Lawford was silent for a few seconds, then gave a shrug. 'In truth I thought it would be impossible.'
'So why did you come?'
Lawford cradled the glass in both hands and stared at Sharpe as if weighing up whether or not to answer. 'To get away from Morris,' he finally confessed, 'and for the excitement.' He seemed embarrassed to admit as much.
'Morris is a bastard,' Sharpe said feelingly.
Lawford frowned at the criticism. 'He's bored,' he said chidingly, then he steered the conversation away from the danger area of criticizing a superior officer. 'And I also came because I owe gratitude to my uncle.'
'And because it would get you noticed?'
Lawford looked up with some surprise on his face, then he nodded. 'That too.'
'Same as me then,' Sharpe said. 'Exact same as me. Except till the General said you was coming with me I had half a mind to run proper.'
Lawford was shocked by the admission. 'You really wanted to desert?'
'For Christ's sake! What do you think it's like in the ranks if you've got an officer like Morris and a sergeant like Hakeswill? Those bastards think we're just bleeding cattle, but we're not. Most of us want to do a decent job. Not too decent, maybe. We want a bit of money and a bibbi from time to time, but we don't actually enjoy being flogged. And we can fight like the bloody devil. If you bastard lot started trusting us instead of treating us like the enemy, you'd be bloody amazed what we could do.'
Lawford said nothing.
'You've got some good men in the company,' Sharpe insisted. 'Tom Garrard is a better soldier than half the officers in the battalion, but you don't even notice him. If a man can't read and doesn't speak like a bleeding choirboy you think he can't be trusted.'
'The army's changing,' Lawford said defensively.
'Like hell it is. Why do you make us powder our hair like bleeding women? Or wear that bloody stock?'
'Change takes time,' Lawford said weakly.
'Too much bloody time!' Sharpe said fervently, then leaned against the wall and eyed the girls who were cooking at the tavern's far end. Were they whores, he wondered? Hickson and Blake had told him they knew where the best whores were, then he remembered Mary and suddenly felt guilty. He had not seen her once since their arrival in Seringapatam, but nor had he thought that much about her. In truth he was having too good a time here; the food was good, the liquor cheap and the company acceptable, and to that was added the heady spice of danger. 'After that brilliant piece of sharpshooting,' he encouraged Lawford, 'we're going to be all right. We'll have a chance to get out of here.'
'What about Mrs. Bickerstaff?' Lawford asked.
'I was just thinking of her. And maybe you were right. Maybe I shouldn't have brought her. Couldn't leave her with the army though, could I? Not with Hakeswill planning to sell her to a kin.'
'A kin?'
'A pimp.'
'He really planned that?' Lawford asked.
'Him and Morris. In it together, they were. Bloody Hakeswill told me as much, the night he got me to hit him. And Morris was there with that little bastard Hicks, just waiting for me to do it. I was a bloody fool to fall for it, but there it is.'
'Can you prove it?'
'Prove it!' Sharpe asked derisively. 'Of course I can't prove it, but it's true.' He blew out a rueful breath. 'Just what am I going to do with Mary?'
'Take her with you, of course,' Lawford said sternly.
'Might not have a chance,' Sharpe said.
Lawford stared at him for a few seconds. 'God, you're ruthless,' he finally said.
'I'm a soldier. It fits.' Sharpe said it proudly, but he was not proud, merely defiant. What was he to do with Mary? And where was she? He drank the rest of his arrack and clapped his hands for more. 'You want to find a bibbi tonight?' he asked Lawford.
'A whore?' Lawford asked in horror.
'I don't suppose a respectable woman will help us out much. Not unless you want a spot of polite conversation.'
Lawford stared aghast at Sharpe. 'What we should do,' the Lieutenant said softly, 'is find this man Ravi Shekhar. He may have a way of getting news out of the city.'
'And how the hell are we supposed to find him?' Sharpe asked defiantly. 'We can't wander the bloody streets asking for this fellow in English. No one will know what the heck we're doing! I'll ask Mary to find him when we see her.' He grinned. 'Bugger Shekhar. How about a bibbi instead?'
'Maybe I'll read.'
'Your choice,' Sharpe said carelessly.
Lawford hesitated, his face reddening. 'It's just that I've seen men with the pox,' he explained.
