Sharpe's Tiger (40 page)

“God knows,” Harris said that night at supper, “but I can think of nothing left undone. Can you, Baird?”

“No, sir, I can't,” Baird said. “Upon my soul, I can't.” He was trying to sound cheerful, but it was still a subdued meal, though Harris had done his best to make it festive. His table was spread with a linen cloth and was lit by fine spermaceti candles that burned with a pure white light. The General's cooks had killed their last chickens to provide a change from the usual half-ration of beef, but none of the officers around the table had much appetite, nor, it seemed, any enthusiasm for conversation. Meer Allum, the commander of the Hyderabad army, did his best to encourage his allies, but only Wellesley seemed capable of responding to his remarks.

Colonel Gent, who as well as being Harris's chief engineer, had taken on himself the collation of what intelligence came out of the city, poured himself some wine. It was rancid stuff, soured by its long journey from Europe and by the heat of India. “There's a rumor.” he said heavily when a break in the desultory conversation had stretched for too long, “that the heathen bastards have planted a mine.”

“There are always such rumors,” Baird said curtly.

“A bit late to tell us, surely?” Harris remonstrated mildly.

“Only heard of it today, sir,” Gent said defensively. “One of their cavalry fellows deserted. He could be making up tales, of course, these people do. Maybe the Tippoo sent him. Wants to scare us into delay, I daresay.” He fell silent, toying with a blue-glass saltcellar. The salt was crusted from the humidity, and he attacked it with the small silver spoon, crumbling it as the city wall had crumbled under the onslaught of the guns. “But the fellow seemed sure of himself,” he said after a while. “Says it's a big mine.”

Baird grimaced. “So the bastards will blow it when the Forlorn Hopes attack. That's why we have Forlorn Hopes. To die.” He had not meant to sound so callous, but he had wanted to silence the engineer.

Somewhere in the far distance there was a grumble of thunder. Everyone around the table waited for the patter of rain on the tent's canvas, but no such sound came. “My worry,” Gent said, apparently unmoved by Baird's brusque-ness, “is that they'll blow their mine once we're on the ramparts, and if it's a big enough brute it'll clear our fellows clean off the walls.” He thrust the spoon hard down into the salt. “Clean off.”

“Then let us hope the rumors are untrue,” Harris said firmly, squashing the engineer's pessimism. “Colonel Wellesley, can I persuade you to another glass?”

Wellesley shook his head. “I've drunk enough, sir, thank you.” But then the young Colonel looked down the table to where his rival Baird was sitting. “Though maybe, sir, I should accept a glass and drink to your success and renown.”

Baird, whose distaste for the young Colonel had only increased over the last few days, managed to look pleased. “Obliged to you, Wellesley.” He forced himself to be courteous. “Greatly obliged to you.”

Harris was grateful for Wellesley's generosity. He disliked having his deputies at odds, especially as Harris had decided that it should be Wellesley, the younger and more junior man, who should be made Governor of Mysore if the city fell. Baird would undoubtedly be displeased, for the Scotsman would regard the appointment as a slight, yet in truth Baird's hatred of all things Indian disqualified him from such a post. Britain needed a friendly Mysore, and Wellesley was a tactful man who harbored no prejudice against natives. “Good of you, Wellesley,” Harris said when the toast had been drunk. “Very good of you, I'm sure.”

“This time tomorrow,” Meer Allum said in his odd English accent, “we shall all dine in the Tippoo's palace. Drink from his silver and eat from his gold.”

“I pray that we do,” Harris said, “and I pray we manage it without grievous loss.” He scratched his old wound beneath his wig.

The officers were still somber when the meal ended. Harris bade them a good night, then stood for a while outside his tent staring at the moon-glossed walls of the distant city. The limewashed ramparts seemed to glow white, beckoning him, but to what? He went to his bed where he slept badly and, in his waking moments, found himself rehearsing excuses for failure. Baird also stayed awake for a while, but drank a good measure of whisky and, afterward, in full uniform and with his big claymore propped beside his cot, he slipped in and out of a restless sleep. Wellesley slept well. The men crammed in the trenches hardly slept at all.

