“You think the British will attack in the north?”
"I think, Monsewer, that the British will attack here, in the south.
Our orders are to kill as many as we can, then escape to join Colonel Pohlmann. We shall
make that escape through the north gate, but even an idiot can see that half the city's
inhabitants will also try to escape through the north gate and your job, Joubert, is to
keep the bastards from blocking our way. I intend to save the regiment, not lose it with
the city. That means you open fire on any civilian who tries to leave the city, do you
understand?" Joubert wanted to argue,
J]
but one look at Dodd's face persuaded him into hasty agreement.
"I
shall be at the north gate in one hour,“ Dodd said, 'and God help you, Monsewer, if your
three hundred men are not in position.”
Joubert ran off. Dodd watched him go, then turned to Silliere.
“When were the men last paid?”
Tour months ago, sir."
“Where did you learn English, Lieutenant?”
“Colonel Mathers insisted we speak it, sir.”
“And where did Madame Joubert learn it?”
Silliere gave Dodd a suspicious glance.
“I would not know, sir.”
Dodd sniffed.
“Are you wearing perfume, Monsewer?”
“No!” Silliere blushed.
"Make sure you never do, Lieutenant. And in the meantime take your company, find the
kill adar and tell him to break open the city treasury.
If you have any trouble, break the damn thing open yourself with one of our guns. Give
every man three months' pay and load the rest of the money on pack animals. We'll take it
with us."
Silliere looked astonished at me order.
“But the kill adar Monsieur .. .” he began.
“The kill adar Monsewer, is a wretched little man wit ii the balls of a mouse! You are a
soldier. If we don't take the money, the British will get it. Now go!” Dodd shook his head in
exasperation as the Lieutenant went. Four months without pay! There was nothing unusual
in such a lapse, but Dodd disapproved of it. A soldier risked his life for his country, and
the least his country could do in return was pay him promptly.
He walked eastwards along the fire step trying to anticipate where the British would
site their batteries and where they would make a breach. There was always a chance that
Wellesley would pass by Ahmednuggur and simply march north towards Scindia's army, but
Dodd doubted the enemy would choose that course, for then the city and fort would lie athwart
the British supply lines and the garrison could play havoc with the convoys carrying
ammunition, shot and food to the redcoats.
A small crowd was gathered on the southernmost ramparts to gaze towards the distant
cloud that betrayed the presence of the enemy army. Simone Joubert was among them,
sheltering her face from the westering sun with a frayed parasol. Dodd took off his cocked
hat. He always felt oddly awkward with women, at least white women, but his new rank gave
him an unaccustomed confidence.
“I see you have come to observe the enemy, Ma'am,” he said.
“I like to walk about the walls, Major,” Simone answered, 'but today, as you see, the
way is blocked with people."
“I can clear a path for you, Ma'am,” Dodd offered, touching the gold hilt of his new
sword.
“It is not necessary, Major,” Simone said.
“You speak good English, Ma'am.”
“I was taught it as a child. We had a Welsh governess.”
“In France, Ma'am?”
“In the lie de France, Monsieur,” Simone said. She was not looking at Dodd as she spoke,
but staring into the heat-hazed south.
“Mauritius,” Dodd said, giving the island the name used by the British.
“The lie de France, Monsieur, as I said.”
“A remote place, Ma'am.”
Simone shrugged. In truth she agreed with Dodd. Mauritius was remote, an island four
hundred miles east of Africa and the only decent French naval base in the Indian Ocean.
There she had been raised as the daughter of the port's captain, and it was there, at
sixteen, that she had been wooed by Captain Joubert who was on passage to India where he
had been posted as an adviser to Scindia. Joubert had dazzled Simone with tales of the
riches that a man could make for himself in India, and Simone, bored with the small petty
society of her island, had allowed herself to be swept away, only to discover that
Captain Joubert was a timid man at heart, and that his impoverished family in Lyons had
first claim on his earnings, and whatever was left was assiduously saved so that the
Captain could retire to France in comfort. Simone had expected a life of parties and
jewels, of dancing and silks, and instead she scrimped, she sewed and she suffered. Colonel
Pohlmann had offered her a way out of poverty, and now she sensed that the lanky Englishman
was clumsily attempting to make the same offer, but Simone was not minded to become a
man's mistress just because she was bored. She might for love, and in the absence of any
love in her life she was fighting an attraction for Lieutenant Silliere, although she
knew that the Lieutenant was almost as worthless as her I husband and the dilemma was
making her think that she was going! mad. She wept about it, and the tears only added to her
self-diagnosis I of insanity.
