Sharpe's Triumph s-2

by Bernard Cornwell

  "I thought I told you to let me know where you were!" McCandless complained when Sharpe appeared at the top of the steps.

  "I did, sir," Sharpe lied. "I told an ensign of the 78th to find you, sir."

  "He never arrived!" McCandless said as he climbed the outside stairs. "Are you telling me you spent the night alone with this woman, Sergeant?"

  "You told me to protect her, sir."

  "I didn't tell you to risk her honour! You should have sought me out."

  "Didn't want to bother you, sir."

  "Duty is never a bother, Sharpe," McCandless said when he reached the small balcony at the stair head. "The General expressed a wish to dine with Madame Joubert and I had to explain she was indisposed. I lied, Sharpe!" The Colonel thrust an indignant finger at Sharpe's chest. "But what else could I do? I could hardly admit I'd left her alone with a sergeant!"

  "I'm sorry, sir."

  "There's no harm done, I suppose," McCandless said grudgingly, then took off his hat as he followed Sharpe into the living room where Simone sat at the table. "Good morning, Madame," the Colonel boomed cheerfully. "I trust you slept well?"

  "Indeed, Colonel," Simone said, blushing, but McCandless was far too obtuse to see or to interpret the blush.

  "I have good news, Madame," the Scotsman went on. "General Wellesley is agreeable that you should rejoin your husband. There is, however, a difficulty." It was McCandless's turn to blush. "I can provide no chaperone, Madame, and you do not possess a maid. I assure you that you may rely utterly upon my honour, but your husband might object if you lack a female companion on the journey."

  "Pierre will have no objection, Colonel," Simone said meekly.

  "And I warrant Sergeant Sharpe will behave like a gentleman," McCandless said with a fierce look at Sharpe.

  "He does, Colonel, he does," Simone said, offering Sharpe a very shy glance.

  "Good!" McCandless said, relieved to be done with such a delicate topic. He slapped his cocked hat against his leg. "No rain again," he declared, "and I dare say it'll be a hot day. You can be ready to ride in an hour, Madame?"

  "In less, Colonel."

  "One hour will suffice, Madame. You will do me the honour, perhaps, of meeting me by the north gate? I'll have your horse ready, Sharpe."

  * * *

  They left promptly, riding northwards past the battery that had been dug to hammer the fort's big walls. The battery's four guns were mere twelve-pounders, scarce big enough to dent the fort's wall, let alone break it down, but General Wellesley reckoned the garrison would be so disheartened by the city's swift defeat that even a few twelve-pound shots might persuade them into surrender. The four guns had opened fire at dawn, but their firing was sporadic until McCandless led his party out of the city when they suddenly all fired at once and Simone's horse, startled by the unexpected noise, skittered sideways. Simone rode side-saddle just behind the Colonel, while Sevajee and his men brought up the rear. Sharpe was wearing boots at last; the tall red leather boots with steel spurs that he had dragged from the body of an Arab.

  He glanced back as they rode away. He saw the huge jet of smoke burst from a twelve-pounder's muzzle and a second later heard the percussive thump of the exploding charge and, just as that sound faded, a crack as the ball struck the wall of the fort. Then the other three guns fired and he imagined the steam hissing into the air as the gunners poured water on the overheated barrels. The fort's red walls blossomed with smoke as the defenders' cannon replied, but the pioneers had dug the gunners a deep battery and protected it with a thick wall of red earth, and the enemy's fire wasted itself in those defences. Then Sharpe rode past a grove of trees and the distant fight was hidden and the sound of the guns grew fainter and fainter as they rode farther north until, at last, the sound of the cannonade was a mere grumbling on the horizon.

  Then they dropped down the escarpment and the noise of the guns faded away altogether.

  It was a disconsolate expedition. Colonel McCandless had nothing to say to Simone who was still withdrawn. Sharpe tried to cheer her up, but his clumsy attempts only made her more miserable and after a time he too fell silent. Women were a mystery, he thought. During the night Simone had clung to him as though she were drowning, but since the dawn it had seemed as if she would prefer to be drowned.