'Christ! You've seen men vomit, but it don't stop you drinking. Besides, don't worry about the pox. That's why God gave us mercury. The stuff worked for bloody Hakeswill, didn't it? Though God knows why. Besides, Harry Hickson says he knows some clean girls, but of course they always say that. Still, if you want to ruin your eyes reading the Bible, go ahead, but there ain't no mercury that will give you your sight back.'
Lawford said nothing for a few seconds. 'Maybe I will come with you,' he finally said shyly, staring down at the table.
'Learning how the other half lives?' Sharpe asked with a grin.
'Something like that,' Lawford mumbled.
'Well enough, I tell you. Give us some cash and a willing couple of frows and we can live like kings. We'll make this the last drink, eh? Don't want to lower the flag, do we?'
Lawford was now deep red. 'You won't, of course, tell anyone about this when we're back?'
'Me?' Sharpe pretended to be astonished at the very idea. 'My lips are gummed together. Not a word, promise.'
Lawford worried that he was letting his dignity slide, but he did not want to lose Sharpe's approval. The Lieutenant was becoming fascinated by the younger man's confidence, and envied the way in which Sharpe so instinctively negotiated a wicked world and he wished he could find the same easy ability in himself. He thought briefly of the Bible waiting back in the barracks, and of his mother's advice to read it diligently, but then he decided to hell with them both. He drained his arrack, picked up his musket and followed Sharpe into the dusk.
Every house in the city was prepared for the siege. Storehouses were filled with food and valuables were being hastily concealed in case the enemy armies broke through the wall. Holes were dug in gardens and filled with coins and jewellery, and in some of the wealthier houses whole rooms were concealed by false walls so that the women could be hidden away when the invaders rampaged through the streets.
Mary helped General Appah Rao's household prepare for that ordeal. She felt guilty, not because she came from the army that was imposing this threatened misery on the city, but because she had unexpectedly found herself happy in Rao's sprawling home.
When General Appah Rao had first taken her away from Sharpe she had been frightened, but the General had taken her to his own house and there reassured her of her safety. 'We must clean you,' the General told her, 'and let that eye heal.' He treated her gently, but with a measure of reserve that sprang from her dishevelled looks and her presumed history. The General did not believe that Mary was the most suitable addition to his household, but she spoke English and Appah Rao was shrewd enough to reckon that a command of English would be a profitable accomplishment in Mysore's future and he had three sons who would have to survive in that future. 'In time,' Rao told Mary, 'you can join your man, but it's best he should settle in first.'
But now, after a week in the General's household, Mary did not want to leave. For a start the house was filled with women who had taken her into their care and treated her with a kindness that astonished her. The General's wife, Lakshmi, was a tall plump woman with prematurely grey hair and an infectious laugh. She had two grown unmarried daughters and, though there was a score of female servants, Mary was surprised to discover that Lakshmi and her daughters shared the work of the big house. They did not sweep it or draw water—those tasks were for the lowest of the servants—but Lakshmi loved to be in the kit
chen from where her laughter rippled out into the rest of the house.
It had been Lakshmi who had scolded Mary for being so dirty, had stripped her from her western clothes, forced her into a bath and there untangled and washed her filthy hair. 'You'd be beautiful if you took some trouble,' Lakshmi had said.
'I didn't want to draw attention to myself.'
'When you're my age, my dear, no one pays you any attention at all, so you should take all you can get while you're young. You say you're a widow?'
'He was an Englishman,' Mary said nervously, explaining the lack of the marriage mark on her forehead and worried lest the older woman thought she should have thrown herself onto her husband's pyre.
'Well, you're a free woman now, so let's make you expensive.' Lakshmi laughed and then, helped by her daughters, she first brushed and then combed Mary's hair, drawing it back and then gathering it into a bun at the nape of her neck. A cheerful maid brought in an armful of clothes and the women tossed cholis at her. 'Choose one,' Lakshmi said. The choli was a brief blouse that covered Mary's breasts, shoulders and upper arms, but left most of her back naked and Mary instinctively selected the most modest, but Lakshmi would have none of it. 'That lovely pale skin of yours, show it off!' she said, and chose a brief choli patterned in extravagant swirls of scarlet flowers and yellow leaves. Lakshmi tugged the short sleeves straight. 'So why did you run with those two men?' Lakshmi asked.