Bugles greeted the dawn. The storm clouds had thickened in the west, but there was no rain, and the rising sun soon burned the small wispy clouds from above the city. The assaulting troops crouched in the trenches where they could not be seen from Seringapatam's walls. The small white flags fluttered in the river. The siege guns kept firing, some
attempting to open the breach wader, but most just trying to discourage the defenders from making any attempt to repair the breach or place obstacles on its forward slope. The undamaged ramparts gleamed white in the sun, while the breach appeared as a red-brown scar in the long city wall.

The Tippoo had spent the night in a small sentry shelter on the north walls. He woke early for he expected an attack at dawn and he had ordered that all his soldiers should be ready on the walls, but no assault came and, as the sun climbed higher, he allowed some of the defenders back to their barracks to rest while he himself went to the Inner Palace. He sensed a nervous expectancy in the crowded streets, and he himself was a troubled man for during his restless night he had dreamed of monkeys, and monkeys were ever a bad omen, and the Tippoo's mood was not helped when his diviners reported that the oil in their pots had been clouded. Today, it seemed, was an inauspicious day, but luck, as the Tippoo knew, was malleable and he attempted to change the day's ill-starred beginning by giving gifts. He summoned a Hindu priest and presented the man with an elephant, a sack of oilseed, and a purse of gold. To the Brahmins who accompanied the priest he gave a bullock, a nanny goat, two buffalo, a black hat, a black coat, and one of his precious pots of divining oil. Then he washed his hands and donned a cloth-padded war helmet that had been dipped in a sacred fountain to make its wearer invulnerable. On his right arm, his sword arm, he wore a silver amulet inscribed with verses from the Koran. A servant pinned the great red ruby onto the helmet's plume, the Tippoo slung the gold-hilted sword at his waist, then went back to the western walls.

Nothing had changed. Beyond the gently flowing South Cauvery the sun baked the ground where the British guns still fired. Their massive round shots churned up the nibble ramp, but no redcoats stirred from their trenches and the
only signs that an assault might be imminent were the small pennants stuck in the riverbed.

“They want another day to widen the breach,” an officer opined.

Colonel Gudin shook his head. “They'll come today,” he insisted.

The Tippoo grunted. He was standing just north of the breach from where he watched the enemy trenches through a spyglass. Some of the British round shot struck dangerously close to where he stood, and his aides tried to persuade him to move to a safer place, but even when a stone shard thrown up by a cannonball flicked at his white linen tunic, he would not move. “They would have come at dawn,” he finally said, “if they were coming today.”

“They want us to think that,” Gudin protested, “to lull us. But they will come today. They won't give us another night to make preparations. And why plant the flags?” He pointed at the river.

The Tippoo stepped back from the remains of the parapet. Was his luck changed? He had given gifts to the enemies of his God in the hope that his God would then reward him with victory, but he still felt an unease. He would much have preferred that the storming should be delayed another day so that another set of auspices could be taken, but perhaps Allah willed it otherwise. And nothing would be lost by assuming that the attack would come this day. “Assume they will come this afternoon,” he ordered. “Every man back to the walls.”

The walls, already thick with troops, now became crowded with defenders. One company of Muslims had volunteered to face the first enemy who came into the breach and those brave men, armed with swords, pistols, and muskets, crouched just inside the breach, but hidden from the enemy's guns by the mound of rubble. Those volunteers would
almost certainly die, it not at the hands of the attackers then when the great mine blew, but each man had been assured of his place in paradise and so they went gladly to their deaths. Rockets were piled on the ramparts, and guns that had staved hidden from the bombardment were manhandled into position to take the attackers in the flanks.

Others of the Tippoo's finest troops were posted on the outer wall above the edges of the breach. Their job was to defend the shoulders of the breach, for the Tippoo was determined to funnel the attackers into the space between the walls where his mine could destroy them. Let the British come, the Tippoo prayed, but let them be shepherded across the breach and into the killing ground.

The Tippoo had decided to lead the fight on the wall north of the breach. Colonel Gudin's battalion would fight south of the breach, but Gudin himself had responsibility for blowing the great mine. R was ready now, a hoard of powder crammed into the old gate passage and shored up by stones and timber so that the blast of the explosion would be forced northward between the walls. Gudin would watch the killing space from his place on the inner rampart, then signal to Sergeant Rothière to light the fuse. Rothière and the fuse were guarded by two of Gudin's steadiest men and by six of the Tippoo's
jettis
.

