Sharpe 3-Book Collection 1: Sharpe’s Tiger, Sharpe’s Triumph, Sharpe’s Fortress. Bernard Cornwell

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СКАЧАТЬ French, but with a scattering of Swiss, Germans and two Britishers. They all wore the blue coats of French infantry, but there were none to spare for the two new men, and so Sergeant Rothière had issued Sharpe and Lawford with tiger tunics like those the Tippoo’s men wore. The tunics did not open down the front like a European coat, but had to be pulled over the head. ‘Where you boys from?’ an English voice asked Sharpe as he pulled down the dyed cotton tunic.

      ‘33rd,’ Sharpe had said.

      ‘The Havercakes?’ the man said. ‘Thought they were up north, in Calcutta?’

      ‘Brought down to Madras last year,’ Sharpe said. He gingerly sat on his cot, an Indian bed made from ropes stretched between a simple wooden frame. It proved surprisingly comfortable. ‘And you?’ he asked the Englishman.

      ‘Royal bleeding Artillery, mate, both of us. Ran three months back. Name’s Johnny Blake and that’s Henry Hickson.’

      ‘I’m Dick Sharpe and that’s Bill Lawford,’ Sharpe said, introducing the Lieutenant who looked desperately awkward in his knee-length tunic of purple and white stripes. Over the tunic he wore two crossbelts and an ordinary belt from which hung a bayonet and a cartridge pouch. They had been issued with heavy French muskets and warned they would have to do their share of sentry duty with the rest of the small battalion.

      ‘Used to be a lot more of us,’ Blake told Sharpe, ‘but men die here like flies. Fever mostly.’

      ‘But it ain’t bad here,’ Henry Hickson offered. ‘Food’s all right. Plenty of bibbis and Gudin’s a real decent officer. Better than any we ever had.’

      ‘Right bastards we had,’ Blake agreed.

      ‘Aren’t they all?’ Sharpe had said.

      ‘And the pay’s good, when you get it. Five months overdue now, but maybe we’ll get it when we beat the stuffing out of the British.’ Blake laughed at the suggestion.

      Blake and Hickson were not required to stand guard, but instead manned one of the big tiger-mouthed guns that crouched behind a nearby embrasure. Sharpe and Lawford stood their watch alone and it was that privacy which had encouraged Lawford into his furious attack. ‘Have you got nothing to say for yourself, Private?’ he challenged Sharpe who still stared serenely over the green landscape through which the river curled south about the city’s island. ‘Well?’ Lawford snapped.

      Sharpe looked at him. ‘You loaded the musket, didn’t you, Bill?’

      ‘Of course!’

      ‘You ever felt gunpowder that smooth and fine?’ Sharpe gazed into the Lieutenant’s face.

      ‘It could have been gunpowder dust!’ Lawford insisted angrily.

      ‘That shiny?’ Sharpe said derisively. ‘Gunpowder dust is full of rat shit and sawdust! And did you really think, Bill’ – he pronounced the name sarcastically – ‘that the bleeding Tippoo would let us have loaded guns before he was sure he could trust us? And with him standing not six feet away? And did you bother to taste the powder? I did, and it weren’t salty at all. That weren’t gunpowder, Lieutenant, that were either ink powder or black pigment, but whatever it was it was never going to spark.’

      Lawford gaped at Sharpe. ‘So you knew all along the gun wouldn’t fire?’

      ‘Of course I bloody knew! I wouldn’t have pulled the trigger else. You mean you didn’t realize that weren’t powder?’

      Lawford turned away. Once again he had been made to look like a fool and he blushed at the realization. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. He was crestfallen, and again he felt a galling sense of inadequacy compared to this common soldier.

      Sharpe stared at a patrol of the Tippoo’s lancers who were riding back towards the city. Three of them were wounded and were being supported in their saddles by their comrades, which suggested the British were not so very far away now. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said very softly, and deliberately using the word ‘sir’ to mollify Lawford, ‘but I’m not trying to be insolent. I’m just trying to keep you and me alive.’

      ‘I know. I’m sorry too. I should have known it wasn’t powder.’

      ‘It was confusing, weren’t it?’ Sharpe said, trying to console his companion. ‘What with the Tippoo being there. Fat little bugger, ain’t he? But you’re doing all right, sir.’ Sharpe spoke feelingly, knowing that the young Lieutenant desperately needed encouragement. ‘And you were clever as hell, sir, saying you wore an apron. I should have splashed some ink on your uniform, shouldn’t I? But I never thought of it, but you got us out of that one.’

      ‘I was thinking of Private Brookfield,’ Lawford said, not without some pride at the memory of his inspired lie. ‘You know Brookfield?’

      ‘The clerk of Mister Stanbridge’s company, sir? Fellow who wears spectacles? Does he wear a pinny?’

      ‘He says it keeps the ink off him.’

      ‘He always was an old woman,’ Sharpe said scornfully, ‘but you did well. And I’ll tell you something else. We have to get out of here soon because I know why we came now. We don’t have to find your merchant fellow, we just have to get out. Unless you think we ought to rescue your uncle, but if you don’t, then we can just run, because I know why we came now.’

      Lawford gaped at him. ‘You know?’

      ‘The Colonel spoke to me, sir, while we was going through that pantomime back there in the palace. He says we’re to tell General Harris to avoid the west wall. Nothing else, just that.’

      Lawford stared at Sharpe, then glanced across the angle of the city walls towards the western defences, but nothing he could see there looked strange or suspicious. ‘You’d better stop calling me “sir”,’ he said. ‘Are you sure about what he said?’

      ‘He said it twice. Avoid the west wall.’

      A bellow from the next cavalier made them turn. Rothière was pointing south, suggesting that the two Englishmen watch that direction as they were supposed to instead of gaping like yokels towards the west. Sharpe obediently stared southwards, though there was nothing to be seen there except some women carrying loads on their heads and a thin naked boy herding some scrawny cattle along the river bank. His duty now, Sharpe thought, was to escape this place and get back to the British army, but how in God’s name was he ever to do that? If he were to jump off the wall now, Sharpe reckoned, he would stand a half-chance of breaking a leg, and even if he survived the jump he would only land in the glacis ditch, and if he managed to cross the glacis he would merely reach the military encampment that was built hard around the city’s southern and eastern walls, and if he was lucky enough to escape the hundreds of soldiers who would converge on him, he would still need to cross the river, and meanwhile every gun on the encampment wall would be hammering at his heels, and once he had crossed the river, if he ever did, the Tippoo’s lancers would be waiting on the far bank. The sheer impossibility of escaping the city made him smile. ‘God knows how we ever get out of here,’ he said to Lawford.

      ‘Maybe at night?’ Lawford suggested vaguely.

      ‘If they ever let us stand guard at night,’ Sharpe said dubiously, then thought of Mary. Could he leave her in the city?

      ‘So what do we do?’ Lawford asked.

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