Sharpe’s Tiger: The Siege of Seringapatam, 1799

‘Me too.’ She smiled and, awkwardly, Sharpe smiled back. For a moment neither had anything to say, then Mary excitedly fished in the pocket of her apron to produce a jewel she had taken from a dead man. ‘Look what I found!’ She handed Sharpe a red stone, half the size of a hen’s egg. ‘You reckon it’s a ruby?’ Mary asked eagerly.

Sharpe tossed the stone up and down. ‘I reckon it’s glass, lass,’ he said gently, ‘just glass. But I’ll get you a ruby for a wedding gift, just you watch me.’

‘I’ll more than watch you, Dick Sharpe,’ she said happily and put her arm into his. Sergeant Hakeswill, a hundred paces away, watched them and his face twitched.

While on the edges of the killing place, where the looted and naked bodies lay scattered, the vultures came down, sidled forward and began to tear at the dead.

The allied armies camped a quarter of a mile short of the place where the dead lay. The camp sprawled across the plain: an instant town where fifty thousand soldiers and thousands of camp followers would spend the night. Tents went up for officers well away from the places where the vast herds of cattle were guarded for the night. Some of the cattle were beeves, being herded and slaughtered for food, some were oxen that carried panniers filled with the eighteen- and twenty-four-pounder cannonballs that would be needed to blast a hole through the walls of Seringapatam, while yet others were bullocks that hauled the wagons and guns, and the heaviest guns, the big siege pieces, needed sixty bullocks apiece. There were more than two hundred thousand cattle with the army, but all were now scrawny for the Tippoo’s cavalry was stripping the land of fodder as the British and Hyderabad armies advanced.

The common soldiers had no tents. They would sleep on the ground close to their fires, but first they ate and this night the feeding was good, at least for the men of the King’s 33rd who had coins taken from the enemy dead to spend with the bhinjarries, the merchant clans that travelled with the army and had their own private guards to protect their goods. The bhinjarries all sold chickens, rice, flour, beans and, best of all, the throat-burning skins of arrack which could make a man drunk even faster than rum. Some of the bhinjarries also hired out whores and the 33rd gave those men good business that night.

Captain Morris expected to visit the famous green tents of Naig, the bhinjarrie whose stock in trade was the most expensive whores of Madras, but for now he was stuck in his own tent where, under the feeble light of a candle that flickered on his table, he disposed of the company’s business. Or rather Sergeant Hakeswill disposed of it while Morris, his coat unbuttoned and silk stock loosened, sprawled in a camp chair. Sweat dripped down his face. There was a small wind, but the muslin screen hanging at the entrance to the tent took away its cooling effects, and if the screen was discarded the tent would fill with savagely huge moths. Morris hated moths, hated the heat, hated India. ‘Guard rosters, sir,’ Hakeswill said, offering the papers.

‘Anything I should know?’

‘Not a thing, sir. Just like last week’s, sir. Ensign Hicks made up the roster, sir. A good man, sir, Ensign Hicks. Knows his place.’

‘You mean he does what you tell him to do?’ Morris asked drily.

‘Learning his trade, sir, learning his trade, just like a good little ensign should. Unlike some as I could mention.’

Morris ignored the sly reference to Fitzgerald and instead dipped his quill in ink and scrawled his name at the foot of the rosters. ‘I assume Ensign Fitzgerald and Sergeant Green have been assigned all the night duty?’ he asked.

‘They needs the practice, sir.’

‘And you need your sleep, Sergeant?’

‘Punishment book, sir,’ Hakeswill said, offering the leather-bound ledger and taking back the guard roster without acknowledging Morris’s last comment.

Morris leafed through the book. ‘No floggings this week?’

‘Will be soon, sir, will be soon.’

‘Private Sharpe escaped you today, eh?’ Morris laughed. ‘Losing your touch, Obadiah.’ There was no friendliness in his use of the Christian name, just scorn, but Sergeant Hakeswill took no offence. Officers were officers, at least those above ensigns were proper officers in Hakeswill’s opinion, and such gentlemen had every right to be scornful of lesser ranks.

‘I ain’t losing nothing, sir,’ Hakeswill answered equably. ‘If the rat don’t die first shake, sir, then you puts the dog in again. That’s how it’s done, sir. Says so in the scriptures. Sick report, sir. Nothing new, except that Sears has the fever, so he won’t be with us long, but he won’t be no loss, sir. No good to man or beast, Private Sears. Better off dead, he is.’

‘Are we done?’ Morris asked when he had signed the sick report, but then a tactful cough sounded at the tent’s opening and Lieutenant Lawford ducked under the flap and pushed through the muslin screen.

‘Busy, Charles?’ Lawford asked Morris.

