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

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СКАЧАТЬ know how to spell Wellesley’s name for the despatch, Harris?’ Baird asked. ‘Three L’s!’

      ‘Good night,’ Harris said firmly.

      At dawn the Scotch Brigade and two Indian battalions paraded east of the encampment, while a battery of four twelve-pounder guns unlimbered to their south. As soon as the sun was up the four guns began throwing shells into the tope. The missiles left filmy smoke traces in the air from their burning fuses, then plunged into the trees where their explosions were muffled by the thick foliage. One shell fell short and a great gout of water spurted up from the aqueduct. Birds wheeled above the smoking tope, squawking their protests at the violence that had once again disturbed their nests.

      Major General Baird waited in front of the Scotch Brigade. He itched to take his countrymen forward, but Harris insisted it was Wellesley’s privilege. ‘He’s officer of the day till noon,’ Harris said.

      ‘He ain’t up,’ Baird said. ‘He’s sleeping it off. If you wait for him to wake up it’ll be past noon anyway. Just let me go, sir.’

      ‘Give him five minutes,’ Harris insisted. ‘I sent an aide to wake him.’

      Baird had intercepted the aide to make certain Wellesley did not wake in time, but just before the five minutes expired the young Colonel came racing across the ground on his white horse. He looked dishevelled, like a man who had made too hasty a toilet. ‘My sincerest apologies, sir,’ he greeted Harris.

      ‘You’re ready, Wellesley?’

      ‘Indeed, sir.’

      ‘Then you know what to do,’ Harris said curtly.

      ‘Look after my Scots boys!’ Baird called to Wellesley, and received, as he expected, no answer.

      The Scots colours were unfurled, the drummer boys sounded the advance, the pipers began their fierce music and the brigade marched into the rising sun. The sepoys followed. Rockets streaked up from the tope, but the missiles were no more accurate in the morning than they had been at night. The four brass field guns fired shell after shell, only stopping when the Scotsmen reached the aqueduct. Harris and Baird watched as the brigade attacked in a four-deep line that climbed the nearer embankment, dropped out of sight into the aqueduct, briefly reappeared on the farther embankment, then finally disappeared into the trees beyond. For a few moments there was the disciplined sound of musket volleys, then silence. The sepoys followed the Scots, spreading left and right to attack the fringes of the battered woodland. Harris waited, then a galloper came from the northern stretch of the aqueduct, which had been captured during the night, to report that the land between the tope and the city was thick with enemy fugitives running back to Seringapatam. That news was proof that the tope was at last taken and that the whole aqueduct was now in allied hands. ‘Time for breakfast,’ Harris said happily. ‘You’ll join me, Baird?’

      ‘I’ll hear the butcher’s bill first, sir, if you don’t mind,’ Baird answered, but there was no butcher’s bill, for none of the Scots or Indian troops had died. The Tippoo’s men had abandoned the tope once the artillery shells began to fall among the trees and they left behind only the plundered British dead of the previous night. Lieutenant Fitzgerald was among them, and he was buried with honours. Killed by an enemy bayonet, the report said.

      And now, with the approach ground west of the city in Harris’s hands, the siege proper could begin.

      It did not prove difficult to find Mary. Sharpe merely asked Gudin and, after the night’s events in the tope, the Colonel was eager to give Sharpe whatever he wanted. The loss of the tope the following dawn had in no way diminished the Frenchman’s delight at the night-time victory, nor the optimism inside the city, for no one had seriously expected the tope to resist for more than a few minutes and the previous night’s victory, with its catch of prisoners and its tales of British defeat, had convinced the Tippoo’s forces that they would prove more than a match for the enemy armies.

      ‘Your woman, Sharpe?’ Gudin teased. ‘You become a corporal and all you want is your woman back?’

      ‘I just want to see her, sir.’

      ‘She’s in Appah Rao’s household. I’ll have a word with the General, but first you’re to go to the palace at midday.’

      ‘Me, sir?’ Sharpe felt an instant pang of alarm, fearing that Hakeswill had betrayed him.

      ‘To get an award, Sharpe,’ Gudin reassured him. ‘But don’t worry, I’ll be there to steal most of your glory.’

      ‘Yes, sir.’ Sharpe grinned. He liked Gudin, and he could not help contrasting the kind and easy-going Frenchman with his own Colonel who always appeared to treat common soldiers as if they were a nuisance that had to be endured. Of course Wellesley was sheltered from his ranks by his officers and sergeants, while Gudin had such a small battalion that in truth he was more like a captain than a colonel. Gudin did have the assistance of a Swiss adjutant and the occasional help of the two French captains when they were not drinking in the city’s best brothel, but the battalion had no lieutenants or ensigns, and only three sergeants, which meant that the rank and file had an unprecedented access to their Colonel. Gudin liked it that way for he had little else to occupy him. Officially he was France’s adviser to the Tippoo, but the Tippoo rarely sought anyone’s advice. Gudin confessed as much as he walked with Sharpe to the palace at midday. ‘Knows it all, does he, sir?’ Sharpe asked.

      ‘He’s a good soldier, Sharpe. Very good. What he really wants is a French army, not a French adviser.’

      ‘What does he want a French army for, sir?’

      ‘To beat you British out of India.’

      ‘But then he’d just be stuck with you French instead,’ Sharpe pointed out.

      ‘But he likes the French, Sharpe. You find that strange?’

      ‘I find everything in India strange, sir. Haven’t had a proper meal since I got here.’

      Gudin laughed. ‘And a proper meal is what?’

      ‘Bit of beef, sir, with some potatoes and a gravy thick enough to choke a rat.’

      Gudin shuddered. ‘La cuisine anglaise!’

      ‘Sir?’

      ‘Never mind, Sharpe, never mind.’

      A half-dozen men waited to be presented to the Tippoo, all of them soldiers who had somehow distinguished themselves in the defence of the tope the previous night. There was also one prisoner, a Hindu soldier who had been seen to run away when the attackers had first crossed the aqueduct. All of them, coward and heroes alike, waited in the courtyard where Sharpe and Lawford had been tested by the Tippoo, though today five of the six tigers had been taken away, leaving only a big old docile male. Gudin crossed to the beast and tickled its chin, then scratched it between the ears. ‘This one’s tame as a cat, Sharpe.’

      ‘I’ll let you stroke it, sir. Wild horses wouldn’t get me near a beast like that.’

      The tiger liked being scratched. It closed its yellow eyes and for a few seconds Sharpe could almost persuade himself the big beast was purring, then it yawned hugely, displaying a massive mouth with old worn teeth, and when it had yawned it stretched out its long forepaws and, from its furry СКАЧАТЬ