Colonel Gudin had then taken the two Englishmen to a barracks room close by the city’s south-western corner. Every man in the barracks was a European, most of them French, but with a scattering of Swiss, Germans and two Britishers. They all wore the blue coats of French infantry, but there were none to spare for the two new men, and so Sergeant Rothiere had issued Sharpe and Lawford with tiger tunics like those the Tippoo’s men wore. The tunics did not open down the front like a European coat, but had to be pulled
over the head. ‘Where you boys from?’ an English voice asked Sharpe as he pulled down the dyed cotton tunic.
’33rd,’ Sharpe had said.
‘The Havercakes?’ the man said. ‘Thought they were up north, in Calcutta?’
‘Brought down to Madras last year,’ Sharpe said. He gingerly sat on his cot, an Indian bed made from ropes stretched between a simple wooden frame. It proved surprisingly comfortable. ‘And you?’ he asked the Englishman.
‘Royal bleeding Artillery, mate, both of us. Ran three months back. Name’s Johnny Blake and that’s Henry Hickson.’
Tm Dick Sharpe and that’s Bill Lawford,’ Sharpe said, introducing the Lieutenant who looked desperately awkward in his knee-length tunic of purple and white stripes. Over the tunic he wore two crossbelts and an ordinary belt from which hung a bayonet and a cartridge pouch. They had been issued with heavy French muskets and warned they would have to do their share of sentry duty with the rest of the small battalion.
‘Used to be a lot more of us,’ Blake told Sharpe, ‘but men die here like flies. Fever mostly.’
‘But it ain’t bad here,’ Henry Hickson offered. ‘Food’s all right. Plenty of bibbis and Gudin’s a real decent officer. Better than any we ever had.’
‘Right bastards we had,’ Blake agreed.
‘Aren’t they all?’ Sharpe had said.
‘And the pay’s good, when you get it. Five months overdue now, but maybe we’ll get it when we beat the stuffing out of the British.’ Blake laughed at the suggestion.
Blake and Hickson were not required to stand guard, but instead manned one of the big tiger-mouthed guns that crouched behind a nearby embrasure. Sharpe and Lawford stood their watch alone and it was that privacy which had encouraged Lawford into his furious attack. ‘Have you got
nothing to say for yourself, Private?’ he challenged Sharpe who still stared serenely over the green landscape through which the river curled south about the city’s island. ‘Well?’ Lawford snapped.
Sharpe looked at him. ‘You loaded the musket, didn’t you, Bill?’
‘Of course!’
‘You ever felt gunpowder that smooth and fine?’ Sharpe gazed into the Lieutenant’s face.
‘It could have been gunpowder dust!’ Lawford insisted angrily.
‘That shiny?’ Sharpe said derisively. ‘Gunpowder dust is full of rat shit and sawdust! And did you really think, Bill’ -he pronounced the name sarcastically – ‘that the bleeding Tippoo would let us have loaded guns before he was sure he could trust us? And with him standing not six feet away? And did you bother to taste the powder? I did, and it weren’t salty at all. That weren’t gunpowder, Lieutenant, that were either ink powder or black pigment, but whatever it was it was never going to spark.’
Lawford gaped at Sharpe. ‘So you knew all along the gun wouldn’t fire?’
‘Of course I bloody knew! I wouldn’t have pulled the trigger else. You mean you didn’t realize that weren’t powder?’
Lawford turned away. Once again he had been made to look like a fool and he blushed at the realization. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. He was crestfallen, and again he felt a galling sense of inadequacy compared to this common soldier.
Sharpe stared at a patrol of the Tippoo’s lancers who were riding back towards the city. Three of them were wounded and were being supported in their saddles by their comrades, which suggested the British were not so very far away now. Tm sorry, sir,’ he said very softly, and deliberately using the word ‘sir’ to mollify Lawford, ‘but I’m not trying to be insolent. I’m just trying to keep you and me alive.’
‘I know. I’m sorry too. I should have known it wasn’t powder.’