Sharpe’s Tiger: The Siege of Seringapatam, 1799

She was a rare beauty, Mary Bickerstaff. A beauty amongst a pack of ugly, rancid women. Hakeswill watched as a group of the battalion’s wives ran to take part in the plundering and almost shuddered as he contemplated their ugliness. About two thirds of the wives were bibbis, Indians, and most of those, Hakeswill knew, were not properly married with the Colonel’s permission, while the rest were those lucky British women who had won the brutal lottery that had taken place on the night before the battalion had sailed from England. The wives had been gathered in a barrack room, their names had been put into ten shakos, one for each company, and the first ten names drawn from each hat were allowed to accompany their husbands. The rest had to stay in Britain, and what happened to them there was anybody’s guess. Most went on the parish, but parishes resented feeding soldiers’ wives, so as like as not they were forced to become whores. Barrack-gate whores, for the most part, because they lacked the looks for anything better. But a few, a precious few, were pretty, and none was prettier than Sergeant Bickerstaff’s half and half widow.

The women spread out among the dead and dying Mysoreans. If anything they were even more efficient than their men at plundering the dead, for the men tended to hurry and so missed the hiding places where a soldier secreted his money. Hakeswill watched Flora Placket strip the body of a tall tiger-striped corpse whose throat had been slashed to the backbone by the slice of a cavalryman’s sabre. She did not rush her work, but searched carefully, garment by garment, then handed each piece of clothing to one of her two children to fold and stack. Hakeswill approved of Flora Placket for she was a large and steady woman who kept her man in good order and made no fuss about a campaign’s discomforts. She was a good mother too, and that was why Obadiah did not care that Flora Placket was as ugly as a haversack. Mothers were sacred. Mothers were not expected to be pretty. Mothers were Obadiah Hakeswill’s guardian angels, and Flora Placket reminded Obadiah of his own mother who was the only person in all his life who had shown him kindness. Biddy Hakeswill was long dead now, she had died a year before the twelve-year-old Obadiah had dangled on a scaffold for the trumped-up charge of sheep stealing and, to amuse the crowd, the executioner had not let any of that day’s victims drop from the gallows, but had instead hoisted them gently into the air so that they choked slowly as their piss-soaked legs jerked in the death dance of the gibbet. No one had taken much notice of the small boy at the scaffold’s end and, when the heavens had opened and the rain come down in bucketfuls to scatter the crowd, no one had bothered when Biddy Hakeswill’s brother had cut the boy down and set him loose. ‘Did it for your mother,’ his uncle had snarled. ‘God rest her soul. Now be off with you and don’t ever show your face in the dale again.’ Hakeswill had run south, joined the army as a drummer boy, had risen to sergeant and had never forgotten his dying mother’s words. ‘No one will ever get rid of Obadiah,’ she had said, ‘not my Obadiah. Death’s too good for him.’ The gallows had proved that. Touched by God, he was, indestructible!

A groan sounded near Hakeswill and the Sergeant snapped out of his reverie to see a tiger-striped Indian struggling to turn onto his belly. Hakeswill scurried over, forced the man onto his back again and placed his halberd’s spear point at the man’s throat. ‘Money?’ Hakeswill snarled, then held out his left hand and motioned the counting of coins. ‘Money?’

The man blinked slowly, then said something in his own language.

‘I’ll let you live, you bugger,’ Hakeswill promised, leering at the wounded man. ‘Not that you’ll live long. Got a goolie in your belly, see?’ He pointed at the wound in the man’s belly where the bullet had driven home. ‘Now where’s your money? Money! Pice? Dan? Pagodas? Annas? Rupees?’

The man must have understood for his hand fluttered weakly towards his chest.

‘Good boy, now,’ Hakeswill said, smiling again, then his face jerked in its involuntary spasms as he pushed the spear point home, but not too quickly for he liked to see the realization of death on a man’s face. ‘You’re a stupid bugger, too,’ Hakeswill said when the man’s death throes had ended, then he cut open the tunic and found that the man had strapped some coins to his chest with a cotton sash. He undid the sash and pocketed the handful of copper change. Not a big haul, but Hakeswill was not dependent on his own plundering to fill his purse. He would take a cut from whatever the soldiers of the Light Company found. They knew they would have to pay up or else face punishment.

