Sharpe's Tiger (32 page)

She nodded and again looked fearful. “Please?” she begged him. Sharpe paused, not to keep Mary on tenterhooks, but because the naked man had at last moved. He had slowly clasped his hands together, but that seemed the extent
of his exertions for he went quite still again. “Richard?” Mary pleaded. “You won't tell him, will you?”

He looked back to her. “I want you to do something for me,” he said.

She looked wary, but nodded. “Of course. If I can.”

“There's a fellow in this city called Ravi Shekhar. Got the name? He's a merchant, God knows what he sells, but he's here right enough and you've got to find him. Do they ever let you out of the house?”

“Yes.”

“Then you get out, lass, and find this Ravi Shekhar and tell him to get a message to the British. And the message is this. They mustn't attack the west wall. That's it, just that. The daft buggers are setting themselves to attack it right now, so it's urgent. Will you do that?”

Mary licked her lips, then nodded. “And you won't tell Kunwar about us?”

“I wouldn't have told him anyway.” Sharpe said. “Of course I wouldn't. I wish you joy of the fellow, sister, eh?” He smiled. “Sister Aruna. It's nice to have some family and you're all I've got. And I hate to ask you to find this Shekhar fellow, but the Lieutenant and me, we just can't manage to escape so someone else has to send the message out. Looks like you.” Sharpe grinned. “But it looks like you've changed sides now and I don't blame you. So you don't mind doing this for me?”

I'll do it for you. I promise.”

“You're a good lass.” He stood. “Do brothers kiss sisters in India?”

Mary half smiled. “I think they do, yes.”

Sharpe gave her a very respectable kiss on the cheek, smelling her perfume. “You look grand, Mary,” he said. “Too grand for me, eh?”

“You're a good man, Richard.”

“That won't get me very far in this world, will it?” He hacked away from Mary then grinned at Kunwar Singh who offered him a stiff, slight bow. “You're a lucky man!” Sharpe said, and then, with a backward glance at the tall elegant woman who now called herself Aruna, he walked away from Mary Bickerstaff. Easy come, easy go, he thought, but there was also a pang of jealousy for the tall good-looking Indian. But what the hell? Mary was doing her best to survive and Sharpe could never blame someone for doing that. He was doing the same himself

He had turned back toward the barracks where Gudin's battalion was quartered. He was thinking about Mary and about how graceful, even unapproachable, she had looked, and he was hardly looking where he was going when a cheerful shout warned him of an approaching bullock cart that was loaded with great barrels. Sharpe stepped hastily aside as the bullocks, their horns painted yellow and blue and tipped with small silver bells, lumbered past. He saw that the brightly painted cart was heading down a narrow alley which led toward the gatehouse in the western wall and the sentries at the gate, seeing the cart approach, heaved back the huge double doors.

And Sharpe instinctively knew something was amiss. He stood watching and suspected he was on the edge of solving the city's mystery. The guards were opening the gates, yet so far as Sharpe knew there were no gates in the city's western wall which faced the South Cauvery river. He knew of the Bangalore Gate to the east, the Mysore Gate to the south, and the much smaller Water Gate to the north, but no one had ever spoken of a fourth gate, yet there it was. Once, plainly, there had been another water gate here, a gate that opened onto the South Cauvery, and presumably that entrance to the city had long ago been sealed up, yet now Sharpe was watching the gates being opened and he impulsively
turned and followed the cart down the alley. The cart had already vanished into the deep gloom inside the gate's tunnel and the two guards were dragging the big double doors closed, but then they saw the bright gold medallion on Sharpe's chest and maybe that rare token convinced them that he had the authority to enter. “Looking for Colonel Gudin!” Sharpe offered in brazen explanation when one of the two men nervously moved to intercept him. “Got a message for the Colonel, see?”

Then he was through the gate and he saw that it was not a passage out of the city at all, but was rather a long tunnel that led only to a blank stone wall. It had once been a gateway, that much was obvious, but at some time the old outer gate had been walled shut to leave this gloomy tunnel that was now stacked with barrels. They had to be powder barrels, for Sharpe could see pale lengths of fuses coming from their stoppered bungholes. The whole northern side of the tunnel was crammed with the powder barrels. Just the northern side.

