Sharpe’s Trafalgar: The Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805
Bernard Cornwell
Richard Sharpe, travelling home aboard the ‘Revenant’, meets Admiral Nelson and his fleet, on what was a calm October day off Cape Trafalgar.Soldier, hero, rogue – Sharpe is the man you always want on your side. Born in poverty, he joined the army to escape jail and climbed the ranks by sheer brutal courage. He knows no other family than the regiment of the 95th Rifles whose green jacket he proudly wears.
SHARPE’S
TRAFALGAR
Richard Sharpe and the Battle
of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805
BERNARD CORNWELL
Copyright
This novel is a work of fiction. The incidents and some of the characters portrayed in it, while based on real historical events and figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2000
Copyright © Bernard Cornwell 2000
Map © Ken Lewis
Bernard Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780007235162
Ebook Edition © JULY 2009 ISBN: 9780007338740
Version: 2017-05-06
Sharpe’s Trafalgar is for Wanda Pan, Anne Knowles, Janet Eastham, Elinor and Rosemary Davenhill, and Maureen Shettle
‘Amid the thunder of cannon and the crack of the lash, Sharpe faces all kinds of perils – but always survives another day. Another rollicking instalment for Cornwell’s Sharpe fans’
The Times
Table of Contents
Title Page (#uc0ea196f-5c5d-5a6e-a2f8-7d956e7b108f)
Copyright (#ufafb73a6-acaf-53c2-b65c-72fe47050781)
Dedication (#u7c4e6534-4ff9-580f-af49-44347643016d)
Epigraph (#u784368e9-7f9a-5575-95d5-2ad3a6be09fe)
Map (#u7f85e800-ab11-5699-b4be-c183d332bb1b)
Chapter One (#uaafc3066-c3ce-5a73-9e92-6e3d626eb571)
Chapter Two (#u471c175b-edff-5d8d-8a4b-eff3fd4698df)
Chapter Three (#ud61d5de9-f0d4-5af0-8a51-a4d27a7ee7a1)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
Historical Note (#litres_trial_promo)
Sharpe’s Story (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
The SHARPE Series (in chronological order) (#litres_trial_promo)
The SHARPE Series (in order of publication) (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by Bernard Cornwell (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
‘A hundred and fifteen rupees,’ Ensign Richard Sharpe said, counting the money onto the table.
Nana Rao hissed in disapproval, rattled some beads along the wire bars of his abacus and shook his head. ‘A hundred and thirty-eight rupees, sahib.’
‘One hundred and bloody fifteen!’ Sharpe insisted. ‘It were fourteen pounds, seven shillings and threepence ha’penny.’
Nana Rao examined his customer, gauging whether to continue the argument. He saw a young officer, a mere ensign of no importance, but this lowly Englishman had a very hard face, a scar on his right cheek and showed no apprehension of the two hulking bodyguards who protected Nana Rao and his warehouse. ‘A hundred and fifteen, as you say,’ the merchant conceded, scooping the coins into a large black cash box. He offered Sharpe an apologetic shrug. ‘I get older, sahib, and find I cannot count!’
‘You can count, all right,’ Sharpe said, ‘but you reckon I can’t.’
‘But you will be very happy with your purchases,’ Nana Rao said, for Sharpe had just become the possessor of a hanging bed, two blankets, a teak travelling chest, a lantern and a box of candles, a hogshead of arrack, a wooden bucket, a box of soap, another of tobacco, and a brass and elmwood filtering machine which he had been assured would render water from the filthiest barrels stored in the bottom-most part of a ship’s hold into the sweetest and most palatable liquid.
Nana Rao had demonstrated the filtering machine which he claimed had been brought out from London as part of the baggage of a director of the East India Company who had insisted on only the finest equipment. ‘You put the water here, see?’ The merchant had poured a pint or so of turbid water into the brass upper chamber. ‘And then you allow the water to settle, Mister Sharpe. In five minutes it will be as clear as glass. You observe?’ He lifted the upper container to show water dripping from the packed muslin layers of the filter. ‘I have myself cleaned the filter, Mister Sharpe, and I will warrant the item’s efficiency. It would be a miserable pity to die of mud blockage in the bowel because you would not buy this thing.’
So Sharpe had bought it. He had refused to purchase a chair, bookcase, sofa or washstand, all pieces of furniture that had been used by passengers outward bound from London to Bombay, but he had paid for the filtering machine and all the other goods because otherwise his voyage home would be excruciatingly uncomfortable. Passengers on the great merchantmen of the East India Company were expected to supply their own furniture. ‘Unless you would be liking to sleep on the deck, sahib? Very hard! Very hard!’ Nana Rao had laughed. He was a plump and seemingly friendly man with a large black moustache and a quick smile. His business was to purchase the furniture of incoming passengers which he then sold to those folk who were going home. ‘You will leave the goods here,’ he told Sharpe, ‘and on the day of your embarkation my cousin will deliver them to your ship. Which ship is that?’
‘The Calliope,’ Sharpe said.
‘Ah! The Calliope! Captain Cromwell. Alas, the Calliope is anchored in the roads, so the goods will need to be carried out by boat, but my cousin charges very little for such a service, Mister Sharpe, very little, and when you are happily arrived in London you can sell the items for much profit!’
Which might or, more probably, might not have been true, but was irrelevant because that same night, just two days before Sharpe was to embark, Nana Rao’s godown was burned to the ground and all the goods: the beds, bookcases, lanterns, water filters, blankets, boxes, tables and chairs, the arrack, soap, tobacco, brandy and wine were supposedly consumed with the warehouse. In the morning there was nothing but ashes, smoke and a group of shrieking mourners who wailed that the kindly Nana Rao had died in the conflagration. Happily another godown, not three hundred yards from Nana Rao’s ruined business, was well supplied with all the necessities for the voyage, and that second warehouse did a fine trade as disgruntled passengers replaced their vanished goods at prices that were almost double those that Nana Rao had charged.
Richard Sharpe did not buy anything from the second warehouse. He had been in Bombay for five months, much of that time spent sweating and shivering in the castle hospital, but when the fever had passed, and while he was waiting for the annual convoy to arrive from Britain with the ship that would carry him home, he had explored the city, from the wealthy houses in the Malabar hills to the pestilential alleys by the waterfront. He had found companionship in the alleyways and it was one of those acquaintances who, in return for a golden guinea, gave Sharpe a scrap of information which the ensign reckoned was worth far more than a guinea. It was, indeed, worth a hundred and fifteen rupees which was why, at nightfall, Sharpe was in another alley on the eastern outskirts of the city. He wore his uniform, though over it he had donned a swathing cloak made of cheap sacking which was thickly impregnated with mud and filth. He limped and shuffled, his body bent over with a hand outstretched as though he were begging. He muttered to himself and twitched, and sometimes turned and snarled at some innocent soul for no apparent reason. He went utterly unnoticed.
He found the house he wanted and squatted by its wall. A score of beggars, some horribly maimed, were gathered by the gate along with almost a hundred petitioners who waited for the house’s owner, a wealthy merchant, to return from his place of business. The merchant came after nightfall, riding in a curtained palanquin that was carried by eight men, while another dozen men whacked the beggars out of the way with long staves, but, once the merchant’s palanquin was safe inside the courtyard, the gates were left open so that the petitioners and beggars could follow. The beggars, Sharpe among them, were pushed to one side of the yard while the petitioners gathered at the foot of the broad steps that climbed to the house door. Lanterns hung from the coconut palms that arched over the yard, while from inside the big house yellow candlelight glimmered behind filigree shutters. Sharpe pushed as close to the house as he could, staying in the shadow of the palm trunks. Under the greasy cloak he had his cavalry sabre and a loaded pistol, though he hoped he would need neither weapon.
The merchant was called Panjit and he kept the petitioners and beggars waiting until he had eaten his evening meal, but then the house door was thrown open and Panjit, resplendent in a long robe of embroidered yellow silk, appeared on the top step. The petitioners called aloud while the beggars shuffled forward until they were driven back by the staves of the bodyguards. The merchant smiled then rang a small handbell to attract the attention of a brightly painted god who sat in a niche of the courtyard wall. Panjit bowed to the god, and then, in answer to Sharpe’s prayers, a second man, this one dressed in a red silk robe, emerged from the house door.
That second man was Nana Rao. He had a wide smile, and no wonder, for he was quite untouched by fire and, as Sharpe’s guinea had discovered, he was also first cousin of Panjit who was the merchant who had profited so greatly by owning the second warehouse that had replaced the goods supposedly destroyed in Nana Rao’s calamitous fire. It had been a slick deception, enabling the cousins to sell the same goods twice, and tonight, replete with their swollen profits, they were choosing which men would be given the lucrative job of rowing the passengers and their belongings out to the great ships that lay in the anchorage. The chosen men would be required to pay for the privilege, thus enriching Panjit and Nana Rao even more, and the two cousins, aware of their good fortune, planned to propitiate the gods by distributing some petty coins to the beggars. Sharpe was reckoning that he could reach Nana Rao in the guise of a supplicant, then throw off the filthy cloak and shame the man into returning his money. The competent-looking bodyguards at the foot of the steps suggested that his skimpy plan might prove more complicated than he envisaged, but Sharpe guessed Nana Rao would not want his deception revealed and so would probably be happy to pay him off.
Sharpe was close to the house now. He had noticed that the empty palanquin had been carried down a narrow and dark passage that led alongside the building, evidently giving access to a courtyard at the rear of the house, and he was considering going down the passage and coming back through the building to approach Nana Rao from the rear, but any of the beggars who ventured near the passage were beaten back by the bodyguards. The petitioners were being allowed onto the steps in small groups, but the beggars were expected to wait until the main business of the evening was over.
Sharpe suspected it would be a long night, but he was content to wait with his cloak hood pulled over his face. He squatted against the wall, watching for an opportunity to dash into the passageway beside the house, but then a servant who had been guarding the outer gate pushed through the crowd and spoke in Panjit’s ear. For an instant the merchant looked alarmed and a silence fell over the courtyard, but then he whispered to Nana Rao who just shrugged. Panjit clapped his hands and shouted at the bodyguards who energetically drove the petitioners back to form an open passage between the gate and the steps. Someone was plainly coming to the house and Nana Rao, nervous of their appearance, stepped into the black shadow at the back of the porch.
The way was clear now for Sharpe to go down the passage beside the house, but curiosity held him in place. There was a commotion in the alley, sounding like the jeers and scramble that always accompanied a band of constables marching through the lesser streets of London, then the outer gate was pushed fully open and Sharpe could only stare in astonishment.
A group of British sailors stood in the gate, led by a naval captain, a post captain no less, who was immaculate in cocked hat, blue frock coat, silk breeches and stockings, silver-buckled shoes and slim sword. The lantern light reflected from the heavy gold bullion of his twin epaulettes. He took off his hat, revealing thick blond hair, smiled and bowed. ‘Do I have the honour,’ he asked, ‘of coming to the house of Panjit Lashti?’
Panjit nodded cautiously. ‘This is the house,’ he said in English.
The naval captain put on his cocked hat. ‘I have come,’ he announced in a friendly voice that had a distinct Devonshire accent, ‘for Nana Rao.’
‘He is not here,’ Panjit answered.
The captain glanced at the red-robed figure in the porch shadows. ‘His ghost will do very well.’
‘I have answered you,’ Panjit said, defiance now making his voice angry. ‘He is not here. He is dead.’
The captain smiled. ‘My name is Chase,’ he said courteously, ‘Captain Joel Chase of His Britannic Majesty’s navy, and I would be obliged if Nana Rao would come with me.’
‘His body was burned,’ Panjit declared fiercely, ‘and his ashes have gone to the river. Why do you not seek him there?’
‘He’s no more dead than you or I,’ Chase said, then waved his men forward. He had brought a dozen seamen, all identically dressed in white duck trousers, red and white hooped shirts and straw hats stiffened with pitch and circled with red and white ribbons. They wore long pigtails and carried thick staves which Sharpe guessed were capstan bars. Their leader was a huge man whose bare forearms were thick with tattoos, while beside him was a Negro, every bit as tall, who carried his capstan bar as though it were a hazel wand. ‘Nana Rao’ – Chase abandoned the pretence that the merchant was dead – ‘you owe me a deal of money and I have come to collect it.’
‘What is your authority to be here?’ Panjit demanded. The crowd, most of whom did not understand English, watched the sailors nervously, but Panjit’s bodyguards, who outnumbered Chase’s men and were just as well armed, seemed eager to be loosed on the seamen.
‘My authority,’ Chase said grandly, ‘is my empty purse.’ He smiled. ‘You surely do not wish me to use force?’
‘Use force, Captain Chase,’ Panjit answered just as grandly, ‘and I shall have you in front of a magistrate by dawn.’
‘I shall happily appear in court,’ Chase said, ‘so long as Nana Rao is beside me.’
Panjit shook his hands as if he was shooing Chase and his men away from his courtyard. ‘You will leave, Captain. You will leave my house now.’
‘I think not,’ Chase said.
‘Go! Or I will summon authority!’ Panjit insisted.
Chase turned to the huge tattooed man. ‘Nana Rao’s the bugger with the moustache and the red silk robe, Bosun. Get him.’
The British seamen charged forward, relishing the chance of a scrap, but Panjit’s bodyguards were no less eager and the two groups met in the courtyard’s centre with a sickening crash of staves, skulls and fists. The seamen had the best of it at first, for they had charged with a ferocity that drove the bodyguards back to the foot of the steps, but Panjit’s men were both more numerous and more accustomed to fighting with the long clubs. They rallied at the steps, then used their staves like spears to tangle the sailors’ legs and, one by one, the pigtailed men were tripped and beaten down. The bosun and the Negro were the last to fall. They tried to protect their captain who was using his fists handily, but the British sailors had woefully underestimated the opposition and were doomed.
Sharpe sidled towards the steps, elbowing the beggars aside. The crowd was jeering at the defeated British seamen, Panjit and Nana Rao were laughing, while the petitioners, emboldened by the success of the bodyguards, jostled each other for a chance to kick the fallen men. Some of the bodyguards were wearing the sailors’ tarred hats while another pranced in triumph with Chase’s cocked hat on his head. The captain was a prisoner, his arms pinioned by two men.
One of the bodyguards had stayed with Panjit and saw Sharpe edging towards the steps. He came down fast, shouting that Sharpe should go back, and when the cloaked beggar did not obey he aimed a kick at him. Sharpe grabbed the man’s foot and kept it swinging upwards so that the bodyguard fell on his back and his head struck the bottom step with a sickening thump that went unnoticed in the noisy celebration of the British defeat. Panjit was shouting for quiet, holding his hands aloft. Nana Rao was laughing, his shoulders heaving with merriment, while Sharpe was in the shadow of the bushes at the side of the steps.
The victorious bodyguards pushed the petitioners and beggars away from the bruised and bloodied sailors who, disarmed, could only watch as their dishevelled captain was ignominiously hustled to the bottom of the steps. Panjit shook his head in mock sadness. ‘What am I to do with you, Captain?’
Chase shook his hands free. His fair hair was darkened by blood that trickled down his cheek, but he was still defiant. ‘I suggest,’ he said, ‘that you give me Nana Rao and pray to whatever god you trust that I do not bring you before the magistrates.’
Panjit looked pained. ‘It is you, Captain, who will be in court,’ he said, ‘and how will that look? Captain Chase of His Britannic Majesty’s navy, convicted of forcing his way into a private house and there brawling like a drunkard? I think, Captain Chase, that you and I had better discuss what terms we can agree to avoid that fate.’ Panjit waited, but Chase said nothing. He was beaten. Panjit frowned at the bodyguard who had the captain’s hat and ordered the man to give it back, then smiled. ‘I do not want a scandal any more than you, Captain, but I shall survive any scandal that this sad affair starts, and you will not, so I think you had better make me an offer.’
A loud click interrupted Panjit. It was not a single click, but more like a loud metallic scratching that ended in the solid sound of a pistol being cocked, and Panjit turned to see that a red-coated British officer with black hair and a scarred face was standing beside his cousin, holding a blackened pistol muzzle at Nana Rao’s temple.
The bodyguards glanced at Panjit, saw his uncertainty, and some of them hefted their staves and moved towards the steps, but Sharpe gripped Nana Rao’s hair with his left hand and kicked him in the back of the knees so that the merchant dropped hard down with a cry of hurt surprise. The sudden brutality and Sharpe’s evident readiness to pull the trigger checked the bodyguards. ‘I think you’d better make me an offer,’ Sharpe said to Panjit, ‘because this dead cousin of yours owes me fourteen pounds, seven shillings and threepence ha’penny.’
‘Put the pistol away,’ Panjit said, waving his bodyguards back. He was nervous. Dealing with a courteous naval captain who was an obvious gentleman was one thing, but the red-coated ensign looked wild, and the pistol’s muzzle was grinding into Nana Rao’s skull so that the merchant whimpered with pain. ‘Just put the pistol away,’ Panjit said soothingly.
‘You think I’m daft?’ Sharpe sneered. ‘Besides, the magistrates can’t do anything to me if I shoot your cousin. He’s already dead! You said so yourself. He’s nothing but ashes in the river.’ He twisted Nana Rao’s hair, making the kneeling man gasp. ‘Fourteen pounds,’ Sharpe said, ‘seven shillings and threepence ha’penny.’
‘I’ll pay it!’ Nana Rao gasped.
‘And Captain Chase wants his money too,’ Sharpe said.
‘Two hundred and sixteen guineas,’ Chase said, brushing off his hat, ‘though I think we deserve a little more for having worked the miracle of bringing Nana Rao back to life!’
Panjit was no fool. He looked at Chase’s seamen who were picking up their capstan bars and readying themselves to continue the fight. ‘No magistrates?’ he asked Sharpe.
‘I hate magistrates,’ Sharpe said.