He saw Sharpe kneeling beside a body and hurried across. ‘Got a sword there, Sharpie?’ Hakeswill asked. ‘Stole it, did you?’

‘I killed the man, Sergeant.’ Sharpe looked up.

‘Doesn’t bleeding matter, does it, lad? You ain’t permitted to carry a sword. Officer’s weapon, a sword is. Mustn’t get above your station, Sharpie. Get above yourself, boy, and you’ll be cut down. So I’ll take the blade, I will.’ Hakeswill half expected Sharpe to resist, but the Private did nothing as the Sergeant picked up the silver-hilted blade. ‘Worth a few bob, I dare say,’ Hakeswill said appreciatively, then he laid the sword’s tip against the stock at Sharpe’s neck. ‘Which is more than you’re worth, Sharpie. Too clever for your own good, you are.’

Sharpe edged away from the sword and stood up. ‘I ain’t got a quarrel with you, Sergeant,’ he said.

‘But you do, boy, you do.’ Hakeswill grimaced as his face went into spasm. ‘And you know what the quarrel’s about, don’t you?’

Sharpe backed away from the sword. ‘I ain’t got a quarrel with you,’ he repeated stubbornly.

‘I think our quarrel is called Mrs Bickerstaff,’ Hakeswill said, and grinned when Sharpe said nothing. ‘I almost got you with that flint, didn’t I? Would have had you flogged raw, boy, and you’d have died of a fever within a week. A flogging does that in this climate. Wears a man down, a flogging does. But you got a friendly officer, don’t you? Mister Lawford. He likes you, does he?’ He prodded Sharpe’s chest with the sword’s tip. ‘Is that what it is? Officer’s pet, are you?’

‘Mister Lawford ain’t nothing to me,’ Sharpe said.

‘That’s what you say, but my eyes tell different.’ Hakeswill giggled. ‘Sweet on each other, are you? You and Mister Lawford? Ain’t that nice, Sharpie, but it don’t make you much use to Mrs Bickerstaff, does it? Reckon she’d be better off with a real man.’

‘She ain’t your business,’ Sharpe said.

‘Ain’t my business! Oh, listen to it!’ Hakeswill sneered, then prodded the sword forward again. He wanted to provoke Sharpe into resisting, for then he could charge him with attacking a superior, but the tall young man just backed away from the blade. ‘You listen, Sharpie,’ Hakeswill said, ‘and you listen well. She’s a sergeant’s wife, not the whore of some common ranker like you.’

‘Sergeant Bickerstaff’s dead,’ Sharpe protested.

‘So she needs a man!’ Hakeswill said. ‘And a sergeant’s widow doesn’t get rogered by a stinking bit of dirt like you. It ain’t right. Ain’t natural. It’s beneath her station, Sharpie, and it can’t be allowed. Says so in the scriptures.’

‘She can choose who she wants,’ Sharpe insisted.

‘Choose, Sharpie? Choose?’ Hakeswill laughed. ‘Women don’t choose, you soft bugger. Women get taken by the strongest. Says so in the scriptures, and if you stand in my way, Sharpie’ – he pushed the sword hard forward – ‘then I’ll have your spine laid open to the daylight. A lost flint? That would have been two hundred lashes, lad, but next time? A thousand. And laid on hard! Real hard! Be blood and bones, boy, bones and blood, and who’ll look after your Mrs Bickerstaff then? Eh? Tell me that. So you takes your filthy hands off her. Leave her to me, Sharpie.’ He leered at Sharpe, but still the younger man refused to be provoked and Hakeswill at last abandoned the attempt. ‘Worth a few guineas, this sword,’ the Sergeant said again as he backed away. ‘Obliged to you, Sharpie.’

Sharpe swore uselessly at Hakeswill’s back, then turned as a woman hailed him from among the heaped bodies that had been the leading ranks of the Tippoo’s column. Those bodies were now being dragged apart to be searched and Mary Bickerstaff was helping the work along.

