was happening. There was a strange stillness in the city, and the tempo of the British guns, which had been firing so hard and fast for days, was now muted and the ominous silence had made Mary nervous.
‘We think the British are coming,’ Kunwar Singh told her, then blurted out that she would be safe for he had been ordered to free the British Colonel from the dungeons and bring him to the house where McCandless’s presence would protect the women. ‘If the British even get through the wall,’ he added dubiously.
‘What about my brother?’ Mary asked.
Kunwar Singh shrugged. ‘I have no orders for him.’
‘Then I shall come with you,’ Mary declared.
‘You can’t!’ Kunwar Singh insisted. He was often shocked by Mary’s defiance, though he also found it appealing.
‘You can stop me,’ she said, ‘by shooting me. Or you can let me come. Make up your mind.’ She did not wait to hear his answer, but hurried to her quarters where she snatched up the pistol that Appah Rao had given her. Kunwar Singh made no further protest. He was confused by what was happening, and, though he sensed that his master’s loyalties were wavering, he still did not know which way they would ultimately fall.
‘I can’t let your brother come back here,’ he warned Mary when she came back to the courtyard.
‘We can free him,’ Mary insisted, ‘and after that he can look after himself. He’s good at that.’
The streets of the city were oddly deserted. Most of the Tippoo’s soldiers were on the ramparts, and anyone who had no business in the coming battle had taken care to lock their doors and stay hidden. A few men still trundled handcarts of ammunition and rockets towards the walls, but there were no bullock carts and no open shops. A few sacred cows wandered the city with sublime unconcern, but otherwise it was like a place of ghosts and it only took Kunwar Singh’s small
party five minutes to reach the complex of small courtyards that lay to the north of the Inner Palace. No one questioned Kunwar Singh’s right to be in the palace precincts, for he wore the Tippoo’s uniform and the jewels hanging about his neck were glittering proof of his authority.
The difficulty, Kunwar Singh had anticipated, would lie in persuading the guards to unlock the gate of the dungeon’s outer cage. Once that gate was open the rest should be easy, for his men could swiftly overwhelm the guards and so find the key to McCandless’s cell. Kunwar Singh had decided that his best course was simply to pretend to an authority he did not have and claim to bear a summons from the Tippoo himself. Arrogance went far in Mysore and he would give it a try. Otherwise he must order his men to use their muskets to blast the cage doors down and he feared that such a commotion would bring guards running from the nearby Inner Palace.
But when he reached the cells he found there were no guards. The space within the outer cage and around the stone steps was empty. A solther on the inner wall above the cells saw the small group standing uncertainly beside the dungeon gate and assumed they had come to fetch the guards. ‘They’ve already gone!’ the man shouted down. ‘Ordered to the walls. Gone to kill some Englishmen.’
Kunwar Singh acknowledged the man, then rattled the gate, vainly hoping that the padlock would fall off. ‘You don’t want to go inside,’ the helpful man called down, ‘the tiger’s on duty.’
Kunwar Singh instinctively stepped back. The soldier above him lost interest and went back to his post as Kunwar Singh stepped back to the gate and tugged a second time at the huge padlock. ‘Too big to shoot open,’ he said. ‘That lock will take five or six bullets, at least.’
‘We can’t get inside?’ Mary asked.
‘No. Not without attracting the guards.’ He gestured
towards the palace. The thought of the tiger had made him nervous and he was wondering whether he would do better to wait until the assault started and then, under the cover of its huge noise, try to shoot the padlock away from the gate, then kill the tiger. Or else just give up the errand. The courtyard stank of sewage, and the smell only reinforced Kunwar Singh’s presentiments of failure.