Sharpe’s Triumph: The Battle of Assaye, September 1803. Bernard Cornwell
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remnants of his pack and pouches glowed red as he found a stick and raked through the embers. One by one he found what he had hidden in the fire. The rupees that had been for hiring the carts, then the rubies and emeralds, diamonds and pearls, sapphires and gold. He fetched a sack of rice from the cookhouse and he emptied the grains onto the ground and filled the sack with his treasure. A king’s ransom, it was, and it had been taken from a king four years before in the Water Gate at Seringapatam where Sharpe had trapped the Tippoo Sultan and shot him down before looting his corpse.
Then, with the treasure clutched to his midriff, he knelt in the stench of Chasalgaon and felt guilty. He had survived a massacre. Anger mingled with his guilt, then he knew he had duties to do. He must find any others who had survived, he must help them, and he must work out how he could take his revenge.
On a man called Dodd.
Major John Stokes was an engineer, and if ever a man was happy with his avocation, it was Major John Stokes. There was nothing he enjoyed so much as making things, whether it was a better gun carriage, a garden or, as he was doing now, improvements to a clock that belonged to the Rajah of Mysore. The Rajah was a young man, scarcely more than a boy indeed, and he owed his throne to the British troops who had ejected the usurping Tippoo Sultan and, as a result, relations between the palace and Seringapatam’s small British garrison were good. Major Stokes had found the clock in one of the palace’s antechambers and noted its appalling accuracy, which is why he had brought it back to the armoury where he was happily taking it apart. ‘It isn’t signed,’ he told his visitor, ‘and I suspect it’s local work. But a Frenchman had his hand in it, I can tell that. See the escapement? Typical French work, that.’
The visitor peered at the tangle of cogwheels. ‘Didn’t know the Frogs had it in them to make clocks, sir,’ he said.
‘Oh, indeed they do!’ Stokes said reprovingly. ‘And very fine clocks they make! Very fine. Think of Lépine! Think of Berthoud! How can you ignore Montandon? And Breguet!’ The Major shook his head in mute tribute to such great craftsmen, then peered at the Rajah’s sorry timepiece. ‘Some rust on the mainspring, I see. That don’t help. Soft metal, I suspect. It’s catch as catch can over here. I’ve noticed that. Marvellous decorative work, but Indians make shoddy mechanics. Look at that mainspring! A disgrace.’
‘Shocking, sir, shocking.’ Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill did not know a mainspring from a pendulum, and could not have cared less about either, but he needed information from Major Stokes so it was politic to show an interest.
‘It was striking nine when it should have struck eight,’ the Major said, poking a finger into the clock’s entrails, ‘or perhaps it was striking eight when it ought to have sounded nine. I don’t recall. One to seven it copes with admirably, but somewhere about eight it becomes wayward.’ The Major, who was in charge of Seringapatam’s armoury, was a plump, cheerful fellow with prematurely white hair. ‘Do you understand clocks, Sergeant?’
‘Can’t say as I does, sir. A simple soldier, me, sir, who has the sun as his clock.’ The Sergeant’s face twitched horribly. It was an uncontrollable spasm that racked his face every few seconds.
‘You were asking about Sharpe,’ Major Stokes said, peering into the clock. ‘Well, I never! This fellow has made the bearings out of wood! Good Lord above. Wood! No wonder she’s wayward! Harrison once made a wooden clock, did you know? Even the gearings! All from timber.’
‘Harrison, sir? Is he in the army, sir?’
‘He’s a clockmaker, Sergeant, a clockmaker. A very fine clockmaker too.’
‘Not a Frog, sir?’
‘With a name like Harrison? Good Lord, no! He’s English, and he makes a good honest clock.’
‘Glad to hear it, sir,’ Hakeswill said, then reminded the Major of the purpose of his visit to the armoury. ‘Sergeant Sharpe, sir, my good friend, sir, is he here?’
‘He is here,’ Stokes said, at last looking up from the clock, ‘or rather he was here. I saw him an hour ago. But he went to his quarters. He’s been away, you see. Involved in that dreadful business in Chasalgaon.’