He walked towards her and, as ever, was struck by the beauty of the girl. She had black hair, a thin face and dark big eyes that could spark with mischief. Now, though, she looked worried. ‘What did Hakeswill want?’ she asked.

‘You.’

She spat, then crouched again to the body she was searching. ‘He can’t touch you, Richard,’ she said, ‘not if you do your duty.’

‘The army’s not like that. And you know it.’

‘You’ve just got to be clever,’ Mary insisted. She was a soldier’s daughter who had grown up in the Calcutta barrack lines. She had inherited her dark Indian beauty from her mother and learned the ways of soldiers from her father who had been an engineer sergeant in the Old Fort’s garrison before an outbreak of cholera had killed him and his native wife. Mary’s father had always claimed she was pretty enough to marry an officer and so rise in the world, but no officer would marry a half-caste, at least no officer who cared about advancement, and so after her parents’ death Mary had married Sergeant Jem Bickerstaff of the 33rd, a good man, but Bickerstaff had died of the fever shortly after the army had left Madras to climb to the Mysore plateau and Mary, at twenty-two, was now an orphan and a widow. She was also wise to the army’s ways. ‘If you’re made up to sergeant, Richard,’ she told Sharpe now, ‘then Hakeswill can’t touch you.’

Sharpe laughed. ‘Me? A sergeant? That’ll be the day, lass. I made corporal once, but that didn’t last.’

‘You can be a sergeant,’ she insisted, ‘and you should be a sergeant. And Hakeswill couldn’t touch you if you were.’

Sharpe shrugged. ‘It ain’t me he wants to touch, lass, but you.’

Mary had been cutting a tiger-striped tunic from a dead man, but now she paused and looked quizzically up at Sharpe. She had not been in love with Jem Bickerstaff, but she had recognized that the Sergeant was a good, kind man, and she saw the same decency in Sharpe. It was not exactly the same decency, for Sharpe, she reckoned, had ten times Jem Bickerstaff’s fire and he could be as cunning as a snake when it suited him, but Mary still trusted Sharpe. She was also attracted to him. There was something very striking about Sharpe’s lean good looks, something dangerous, she acknowledged, but very exciting. She looked at him for a few seconds, then shrugged. ‘Maybe he won’t dare touch me if we’re married,’ she said. ‘I mean proper married, with the Colonel’s permission.’

‘Married!’ Sharpe said, flustered by the word.

Mary stood. ‘It ain’t easy being a widow in the army, Richard. Every man reckons you’re loot.’

‘Aye, I know it’s hard,’ Sharpe said, frowning. He stared at her as he thought about the idea of getting married. Till now he had only been thinking of desertion, but maybe marriage was not such a bad idea. At least it would make it much harder for Hakeswill to get his hands on Mary’s skin. And a married man, Sharpe reckoned, was more likely to be promoted. But what was the point of rising an inch or two in the dunghill? Even a sergeant was still at the bottom of the heap. It was better to be out of the army altogether and Mary, Sharpe decided, would be more likely to desert with him if she was properly married to him. That thought made him nod slowly. ‘I reckon I might like to be married,’ he said shyly.

‘Me too.’ She smiled and, awkwardly, Sharpe smiled back. For a moment neither had anything to say, then Mary excitedly fished in the pocket of her apron to produce a jewel she had taken from a dead man. ‘Look what I found!’ She handed Sharpe a red stone, half the size of a hen’s egg. ‘You reckon it’s a ruby?’ Mary asked eagerly.

Sharpe tossed the stone up and down. ‘I reckon it’s glass, lass,’ he said gently, ‘just glass. But I’ll get you a ruby for a wedding gift, just you watch me.’

‘I’ll more than watch you, Dick Sharpe,’ she said happily and put her arm into his. Sergeant Hakeswill, a hundred paces away, watched them and his face twitched.

While on the edges of the killing place, where the looted and naked bodies lay scattered, the vultures came down, sidled forward and began to tear at the dead.