“When will the British come, Major?” she asked Dodd.
“Tomorrow, Ma'am. They'll establish batteries the next day, knock at the wall for two
or three days, make their hole and then come in.”
She looked at Dodd beneath the hem of her parasol. Although he was a tall man, Simone
could still look him in the eye.
“They'll take the city that quickly?” she asked, showing a hint of worry.
“Nothing to hold them, Ma'am. Not enough men, too much wall, not enough guns.”
“So how will we escape?”
“By trusting me, Ma'am,” Dodd said, offering Simone a leering smile.
“What you must do, my dear, is pack your luggage, as much as can be carried on whatever
packhorses your husband might possess, and be ready to leave. I shall send you warning
before the attack, and at that time you go to the north gate where you'll find your husband.
It would help, of course, Ma'am, if I knew where you were lodged?”
“My husband knows, Monsieur,” Simone said coldly.
“So once the rosbifs arrive I need do nothing for three days except pack?”
Dodd noted her use of the French term of contempt for the English, but chose to make
nothing of it.
“Exactly, Ma'am.”
“Thank you, Major,” Simone said, and made a gesture so that two servants, whom Dodd had
not noticed in the press of people, came to escort her back to her house.
“Cold bitch,” Dodd said to himself when she was gone, 'but she'll thaw, she'll thaw."
The dark fell swiftly. Torches flared on the city ramparts, lighting the ghostly robes
of the Arab mercenaries who patrolled the bastions.
Small offerings of food and flowers were piled in front of the garish gods and
goddesses in their candlelit temples. The inhabitants of the city were praying to be
spared, while to the south a faint glow in the sky betrayed where a red-coated army had come
to bring Ahmednuggur death.
Lieutenant-Colonel Albert Gore had taken command of the King's 33rd in succession to
Sir Arthur Wellesley and it had not been a happy battalion when Gore arrived. That
unhappiness was not Sir Arthur's fault for he had long left the battalion for higher
responsibilities, but in his absence the 33rd had been commanded by Major John Shee who
was an incompetent drunk. Shee had died, Gore had received command, and now he was slowly
mending the damage. That mending could have been a great deal swifter if Gore had been able
to rid himself of some of the battalion's officers, and of all those officers it was the
lazy and dishonest Captain Morris of the Light Company whom he would have most liked to
dismiss, but Gore was helpless in the matter. Morris had purchased his commission, he
was guilty of no of fences against the King's regulations and thus he had to stay. And with
him stayed the malevolent, unsettling, yellow-faced and perpetually twitching Sergeant
Obadiah Hakeswill.
“Sharpe was always a bad man, sir. A disgrace to the army, sir,” Hakeswill told the
Colonel.
"He should never have been made into a sergeant, sir, 'cos he ain't the material of
what sergeants are made, sir.
He's nothing but a scrap of filth, sir, what shouldn't be a corporal, let alone a
sergeant. It says so in the scriptures, sir." The Sergeant stood rigidly at attention, his
right foot behind his left, his hands at his sides and his elbows straining towards the
small of his back. His voice boomed in the small room, drowning out the sound of the pelting
rain.
Gore wondered whether the rain was the late beginning of the monsoon.
He hoped so, for if the monsoon failed utterly then there would be a lot of hungry
people in India the following year.
Gore watched a spider crawl across the table. The house belonged to a leather dealer who
had rented it to the 33rd while they were based in Arrakerry and the place seethed with
insects that crawled, flew, slunk and stung, and Gore, who was a fastidious and elegant
man, rather wished he had used his tents.
“Tell me what happened,” Gore said to Morris, 'again. If you would be so kind."
Morris, slouching in a chair in front of Gore's table with a thick bandage on his head,
seemed surprised to be asked, but he straightened himself and offered the Colonel a feeble
shrug.
"I don't really recall, sir.
It was two nights ago, in Seringapatam, and I was hit, sir."
