Читать книгу Sharpe 3-Book Collection 3: Sharpe’s Trafalgar, Sharpe’s Prey, Sharpe’s Rifles - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 14

Two mornings later a sail was sighted, the first since the Calliope had left the convoy. It was dawn and the sky above unseen Madagascar was still dark when a topman saw the first sunlight reflect from a distant sail off the starboard bow. Captain Cromwell, summoned from his cabin by Lieutenant Tufnell, appeared agitated. He was wearing a flannel nightgown and his long hair was twisted into a bun at the nape of his neck. He stared at the strange ship’s sails through an ancient telescope. ‘It ain’t a native ship,’ Sharpe heard him say. ‘They’re proper topsails. Christian canvas, that.’ Cromwell ordered the main-deck guns to be unlashed. Powder was brought up from the magazines while Cromwell changed into his usual uniform. Tufnell went to the mainmast crosstrees equipped with a telescope. He stared for a long time, then shouted that he thought the distant vessel was a whaler. Cromwell seemed relieved, but left the powder charges on deck just in case the strange ship proved to be a privateer.

It was the best part of an hour before the distant ship could be seen from the Calliope’s deck and its presence brought the passengers on deck to stare at the stranger. Like the glimpse of land, this was a break in the journey’s tedium and Sharpe gazed with the rest, though he had an advantage over most of the passengers, for he possessed a telescope. The instrument was a marvel, a beautiful spyglass made by Matthew Berge of London and inscribed with the date of the battle of Assaye. Sir Arthur Wellesley had given the telescope to Sharpe, with his thanks engraved above the date, though he had been his usual distant and diffident self as he handed the glass over. ‘I would not have you think I was unmindful of the service you did me,’ the general had said awkwardly.

‘I was just glad to be there, sir,’ Sharpe had answered just as awkwardly.

Sir Arthur had forced himself to say something more. ‘Remember, Mister Sharpe, that an officer’s eyes are more valuable than his sword.’

‘I’ll remember that, sir,’ Sharpe said, reflecting that the general would have been dead without Sharpe’s sabre. Still, he supposed the advice was good. ‘And thank you, sir,’ Sharpe had said and remembered being obscurely disappointed with the telescope. He had reckoned that a good sword would have been a better reward for saving the general’s life.

Sir Arthur had frowned, but Campbell, one of his aides, had tried to be friendly. ‘So you’re off to join the Rifles, Sharpe?’

‘I am, sir.’

Sir Arthur had cut the conversation short. ‘You’ll be happy there, I’m sure. Thank you, Mister Sharpe. Good day to you.’

And thus Sharpe had become the ungrateful possessor of a telescope that would have been the envy of richer men. He trained it now on the strange ship, which, to his untutored eye, looked a good deal smaller than the Calliope. She was certainly no warship, but appeared to be a small merchantman.

‘She’s a Jonathon!’ Tufnell called from aloft, and Sharpe edged the glass leftwards and saw a faded ensign flying at the far ship’s stern. The flag looked very like the red-and-white-striped banner of the East India Company, but then the wind lifted it and he saw the stars in its upper quadrant and realized she was an American.

Major Dalton had come down to the main deck and now stood beside Sharpe who politely offered the Scotsman the use of the telescope. The major stared at the American ship. ‘She’s carrying powder and shot to Mauritius,’ he said.

‘How do you know, sir?’

‘Because that’s what they do. No French merchantman dare sail in these waters, so the damned Americans supply Mauritius with weaponry. And they have the nerve to call themselves neutral! Still, I’ve no doubt they turn a fine profit, which is all that matters to them. This is a very fine glass, Sharpe!’

‘It was a gift, Major.’

‘A handsome one.’ Dalton handed the glass back and frowned. ‘You look tired, Sharpe.’

‘Not been sleeping that well, Major.’

‘I pray you’re not sickening. The Lady Grace is also looking very peaky. I do hope there isn’t ship fever on board. I recall a brigantine coming into Leith when I was a child and there can’t have been more then three men alive on her, and they were near death’s door. They couldn’t land, of course, poor things. They had to anchor off and let the sickness run its course, which left them all dead.’