Panjit’s face betrayed a flicker of a smile. ‘If you were to let go of my cousin’s hair,’ he suggested, ‘then I think we can all talk business.’
Sharpe let go of Nana Rao, lowered the flint of the pistol and stepped back. He stood momentarily to attention. ‘Ensign Sharpe, sir,’ he introduced himself to Chase.
‘You are no ensign, Sharpe, but a ministering angel.’ Chase climbed the steps with an outstretched hand. Despite the blood on his face he was a good-looking man with a confidence and friendliness that seemed to come from a contented and good-natured character. ‘You are the deus ex machina, Ensign, as welcome as a whore on a gundeck or a breeze in the horse latitudes.’ He spoke lightly, but there was no doubting the fervency of his thanks and, instead of shaking Sharpe’s hand, he embraced him. ‘Thank you,’ he whispered, then stepped back. ‘Hopper!’
‘Sir?’ The huge bosun with the tattooed arms who had been laying enemies left and right before he was overwhelmed stepped forward.
‘Clear the decks, Hopper. Our enemies wish to discuss surrender terms.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
‘And this is Ensign Sharpe, Hopper, and he is to be treated as a most honoured friend.’
‘Aye aye, sir,’ Hopper said, grinning.
‘Hopper commands my barge crew,’ Chase explained to Sharpe, ‘and those battered gentlemen are his oarsmen. This night may not go down as one of our greater victories, gentlemen’ – Chase was now addressing his bruised and bleeding men – ‘but a victory it still is, and I thank you.’
The yard was cleared, chairs were fetched from the house, and terms discussed.
It had been a guinea, Sharpe thought, exceedingly well spent.
‘I rather liked the fellows,’ Chase said.
‘Panjit and Nana Rao? They’re rogues,’ Sharpe said. ‘I liked them too.’
‘Took their defeat like gentlemen!’
‘They got off light, sir,’ Sharpe said. ‘Must have made a fortune on that fire.’
‘Oldest trick in the bag,’ Captain Chase said. ‘There used to be a fellow on the Isle of Dogs who claimed thieves had cleaned out his chandlery on the night before some foreign ship sailed, and the victims always fell for it.’ Chase chuckled and Sharpe said nothing. He had known the man Chase spoke of, and had even helped him clear the warehouse one night, but he thought it best to be silent. ‘But you and I are all right, Sharpe, other than a scratch and a bruise,’ Chase went on, ‘and that’s all that matters, eh?’
‘We’re all right, sir,’ Sharpe agreed. The two men, followed by Chase’s barge crew, were walking back through the pungent alleys of Bombay and both were carrying money. Chase had originally contracted with Rao to supply his ship with rum, brandy, wine and tobacco, and now, instead of the two hundred and sixteen guineas he had paid the merchant, he was carrying three hundred, while Sharpe had two hundred rupees, so all in all, Sharpe reckoned, it had been a good evening’s work, especially as Panjit had promised to supply Sharpe with the bed, blankets, bucket, lantern, chest, arrack, tobacco, soap and filter machine, all to be delivered to the Calliope at dawn and at no cost to Sharpe. The two Indians had been eager to placate the Englishmen once they realized that Chase and Sharpe had no intention of telling the rest of the fleeced victims that Nana Rao still lived, and so the merchants had fed their unwanted guests, plied them with arrack, paid the money, sworn eternal friendship and bid them good night. Now Chase and Sharpe groped their way through the dark city.
‘God, this place stinks!’ Chase said.
‘You’ve not been here before?’ Sharpe asked, surprised.
‘I’ve been five months in India,’ Chase said, ‘but always at sea. Now I’m living ashore for a week, and it stinks. My God, how the place stinks!’
‘No more than London,’ Sharpe said, which was true, but here the smells were different. Instead of coal fumes there was bullock-dung smoke and the rich odours of spices and sewage. It was a sweet smell, ripe even, but not unpleasant, and Sharpe was thinking back to when he had first arrived and how he had recoiled from the smell that he now thought homely and even enticing. ‘I’ll miss it,’ he admitted. ‘I sometimes wish I wasn’t going back to England.’
‘Which ship are you on?’
‘The Calliope.’
Chase evidently found that amusing. ‘So what do you make of Peculiar?’
‘Peculiar?’ Sharpe asked.
‘Peculiar Cromwell, of course, the Captain.’ Chase looked at Sharpe. ‘Surely you’ve met him!’
‘I haven’t. Never heard of him.’
‘But the convoy must have arrived two months ago,’ Chase said.
‘It did.’
‘Then you should have made an effort to see Peculiar. That’s his real name, by the way, Peculiar Cromwell. Odd, eh? He was navy once, most of the East Indiamen captains were navy, but Peculiar resigned because he wanted to become rich. He also believed he should have been made admiral without spending tedious years as a mere captain. He’s an odd soul, but he sails a tidy ship, and a fast one. I can’t believe you didn’t make the effort to meet him.’
‘Why should I?’ Sharpe asked.
‘To make sure you get some privileges aboard, of course. Can I assume you’ll be travelling in steerage?’
‘I’m travelling cheap, if that’s what you mean,’ Sharpe said. He spoke bitterly, for though he had paid the lowest possible rate, his passage was still costing him one hundred and seven pounds and fifteen shillings. He had thought the army would pay for the voyage, but the army had refused, saying that Sharpe was accepting an invitation to join the 95th Rifles and if the 95th Rifles refused to pay his passage then damn them, damn their badly coloured coats, and damn Sharpe. So he had cut one of the precious diamonds from the seam of his red coat and paid for the voyage himself. He still had a king’s ransom in the precious stones that he had taken from the Tippoo Sultan’s body in a dank tunnel at Seringapatam, but he resented using the loot to pay the East India Company. Britain had sent Sharpe to India, and Britain, Sharpe reckoned, should fetch him back.
‘So the clever thing to have done, Sharpe,’ Chase said, ‘would have been to introduce yourself to Peculiar while he was living ashore and given the greedy bugger a present, because then he’d have assigned you to decent quarters. But if you haven’t crossed Peculiar’s palm with silver, Sharpe, he’ll like as not have you down in lower steerage with the rats. Main-deck steerage is much better and doesn’t cost a penny more, but the lower steerage is nothing but farts, vomit and misery all the way home.’ The two men had left the narrow alleys and were leading the barge crew down a street that was edged with sewage-filled ditches. It was a tinsmithing quarter and the forges were already burning bright as the sound of hammers rattled the night. Pale cows watched the sailors pass and dogs barked frantically, waking the homeless poor who huddled between the ditches and the house walls. ‘It’s a pity you’re sailing in convoy,’ Chase said.
‘Why, sir?’
‘Because a convoy goes at the speed of its slowest boat,’ Chase explained. ‘Calliope could make England in three months if she was allowed to fly, but she’ll have to limp. I wish I was sailing with you. I’d offer you passage myself as thanks for your rescue tonight, but alas, I am ghost-hunting.’
‘Ghost-hunting, sir?’
‘You’ve heard of the Revenant?’
‘No, sir.’
‘The ignorance of you soldiers,’ Chase said, amused. ‘The Revenant, my dear Sharpe, is a French seventy-four that is haunting the Indian Ocean. Hides herself in Mauritius, sallies out to snap up prizes, then scuttles back before we can catch her. I’m here to stifle her ardour, only before I can hunt her I have to scrape the bottom. My ship’s too slow after eight months at sea, so we scour off the barnacles to quicken her up.’
‘I wish you good fortune, sir,’ Sharpe said, then frowned. ‘But what’s that to do with ghosts?’ He usually did not like asking such questions. Sharpe had once marched in the ranks of a redcoat battalion, but he had been made into an officer and so found himself in a world where almost every man was educated except himself. He had become accustomed to allowing small mysteries to slide past him, but Sharpe decided he did not mind revealing his ignorance to a man as good-natured as Chase.
‘Revenant is the Frog word for ghost,’ Chase said. ‘Noun, masculine. I had a tutor for these things who flogged the language into me and I’d like to flog it out of him now.’ In a nearby yard a cockerel crowed and Chase glanced up at the sky. ‘Almost dawn,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you’ll permit me to give you breakfast? Then my lads will take you out to the Calliope. God speed your way home, eh?’
Home. It seemed an odd word to Sharpe, for he did not have a home other than the army and he had not seen England in six years. Six years! Yet he felt no pang of delight at the prospect of sailing to England. He did not think of it as home, indeed he had no idea where home was, but wherever that elusive place lay, he was going there.
Chase was living ashore while his ship was cleaned of the weed. ‘We tip her over, scrape her copper-sheathed bum clean when the tide’s low, and float her off,’ he explained as servants brought coffee, boiled eggs, bread rolls, ham, cold chicken and a basket of mangoes. ‘Bumscrubbing is a damned nuisance. All the guns have to be shipped and half the contents of the hold dragged out, but she’ll sail like a beauty when it’s done. Have more eggs than that, Sharpe! You must be hungry. I am. Like the house? It belongs to my wife’s first cousin. He’s a trader here, though right now he’s up in the hills doing whatever traders do when they’re making themselves rich. It was his steward who alerted me to Nana Rao’s tricks. Sit down, Sharpe, sit down. Eat.’
They took their breakfast in the shade of a wide verandah that looked out on a small garden, a road and the sea. Chase was gracious, generous and apparently oblivious of the vast gulf that existed between a mere ensign, the lowest of the army’s commissioned ranks, and a post captain who was officially the equivalent of an army colonel, though on board his own ship such a man outranked the very powers of heaven. Sharpe had been conscious of that wide gulf at first, but it had gradually dawned on him that Joel Chase was genuinely good-natured and Sharpe had warmed to the naval officer whose gratitude was unstinting and heartfelt. ‘Do you realize that bugger Panjit really could have had me in front of the magistrates?’ Chase enquired. ‘Dear God, Sharpe, that would have been a pickle! And Nana Rao would have vanished, and who’d have believed me if I said the dead had come back to life? Do have more ham, please. It would have meant an enquiry at the very least, and almost certainly a court martial. I’d have been damned lucky to have survived with my command intact. But how was I to know he had a private army?’
‘We came out of it all right, sir.’
‘Thanks to you, Sharpe, thanks to you.’ Chase shuddered. ‘My father always said I’d be dead before I was thirty, and I’ve beaten that by five years, but one day I’ll jump into trouble and there’ll be no ensign to pull me out.’ He patted the bag which held the money he had taken from Nana Rao and Panjit. ‘And between you and me, Sharpe, this cash is a windfall. A windfall! D’you think we could grow mangoes in England?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘I shall try. Plant a couple in a warm spot of the garden and who knows?’ Chase poured coffee and stretched out his long legs. He was curious why Sharpe, a man in his late twenties, should only be an ensign, but he made the enquiry with an exquisite tact and once he discovered that Sharpe had been promoted from the ranks he was genuine in his admiration. ‘I once had a captain who’d come up through the hawsehole,’ he told Sharpe, ‘and he was damned good! Knew his business. Understood what went on in the dark places where most captains dare not look. I reckon the army’s lucky in you, Sharpe.’
‘I’m not sure they think so, sir.’
‘I shall whisper in some ears, Sharpe, though if I don’t catch the Revenant there’ll be precious few who’ll listen to me.’
‘You’ll catch her, sir.’
‘I pray so, but she’s a fast beast. Fast and slippery. All French ships are. God knows, the buggers can’t sail them, but they do know how to build ’em. French ships are like French women, Sharpe. Beautiful and fast, but hopelessly manned. Have some mustard.’ Chase pushed the jar across the table, then petted a skinny black kitten as he stared past the palm trees towards the sea. ‘I do like coffee,’ he said, then pointed out to sea. ‘There’s the Calliope.’
Sharpe looked, but all he could see was a mass of shipping far out in the harbour beyond the shallower water which was busy with scores of bumboats, launches and fishing craft.
‘She’s the one drying her topsails,’ Chase said, and Sharpe saw that one of the far ships had hung out her topmost sails, but at this distance she looked like the other dozen East Indiamen that would sail home together to protect themselves against the privateers who haunted the Indian Ocean. From the shore they looked like naval ships, for their hulls were banded black and white to suggest that massive broadsides were concealed behind closed gunports, but the ruse would not mislead any privateer. Those ships, their hulls stuffed with the riches of India, were the greatest prizes any corsair or French naval captain could wish to take. If a man wanted to live and die rich then all he needed to do was capture an Indiaman, which is why the great ships sailed in convoy.
‘Where’s your ship, sir?’ Sharpe asked.
‘Can’t see her from here.’ Chase said. ‘She’s careened on a mudbank on the far side of Elephanta Island.’
‘Careened?’
‘Tipped on her side so we can polish her bum.’
‘What’s she called?’
Chase looked abashed. ‘Pucelle,’ he said.
‘Pucelle? Sounds French.’
‘It is French, Sharpe. It means a virgin.’ Chase pretended to be offended as Sharpe laughed. ‘You’ve heard of la Pucelle d’Orléans?’ he asked.
‘No, sir.’
‘The maid of Orleans, Sharpe, was Joan of Arc, and the ship was named for her and I just trust she doesn’t end up like Joan, burned to a crisp.’
‘But why would you name a boat for a Frenchwoman, sir?’ Sharpe asked.
‘We didn’t. The Frogs did. She was a French boat till Nelson took her at the Nile. If you capture a ship, Sharpe, you keep the old name unless it’s really obnoxious. Nelson took the Franklin at the Nile, an eighty-gun thing of great beauty, but the navy will be damned if it has a ship named after a traitorous bloody Yankee so we call her the Canopus now. But my ship kept her name, and she’s a lovely beast. Lovely and fast. Oh my God, no.’ He sat up straight, staring towards the road. ‘Oh, God, no!’ These last words were prompted by the sight of an open carriage that had slowed and now stopped just beyond the garden gate. Chase, who had been genial until this moment, suddenly looked bitter.
A man and a woman were seated in the carriage which was driven by an Indian dressed in yellow and black livery. Two native footmen, arrayed in the same livery, now hurried to open the carriage door and unfold the steps, allowing the man, who was dressed in a white linen jacket, to step down to the pavement. A beggar immediately swung on short crutches and calloused stumps towards the carriage, but one of the footmen fended the man off with a sharp kick and the coachman completed the rout with his whip. The white-jacketed man was middle-aged and had a face that reminded Sharpe of Sir Arthur Wellesley. Maybe it was the prominent nose, or perhaps it was the cold and haughty look the man wore. Or perhaps it was just that everything about him, from his carriage to the liveried servants, spoke of privilege.
‘Lord William Hale,’ Chase said, investing every syllable with dislike.
‘Never heard of him.’
‘He’s on the Board of Control,’ Chase explained, then saw Sharpe’s raised eyebrow. ‘Six men, Sharpe, who are appointed by the government to make certain that the East India Company doesn’t do anything foolish. Or rather that, if it does, no blame attaches itself to the government.’ He looked sourly at Lord William who had paused to speak with the woman in the carriage. ‘That’s his wife and I’ve just brought the two of them from Calcutta so they could go home on the same convoy as yourself. You should pray they aren’t on the Calliope.’
Lord William was grey-haired and Sharpe assumed his wife would also be middle-aged, but when she lowered her white parasol Sharpe had a clear view of her ladyship and the breath was checked in his throat. She was much younger than Lord William, and her pale, slender face had a haunting beauty, almost a sadness, that struck Sharpe with the force of a bullet. He stared at her, entranced by her.
Chase smiled at Sharpe’s smitten expression. ‘She was born Grace de Laverre Gould, third daughter of the Earl of Selby. She’s twenty years younger than her husband, but just as cold.’
Sharpe could not take his eyes from her ladyship, for she was truly beautiful; breathtakingly, achingly, untouchably beautiful. Her face was pale as ivory, sharp-shadowed as she leaned towards her husband, and framed by heavy loops of black hair that were pinned to appear artless, but which even Sharpe could tell must have taken her maid an age to arrange. She did not smile, but just gazed solemnly into her husband’s face. ‘She looks sad rather than cold,’ Sharpe said.
Chase mocked the wistfulness in Sharpe’s voice. ‘What does she have to be sad about? Her beauty is her fortune, Sharpe, and her husband is as rich as he is ambitious as he is clever. She’s on her way to being wife of the Prime Minister so long as Lord William doesn’t put a foot wrong and, believe me, he steps as lightly as a cat.’
Lord William concluded the conversation with his wife, then gestured for a footman to open Chase’s gate. ‘You might have taken a house with a carriage drive,’ he admonished the naval captain as he strode up the short path. ‘It’s devilish annoying being pestered by beggars every time one makes a call.’
‘Alas, my lord, we sailors are so inept on land. I cannot entice your wife to take some coffee?’
‘Her ladyship is not well.’ Lord William ran up the verandah steps, gave Sharpe a careless glance, then held a hand towards Chase as if expecting to be given something. He must have noted the blood that was still crusted in Chase’s fair hair, but he made no mention of it. ‘Well, Chase, can you settle?’
Chase reluctantly found the big leather bag which held the coins he had taken from Nana Rao and counted out a substantial portion that he gave to Lord William. His lordship shuddered at the thought of handling the grubby currency, but forced himself to take the money and pour it into his coat’s tail pockets. ‘Your note,’ he said, and handed Chase a scrap of paper. ‘You haven’t received new orders, I suppose?’
‘Alas no, my lord. We are still ordered to find the Revenant.’
‘I was hoping you’d be going home instead. It is crucial I reach London quickly.’ He frowned, then, without another word, turned away.
‘You did not give me a chance, my lord,’ Chase said, ‘to introduce my particular friend, Mister Sharpe.’
Lord William bestowed a second brief look at Sharpe and his lordship saw nothing to contradict his first opinion that the ensign was penniless and powerless, for he merely looked, calculated and glanced away without offering any acknowledgement, but in that brief meeting of eyes Sharpe had received an impression of force, confidence and arrogance. Lord William was a man who had more than his share of power, he wanted more and he would not waste time on those who had nothing to give him.
