'Speak up, man!' Wellesley snarled.
'It would be better, sir,' Sharpe said so loudly that he was verging on insolence, 'if the Lieutenant said he was a company clerk, sir.'
'A clerk?' Baird asked. 'Why?'
'He's got soft hands, sir. Clean hands, sir. Clerks don't muck about in the dirt like the rest of us. And recruits, sir, they're usually just as filthy-handed as the rest of us. But not clerks, sir.' Harris, who had been writing, looked up with a faint expression of admiration. 'Put some ink on his hands, sir,' Sharpe still spoke to Baird, 'and he won't look wrong.'
'I like it, Sharpe, indeed I do!' Baird said. 'Well done.'
Wellesley sneered, then pointedly stared through one of the tent openings as though he found the proceedings tiresome. General Harris looked at Lawford. 'You could manage to play the part of a disgruntled clerk, Lieutenant?' he asked.
'Oh, indeed, sir. I'm sure, sir.' Lawford at last sounded confident.
'Good,' Harris said, laying down his pen. The General wore a wig to hide the scar where an American bullet had torn away a scrap of his skull on Bunker Hill. Now, unconsciously, he lifted a corner of the wig and scratched at that old scar. 'And I suppose, once you reach the city, you contact this merchant. Remind me of his name, Baird?'
'Ravi Shekhar, sir.'
'And what if this fellow Shekhar ain't there?' Harris asked. 'Or won't help?' There was silence after the question. The sentries outside the tent, moved far enough away so they could not overhear the conversation, stamped up and down.
A dog barked. 'You have to anticipate these things,' Harris said mildly, scratching again under his wig. Wellesley offered a harsh laugh, but no suggestion.
'If Ravi Shekhar won't help us, sir,' Baird suggested, 'then Lawford and Sharpe must get themselves into McCandless's jail, then find a way of getting themselves out.' The Scotsman turned to Sharpe. 'Were you by any chance a thief before you joined up?'
A heartbeat's hesitation, then Sharpe nodded. 'Yes, sir.'
'What kind of a thief?' Wellesley asked in a disgusted voice as though he was astonished to discover the ranks of his battalion contained criminals, and, when Sharpe did not answer, the Colonel became even more irritable. 'A diver? A scamp?'
Sharpe was surprised that his Colonel even knew such slang. He shook his head indignantly, denying he had ever been a mere pickpocket or a highwayman. 'I was a house boner, sir,' he said. 'And proper trained too,' he added proudly. In fact he had done his share on the highway, not so much holding up coaches as slicing the leather straps that held the passengers' portmanteaus on the back of coaches. The job was done while the coach was speeding along a road so that the noise of the hooves and wheels would hide the sound of the tumbling luggage. It was a job for agile youngsters and Sharpe had been good at it.
'A house boner means he was a burglar,' Wellesley translated for his two senior officers, unable to hide his scorn.
Baird was pleased with Sharpe's answers. 'Do you still have a picklock, Private?'
'Me, sir? No, sir. But I suppose I could find one, sir, if I had a guinea.'
Baird laughed, suspecting the true cost was nearer a shilling, but he still went to his coat which was hanging from a hook on one of the tent poles and fished out a guinea which he tossed onto Sharpe's lap. 'Find one before tonight, Private Sharpe,' he said, 'for who knows, it might be useful.' He turned to Harris. 'But I doubt it will come to that, sir. I pray it doesn't come to that for I'm not sure that any man, even Private Sharpe here, can escape from the Tippoo's dungeons.' The tall General turned back to Sharpe. 'I was near four years in those cells, Sharpe, and in all that time not one man escaped. Not one.' Baird paced restlessly as he remembered the ordeal. 'The Tippoo's cells have barred doors with padlocks, so your picklock could take care of that, but when I was there we always had four jailers in the daytime, and some days there were even jettis on guard.'
'Jettis, sir?' Lawford asked.
'Jettis, Lieutenant. The Tippoo inherited a dozen of the bastards from his father. They're professional strongmen and their favourite trick is executing prisoners. They have several ways of doing it, none of them pleasant. You want to know their methods?'
'No, sir,' Lawford said hurriedly, blanching at the thought. Sharpe was disappointed, but dared not ask for the details.
