Sharpe's Fortress Read online

  Sharpe laughed. “I doubt it, sir. He ain’t the sort.” He turned southward again because Ahmed had called a warning in Arabic. The boy was pointing downhill and Sharpe stood to see over the crown of the slope. Far beneath him, where the road passed through one of the lush valleys, a small party of horsemen was approaching and one of the riders was in a blue coat. “Friends, Ahmed!” he called. “Looks like the new engineer,” Sharpe said to Simons.

  “Pinckney will be delighted,” Simons said sarcastically.

  Pinckney came back to inspect the approaching party through a telescope, and spat when he saw the blue coat of the Royal Engineers. “Another interfering bastard to teach me how to suck eggs,” he said. “So let’s blow the charge before he gets here, otherwise he’ll tell us we’re doing it all wrong.”

  A crowd of grinning sepoys waited expectantly about the end of the fuse. Pinckney struck a light, put it to the quickmatch, then watched the sparks smoke their way toward the distant charge. The smoke trail vanished in grass and it seemed to Sharpe that it must have extinguished itself, but then there was a violent coughing sound and the small ridge heaved upward. Soil and stone flew outward in a cloud of filthy smoke. The sepoys cheered. The explosion had seemed small to Sharpe, but when the smoke and dust cleared he could see that the ridge now had a deep notch through which the road could climb to the next high valley.

  The pioneers went to shovel the loosened earth away and Sharpe sat again. Ahmed squatted beside him. “What am I going to do with you?” Sharpe asked.

  “I go to England,” Ahmed said carefully.

  “You won’t like it there. Cold as buggery.”

  “Cold?”

  “Freezing.” Sharpe mimicked a shiver, but plainly it meant nothing to the Arab boy.

  “I go to England,” Ahmed insisted.

  A half-hour later the new engineer appeared just beneath Sharpe. He wore a wide-brimmed straw hat, rode a gray horse and was trailed by three servants who led pack mules laden with luggage among which Sharpe could see a tripod, a surveyor’s level and a vast leather tube that he guessed held a telescope. The engineer took off his hat and fanned his face as he rounded the last bend. “Ton my soul,” he said cheerfully, “but thank God the horse does the climbing and not me.”

  Pinckney had come back to greet the engineer and held out his hand as the blue-coated Major slid from his saddle. “Captain Pinckney, sir,” he introduced himself.

  “Pinckney, eh?” the white-haired engineer said cheerfully. “I knew a Pinckney in Hertfordshire. He made plowshares, and damn fine ones too.”

  “My uncle Joshua, sir.”

  “Then you must be Hugh’s boy, yes? An honor!” He shook Pinckney’s hand vigorously. “Major John Stokes, at your service, though I don’t suppose you need me, do you? You must have built more roads than I ever did.” Major Stokes looked toward Sharpe who had stood and was now smiling. “Good God in His blessed heaven,” Stokes said, “it can’t be! But it is! My dear Sharpe! My dear Mr. Sharpe. I heard all about your commission! Couldn’t be more pleased, my dear Sharpe. An officer, eh?”

  Sharpe smiled broadly. “Only an ensign, sir.”

  “Every ladder has a first rung, Sharpe,” Stokes said in gentle reproof of Sharpe’s modesty, then held out his hand. “We shall be mess mates, as they say in the Navy. Well, I never! Mess mates, indeed! And with a Pinckney too! Hugh Pinckney forges mill gears, Sharpe. Never seen a man make better-toothed wheels in all my life.” He clasped Sharpe’s hand in both of his. “They grubbed me out of Seringapatam, Sharpe. Can you believe that? Told me all the other engineers had the pox, and summoned me here just in time to discover that poor Elliott’s dead.

  I suppose I shouldn’t complain. It’s awfully good for my promotion prospects.” He let go of Sharpe’s hand. “Oh, and by the way, I traveled north with some of your old comrades! Captain Charles Morris and his company. Not the most charming creature, is he?”

  “Not one of my favorites, sir,” Sharpe admitted. Good God! Bloody Morris was here? First Hakeswill, then Morris!

  “He didn’t want to come,” Stokes said, “but higher powers deemed that I had to be protected from the ungodly, so they insisted on an infantry escort.” He turned as a rattle of gunfire sounded higher up the escarpment. “Bless my soul! Is that musketry?”

  “Picket line, sir,” Pinckney explained. “The enemy harasses us, but they’re not thrusting home.”