Gore brushed the spider aside and made a note.
“Hit,” he said as he wrote the word in his fine copperplate hand.
“Where exactly?”
“On the head, sir,” Morris answered.
Gore sighed.
“I see that, Captain. I meant where in Seringapatam?”
“By the armoury, sir.”
“And this was at night?”
Morris nodded.
“Black night, sir,” Hakeswill put in helpfully, 'black as a blackamoor's backside,
sir."
The Colonel frowned at the Sergeant's indelicacy. Gore was resisting the urge to push a
hand inside his coat and scratch his belly. He feared he had caught the Malabar Itch, a foul
complaint that would condemn him to weeks of living with a salve of lard on his skin, and if
the lard failed he would be reduced to taking baths in a solution of nitric acid.
“If it was dark,” he said patiently, 'then surely you had no chance to see your
assailant?"
“I didn't, sir,” Morris replied truthfully.
“But I did, sir,” Hakeswill said, 'and it was Sharpie. Saw him clear as daylight, sir."
“At night?” Gore asked sceptic ally
“He was working late, sir,” Hakeswill said, 'on account of him not having done his
proper work in the daylight like a Christian should, sir, and he opened the door, sir, and
the lantern was lit, sir, and he came out and hit the Captain, sir."
“And you saw that?”
“Clear as I can see you now, sir,” Hakeswill said, his face racked with a series of
violent twitches.
Gore's hand strayed to his coat buttons, but he resisted the urge.
“If you saw it, Sergeant, why didn't you have Sharpe arrested? There were sentries
present, surely?”
“More important to save the Captain's life, sir. That's what I deemed, sir. Get him back
here, sir, into Mister Micklewhite's care. Don't trust other surgeons, sir. And I had to
clean up Mister Morris, sir, I did.”
“The blood, you mean?”
Hakeswill shook his head.
“The substances, sir.” He stared woodenly over Colonel Gore's head as he spoke.
“Substances?”
Hakeswill's face twitched.
“Begging your pardon, sir, as you being a gentleman as won't want to hear it, sir, but
Sergeant Sharpe hit Captain Morris with a jakes pot, sir. A full Jakes pot, sir, liquid and
solids.”
“Oh, God,” Gore said, laying down his pen and trying to ignore the fiery itch across his
belly.
“I still don't understand why you did nothing in Seringapatam,” the Colonel said.
“The Town Major should have been told, surely?”
“That's just it, sir,” Hakeswill said enthusiastically, 'on account of there not
being a Town Major, not proper, seeing as Major Stokes does the duties, sir, and the rest
is up to the Rajah's hlladar and I don't like seeing a redcoat being arrested by a
darkie, sir, not even Sharpe. It ain't right, that. And Major Stokes, he won't help, sir. He
likes
Sharpe, see? He lets him live comfortable, sir. Off the fat of the land, sir, like it says
in the scriptures. Got himself a set of rooms and a bibbi, he has, and a servant, too.
Ain't right, sir. Too comfortable, sir, whiles the rest of us sweats like the soldiers we
swore to be."
The explanation made some sort of sense, or at least Gore appreciated that it might
convince Sergeant Hakeswill, yet there was still something odd about the whole tale.
“What were you doing at the armoury after dark, Captain?”
“Making certain the full complement of wagons was there, sir,” Morris answered.
“Sergeant Hakeswill informed me that one was missing.”
“And was it?”
“No, sir,” Morris said.
“Miscounted, sir,” Hakeswill said, 'on account of it being dark, sir."
Hakeswill had indeed summoned Morris to the armoury after dark, and there he had hit
the Captain with a baulk of timber and, for good measure, had added the contents of a
chamber pot that Major Stokes had left outside his office. The sentries had been
sheltering from the rain in the guardhouse and none had questioned the sight of Hakeswill
dragging the recumbent Morris back to his quarters, for the sight of drunken officers
being taken home by sergeants or privates was too common to be remarkable. The
important thing was that Morris had not seen who assaulted him and was quite prepared to
believe Hakes-will's version, for Morris relied utterly on Hakeswill in
everything.
“I blames myself, sir,” Hakeswill went on, 'on account of not chasing Sharpie, but I
thought my duty was to look after my Captain, sir, on account of him being drenched by a
slop pot."