The American, confident that the Calliope presented no threat, sailed close to the great Indiaman and the two ships inspected each other as they passed in mid ocean. The American ship was half the Calliope’s length and her main deck was crammed with the longboats that her crew used to stalk and kill whales. ‘Doubtless she’ll drop her cargo on Mauritius,’ Major Dalton observed, ‘then head for the Southern Ocean. A hard life, Sharpe.’

The American crew returned the Calliope’s waves, then she was past and the folk on board the Indiaman could read the whaler’s name and hailing port, which were painted in blue and gold on handsome stern boards. ‘The Jonah Coffin out of Nantucket,’ Dalton said. ‘What extraordinary names they do pick!’

‘Like Peculiar Cromwell?’

‘There is that!’ Dalton laughed. ‘But I can’t imagine our captain painting his name on his boat’s stern, can you? By the way, Sharpe, I’ve donated a pickled tongue for dinner.’

‘Generous of you, sir.’

‘And I owe you a recompense for all the help you’ve been to me,’ Dalton said, referring to his long conversations with Sharpe about the war against the Mahrattas which the major planned to write about in his retirement, ‘so why don’t you join us at noon? The captain’s agreed to let us eat on the quarterdeck!’ Dalton sounded excited, as if dining in the open air would prove a special treat.

‘I don’t want to intrude, Major.’

‘No intrusion, no intrusion! You shall be my guest. I’ve also donated some wine and you can help drink it. Red coat, I fear, Sharpe. Dinner might be a mere cold collation, but Peculiar rightly insists there are no shirtsleeves on the quarterdeck.’

Sharpe had an hour before the dinner was to be served and he went below to brush the red coat and, to his astonishment, found Malachi Braithwaite seated on his travelling chest. The secretary was becoming ever more morose as the voyage continued and now looked up at Sharpe with resentful eyes.

‘Lost your own quarters, Braithwaite?’ Sharpe asked brusquely.

‘I wanted to see you, Sharpe.’ The secretary seemed nervous, unable to meet Sharpe’s eyes.

‘You could have found me on deck,’ Sharpe said and waited, but Braithwaite said nothing, just watched as Sharpe draped the red coat over the edge of the hanging cot and began to brush it vigorously. ‘Well?’ Sharpe asked.

Braithwaite still hesitated. His right hand was fiddling with a loose thread hanging from the sleeve of his faded black coat, but he finally summoned the courage to look at Sharpe, opened his mouth to speak, then lost his courage and closed it again. Sharpe scrubbed at a patch of dirt and finally the secretary found his voice. ‘You entertain a woman at nights,’ he blurted out accusingly.

Sharpe laughed. ‘What if I do? Didn’t they teach you about women at Oxford?’

‘A particular woman,’ Braithwaite said in a tone so filled with resentment that he sounded like a spitting serpent.

Sharpe put the brush on top of his barrel of arrack and turned on the secretary. ‘If you’ve got something to say, Braithwaite, then bloody say it.’

The secretary reddened. The fingers of his right hand were now drumming on the edge of the chest, but he forced himself to continue the confrontation. ‘I know what you’re doing, Sharpe.’

‘You don’t know a bloody thing, Braithwaite.’

‘And if I inform his lordship, as I should, then you can be assured that you will have no career in His Majesty’s army.’ It had taken almost all Braithwaite’s courage to voice the threat, but he was encouraged by a rancour that was eating him like a tapeworm. ‘You’ll have no career, Sharpe, none!’

Sharpe’s face betrayed no emotion as he stared at the secretary, but he was privately appalled that Braithwaite had discovered his secret. Lady Grace had been in this squalid cabin for two nights running, coming long after dark and leaving well before dawn, and Sharpe had thought no one had noticed. They had both believed they were being discreet, but Braithwaite had seen and now he was bitter with envy. Sharpe picked up the brush. ‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’

‘And I’ll ruin her too,’ Braithwaite hissed, then started violently back as Sharpe threw down the brush and turned on him. ‘And I know you deposited valuables with the captain!’ the secretary went on hurriedly, holding up both hands as if to ward off a blow.