  “They should, they should. A battalion of skirmishers in these hills could keep us at bay for a month! Well, I never, Sharpe! An ensign!” The Major turned back to Pinckney. “Sharpe and I ran the armory at Seringapatam for four years.”

  “You ran it, sir,” Sharpe said. “I was just your sergeant.”

  “Best sergeant I ever had,” Stokes told Pinckney enthusiastically. “And it’s not ‘sir’”—he turned to Sharpe—”but John.” He grinned at Sharpe. “They were four good years, eh? Best we’ll ever have, I daresay. And here you are now, an officer! My dear fellow, I couldn’t be more overjoyed.” He sniffed the air. “Been blowing things up, Pinckney?”

  “Cutting through that ridge, sir. I trust you don’t mind that we didn’t wait for you?”

  “Mind? Why should I mind? You go ahead, dear fellow. I’m sure you know your business better than I do. God knows why they need an engineer here at all! Probably to be decorative, eh? Still, I’ll make myself useful. I thought I might map the escarpment. Hasn’t been done, you see. Of course, Pinckney, if you need advice, just ask away, but I’ll probably be at sixes and sevens groping for an answer.” He beamed at the delighted Pinckney, then looked at the rough country through which the road led. “This is fine landscape, isn’t it? Such a relief after the plains. It reminds me of Scotland.”

  “There are tigers here, Major,” Sharpe said.

  “And there’s all kinds of fierce things in Scotland too, Sharpe. I was once posted to Fort William and might as well have been in darkest China! It was worse than Newfoundland. And speaking of America, Sharpe, that young lady you sent me has traveled there. Extraordinary thing to do, I thought, and I advised her to abandon the whole wretched idea. There are bears, I told her, fierce bears, but she wouldn’t be persuaded.”

  “Simone, sir?” Sharpe asked, at first not believing his ears, then feeling a dreadful premonition.

  “A charming creature, I thought. And to be widowed so young!” Stokes tutted and shook his head. “She went to a fortune-teller, one of those naked fellows who make funny faces in the alley by the Hindu temple, and says she was advised to go to a new world. Whatever next, eh?”

  “I thought she was waiting for me, sir,” Sharpe said.

  “Waiting for you? Good Lord, no. Gone to Louisiana, she says. She stayed in my house for a week—I moved out, of course, to stop any scandal—and then she traveled to Madras with Mrs. Pennington. Remember Charlotte Pennington? The clergyman’s widow? I can’t think the two of them will get along, but your friend said the fortuneteller was adamant and so she chose to go.” The Major was eager to give Sharpe the rest of the news from Seringapatam. The armory was closing down, he said, now that the frontier of the British-held territory was so much farther north, but Stokes had kept himself busy dismantling the town’s inner fortifications. “Very ill made, Sharpe, disgraceful work, quite disgraceful. Walls crumbled to the touch.”

  But Sharpe was not listening. He was thinking of Simone. She had gone! By now she was probably in Madras, and maybe already on board a ship. And she had taken his jewels. Only a few of them, true, but enough. He touched the seam of his jacket where a good many of the Tippoo’s other jewels were hidden.

  “Did Madame Joubert leave any message?” he asked Stokes when the Major paused to draw breath. What did he hope, Sharpe wondered, that Simone would want him to join her in America?

  “A message? None, Sharpe. Too busy to write, I daresay. She’s a remarkably wealthy woman, did you know? She bought half the raw silk in town, hired a score of bearers and off she went. Every officer
in town was leaving a card for her, but she didn’t have the time of day for any of them. Off to Louisiana!” Stokes suddenly frowned. “What is the matter, Sharpe? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost. You’re not sickening, are you?”

  “No, no. It’s just I thought she might have written.”

  “Oh! I see! You were sweet on her!” Stokes shook his head. “I feel for you, Sharpe, ‘pon my soul, I do, but what hope could you have? A woman with her sort of fortune doesn’t look at fellows like us! Ton my soul, no. She’s rich! She’ll marry high, Sharpe, or as high as a woman can in French America.”

  Her sort of fortune indeed! Simone had no fortune, she had been penniless when Sharpe met her, but he had trusted her. God damn the Frog bitch! Stolen a small fortune. “It doesn’t matter,” he told Stokes, but somehow it did. Simone’s betrayal was like a stab to the belly. It was not so much the jewels, for he had kept the greater part of the plunder, but the broken promises. He felt anger and pity and, above all, a fool. A great fool. He turned away from Stokes and stared down the track to where a dozen oxen escorted by two companies of sepoys were trudging towards him. “I’ve got work coming,” he said, not wanting to discuss Simone any further.

