‘Poor bloody fools,’ Sharpe said, though neither he nor Lawford yet knew what was dangerous about the western defences. Nor had they been given the slightest chance to escape from the city. They were never unwatched, they were never allowed to stand guard at night, and Sharpe knew that even the smallest attempt to break away from the city would lead to immediate death, yet they were not otherwise treated badly. They had been accepted well enough by their new comrades, but Sharpe could detect a reserve and he supposed
that until he and Lawford proved their reliability there would always be an undercurrent of suspicion. ‘It ain’t that they don’t trust you,’ Henry Hickson had explained on their first night, ‘but till they’ve actually seen you bang a few bails off at your old mates, they won’t really know whether you’re stout.’ Hickson was sewing up the frayed edge of his leather thumbstall which protected his hand when a cannon was swabbed out. The gunner had to stop the touchhole so that the rammer could not drive a jet of fresh air down the barrel and so ignite any scraps of remaining powder, and Hickson’s old and blackened thumbstall betrayed how long he had been an artilleryman. ‘Had this in America,’ Hickson said, flourishing the ancient scrap of leather. ‘Stitched for me by a little girl in Charleston. Lovely little thing she was.’
‘How long have you been in the artillery?’ Lawford had asked the grey-haired Hickson.
‘Bleeding lifetime, Bill. Joined in ’76.’ Hickson laughed. ‘King and country! Go and save the colonies, eh? And all I did was march up and down like a little lost lamb and only ever fired a dozen shots. I should have stayed there, shouldn’t I, when they kicked us out, but, like a fool, I didn’t. Went to Gibraltar, polished cannon for a couple of years, then got posted out here.’
‘So why did you run?’ Lawford asked.
‘Money, of course. The Tippoo might be a black heathen bastard, but he pays well for gunners. When he pays at all, of course, which isn’t precisely frequent, but all the same he ain’t done bad by me. And if I’d stayed in the gunners I wouldn’t have met Suni, would I?’ He had jerked his calloused thumb towards his Indian woman who was cooking the evening meal with the wives of the other soldiers.
‘Don’t you ever worry that you’ll be recaptured?’ Lawford asked him.
‘Of course I bloody worry! All the bleeding time!’ Hickson held the thumbstall close to his right eye to judge the neatness
of his stitching. ‘Christ, Bill, I don’t want to be stood up against a bleeding post with a dozen bastards staring down their musket barrels at me. I want to die in Suni’s bed.’ He grinned. ‘You do ask the most stupid questions, Bill, but what do you expect of a bleeding clerk! All that reading and writing, mate, it doesn’t do a man any bleeding good.’ He had shaken his head in despair of Lawford ever seeing sense. Like all of Gudin’s soldiers, Hickson was more suspicious of Lawford than of Sharpe. They all understood Sharpe for he was one of them and good at his trade, but Lawford was patently uncomfortable. They put it down to his having come from a comfortable home that had fallen on hard times, and while they were sympathetic to that misfortune they nevertheless expected him to make the best of it. Others in Gudin’s small battalion despised Lawford for his clumsiness with weapons, but Sharpe was his friend and so far no man had been willing to risk Sharpe’s displeasure by needling Lawford.
Sharpe and Lawford watched the invading armies make their camp well out of cannon range to the south of the city. A few Mysorean cavalrymen still circled the armies, watching for a chance to snap up a fugitive, but most of the Tippoo’s men were now back on the city’s island. There was an excited buzz in the city, almost a relief that the enemy was in sight and the waiting at last was over. There was also a feeling of confidence, for although the enemy horde looked vast, the Tippoo had formidable defences and plenty of men. Sharpe could detect no lack of enthusiasm among the Hindu troops. Lawford had told him there was bad blood between them and the Muslims, but on that evening, as the Tippoo’s men hung more defiant banners above their limewashed walls, the city seemed united in its defiance.