Baird grimaced. 'Very unpleasant executions, Lieutenant,' he said grimly. 'You still want to go?'
Lawford remained pale, but nodded. 'I think it's worth a try, sir.'
Wellesley snorted at the Lieutenant's foolishness, but Baird ignored the Colonel. 'At night the guards are withdrawn,' he went on, 'but there's still a sentry.'
'Just one?' Sharpe asked.
'Just one, Private,' Baird confirmed.
'I can take care of one sentry, sir,' Sharpe boasted.
'Not this one,' Baird said grimly, 'because when I was there he was eight feet long if he was an inch. He was a tiger, Sharpe. A man-eater, and the eight foot don't count his tail. He used to be put in the corridor every night, so pray you don't ever end up in the Tippoo's cells. Pray that Ravi Shekhar will know how to get McCandless out.'
'Or at the very least,' Harris intervened, 'pray that Shekhar can discover what McCandless knows and that you can get that news out to us.'
'So that's what we want of you!' Baird said to Sharpe with a brusque cheerfulness. 'Are you willing to go, man?'
Sharpe reckoned it was all idiocy, and he did not much like the sound of the tiger, but he knew better than to show any reluctance. 'I reckon three is better than two thousand, sir,' he said.
'Three?' Baird asked, puzzled.
'Three stripes are better than two thousand lashes, sir. If we find out what you want to know or else fetch this Colonel McCandless out of jail, sir, can I be a sergeant?' He asked the question of Wellesley.
Wellesley looked enraged at Sharpe's presumption, and for a second it was plain that he proposed to turn him down, but General Harris cleared his throat and mildly remarked that it sounded a reasonable suggestion to him.
Wellesley thought about opposing the General, then decided that it was most unlikely that Sharpe would even survive this nonsense and so, albeit reluctantly, he nodded. 'A sergeant's stripes, Sharpe, if you succeed.'
'Thank you, sir,' Sharpe said.
Baird dismissed him. 'Go with Lieutenant Lawford now, Sharpe, he'll tell you what to do. And one other thing . . .' The Scotsman's voice became urgent. 'For God's sake, man, don't tell another soul what you're doing.'
'Wouldn't dream of it, sir,' Sharpe said, flinching as he stood up.
'Go then,' Baird said. He waited till the two men were gone, then sighed. 'A bright young fellow, that Sharpe.' He spoke to Harris.
'A rogue,' Wellesley interjected. 'I could provide you with a hundred others just as disreputable. Scum, all of them, and the only thing that keeps them from riot is discipline.'
Harris rapped the table to stop the squabbling of his two seconds-in-command. 'But will the rogue succeed?' he asked.
'Not a chance,' Wellesley said confidently.
'A woefully small chance,' Baird admitted dourly, then added more vigorously, 'but even a small chance is worth it if we can get McCandless back.'
'At the risk of losing two good men?' Harris asked.
'One man who might become a decent officer,' Wellesley corrected the General, 'and one man whose loss the world won't mourn for a second.'
'But McCandless might hold the key to the city, General,' Baird reminded Harris.
'True,' Harris said heavily, then unrolled a map that had lain scrolled on the edge of his table. The map showed Seringapatam and whenever he gazed at it he wondered how he was to set about besieging the city. Lord Cornwallis, who had captured the city seven years before, had assaulted the north side of the island and then attacked the eastern walls, but Harris doubted that he would be given that route again. The Tippoo would have been forewarned by that earlier success, which meant this new assault must come from either the south or the wes
t. A dozen deserters from the enemy's forces had all claimed that the west wall was in bad repair, and maybe that would give Harris his best chance. 'South or west,' he said aloud, reiterating the problem he had already discussed a score of times with his two deputies. 'But either way, gentlemen, the place is crammed with guns, thick with rockets and filled with infantry. And we'll have only the one chance before the rains come. Just one. West or south, eh?' He stared at the map, hoping against hope that McCandless could be fetched from his dungeon to offer some guidance, but that, he admitted to himself, was a most unlikely outcome, which meant the decision would inevitably be all his to make. The final decision could wait till the army was close to the city and Harris had been given a chance to view the Tippoo's defences, but once the army was ready to make camp the choice would have to be made swiftly and, all things being equal, Harris was fairly sure which route he would choose. For weeks now his instinct had been telling him where to attack, but he worried that the Tippoo might have foreseen the weakness in his city's defences. But there was no point in wondering whether the Tippoo was outfoxing him, that way lay indecision, and so Harris tapped his quill on the map. 'My instincts tell me to attack here, gentlemen, right here.' He was indicating the west wall. 'Across the river shallows and right through the weakest stretch of the walls. It seems the obvious place.' He tapped the map again. 'Right here, right here.'