The Tippoo assured himself that all had been done that could be done. The city was ready and, in honor of the slaughter of infidels, the Tippoo bad arrayed himself in jewels, then consigned his soul and his kingdom into Allah's keeping. Now he could only wait as the late-morning sun climbed higher and yet higher to become a burning whiteness in the Indian sky where the vultures circled on their wide ragged wings.

The British guns fired on. In the mosque some men praved, but all of them were old men, for any man young
enough to fight was waiting on the walls. The Hindus prayed to their gods while the women of the city made themselves ragged and dirty so that, should the city fall, they would not attract the enemy's attention.

Midday came. The city baked in the heat. It seemed strangely silent, for the fire of the siege guns was desultory now. The sound of each shot echoed dully from the walls and each strike would start a trickle of stone and a small cloud of dust and afterward there would be silence again. On the walls a horde of men crouched behind their firesteps, while in the trenches across the river an opposing horde waited for the order that would send them against an expectant city.

The Tippoo had a prayer mat brought to the walls and there, facing toward the enemy, he knelt and bowed in prayer. He prayed that Colonel Gudin was wrong and that his enemies would give him one more day, and then, as in a waking dream, a message came to him. He had given gifts, and gifts of charity were blessed, but he had not made sacrifice. He had been saving his sacrifice for the celebration of victory, but perhaps victory would not come unless he made his offerings now. Luck was malleable, and death was a great changer of fortune. He made a last obeisance, touching his forehead to the mat's weave, then climbed to his feet. “Send for three
jettis”
he ordered an aide, “and tell them to bring me the British prisoners.”

“All of them, Your Majesty?” the aide asked.

“Not the Sergeant,” the Tippoo said. “Not the one who twitches. The others. Tell
the jettis
to bring them here.” For his victory needed one last sacrifice of blood before the Cauvery was made dark with it.

A
ppah Rao was an able man, otherwise he would not have been promoted to the command of one of the Tippoo's brigades, but he was also a discreet man. Discretion had kept Rao alive and discretion had enabled him to preserve his loyalty to the unthroned Rajah of the house of Wodeyar while still serving the Tippoo.

Now, ordered to take his men to the walls of Seringapatam and there fight to preserve the Muslim dynasty of the Tippoo, Appah Rao at last questioned his discretion. He obeyed the Tippoo, of course, and his
cushoons
filed dutifully enough onto the city ramparts, but Appah Rao, standing beneath one of the sun banners above the Mysore Gate, asked himself what he wanted of this world. He possessed family, high rank, wealth, and ability, yet he still bowed his head to a foreign monarch and some of the flags above his men's heads were inscribed in Arabic to celebrate a god who was no god of Appah Rao's. His own monarch lived in poverty, ever under the threat of execution, and it was possible, more than possible, Rao allowed, that victory this day would raise the Tippoo so high that he would no longer need the small advantage of the Rajah's existence. The Rajah was paraded like a doll on Hindu holy days to placate the Tippoo's Hindu subjects, but if Mysore had no enemies in southern India, why should the Hindus of Mysore need to be placated? The Rajah and all his family would be secretly
strangled and their corpses, like the bodies of the twelve murdered British prisoners, would be wrapped in reed mats and buried in an unmarked grave.

But if the Tippoo lost then the British would rule in Mysore. True, if they kept their word, the Rajah would be restored to his palace and to his ancient throne, but the power of the palace would still rest with the British advisers, and the Rajah's treasury would be required to pay for the upkeep of British troops. But if the Tippoo won, Appah Rao thought, then the French would come and what evidence was there that the French were any better than the British?

He stood above the southern gate, waiting for an unseen enemy to erupt from their trenches and assault the city, and he felt like a man buffeted between two implacable forces. If he had been less discreet he might have considered rebelling openly against the Tippoo and ordering his troops to help the invading British, but such a risk was too great for a cautious man. Yet if the Tippoo lost this day's battle, and if Appah Rao was perceived to be loyal to the defeated man, then what future did he have? Whichever side won, Appah Rao thought, he lost, but there was one small act that might vet snatch survival from defeat. He walked out to the end of a jutting cavalier, waved the gunners posted there away from their cannon, and beckoned Kunwar Singh to his side. “Where are your men?” he asked Singh.