Sharpe hesitated. ‘How do you know that?’

‘Everyone knows. It’s a ship, Sharpe. People talk.’

Sharpe looked into the secretary’s shifty eyes. ‘Go on,’ he said softly.

‘My silence can be purchased,’ Braithwaite said defiantly.

Sharpe nodded as though he were considering the bargain. ‘I’ll tell you how I’ll buy your silence, Braithwaite, a silence, by the way, about nothing because I don’t know what you’re talking about. I reckon Oxford addled your brain, but let’s suppose, just for a minute, that I think I know what you’re suggesting. Shall we agree to that?’

Braithwaite nodded cautiously.

‘And a ship is a very small place, Braithwaite,’ Sharpe said, seating himself beside the gangly secretary, ‘and you can’t escape me on board this ship. And that means that if you open your sordid mouth to tell anyone anything, if you say even one bloody word, then I’ll kill you.’

‘You don’t understand …’

‘I do understand,’ Sharpe interrupted, ‘so shut your mouth. In India, Braithwaite, there are men called jettis who kill by wringing their victims’ necks like chickens.’ Sharpe put his hands on Braithwaite’s head and began to twist it. ‘They twist it all the bloody way round, Braithwaite.’

‘No!’ the secretary gasped. He fumbled at Sharpe’s hands with his own, but he lacked the strength to free himself.

‘They twist it till their victim’s eyes are staring out over his arse and his neck gives way with a crack.’

‘No!’ Braithwaite could barely speak, for his neck was being twisted hard round.

‘It’s not really a crack,’ Sharpe went on in a conversational tone, ‘more a kind of grating creak, and I’ve often wondered if I could do it myself. It’s not that I’m afraid of killing, Braithwaite. I wouldn’t have you think that. I’ve killed men with guns, with swords, with knives and with my bare hands. I’ve killed more men, Braithwaite, than you can imagine in your worst nightmare, but I’ve never wrung a man’s neck till it creaked. But I’ll start with you. If you do anything to hurt me, or anything to hurt any lady I know, then I’ll twist your head like a cork in a bloody bottle, and it’ll hurt. My God, it’ll hurt.’ Sharpe gave the secretary’s neck a sudden jerk. ‘It’ll hurt more than you know, and I promise you that it will happen if you say so much as one single bloody word. You’ll be dead, Braithwaite, and I won’t give a rat’s droppings about doing it. It’ll be a real pleasure.’ He gave the secretary’s neck a last twist, then let go.

Braithwaite gasped for breath, massaging his throat. He gave Sharpe a scared glance, then tried to stand, but Sharpe hauled him back onto the chest. ‘You’re going to make me a promise, Braithwaite,’ Sharpe said.

‘Anything!’ All the fight had gone from the man now.

‘You’ll say nothing to anybody. And I’ll know if you do, I’ll know, and I’ll find you, Braithwaite. I’ll find you and I’ll wring your scrawny neck like a chicken.’

‘I won’t say a word!’

‘Because your accusations are false, aren’t they?’

‘Yes.’ Braithwaite nodded eagerly. ‘Yes, they are.’

‘You’re having dreams, Braithwaite.’

‘I am, I am.’

‘Then go. And remember I’m a killer, Braithwaite. When you were at Oxford learning to be a bloody fool I was learning how to kill folk. And I learned well.’

Braithwaite fled and Sharpe stayed seated. Damn, he thought, damn and damn and damn again. He reckoned he had frightened the secretary into silence, but Sharpe was still scared. For if Braithwaite had found out, who else might discover their secret? Not that it mattered for Sharpe, but it mattered mightily to Lady Grace. She had a reputation to lose. ‘You’re playing with fire, you bloody fool,’ he told himself, then retrieved his brush and finished cleaning his coat.

