Cornwell, Bernard 01 Sharpe’s Tiger-Serigapatam-Apr-May 1799

‘Maybe, maybe not,’ Green said, ‘but the more you drink the less you’ll feel. Finish it, lad.’

‘Tomkins says you don’t feel a damn thing after the first thirty,’ Sharpe said.

‘I hope he’s right, lad, I hope he’s right, but you drink that rum anyway.’ Green took off his shako and wiped the sweat from his bald head with a scrap of rag.

Sharpe tipped the canteen again. ‘And where was Mister Lawford?’ he asked bitterly.

‘You heard, son. He was called off to see the General.’ Green hesitated. ‘But what could he have said anyway?’ he added.

Sharpe leaned his head against the box-built wall. ‘He could have said that Morris is a lying bastard and that Hicks will say anything to please him.’

‘No, he couldn’t say that, lad, and you know it.’ Green filled a clay pipe with tobacco and lit it with his tinderbox. He sat on the ground opposite Sharpe and saw the fear in the younger man’s eyes. Sharpe was doing his best to hide it, but it was plainly there and so it should be, for only a fool did not fear two thousand lashes and only a lucky man came away alive. No man had ever actually walked away from such a punishment, but a handful had recovered after a month in the sick tent. ‘Your Mary’s all right,’ Green told Sharpe.

Sharpe gave a sullen grimace. ‘You know what Hakeswill told me? That he was going to sell her as a whore.’

Green frowned. ‘He won’t, lad. He won’t.’

‘And how will you stop him?’ Sharpe asked bitterly.

‘She’s being looked after now,’ Green reassured him. ‘The lads are making sure of that, and the women are all protecting her.’

‘But for how long?’ Sharpe asked. He drank more of the rum which seemed to be having no effect that he could sense. He momentarily closed his eyes. He knew he had been given an effective death sentence, but there was always hope. Some men had survived. Their ribs might have been bared to the sun and their skin and flesh be hanging from their backs in bloody ribbons, yet they had lived, but how was he to look after Mary when he was bandaged in a bed? If he was even lucky enough to reach a sick bed instead of a grave. He felt tears pricking at his eyes, not for the punishment he faced, but for Mary. ‘How long can they protect her?’ he asked gruffly, cursing himself for being so near to weeping.

‘I tell you she’ll be all right,’ Green insisted.

‘You don’t know Hakeswill,’ Sharpe said.

‘Oh, but I do, lad, I do,’ Green said feelingly, then paused. For a second or two he looked embarrassed, then glanced up at Sharpe. ‘The bastard can’t touch her if she’s married. Married proper, I mean, with the Colonel’s blessing.’

‘That’s what I thought.’

Green drew on the pipe. ‘If the worst does happen, Sharpie . ..’ he said, then stopped in embarrassment again.

‘Aye?’ Sharpe prompted him.

‘Not that it will, of course,’ Green said hurriedly. ‘Billy Nixon survived a couple of thousand tickles, but you probably don’t remember him, do you? Little fellow, with a wall eye. He survived all right. He was never quite the same afterwards, of course, but you’re a tough lad, Sharpie. Tougher than Billy.’

‘But if the worst does happen?’ Sharpe reminded the Sergeant.

‘Well,’ Green said, colouring, but then at last he summoned the courage to say what he had come to say. ‘I mean if it don’t offend you, lad, and only if the worst does happen, which of course it won’t, and I pray it won’t, but if it does then I thought I might ask for Mrs Bickerstaff’s hand myself, if you follow my meaning.’

Sharpe almost laughed, but then the thought of two thousand lashes choked off even the beginnings of a smile. Two thousand! He had seen men with backs looking like offal after just a hundred lashes and how the hell was he to survive with another nineteen hundred strokes on top of that? Such survival really depended on the battalion surgeon. If Mister Micklewhite thought Sharpe was dying after five or six hundred lashes he might stop the punishment to give his back time to heal before the rest of the lashes were given, but Micklewhite was not known for stopping whippings. The rumour in the battalion was that so long as the man did not scream like a baby and thus disturb the more squeamish of the officers, the surgeon would keep the blows coming, even if they were falling onto a dead man’s spine. That was the rumour, and Sharpe could only hope it was not true.

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