‘Always pleased to see you, William,’ Morris said sarcastically, ‘but I was about to go for a stroll.’

‘There’s a soldier to see you,’ Lawford explained. ‘Man’s got a request, sir.’

Morris sighed as though he was too busy to be bothered with such trifles, but then he shrugged and waved a hand as if to suggest he was making a great and generous gesture by giving the man a moment of his precious time. ‘Who?’ he asked.

‘Private Sharpe, sir.’

‘Troublemaker, sir,’ Hakeswill put in.

‘He’s a good man,’ Lawford insisted hotly, but then decided his small experience of the army hardly qualified him to make such judgements and so, diffidently, he added that it was only his opinion. ‘But he seems like a good man, sir,’ he finished.

‘Let him in,’ Morris said. He sipped from a tin mug of arrack while Sharpe negotiated the muslin screen and then stood to attention beneath the ridge pole. ‘Hat off, boy!’ Hakeswill snapped. ‘Don’t you know to take your hat off in the presence of an officer?’

Sharpe snatched off his shako.

‘Well?’ Morris asked.

For a second it seemed that Sharpe did not know what to say, but then he cleared his throat and, staring at the tent wall a few inches above Captain Morris’s head, he at last found his voice. ‘Permission to marry, sir.’

Morris grinned. ‘Marry! Found yourself a bibbi, have you?’ He sipped more arrack, then looked at Hakeswill. ‘How many wives are on the company strength now, Sergeant?’

‘Full complement, sir! No room for more, sir! Full up, sir. Not a vacancy to be had. Shall I dismiss Private Sharpe, sir?’

‘This girl’s on the complement,’ Lieutenant Lawford intervened. ‘She’s Sergeant Bickerstaff’s widow.’

Morris stared up at Sharpe. ‘Bickerstaff,’ he said vaguely as though the name was strange to him. ‘Bickerstaff. Fellow who died of a fever on the march, is that right?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Hakeswill answered.

‘Didn’t know the man was even married,’ Morris said. ‘Official wife, was she?’

‘Very official, sir,’ Hakeswill answered. ‘On the company strength, sir. Colonel’s signature on the certificate, sir. Proper married before God and the army, sir.’

Morris sniffed and looked up at Sharpe again. ‘Why on earth do you want to marry, Sharpe?’

Sharpe looked embarrassed. ‘Just do, sir,’ he said lamely.

‘Can’t say I disapprove of marriage,’ Morris said. ‘Steadies a man does marriage, but a fellow like you, Sharpe, can do better than a soldier’s widow, can’t you? Dreadful creatures, soldiers’ widows! Used goods, Private. Fat and greasy, like lumps of lard wrapped up in linen. Get yourself a sweet little bibbi, man, something that ain’t yet run to seed.’

‘Very good advice, sir,’ Hakeswill said, his face twitching. ‘Words of wisdom, sir. Shall I dismiss him, sir?’

‘Mary Bickerstaff is a good woman, sir,’ Lieutenant Lawford said. The Lieutenant, whom Sharpe had first approached with his request, was eager to do his best. ‘Sharpe could do a lot worse than marry Mary Bickerstaff, sir.’

Morris cut a cigar and lit it from the guttering candle that burned on his camp table. ‘White, is she?’ he asked negligently.

‘Half bibbi and half Christian, sir,’ Hakeswill said, ‘but she had a good man for her husband.’ He sniffed, pretending that he was suddenly overcome with emotion. ‘And Jem Bickerstaff ain’t this month in his grave, sir. Too soon for the trollop to marry again. It ain’t right, sir. Says so in the scriptures.’

Morris offered Hakeswill a cynical glance. ‘Don’t be absurd, Sergeant. Most army widows marry the next day! The ranks are hardly high society, you know.’

‘But Jem Bickerstaff was a friend of mine, sir,’ Hakeswill said, sniffing again and even cuffing at an invisible tear. ‘Friend of mine, sir,’ he repeated more hoarsely, ‘and on his dying bed, sir, he begged me to look after his little wife, sir. I know she ain’t through and through white, he told me, but she deserves to be looked after. His very dying words, sir.’

‘He bloody hated you!’ Sharpe could not resist the words.

‘Quiet in front of an officer!’ Hakeswill shouted. ‘Speak when you’re spoken to, boy, and otherwise keep your filthy mouth buttoned like God wanted it.’

Morris frowned as though Hakeswill’s loud voice was giving him a headache. Then he looked up at Sharpe. ‘I’ll talk to Major Shee about it, Sharpe. If the woman is on the strength and wants to marry you, then I don’t suppose we can stop her. I’ll talk to the Major. You’re dismissed.’