  "Horsemen on our right, Sergeant!" McCandless said, his tone a reproof that Sharpe had not spotted the cavalry first. "Probably ours, but they could be enemy."

  Sharpe stared eastwards.

  "They're ours, sir," he called, kicking his horse to catch up with McCandless. One of the distant horsemen carried the new Union flag and Sharpe's good eyes had spotted the banner. The flag was easier to recognize at a distance these days, for since the incorporation of Ireland into the United Kingdom a new red diagonal cross had been added to the flag, and though the new-faingled design looked odd and unfamiliar, it did make the banner stand out.

  The cavalry left a plume of dust as they rode to intercept McCandless's party. Sevajee and his men cantered to meet them and Sharpe saw the two groups of horsemen greet each other warmly. The strangers turned out to be boundaries from the Mahratta states who, like Sevajee, had sided with the British against Scindia. These mercenaries were under the command of a British officer and, like Sevajee's men, they carried lances, tulwars, matchlock guns, flintlocks, pistols and bows and arrows.

  They wore no uniform, but a handful of the sixty men possessed breastplates and most had metal helmets that were crested with feathers or horsehair plumes. Their officer, a dragoon captain, fell in alongside McCandless and reported seeing a white-coated battalion on the far side of the River Godavery.

  "I didn't try and cross, sir," the Captain said, "for they weren't exactly friendly."

  "But you're sure they had white coats?"

  "No doubts at all, sir," the Captain said, thus confirming that Dodd must have crossed the river already.

  He added that he had questioned some grain merchants who had travelled south across the Godavery and those men had told him that Pohlmann's compoo was camped close to Aurungabad. That city belonged to Hyderabad, but the merchants had seen no evidence that the Mahrattas were preparing to besiege the city walls. The Captain tugged his reins, turning his horse southwards so he could carry his news to Wellesley.

  "Bid you good day, Colonel. Your servant, Ma'am." The dragoon officer touched his hat to Simone, then led his brigands away.

  McCandless decreed that they would camp that night on the south bank of the River Godavery where Sharpe rigged two horse blankets as a tent for Simone. Sevajee and his men made their beds on the bluff above the river, a score of yards from the tent, and McCandless and Sharpe spread their blankets alongside. The river was high, but it had still not filled the steep-sided ravine that successive monsoons had scarred into the flat earth and Sharpe guessed that the river was only at half flood. If the belated monsoon did arrive the Godavery would swell into a swirling torrent a full quarter-mile wide, but even half full the river looked a formidable obstacle as it surged westwards with its burden of flotsam.

  "Too deep to wade," McCandless said as the sun fell.

  "Current looks strong, sir."

  "It'll sweep you to your death, man."

  "So how's the army to cross it, sir?"

  "With difficulty, Sharpe, with difficulty, but discipline always overcomes difficulty. Dodd got across, so we surely can."

  McCandless had been reading his Bible, but the falling dark now obscured the pages and so he closed the book. Simone had eaten with them, but she had been uncommunicative and McCandless was glad when she withdrew behind her blankets.

  "Women upset matters," the Scotsman said unhappily.

  "They do, sir?"

  "Perturbations," McCandless said mysteriously, "perturbations." The small flames of the campfire made his already gaunt face seem skeletal.

  He shook his head.

  "It's the heat, Sharpe, I'm convinced of it. The further south you travel, the more sin is pro
voked among womankind. It makes sense, of course. Hell is a hot place, and hell is sin's destination."

  "So you think that heaven's cold, sir?"

  "I like to think it's bracing," the Colonel answered seriously. "Something like Scotland, I imagine. Certainly not as hot as India, and the heat here has a very bad effect on some women. It releases things in them." He paused, evidently deciding he risked saying too much. "I'm not at all convinced India is a place for European women," the Colonel went on, "and I shall be very glad when we're rid of Madame Joubert. Still, I can't deny that her predicament is propitious. It enables us to take a look at Lieutenant Dodd."

  Sharpe poked a half-burned scrap of driftwood into the hottest part of the fire, provoking an up draught of sparks.