‘Mister Sharpe served under Sir Arthur Wellesley,’ Chase said.
‘As did many thousands of others, I believe,’ Lord William said carelessly, then frowned. ‘There is a service you can do me, Chase.’
‘I am, of course, entirely at your lordship’s convenience,’ Chase said politely.
‘You have a barge and a crew?’
‘All captains do,’ Chase said.
‘We must reach the Calliope. You could take us there?’
‘Alas, my lord, I have promised Mr Sharpe the barge,’ Chase said, ‘but I am sure he will gladly share it with you. He too is bound for the Calliope.’
‘I’d be happy to help,’ Sharpe said.
Lord William’s expression suggested that Sharpe’s help was the last thing he would ever require. ‘We shall let our present arrangements stand,’ he told Chase and, wasting no more time, stalked away.
Chase laughed softly. ‘Share a boat with you, Sharpe? He’d rather sprout wings and fly.’
‘I wouldn’t mind sharing a boat with her,’ Sharpe said, staring at the Lady Grace who was gazing fixedly ahead as a score of beggars whimpered a safe distance from the coachman’s stinging whip.
‘My dear Sharpe,’ Chase said, watching the carriage draw away, ‘you will be sharing that lady’s company for at least four months and I doubt you will even see her. Lord William claims she suffers from delicate nerves and is averse to company. I had her on board the Pucelle for near a month and might have seen her twice. She sticks to her cabin, or else walks the poop at night when no one can accost her, and I will wager you a month of your wages to a year of mine that she will not even know your name by the time you reach England.’
Sharpe smiled. ‘I don’t wager.’
‘Good for you,’ Chase said. ‘Like a fool I played too much whist in the last month. I promised my wife I wouldn’t plunge heavily, and God punished me for it. Dear me, what a fool I am! I played almost every night between Calcutta and here and lost a hundred and seventy guineas to that rich bastard. My own fault,’ he admitted ruefully, ‘and I won’t succumb again.’ He reached out to touch the wood of the table top as if he did not trust his own resolve. ‘But cash is always short, isn’t it? I’ll just have to capture the Revenant and earn myself some decent prize money.’
‘You’ll manage that,’ Sharpe said comfortingly.
Chase smiled. ‘I do hope so. I fervently hope so, but once in a while, Sharpe, the damned Frogs throw up a real seaman and the Revenant is in the hands of Capitaine Louis Montmorin. He’s good, his men are good and his ship is good.’
‘But you’re British,’ Sharpe said, ‘so you must be better.’
‘Amen to that,’ Chase said, ‘amen.’ He wrote his English address on a scrap of paper, then insisted on walking Sharpe to the fort where the ensign collected his pack, after which the two men went past the still smoking ruins of Nana Rao’s warehouse to the quay where Chase’s barge waited. The naval captain shook Sharpe’s hand. ‘I remain entirely in your debt, Sharpe.’
‘You’re making too much of it, sir.’
Chase shook his head. ‘I was a fool last night, and if it hadn’t been for you I’d be looking an even greater fool this morning. I am beholden to you, Sharpe, and shall not forget it. We’ll meet again, I’m sure of it.’
‘I hope so, sir,’ Sharpe said, then went down the greasy steps. It was time to go home.
The crew of Captain Chase’s barge were still bruised and bloodied, but in good spirits after their night’s adventure. Hopper, the bosun who had fought so stoutly, helped Sharpe down into the barge which was painted dazzling white with a red stripe around its gunwales to match the red bands painted on the white-shafted oars. ‘You had breakfast, sir?’ Hopper asked.
‘Captain Chase looked after me.’
‘He’s a good man,’ Hopper said warmly. ‘None better.’
‘You’ve known him long?’ Sharpe asked.
‘Since he was as old as Mister Collier,’ the bosun said, jerking his head at a small boy, perhaps twelve years old, who sat beside him in the stern. Mister Collier was a midshipman and, once Sharpe had been safely delivered to the Calliope, he had the responsibility of fetching the liquor for Captain Chase’s private stores. ‘Mister Collier,’ the bosun went on, ‘is in charge of this boat, ain’t that so, sir?’
‘I am,’ Collier said in a still unbroken voice. He held a hand to Sharpe. ‘Harry Collier, sir.’ He had no need to call Sharpe ‘sir’, for a midshipman’s rank was the equivalent of an ensign, but Sharpe was much older and, besides, a friend of the captain.
‘Mister Collier is in charge,’ Hopper said again, ‘so if he orders us to attack a ship, sir, attack we shall. Obey him to the death, ain’t that right, Mister Collier, sir?’
‘If you say so, Mister Hopper.’
The crew were grinning. ‘Wipe those smirks off your uglies!’ Hopper shouted, then spat a stream of tobacco juice over the gunwale. His two upper front teeth were missing, which made spitting the juice far easier. ‘Yes, sir,’ he went on, looking at Sharpe, ‘I’ve served with Captain Chase since he was a nipper. I was with him when he captured the Bouvines.’
‘The Bouvines?’
‘A Frog frigate, sir, thirty-two guns, and we was in the Spritely, twenty-eight, and it took us twenty-two minutes first gun to last and there was blood leaking out of her scuppers when we’d finished with her. And one day, Mister Collier, sir’ – he looked sternly down at the small boy whose face was almost entirely hidden by a cocked hat that was much too big for him – ‘you’ll be in charge of one of His Majesty’s ships and it’ll be your duty and privilege to knock a Froggy witless.’
‘I hope so, Mister Hopper.’
The barge was travelling smoothly through water that was filthy with floating rubbish, palm fronds and the bloated corpses of rats, dogs and cats. A score of other boats, some of them heaped with baggage, were also rowing out to the waiting convoy. The luckiest passengers were those whose ships were moored at the Company’s docks, but those docks were not large enough for every merchantman that would leave for home and so most of the travellers were being ferried out to the anchorage. ‘I seen your goods loaded on a native boat, sir,’ Hopper said, ‘and told the bastards there’d be eight kinds of hell to pay if they weren’t delivered shipshape. They do like their games, sir, they do.’ He squinted ahead and laughed. ‘See? One of the buggers is up to no good right now.’
‘No good?’ Sharpe asked. All he could see were two small boats that were dead in the water. One of the two boats was piled with leather luggage while the other held three passengers.
‘Buggers say it’ll cost a rupee to reach the ship, sir,’ Hopper explained, ‘then they get halfway and triple the price, and if they don’t get it they’ll row back to the quay. Our boys do the same thing when they pick passengers up at Deal to row them out to the Downs.’ He tugged on a rudder line to skirt the two boats.
Sharpe saw that Lord William Hale, his wife and a young man were the passengers in the leading boat, while two servants and a pile of luggage were crammed into the second. Lord William was speaking angrily with a grinning Indian who seemed unmoved by his lordship’s ire.
‘His bloody lordship will just have to pay up,’ Hopper said, ‘or else get rowed ashore.’
‘Take us close,’ Sharpe said.
Hopper glanced at him, then shrugged as if to suggest that it was none of his business if Sharpe wanted to make a fool of himself. ‘Ease oars!’ he shouted and the crew lifted their dripping blades from the water to let the barge glide on until it was within a few feet of the stranded boats. ‘Back water!’ Hopper snapped and the oars dipped again to bring the elegant boat to a stop.
Sharpe stood. ‘You have trouble, my lord?’
Lord William frowned at Sharpe, but said nothing, while his wife managed to suggest that an even more noxious stench than the others in the harbour had somehow approached her delicate nostrils. She just stared sternwards, ignoring the Indian crew, her husband and Sharpe. It was the third passenger, the young man who was dressed as soberly as a curate, who stood and explained their trouble. ‘They won’t move,’ he complained.
‘Be quiet, Braithwaite, be quiet and sit down,’ his lordship snapped, disdaining Sharpe’s assistance.
Not that Sharpe wanted to help Lord William, but his wife was another matter and it was for her benefit that Sharpe drew his pistol and cocked the flint. ‘Row on!’ he ordered the Indian, who answered by spitting overboard.
‘What in God’s name are you doing?’ Lord William at last acknowledged Sharpe. ‘My wife’s aboard! Have a care with that gun, you fool! Who the devil are you?’
‘We were introduced not an hour ago, my lord,’ Sharpe said. ‘Richard Sharpe is the name.’ He fired and the pistol ball splintered a timber of the boat just on the water line between the recalcitrant skipper and his passengers. Lady Grace put a hand to her mouth in alarm, but the ball had harmed no one, merely holed the boat so that the Indian had to stoop to plug the damage with a thumb. Sharpe began to reload. ‘Row on, you bastard!’ he shouted.
The Indian glanced behind as if judging the distance to the shore, but Hopper ordered his crew to back water and the barge slowly moved behind the two boats, cutting them off from land. Lord William seemed too astonished to speak, but just stared indignantly as Sharpe rammed a second bullet down the short barrel.
The Indian did not want another ball cracking into his boat and so he suddenly sat and shouted at his men who began pulling hard on their oars. Hopper nodded approvingly. ‘Twixt wind and water, sir. Captain Chase would be proud of you.’
‘Between wind and water?’ Sharpe asked.
‘You holed the bastard on the water line, sir. It’ll sink him if he doesn’t keep it stopped up.’
Sharpe gazed at her ladyship who, at last, turned to look at her rescuer. She had huge eyes, and perhaps they were the feature that made her seem so sad, but Sharpe was still astonished by her beauty and he could not resist giving her a wink. She looked quickly away. ‘She’ll remember my name now,’ he said.
‘Is that why you did it?’ Hopper asked, then laughed when Sharpe did not answer.
Lord William’s boat drew up to the Calliope first. The servants, who were in the second boat, were expected to scramble up the ship’s side as best they could while seamen hauled the baggage up in nets, but Lord William and his wife stepped from their boat onto a floating platform from which they climbed a gangway to the ship’s waist. Sharpe, waiting his turn, could smell bilge water, salt and tar. A stream of dirty water emerged from a hole high up in the hull. ‘Pumping his bottoms, sir,’ Hopper said.
‘You mean she leaks?’
‘All ships leak, sir. Nature of ships, sir.’
Another launch had gone alongside the Calliope’s bows and sailors were hoisting nets filled with struggling goats and crates of protesting hens. ‘Milk and eggs,’ Hopper said cheerfully, then barked at his crew to lay to their oars so Sharpe could be put alongside. ‘I wish you a fast, safe voyage, sir,’ the bosun said. ‘Back to old England, eh?’
‘Back to England,’ Sharpe said, and watched as the oars were raised straight up as Hopper used the last of the barge’s momentum to lay her sweetly alongside the floating platform. Sharpe gave Hopper a coin, touched his hat to Mister Collier, thanked the boat’s crew and stepped up onto the platform from where he climbed to the main deck past an open gunport in which a polished cannon muzzle showed.
An officer waited just inside the entry port. ‘Your name?’ he asked peremptorily.
‘Richard Sharpe.’
The officer peered at a list. ‘Your baggage is already aboard, Mister Sharpe, and this is for you.’ He took a folded sheet of paper from a pocket and gave it to Sharpe. ‘Rules of the ship. Read, mark, learn and explicitly obey. Your action station is gun number five.’
‘My what?’ Sharpe asked.
‘Every male passenger is expected to help defend the ship, Mister Sharpe. Gun number five.’ The officer waved across the deck which was so heaped with baggage that none of the guns on the farther side could be seen. ‘Mister Binns!’
A very young officer hurried through the piled baggage. ‘Sir?’
‘Show Mister Sharpe to the lower-deck steerage. One of the seven by sixes, Mister Binns, seven by six. Mallet and nails, look lively, now!’
‘This way, sir,’ Binns said to Sharpe, darting aft. ‘I’ve got the mallet and nails, sir.’
‘The what?’ Sharpe asked.
‘Mallet and nails, sir, so you can nail your furniture to the deck. We don’t want it sliding topsy-turvy if we gets rough weather, sir, which we shouldn’t, sir, not till we reach the Madagascar Straits and it can be lumpy there, sir, very lumpy.’ Binns hurried on, vanishing down a dark companionway like a rabbit down its burrow.
Sharpe followed, but before he reached the companionway he was accosted by Lord William Hale who stepped from behind a pile of boxes. The young man in the sepulchral clothes stood behind his lordship. ‘Your name?’ Hale demanded.
Sharpe bristled. The sensible course was to knuckle under, for Hale was evidently a formidable man in London, but Sharpe had acquired an acute dislike of his lordship. ‘The same as it was ten minutes ago,’ he answered curtly.
Lord William looked into Sharpe’s face which was sunburned, hard and slashed by the wicked scar. ‘You are impertinent,’ Lord William said, ‘and I do not abide impertinence.’ He glanced at the grubby white facings on Sharpe’s jacket. ‘The 74th? I am acquainted with Colonel Wallace and I shall let him know of your insubordination.’ So far Lord William had not raised his voice which was chilling enough anyway, but now a note of indignation did creep in. ‘You could have killed me with that pistol!’
‘Killed you?’ Sharpe asked. ‘No, I couldn’t. I wasn’t aiming at you.’
‘You will write to Colonel Wallace now, Braithwaite,’ Lord William said to the young man in the black clothes, ‘and make sure the letter goes ashore before we sail.’
‘Of course, my lord. At once, my lord,’ Braithwaite said. He was evidently Lord William’s secretary and he shot Sharpe a look of pitying condescension, suggesting that the ensign had come up against forces far too strong for him.
Lord William stepped aside, allowing Sharpe to catch up with the young Binns who had been watching the confrontation from the companionway.
Sharpe was not worried by Lord William’s threat. His lordship could write a thousand letters to Colonel Wallace and much good it would do him for Sharpe was no longer in the 74th. He wore the uniform for he had no other clothes to wear, but once he was back in Britain he would join the 95th with its odd new uniform of a green jacket. He did not like the idea of wearing green. He had always worn red.
Binns waited at the foot of the companionway. ‘Lower deck, sir,’ he said, then pushed through a canvas screen into a dark, humid and foul-smelling space. ‘This is steerage, sir.’
‘Why’s it called steerage?’
‘They used to steer the boats from here, sir, in the old days, before there was wheels. Gangs of men hauling on ropes, sir, must have been hell.’ It still looked hellish. A few lanterns guttered, struggling against the gloom in which a score of sailors were nailing up canvas screens to divide the foetid space into a maze of small rooms. ‘One seven by six,’ Binns shouted, and a sailor gestured to the starboard side where the screens were already in place. ‘Take your pick, sir,’ Binns said, ‘as you’re one of the first gentlemen aboard, but if you wants my advice I’d be as near aft as you can go, and it’s best not to share with a gun, sir.’ He gestured at an eighteen-pounder cannon that half filled one cabin. The weapon was lashed to the deck and pointed at a closed gunport. Binns ushered Sharpe into the empty cubicle next door where he dropped a linen bag on the floor. ‘That’s a mallet and nails, sir, and as soon as your dunnage is delivered you can secure everything shipshape.’ He tied back one side of the canvas box, thus allowing a little dim lantern light to seep into the cabin, then tapped the deck with his foot. ‘All the money’s down below, sir,’ he said cheerfully.
‘The money?’ Sharpe asked.
‘A cargo of indigo, sir, saltpetre, silver bars and silk. Enough to make us all rich a thousand times over.’ He grinned, then left Sharpe to contemplate the tiny space that would be his home for the next four months.
The rear wall of his cabin was the curving side of the ship. The ceiling was low, and crossed by heavy black beams in which some hooks rusted. The floor was the deck, thickly scarred with old nail-holes where previous passengers had hammered down their chests. The remaining three walls were made of dirty canvas, but it was a heaven compared to the accommodation he had been given when he had sailed from Britain to India. Then, a private, he had been content with a hammock and fourteen inches of space in which to swing it.
He squatted in the cabin’s entrance, where a lantern offered some light, and unfolded the ship’s rules. They were printed, though some additions had been inked in afterwards. He was forbidden to go on the quarterdeck unless invited by the ship’s captain or the officer of the watch, and to that prohibition someone had added the warning that, even if he was so invited, he was never to come between the captain and the weather rail. Sharpe did not even know what the weather rail was. Upon going on deck he was required to touch his hat to the quarterdeck, even if the captain was not in sight. Gambling was forbidden. The purser would hold divine service, weather permitting, each Sunday and passengers were required to attend unless excused by the ship’s surgeon. Breakfast would be supplied at eight o’clock in the morning, dinner at midday, tea would be served at four o’clock and supper at eight. All male passengers were required to acquaint themselves with the quarter bill which allocated their action stations. No unshielded flames were to be lit below decks and all lanterns must be extinguished by nine o’clock at night. Smoking was forbidden because of the danger of fire, and passengers who chewed tobacco were to use the spittoons. Spitting on the deck was strictly forbidden. No passenger was to climb the rigging without permission of a ship’s officer. Passengers in steerage, like Sharpe, were prohibited from entering the great cabin or the roundhouse unless invited. There would be no foul language aboard.
‘Christ all-bloody-mighty,’ a sailor grumbled as he struggled with Sharpe’s barrel of arrack. Two other seamen were carrying his bed and another pair were bringing his chest. ‘Got any rope, sir?’ one of them asked.
‘No.’
The sailor produced a length of hemp rope and showed Sharpe how to secure the wooden chest and the heavy hogshead which virtually filled the small space. Sharpe gave the sailor a rupee as thanks, then hammered the nails through the chest’s corners into the deck and roped the barrel to one of the beams on the ship’s side. The bed was a wooden cot, the size of a coffin, which he hung from the hooks in the beams. He suspended the bucket alongside. ‘It’s best to piss through the after gunport when it ain’t underwater,’ the sailor had told him, ‘and save your bucket for solids, if you sees my meaning, sir. Or go on deck and use the heads which are forrard, but not in heavy seas, sir, for you’re likely to go overboard and no one will be any the wiser. Specially at night, sir. Many a good man has gone to see the angels through being caught short on a bad night.’
