Читать книгу Sharpe 3-Book Collection 3: Sharpe’s Trafalgar, Sharpe’s Prey, Sharpe’s Rifles - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 13

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.’

‘And were you?’ Sharpe asked, suddenly jealous of the man. ‘Were you delicate?’

‘I froze him.’

‘You’re good at that.’

‘And in the morning,’ she said, ‘I will have to be good at it again.’

‘Yes, my lady, you will.’

She smiled, acknowledging that he understood the necessary deception. ‘But it won’t be light,’ she said, ‘for another three hours.’

‘Four, more like.’

‘And I’ve been wanting to explore the ship,’ she said. ‘All I ever see is the roundhouse, the cuddy and the poop deck.’

He took her hand. ‘It’ll be pitch black below.’

‘I think that would probably help,’ she said gravely. She took her hand from his. ‘You go first,’ she said, ‘and I’ll follow. I’ll meet you on the main deck.’

And so he waited below the break of the quarterdeck and she did follow and he led her below and there they forgot their suspicions of Pohlmann and Cromwell.

Who, most probably, Sharpe thought when the dawn came and he lay astonished and alone again in his bed, had been playing backgammon. He closed his eyes, amazed at his happiness and praying that this voyage could last for ever.