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

Sharpe was brought to the triangle. He was bareheaded and already stripped to the waist. The skin of his chest and

back were as white as his powdered hair and contrasted oddly with his darkly tanned face. He walked steadily, for though he had the best part of a pint of rum in his belly, the liquor had not seemed to have the slightest effect. He did not look at either Hakeswill or Morris as he walked to the tripod.

‘Arms up, lad,’ the Sergeant Major said quietly. ‘Stand against the triangle. Feet apart. There’s a good lad.’

Sharpe obediently stepped up to the triangular face of the tripod. Two corporals knelt at his feet and lashed his ankles to the halberds, then stood and pushed his arms over the crosswise halberd. They pulled his hands down and tied them to the uprights, thus forcing his naked back up and outwards. That way he could not sag between the triangle and so hope to exhaust some of the blows on the halberd staffs. The corporals finished their knots, then stepped back.

The Sergeant Major went to the back of the triangle and brought from his pouch a folded piece of leather that was deeply marked by tooth prints. ‘Open your mouth, lad,’ he said softly. He smelt the rum on the prisoner’s breadi and hoped it would help him survive, then he pushed the leather between Sharpe’s teeth. The gag served a double purpose. It would stifle any cries the victim might make and would stop him biting off his tongue. ‘Be brave, boy,’ Bywaters said quietly. ‘Don’t let the regiment down.’

Sharpe nodded.

Bywaters stepped smartly back and came to attention. ‘Prisoner ready for punishment, sir!’ he called to Major Shee.

The Major looked to the surgeon. ‘Is the prisoner fit for punishment, Mister Micklewhite?’

Micklewhite did not even give Sharpe a glance. ‘Hale and fit, sir.’

‘Then carry on, Sergeant Major.’

‘Right, boys,’ the Sergeant Major said, ‘do your duty! Lay it on hard now, and keep the strokes high. Above his trousers. Drummer! Begin.’

A third drummer boy was standing behind the floggers. He lifted his sticks, paused, then brought the first stick down.

The boy to the right brought his whip hard down on Sharpe’s back.

‘One!’ Bywaters shouted.

The whip had left a red mark across Sharpe’s shoulder blades. Sharpe had flinched, but the rope fetters restricted his movement and only those close to the triangle saw the tremor run through his muscles. He stared up at Major Shee who took good care to avoid the baleful gaze.

‘Two!’ Bywaters called and the drummer brought down his stick as the second boy planted a red mark crosswise on the first.

Hakeswill’s face twitched uncontrollably, but he was smiling under the rictus. For the drumbeat of death had begun.

Colonel McCandless stood alone in the centre of the courtyard of the Tippoo’s Inner Palace inside Seringapatam. The Scotsman was still in his full uniform: red-coated, tartan-kilted and with his feather-plumed cocked hat on his head. Six tigers were chained to the courtyard’s walls and those tigers sometimes strained to reach him, but they were always checked by the heavy chains that quivered taudy whenever one of the muscled beasts sprang towards the Scotsman. McCandless did not move and the tigers, after one or two fruitless lunges, contented themselves with snarling at him. The tigers’ keepers, big men armed with long staves, watched from the courtyard entrance. It was those men who might receive the orders to unleash the tigers and McCandless was determined to show them a calm face.

The courtyard was covered with sand, its lower walls were of dressed stone, but above the stone the palace’s second storey was a riot of stuccoed teak that had been painted red, white, green and yellow. That decorated second storey was composed of Moorish arches and McCandless knew just

enough Arabic to guess that the writing incised above each arch was a surah from the Koran. There were two entrances to the courtyard. The one behind McCandless, through which he had entered and where the tigers’ keepers now stood, was a plain double gateway that led to a tangle of stables and storehouses behind the palace, while in front of him, and evidendy leading into the palace’s staterooms, was a brief marble staircase rising to a wide door of black wood that had been decorated with patterns of inlaid ivory. Above that lavish door was a balcony that jutted out from three of the stuccoed arches. A screen of intricately carved wood hid the balcony, but McCandless could see that there were men behind the screen. He suspected the Tippoo was there and, the Scotsman trusted, so was the Frenchman who had first questioned him. Colonel Gudin had struck him as an honest fellow and right now, McCandless hoped, Gudin was pleading to let him live, though McCandless had taken good care not to offer the Frenchman his real name. He feared that the Tippoo would recognize it, and realize just what a prize his cavalry had taken, and so the Scotsman had given his name as Ross instead.

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