An officer saw him and shouted angrily. Sharpe played the innocent. “Colonel Gudin?” he asked. “Have you seen Colonel Gudin, sahib?”

The Indian officer ran toward him and, as he came, he drew a pistol, but then, in the tunnel's dim dusty light, he saw the gold medal on Sharpe's chest and he pushed the pistol back into his sash. “Gudin?” he asked Sharpe.

Sharpe smiled eagerly. “He's my officer, sahib. I've got a message for him.”

The Indian did not understand, but he did know the significance of the medal and it was enough to make him respectful. But be was still firm. He pointed Sharpe toward the door and gestured that he was to leave.

“Gudin?” Sharpe insisted.

The man shook his head and Sharpe, with a grin, left the tunnel.

He had forgotten Mary now for he knew he was on the verge of understanding what was being kept so secret. He went back down the alley and at its end he turned and looked at the wall above and he wondered why there were no gunners standing by the brass guns, and why no sentries stood in the embrasures and why no flags were hung on the battlements. Everywhere else on the walls there were flags and sentries and gunners, but not here. He waited until the tunnel gates had been closed, then he hurried up the nearby ramp that led to the wall's firestep. The wall here was made of red mud bricks and was not nearly so formidable as the southern wall which was constructed from massive granite blocks. Nor was this wall more than twenty feet thick, whereas the tunnel had been nearer a hundred feet long. He ran up to the parapet where the big guns waited and, when he reached the firestep, he understood everything.

For there was not one wall here, but two. The one he was standing on was the inner wall and it was new, so new that some short stretches of the wall were still festooned with scaffolding and ropes where the Tippoo's laborers hastened to complete the work. And sixty feet away, beyond an empty inner ditch, was the city's outer wall where the flags were hung and where the gunners and sentries stood guard. That old outer wall was a couple of feet higher than this new inner wall, but opposite Sharpe, and close to where he had seen the powder-crammed tunnel, those older ramparts had crumbled at their top. That decay would surely serve as a beacon to the British, enticing them to aim their guns at that stretch of decayed wall in the certainty that they could soon finish its destruction with their bombardment. The big eighteen-and twenty-four-pounder guns would hammer away until the older outer wall collapsed to leave a ramp-like
breach. The British, staring across the river at that breach, would doubtless see the new inner wall, but they might well think it was nothing but the flank of a warehouse or a temple. And so the assault would come storming across the shallow river and up the ramp of the breach in the outer wall, and then spill down into the space between the two walls. More and more men would come, those behind forcing the ones in front ever onward, and slowly the crush between the walls would grow. The guns and rockets on the inner wall would rain down death, but after a while, when the attackers filled the space between the walls, the huge charge of powder, stored in what remained of the old elaborate gateway, would be detonated. And that explosion, its force funnelled by the old and new walls, would tear into the narrow gap and flood the ditch between the walls with blood. Sharpe looked to his left and saw that the tunnel was built beneath a squat gate tower. That ancient tower would surely collapse, spilling stones onto any troops who might survive the terrible blast.

“Bloody hell,” Sharpe said, and then he slipped back down the inner wall's ramp and went to find Lawford. If Mary did not get the news out, he thought, there would be slaughter when the assault came. It would be pure slaughter, and it seemed that only Many, who was now in love with the enemy, could prevent it.

T
he siege works advanced steadily, hampered only by the Tippoo's guns and by a shortage of the heavy timber needed to shore up the trenches and construct the batteries where the big siege guns would be emplaced. Colonel Gent, an engineer of the East India Company, supervised the work, and he agreed wholeheartedly with General Harris that the decayed stretch of the city's western walls was the obvious and opportune target. Then, just days after the construction of the siege works had begun, a local farmer revealed the existence of a new second wall behind the first. The man insisted the new wall was unfinished, but Harris was worried enough by the farmer's news to call his deputies to his tent where Colonel Gent delivered the gloomy intelligence about the new inner ramparts. “The fellow says his sons were taken away to help build the walls,” the engineer reported, “and he seems to be telling the truth.”