'There was a man back in the army. A bad man. He wanted to . . .' Mary stopped and shrugged. 'You know.'
'Soldiers!' Lakshmi said disapprovingly. 'But the two men you ran away with, did they treat you well?'
'Yes, oh yes.' Mary suddenly wanted Lakshmi's good opinion, and that opinion would not be good if she thought that Mary had run from the army with a lover. 'One of them'—she told the lie shyly—'is my half-brother.'
'Ah!' Lakshmi said as though everything was clear now. Her husband had told her that Mary had run with her lover, but Lakshmi decided to accept Mary's story. 'And the other man?' she asked.
'He's just a friend of my brother's.' Mary blushed at the lie, but Lakshmi did not seem to notice. 'They were both protecting me,' Mary explained.
'That's good. That's good. Now, this.' She held out a white petticoat that Mary stepped into. Lakshmi laced it tight at the back, then began hunting through the pile of saris.
'Green,' she said, 'that'll suit you,' and she unfolded a vast bolt of green silk that was four feet wide and over twenty feet long. 'You know how to wear a sari?' Lakshmi asked.
'My mother taught me.'
'In Calcutta?' Lakshmi hooted. 'What do they know of saris in Calcutta? Skimpy little northern things, that's all they are. Here, let me.' Lakshmi wrapped the first length of sari about Mary's slender waist and tucked it firmly into the petticoat's waistband, then she wrapped a further length about the girl, but this she skilfully nicked into pleated folds that were again firmly anchored in the petticoat's waistband. Mary could easily have done the job herself, but Lakshmi took such pleasure in it that it would have been cruel to have denied her. By the time the pleats were tucked in about half of the sari had been used up, and the rest Lakshmi looped over Mary's left shoulder, then tugged at the silk so that it fell in graceful folds. Then she stepped back. 'Perfect! Now you can come and help us in the kitchens. We'll burn those old clothes.'
In the mornings Mary taught the General's three small boys English. They were bright children and learned quickly and the hours passed pleasantly enough. In the afternoons she helped in the household chores, but in the early evening it was her job to light the oil lamps about the house and it was that duty that threw Mary into the company of Kunwar Singh who, at about the same time as the lamps were lit, went round the house ensuring that the shutters were barred and the outer doors and gates either locked or guarded. He was the chief of Appah Rao's bodyguard, but his duties were more concerned with the household than with the General who had enough soldiers surrounding him wherever he went in the city. Kunwar Singh, Mary learned, was a distant relation of the General, but there was something oddly sad about the tall young man whose manners were so courteous but also so distant.
'We don't talk about it,' Lakshmi said to Mary one afternoon when they were both hulling rice.
'I'm sorry I asked.'
'His father was disgraced, you see,' Lakshmi went on enthusiastically. 'And so the whole family was disgraced. Kunwar's father managed some of our land near Sedasseer, and he stole from us! Stole! And when he was found out, instead of throwing himself on my husband's mercy, he became a bandit. The Tippoo's men caught him in the end and cut his head off. Poor Kunwar. It's hard to live down that sort of disgrace.'
'Is it a worse disgrace than having been married to an Englishman?' Mary asked miserably, for somehow, in this lively house, she did feel obscurely ashamed. She was half English herself, but under Lakshmi's swamping affection, she kept remembering her mother who had been rejected by her own people for marrying an Englishman.
'A disgrace? Married to an Englishman? What nonsense you do talk, girl!' Lakshmi said, and the next day she took care to send Mary to deliver a present of food to the young deposed Rajah of Mysore who survived at the Tippoo's mercy in a small house just east of the Inner Palace. 'But you can't go alone,' Lakshmi said, 'not with the streets full of soldiers. Kunwar!' And Lakshmi saw the blush of happiness on Mary's face as she set off in the tall Kunwar Singh's protective company.
Mary was happy, but she felt guilty. She knew she ought to try and find Sharpe for she suspected he must be missing her, but she was suddenly so content in Appah Rao's household that she did not want to disturb that happiness by returning to her old world. She felt at home and, though the city was surrounded by enemies, she felt oddly safe. One day, she supposed, she would have to find Sharpe, and perhaps everything would turn out well on that day, but Mary did nothing to hasten it. She just felt guilty and made sure that she did not start lighting the lamps until she heard the first shutter bar fall.
