Bernard Cornwell - Sharpe’s Triumph - The Battle of Assaye, September 1803

‘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 the two men. McCandless, tall, vigorous and in his sixties, was the East India Company’s head of intelligence for all southern and western India, and in the last four years he and Sharpe had talked a few times whenever the Colonel passed through Seringapatam, but those had been social conversations and the Colonel’s grim face suggested that this meeting was anything but social.

‘You were at Chasalgaon?’ McCandless demanded.

‘I was, sir, yes.’

‘So you saw Lieutenant Dodd?’

Sharpe nodded. ‘Won’t ever forget the bastard. Sorry, sir.’ He apologized because McCandless was a fervent Christian who abhorred all foul language. The Scotsman was a stern man, honest as a saint, and Sharpe sometimes wondered why he liked him so much. Maybe it was because McCandless was always fair, always truthful and could talk to any man, rajah or sergeant, with the same honest directness.

‘I never met Lieutenant Dodd,’ McCandless said, ‘so describe him to me.’

‘Tall, sir, and thin like you or me.’

‘Not like me,’ Major Stokes put in.

‘Sort of yellow-faced,’ Sharpe went on, ‘as if he’d had the fever once. Long face, like he ate something bitter.’ He thought for a second. He had only caught a few glimpses of Dodd, and those had been sideways. ‘He’s got lank hair, sir, when he took off his hat. Brown hair. Long nose on him, like Sir Arthur’s, and a bony chin. He’s calling himself Major Dodd now, sir, not Lieutenant. I heard one of his men call him Major.’

‘And he killed every man in the garrison?’ McCandless asked.

‘He did, sir. Except me. I was lucky.’

‘Nonsense, Sharpe!’ McCandless said. ‘The hand of the Lord was upon you.’

‘Amen,’ Major Stokes intervened.

McCandless stared broodingly at Sharpe. The Colonel had a hard-planed face with oddly blue eyes. He was forever claiming that he wanted to retire to his native Scotland, but he always found some reason to stay on in India. He had spent much of his life riding the states that bordered the land administered by the Company, for his job was to explore those lands and report their threats and weaknesses to his masters. Little happened in India that escaped McCandless, but Dodd had escaped him, and Dodd was now McCandless’s concern. ‘We have placed a price on his head,’ the Colonel said, ‘of five hundred guineas.’

‘Bless me!’ Major Stokes said in astonishment.

‘He’s a murderer,’ McCandless went on. ‘He killed a goldsmith in Seedesegur, and he should be facing trial, but he ran instead and I want you, Sharpe, to help me catch him. And I’m not pursuing the rogue because I want the reward money; in fact I’ll refuse it. But I do want him, and I want your help.’

Major Stokes began to protest, saying that Sharpe was his best man and that the armoury would go to the dogs if the Sergeant was taken away, but McCandless shot the amiable Major a harsh look that was sufficient to silence him.

‘I want Lieutenant Dodd captured,’ McCandless said implacably, ‘and I want him tried, and I want him executed, and I need someone who will know him by sight.’

Major Stokes summoned the courage to continue his objections. ‘But I need Sergeant Sharpe,’ he protested. ‘He organizes everything! The duty rosters, the stores, the pay chest, everything!’

‘I need him more,’ McCandless snarled, turning on the hapless Major. ‘Do you know how many Britons are in India, Major? Maybe twelve thousand, and less than half of those are soldiers. Our power does not rest on the shoulders of white men, Major, but on the muskets of our sepoys. Nine men out of every ten who invade the Mahratta states will be sepoys, and Lieutenant Dodd persuaded over a hundred of those men to desert! To desert! Can you imagine our fate if the other sepoys follow them? Scindia will shower Dodd’s men with gold, Major, with lucre and with spoil, in the hope that others will follow them. I have to stop that, and I need Sharpe.’

Major Stokes recognized the inevitable. ‘You will bring him back, sir?’

‘If it is the Lord’s will, yes. Well, Sergeant? Will you come with me?’

Sharpe glanced at Major Stokes who shrugged, smiled, then nodded his permission. ‘I’ll come, sir,’ Sharpe said to the Scotsman.

‘How soon can you be ready?’

‘Ready now, sir.’ Sharpe indicated the newly issued pack and musket that lay at his feet.

‘You can ride a horse?’

Sharpe frowned. ‘I can sit on one, sir.’

‘Good enough,’ the Scotsman said. He pulled on his oilcloth cape, then untied the two reins and gave one set to Sharpe. ‘She’s a docile thing, Sharpe, so don’t saw on her bit.’