Sergeant Richard Sharpe slung the musket and walked around the base of the inner wall, seeking a passage into the city. He had only a few moments of freedom left before the army took him back into its iron grip, but he had won his victory and he had pockets full of stones to prove it. He went to find a drink.
Next day it rained. It was not the monsoon, though it could have been, for the rain fell with a ferocity that matched the fury of the previous day’s assault. The pelting warm rain washed the blood off the city’s walls and scoured the hot season’s filth out of its streets. The Cauvery swelled to fill its banks, rising so high that no man could have crossed the river in front of the breach. If the Tippoo’s prayers had been answered and the British had waited one more day, then the floods would have defeated them.
But there was no Tippoo in Seringapatam, only the Rajah, who had been restored to his palace where he was surrounded by red-coated guards. The palace, which had been protected
from the ravages of the assaulting troops, was now being stripped bare by the victorious officers. Rain drummed on the green-tiled roof and ran into the gutters and puddled in the courtyards as the red-coated officers sawed up the great tiger throne on which the Tippoo had never sat. They turned the handles of the tiger organ and laughed as the mechanical claw savaged the redcoat’s face. They tugged down silk hangings, they prised gems out of furniture and marvelled at the simple, bare, white-painted room which had been the Tippoo’s bedchamber. The six tigers, roaring because they had not been fed and because the rain fell so hard, were shot.
The Tippoo’s father, the great Hyder Ali, lay in a mausoleum east of the city and, when the rainstorm had stopped, and while the garden around the mausoleum was still steaming in the sudden sultry sunlight, the Tippoo was carried to rest beside his father. British troops lined the route and reversed their arms as the cortege passed. Muffled drums beat a slow tattoo as the Tippoo was borne on his sad last journey by his own defeated soldiers.
Sharpe, with three bright white stripes newly sewn onto his faded red sleeve, waited close beside the domed mausoleum. ‘I do wonder who killed him.’ Colonel McCandless, restored to a clean uniform and with his hair neatly cut, had come to stand beside Sharpe.
‘Some lucky bastard, sir.’
‘A rich one by now, no doubt,’ the Colonel said.
‘Good for him, sir,’ Sharpe said, ‘whoever he is.’
‘He’d only waste the plunder,’ McCandless said severely. ‘He’ll fritter it on women and drink.’
‘Don’t sound like a waste to me, sir.’
McCandless grimaced at the Sergeant’s levity. ‘That ruby alone was worth ten years of a general’s salary. Ten years!’
‘A shame it’s vanished, sir,’ Sharpe said guilelessly.
‘Isn’t it, Sharpe?’ McCandless agreed. ‘But I hear you were at the Water Gate?’
‘Me, sir? No, sir. Not me, sir. I stayed with Mister Lawford, sir.’
The Colonel gave Sharpe a fierce glance. ‘A sergeant of the Old Dozen reports he saw a wild-looking fellow come out of the Water Gate.’ McCandless’s voice was accusing. ‘He says the man had a coat with scarlet facings and no buttons.’ The Colonel looked disapprovingly at Sharpe’s red coat on which Sharpe had somehow found time to stitch the sergeant’s stripes, but not a single button. ‘The man seems very certain of what he saw.’
‘He was probably confused by the battle, sir. Lost his wits, I wouldn’t doubt.’
‘So who put Sergeant Hakeswill in with the tigers?’ McCandless demanded.
‘Only the good Lord knows, sir, and He ain’t saying.’
The Colonel, scenting blasphemy, frowned. ‘Hakeswill says it was you,’ he accused Sharpe.
‘Hakeswill’s mad, sir, and you can’t trust a thing he says,’ Sharpe said. And Hakeswill was more than mad, he was alive. Somehow he had escaped the tigers. Not one of the beasts had attacked the Sergeant who had been discovered babbling in the courtyard, crying for his mother and declaring his fondness for tigers. He liked all pussy cats, he had said to his rescuers. ‘I can’t be killed!’ he had shouted when the redcoats led him gently away. ‘Touched by God, I am,’ he had claimed, and then he had demanded that Sharpe be arrested for attempted murder, but Lieutenant Lawford had blushed and sworn that Sergeant Sharpe had never left his side after the mine was blown. Colonel Gudin, a prisoner now, had confirmed the claim. The two men had been discovered in one of the city’s brothels where they had been protecting the women from the drunken, rampaging victors.