Pohlmann seemed surprised that Sharpe should be a guest at dinner, but he greeted him effusively and shouted at the steward to fetch another chair onto the quarterdeck. A trestle table had been placed forward of the Calliope’s big wheel, spread with white linen and set with silverware. ‘I was going to invite you myself,’ Pohlmann told Sharpe, ‘but in the excitement of seeing the Jonathon I quite forgot.’

There was no precedence at this table, for Captain Cromwell was not dining with his passengers, but Lord William made sure he took the table’s head, then cordially invited the baron to sit beside him. ‘As you know, my dear baron, I am compiling a report on the future policy of His Majesty’s government towards India and I would value your opinion on the remaining Mahratta states.’

‘I’m not sure I can tell you much,’ Pohlmann said, ‘for I hardly knew the Mahrattas, but of course I shall oblige you as best I can.’ Then, to Lord William’s evident irritation, Mathilde took the chair on his left and called for Sharpe to sit next to her.

‘I’m the major’s guest, my lady.’ Sharpe explained his reluctance to sit beside Mathilde, but Dalton shook his head and insisted Sharpe take the offered chair.

‘I have a handsome man on either of my sides now!’ Mathilde exclaimed in her eccentric English, earning a look of withering condescension from Lord William. Lady Grace, denied a seat beside her husband, stayed standing until Lord William coldly nodded to the chair beside Pohlmann which meant she would be sitting directly opposite Sharpe. In a superb piece of dumb play she glanced at Sharpe, then raised her eyebrows towards her husband, who shrugged as though there was nothing he could do to alleviate the misfortune of being made to sit opposite a mere ensign, and so the Lady Grace sat. Not eight hours before she had been naked in Sharpe’s hanging bed, but now her disdain of him was cruelly obvious. Fazackerly, the barrister, asked permission to sit beside her and she smiled at him graciously as though she was relieved to have a dinner companion who could be relied on to make civilized conversation.

‘Sixty-nine miles,’ Lieutenant Tufnell said, joining the passengers and announcing the results of the noon sight. ‘We’d hoped to do better, much better, but the wind frets.’

‘My wife,’ Lord William said, shaking out his napkin, ‘claims we would make faster progress if we sailed inside Madagascar. Is she right, Lieutenant?’ His voice suggested that he hoped she was not.

‘She is indeed right, my lord,’ Tufnell said, ‘for there is a prodigious current down the African coast, but the Madagascar Straits are liable to be very stormy. Very stormy. And the captain deemed we might do better outside, which we will if the wind stirs itself.’

‘You see, Grace?’ Lord William looked at his wife. ‘The captain evidently knows his business.’

‘I thought we were in a hurry to be first back to London,’ Sharpe observed to Tufnell.

The first lieutenant shrugged. ‘We anticipated stronger winds. Now, shall I carve? Major, perhaps you will pass the coleslaw? Sharpe? That is a chitney in the covered dish, or should I say chatna? Chutney, perhaps? Baron, you might pour some wine? We’re indebted to Major Dalton for the wine and for this very fine tongue.’

The guests murmured their appreciation of Dalton’s generosity, then watched as Tufnell carved. The first lieutenant passed the plates up the table and, as a stronger wave heaved the ship, one of the plates slipped from Major Dalton’s hand to spill its thick slices of pickled tongue onto the linen cloth. ‘Lapsus linguae,’ Fazackerly said gravely, and was rewarded with instant laughter.

‘Very good!’ Lord William said. ‘Very good!’

‘Your lordship is too kind,’ the barrister acknowledged with an inclination of his head.

Lord William leaned back in his chair. ‘You did not laugh, Mister Sharpe,’ he observed silkily. ‘Perhaps you do not approve of puns?’

‘Puns, my lord?’ Sharpe knew he was being made a fool, but did not see any way out except to let it happen.

‘Lapsus linguae,’ Lord William said, ‘means a slip of the tongue.’

‘I’m glad you told me,’ a strong voice came from the far end of the table, ‘because I didn’t know what it meant either. And it’s not much of a joke even when you do know.’ The speaker was Ebenezer Fairley, the wealthy merchant who was returning with his wife after making his fortune in India.