Right where the Tippoo had set his trap.
Allah, in His infinite mercy, had been good to the Tippoo Sultan, for Allah, in His immeasurable wisdom, had revealed the existence of a merchant who was sending information to the British army. The man dealt in common metals, in copper, tin and brass, and his wagons frequently passed through one of the city's two main gates loaded with their heavy cargoes. God alone knows how many such cargoes had passed out of Seringapatam in the last three months, but at least the gate guards had searched the right wagon, the one that carried a coded letter which, under interrogation, the wretched merchant had admitted contained a report of the strange work that was being done in the old closed gateway of the western wall. That work should have been a close secret, for the only men allowed near the gateway were Gudin's reliable European troops and a small band of the Tippoo's Muslim warriors whom he regarded as utterly trustworthy. The merchant, not surprisingly, was a Hindu, but when his wife was brought into the interrogation room and threatened with the red-hot pincers, the merchant had confessed the name of the Muslim soldier who had allowed himself to be suborned by the merchant's gold. And so much gold! A strong-room filled with the metal, far more than the Tippoo suspected could be earned from trading in tin, brass and copper. It was British gold, the merchant confessed, given him so he could raise rebellion inside Seringapatam.
The Tippoo did not consider himself a cruel man, but nor, indeed, did he think of himself as a gentle one. He was a ruler, and cruelty and mercy were both weapons of rulers. Any monarch who flinched from cruelty would not rule long, just as any ruler who forgot mercy would soon earn hatred, and so the Tippoo tried to balance mercy with cruelty. He did not want the reputation of being lenient any more than he wanted to be judged a tyrant, and so he tried to use both mercy and cruelty judiciously. The Hindu merchant, his confession made, had pleaded for mercy, but the Tippoo knew this was no time to show weakness. This was the time to let a shudder of horror ripple through the streets and alleys of Seringapatam. It was a time to let his enemies know that the price for treason was death, and so both the merchant and the Muslim soldier who had taken the merchant's gold were now standing on the hot sand of the Inner Palace's courtyard where they were being guarded by two of the Tippoo's favoured jettis.
The jettis were Hindus, and their strength, which was remarkable, was devoted to their religion. That amused the Tippoo. Some Hindus sought the rewards of godliness by growing their hair and fingernails, others by denying themselves food, still others by abjuring all earthly pleasures, but the jettis did it by developing their muscles, and the results, the Tippoo admitted, were extraordinary. He might disagree with their religion, but he encouraged them all the same and like his father he had hired a dozen of the most impressive strongmen to amuse and serve him. Two of the finest now stood beneath the throne-room balcony, stripped to their waists and with their vast chests oiled so that their muscles shone dark in the early-afternoon sun. The six tigers, restless because they had been denied their midday meal of freshly slaughtered goat meat, glared with yellow eyes from the courtyard's edges.
The Tippoo came from his prayers to the balcony where he threw open the filigree shutters so that he and his entourage could view the courtyard clearly. Colonel Gudin was in attendance, as was Appah Rao. Both men had been summoned from the city ramparts where they had been making the last preparations for the arrival of the British. Gun carriages were being repaired, ammunition being laid down in magazines deep enough to be shielded from the fall of enemy howitzer shells, while dozens of rockets were in the ready magazines on the ramparts' firesteps. The Tippoo liked to tour his defences where he could imagine his rockets and shells searing down into the enemy ranks, but now, in the courtyard of his Inner Palace, he had an even more pleasurable duty to perform. He would kill traitors. 'Both men betrayed me,' he told Colonel Gudin through the interpreter, 'and one is also a spy. What would you do in France with such men, Colonel?'