A woman was protesting loudly at the accommodation on the deck’s far side, while her husband was meekly asserting that they could afford no better. Two small children, hot and sweating, were bawling. A dog barked until it was silenced by a kick. Dust sifted from the overhead beam as a passenger in the main-deck steerage hammered in a staple or a nail. Goats bleated. The bilge pump clattered and sucked and gulped and spat filthy water into the sea.
Sharpe sat on the chest. There was just enough light for him to read the paper that Captain Chase had pressed on him. It was a letter of introduction to Chase’s wife at the captain’s house near Topsham in Devon. ‘Lord knows when I’ll see Florence and the children again,’ Chase had said, ‘but if you’re in the west country, Sharpe, do go and introduce yourself. The house ain’t much. A dozen acres, run-down stable block and a couple of barns, but Florence will make you welcome.’
No one else would, Sharpe thought, for no one waited for him in England; no hearth would blaze for his return and no family would greet him. But it was home. And, like it or not, he was going there.
CHAPTER TWO
That evening, when the last boats had delivered their passengers and baggage to the convoy, the Calliope’s bosun shouted for the topmen to go aloft. Thirty other seamen came to the lower deck and shipped the capstan bars, then began to trudge round and round, inching up the great anchor cable that came through the hawsehole, along the lower deck and down into the ship’s belly. The cable seeped a foul-smelling mud that two seamen ineffectually tried to wash overboard with pails of water, but much of the diluted mud swilled aft into the steerage compartments. The topsails were dropped, then the headsails were unfurled as the anchor came clear of the bottom and the ship’s head swung away from land as the mainsails were dropped. The steerage passengers were not allowed to leave their quarters until the sails were hoisted and Sharpe sat on his trunk listening to the rush of feet overhead, the scraping of ropes along the deck and the creak of the ship’s timbers. It was a half-hour after the anchor had been hauled that Binns, the young officer, shouted that the deck was clear, and Sharpe could go up the stairs to see that the ship had still not cleared the harbour. A red swollen sun, streaked by black clouds, hovered above the roofs and palm trees of Bombay. The scent of the land came strong. Sharpe leaned on the gunwale and stared at India. He doubted he would see it again and was sad to be leaving. The rigging creaked and the water gurgled down the ship’s side. On the quarterdeck, where the richer passengers took the air, a woman waved to the distant shore. The ship tilted to a stronger gust of wind and a cannon near Sharpe scraped on the deck until it was checked by its lashings.
The channel veered nearer the shore, taking the ship close to a temple with a brightly coloured tower carved with monkeys, gods and elephants. The big driver sail on the mizzen was just being loosed and its canvas slapped and cracked, then bellied with the wind to lean the ship further over. Behind the Calliope the other great ships of the convoy were turning away from the anchorage, showing white water at their stems and filling their high masts and tangled rigging with creamy yellow sails. An East India Company frigate that would escort the convoy as far as the Cape of Good Hope sailed just ahead of the Calliope. The frigate’s bright ensign, thirteen stripes of red and white with the union flag in the upper staff quadrant, streamed bright in the sun’s red glow. Sharpe looked for Captain Joel Chase’s ship, but the only Royal Navy vessel he could see was a small schooner with four cannon.
The Calliope’s seamen tidied the deck, stowing the loose sheets in wooden tubs and checking the lashings of the ship’s boats that were stored on the spare spars which ran like vast rafters between the quarterdeck and the forecastle. A dark-skinned man in a fishing canoe paddled out of the ship’s way, then gaped up at the great black and white wall that roared past him. The temple was fading now, lost in the glare of the sun, but Sharpe stared at the tower’s black outline and wished again that he was not leaving. He had liked India, finding it a playground for warriors, princes, rogues and adventurers. He had found wealth there, been commissioned there, fought in its hills and on its ancient battlements. He was leaving friends and lovers there, and more than one enemy in his grave, but for what? For Britain? Where no one waited for him and no adventurers rode from the hills and no tyrants lurked behind red battlements.
One of the wealthy passengers came down the steep steps from the quarterdeck with a woman on his arm. Like most of the Calliope’s passengers he was a civilian and was elegantly dressed in a long dark-green coat, white breeches and an old-fashioned tricorne. The woman on his arm was plump, dressed in gauzy white, fair-haired, and laughing. The two spoke a foreign language, one Sharpe did not know. German? Dutch? Swedish? Everything the foreign couple saw, from the lashed guns to the crates of hens to the first seasick passengers leaning over the rail, amused them. The man was explaining the ship to his companion. ‘Boom!’ he cried, pointing to one of the guns, and the woman laughed, then staggered as a gust of wind made the big ship lurch. She whooped in mock alarm and clung to the man’s elbow as they staggered on forrard.
‘Know who that is?’ It was Braithwaite, Lord William Hale’s secretary, who had sidled alongside Sharpe.
‘No.’ Sharpe was brusque, instinctively disliking anyone connected with Lord William.
‘That was the Baron von Dornberg,’ Braithwaite said, evidently expecting Sharpe to be impressed. The secretary watched the baron help his lady up to the forecastle where another gust of wind threatened to snatch her wide-brimmed hat.
‘Never heard of him,’ Sharpe said churlishly.
‘He’s a nabob.’ Braithwaite spoke the word in awe, meaning that the baron was a man who had made himself fabulously rich in India and was now carrying his wealth back to Europe. Such a career was a gamble. A man either died in India or became wealthy. Most died. ‘Are you carrying goods?’ Braithwaite asked Sharpe.
‘Goods?’ Sharpe asked, wondering why the secretary was making such an effort to be pleasant to him.
‘To sell,’ Braithwaite said impatiently, as though Sharpe was being deliberately obtuse. ‘I’ve got peacock feathers,’ he went on, ‘five crates! The plumes fetch a rare price in London. Milliners buy them. I’m Malachi Braithwaite, by the way.’ He held out his hand. ‘Lord William’s confidential secretary.’
Sharpe reluctantly shook the offered hand.
‘I never did send that letter,’ Braithwaite said, smiling meaningfully. ‘I told him I did, but I didn’t.’ Braithwaite leaned close to make these confidences. He was a few inches taller than Sharpe, but much thinner, and had a lugubrious face with quick eyes that never seemed to look at Sharpe for long before darting sideways, almost as though Braithwaite expected to be attacked at any second. ‘His lordship will merely assume your colonel never received the letter.’
‘Why didn’t you send it?’ Sharpe asked.
Braithwaite looked offended at Sharpe’s curt tone. ‘We’re to be shipmates,’ he explained earnestly, ‘for how long? Three, four months? And I don’t travel in the stern like his lordship, but have to sleep in the steerage, and lower steerage at that! Not even main-deck steerage.’ He plainly resented that humiliation. The secretary was dressed as a gentleman, with a fashionable high stock and an elaborately tied cravat, but the cloth of his black coat was shiny, the cuffs were frayed and the collar of his shirt was darned. ‘Why should I make unnecessary enemies, Mister Sharpe?’ Braithwaite asked. ‘If I scratch your back, then maybe you can do me a service.’
‘Such as?’
Braithwaite shrugged. ‘Who knows what eventuality might arise?’ he asked airily, then turned to watch the Baron von Dornberg come back down the forecastle steps. ‘They say he made a fortune in diamonds,’ Braithwaite murmured to Sharpe, ‘and his servant isn’t expected to travel in steerage, but has a place in the great cabin.’ He spat that last information, then composed his face and stepped forward to intercept the baron. ‘Malachi Braithwaite, confidential secretary to Lord William Hale,’ he introduced himself as he raised his hat, ‘and most honoured to meet your lordship.’
‘The honour and pleasure are entirely mine,’ the Baron von Dornberg answered in excellent English, then returned Braithwaite’s courtesy by removing his tricorne hat and making a low bow. Straightening, he looked at Sharpe and Sharpe found himself staring into a familiar face, though now that face was decorated with a big waxed moustache. He looked at the baron, and the baron looked astonished for a second, then recovered himself and winked at Sharpe.
Sharpe wanted to say something, but feared he would laugh aloud and so he simply offered the baron a stiff nod.
But von Dornberg would have none of Sharpe’s formality. He spread his powerful arms and gave Sharpe a bear-like embrace. ‘This is one of the bravest men in the British army,’ he told his woman, then whispered in Sharpe’s ear. ‘Not a word, I beg you, not a pippy squeak.’ He stepped back. ‘May I name the Baroness von Dornberg? This is Mister Richard Sharpe, Mathilde, a friend and an enemy from a long time ago. Don’t tell me you travel in steerage, Mister Sharpe?’
‘I do, my lord.’
‘I am shocked! The British do not know how to treat their heroes. But I do! You shall come and dine with us in the captain’s cuddy. I shall insist on it!’ He grinned at Sharpe, offered Mathilde his arm, inclined his head to Braithwaite and walked on.
‘I thought you said you didn’t know him!’ Braithwaite said, aggrieved.
‘I didn’t recognize him with his hat on,’ Sharpe said. He turned away, unable to resist a grin. The Baron von Dornberg was no baron, and Sharpe doubted he had traded for any diamonds, no matter how many he carried, for von Dornberg was a rogue. His true name was Anthony Pohlmann and he had once been a sergeant in the Hanoverian army before he deserted for the richer service of an Indian prince, and his talent for war had brought him ever swifter promotion until, for a time, he had led a Mahratta army that was feared throughout central India. Then, one hot day, his forces met a much smaller British army between two rivers at a village called Assaye, and there, in an afternoon of dusty heat and red-hot guns and bloody slaughter, Anthony Pohlmann’s army had been shredded by sepoys and Highlanders. Pohlmann himself had vanished into the mystery of India, but now he was here on the Calliope as a celebrated passenger.
‘How did you meet him?’ Braithwaite demanded.
‘Can’t remember now,’ Sharpe said vaguely. ‘Somewhere or other. Can’t really remember.’ He turned to stare at the shore. The land was black now, punctured by sparks of firelight and outlined by a grey sky smeared with a city’s smoke. He wished he was back there, but then he heard Pohlmann’s loud voice and turned to see the German introducing his woman to Lady Grace Hale.
Sharpe stared at her ladyship. She was above him, on the quarterdeck, seemingly oblivious of the folk crowded on the main deck below. She offered Pohlmann a limp hand, inclined her head to the fair-haired woman and then, without a word, turned regally away. ‘That is Lady Grace,’ Braithwaite told Sharpe in an awed voice.
‘Someone told me she was ill?’ Sharpe suggested.
‘Merely highly strung,’ Braithwaite said defensively. ‘Very fine-strung women are prone to fragility, I think, and her ladyship is fine-strung, very fine-strung indeed.’ He spoke warmly, unable to take his eyes from Lady Grace, who stood watching the receding shore.
An hour later it was dark, India was gone and Sharpe sailed beneath the stars.
‘The war is lost,’ Captain Peculiar Cromwell declared, ‘lost.’ He made the statement in a harsh, flat voice, then frowned at the tablecloth. It was the Calliope’s third day out from Bombay and she was running before a gentle wind. She was, as Captain Chase had told Sharpe, a fast ship and the East India Company frigate had ordered Cromwell to shorten sail during the day because she was in danger of outrunning the slower ships. Cromwell had grumbled at the order, then had taken so much canvas from the yards that the Calliope now sailed at the convoy’s rear.
Anthony Pohlmann had invited Sharpe to take supper in the cuddy where Captain Cromwell nightly presided over those wealthier passengers who had paid to travel in the luxurious stern cabins. The cuddy was in the poop, the highest part of the ship, just forward of the two roundhouse cabins that were the largest, most lavish and most expensive. Lord William Hale and the Baron von Dornberg occupied the roundhouse, while beneath them, on the main deck of the ship, the great cabin had been divided into four compartments for the ship’s other wealthy passengers. One was a nabob and his wife who returned to their Cheshire home after twenty profitable years in India, another was a barrister who had been travelling after practising in the Supreme Court in Bengal, the third was a grey-haired major from the 96th who was retiring from the army, while the last cabin belonged to Pohlmann’s servant who alone among the stern passengers was not invited to eat in the cuddy.
It was the Scottish major, a stocky man called Arthur Dalton, who frowned at Peculiar Cromwell’s declaration that the war was lost. ‘We’ve beaten the French in India,’ the major protested, ‘and their navy is on its knees.’
‘If their navy is on its knees,’ Cromwell growled, ‘why are we sailing in convoy?’ He stared belligerently at Dalton, waiting for an answer, but the major declined to take up the cudgels and Cromwell looked triumphantly about the cuddy. He was a tall and heavy-set man with black hair streaked badger white that he wore past his shoulders. He had a long jaw, big yellow teeth and belligerent eyes. His hands, large and powerful, were permanently blackened from the tarred rigging. His uniform coat was cut from a thick blue broadcloth and heavily crusted with brass buttons decorated with the Company’s symbol which was supposed to show a lion holding a crown, but which everyone called ‘the cat and the cheese’. Cromwell shook his ponderous head. ‘The war is lost,’ he declared again. ‘Who rules the continent of Europe?’
‘The French,’ the barrister answered lazily, ‘but it won’t last. All flash and fire, the French, but there ain’t no substance in them. No substance at all.’
‘The whole coast of Europe,’ Cromwell said icily, ignoring the lawyer’s scorn, ‘is in enemy hands.’ He paused as a shuddering, grating and scraping noise echoed through the cabin. It punctuated the conversation sporadically and it had taken Sharpe a few moments to realize that it was the sound of the tiller ropes that ran two decks beneath him. Cromwell glanced up at a telltale compass that was mounted on the ceiling, then, deciding all was in order, resumed his argument. ‘Europe, I tell you, is in enemy hands. The Americans, damn their insolence, are hostile, so our home ocean, sir, is an enemy sea. An enemy sea. We sail there because we have more ships, but ships cost money, and for how long will the British people pay for ships?’
‘There are the Austrians,’ Major Dalton suggested, ‘the Russians?’
‘The Austrians, sir!’ Cromwell scoffed. ‘No sooner do the Austrians field an army than it is destroyed! The Russians? Would you trust the Russians to free Europe when they cannot liberate themselves? Have you been to Russia, sir?’
‘No,’ Major Dalton admitted.
‘A land of slaves,’ Cromwell said derisively.
Lord William Hale might have been expected to contribute to this conversation for, as one of the six members of the East India Company’s Board of Control, he must have been familiar with the thinking of the British government, but he was content to listen with a faintly amused smile, though he did raise an eyebrow at Cromwell’s assertion that the Russians were a nation of slaves.
‘The French, sir,’ Cromwell went on hotly, ‘face a rabble of enemies on their eastern frontiers, but none on their west. They can therefore concentrate their armies, sure in the knowledge that no British army will ever touch their shore.’
‘Never?’ the merchant, a solid man called Ebenezer Fairley, asked sarcastically.
Cromwell swung his heavy gaze on this new opponent. He contemplated Fairley for a while, then shook his head. ‘The British, Fairley, do not like armies. They keep a small army. A small army can never defeat Napoleon. Ergo, Napoleon is safe. Ergo, the war is lost. Good God, man, they might already have invaded Britain!’
‘I pray not,’ Major Dalton said fervently.
‘Their army was ready,’ Cromwell boomed with a strange relish in this talk of British defeat, ‘and all they needed was for their navy to command the channel.’
‘Which it cannot do,’ the barrister intervened quietly.
‘And even if they did not invade this year,’ Cromwell went on, ignoring the lawyer, ‘then in time they will succeed in building a navy fit to defeat ours, and when that day comes Britain will have to seek peace. Britain will revert to its natural posture, and its natural posture is to be a small and insignificant island poised off a great continent.’
Lady Grace spoke for the first time. Sharpe had been pleased and surprised to see her at supper, for Captain Chase had suggested that she eschewed company, but she seemed content to be in the cuddy though so far she had taken as little part in the conversation as her husband. ‘So we are doomed to defeat, Captain?’ she suggested.
‘No, ma’am,’ Cromwell answered, softening his pugnacity now that he addressed a titled passenger. ‘We are doomed to a realistic settlement of peace just as soon as the jackanapes politicians recognize what is plain in front of their faces.’
‘Which is?’ Fairley demanded.
‘That the French are more powerful than us, of course!’ Cromwell growled. ‘And until we make peace the prudent man makes money, for we shall need money in a world run by the French. That is why India is important. We should suck the place dry before the French take it from us.’ Cromwell snapped his fingers to instruct the stewards to remove the plates which had held a ragout of salted beef. Sharpe had eaten clumsily, finding the thick silverware unwieldy, and wishing he had dared take out his folding pocket knife which he used at meals when his betters were not present.
Mathilde, the Baroness von Dornberg, smiled gratefully as the captain replenished her wine glass. The baroness, who was almost certainly nothing of the sort, sat on Captain Cromwell’s left while opposite her was Lady Grace Hale. Pohlmann, resplendent in a lace-fringed silk coat, sat next to Lady Grace while Lord William was to the left of Mathilde. Sharpe, as the least important person present, was at the lower end of the table.
The cuddy was an elegant room panelled with wood that had been painted pea-green and gold, while a brass chandelier, bereft of candles, hung from a beam alongside the wide skylight. If the room had not been gently rocking, sometimes shifting a wine glass on the table, Sharpe might have thought himself ashore.
He had said nothing all evening, content to gaze at Lady Grace who, white-faced and aloof, had ignored him since the moment he had been named to her. She had politely offered him a gloved hand, given him an expressionless glance, then turned away. Her husband had frowned at Sharpe’s presence, then imitated his wife by pretending the ensign did not exist.
A dessert of oranges and burnt sugar was served. Pohlmann eagerly spooned the rich sauce into his mouth, then looked at Sharpe. ‘You think the war is lost, Sharpe?’
‘Me, sir?’ Sharpe was startled at being addressed.
