Sharpe’s Triumph: The Battle of Assaye, September 1803. Bernard Cornwell
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the trail, leaving curls of new white wood to fall away. ‘I’m mending a clock,’ he told Sharpe while he worked, ‘a lovely-made piece, all but for some crude local gearing. Have a look at it. It’s in my office.’
‘I will, sir.’
‘And I’ve found some new timber for axletrees, Sharpe. It’s really quite exciting!’
‘They’ll still break, sir,’ Sharpe said gloomily, then scooped up one of the many cats that lived in the armoury. He put the tabby on his lap and stroked her into a contented purr.
‘Don’t be so doom-laden, Sharpe! We’ll solve the axletree problem yet. It’s only a question of timber, nothing but timber. There, that looks better.’ The Major stepped back from his work and gave it a critical look. There were plenty of Indian craftsmen employed in the armoury, but Major Stokes liked to do things himself, and besides, most of the Indians were busy preparing for the feast of Dusshera which involved manufacturing three giant-sized figures that would be paraded to the Hindu temple and there burned. Those Indians were busy in another open-sided shed where they had glue bubbling on a fire, and some of the men were pasting lengths of pale cloth onto a wicker basket that would form one of the giants’ heads. Stokes was fascinated by their activity and Sharpe knew it would not be long before the Major joined them. ‘Did I tell you a sergeant was here looking for you this morning?’ Stokes asked.
‘No, sir.’
‘Came just before dinner,’ Stokes said, ‘a strange sort of fellow.’ The Major stooped to the trail and attacked another section of wood. ‘He twitched, he did.’
‘Obadiah Hakeswill,’ Sharpe said.
‘I think that was his name. Didn’t seem very important,’ Stokes said. ‘Said he was just visiting town and looking up old companions. D’you know what I was thinking?’
‘Tell me, sir,’ Sharpe said, wondering why in holy hell Obadiah Hakeswill had been looking for him. For nothing good, that was certain.
‘Those teak beams in the Tippoo’s old throne room,’ Stokes said, ‘they’ll be seasoned well enough. We could break out a half-dozen of the things and make a batch of axletrees from them!’
‘The gilded beams, sir?’ Sharpe asked.
‘Soon have the gilding off them, Sharpe. Plane them down in two shakes!’
‘The Rajah may not like it, sir,’ Sharpe said.
Stokes’s face fell. ‘There is that, there is that. A fellow don’t usually like his ceilings being pulled down to make gun carriages. Still, the Rajah’s usually most obliging if you can get past his damned courtiers. The clock is his. Strikes eight when it should ring nine, or perhaps it’s the other way round. You reckon that quoin’s true?’
Sharpe glanced at the wedge which lowered and raised the cannon barrel. ‘Looks good, sir.’
‘I might just plane her down a shade. I wonder if our templates are out of true? We might check that. Isn’t this rain splendid? The flowers were wilting, wilting! But I’ll have a fine show this year with a spot of rain. You must come and see them.’
‘You still want me to stay here, sir?’ Sharpe asked.
‘Stay here?’ Stokes, who was placing the quoin in a vice, turned to look at Sharpe. ‘Of course I want you to stay here, Sergeant. Best man I’ve got!’
‘I lost six men, sir.’
‘And it wasn’t your fault, not your fault at all. I’ll get you another six.’
Sharpe wished it was that easy, but he could not chase the guilt of Chasalgaon out of his mind. When the massacre was finished he had wandered about the fort in a half-daze. Most of the women and children still lived, but they had been frightened and had shrunk away from him. Captain Roberts, the second in command of the fort, had returned from patrol that afternoon and he had vomited when he saw the horror inside the cactus-thorn wall.
Sharpe had made his report to Roberts who had sent it by messenger to Hurryhur, the army’s headquarters, then dismissed Sharpe. ‘There’ll be an enquiry, I suppose,’ Roberts had told Sharpe, ‘so doubtless your evidence will be needed, but you might as well wait in Seringapatam.’ And so Sharpe, with no other orders, had walked home. He had returned the bag of rupees to Major Stokes, and now, obscurely, he wanted some punishment from the Major, but Stokes was far more concerned about the angle of the quoin. ‘I’ve seen screws shatter because the angle was too steep, and it ain’t no good having broken screws in battle. I’ve seen Frog guns with metalled quoins, but they only rust. Can’t trust a Frog to keep them greased, you see. You’re brooding, Sharpe.’
‘Can’t help it, sir.’
‘Doesn’t do to brood. Leave brooding to poets and priests, eh? Those sorts of fellows are paid to brood. You have to get on with life. What could you have done?’
‘Killed one of the bastards, sir.’
‘And they’d have killed you, and you wouldn’t have liked that and nor would I. Look at that angle! Look at that! I do like a fine angle, I declare I do. We must check it against the templates. How’s your head?’
‘Mending, sir.’ Sharpe touched the bandage that wrapped his forehead. ‘No pain now, sir.’
‘Providence, Sharpe, that’s what it is, providence. The good Lord in His ineffable mercy wanted you to live.’ Stokes released the vice and restored the quoin to the carriage. ‘A touch of paint on that trail and it’ll be ready. You think the Rajah might give me one roof beam?’
‘No harm in asking him, sir.’
‘I will, I will. Ah, a visitor.’ Stokes straightened as a horseman, swathed against the rain in an oilcloth cape and with an oilcloth cover on his cocked hat, rode into the armoury courtyard leading a second horse by the reins. The visitor kicked his feet from the stirrups, swung down from the saddle, then tied both horses’ reins to one of the shed’s pillars. Major Stokes, his clothes just in their beginning stage of becoming dirty and dishevelled, smiled at the tall newcomer whose cocked hat and sword betrayed he was an officer. ‘Come to inspect us, have you?’ the Major demanded cheerfully. ‘You’ll discover chaos! Nothing in the right place, records all muddled, woodworm in the timber stacks, damp in the magazines and the paint completely addled.’
‘Better that paint is addled than wits,’ the newcomer said, then took off his cocked hat to reveal a head of white hair.
Sharpe, who had been sitting on one of the finished gun carriages, shot to his feet, tipping the surprised cat into the Major’s wood shavings. ‘Colonel McCandless, sir!’
‘Sergeant Sharpe!’ McCandless responded. The Colonel shook water from his cocked hat and turned to Stokes. ‘And you, sir?’
‘Major Stokes, sir, at your service, sir. John Stokes, commander of the armoury and, as you see, carpenter to His Majesty.’
‘You will forgive me, Major Stokes, if I talk to Sergeant Sharpe?’ McCandless shed his oilskin cape to reveal his East India Company uniform. ‘Sergeant Sharpe and I are old friends.’
‘My pleasure, Colonel,’ Stokes said. ‘I have business in the foundry. They’re pouring too fast. I tell them all the time! Fast pouring just bubbles the metal, and bubbled metal leads to disaster, but they won’t listen. Ain’t like making temple bells, I tell them, but I might as well save my breath.’ He glanced wistfully towards the happy men making the giant’s head for the Dusshera festival. ‘And I have other things to do,’ he added.
‘I’d rather you didn’t leave, Major,’ McCandless said very formally. ‘I suspect what I have to say concerns you. It is good to see you, Sharpe.’
‘You too, sir,’ Sharpe said, and it was true. He had been locked in the Tippoo’s dungeons with Colonel Hector McCandless and if it was possible for a sergeant and a colonel to be friends, then a friendship existed between