Sharpe obediently turned, showing his back to the Tippoo, who, fascinated by the open wounds, stepped close so he
could inspect the damage. Sharpe could feel the Tippoo’s breath on the back of his neck, he could smell the man’s subtle perfume, and then he felt a spider soft touch as the Tippoo fingered a strip of hanging skin.
Then a sudden pain like the blow of a red-hot poker slammed through Sharpe. He almost cried aloud, but instead he stiffened and flinched. The Tippoo had thrust the tiger hilt of his sword against the deepest wound to see Sharpe’s reaction. He ordered Sharpe to turn around and peered up to see whether there were any tears showing. Tears were pricking at Sharpe’s eyes, but none spilt onto his cheeks.
The Tippoo nodded approval and stepped back. ‘So tell me about them,’ he ordered Gudin.
‘Ordinary deserters,’ Gudin said in French to the interpreter. ‘That one’ – he indicated Sharpe – ‘is a tough soldier who’d probably be a credit to any army. The other one’s just a clerk.’
Lawford tried not to show his disapproval of the judgement. The Tippoo glanced at him, saw nothing to interest him, and looked at Mary instead. ‘The woman?’ he asked Gudin.
‘She’s with the tall one,’ Gudin said, again indicating Sharpe, then waited as the interpreter turned his answer into Persian.
The Tippoo gave Mary a brief inspection. She was slouching, trying to accentuate her drab, bruised and dirty appearance, but when she saw his pensive gaze she became flustered and tried to make a curtsey. The Tippoo seemed amused by the gesture, then looked back to Gudin. ‘So what do they know of the British plans?’ he asked, gesturing at Lawford and Sharpe.
‘Nothing.’
‘They say they know nothing,’ the Tippoo corrected Gudin. ‘And they’re not spies?’
Gudin shrugged. ‘How can one tell? But I think not.’
‘I think we can tell,’ the Tippoo said. ‘And I think we can
discover what kind of soldiers they are too.’ He turned and rapped some orders to an aide, who bowed, then ran out of the courtyard.
The aide returned with a pair of hunting muskets. The long-barrelled weapons were like no guns Sharpe had ever seen, for their stocks were crusted with jewels and inlaid with a delicate ivory filigree. The jewelled butts had an extravagant flair at their shoulder pieces and the two guns’ trigger guards were rimmed with small rubies. The dogheads that held the flints had been fashioned into tiger heads with diamonds for the tigers’ eyes. The Tippoo took the guns, made sure their flints were properly seated within the tiger jaws, then tossed one gun to Lawford and the other to Sharpe. The aide then placed a pot filled with black powder on the ground and beside it a pair of musket balls that Sharpe could have sworn were made of silver. ‘Load the guns,’ the interpreter said.
A British soldier, like any other, learned to load with a paper cartridge, but there was no mystery about using naked powder and ball. Plainly the Tippoo wished to see how proficient the two men were and, while Lawford hesitated, Sharpe stooped to the pot and took out a handful of powder. He straightened up and let the black powder trickle down the gun’s chased barrel. The powder was extraordinarily fine and a fair bit blew away on the small wind, but he had enough to spare and, once the charge was safe inside the barrel, he stooped again, picked up the bullet, shoved it into the muzzle and scraped the ramrod out of its three golden hoops. He twirled the ramrod, let it slide through his hand onto the bullet and then slammed the missile hard down onto the powder charge. The Tippoo had provided no wadding, but Sharpe guessed it did not matter. He pulled the ramrod out, reversed it and let it fall into the precious loops beneath the long barrel. Then he stooped again, took a pinch of powder, primed the gun, closed the frizzen and stood to
attention with the gun’s jewelled butt grounded beside him. ‘Sir!’ he said, signifying he was done.
Lawford was still trying to trickle powder into the muzzle. The Lieutenant was just as proficient at loading a gun as Sharpe, but being an officer he was never required to do it quickly, for that was the one indispensable skill of a private soldier. Lawford only loaded guns while hunting, but in the army he had a servant who loaded his pistols and never in his life had he needed to be quick with a gun and now he demonstrated a lamentable slowness. ‘He was a clerk, sir,’ Sharpe explained to Gudin. He paused to lick the powder residue off his fingers. ‘He never needed to fight, like.’