  "Are you hoping to capture Lieutenant Dodd, sir? Is that why we're taking Madame back to her husband?"

  McCandless shook his head.

  "I doubt we'll get the chance, Sharpe. No, we're using a heaven-sent opportunity to take a look at our enemy. Our armies are marching into dangerous territory, for no place in India can raise armies the size of the Mahratta forces, and we are precious few in number. We need intelligence, Sharpe, so when we reach them, watch and pray! Keep your eyes skinned. How many battalions? How many guns? What's the state of the guns? How many limbers? Look hard at the infantry. Matchlocks or fire locks. In a month or so we'll be fighting these rogues, so the more we know of them the better." The Colonel scuffed earth onto the fire, dousing the last small flames that Sharpe had just provoked. "Now sleep, man. You'll be needing all your strength and wits in the morning."

  * * *

  Next morning they rode downstream until they found a village next to a vast empty Hindu temple, and in the village were small basket boats that resembled Welsh coracles and McCandless hired a half-dozen of these as ferries. The unsaddled horses were made to swim behind the boats. It was a perilous crossing, for the brown current snatched at the light vessels and whirled them downstream. The horses, white-eyed, swam desperately behind the reed boats that Sharpe noted had no caulking of any kind, but depended on skilful close weaving to keep the water out, and the tug of the horses' leading reins strained the light wooden frames and stretched the weave so that the boats let in water alarmingly. Sharpe used his shako to bail out his coracle, but the boatmen just grinned at his futile efforts and dug their paddles in harder. Once a half-submerged tree almost speared Sharpe's boat, and if the trunk had struck them the boat must surely have been tipped over, but the two boatmen skilfully spun the coracle away, let the tree pass, then paddled on.

  It took half an hour to land and saddle the horses. Simone had shared a coracle with McCandless and the brief voyage had soaked the bottom half of her thin linen dress so that the damp weave clung to her legs.

  McCandless was embarrassed, and offered her a horse blanket for modesty's sake, but Simone shook her head.

  "Where do we go now, Colonel?" she asked.

  "Towards Aurungabad, Ma'am," McCandless said gruffly, keeping his eyes averted from her beguiling figure, "but doubtless we shall be intercepted long before we reach that city. You'll be with your husband by tomorrow night, I don't doubt."

  Sevajee's men rode far ahead now, spread into a picquet line to give warning of any enemy. This land all belonged to the Rajah of Hyderabad, an ally of the British, but it was frontier land and the only friendly troops now north of the Godavery were the garrisons of Hyderabad's isolated fortresses. The rest were all Mahrattas, though Sharpe saw no enemies that day. The only people he saw were peasants cleaning out the irrigation channels in their stubble fields or tending the huge brick kilns that smoked in the sunlight. The brick-workers were all women and children, greasy and sweaty, who gave the travellers scarcely a glance.

  "It's a hard life," Simone said to Sharpe as they passed one half-built kiln where an overseer lazed under a woven canopy and shouted at the children to work faster.

  "All life's hard unless you've got money," Sharpe said, grateful that Simone had at last broken her silence. They were riding a few paces behind the Colonel and kept their voices low so he could not hear them.

  "Money and rank," Simone said.

  "Rank?" Sharpe asked.

  "They're usually the same thing," Simone said. "Colonels are richer than captains, are they not?"

  And captains are generally richer than sergeants, Sharpe thought, but he said nothing.

  Simone touched the pouch at her waist.

  "I should give you back your diamonds."

  "Why?"

  "Because..." she said, but then fell silent for a while. "I do not want you to think..." she tried again, but the words would not come.

  Sharpe smiled at her.

  "Nothing happened, love," he told her. "That's what you say to your husband. Nothing happened, and you found the diamonds on a dead body."

  "He will want me to give them to him. For his family."

  "Then don't tell him."

  "He is saving money," Simone explained, "so his family can live without work."

  "We all want that. Dream of life without work, we do. That's why we all want to be officers."

  "And I think to myself," she went on as if Sharpe had not spoken, "what shall I do? I cannot stay here in India. I must go to France. We are like ships, Sergeant, who look for a safe harbour."