'Send them to Madame Guillotine, Your Majesty.' The Tippoo chuckled when the answer was translated. He was curious about the guillotine and at one time he had thought of having such a machine built in the city. He was fascinated by all things French and indeed, when the revolution had swept France and destroyed the ancién regime, the Tippoo had for a time embraced the new ideas of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. He had erected a Tree of Liberty in Seringapatam, ordered his guards to wear the red hats of the revolution, and had even ordered revolutionary declarations to be posted in the city's main streets, but the fascination had not endured. The Tippoo had begun to fear that his people might become too fond of liberty, or even infected with equality, and so he had removed the Tree of Liberty and had the declarations torn down, yet still the Tippoo treasured a love of France. He had never built the guillotine, not for lack of funds, but rather because Gudin had persuaded him that the machine was a device of mercy, constructed to end a criminal's life with such swiftness that the victim would never even realize he was being killed. It was an ingenious device, the Tippoo admitted, but much too merciful. How could such a machine deter traitors?
'That man'—the Tippoo now pointed to the Muslim soldier who had betrayed the secrets of the gatehouse—'will be killed first and then his body will be fed to pigs. I can think of no fate worse for a Muslim, and believe me, Colonel, he fears the pigs more than he fears his death. The other man will feed my tigers and his bones will be ground to powder and delivered to his widow. Their deaths will be short, not perhaps as quick as your machine, Colonel, but still mercifully short.' He clapped his hands and the two chained prisoners were dragged forward until they stood in the centre of the courtyard.
The Muslim soldier was forced to his knees. His tiger-striped uniform had been stripped from him and now he wore nothing but a short pair of loose cotton breeches. He stared up at the Tippoo who was gaudy in a yellow silk tunic and a jewelled turban, and the man raised his manacled hands in a mute appeal for clemency that the Tippoo ignored. Gudin tensed himself. He had seen the jettis at work before, but familiarity did not make the spectacle any more pleasant.
The first jetti placed a nail on the crown of the victim's bare head. The nail was of black iron and had a six-inch shank that was topped by a flat head that was a good three inches wide. The man held the nail in place with his left hand, then looked up at the balcony. The doomed soldier, feeling the touch of the iron point on his scalp, called for forgiveness. The Tippoo listened for a second to the soldier's desperate excuses, then pointed a finger at him. The Tippoo held the finger steady for a few seconds and the soldier held his breath as he dared to believe he might be forgiv
en, but then the Tippoo's hand abruptly dropped.
The jetti raised his right hand, its palm facing downwards, then took a deep breath. He paused, summoning his huge strength, then he slapped the hand fast down so that his open palm struck the nail's flat top. He shouted aloud as he struck, and at the very instant that his right hand slapped the nail so he snatched his left hand away from the long shank which was driven hard and deep into the soldier's skull. It went so deep that the nail's flat head crushed the prisoner's black hair. Blood spurted from under the nail as its shank slammed home. The jetti stepped away, gesturing at the nail as if to show how much strength had been needed to so drive it through the thick bone of the skull. The traitor still lived. He was babbling and shrieking, and blood was spilling down his face in quick lacing rivulets as he swayed on his knees. His body was shaking, but then, quite suddenly, his back arched, he stared wide-eyed up at the Tippoo and then fell forward. His body shuddered twice, then was still. One of the six chained tigers stirred at the smell of blood and padded forward until its chain stretched to its full length and so held it back. The beast growled, then settled down to watch the second man die.
The Tippoo and his entourage applauded the first jetti's skill, then the Tippoo pointed at the wretched Hindu merchant. This second prisoner was a big man, fat as butter, and his gross size would only make the second demonstration all the more impressive.
The first jetti, his execution successfully completed, fetched a stool from the gateway. He set it down and forced the fat, weeping merchant onto its seat. Then he knelt in front of the chair and pinned the man's manacled arms down tight against his sagging belly so that he could not move. The chair faced the Tippoo and the kneeling jetti made certain he stayed low so that he would not spoil his master's view. 'It takes more strength than you would think,' the Tippoo remarked to Gudin, 'to drive a nail into a skull.'