‘You, Sharpe, yes, you,’ Pohlmann said. ‘Do you think the war is lost?’
Sharpe hesitated, wondering whether the wisest course was to say something harmless and let the conversation go on again without him, but he had been offended by Cromwell’s defeatism. ‘It certainly isn’t over, my lord,’ he said to Pohlmann.
Cromwell recognized the challenge. ‘What do you mean by that, sir, eh? Explain yourself.’
‘A fight ain’t lost till it’s finished, sir,’ Sharpe said, ‘and this one ain’t done.’
‘An ensign speaks,’ Lord William murmured scornfully.
‘You think a rat has a chance against a terrier?’ Cromwell demanded, just as scornfully.
Pohlmann held up a hand to stop Sharpe from responding. ‘I think Ensign Sharpe knows a good deal about fighting, Captain,’ the German said. ‘When I first met him he was a sergeant, and now he is a commissioned officer.’ He paused, letting that statement cause its stir of surprise. ‘What does it take for a sergeant to become an officer in the British army?’
‘Damned luck,’ Lord William said laconically.
‘It takes an act of outstanding bravery,’ Major Dalton observed quietly. He raised his wine glass to Sharpe. ‘Honoured to make your acquaintance, Sharpe. I didn’t place the name when we were introduced, but I recall you now. I’m honoured.’
Pohlmann, enjoying his mischief, toasted Sharpe with a sip of wine. ‘So what was your act of outstanding bravery, Mister Sharpe?’
Sharpe reddened. Lady Grace was staring at him, the first notice she had taken of him since the company had sat to dinner.
‘Well, Sharpe?’ Captain Cromwell insisted.
Sharpe was tongue-tied, but was rescued by Dalton. ‘He saved Sir Arthur Wellesley’s life,’ the major said quietly.
‘How? Where?’ Pohlmann demanded.
Sharpe caught the German’s eye. ‘At a place called Assaye, sir.’
‘Assaye?’ Pohlmann said, frowning slightly. It had been at Assaye that his army and his ambitions had been wrecked by Wellesley. ‘Never heard of it,’ he said lightly, leaning back in his chair.
‘And you were first over the wall at Gawilghur, Sharpe,’ the major said. ‘Isn’t that right?’
‘Me and Captain Campbell were first across, sir. But it were lightly defended.’
‘Is that where you fetched the scar, Sharpe?’ the major enquired, and the whole table gazed at Sharpe. He looked uncomfortable, but there was no denying the power of his face, nor the suggestion of violence that was contained in the scar. ‘It wasn’t a bullet, was it?’ the major insisted. ‘No bullet makes that kind of scar.’
‘It were a sword, sir,’ Sharpe answered. ‘Man called Dodd.’ He looked at Pohlmann as he spoke and Pohlmann, who had once commanded and heartily disliked the renegade Dodd, half smiled.
‘And does Mister Dodd still live?’ the German asked.
‘He’s dead, sir,’ Sharpe said flatly.
‘Good.’ Pohlmann raised his glass to Sharpe.
The major turned to Cromwell. ‘Mister Sharpe is a very considerable soldier, Captain. Sir Arthur told me that if you find yourself in a bad fight then you can ask for no one better at your side.’
The news that General Wellesley had said any such thing pleased Sharpe, but Captain Cromwell had not been deflected from his argument and was now frowning at the ensign. ‘You think,’ the captain demanded, ‘that the French can be defeated?’
‘We’re at war with them, sir,’ Sharpe retorted, ‘and you don’t go to war unless you mean to win.’
‘You go to war,’ Lord William said icily, ‘because small-minded men can see no alternative.’
‘And if every war has a winner,’ Cromwell said, ‘it must by ineluctable logic also have a loser. If you want my advice, young man, leave the army before some politician has you killed in an ill-considered attack on France. Or, more likely, the French invade Britain and kill you along with the rest of the redcoats.’
The ladies withdrew a short while later and the men drank a glass of port, but the atmosphere was stiff and Pohlmann, plainly bored, excused himself from the company and gestured that Sharpe should follow him back to the starboard roundhouse cabin where Mathilde was now sprawled on a silk-covered sofa. Facing her on a matching sofa was an elderly man who was talking animatedly in German when Pohlmann entered, but who immediately stood and bowed his head respectfully. Pohlmann seemed surprised to see him and gestured the man to the door. ‘I won’t need you tonight,’ he said in English.
‘Very good, my lord,’ the man, evidently Pohlmann’s servant, answered in the same language, then, with a glance at Sharpe, left the cabin. Pohlmann peremptorily ordered Mathilde to take some air on the poop, then, when she had gone, he poured two large brandies and gave Sharpe a mischievous grin. ‘My heart,’ he said, clasping a dramatic hand to his breast, ‘almost flopped over and died when I first saw you.’
‘Would it matter if they knew who you were?’ Sharpe asked.
Pohlmann grinned. ‘How much credit will merchants give Sergeant Anthony Pohlmann, eh? But the Baron von Dornberg! Ah! They queue to give the baron credit. They trip over their fat feet to pour guineas into my purse.’
Sharpe looked about the big cabin that was furnished with two sofas, a sideboard, a low table, a harp and an enormous teak bed with ivory inlays on the headboard. ‘But you must have done well in India,’ Sharpe said.
‘For a former sergeant, you mean?’ Pohlmann laughed. ‘I do have some loot, my dear Sharpe, but not as much as I would have liked and nowhere near as much as I lost at Assaye, but I cannot complain. If I am careful I shall not need to work again.’ He looked at the hem of Sharpe’s red coat where the jewels made small lumps in the threadbare cloth. ‘I see you did well in India too, eh?’
Sharpe was aware that the fraying, thinning cloth of his coat was increasingly an unsafe place to hide the diamonds, emeralds and rubies, but he did not want to discuss them with Pohlmann so gestured at the harp instead. ‘You play?’
‘Mein Gott, no! Mathilde plays. Very badly, but I tell her it is wonderful.’
‘She’s your wife?’
‘Am I a numbskull? A blockhead? Would I marry? Ha! No, Sharpe, she was whore to a rajah and when he tired of her I took her over. She is from Bavaria and wants babies, so she is a double fool, but she will keep my bed warm till I see home and then I shall find something younger. So you killed Dodd?’
‘Not me, a friend killed him.’
‘He deserved to die. A very horrid man.’ Pohlmann shuddered. ‘And you? You travel alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘In the rat hole, eh?’ He looked at the hem of Sharpe’s coat. ‘You keep your jewels until you reach England and travel in steerage. But more important, my cautious friend, will you reveal who I am?’
‘No,’ Sharpe said with a smile. The last time he had seen Pohlmann the Hanoverian had been hiding in a peasant’s hut in the village of Assaye. Sharpe could have arrested him and gained credit for capturing the commander of the beaten army, but he had always liked Pohlmann and so he had looked the other way and let the big man escape. ‘But I reckon my silence is worth something, though,’ Sharpe added.
‘You want Mathilde every other Friday?’ Pohlmann, assured that his secret was safe with Sharpe, could not hide his relief.
‘A few invitations to supper, perhaps?’
Pohlmann was surprised by the modesty of the demand. ‘You so like Captain Cromwell’s company?’
‘No.’
Pohlmann laughed. ‘Lady Grace,’ he said softly. ‘I saw you, Sharpe, with your tongue lolling like a dog. You like them thin, do you?’
‘I like her.’
‘Her husband doesn’t,’ Pohlmann said. ‘We hear them through the partition.’ He jerked his thumb at the wall which divided the big roundhouse. The bulkhead was made from thin wooden panelling which could be struck down into the hold if only one passenger travelled in the lavish quarters. ‘The captain’s steward tells me their cabin is twice as big as this one and divided into two. He has one part and she the other. They are like, what do you say? Dog and cat?’
‘Cat and dog,’ Sharpe said.
‘He barks and she hisses. Still, I wish you joy. The gods alone know what they must make of us. They probably think we are bull and cow. Shall we join Mathilde on deck?’ Pohlmann took two cigars from the side-board. ‘The captain says we should not smoke on board. We must chew tobacco instead, but he can roger himself.’ He lit the cigars, handed one to Sharpe and then led him out onto the quarterdeck and up the stairs to the poop deck. Mathilde was standing at the rail, staring down at a seaman who was lighting the lamp in the binnacle, the only light which was allowed on the ship after dark, while Lady Grace was at the taffrail, standing beneath the huge stern lantern that would not be lit on this voyage so long as there was a danger of the Revenant or another French ship seeing the convoy. ‘Go and talk to her.’ Pohlmann leered, digging an elbow into Sharpe’s ribs.
‘I’ve got nothing to say to her.’
‘So you are not really brave after all,’ Pohlmann said. ‘I dare say you wouldn’t think twice about charging a line of guns like those I had at Assaye, but a beautiful woman makes you shiver, yes?’
Lady Grace stood solitary and slim, wrapped in a cloak. A maid attended her, but the girl stood at the side of the deck as though she was nervous of her ladyship. Sharpe was also nervous. He wanted to talk to her, but he knew he would stumble over his words, so instead he stood beside Pohlmann and stared forrard past the great bulk of the sails to where the rest of the convoy was just visible in the gathering night. Far forrard, on the fo’c’sle, a violin was being played and a group of sailors danced the hornpipe.
‘Were you really promoted from the ranks?’ a cold voice asked and Sharpe turned to see that Lady Grace had appeared at his side.
He instinctively touched his forelock. For a moment he felt struck dumb and his tongue seemed stuck to his palate, but then he managed to nod. ‘Yes, ma’am. Milady.’
She looked into his eyes and was tall enough not to need to look up. Her big eyes were dim in the twilight, but at supper Sharpe had seen they were green. ‘It must be a difficult circumstance,’ she said, still using a distant voice as though she was being reluctantly forced into this conversation.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ Sharpe said again, and knew he was sounding like a fool. He was tense, a muscle was twitching in his left leg, his mouth was dry and his belly felt sour, the same sensations that a man got when he was waiting for battle. ‘Before it happened, ma’am,’ he blurted out, wanting to say anything other than a monosyllabic response, ‘I wanted it badly, but afterwards? I reckon I shouldn’t have wanted it at all.’
Her face was expressionless. Beautiful, but expressionless. She ignored Pohlmann and Mathilde, but just stared down at the quarterdeck before looking back to Sharpe. ‘Who makes it most difficult,’ she asked, ‘the men or the officers?’
‘Both, ma’am,’ Sharpe said. He saw that the smoke from his cigar was annoying her and so he tossed it overboard. ‘The men don’t think you’re a proper officer, and the other officers … well, it’s like a working dog ending up on the hearth rug. The lap dogs don’t like it.’
She half smiled at that. ‘You must tell me,’ she said in a voice which still suggested she was merely making polite conversation, ‘just how you saved Arthur’s life.’ She paused, and Sharpe saw there was a nervous tic in her left eye that caused it to quiver every few seconds. ‘He’s a cousin,’ she went on, ‘but quite far removed. None of the family thought he’d amount to anything.’
It had taken Sharpe a second or two to realize that she meant Sir Arthur Wellesley, the cold man who had promoted Sharpe. ‘He’s the best general I’ve ever seen, ma’am,’ Sharpe said.
‘And you would know?’ she asked sceptically.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ Sharpe said firmly, ‘I would know.’
‘So how did you save his life?’ she insisted.
Sharpe hesitated. The aroma of her perfume was heady. He was about to say something vague of battle, confusion and blurred memory, but just then Lord William appeared on the quarterdeck and, without a word, Lady Grace turned to the poop stairs. Sharpe watched her go, conscious of his heart thumping against his ribs. He was still trembling. He had been dizzied by her.
Pohlmann was laughing softly. ‘She likes you, Sharpe.’
‘Don’t be daft.’
‘She is panting for you,’ Pohlmann said.
‘My dear Sharpe! My dear Sharpe!’ It was the Scotsman, Major Dalton, climbing from the quarterdeck. ‘There you are! You vanished! I would speak with you, Sharpe, if you can be kind enough to spare me a few moments. Like you, Sharpe, I was at Assaye, but I’m still utterly confused as to what happened there. We must talk, indeed we must. My dear baron, baroness’ – he took off his hat and bowed – ‘my compliments, and perhaps you will forgive two soldiers reminiscing?’
‘I will forgive you, Major,’ Pohlmann said expansively, ‘but I will also leave you, for I know nothing of soldiering, nothing! Your conversation would be one long mystery to me. Come, my Liebchen, come.’
So Sharpe talked of battle, and the ship trembled to the sea, and the tropical darkness fell.
‘Number four gun!’ Lieutenant Tufnell, the Calliope’s first officer, shouted. ‘Fire!’
The eighteen-pounder leaped back, jerking to a halt as its breeching rope took the vast strain of the weapon’s recoil. Scraps of paint flew from the taut hemp, for Captain Cromwell was insistent that the gun tackles, like every other piece of equipment on deck, were painted white. It was for that reason that only one gun was being fired, for Cromwell did not want to disturb the other thirty-one cannons that had polished barrels and freshly painted tackle, so each gun crew, half made up of the ship’s crew and half of passengers, was taking it in turn to fire number four gun. The eighteen-pounder, its muzzle blackened by powder, hissed as the barrel was sponged out. A great cloud of smoke drifted in the wind to keep the ship company.
‘Shot fell short, sir!’ Binns, the young officer, piped from the poop where, equipped with a telescope, he watched the fall of shot. The Chatham Castle, another ship of the convoy, was periodically loosing empty casks in its wake to serve as targets for the Calliope’s gun.
It was the turn of number five gun’s crew to fire. The seaman in charge was a wizened man with long grey hair that he wore tied in a great bun into which he had stuck a marlin spike. ‘You’ – he pointed at Malachi Braithwaite who, to his great displeasure, was expected to serve on a gun crew despite being private secretary to a peer – ‘shove two of them black bags down the gun when I gives the word. Him’ – he pointed at a lascar seaman – ‘rams it and you’ – he peered at Braithwaite again – ‘puts the shot in and the blackie rams that as well and none of you landlubbers gets in his way, and you’ – he looked at Sharpe – ‘aims the piece.’
‘I thought that was your job,’ Sharpe said.
‘I’m half blind, sir.’ The seaman offered Sharpe a toothless grin then turned on the other three passengers. ‘The rest of you,’ he said, ‘helps the other blackies haul the gun forrard on those two lines there, and once you’ve done that you stand out the bleeding way and cover your ears. If it comes to a fight the best thing you can do is fall to your knees and pray to the Almighty that we surrender. You’ll fire the gun, sir?’ he asked Sharpe. ‘And you knows as to stand to one side unless you want to be buried at sea. Bag of reeds here, sir, lanyard there, sir, and it’s best to fire on the uproll if you don’t want to make us look like lubberly fools. You ain’t going to hit nothing, sir, because no one ever does. We only practise because the Company says we must, but we ain’t never fired a gun in anger and I hopes and prays we never will.’
The cannon was equipped with a flintlock, just like a musket, which fired the powder packed inside a hollow reed which was inserted in the touch-hole and so carried the flame down to the main charge. Once the gun was loaded all Sharpe had to do was aim it, stand aside, and jerk the lanyard which triggered the lock. Braithwaite and the lascar put the powder and shot into the barrel, the lascar rammed it down, Sharpe pushed a sharpened wire through the touch-hole to pierce the canvas powder bag, then slid the reed into place. The other crew members clumsily hauled the gun until its barrel protruded through the main deck’s gunwale. There were handspikes available, great club-like wooden levers that could be used to turn the gun left or right, but none of the crews used them. They were not seriously trying to aim the gun, merely going through the obligatory motions of practice so that the logbook could confirm that the Company regulations had been fulfilled.
‘There’s your target!’ Captain Cromwell called and Sharpe, standing on the gun carriage, saw an impossibly small cask bobbing on the distant waves. He had no idea what the range was, and all he could do was wait until the cask floated into line then pause until a wave rolled the ship upwards when he skipped smartly aside and jerked the lanyard. The flintlock snapped forward and a small jet of fire whipped up from the touch-hole, then the gun hammered back on its small wheels and its smoke billowed halfway up the mainsail as the powder flame licked and curled in the pungent white cloud. The big breeching rope quivered, scattering more flecks of paint, and Mister Binns called excitedly from the poop, ‘A hit, sir, a hit! A hit! Plumb, sir! A hit!’
‘We heard you the first time, Mister Binns,’ Cromwell growled.
‘But it’s a hit, sir!’ Binns protested, thinking that no one believed him.
‘Up to the main cap!’ Cromwell snapped at Binns. ‘I told you to be quiet. If you cannot learn to curb your tongue, boy, then go and shriek at the clouds. Up!’ He pointed to the very top of the mainmast. ‘And you will stay there until I can abide your malodorous presence again.’
Mathilde was applauding enthusiastically from the quarterdeck. Lady Grace was also there and Sharpe had been acutely aware of her presence as he aimed the gun. ‘That was bleeding luck,’ the old seaman said.
‘Pure luck,’ Sharpe agreed.
‘And you’ve cost the captain ten guineas,’ the old man chuckled.
‘I have?’
‘He has a wager with Mister Tufnell that no one would ever hit the target.’
‘I thought gambling was forbidden on board.’
‘There’s lots that’s forbidden, sir, but that don’t mean it don’t happen.’
Sharpe’s ears were ringing from the terrible sound of the gun as he stepped away from the smoking weapon. Tufnell, the first lieutenant, insisted on shaking his hand and refused to countenance Sharpe’s insistence that the shot had been pure luck, then Tufnell stepped aside for Captain Cromwell had come down from the quarterdeck and was advancing on Sharpe. ‘Have you fired a cannon before?’ the captain enquired fiercely.
‘No, sir.’
Cromwell peered up into the rigging, then looked for his first officer. ‘Mister Tufnell!’
‘Sir?’