‘Chiseldown, sir?’
‘Terrible business, terrible! So I told Sharpe to clean himself up. Poor fellow was covered in blood! Looked like a pirate. Now that is interesting.’
‘Blood, sir?’ Hakeswill asked.
‘A six-toothed scapewheel! With a bifurcated locking piece! Well, I never! That is enriching the pudding with currants. Rather like putting an Egg lock on a common pistol! I’m sure if you wait, Sergeant, Sharpe will be back soon. He’s a marvellous fellow. Never lets me down.’
Hakeswill forced a smile, for he hated Sharpe with a rare and single-minded venom. ‘He’s one of the best, sir,’ he said, his face twitching. ‘And will he be leaving Seringapatam soon, sir? Off on an errand again, would he be?’
‘Oh no!’ Stokes said, picking up a magnifying glass to look more closely into the clock. ‘I need him here, Sergeant. That’s it, you see! There’s a pin missing from the strike wheel. It engages the cogs here, do you see, and the gearing does the rest. Simple, I suppose.’ The Major looked up, but saw that the strange Sergeant with the twitching face was gone. Never mind, the clock was far more interesting.
Sergeant Hakeswill left the armoury and turned left towards the barracks where he had temporary accommodation. The King’s 33rd was quartered now in Hurryhur, a hundred and fifty miles to the north, and their job was to keep the roads of western Mysore clear of bandits and so the regiment ranged up and down the country and, finding themselves close to Seringapatam where the main armoury was located, Colonel Gore had sent a detachment for replacement ammunition. Captain Morris of the Light Company had drawn the duty, and he had brought half his men and Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill to protect the shipment which would leave the city next morning and be carried on ox carts to Arrakerry where the regiment was currently camped. An easy task, but one that had offered Sergeant Hakeswill an opportunity he had long sought.
The Sergeant stopped in one of the grog shops and demanded arrack. The shop was empty, all but for himself, the owner and a legless beggar who heaved himself towards the Sergeant and received a kick in the rump for his trouble. ‘Get out of here, you scabby bastard!’ Hakeswill shouted. ‘Bringing the flies in, you are. Go on! Piss off.’ The shop thus emptied to his satisfaction, Hakeswill sat in a dark corner contemplating life. ‘I chide myself,’ he muttered aloud, worrying the shop’s owner who feared the look of the twitching man in the red coat. ‘Your own fault, Obadiah,’ Hakeswill said. ‘You should have seen it years ago! Years! Rich as a Jew, he is. Are you listening to me, you heathen darkie bastard?’ The shop’s owner, thus challenged, fled into the back room, leaving Hakeswill grumbling at the table. ‘Rich as a Jew, Sharpie is, only he thinks he hides it, which he don’t, on account of me having tumbled to him. He don’t even live in barracks! Got himself some rooms over by the Mysore Gate. Got a bleeding servant boy. Always got cash on him, always! Buys drinks.’ Hakeswill shook his head at the injustice of it all. The 33rd had spent the last four years patrolling Mysore’s roads and Sharpe, all that while, had been living in Seringapatam’s comforts. It was not right, not fair, not just. Hakeswill had worried about it, wondering why Sharpe was so rich. At first he had assumed that Sharpe had been fiddling the armoury stores, but that could not explain Sharpe’s apparent wealth. ‘Only so much milk in a cow,’ Hakeswill muttered, ‘no matter how hard you squeeze the teats.’ Now he knew why Sharpe was rich, or he thought he knew, and what he had learned had filled Obadiah Hakeswill with a desperate jealousy. He scratched at a mosquito bite on his neck, revealing the old dark scar where the hangman’s rope had burned and abraded his skin. Obadiah Hakeswill had survived that hanging, and as a result he fervently believed that he could not be killed. Touched by God, he claimed he was, touched by God.
But he was not rich. Not rich at all, and Richard Sharpe was rich. Rumour had it that Richard Sharpe used Lali’s house, and that was an officers-only brothel, so why was Sergeant Sharpe allowed inside? Because he was rich, that was why, and Hakeswill had at last discovered