The allied armies camped a quarter of a mile short of the place where the dead lay. The camp sprawled across the plain: an instant town where fifty thousand soldiers and thousands of camp followers would spend the night. Tents went up for officers well away from the places where the vast herds of cattle were guarded for the night. Some of the cattle were beeves, being herded and slaughtered for food, some were oxen that carried panniers filled with the eighteen- and twenty-four-pounder cannonballs that would be needed to blast a hole through the walls of Seringapatam, while yet others were bullocks that hauled the wagons and guns, and the heaviest guns, the big siege pieces, needed sixty bullocks apiece. There were more than two hundred thousand cattle with the army, but all were now scrawny for the Tippoo’s cavalry was stripping the land of fodder as the British and Hyderabad armies advanced.

The common soldiers had no tents. They would sleep on the ground close to their fires, but first they ate and this night the feeding was good, at least for the men of the King’s 33rd who had coins taken from the enemy dead to spend with the bhinjarries, the merchant clans that travelled with the army and had their own private guards to protect their goods. The bhinjarries all sold chickens, rice, flour, beans and, best of all, the throat-burning skins of arrack which could make a man drunk even faster than rum. Some of the bhinjarries also hired out whores and the 33rd gave those men good business that night.

Captain Morris expected to visit the famous green tents of Naig, the bhinjarrie whose stock in trade was the most expensive whores of Madras, but for now he was stuck in his own tent where, under the feeble light of a candle that flickered on his table, he disposed of the company’s business. Or rather Sergeant Hakeswill disposed of it while Morris, his coat unbuttoned and silk stock loosened, sprawled in a camp chair. Sweat dripped down his face. There was a small wind, but the muslin screen hanging at the entrance to the tent took away its cooling effects, and if the screen was discarded the tent would fill with savagely huge moths. Morris hated moths, hated the heat, hated India. ‘Guard rosters, sir,’ Hakeswill said, offering the papers.

‘Anything I should know?’

‘Not a thing, sir. Just like last week’s, sir. Ensign Hicks made up the roster, sir. A good man, sir, Ensign Hicks. Knows his place.’

‘You mean he does what you tell him to do?’ Morris asked drily.

‘Learning his trade, sir, learning his trade, just like a good little ensign should. Unlike some as I could mention.’

Morris ignored the sly reference to Fitzgerald and instead dipped his quill in ink and scrawled his name at the foot of the rosters. ‘I assume Ensign Fitzgerald and Sergeant Green have been assigned all the night duty?’ he asked.

‘They needs the practice, sir.’

‘And you need your sleep, Sergeant?’

‘Punishment book, sir,’ Hakeswill said, offering the leather-bound ledger and taking back the guard roster without acknowledging Morris’s last comment.

Morris leafed through the book. ‘No floggings this week?’

‘Will be soon, sir, will be soon.’

‘Private Sharpe escaped you today, eh?’ Morris laughed. ‘Losing your touch, Obadiah.’ There was no friendliness in his use of the Christian name, just scorn, but Sergeant Hakeswill took no offence. Officers were officers, at least those above ensigns were proper officers in Hakeswill’s opinion, and such gentlemen had every right to be scornful of lesser ranks.

‘I ain’t losing nothing, sir,’ Hakeswill answered equably. ‘If the rat don’t die first shake, sir, then you puts the dog in again. That’s how it’s done, sir. Says so in the scriptures. Sick report, sir. Nothing new, except that Sears has the fever, so he won’t be with us long, but he won’t be no loss, sir. No good to man or beast, Private Sears. Better off dead, he is.’

‘Are we done?’ Morris asked when he had signed the sick report, but then a tactful cough sounded at the tent’s opening and Lieutenant Lawford ducked under the flap and pushed through the muslin screen.

‘Busy, Charles?’ Lawford asked Morris.

‘Always pleased to see you, William,’ Morris said sarcastically, ‘but I was about to go for a stroll.’

‘There’s a soldier to see you,’ Lawford explained. ‘Man’s got a request, sir.’