‘A broken horse! There, on the main topsail!’ Cromwell pointed. Sharpe followed the captain’s finger and saw that one of the footropes that the topmen would stand on when they were furling the sail had parted. ‘I will not command a ragged ship, Mister Tufnell,’ Cromwell snarled. ‘This ain’t a Thames hay barge, Mister Tufnell, but an Indiaman! Have it spliced, man, have it spliced!’
Tufnell sent two seamen aloft to mend the broken line, while Cromwell paused to glower at the next crew firing the gun. The cannon recoiled, the smoke blossomed, and the ball skipped across the waves a good hundred yards from the bobbing cask.
‘A miss!’ Binns shouted from the top of the mainmast.
‘I have an eye for an irregularity,’ Cromwell said in his harsh, low voice, ‘as I’ve no doubt you do, Mister Sharpe. You see a hundred men on parade and doubtless your eye goes to the one sloven with a dirty musket. Am I right?’
‘I hope so, sir.’
‘A broken horse can kill a man. It can tumble him to the deck, putting misery into a mother’s heart. Her son put his foot down and there was nothing beneath him but void. Do you want your mother to have a broken heart, Mister Sharpe?’
Sharpe decided this was no time to explain that he had long been orphaned. ‘No, sir.’
Cromwell glared around the main deck which was crowded with the men who formed the gun crews. ‘What is it that you notice about these men, Mister Sharpe?’
‘Notice, sir?’
‘They are in shirtsleeves, Mister Sharpe. All except you and me are in shirtsleeves. I keep my coat on, Sharpe, because I am captain of this ship and it is meet and right that a captain should appear formally dressed before his crew. But why, I ask myself, does Mister Sharpe keep on his wool jacket on a hot day? Do you believe you are captain of this scow?’
‘I just feel the cold, sir,’ Sharpe lied.
‘Cold?’ Cromwell sneered. He put his right foot on a crack between the deck planks and, when he lifted the shoe, a string of melting tar adhered to his sole. ‘You are not cold, Mister Sharpe, you are sweating. Sweating! So come with me, Mister Sharpe.’ The captain turned and led Sharpe up to the quarterdeck. The passengers watching the gunnery made way for the two men and Sharpe was suddenly conscious of Lady Grace’s perfume, then he followed Cromwell down the companionway into the great cabin where the captain had his quarters. Cromwell unlocked his door, pushed it open and gestured that Sharpe should go inside. ‘My home,’ the captain grunted.
Sharpe had expected that the captain would have one of the stern cabins with their big wide windows, but it was more profitable to sell such accommodation to passengers and Cromwell was content with a smaller cabin on the larboard side. It was still a comfortable home. A bunk bed was built into a wall of bookshelves while a table, hinged to the bulkhead, was smothered in unrolled charts that were weighted down with three lanterns and a pair of long-barrelled pistols. The daylight streamed in through an opened porthole, above which the sea’s reflection rippled on the white painted ceiling. Cromwell unlocked a small cupboard to reveal a barometer and, beside it, what appeared to be a fat pocket watch hanging from a hook. ‘Three hundred and twenty-nine guineas,’ Cromwell told Sharpe, tapping the timepiece.
‘I’ve never owned a watch,’ Sharpe said.
‘It is not a watch, Mister Sharpe,’ Cromwell said in disgust, ‘but a chronometer. A marvel of science. Between here and Britain I doubt it will lose more than two seconds. It is that machine, Mister Sharpe, that tells us where we are.’ He blew a fleck of dust from the chronometer’s face, tapped the barometer, then carefully closed and locked the cupboard. ‘I keep my treasures safe, Mister Sharpe. You, on the other hand, flaunt yours.’
Sharpe said nothing, and the captain waved at the cabin’s only chair. ‘Sit down, Mister Sharpe. Do you wonder about my name?’
Sharpe sat uneasily. ‘Your name?’ He shrugged. ‘It’s unusual, sir.’
‘It is peculiar,’ Peculiar Cromwell said, then gave a harsh laugh that betrayed no amusement. ‘My people, Mister Sharpe, were fervent Christians and they named me from the Bible. “The Lord has chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself,” the book of Deuteronomy, chapter fourteen, verse two. It is not easy, Mister Sharpe, living with such a name. It invites ridicule. In its time that name has made me a laughing stock!’ He said these last words with extraordinary force, as though resenting all the folk who had ever mocked him, but Sharpe, perched on the edge of the chair, could not imagine anyone mocking the harsh-voiced, heavy-faced Peculiar Cromwell.
Cromwell sat on his bunk bed, placed his elbows on the charts and fixed his eyes on Sharpe. ‘I was put aside for God, Mister Sharpe, and it makes for a lonely life. I was denied a proper education. Other men go to Oxford or Cambridge, they are immersed in knowledge, but I was sent to sea for my parents believed I would be beyond earthly temptation if I was far from any shore. But I taught myself, Mister Sharpe. I learned from books’ – he waved at the shelves – ‘and discovered that I am well named. I am peculiar, Mister Sharpe, in my opinions, apprehensions and conclusions.’ He shook his head sadly, rippling his long hair which rested on the shoulders of his heavy blue coat. ‘All around me I espy educated men, rational men, conventional men and, above all, sociable men, but I have discovered that no such creature ever did a great thing. It is among the lonely, Mister Sharpe, that true greatness occurs.’ He scowled, as though that burden was almost too heavy to bear. ‘You too, I think, are a peculiar man,’ Cromwell went on. ‘You have been plucked by destiny from your natural place among the dregs of society and have been translated into an officer. And that’ – he leaned forward and jabbed a finger at Sharpe – ‘must make for loneliness.’
‘I have never lacked friends,’ Sharpe said, evading the embarrassing conversation.
‘You trust yourself, Mister Sharpe,’ Cromwell boomed, ignoring Sharpe’s words, ‘as I have learned to trust myself in the knowledge that no one else can be trusted. We have been set aside, you and I, as lonely men doomed to watch the traffic of those who are not peculiar. But today, Mister Sharpe, I am going to insist that you put your mistrust aside. I shall demand that you trust me.’
‘In what, sir?’
Cromwell paused as the tiller ropes creaked and groaned beneath him, then glanced up at a telltale compass fixed above the bunk. ‘A ship is a small world, Mister Sharpe,’ he said, ‘and I am appointed the ruler of that world. Upon this vessel I am lord of all, and the power of life and death is granted to me, but I do not crave such power. What I crave, Mister Sharpe, is order. Order!’ He slapped a hand on the charts. ‘And I will not abide thievery on my ship!’
Sharpe sat up in indignation. ‘Thievery! Are you …’
‘No!’ Cromwell interrupted him. ‘Of course I am not accusing you. But there will be thievery, Mister Sharpe, if you continue to flaunt your wealth.’
Sharpe smiled. ‘I’m an ensign, sir, lowest of the low. You said yourself I’d been plucked out of my place, and you know there’s no money down there. I’m not wealthy.’
‘Then what, Mister Sharpe, is sewn into the seams of your garment?’ Cromwell asked.
Sharpe said nothing. A king’s ransom was sewn into the hems of his coat, the tops of his boots and the waistband of his trousers, and the jewels in his coat were showing because of the frailty of the red-dyed cloth.
‘Sailors are keen-eyed fellows, Mister Sharpe,’ Cromwell growled. He looked irritated when the gun fired from the main deck, as though the sound had interrupted his thinking. ‘Sailors have to be keen-eyed,’ he continued, ‘and mine are clever enough to know that a soldier hides his plunder on his person, and they’re keen-eyed enough to note that Mister Sharpe does not take off his coat, and one night, Mister Sharpe, when you go forrard to the heads, or when you take the air on the deck, a keen-eyed sailor will come at you from behind. A belaying pin? A strike at your skull? A splash in the night? Who would miss you?’ He smiled, revealing long yellow teeth, then touched the hilt of one of the pistols on the table. ‘If I were to shoot you now, strip your body and then push you through the scuttle, who would dare contradict my story that you had attacked me?’
Sharpe said nothing.
Cromwell’s hand stayed on the pistol. ‘You have a chest in your cabin?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘But you don’t trust my sailors. You know they will break through its lock in a matter of seconds.’
‘They would too,’ Sharpe said.
‘But they will not dare break into my chest!’ Cromwell declared, gesturing beneath the table where a vast iron-bound teak chest stood. ‘I want you to yield me your treasure now, Mister Sharpe, and I will sign for it and I will store it, and when we reach our destination you will be given it back. It is a normal procedure.’ He at last removed his hand from the gun and reached onto the bookshelf, taking down a small box that was filled with papers. ‘I have some money belonging to Lord William Hale in that chest, see?’ He handed one of the papers to Sharpe who saw that it acknowledged receipt of one hundred and seventy guineas in native specie. The paper had been signed by Peculiar Cromwell and, on Lord William’s behalf, by Malachi Braithwaite, MA Oxon. ‘I have possessions of Major Dalton,’ Cromwell said, producing another piece of paper, ‘and jewels belonging to the Baron von Dornberg.’ He showed Sharpe that receipt. ‘And more jewels belonging to Mister Fazackerly.’ Fazackerly was the barrister. ‘This’ – Cromwell kicked the chest – ‘is the safest place on the ship, and if one of my passengers is carrying valuables then I want those valuables out of temptation’s way. Do I make myself plain, Mister Sharpe?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘But you are thinking that you do not trust me?’
‘No, sir,’ Sharpe said, who was thinking just that.
‘I told you,’ Cromwell growled, ‘it is a normal procedure. You entrust your valuables to me and I, as a captain in the service of the East India Company, give you a receipt. If I were to lose the valuables, Mister Sharpe, then the Company would reimburse you. The only way you can lose them is if the ship sinks or if it is taken by enemy action, in which case you must have recourse to your insurers.’ Cromwell half smiled, knowing full well that Sharpe’s treasure would not be insured.
Sharpe still said nothing.
‘Thus far, Mister Sharpe,’ Cromwell said in a low voice, ‘I have requested you to comply with my wishes. If needs be, I can insist.’
‘No need to insist, sir,’ Sharpe said, for, in truth, Cromwell was right in suggesting that every sharp-eyed sailor in the ship would note the badly hidden jewels. Each and every day Sharpe was aware of the stones, and they were a burden to him and would stay a burden until he could sell them in London, and that burden would be lifted if he yielded the stones into the Company’s keeping. Besides, he had been reassured by the fact that Pohlmann had entrusted so many jewels to the captain’s keeping. If Pohlmann, who was nobody’s fool, trusted Cromwell then Sharpe surely could.
Cromwell gave him a small pair of scissors and Sharpe cut the hem of his coat. He did not reveal the stones in his waistband, nor in his boots, for they were not obvious to even a searching glance, but he did place on the table a growing heap of rubies, diamonds and emeralds that he stripped from the red coat’s seams.
Cromwell separated the stones into three piles, then weighed each pile on a small and delicate balance. He carefully noted the results, locked the jewels away, then gave Sharpe a receipt which both he and Sharpe had signed. ‘I thank you, Mister Sharpe,’ Cromwell said gravely, ‘for you have made my mind easier. The purser will find a seaman who can sew up your coat,’ he added, standing.
Sharpe also stood, ducking his head under the low beams. ‘Thank you, sir.’
‘I’ve no doubt I’ll see you at dinner soon. The baron seems fond of your company. You know him well?’
‘I met him once or twice in India, sir.’
‘He seems a strange man, not that I know him at all. But an aristocrat? Dirtying his hands with trade?’ Cromwell shuddered. ‘I suppose they do things differently in Hanover.’
‘I imagine they do, sir.’
‘Thank you, Mister Sharpe.’ Cromwell tucked his keys into a pocket and nodded to indicate that Sharpe could leave.
Major Dalton was on the quarterdeck, revelling in the gun practice. ‘No one’s matched your marksmanship, Sharpe,’ the Scotsman said. ‘I’m proud of you! Upholding the honour of the army.’
Lady Grace gave Sharpe one of her disinterested glances, then turned back to look at the horizon. ‘Tell me, sir,’ Sharpe said to the major, ‘would you trust an East India captain?’
‘If you can’t trust such a man, Sharpe, then the world is coming to an end.’
‘We wouldn’t want that, sir, would we?’
Sharpe gazed at Lady Grace. She stood beside her husband, lightly touching his arm to keep her balance on the swaying deck. Dog and cat, he thought.
And he felt like being scratched.
CHAPTER THREE
The boredom on the ship was palpable.
Some passengers read, but Sharpe, who still found reading difficult, obtained no relief from the few books he borrowed from Major Dalton, who spent his time making notes for a memoir he planned to write about the war against the Mahrattas. ‘I doubt anyone will read it, Sharpe,’ the major admitted modestly, ‘but it would be a pity if the army’s successes were not recorded. You would oblige me with your best recollections?’
Some of the men passed the time by practising with small arms or fighting mock duels with sword and sabres up and down the main deck until they were running with sweat. During the second week of the voyage there was a sudden enthusiasm for target practice, using the ship’s heavy sea-service muskets to fire at empty bottles hurled into the waves, but after five days Captain Cromwell declared that the fusillades were depleting the Calliope’s powder stores and the pastime ceased. Later that week a seaman claimed to have spied a mermaid at dawn and for a day or two the passengers hung on the rails vainly searching the empty sea for another glimpse. Lord William scornfully denied the existence of such creatures, but Major Dalton had seen one when he was a boy. ‘It was exhibited in Edinburgh,’ he told Sharpe, ‘after the poor creature had washed ashore on Inchkeith Rock. It was a very dark room, I remember, and she was somewhat hairy. Bedraggled, really. She was very ill-smelling, but I recall her tail and seem to remember she was very well endowed above.’ He blushed. ‘Poor lass, she was dead as a bucket.’
A strange sail was sighted one morning and there was an hour’s excitement as the gun crews mustered, the convoy clumsily closed up and the Company frigate set her studdingsails to investigate the stranger, which turned out to be an Arab dhow on course for Cochin and certainly no threat to the big Indiamen.
The passengers in the stern, the rich folk who inhabited the roundhouse and the great cabin, played whist. Another group played the game in steerage, but Sharpe had never learned to play and, besides, was not tempted to wager. He was aware that large sums were being won and lost, and though it was forbidden by the Company rules, Captain Cromwell made no objection. Indeed he sometimes played a hand himself. ‘He wins,’ Pohlmann told Sharpe, ‘he always wins.’
‘And you lose?’
‘A little.’ Pohlmann shrugged as though it did not matter.
Pohlmann was sitting on one of the lashed guns. He often came and talked with Sharpe, usually about Assaye where he had suffered such a great defeat. ‘Your William Dodd,’ he told Sharpe, ‘claimed that Sir Arthur was a cautious general. He isn’t.’ He always called Dodd ‘your William Dodd’, as though the renegade redcoat had been a colleague of Sharpe’s.
‘Wellesley’s bull-headed,’ Sharpe said admiringly. ‘He sees a chance and snatches it.’
‘And he’s gone home to England?’
‘Sailed last year,’ Sharpe said. Sir Arthur, as befitted his rank, had sailed on the Trident, Admiral Rainier’s flagship, and was probably in Britain by now.
‘He will be bored at home,’ Pohlmann said.
‘Bored? Why?’
‘Because our dour Captain Cromwell is right. Britain cannot fight France in Europe. She can fight her at the ends of the world, but not in Europe. The French army, my dear Sharpe, is a horde. It is not like your army. It doesn’t depend on jailbirds, failures and drunkards, but is conscripted. It is therefore huge.’
Sharpe grinned. ‘The jailbirds, failures and drunkards cooked your goose.’
‘So they did,’ Pohlmann acknowledged without taking offence, ‘but they cannot stand against the vast armies of France. No one can. Not now. And when the French decide to build a proper navy, my friend, then you will see the world dance to their tunes.’
‘And you?’ Sharpe asked. ‘Where will you be dancing?’
‘Hanover?’ Pohlmann suggested. ‘I shall buy a big house, fill it with women and watch the world from my windows. Or perhaps I shall live in France. The women are more beautiful there and I have learned one thing in my life, Sharpe, and that is that women do like money. Why do you think Lady Grace married Lord William?’ He jerked his head towards the quarterdeck where Lady Grace, accompanied by her maid, walked up and down. ‘How goes your campaign with the lady?’
‘It doesn’t,’ Sharpe grunted, ‘and there isn’t a campaign.’
Pohlmann laughed. ‘Then why do you accept my invitations to supper?’
The truth, and Sharpe knew it, was that he was obsessed with the Lady Grace. From the moment he woke in the morning until he finally slept he thought of little but her. She seemed untouchable, unemotional, unapproachable, and that only made his obsession worse. She had spoken to him once, then never again, and when Sharpe did meet her at suppertime in the captain’s cuddy and tried to engage her in conversation she turned away as though his presence offended her.
Sharpe thought of her constantly, and constantly watched for her, though he took good care not to show his obsession. But it was there, gnawing at him, filling the tedious hours as the Calliope thumped her way across the Indian Ocean. The winds stayed kind and each day the first officer, Lieutenant Tufnell, reported on the convoy’s progress: seventy-two miles, sixty-eight miles, seventy miles, always about the same distance.
The weather was fine and dry, yet even so the ship seemed to be rotting with damp below the decks. Even in the tropic winds that blew the convoy southwestwards some water slopped through the closed lower gunports, and the lower-deck steerage where Sharpe slept was never dry; his blankets were damp, the timbers of the ship were dank, indeed the whole Calliope, wherever the sun did not shine, was weeping with water, stinking and decaying, fungus-ridden and rat-infested. Seamen constantly manned the ship’s four pumps and the water slopped out of the elm tubes into gutters on the lower deck which led the stinking bilge water overboard, but however much they pumped, more always needed to be sucked out of the hull.
