Sharpe’s Fortress: The Siege of Gawilghur, December 1803. Bernard Cornwell
‘Leaves us short of good engineers,’ Wallace remarked, ‘and we’ll need them if we’re going to Gawilghur.’
‘Gawilghur, sir?’
‘A ghastly fortress, Sharpe, quite ghastly.’ The Colonel turned and pointed north. ‘Only about twenty miles away, and if the Mahrattas have any sense that’s where they’ll be heading.’ Wallace sighed. ‘I’ve never seen the place, so maybe it isn’t as bad as they say, but I remember poor McCandless describing it as a brute. A real brute. Like Stirling Castle, he said, only much larger and the cliff’s twenty times higher.’
Sharpe had never seen Stirling Castle, so had no real idea what the Colonel meant. He said nothing. He had been idling the morning away when Wallace sent for him, and now he and the Colonel were walking through the battle’s litter. The Arab boy followed a dozen paces behind. ‘Yours, is he?’ Wallace asked.
‘Think so, sir. Sort of picked him up yesterday.’
‘You need a servant, don’t you? Urquhart tells me you don’t have one.’
So Urquhart had been discussing Sharpe with the Colonel. No good could come of that, Sharpe thought. Urquhart had been nagging Sharpe to find a servant, implying that Sharpe’s clothes were in need of cleaning and pressing, which they were, but as he only owned the clothes he wore, he could not really see the point in being too finicky. ‘I hadn’t really thought what to do with the lad, sir,’ Sharpe admitted.
Wallace turned and spoke to the boy in an Indian language, and Ahmed stared up at the Colonel and nodded solemnly as though he understood what had been said. Perhaps he did, though Sharpe did not. ‘I’ve told him he’s to serve you properly,’ Wallace said, ‘and that you’ll pay him properly.’ The Colonel seemed to disapprove of Ahmed, or maybe he just disapproved of everything to do with Sharpe, though he was doing his best to be friendly. It had been Wallace who had given Sharpe the commission in the 74th, and Wallace had been a close friend of Colonel McCandless, so Sharpe supposed that the balding Colonel was, in his way, an ally. Even so, Sharpe felt awkward in the Scotsman’s company. He wondered if he would ever feel relaxed among officers. ‘How’s that woman of yours, Sharpe?’ Wallace asked cheerfully.
‘My woman, sir?’ Sharpe asked, blushing.
‘The Frenchwoman, can’t recall her name. Took quite a shine to you, didn’t she?’
‘Simone, sir? She’s in Seringapatam, sir. Seemed the best place for her, sir.’
‘Quite, quite.’
Simone Joubert had been widowed at Assaye where her husband, who had served Scindia, had died. She had been Sharpe’s lover and, after the battle, she had stayed with him. Where else, she asked, was she to go? But Wellesley had forbidden his officers to take their wives on the campaign, and though Simone was not Sharpe’s wife, she was white, and so she had agreed to go to Seringapatam and there wait for him. She had carried a letter of introduction to Major Stokes, Sharpe’s friend who ran the armoury, and Sharpe had given her some of the Tippoo’s jewels so that she could find servants and live comfortably. He sometimes worried he had given her too many of the precious stones, but consoled himself that Simone would keep the surplus safe till he returned.
‘So are you happy, Sharpe?’ Wallace asked bluffly.
‘Yes, sir,’ Sharpe said bleakly.
‘Keeping busy?’
‘Not really, sir.’
‘Difficult, isn’t it?’ Wallace said vaguely. He had stopped to watch the gunners loading one of the captured cannon, a great brute that looked to take a ball of twenty or more pounds. The barrel had been cast with an intricate pattern of lotus flowers and dancing girls, then painted with garish colours. The gunners had charged the gaudy barrel with a double load of powder and now they rammed two cannonballs down the blackened gullet. An engineer had brought some wedges and a gunner sergeant pushed one down the barrel, then hammered it home with the rammer so that the ball would jam when the gun was fired. The engineer took a ball of fuse from his pocket, pushed one end into the touch-hole, then backed away, uncoiling the pale line. ‘Best if we give them some space,’ Wallace said, gesturing that they should walk south a small way. ‘Don’t want to be beheaded by a scrap of gun, eh?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Very difficult,’ Wallace said, picking up his previous thought. ‘Coming up from the ranks? Admirable, Sharpe, admirable, but difficult, yes?’