And Lakshmi, who had been wondering just where she might find poor disgraced Kunwar Singh a suitable bride, chuckled.
Once the British and Hyderabad armies had made their permanent encampment to the west of Seringapatam the siege settled into a pattern that both sides recognized. The allied armies stayed well out of the range of even the largest cannon on the city's wall and far beyond the reach of any rocket, but they established a picket line facing an earth-banked aqueduct that wended its way through the fields about a mile west of the city and there they posted some field artillery and infantry to cover the land across which they would dig their approach ditches. The sooner those ditches were begun the sooner the breaching batteries could be built, but to the south of that chosen ground the steeply banked aqueduct made a deep loop that penetrated a half-mile westwards and the inside of that bend was filled by a tope, a thick wood, and from its leafy cover the Tippoo's men kept up a galling musket fire on the British picket line, while his rocket-men rained an erratic but troublesome barrage of missiles onto the forward British works. One lucky rocket streaked a thousand yards to hit an ammunition limber and the resultant explosion caused a cheer to sound from the distant walls of the city.
General Harris endured the rocket bombardment for two days, then decided it was time to capture the whole length of the aqueduct and clear the tope. Orders were written and trickled down from general to colonel to captains, and the captains sought out their sergeants. 'Get the men ready, Sergeant,' Morris told Hakeswill.
Hakeswill was sitting in his own tent, a luxury he alone enjoyed among the 33rd's sergeants. The tent had belonged to Captain Hughes and should have been auctioned with the rest of the Captain's belongings after Hughes died of the fever, but Hakeswill had simply claimed the tent and no one had liked to cross him. His servant Raziv, a miserable half-witted creature from Calcutta, was polishing Hakeswill's boots so the Sergeant had to come bare-footed from his tent to face Morris. 'Ready, sir?' he said. 'They are ready, sir.' He stared suspici
ously about the Light Company's lines. 'Better be ready, sir, or we'll have the skin off the lot of them.' His face jerked.
'Sixty rounds of ammunition,' Morris said.
'Always carry it, sir! Regulations, sir!'
Morris had drunk the best part of three bottles of wine at luncheon and was in no mood to deal with Hakeswill's equivocations. He swore at the Sergeant, then pointed south to where another rocket was smoking up from the tope. 'Tonight, you idiot, we're cleaning those bastards out of those trees.'
'Us, sir?' Hakeswill was alarmed at the prospect. 'Just us, sir?'
'The whole battalion. Night attack. Inspection at sundown. Any man who looks drunk gets flogged.'
Officers excepted, Hakeswill thought, then quivered as he offered Morris a cracking salute. 'Sir! Inspection at sundown, sir. Permission to carry on, sir?' He did not wait for Morris's permission, but turned back into his tent. 'Boots! Give 'em here! Come on, you black bastard!' He gave Raziv a cuff round the ear and snatched his half-cleaned boots. He tugged them on, then dragged Raziv by the ear to where the halberd was planted like a banner in front of the tent. 'Sharpen!' Hakeswill bawled in the unfortunate boy's bruised ear. 'Sharpen! Understand, you toad-witted heathen? I want it sharp!' Hakeswill gave the boy a parting slap as an encouragement, then stumped off through the lines. 'On your bleeding feet!' he shouted. 'Look lively now! Time to earn your miserable pay. Are you drunk, Garrard? If you're drunk, boy, I'll have your bones given a stroking.'
The battalion paraded at dusk and, to its surprise, found itself being inspected by its Colonel, Arthur Wellesley. There was a feeling of relief in the ranks when Wellesley appeared, for by now every man knew that they were due for a fight and none wished to go into battle under the uncertain leadership of Major Shee who had drunk so much arrack that he was visibly swaying on his horse. Wellesley might be a cold-hearted bastard, but the men knew he was a careful soldier and they even looked cheerful as he trotted down their ranks on his white horse. Each man had to demonstrate possession of sixty cartridges, and those who failed had their names taken for punishment. Two sepoy battalions from the East India Company's forces paraded behind the 33rd and, just as the sun disappeared behind them, all three battalions marched south-eastwards towards the aqueduct. Their colours were flying and Colonel Wellesley led them on horseback. Other King's battalions marched to their left, going to attack the northern stretch of the aqueduct.