The goats had an infection and most died in the first fortnight so there was no fresh milk for the steerage passengers. The fresh food was soon used up, and what was left was salted, tough, rancid and monotonous. The water was foul, discoloured and stank, useful only for making strong tea, and though Sharpe’s filtering machine removed some of the impurities, it did nothing to improve the taste, and after two weeks the filter was so clogged with brown muck that he hurled the machine into the ocean. He drank arrack and sour beer or, in Captain Cromwell’s cuddy, the wine which was little better than vinegar.
Breakfast was at eight every morning. The steerage passengers were divided into groups of ten and the men took it in turn to fetch each mess a cauldron of burgoo from the galley in the forecastle. The burgoo was a mixture of oatmeal and scraps of beef fat that had simmered all night on the galley stove. Dinner was at mid-day and was another burgoo, though this sometimes had larger scraps of meat or fibrous pieces of dried fish floating in the burned and lumpy oatmeal. On Sundays there was salt fish and ship’s biscuits that were as hard as stone, yet even so were infested with weevils that needed to be tapped out. The biscuits had to be chewed endlessly so that it was like masticating a dried brick that was occasionally enlivened by the juice of an insect that had escaped the tapping. Tea was served at four, but only to the passengers who travelled in the stern of the ship, while the steerage passengers had to wait for supper, which was more dried fish, biscuits and a hard cheese in which red worms made miniature tunnels. ‘Human beings should not be expected to eat such things,’ Malachi Braithwaite said, shuddering after one particularly evil supper. He had joined Sharpe on the main deck to watch the sun set in red-gold splendour.
‘You ate them on the way out, didn’t you?’ Sharpe asked.
‘I travelled out as a private secretary to a London merchant,’ Braithwaite said grandly, ‘and he accommodated me in the great cabin and fed me at his own expense. I told his lordship as much, but he refuses the expense.’ He sounded hurt. Braithwaite was a proud man, but poor, and very aware of any insults to his self-esteem. He spent his afternoons in the roundhouse where, he told Sharpe, Lord William was compiling a report for the Board of Control. The report would suggest the future governance of India and Braithwaite enjoyed the work, but late every afternoon he was dismissed back to the lower deck and his gnawing misery. He was ashamed of being made to travel steerage, he hated being one of the gun crews and he detested fetching the mess cauldrons, believing that chore put him in the place of a menial servant, no better than Lord William’s valet or Lady Grace’s maid. ‘I am a secretary,’ he protested once to Sharpe. ‘I was at Oxford!’
‘How did you become Lord William’s secretary?’ Sharpe now asked him.
Braithwaite thought about the question as though a trap lay within it, then decided it was safe to answer. ‘His original secretary died in Calcutta. Of snake-bite, I believe, and his lordship was kind enough to offer me the position.’
‘Now you regret taking it?’
‘Indeed I do not!’ Braithwaite said sharply. ‘His lordship is a prominent man. He is intimate with the Prime Minister.’ This was confided in an admiring tone. ‘Indeed the report we work on will not just be for the Board of Control, but will go directly to Pitt himself! Much depends on his lordship’s conclusions. Maybe even a cabinet post? His lordship could well become Foreign Secretary within a year or two, and what would that make me?’
‘An overworked secretary,’ Sharpe said.
‘But I will have influence,’ Braithwaite insisted earnestly, ‘and his lordship will have one of the grandest houses in London. His wife will preside over a salon of wit and vast influence.’
‘If she’ll ever talk to anyone,’ Sharpe commented drily. ‘She don’t say a word to me.’
‘Of course she doesn’t,’ Braithwaite said crossly. ‘She is accustomed to nothing but the highest discourse.’ The secretary looked to the quarterdeck, but if he hoped to see Lady Grace he was disappointed. ‘She is an angel, Sharpe,’ he blurted out. ‘One of the best women I have ever had the privilege of meeting. And with a mind to match! I have a degree from Oxford, Mister Sharpe, yet even I cannot match her ladyship’s knowledge of the Georgics.’
Whatever the hell they were, Sharpe thought. ‘She is a rare-looking woman,’ he said mildly, wondering whether that would provoke Braithwaite into another burst of candour.
It did. ‘Rare-looking?’ Braithwaite asked sarcastically. ‘She is a beauty, Mister Sharpe, the very quintessence of feminine virtue, looks and intelligence.’
Sharpe laughed. ‘You’re in love with her, Braithwaite.’
The secretary gave Sharpe a withering look. ‘If you were not a soldier with a reputation for savagery, Sharpe, I should deem that statement impertinent.’
‘I might be the savage,’ Sharpe said, rubbing salt into the secretary’s wounded pride, ‘but I’m the one who had supper with her tonight.’
Though Lady Grace had neither spoken with him that night, nor even appeared to notice his presence in the cuddy where the food was scarcely better than the slop provided in steerage. The richer passengers were served the dead goats that were stewed and served in a vinegar sauce and Captain Cromwell was particularly fond of peas and pork, though the peas were dried to the consistency of bullets and the meat was salted to the texture of ancient leather. There was a suet pudding most nights, then port or brandy, coffee, cigars and whist. Eggs and coffee were served for breakfast, luxuries that never appeared in steerage, but Sharpe was not invited to share breakfast with the privileged folk.
On the nights when he ate in steerage Sharpe would go on deck afterwards and watch the sailors dancing to a four-man orchestra of two violins, a flute and a drummer who beat his hands on the end of a half-barrel. One night there was a sudden and violent down-pour of rain that drummed on the sails. Sharpe stood bare-chested, head back and mouth agape to drink the clean water, but most of the rain which fell on the ship seemed to find its way between decks that became ever more rank. Everything seemed to rot, rust or grow fungus. On Sundays the purser held divine service and the four-man orchestra played while the passengers, the richer standing on the quarterdeck and the less privileged beneath them on the main deck, sang ‘Awake, my soul, and with the sun thy daily stage of duty run’. Major Dalton sang gustily, beating time with his hand. Pohlmann seemed amused by the services, while Lord William and his wife, contravening the captain’s orders, did not bother to attend. When the hymn was done the purser read a toneless prayer that Sharpe and those other passengers who were paying attention found alarming. ‘O most glorious and gracious Lord God, who dwellest in heaven, but beholdest all things below; Look down, we beseech thee, and hear us, calling out of the depths of misery and out of the jaws of this death which is ready now to swallow us up. Save, Lord, or else we perish.’
Yet they did not perish and the sea and the miles slipped endlessly by, untouched by any speck of land or hostile sail. At noon the officers solemnly sighted the sun with their sextants, then hurried to Captain Cromwell’s cabin to work out the mathematics, though, in the middle of the third week, a day at last came when the sky was so thick with cloud that no sight could be taken. Captain Cromwell was overheard to remark that the Calliope was in for a blow, and all day he strode about the quarterdeck with a look of grim pleasure. The wind rose slowly but surely, making the passengers stagger on the canted deck and hold onto their hats. Many of those who had overcome their early seasickness now succumbed again, and the spray breaking on the ship’s bluff bows rattled on the sails as it flew down the deck. Late in the afternoon it began to rain so heavily that grey veils hid all but the closest vessels of the convoy.
Sharpe was again invited to be Pohlmann’s guest for supper and, when he went below to change into his least dirty shirt and to pull on his coat that had been neatly mended by a foretop man, he found the steerage slopping with water and vomit. Children cried, a tethered dog yelped. Braithwaite was draped over a gun, heaving dry. Every time the ship dipped to the wind water forced its way through the locked gunports and rippled across the deck, and when she buried her bows into the sea a veritable flood came through the hawseholes and rolled down the sopping planks.
Water cascaded down the companionway as Sharpe climbed back to the remains of the daylight. He staggered across the quarterdeck where six men hung onto the wheel and banged through the poop door where he was thrown across the small hallway before cannoning back into the cuddy where only the captain, Major Dalton, Pohlmann, Mathilde and Lord William and Lady Grace waited. The other three passengers were all either seasick or were eating in their own cabins.
‘You’re the baron’s guest again?’ Cromwell asked pointedly.
‘You surely do not mind Mister Sharpe being my guest?’ Pohlmann enquired hotly.
‘He eats from your purse, Baron, not mine,’ Cromwell growled, then waved Sharpe into his usual chair. ‘For God’s sake, sit, Mister Sharpe.’ He held up a massive hand, then paused as the ship rolled. The bulkheads shifted alarmingly and the cutlery slid across the table. ‘May the good Lord bless these victuals,’ Cromwell said, ‘and make us grateful for their sustenance, in the name of the Lord, amen.’
‘Amen,’ Lady Grace said distantly. Her husband looked pale and gripped the table’s edge as if it might alleviate the boat’s quick motion. Lady Grace, on the other hand, was quite unaffected by the weather. She wore a red dress, cut low, and had a string of pearls around her slim neck. Her dark hair was piled at her crown and held in place with pearl-encrusted pins.
Fiddles had been placed about the table so that the knives, forks, spoons, glasses, plates and cruets would not slide off, but the lurching of the ship made the meal a perilous experience. Cromwell’s steward served a thick soup first. ‘Fresh fish!’ Cromwell boasted. ‘All caught this morning. I have no idea what kind of fish they were, but no one has yet died of an unknown fish on my ship. They’ve died of other things, of course.’ The captain eagerly spooned the bony gruel into his mouth, expertly holding the plate so that the contents did not spill as the ship tilted. ‘Men fall from the upper works, folk die of fever and I’ve even had a passenger kill herself for unrequited love, but I’ve never had one die of fish poison.’
‘Unrequited love?’ Pohlmann asked, amused.
‘It happens, Baron, it happens,’ Cromwell said with relish. ‘It is a well-attested phenomenon that a sea voyage spurs the baser instincts. You will forgive me mentioning the matter, milady,’ he added hastily to Lady Grace, who ignored his coarseness.
Lord William took one taste of the fish soup and turned away, leaving his plate to slop itself empty on the table. Lady Grace managed a few spoonfuls, but then, disliking the taste, pushed the malodorous mess away. The major ate heartily, Pohlmann and Mathilde greedily and Sharpe warily, not wanting to disgrace himself with a display of ill manners in front of Lady Grace. Fish bones were caught in his teeth and he tried to extricate them subtly, for he had seen Lady Grace shudder whenever Pohlmann spat them onto the table.
‘Cold beef and rice next,’ the captain announced, as though he were offering a treat. ‘So tell me, Baron, how did you make your fortune? You traded, is that right?’
‘I traded, Captain, yes.’
Lady Grace looked up sharply, frowned, then pretended the conversation did not interest her. The wine decanters rattled in their metal cage. The whole ship creaked, groaned and shuddered whenever a stronger wave exploded at her bows.
‘In England,’ Cromwell said pointedly, ‘the aristocracy do not trade. They think it beneath them.’
‘English lords have land,’ Pohlmann said, ‘but my family lost its estates a hundred years ago, and when one does not possess land one must work for a living.’
‘Doing what, pray?’ Cromwell demanded. His long wet hair lay lank on his shoulders.
‘I buy, I sell,’ Pohlmann said, evidently unworried by the captain’s inquisition.
‘And successfully, too!’ Captain Cromwell appeared to be making conversation to take his guests’ minds off the ship’s pitching and rolling. ‘So now you take your profits home, and quite right too. So where is home? Bavaria? Prussia? Hesse?’
‘Hanover,’ Pohlmann said, ‘but I have been thinking that perhaps I should buy a house in London. Lord William can give me advice, no doubt?’ He smiled across the table at Lord William who, for answer, abruptly stood, clutched a napkin to his mouth and bolted from the cuddy. Spray spattered on the closed panes of the skylight and some dripped through onto the table.
‘My husband is a poor sailor,’ Lady Grace said calmly.
‘And you, my lady, are not?’ Pohlmann asked.
‘I like the sea,’ she said, almost indignantly. ‘I have always liked the sea.’
Cromwell laughed. ‘They say, my lady, that those who would go to sea for pleasure would visit hell as a pastime.’
She shrugged, as if what others said made no difference to her. Major Dalton took up the burden of the conversation. ‘Have you ever been seasick, Sharpe?’
‘No, sir, I’ve been lucky.’
‘Me neither,’ Dalton said. ‘My mother always believed beefsteak was a specific against the condition.’
‘Beefsteak, fiddlesticks,’ Cromwell growled. ‘Only rum and oil will serve.’
‘Rum and oil?’ Pohlmann asked with a grimace.
‘You force a pint of rum down the patient’s throat and follow it with a pint of oil. Any oil will do, even lamp oil, for the patient will void it utterly, but next day he’ll feel lively as a trivet.’ Cromwell turned a jaundiced eye on Lady Grace. ‘Should I send the rum and oil to your cabin, my lady?’
Lady Grace did not even bother to reply. She gazed at the panelling where a small oil painting of an English country church swayed to the ship’s motion.
‘So how long will this storm last?’ Mathilde asked in her accented English.
‘Storm?’ Cromwell cried. ‘You think this is a storm? This, ma’am, is nothing but a blow. Nothing but a morsel of wind and rain that will do no harm to man or ship. A storm, ma’am, is violent, violent! This is gentle to what we might meet off the Cape.’
No one had the stomach for a dessert of suet and currants, so instead Pohlmann suggested a hand of whist in his cabin. ‘I have some fine brandy, Captain,’ he said, ‘and if Major Dalton is willing to play we can make a foursome? I know Sharpe won’t play.’ He indicated himself and Mathilde as the other players, then smiled at Lady Grace. ‘Unless I could persuade you to play, my lady?’
‘I don’t,’ she said in a tone suggesting that Pohlmann had invited her to wallow in his vomit. She stood, somehow managing to stay graceful despite the lurching of the ship, and the men immediately pushed their chairs back and stepped aside to let her leave the cabin.
‘Stay and finish your wine, Sharpe,’ Pohlmann said, leading his whist players out.
Sharpe was left alone in the cuddy. He finished his wine, then fetched the decanter from its metal frame on the sideboard, and poured himself another glass. Night had fallen and the frigate, anxious that the convoy should not scatter in the darkness, was firing a gun every ten minutes. Sharpe told himself he would stay for three guns, then make his way into the foetid hold and try to sleep.
Then the door opened and Lady Grace came back into the cuddy. She had a scarf about her neck, hiding the pearls and the smooth white skin of her shoulders. She gave Sharpe an unfriendly glance and ignored his awkward greeting. Sharpe expected her to leave straightaway, assuming she had merely come to fetch something she had left in the cuddy, but to his surprise she sat in Cromwell’s chair and frowned at him. ‘Sit down, Mister Sharpe.’
‘Some wine, my lady?’
‘Sit down,’ she said firmly.
Sharpe sat at the opposite end of the table. The empty brass chandelier swung from the beam, reflecting flashes of the candlelight that came from the two shielded lanterns on the bulkheads. The flickering flames accentuated the high bones of Lady Grace’s face. ‘How well do you know the Baron von Dornberg?’ she asked abruptly.
Sharpe blinked, surprised by the question. ‘Not well, my lady.’
‘You met him in India?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Where?’ she demanded peremptorily. ‘How?’
Sharpe frowned. He had promised not to give away Pohlmann’s identity, so he would need to treat Lady Grace’s insistence tactfully. ‘I served with a Company exploring officer for a while, ma’am,’ he said, ‘and he frequently rode behind enemy lines. That’s when I met P— the baron.’ He thought for a second or two. ‘I maybe met him four times, perhaps five?’
‘Which enemy?’
‘The Mahrattas, ma’am.’
‘So he was a friend to the Mahrattas?’
‘I imagine so, ma’am.’
She stared at him as if she was weighing the truth of his words. ‘He seems very attached to you, Mister Sharpe.’
Sharpe almost swore as the wine glass slid away from him and fell over the fiddle. The glass smashed on the floor, splashing wine across the canvas rug. ‘I did him a service, ma’am, the last time we met. It was after a fight.’
‘He was on the other side?’ she interrupted him.
‘He was with the other side, ma’am,’ Sharpe said carefully, disguising the truth that Pohlmann had been the general commanding the other side. ‘And he was caught up in the rout. I could have captured him, I suppose, but he didn’t seem to pose any harm, so I let him go. He’s grateful for that, I’m sure.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, and seemed about to stand.
‘Why, ma’am?’ Sharpe asked, hoping she would stay.
She relaxed warily, then stared at him for a long time, evidently considering whether to answer, then let go of the table and shrugged. ‘You heard the captain’s conversation with the baron tonight?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘They appear as strangers to each other?’
‘Indeed they do,’ Sharpe agreed, ‘and Cromwell told me as much himself.’
‘Yet almost every night, Mister Sharpe, they meet and talk. Just the two of them. They come in here after midnight and sit across the table from each other and talk. And sometimes the baron’s manservant is here with them.’ She paused. ‘I frequently find it hard to sleep and if the night is fine I will go on deck. I hear them through the skylight. I don’t eavesdrop,’ she said acidly, ‘but I hear their voices.’
‘So they know each other a great deal better than they pretend?’ Sharpe said.
‘So it would seem,’ she answered.
‘Odd, ma’am,’ Sharpe said.
She shrugged as if to suggest that Sharpe’s opinion was of no interest to her. ‘Perhaps they merely play backgammon,’ she said distantly.
She again looked as though she would leave and Sharpe hurried to keep the conversation going. ‘The baron did tell me he might go to live in France, ma’am.’
‘Not London?’
‘France or Hanover, he said.’
‘But you can hardly expect him to confide in you,’ she said scornfully, ‘on the basis of your very slight acquaintance.’ She stood.
Sharpe pushed back his chair and hurried to open the door. She nodded thanks for his courtesy, but a sudden wave heaved the Calliope and made Lady Grace stagger and Sharpe instinctively put a hand out to check her and the hand encircled her waist and took her weight so that she was leaning against him with her face just inches from his. He felt a terrible desire to kiss her and he knew she would not object for, though the ship steadied, she did not step away. Sharpe could feel her slender waist beneath the soft material of her dress. His mind was swimming because her eyes, so large and serious, were on his, and once again, as he had the very first time he glimpsed her, he sensed a melancholy in her face, but then the quarterdeck door banged open and Cromwell’s steward swore as he carried a tray towards the cuddy. Lady Grace twisted from Sharpe’s arm and, without a word, went through the door.