‘I suppose so, sir,’ Sharpe said unhelpfully.
Wallace sighed, as though he was finding the conversation unexpectedly hard going. ‘Urquhart tells me you seem’ – the Colonel paused, looking for the tactful word – ‘unhappy?’
‘Takes time, sir.’
‘Of course, of course. These things do. Quite.’ The Colonel wiped a hand over his bald pate, then rammed his sweat-stained hat back into place. ‘I remember when I joined. Years ago now, of course, and I was only a little chap. Didn’t know what was going on! They said turn left, then turned right. Damned odd, I thought. I was arse over elbow for months, I can tell you.’ The Colonel’s voice tailed away. ‘Damned hot,’ he said after a while. ‘Damned hot. Ever heard of the 95th, Sharpe?’
‘95th, sir? Another Scottish regiment?’
‘Lord, no. The 95th Rifles. They’re a new regiment. Couple of years old. Used to be called the Experimental Corps of Riflemen!’ Wallace hooted with laughter at the clumsy name. ‘But a friend of mine is busy with the rascals. Willie Stewart, he’s called. The Honourable William Stewart. Capital fellow! But Willie’s got some damned odd ideas. His fellows wear green coats. Green! And he tells me his riflemen ain’t as rigid as he seems to think we are.’ Wallace smiled to show he had made some kind of joke. ‘Thing is, Sharpe, I wondered if you wouldn’t be better suited to Stewart’s outfit? His idea, you should understand. He wrote wondering if I had any bright young officers who could carry some experience of India to Shorncliffe. I was going to write back and say we do precious little skirmishing here, and it’s skirmishing that Willie’s rogues are being trained to do, but then I thought of you, Sharpe.’
Sharpe said nothing. Whichever way you wrapped it up, he was being dismissed from the 74th, though he supposed it was kind of Wallace to make the 95th sound like an interesting sort of regiment. Sharpe guessed they were the usual shambles of a hastily raised wartime battalion, staffed by the leavings of other regiments and composed of gutter rogues discarded by every other recruiting sergeant. The very fact they wore green coats sounded bad, as though the army could not be bothered to waste good red cloth on them. They would probably dissolve in panicked chaos in their first battle.
‘I’ve written to Willie about you,’ Wallace went on, ‘and I know he’ll have a place for you.’ Meaning, Sharpe thought, that the Honourable William Stewart owed Wallace a favour. ‘And our problem, frankly,’ Wallace continued, ‘is that a new draft has reached Madras. Weren’t expecting it till spring, but they’re here now, so we’ll be back to strength in a month or so.’ Wallace paused, evidently wondering if he had softened the blow sufficiently. ‘And the fact is, Sharpe,’ he resumed after a while, ‘that Scottish regiments are more like, well, families! Families, that’s it, just it. My mother always said so, and she was a pretty shrewd judge of these things. Like families! More so, I think, than English regiments, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Sharpe said, trying to hide his misery.
‘But I can’t let you go while there’s a war on,’ Wallace continued heartily. The Colonel had turned to watch the cannon again. The engineer had finished unwinding his fuse and the gunners now shouted at everyone within earshot to stand away. ‘I do enjoy this,’ the Colonel said warmly. ‘Nothing like a bit of gratuitous destruction to set the juices flowing, eh?’
The engineer stooped to the fuse with his tinderbox. Sharpe saw him strike the flint then blow the charred linen into flame. There was a pause, then he put the fuse end into the small