Sharpe’s Triumph: The Battle of Assaye, September 1803

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 offences 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 sceptically.

‘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 Killadar 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 Hakeswill’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.’

‘Enough, Sergeant!’ Gore said.

‘It ain’t a Christian act, sir,’ Hakeswill muttered resentfully. ‘Not with a jakes pot, sir. Says so in the scriptures.’

Gore rubbed his face. The rain had taken the edge off the damp heat, but not by much, and he found the atmosphere horribly oppressive. Maybe the itch was just a reaction to the heat. He rubbed his hand across his belly, but it did not help. ‘Why would Sergeant Sharpe assault you without warning, Captain?’ he asked.

Morris shrugged. ‘He’s a disagreeable sort, sir,’ he offered weakly.

‘He never liked the Captain, sir, Sharpie didn’t,’ Hakeswill said, ‘and it’s my belief, sir, that he thought the Captain had come to summon him back to the battalion, where he ought to be soldiering instead of living off the fat of the land, but he don’t want to come back, sir, on account of being comfortable, sir, like he’s got no right to be. He never did know his place, sir, not Sharpe, sir. Got above himself, sir, he has, and he’s got cash in his breeches. On the fiddle, I dare say.’

Gore ignored the last accusation. ‘How badly are you hurt?’ he asked Morris.

‘Only cuts and bruises, sir.’ Morris straightened in the chair. ‘But it’s still a court-martial offence, sir.’

‘A capital offence, sir,’ Hakeswill said. ‘Up against the wall, sir, and God have mercy on his black soul, which I very much doubts God will, God having better things to worry about than a sorry piece of scum like Sharpie.’

Gore sighed. He suspected there was a great deal more to the story than he was hearing, but whatever the real facts Captain Morris was still right. All that mattered was that Sergeant Sharpe was alleged to have struck an officer, and no excuse in the world could explain away such an offence. Which meant Sergeant Sharpe would have to be tried and very probably shot, and Gore would regret that for he had heard some very good things of the young Sergeant Sharpe. ‘I had great hopes of Sergeant Sharpe,’ the Colonel said sadly.

‘Got above himself, sir,’ Hakeswill snapped. ‘Just ’cos he blew the mine at Seringapatam, sir, he thinks he’s got wings and can fly. Needs to have his feathers clipped, sir, says so in the scriptures.’