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

‘Good!’ Pohlmann said. ‘I shall make things easier for you by taking your regiment’s families northwards. You might march soldiers safely from the city’s fall, but I doubt you can manage a horde of women and children too. And what about you, Madame?’ He turned and laid a meaty hand on Simone Joubert’s knee. ‘Will you come with me?’ He talked to her as though she were a child. ‘Or stay with Major Dodd?’

Simone seemed startled by the question. She blushed and looked up at Lieutenant Sillière. ‘I shall stay here, Colonel,’ she answered in English.

‘Make sure you bring her safe home, Major,’ Pohlmann said to Dodd.

‘I shall, sir.’

Pohlmann stood. His purple-coated bodyguards, who had been standing in front of the tent, hurried to take their places on the elephant’s flanks while the mahout, who had been resting in the animal’s capacious shade, now mounted the somnolent beast by gripping its tail and clambering up its backside like a sailor swarming up a rope. He edged past the gilded howdah, took his seat on the elephant’s neck and turned the beast towards Pohlmann’s tent. ‘Are you sure’ – Pohlmann turned back to Simone Joubert – ‘that you would not prefer to travel with me? The howdah is so comfortable, as long as you do not suffer from seasickness.’

‘I shall stay with my husband,’ Simone said. She had stood and proved to be much taller than Dodd had supposed. Tall and somewhat gawky, he thought, but she still possessed an odd attraction.

‘A good woman should stay with her husband,’ Pohlmann said, ‘or someone’s husband, anyway.’ He turned to Dodd. ‘I shall see you in a few days, Major, with your new regiment. Don’t let me down.’

‘I won’t, sir, I won’t,’ Dodd promised as, holding his new sword, he watched his new commander climb the silver steps to the howdah. He had a regiment to save and a reputation to make, and by God, Dodd thought, he would do both things well.

Sharpe sat in the open shed where the armoury stored its gun carriages. It had started to rain, though it was not the sheeting downpour of the monsoon, just a miserable steady grey drizzle that turned the mud in the yard into a slippery coating of red slime. Major Stokes, beginning the afternoon in a clean red coat, white silk stock and polished boots, paced obsessively about a newly made carriage. ‘It really wasn’t your fault, Sharpe,’ he said.

‘Feels like it, sir.’

‘It would, it would!’ Stokes said. ‘Reflects well on you, Sharpe, ’pon my soul, it does. But it weren’t your fault, not in any manner.’

‘Lost all six men, sir. And young Davi.’

‘Poor Hedgehog,’ Stokes said, squatting to peer along the trail of the carriage. ‘You reckon that timber’s straight, Sharpe? Bit hog-backed, maybe?’

‘Looks straight to me, sir.’

‘Ain’t tight-grained, this oak, ain’t tight-grained,’ the Major said, and he began to unbuckle his sword belt. Every morning and afternoon his servant sent him to the armoury in carefully laundered and pressed clothes, and within an hour Major Stokes would be stripped down to breeches and shirtsleeves and have his hands full of spokeshaves or saws or awls or adzes. ‘Like to see a straight trail,’ he said. ‘There’s a number four spokeshave on the wall, Sharpe, be a good fellow.’

‘You want me to sharpen it, sir?’

‘I did it last night, Sharpe. I put a lovely edge on her.’ Stokes unpeeled his red jacket and rolled up his sleeves. ‘Timber don’t season here properly, that’s the trouble.’ He stooped to the new carriage and began running the spokeshave along the trail, leaving curls of new white wood to fall away. ‘I’m mending a clock,’ he told Sharpe while he worked, ‘a lovely-made piece, all but for some crude local gearing. Have a look at it. It’s in my office.’

‘I will, sir.’

‘And I’ve found some new timber for axletrees, Sharpe. It’s really quite exciting!’

‘They’ll still break, sir,’ Sharpe said gloomily, then scooped up one of the many cats that lived in the armoury. He put the tabby on his lap and stroked her into a contented purr.

‘Don’t be so doom-laden, Sharpe! We’ll solve the axletree problem yet. It’s only a question of timber, nothing but timber. There, that looks better.’ The Major stepped back from his work and gave it a critical look. There were plenty of Indian craftsmen employed in the armoury, but Major Stokes liked to do things himself, and besides, most of the Indians were busy preparing for the feast of Dusshera which involved manufacturing three giant-sized figures that would be paraded to the Hindu temple and there burned. Those Indians were busy in another open-sided shed where they had glue bubbling on a fire, and some of the men were pasting lengths of pale cloth onto a wicker basket that would form one of the giants’ heads. Stokes was fascinated by their activity and Sharpe knew it would not be long before the Major joined them. ‘Did I tell you a sergeant was here looking for you this morning?’ Stokes asked.

‘No, sir.’

‘Came just before dinner,’ Stokes said, ‘a strange sort of fellow.’ The Major stooped to the trail and attacked another section of wood. ‘He twitched, he did.’

‘Obadiah Hakeswill,’ Sharpe said.

‘I think that was his name. Didn’t seem very important,’ Stokes said. ‘Said he was just visiting town and looking up old companions. D’you know what I was thinking?’

‘Tell me, sir,’ Sharpe said, wondering why in holy hell Obadiah Hakeswill had been looking for him. For nothing good, that was certain.

‘Those teak beams in the Tippoo’s old throne room,’ Stokes said, ‘they’ll be seasoned well enough. We could break out a half-dozen of the things and make a batch of axletrees from them!’

‘The gilded beams, sir?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Soon have the gilding off them, Sharpe. Plane them down in two shakes!’

‘The Rajah may not like it, sir,’ Sharpe said.

Stokes’s face fell. ‘There is that, there is that. A fellow don’t usually like his ceilings being pulled down to make gun carriages. Still, the Rajah’s usually most obliging if you can get past his damned courtiers. The clock is his. Strikes eight when it should ring nine, or perhaps it’s the other way round. You reckon that quoin’s true?’

Sharpe glanced at the wedge which lowered and raised the cannon barrel. ‘Looks good, sir.’

‘I might just plane her down a shade. I wonder if our templates are out of true? We might check that. Isn’t this rain splendid? The flowers were wilting, wilting! But I’ll have a fine show this year with a spot of rain. You must come and see them.’

‘You still want me to stay here, sir?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Stay here?’ Stokes, who was placing the quoin in a vice, turned to look at Sharpe. ‘Of course I want you to stay here, Sergeant. Best man I’ve got!’

‘I lost six men, sir.’

‘And it wasn’t your fault, not your fault at all. I’ll get you another six.’

Sharpe wished it was that easy, but he could not chase the guilt of Chasalgaon out of his mind. When the massacre was finished he had wandered about the fort in a half-daze. Most of the women and children still lived, but they had been frightened and had shrunk away from him. Captain Roberts, the second in command of the fort, had returned from patrol that afternoon and he had vomited when he saw the horror inside the cactus-thorn wall.

Sharpe had made his report to Roberts who had sent it by messenger to Hurryhur, the army’s headquarters, then dismissed Sharpe. ‘There’ll be an enquiry, I suppose,’ Roberts had told Sharpe, ‘so doubtless your evidence will be needed, but you might as well wait in Seringapatam.’ And so Sharpe, with no other orders, had walked home. He had returned the bag of rupees to Major Stokes, and now, obscurely, he wanted some punishment from the Major, but Stokes was far more concerned about the angle of the quoin. ‘I’ve seen screws shatter because the angle was too steep, and it ain’t no good having broken screws in battle. I’ve seen Frog guns with metalled quoins, but they only rust. Can’t trust a Frog to keep them greased, you see. You’re brooding, Sharpe.’