Morris sighed as though he was too busy to be bothered with such trifles, but then he shrugged and waved a hand as if to suggest he was making a great and generous gesture by giving the man a moment of his precious time. ‘Who?’ he asked.

‘Private Sharpe, sir.’

‘Troublemaker, sir,’ Hakeswill put in.

‘He’s a good man,’ Lawford insisted hotly, but then decided his small experience of the army hardly qualified him to make such judgements and so, diffidently, he added that it was only his opinion. ‘But he seems like a good man, sir,’ he finished.

‘Let him in,’ Morris said. He sipped from a tin mug of arrack while Sharpe negotiated the muslin screen and then stood to attention beneath the ridge pole. ‘Hat off, boy!’ Hakeswill snapped. ‘Don’t you know to take your hat off in the presence of an officer?’

Sharpe snatched off his shako.

‘Well?’ Morris asked.

For a second it seemed that Sharpe did not know what to say, but then he cleared his throat and, staring at the tent wall a few inches above Captain Morris’s head, he at last found his voice. ‘Permission to marry, sir.’

Morris grinned. ‘Marry! Found yourself a bibbi, have you?’ He sipped more arrack, then looked at Hakeswill. ‘How many wives are on the company strength now, Sergeant?’

‘Full complement, sir! No room for more, sir! Full up, sir. Not a vacancy to be had. Shall I dismiss Private Sharpe, sir?’

‘This girl’s on the complement,’ Lieutenant Lawford intervened. ‘She’s Sergeant Bickerstaff’s widow.’

Morris stared up at Sharpe. ‘Bickerstaff,’ he said vaguely as though the name was strange to him. ‘Bickerstaff. Fellow who died of a fever on the march, is that right?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Hakeswill answered.

‘Didn’t know the man was even married,’ Morris said. ‘Official wife, was she?’

‘Very official, sir,’ Hakeswill answered. ‘On the company strength, sir. Colonel’s signature on the certificate, sir. Proper married before God and the army, sir.’

Morris sniffed and looked up at Sharpe again. ‘Why on earth do you want to marry, Sharpe?’

Sharpe looked embarrassed. ‘Just do, sir,’ he said lamely.

‘Can’t say I disapprove of marriage,’ Morris said. ‘Steadies a man does marriage, but a fellow like you, Sharpe, can do better than a soldier’s widow, can’t you? Dreadful creatures, soldiers’ widows! Used goods, Private. Fat and greasy, like lumps of lard wrapped up in linen. Get yourself a sweet little bibbi, man, something that ain’t yet run to seed.’

‘Very good advice, sir,’ Hakeswill said, his face twitching. ‘Words of wisdom, sir. Shall I dismiss him, sir?’

‘Mary Bickerstaff is a good woman, sir,’ Lieutenant Lawford said. The Lieutenant, whom Sharpe had first approached with his request, was eager to do his best. ‘Sharpe could do a lot worse than marry Mary Bickerstaff, sir.’

Morris cut a cigar and lit it from the guttering candle that burned on his camp table. ‘White, is she?’ he asked negligently.

‘Half bibbi and half Christian, sir,’ Hakeswill said, ‘but she had a good man for her husband.’ He sniffed, pretending that he was suddenly overcome with emotion. ‘And Jem Bickerstaff ain’t this month in his grave, sir. Too soon for the trollop to marry again. It ain’t right, sir. Says so in the scriptures.’

Morris offered Hakeswill a cynical glance. ‘Don’t be absurd, Sergeant. Most army widows marry the next day! The ranks are hardly high society, you know.’

‘But Jem Bickerstaff was a friend of mine, sir,’ Hakeswill said, sniffing again and even cuffing at an invisible tear. ‘Friend of mine, sir,’ he repeated more hoarsely, ‘and on his dying bed, sir, he begged me to look after his little wife, sir. I know she ain’t through and through white, he told me, but she deserves to be looked after. His very dying words, sir.’

‘He bloody hated you!’ Sharpe could not resist the words.

‘Quiet in front of an officer!’ Hakeswill shouted. ‘Speak when you’re spoken to, boy, and otherwise keep your filthy mouth buttoned like God wanted it.’