  "And Pierre is safe?"

  "He is safe," Simone said bleakly, and Sharpe understood what she had been thinking for the last two days. He could offer her no security, while her husband could, and although she found Pierre's world stultifying, she was terrified by the alternative. She had dared taste that alternative for one night, but now shied away from it. "You do not think badly of me?" she asked Sharpe anxiously.

  "I'm probably half in love with you," Sharpe told her, "so how can I think badly of you?"

  She seemed relieved, and for the rest of that day she chattered happily enough. McCandless questioned her closely about Dodd's regiment, how it had been trained and how it was equipped, and though she had taken scant interest in such things, her replies satisfied the Colonel who pencilled notes in a small black book.

  They slept that night in a village, and next day rode even more warily.

  "When we meet the enemy, Sharpe," McCandless advised him, "keep your hands away from your weapon."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Give a Mahratta one excuse to think you're hostile," the Colonel said cheerfully, "and he'll use you as an archery butt. They don't make decent heavy horsemen, but as raiders they're unsurpassed. They attack in swarms, Sharpe. A horde of horsemen. Like watching a storm approach. Nothing but dust and the shine of swords. Magnificent!"

  "You like them, sir?" Sharpe asked.

  "I like the wild, Sharpe," McCandless said fiercely. "We've tamed ourselves at home, but out here a man still lives by his weapon and his wits. I shall miss that when we've imposed order."

  "So why tame it, sir?"

  "Because it is our duty, Sharpe. God's duty. Trade, order, law, and Christian decency, that's our business." McCandless was gazing ahead to where a patch of misty white hung just above the northern horizon.

  It was dust kicked into the air, and maybe it was nothing more than a herd of cattle or a flock of sheep, but the dust smear grew and suddenly Sevajee's men veered sharply away to the west and galloped out of sight.

  "Are they running out on us, sir?" Sharpe asked.

  "The enemy will likely enough treat you and me with respect, Sharpe," McCandless said, 'but Sevajee cannot expect courtesy from them. They'd regard him as a traitor and execute him on the spot. We'll meet up with him when we've delivered Madame Joubert to her husband. He and I have arranged a rendezvous."

  The dust cloud drew nearer and Sharpe saw a sliver of reflected sunlight glint in the whiteness and he knew he was seeing the first sign of McCandless's magnificent wild horsemen. The storm was coming.

  The Mahratta cavalrymen had spread into a long line as they approached McCandless's small party. There were, Sharpe
guessed, two hundred or more of the horsemen and, as they drew nearer, the flanks of their line quickened to form a pair of horns that would encircle their prey.

  McCandless feigned not to notice the threat, but kept riding gently ahead while the wild horns streamed past in a flurry of dust and noise.

  They were, Sharpe noticed, small men on small horses. British cavalry were bigger and their horses were heavier, but these nimble horsemen still looked effective enough. The curved blades of their drawn tulwars glittered like their plumed helmets which rose to a sharp point decorated with a crest. Some of the crests were horse-tails, some vultures' feathers and some just brightly coloured ribbons. More ribbons were woven into their horses' plaited manes or were tied to the horn tips of the archers' bows. The horsemen pounded past McCandless, then turned with a swerve, a slew of choking dust, a skid of hooves, a jangle of curb chains and the thump of scabbarded weapons.

  The Mahratta leader confronted McCandless who pretended to be surprised to find his path blocked, but nevertheless greeted the enemy with an elaborate and confident courtesy. The cavalry commander was a wildly bearded man with a scarred cheek, a wall eye and lank hair that hung far below his helmet's cloth-rimmed edge. He held his tulwar menacingly, but McCandless ignored the blade's threat, indeed he ignored most of what the enemy commander said, and instead boomed his own demands in a voice that showed not the least nervousness. The Scotsman towered over the smaller horsemen and, because he seemed to regard his presence among them as entirely natural, they meekly accepted his version of what was happening.

  "I have demanded that they escort us to Pohlmann," the Scotsman informed Sharpe.

  "They probably planned on doing that anyway, sir."