Lord William looked at the nabob, who was a corpulent man of blunt and straightforward views. ‘I doubt, Fairley,’ Lord William said, ‘that Latin is a desideratum in business, but knowledge of it is an attribute of a gentleman, just as French is the language of diplomacy, and we shall need all the gentlemen and diplomacy that we can muster if this new century is to be a time of peace. The aim of civilization is to subdue barbarity’ – he flicked a scornful glance at Sharpe – ‘and cultivate prosperity and progress.’

‘You think a man cannot be a gentleman unless he speaks Latin?’ Ebenezer Fairley asked indignantly. His wife frowned, perhaps feeling that her husband should not be belligerent with an aristocrat.

‘The arts of civilization,’ Lord William said, ‘are the highest achievements and every gentleman should aim high. And officers’ – he did not look at Sharpe, but everyone around the table knew who he meant – ‘should be gentlemen.’

Ebenezer Fairley shook his head in astonishment. ‘You surely wouldn’t deny the King’s commission to men who can’t speak Latin?’

‘Officers should be educated,’ Lord William insisted, ‘properly educated.’

Sharpe was about to say something utterly tactless when a foot descended on his right shoe and pressed hard. He glanced at Lady Grace who was taking no notice of him, but it was her foot nonetheless. ‘I quite agree with you, my dear,’ Lady Grace said in her coldest voice, ‘uneducated officers are a disgrace to the army.’ Her foot slid up Sharpe’s ankle.

Lord William, unaccustomed to his wife’s approval, looked mildly surprised, but rewarded her with a smile. ‘If the army is to be anything other than a rabble,’ he decreed, ‘it must be led by men of breeding, taste and manners.’

Ebenezer Fairley grimaced in disgust. ‘If Napoleon lands his army in Britain, my lord, you won’t care whether our officers talk in Latin, Greek, English or Hottentot, so long as they know their business.’

Lady Grace’s foot pressed harder on Sharpe’s, warning him to be circumspect.

Lord William sneered. ‘Napoleon will not land in Britain, Fairley. The navy will see to that. No, the Emperor of France’ – he invested the title with a superb scorn – ‘will strut and posture for a year or so yet, but he’ll make a mistake sooner or later and then there’ll be another government in France. How many have we had in the last few years? We’ve had a republic, a directorate, a consulate and now an empire! An empire of what? Of cheese? Of garlic? No, Fairley, Bonaparte won’t last. He’s an adventurer. A cutthroat. He’s safe so long as he wins victories, but no mere cutthroat wins for ever. He’ll be defeated one day, and then we shall have serious men in Paris with whom we can do serious business. Men with whom we can make peace. It’ll come soon enough.’

‘I trust your lordship’s right,’ Fairley said dubiously, ‘but for all we know this fellow Napoleon might have crossed the Channel already!’

‘His navy will never put to sea,’ Lord William insisted. ‘Our navy will see to that.’

‘I have a brother in the navy,’ Tufnell said mildly, ‘and he tells me that if the wind blows too strong from the east then the blockade ships run for shelter and the French are free to leave port.’

‘They haven’t sailed in ten years,’ Lord William observed, ‘so I think we can sleep safe in our beds.’ Lady Grace’s foot slid up and down Sharpe’s calf.

‘But if the Emperor doesn’t invade Britain,’ Pohlmann asked, ‘who will defeat France?’

‘My money’s on the Prussians. On the Prussians and Austrians.’ Lord William seemed very certain.

‘Not the British?’ Pohlmann asked.

‘We don’t have a dog in the European rat pit,’ Lord William said. ‘We should save our army’ – he glanced at Sharpe – ‘such as it is, to protect our trade.’

‘You think we’d be wasted fighting the French?’ Sharpe asked. Lady Grace’s foot pressed warningly on his.

Lord William contemplated Sharpe for a moment, then shrugged. ‘The French army would destroy ours in a day,’ he said with a sneer. ‘You might have seen some victories over Indian armies, Sharpe, but that is hardly the same as facing the French.’

