their arrest, and though the guards had left the page of the Bible in Lawford’s pocket, they had taken everything else of value.
‘I had it somewhere it couldn’t be found, sir,’ Sharpe said. ‘Colonel Gudin thought I was scratching my arse, if you follow me, but I was hiding it.’
‘I’d rather not know,’ Lawford said primly.
‘A good picklock like that can take care of those old padlocks in seconds, sir,’ Sharpe said, nodding at the lock on their cell door. ‘Then we just have to rush the guards.’
‘And get a bellyful of lead?’ Lawford suggested.
‘When the assault comes,’ Sharpe said, ‘the guards will like as not be at the top of the steps, trying to see what’s happening. They won’t hear us.’ Sharpe’s back was still painful, and the wounds inflicted by the jetti were crusted with dried blood and pus that tore whenever he moved too quickly, but there was no gangrene and he had been spared any fever, and that good fortune was restoring his confidence.
‘When the assault comes, Sharpe,’ Colonel McCandless intervened, ‘our guards are more likely to be on the walls, leaving our security to the tiger.’
‘Hadn’t thought of that, sir.’ Sharpe sounded disappointed.
‘I don’t think even you can rush a tiger,’ McCandless said.
‘No, sir. I don’t suppose I can,’ Sharpe admitted. Each night, at dusk, the guards left the cells, but first they released the tiger. It was a difficult process, for the tiger had to be held away from the guards with long spears as they retreated up the steps. It had evidently tried to charge the guards once for it bore a long scar down one muscular striped flank, and these days, to prevent another such attack, the guards tossed down a great chunk of raw goat meat to satisfy the tiger’s hunger before they released it, and the prisoners would spend the night hours listening to the creature grinding and slavering as it ripped the last pieces of flesh from the bones. Each dawn the tiger was herded back to its cell where it slept through
the heat of the day until its time for guard duty came again. It was a huge and mangy beast, not nearly so sleek as the six tigers kept in the palace yard, but it had a hungrier look and sometimes, in the moonlight, Sharpe would watch it pacing up and down the short corridor, the fall of its pads silent on the stone as it endlessly went up and down, up and down, and he wondered what tiger thoughts brewed behind its night-glossed yellow eyes. Sometimes, for no reason, it would roar in the night and the hunting cheetahs would call back and the night would be loud with the sound of the animals. Then the tiger would leap lithely up the steps and roar another challenge from the bars at the head of the staircase. It always came back down, its approach silent and its gaze malevolent.
By day, when the tiger twitched in its sleep, the guards would watch the cells. Sometimes there were just two guards, but at other times there were as many as six. Each morning a pair of prisoners from the city’s civilian jail arrived in leg irons to take away the night-soil buckets, and when these had been emptied and returned, the first meal was served. It was usually cold rice, sometimes with beans or scraps of fish in it, with a tin jug of water. A second pail of rice was brought in the afternoon, but otherwise the prisoners were left alone. They listened to the sounds above them, ever fearful that they might be summoned to face the Tippoo’s dreaded killers, and while they waited McCandless prayed, Hakeswill mocked, Lawford worried and Sharpe learned his letters.
At first the learning was hard and it was made no easier by Hakeswill’s constant scoffing. Lawford and McCandless would tell the Sergeant to be quiet, but after a while Hakeswill would chuckle again and start talking, ostensibly to himself, in the far corner of his cage. ‘Above himself, ain’t he?’ Hakeswill would mutter just loud enough for Sharpe to hear. ‘Got hairs and bleeding graces. That’s what Sharpie’s got. Hairs and graces. Learning to read! Might as well teach a stone to fart!