Hakeswill’s face twitched. ‘Iil tell you,’ he wheedled, ‘if you promise to let me live.’ He dropped to his knees and stared up at the verandah. ‘I don’t mind being in your dungeons, my Lord, for Obadiah Hakeswill never did mind a rat or two, but I don’t want these bleeding heathens screwing me neck back to front. It ain’t a Christian act.’
The officer translated for the Tippoo who, at last, nodded and so prompted the officer to turn back to Hakeswill. ‘You will live,’ he called down.
‘Word of honour?’ Hakeswill asked.
‘Upon my honour.’
‘Cross your heart and hope to die? Like it says in the scriptures?’
‘You will live!’ the officer snapped. ‘So long as you tell us the truth.’
‘I always do that, sir. Honest Hakeswill, that’s my name, sir. I saw-him, didn’t I? Lieutenant Lawford, William he’s called. Tall lanky fellow with fair hair and blue eyes. And he ain’t alone. Private bleeding Sharpe was with him.’
The officer had not understood everything that Hakeswill had said, but he had understood enough. ‘You are saying this man Lawford is a British officer?’ he asked.
‘Course he is! In my bleeding company, what’s more. And they said he’d gone back to Madras on account of carrying despatches, but he never did, ‘cos there weren’t no despatches to be carried. He’s here, Your Grace, and up to no bleeding good and, like I said, dolled up in a stripy frock.’
The officer seemed sceptical. ‘The only Englishmen we have here, Sergeant, are prisoners or deserters. You’re lying.’
Hakeswill spat on the gravel that was soaked with the blood from the decapitated prisoners. ‘How can he be a deserter? Officers don’t desert! They sell their commissions and bugger
off home to Mummy. I tell you, sir, he’s an officer! And the other one’s a right bastard! Flogged, he was, and quite right too! He should have been flogged to bleeding death, only the General sent for him.’
The mention of the flogging woke a memory in the Tippoo. ‘When was he flogged?’ The officer translated the Tippoo’s question.
Just before he ran, sir. Raw, he must have been, but not raw enough.’
‘And you say the General sent for him?’ The officer sounded disbelieving.
‘Harris, sir, the bugger what lost a lump out of his skull in America. He sent our Colonel, he did, and Colonel Wellesley stopped the flogging. Stopped it!’ Hakeswill’s indignation was still keen. ‘Stopping a flogging what’s been properly ordered! Never seen anything so disgraceful in all me born days! Going to the dogs, the army is, going to the dogs.’
The Tippoo listened to the translation, then stepped back from the railing. He turned to Appah Rao who had once served in the East India Company’s army. ‘Do British officers desert?’
‘None that I’ve ever heard of, Your Majesty,’ Appah Rao said, glad that the shadows of the balcony were hiding his pale and worried face. ‘They might resign and sell their commission, but desert? Never.’
The Tippoo nodded down to the kneeling Hakeswill. ‘Put that wretch back in the cells,’ he ordered, ‘and tell Colonel Gudin to meet me at the Inner Palace.’
Guards dragged Hakeswill back to the city. ‘And he had a bib hi with him!’ Hakeswill shouted as he was pulled away, but no one took any notice. The Sergeant was shedding tears of pure happiness as he was taken back through the Bangalore Gate. “Thank you, Mother,’ he called to the cloudless sky, ‘thank you, Mother, for I cannot die!’
The twelve dead men were hidden in a makeshift grave.
The troops marched back to their encampment while the Tippoo, being carried to the Inner Palace beneath the tiger-striped canopy of his palanquin, reflected that the sacrifice of the twelve prisoners had not been in vain for it had revealed the presence of enemies. Allah be thanked, he reflected, for his luck had surely turned.
‘You think Mrs Bickerstaff has gone over to the enemy?’ Lawford asked Sharpe for the third or fourth time.
‘She’s gone to his bed,’ Sharpe said bleakly, ‘but I reckon she’ll still help us.’ Sharpe had washed both his and Lawford’s tunics and now he patted the cloth to see if it had dried. Looking after kit in this army, he reflected, was a deal easier than in the British. There was no pipeclay here to be caked onto crossbelts and musket slings, no blackball to be used on boots and no grease and powder to be slathered on the hair. He decided the tunics were dry enough and tossed one to the Lieutenant, then pulled his own over his head, carefully freeing the gold medallion so that it hung on his chest. His tunic also boasted a red cord on his left shoulder, the Tippoo’s insignia of a corporal. Lawford seemed to resent Sharpe bearing these marks of rank that were denied to him.