“I shall happily appear in court,” Chase said, “so long as Nana Rao is beside me.”
Panjit shook his hands as if he was shooing Chase and his men away from his courtyard. “You will leave, Captain. You will leave my house now.”
“I think not,” Chase said.
“Go! Or I will summon authority!” Panjit insisted.
Chase turned to the huge tattooed man. “Nana Rao’s the bugger with the mustache and the red silk robe, Bosun. Get him.”
The British seamen charged forward, relishing the chance of a scrap, but Panjit’s bodyguards were no less eager and the two groups met in the courtyard’s center with a sickening crash of staves, skulls and fists. The seamen had the best of it at first, for they had charged with a ferocity that drove the bodyguards back to the foot of the steps, but Panjit’s men were both more numerous and more accustomed to fighting with the long clubs. They rallied at the steps, then used their staves like spears to tangle the sailors’ legs and, one by one, the pigtailed men were tripped and beaten down. The bosun and the Negro were the last to fall. They tried to protect their captain who was using his fists handily, but the British sailors had woefully underestimated the opposition and were doomed.
Sharpe sidled toward the steps, elbowing the beggars aside..The crowd was jeering at the defeated British seamen, Panjit and Nana Rao were laughing, while the petitioners, emboldened by the success of the bodyguards, jostled each other for a chance to kick the fallen men. Some of the bodyguards were wearing the sailors’ tarred hats while another pranced in triumph with Chase’s cocked hat on his head. The captain was a prisoner, his arms pinioned by two men.
One of the bodyguards had stayed with Panjit and saw Sharpe edging toward the steps. He came down fast, shouting that Sharpe should go back, and when the cloaked beggar did not obey he aimed a kick at him. Sharpe grabbed the man’s foot and kept it swinging upward so that the bodyguard fell on his back and his head struck the bottom step with a sickening thump that went unnoticed in the noisy celebration of the British defeat. Panjit was shouting for quiet, holding his hands aloft. Nana Rao was laughing, his shoulders heaving with merriment, while Sharpe was in the shadow of the bushes at the side of the steps.
The victorious bodyguards pushed the petitioners and beggars away from the bruised and bloodied sailors who, disarmed, could only watch as their disheveled captain was ignominiously hustled to the bottom of the steps. Panjit shook his head in mock sadness. “What am I to do with you, Captain?”
Chase shook his hands free. His fair hair was darkened by blood that trickled down his cheek, but he was still defiant. “I suggest,” he said, “that you give me Nana Rao and pray to whatever god you trust that I do not bring you before the magistrates.”
Panjit looked pained. “It is you, Captain, who will be in court,” he said, “and how will that look? Captain Chase of His Britannic Majesty’s navy, convicted of forcing his way into a private house and there brawling like a drunkard? I think, Captain Chase, that you and I had better discuss what terms we can agree to avoid that fate.” Panjit waited, but Chase said nothing. He was beaten. Panjit frowned at the bodyguard who had the captain’s hat and ordered the man to give it back, then smiled. “I do not want a scandal any more than you, Captain, but I shall survive any scandal that this sad affair starts, and you will not, so I think you had better make me an offer.”
A loud click interrupted Panjit. It was not a single click, but more like a loud metallic scratching that ended in the solid sound of a pistol being cocked, and Panjit turned to see that a red-coated British officer with black hair and a scarred face was standing beside his cousin, holding a blackened pistol muzzle at Nana Rao’s temple.
The bodyguards glanced at Panjit, saw his uncertainty, and some of them hefted their staves and moved toward the steps, but Sharpe gripped Nana Rao’s hair with his left hand and kicked him in the back of the knees so that the merchant dropped hard down with a cry of hurt surprise. The sudden brutality and Sharpe’s evident readiness to pull the trigger checked the bodyguards. “I think you’d better make me an offer,” Sharpe said to Panjit, “because this dead cousin of yours owes me fourteen pounds, seven shillings and threepence ha’penny.”