Morris frowned as though Hakeswill’s loud voice was giving him a headache. Then he looked up at Sharpe. ‘I’ll talk to Major Shee about it, Sharpe. If the woman is on the strength and wants to marry you, then I don’t suppose we can stop her. I’ll talk to the Major. You’re dismissed.’

Sharpe hesitated, wondering whether he should thank the Captain for the laconic words, but before he could say anything, Hakeswill was bawling in his ear. ‘About turn! Smartly now! Hat on! Quick march! One two one two, smartly now. Mind the bleeding curtain, boy! This ain’t a pig sty like what you grew up in, but an officer’s quarters!’

Morris waited till Sharpe was gone, then looked up at Lawford. ‘Nothing more, Lieutenant?’

Lawford guessed that he too was dismissed. ‘You will talk to Major Shee, Charles?’ he pressed Morris.

‘I just said so, didn’t I?’ Morris glared up at the Lieutenant.

Lawford hesitated, then nodded. ‘Good night, sir,’ he said and ducked under the muslin screen.

Morris waited until he was certain that both men were out of earshot. ‘Now what do we do?’ he asked Hakeswill.

‘Tell the silly bugger that Major Shee refused permission, sir.’

‘And Willie Lawford will talk to the Major and find that he didn’t. Or else he’ll go straight to Wellesley. Lawford’s uncle is on the staff, or had you forgotten that? Use your wits, man!’ Morris slapped at a moth that had managed to slip through the screen. ‘What do we do?’ he asked again.

Hakeswill sat on a stool opposite the camp table. He scratched his head, glanced into the night, then looked back to Morris. ‘He’s a sharp one, Sharpie, he is. Slippery. But I’ll do him.’ He paused. ‘Of course, sir, if you helped, it’d be quicker. Much quicker.’

Morris looked dubious. ‘The girl will only find herself another protector,’ he said. ‘I think you’re wasting my time, Sergeant.’

‘What me, sir? No, sir. Not at all, sir. I’ll have the girl, sir, just you watch, and Nasty Naig says you can have all you want of her. Free and gratis, sir, like you ought to.’

Morris stood, pulled on his jacket and picked up his hat and sword. ‘You think I’d share your woman, Hakeswill?’ The Captain shuddered. ‘And get your pox?’

‘Pox, sir? Me, sir?’ Hakeswill stood. ‘Not me, sir. Clean as a whistle, I am, sir. Cured, sir. Mercury.’ His face twitched. ‘Ask the surgeon, sir, he’ll tell you.’

Morris hesitated, thinking of Mary Bickerstaff. He thought a great deal about Mary Bickerstaff. Her beauty ensured that, and men on campaign were deprived of beauty and so Mary’s allure only increased with every mile the army marched westwards. Morris was not alone. On the night when Mary’s husband had died, the 33rd’s officers, at least those who had a mind for such games, had wagered which of them would first take the widow to their bed and so far none of them had succeeded. Morris wanted to win, not only for the fourteen guineas that would accrue to the successful seducer, but because he had become besotted by the woman. Soon after she had become a widow he had asked Mary to do his laundry, thinking that thereby he could begin the intimacy he craved, but she had refused him with a lacerating scorn. Morris wanted to punish her for that scorn, and Hakeswill, with his intuition for other men’s weaknesses, had sensed what Morris wanted and promised he would arrange everything. Naig, Hakeswill assured his bitter officer, had a way of breaking reluctant girls. ‘There ain’t a bibbi born that Nasty can’t break, sir,’ Hakeswill had promised Morris, ‘and he’d give a small fortune for a proper white one. Not that Mrs Bickerstaff’s proper white, sir, not like a Christian, but in the dark she’d pass well enough.’ The Sergeant needed Morris’s help in ridding Mrs Bickerstaff of Richard Sharpe and as an inducement he had offered Morris the free run of Naig’s tent. In return, Morris knew, Hakeswill would expect a lifetime’s patronage. As Morris climbed the army’s ranks, so Hakeswill would be drawn ineluctably after him and with each step the Sergeant would garner more power and influence.