‘Raining buckets, it is,’ the steward said. ‘A bloody fish would drown on deck, I tell you.’
‘Bloody hell,’ Sharpe said, ‘bloody hell.’ He picked the decanter up by the neck, tipped it to his mouth and drained it.
The wind and rain stayed high throughout the night. Cromwell had shortened sail at nightfall and those few passengers who braved the deck at dawn found the Calliope plunging beneath low dark clouds from which black squalls hissed across a white-capped sea. Sharpe, lacking a greatcoat, and unwilling to soak his coat or shirt, went on deck bare-chested. He turned towards the quarterdeck and respectfully bowed his head in acknowledgement of the unseen captain, then half ran and half walked towards the forecastle where the breakfast burgo waited to be fetched. He found a group of sailors at the galley, one of them the grey-haired commander of number five gun, who greeted Sharpe with a tobacco-stained grin. ‘We’ve lost the convoy, sir.’
‘Lost it?’
‘Gone to buggery, ain’t it?’ The man laughed. ‘And not by accident if I knows a thing about it.’
‘And what do you know about it, Jem?’ a younger man asked.
‘More’n you know, and more’n you’ll ever learn.’
‘Why no accident?’ Sharpe asked.
Jem ducked his head to spit tobacco juice. ‘The captain’s been at the wheel since midnight, sir, so he has, and he’s been steering us hard south’ards. Had us on deck in dark of night, hauling the sails about. We be running due south now, sir, instead of sou’west.’
‘The wind changed,’ a man observed.
‘Wind don’t change here!’ Jem said scornfully. ‘Not at this time of year! Wind here be steady as a rock out of the nor’east. Nine days in ten, sir, out the nor’east. You don’t need to steer a ship out of Bombay, sir. You clear the Balasore Roads, hang your big rags up the sticks, and this wind’ll blow you to Madagascar straight as a ball down a tavern alley, sir.’
‘So why has he turned south?’ Sharpe asked.
‘Because we’re a fast ship, sir, and it was grating Peculiar’s nerves to be tied to them slow old tubs of the convoy. You watch him, sir, he’ll have us hanging our shirts in the rigging to catch the wind and we’ll fly home like a seagull.’ He winked. ‘First ship home gets the best prices for the cargo, see, sir?’
The cook ladled the burgoo into Sharpe’s cauldron and Jem opened the forecastle door for Sharpe who almost collided with Pohlmann’s servant, the elderly man who had been so relaxed on his master’s sofa on the first night Sharpe had visited the cabin.
‘Pardonnez-moi,’ the servant said instinctively, stepping hastily back so that Sharpe did not spill the burgoo down his grey clothes.
Sharpe looked at him. ‘Are you French?’
‘I’m Swiss, sir,’ the man said respectfully, then stood aside, though he still looked at Sharpe, who thought the man’s eyes were not like a servant’s eyes. They were like Lord William’s eyes, confident, clever and knowing. ‘Good morning, sir,’ the servant said respectfully, offering a slight bow, and Sharpe stepped past him and carried the steaming burgoo down the rain-slicked main deck towards the aft companionway.
Cromwell chose that moment to appear at the quarterdeck rail and, just as Jem had forecast, he wanted every stitch of sail aloft. He bellowed at the topmen to start climbing, then took a speaking trumpet from the rail and hailed the first lieutenant who was making his way forward. ‘Fly the jib boom spritsail, Mister Tufnell. Lively now! Mister Sharpe, you’ll oblige me by getting dressed. This is an Indiaman, not some sluttish Tyne collier.’
Sharpe went below to eat breakfast and when he came back to the deck, properly dressed, Cromwell had gone to the poop from where he was watching north for fear that the Company frigate might appear to order him back to the convoy, but neither Cromwell, nor the men aloft, saw any sign of the other ships. It appeared that Cromwell had escaped the convoy and could now let Calliope show her speed. And show it she did, for every sail that had been handed at nightfall was now back on the yards, stretching to the wet wind, and the Calliope seemed to churn the sea to cream as she raced southwards.
The wind moderated during the day and the clouds scudded themselves ragged so that by nightfall the sky was again clear and the sea was blue green instead of grey. There was an air of ebullience on board, as though by freeing itself of the convoy the Calliope had brightened everyone’s life. There was the sound of laughter in steerage, and cheers when Tufnell rigged wind scoops to air out the foetid decks. Passengers joined the seamen in dances below the forecastle as the sun sank in a blaze of orange and gold.
Pohlmann brought Sharpe a cigar before supper. ‘I won’t invite you to eat with us tonight,’ he said. ‘Joshua Fazackerly is donating the wine, which means he will feel entitled to bore us all with his legal recollections. It will likely prove a tedious meal.’ He paused, blowing a plume of smoke towards the mainsail. ‘You know why I liked the Mahrattas? There were no lawyers among them.’
‘No law, either,’ Sharpe said.
Pohlmann gave him a sideways glance. ‘True. But I like corrupt societies, Richard. In a corrupt society the biggest rogue wins.’
‘So why go home?’
‘Europe is being corrupted,’ Pohlmann said. ‘The French talk loudly of law and reason, but beneath the talk there is nothing but greed. I understand greed, Richard.’
‘So where will you live?’ Sharpe asked. ‘London, Hanover or France?’
‘Maybe in Italy? Maybe Spain? No, not Spain. I could not stomach the priests. Maybe I shall go to America? They say rogues do well there.’
‘Or perhaps you’ll live in France?’
‘Why not? I have no quarrel with France.’
‘You will if the Revenant finds us.’
‘The Revenant?’ Pohlmann asked innocently.
‘French warship,’ Sharpe said.
Pohlmann laughed. ‘It would be like, how do you say? Finding a needle in a haystack? Although I have always thought it would be easy to find a needle in a haystack. Simply take a girl onto the stack and make love, and you could be quite certain the needle will find her bum. Have you ever made love on a haystack?’
‘No.’
‘I don’t recommend it. It is like those beds the Indian magicians sleep on. But if you do, Richard, make sure you are the one on top.’
Sharpe gazed out across the darkening ocean. There were no whitecaps any more, just an endless vista of slow-heaving waves. ‘How well do you know Cromwell?’ He blurted the question out, torn between a reluctance to raise the German’s suspicions and a desire not to believe in those suspicions at all.
Pohlmann gave Sharpe a glance full of curiosity and not a little hostility. ‘I scarcely know the man,’ he answered stiffly. ‘I met him once or twice when he was ashore in Bombay, because it seemed sensible if we were to get decent accommodation, but otherwise I know him about as well as you do. Why do you ask?’
‘I was wondering if you knew him well enough to find out why he left the convoy?’
Pohlmann laughed, his suspicions allayed by Sharpe’s explanation. ‘I don’t think I know him that well, but Mister Tufnell tells me we are to sail to the east of Madagascar while the convoy goes to the west. We shall make faster time, he reckons, and be home at least two weeks ahead of the other ships. And that will increase the value of the cargo in which the captain has a considerable interest.’ Pohlmann drew on the cigar. ‘You disapprove of his initiative?’
‘There’s safety in numbers,’ Sharpe said mildly.
‘There’s safety in speed, too. Tufnell says we should make at least ninety miles a day now.’ The German threw the remains of his cigar overboard. ‘I must change for supper.’
There was something wrong, Sharpe reckoned, but he could not place it. If Lady Grace was right, then Pohlmann and the captain talked frequently, but Pohlmann claimed he scarcely knew Cromwell, and Sharpe was inclined to believe her ladyship, though for the life of him he could not see how it affected anyone other than Pohlmann and Cromwell.
Two days later land was sighted far to the west. The shout from the masthead brought a rush of passengers to the starboard rail, though no one could see the land unless they were willing to climb into the high rigging, but a belt of thick cloud on the horizon showed where the distant coast lay. ‘Cape East on Madagascar,’ Lieutenant Tufnell announced, and all day the passengers stared at the cloud as though it portended something significant. The cloud was gone the following day, though Tufnell told Sharpe they were still following the Madagascar coast which now lay well beyond the horizon. ‘The next landfall will be the African shore,’ Tufnell said, ‘and there we’ll find a quick current to carry us round to Cape Town.’
The two men spoke on the darkened quarterdeck. It was well past midnight on the second day since the sighting of Cape East and the third night in succession that Sharpe had gone in the small hours to the quarterdeck in hope that Lady Grace would be on the poop. He needed to ask permission to be on the quarterdeck, but the watch officer had welcomed his company every night, unaware why Sharpe wanted to be there. The Lady Grace had not appeared on either of the first two nights, but as Sharpe now stood beside the lieutenant he heard the creak of a door and the sound of soft shoes climbing the stairs to the poop deck. Sharpe waited until the lieutenant went to talk with the helmsman, then he turned and went to the poop deck himself.
A thin sabre-curve of moon glistened on the sea and offered just enough light for Sharpe to see Lady Grace, swathed in a dark cloak, standing beside the stern lantern. She was alone, with no maid to chaperone her, and Sharpe joined her, standing a pace to her left with his hands, like hers, on the rail and he stared, like her, at the smooth, moon-silvered wake that slipped endlessly into the dark. The great mizzen driver sail loomed pale above them.
Neither spoke. She glanced at him when he joined her, but did not walk away. She just stared at the ocean.
‘Pohlmann,’ Sharpe said very quietly, for two panes of the cuddy’s skylight were open and he did not want to be overheard if anyone was below, ‘claims he does not know Captain Cromwell.’
‘Pohlmann?’ Lady Grace asked, frowning at Sharpe.
‘The Baron von Dornberg is no baron, my lady.’ Sharpe was breaking his word to Pohlmann, but he did not care, not when he was standing close enough to smell Lady Grace’s perfume. ‘His name is Anthony Pohlmann and he was once a sergeant in a Hanoverian regiment that was hired by the East India Company, but he deserted. He became a freelance soldier instead, and a very good one. He was the commander of the enemy army at Assaye.’
‘Their commander?’ She sounded surprised.
‘Yes, ma’am. He was the enemy general.’
She stared at the sea again. ‘Why have you protected him?’
‘I like him,’ Sharpe said. ‘I’ve always liked him. He once tried to make me an officer in the Mahratta army and I confess I was tempted. He said he’d make me rich.’
She smiled at that. ‘You want to be rich, Mister Sharpe?’
‘It’s better than being poor, milady.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it is. So why are you telling me about Pohlmann now?’
‘Because he lied to me, ma’am.’
‘Lied to you?’
‘He told me he didn’t know the captain, and you told me that he does.’
She turned to him again. ‘Perhaps I lied to you?’
‘Did you?’
‘No.’ She glanced at the cuddy’s skylight, then walked to the far corner of the deck where a small signal cannon was lashed to the gunwale. She stood in the corner between the cannon and the taffrail and Sharpe, after a moment’s hesitation, joined her there. ‘I don’t like it,’ she said quietly.
‘Don’t like what, ma’am?’
‘That we’re sailing to the east of Madagascar. Why?’
Sharpe shrugged. ‘Pohlmann tells me we’re trying to race ahead of the convoy. Get to London first and bring the cargo to market.’
‘No one sails outside Madagascar,’ she said, ‘no one! We’re losing the Agulhas Current, which means we’ll make slower time. And by coming this way we go much closer to the Île-de-France.’
‘Mauritius?’ Sharpe asked.
She nodded. Mauritius, or the Île-de-France, was the enemy base in the Indian Ocean, an island fortress for raiders and warships with a main harbour protected by treacherous coral reefs and stone forts. ‘I told William all this,’ she said bitterly, ‘but he laughed at me. What would I know? Cromwell knows his business, he says, and I should just leave well alone.’ She fell silent and Sharpe was suddenly and awkwardly aware that she was crying. The realization astonished him, for one moment she had been as aloof as ever, and now she was weeping. She stood with her hands on the rail as the tears ran silently down her cheeks. ‘I hated India,’ she said after a while.
‘Why, milady?’
‘Everything dies in India,’ she said bitterly. ‘Both my dogs died, and then my son died.’
‘Oh, God, I’m sorry.’
She ignored his sympathy. ‘And I almost died. Fever, of course.’ She sniffed. ‘And there were times when I wished I would die.’
‘How old was your son?’
‘Three months,’ she said softly. ‘He was our first and he was so small and perfect, with little fingers and he was just beginning to smile. Just beginning to smile and then he rotted away. Everything rots in India. It turns black and it rots!’ She began to cry harder, her shoulders heaving with sobs and Sharpe simply turned her and drew her towards him and she went to him and wept onto his shoulder.
She calmed after a while. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered and half stepped away, but seemed content to let him keep his hands on her shoulders.
‘There’s no need to be sorry,’ Sharpe said.
Her head was lowered and Sharpe could smell her hair, but then she raised her face and looked at him. ‘Have you ever wanted to die, Mister Sharpe?’
He smiled at her. ‘I always reckoned that would be a terrible waste, my lady.’
She frowned at that answer, then, quite suddenly, she laughed and her face, for the first time since Sharpe had met her, was filled with life and he thought he had never seen, nor ever would see, a woman so lovely. So lovely that Sharpe leaned forward and kissed her. She pushed him away and he stepped back, mortified, readying incoherent apologies, but she was only extricating her arms that had been trapped between their bodies and once they were free she snaked them round his neck and pulled his face to hers and kissed him so fiercely that Sharpe tasted blood from her lip. She sighed, then placed her cheek against his. ‘Oh, God,’ she said softly, ‘I wanted you to do that since the moment I first saw you.’
Sharpe hid his astonishment. ‘I thought you hadn’t noticed me.’
‘Then you are a fool, Richard Sharpe.’
‘And you, my lady?’
She pulled her head back, leaving her arms about his neck. ‘Oh, I’m a fool. I know that. How old are you?’
‘Twenty-eight, milady, as near as I know.’
She smiled and he thought he had never seen a face so transformed by joy, then she leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the lips. ‘My name is Grace,’ she said quietly, ‘and why only as near as you know?’
‘I never knew my mother or father.’
‘Never? So who raised you?’
‘I wasn’t really raised, ma’am. Sorry. Grace.’ He blushed as he said it, for though he could imagine kissing her, and though he could imagine laying her on a bed, he could not accustom himself to using her name. ‘I was in a foundling home for a few years, one that were attached to a workhouse, and after that I fended for myself.’
‘I’m twenty-eight too,’ she said, ‘and I don’t think I’ve ever been happy. That’s why I’m a fool.’ Sharpe said nothing, but just stared at her in disbelief. She saw his incredulity and laughed. ‘It’s true, Richard.’
‘Why?’
There was a murmur of voices from the quarterdeck and a sudden glow of light as the compass in the lantern-lit binnacle was unshielded. Lady Grace stepped away from Sharpe and he from her, and both instinctively turned to stare at the sea. The binnacle light vanished. Lady Grace said nothing for a while and Sharpe wondered if she was regretting what had happened, but then she spoke softly. ‘You’re like a weed, Richard. You can grow anywhere. A big, strong weed and you’ve probably got thorns and stinging leaves. But I was like a rose in a garden: trained and cut back and pampered, but not allowed to grow anywhere except where the gardener wanted me.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m not seeking your pity, Richard. You should never waste pity on the privileged. I’m just talking to find out why I’m here with you.’
‘Why are you?’
‘Because I’m lonely,’ she answered firmly, ‘and unhappy and because you intrigue me.’ She reached out and touched a very gentle finger to the scar on his right cheek. ‘You’re a horribly good-looking man, Richard Sharpe, but if I met you in a London street I’d be very frightened of your face.’
‘Bad and dangerous,’ Sharpe said, ‘that’s me.’
‘And I’m here,’ Lady Grace went on, ‘because there is a joy in doing things we know we should not do. What Captain Cromwell calls our baser instincts, I suppose, and I suppose it will end in tears, but that does not preclude the joy.’ She frowned at him. ‘You look very cruel sometimes. Are you cruel?’
‘No,’ Sharpe said. ‘Perhaps to the King’s enemies. Perhaps to my enemies, but only if they’re as strong as I am. I’m a soldier, not a bully.’
She touched the scar again. ‘Richard Sharpe, my fearless soldier.’
‘I was terrified of you,’ Sharpe admitted. ‘From the moment I saw you.’
‘Terrified?’ She seemed genuinely puzzled. ‘I thought you despised me. You looked at me so grimly.’
‘I never said I didn’t despise you,’ Sharpe said in mock seriousness, ‘but from the moment I saw you I wanted to be with you.’
She laughed. ‘You can be with me here,’ she said, ‘but only on fine nights. I come here when I can’t sleep. William sleeps in the stern cabin,’ she explained, ‘and I sleep on the sofa in the day cabin. My maid uses a truckle bed there.’
‘You don’t sleep with him?’ Sharpe dared to ask.
‘I have to go to bed with him,’ she admitted, ‘but he takes laudanum every night because he insists he cannot sleep. He takes too much and he sleeps like a hog, so when he’s asleep I go to the day cabin.’ She shuddered. ‘And the drug makes him costive, which makes him even more bad-tempered.’
‘I have a cabin,’ Sharpe said.
She looked at him, unsmiling, and Sharpe feared he had offended her, but then she smiled. ‘To yourself?’
He nodded. ‘You’ll like it. It’s seven foot by six with walls of damp wood and clammy canvas.’
‘And you swing in your lonely hammock there?’ she asked, still smiling.
‘Hammock be blowed,’ Sharpe said, ‘I’ve a proper hanging cot with a damp mattress.’
She sighed. ‘And not six months ago a man offered me a palace with walls of carved ivory, a garden of fountains, and a pavilion with a bed of gold. He was a prince, and I must say he was very delicate about it.’
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