Baird broke the brief silence that followed Gent's words. “They can't surely garrison both walls,” the Scotsman insisted.

“The Tippoo has no shortage of men,” Wellesley pointed out. “Thirty or forty thousand, we hear. More than enough to defend both walls, I should think.”

Baird ignored the young Colonel, while Harris, uncomfortably aware of the bad feeling between his two deputies, stared fixedly at his map of the city in the hope that some
new inspiration would strike. Colonel Gent sat beside Harris. The engineer unfolded a pair of wire-framed spectacles and hooked them over his ears as he peered down at the map.

Harris sighed. “I still think it has to be the west,” he said, “despite this new wall.”

“The north?” Wellesley asked.

“According to our farmer fellow,” Gent answered, “the new inner wall goes all the way round the north.” He picked up a pencil and sketched the line of the new inner wall on the map to show that wherever the river flowed close to the city there was now a double rampart. “And the west is infinitely preferable to the north,” Gent added. “The South Cauvery's shallow, while the main river can still be treacherous at this time of year. If our fellows have to wade through the Cauvery, let them do it here.” He tapped the city's western approach. “Of course,” he added optimistically, “maybe that fellow was right, and maybe that inner wall ain't finished.”

Harris wished to God that McCandless was still with the army. That subtle Scotsman would have dispatched a dozen disguised sepoys and discovered within hours the exact state of the new inner wall, but McCandless was lost and so, Harris suspected, were the two men sent to rescue him.

“We could cross the Arrakerry Ford,” Baird suggested, “then blast our way in from the east like Cornwallis did.”

Harris lifted the hem of his wig and scratched at his old scalp wound. “We discussed all this before,” he said wearily. He offered Baird a wan smile to take the sting from his mild reproof, then explained his reasons for not assaulting from the east. “First we have to force the crossing, and the enemy has the riverbanks entrenched. Then we must get through the new wall around their encampment”—he touched the map, showing where the Tippoo had constructed a stout mud wall, well served with guns, that surrounded the encampment
which lay outside the city's southern and eastern walls—”and after that we have to lay siege to the city proper, and we know that both the east and south ramparts already have inner walls. And to breach those walls every round shot and pound of powder will have to be carried across the river.”

“And one good rainfall will make the ford impassable,” Gent put in gloomily, “not to mention bringing those damned crocodiles back.” He shook his head. “I wouldn't want to be earning three tons of supplies a day across a half-flooded river full of hungry teeth.”

“So wherever we attack,” Wellesley asked, “we have to pierce two walls?”

“That's what the man said,” Baird growled.

“This new inner wall,” Wellesley asked Gent, ignoring Baird, “what do we know of it?”

“Mud,” Gent said, “red mud bricks. Just like Devon mud.”

“Mud will crumble,” Wellesley pointed out.

“If it's dry, it will,” Gent agreed, “but the core of the wall won't be dry. Thoroughly good stuff, mud. Soaks up the cannon fire. I've seen twenty-four-pounder shots bounce off mud like currants off a suet pudding. Give me a good stone wall to break down any day. Break its crust and the guns turn the nibble core into a staircase. But not mud.” Gent stared at the map, picking his teeth with the sharpened nib of a quill. “Not mud,” he added in a gloomy undertone.

“But it will yield?” Harris asked anxiously.

“Oh, it'll yield, sir, it'll yield, I can warrant you that, but how much time do we have to persuade it to yield?” The engineer peered over his spectacles at the bewigged General. “The monsoon ain't so far off, and once the rains begin we might as well go home for all the good we'll ever do. You want a path through both walls? It'll take two weeks more, and even then the inner breach will be perilously narrow.
Perilously narrow! Can't enfilade it, you see, and the breach in the outer wall will serve as a glacis to protect the base of the inner wall. Straight on fire, sir, and all aimed a deal higher than any respectable gunner would want. We can make you a breach of sorts, but it'll be narrow and high, and God only knows what'll be waiting on the other side. Nothing good, I dare say.”