  “I passed those fellows on my way,” Stokes said, “carrying powder, I think. I do like blowing things up. So just what do you do here, Sharpe?”

  “I keep the pioneers supplied with material, sir, and sign in all the convoys.”

  “Hope it leaves you time to help me, Sharpe. You and me together again, eh? It’ll be like the old days.”

  “That’d be good, sir,” Sharpe said with as much enthusiasm as he could muster, then he walked down the track and pointed to where the ox-drivers should drop their barrels of gunpowder. The men crowded about him with their chitties, and he pulled out a pencil and scrawled his initials in the corner of each one, thus confirming that they had completed and were owed for one journey.

  The last man also handed Sharpe a sealed paper with his name written in a fine copperplate hand. “From the clerk, sahib,” the man said, the phrase plainly much practiced for he spoke no other English.

  Sharpe tore the seal off as he walked back up the hill. The letter was not from the clerk at all, but from Torrance. “Bloody hell!” he cursed.

  “What is it?” Stokes asked.

  “A man called Torrance,” Sharpe complained. “He’s in charge of the bullocks. He wants me back at Deogaum because he reckons there are forged chitties in the camp.”

  “In the far south of India,” Stokes said, “they call them shits.”

  Sharpe blinked at the Major. “Sorry, sir?”

  “You mustn’t call me ‘sir,’ Sharpe. Ton my soul, yes. I had a Tamil servant who was forever asking me to sign his shits. Had me all in a dither at first, I can tell you.”

  Sharpe crumpled Torrance’s note into a ball. “Why the hell can’t Torrance sort out his own shits?” he asked angrily. But he knew why. Torrance was scared of another meeting with Wellesley, which meant the Captain would now follow the rules to the letter.

  “It won’t take long,” Stokes said, “not if you take my horse. But keep her to a steady walk, Richard, because she’s tired. And have her rubbed down and watered while you’re sorting out the shits.”

  Sharpe was touched by Stokes’s generosity. “Are you sure?”

  “What are friends for? Go on, Richard! On horseback you’ll be home for supper. I’ll have my cook brew up one of those mussallas you like so much.”

  Sharpe left his pack with Stokes’s baggage. The big ruby and a score of other stones were in the pack, and Sharpe was half tempted to carry it to Deogaum and back, but if he could not trust Stokes, who could he trust? He tried to persuade Ahmed to stay behind and keep an eye on the baggage, but the boy refused to be parted from Sharpe and insisted on trotting along behind the horse. “Stokes won’t hurt you,” Sharpe told Ahmed.

  “I’m your havildar,” Ahmed insisted, hefting his musket and peering about tha deserted landscape for enemies. There was none in sight, but Ahmed’s gesture reminded Sharpe of Elliott’s death and he wondered if he should have waited for the ox convoy to return to Deogaum, for the convoys all had escorts of sepoys or mercenary horsemen. He was tempted to kick the horse into a trot, but he resisted the impulse.

  The danger was more acute once he reached the lower hills, for Mahratta horsemen were forever probing the perimeter of the British camp and being chased away by cavalry patrols. Twice he saw horsemen in the distance, but neither group took any notice of Sharpe who was ready to haul Ahmed up onto the horse and then ride for his life if he was threatened. He did not relax until he met a patrol of Madrassi cavalry under the command of a Company lieutenant who escorted him safely to the encampment.

  Deogaum was now surrounded by a great spread of tents and makeshift booths, homes to soldiers and camp followers. A dancing bear was performing for a crowd of infantrymen and the animal reminded Sharpe of Major Stokes’s words about America. Simone! It was his own damn fault. He should never have trusted the woman. The thought of his own foolishness plunged Sharpe into a black mood that was not helped by the sight of two redcoat privates lounging on a bench outside Torrance’s quarters. Neither man moved as Sharpe slid from the horse. He gave the reins to Ahmed and mimed that the boy should rub the gray mare down with straw and then water her.

  The two redcoats shifted slightly as if acknowledging Sharpe’s presence, but neither man stood. He knew both of them; indeed, not so very long ago he had marched in the same ranks as these two men whose coats had the red facings of the 33rd. Kendrick and Lowry, they were called, and two worse characters it would have been hard to find in any light company. Both were cronies of Hakeswill’s, and both had been among the small party Hakeswill had brought north in his failed attempt to arrest Sharpe. “On your feet,” Sharpe said.

  Kendrick glanced at Lowry, who looked back at Kendrick, and the two made faces at each other as though they were surprised by Sharpe’s demands. They hesitated just long enough to make their insolence plain, but not quite long enough to make it punishable, then stood to attention. “Is that your ‘orse, Mr. Sharpe?” Kendrick asked, stressing the “mister.”

  Sharpe ignored the question and pushed into the house to find a new clerk sitting behind the table. He was a young, good-looking Indian with oiled hair and a very white robe. He wore an apron to protect the robe from ink spots. “You have business, sahib?” he asked brusquely.

  “With Captain Torrance.”

  “The Captain is ill.” The Indian, whose English was very good, smiled.

  “He’s always bloody ill,” Sharpe said and walked past the protesting clerk to push open the inner door.

  Torrance was in his hammock, smoking his hookah, and dressed in an Indian gown embroidered with dragons while Sergeant Hakeswill was sitting at a small table counting a pile of coins. “Sharpe!” Torrance sounded surprised. Hakeswill, looking equally surprised, sullenly stood to attention. “Wasn’t expecting you till this evening,” Torrance said.

  “I’m here,” Sharpe said unnecessarily.

  “So it is apparent. Unless you’re a specter?”

  Sharpe had no time for small talk. “You’ve got a problem with chitties?” he asked abrupdy.

  “Tiresome, isn’t it?” Torrance seemed uncomfortable. “Very tiresome. Sergeant, you have business elsewhere?”

  “I’ve got duties, sir!” Hakeswill snapped.

  “Attend to them, dear fellow.”

  “Sir!” Hakeswill stiffened, turned to the right, then marched from the room.

  “So how are you, Sharpe? Keeping busy?” Torrance had swung himself off the hammock and now scooped the coins into a leather bag. “I hear poor Elliott died?”

  “Shot, sir.”

  Torrance shuddered as if the news was personal. “So very sad,” he sighed, then retied the belt of his elaborate gown. “I never did thank you, Sharpe, for being so supportive with Sir Arthur.”

  Sharpe had not thought he had been
supportive at all. “I just told the truth, sir.”

  “My father would be proud of you, and I’m deeply grateful to you. It seems Dilip was in league with Naig.”

  “He was?”

  Torrance heard the disbelief in Sharpe’s voice. “No other explanation, is there?” he said curtly. “Someone must have been telling Naig which convoys carried the vital supplies, and it had to be Dilip. I must say I thought Wellesley was damned obtuse! There really is no point in having scruples about hanging natives. There isn’t exactly a shortage of them, is there?” He smiled.

  “There’s something wrong with the chitties?” Sharpe demanded rudely.

  “So there is, Sharpe, so there is. Our new clerk discovered the discrepancies. He’s a smart young fellow. Sajit!”

  The young clerk came into the room, clasped his hands and offered Torrance a slight bow. “Sahib?”

  “This is Ensign Sharpe, Sajit. He’s by way of being my deputy and thus as much your sahib as I am.”

  Sajit offered Sharpe a bow. “I am honored, sahib.”

  “Perhaps you could show Mr. Sharpe the problematical chitties, Sajit?” Torrance suggested.

  Sajit went back to the outer room and returned a moment later with a pile of the grubby paper slips. He placed them on the table, then invited Sharpe to inspect them. All the chitties had Shaipe’s initials in the bottom right-hand corner, most of them in pencil, but some had been initialed in ink and Sharpe set those aside. “I didn’t sign any of those,” he said confidently. “I don’t have a pen and ink.”

  “You were right, Sajit!” Torrance said.

  “You honor me, sahib,” Sajit said.

  “And every chitty is a stolen anna,” Torrance said, “so we have to discover which bullock men gave us the false ones. That’s the problem, Sharpe.”

  “They’ve got names on them,” Sharpe said, pointing at the slips of paper. “You hardly needed to drag me down here to tell you who they were issued to!”

  “Please don’t be tedious, Sharpe,” Torrance said plaintively. “Ever since the General put a shot across our bows I am forced to be particular. And the names mean nothing! Nothing! Look”—he scooped up the chitties—”at least a dozen are assigned to Ram, whoever Ram is. There are probably a dozen Rams out there. What I want you to do, Sharpe, is go round the encampment with Sajit and point out which men have visited the road. Sajit can then identify which bullock men are submitting false claims.”