The foot pressed harder on Sharpe’s instep.

‘I think we would acquit ourselves nobly,’ Major Dalton averred, ‘and the Indian armies were not to be despised, my lord, not to be despised at all.’

‘Fine troops!’ Pohlmann said warmly, then hastily added, ‘Or so I’m told.’

‘It isn’t the quality of the troops,’ Lord William said, nettled, ‘but their leadership. Good Lord! Even Arthur Wellesley beat the Indians! He’s a distant cousin of yours, ain’t he, my dear?’ He did not wait for his wife to answer. ‘And he was never very bright. A dunce at school.’

‘You were at school with him, my lord?’ Sharpe asked, interested.

‘Eton,’ Lord William said curtly. ‘And my younger brother was there with Wellesley who was no damn good at Latin. He left early, I believe. Wasn’t up to the place.’

‘He learned to cut throats, though,’ Sharpe said.

‘Didn’t he just!’ the major agreed eagerly. ‘You were at Argaum, Sharpe. Did you see him muster those sepoys? Line broken, enemy raining shot like hail, cavalry lurking on the flank and there’s your cousin, ma’am, cool as you like, bringing the fellows back into line.’

‘Arthur is a very distant cousin,’ Grace said, smiling at Dalton, ‘though I am glad of your good opinion of him, Major.’

‘And of Sharpe’s good opinion, I hope?’ Dalton said.

Lady Grace shuddered as if to suggest that it would demean her even to consider an opinion of Sharpe’s, and at the same time she kicked him on the shin so that he almost grinned. Lord William regarded Sharpe coldly. ‘You only like Wellesley, Sharpe, because he made you an officer. Which is properly loyal of you, but scarcely discriminating.’

‘He also had me flogged, my lord.’

That brought silence to the table. Lady Grace alone knew Sharpe had been flogged, for she had drawn her long white fingers across the scars on his back, but the rest of the table stared at him as though he were some strange creature just dragged up on one of the seamen’s fishing lines. ‘You were flogged?’ Dalton asked in astonishment.

‘Two hundred lashes,’ Sharpe said.

‘I’m sure you deserved it,’ Lord William said, amused.

‘As it happens, my lord, I didn’t.’

‘Oh come, come.’ Lord William frowned. ‘Every man says that. Ain’t that right, Fazackerly? Have you ever known a guilty man accept responsibility for his crime?’

‘Never, my lord.’

‘It must have hurt dreadfully,’ Lieutenant Tufnell said sympathetically.

‘That,’ Lord William said, ‘is the point of it. You can’t win battles without discipline, and you can’t have discipline without the lash.’

‘The French don’t use the lash,’ Sharpe said mildly, staring up at the big mainsail and the tangle of canvas and rigging that rose higher still, ‘and you tell me, my lord, that they would destroy us in a day.’

‘That is a question of numbers, Sharpe, numbers. Officers should also know how to count.’

‘I can manage up to two hundred,’ Sharpe said, and was rewarded with another kick.

They finished the meal with dried fruit, then the men drank brandy, and Sharpe slept for much of the afternoon in a hammock slung under the spare spars that ran lengthwise above the main deck and on which the ship’s boats were stored during the voyage. He dreamed of battle. He was running away, pursued by a giant Indian with a spear. He woke drenched in sweat and immediately looked for the sun, for he knew he could not meet Grace until it was dark. Well dark. Until the ship was sleeping and only the night watch was on deck, but Braithwaite, he knew, would be watching and listening in that dark. What the hell was he to do about Braithwaite? He dared not tell Lady Grace about the man’s allegations, for they would terrify her.

He ate in steerage, then paced the main deck as darkness fell. And still he must wait until Lord William had finished playing whist or backgammon and had finally taken his drops of laudanum and gone to bed. The ship’s bell rang the night past and Sharpe waited in the black shadows between the vast mainmast and the bulkhead which supported the front end of the quarterdeck. It was where he waited for Lady Grace, for she could come there unseen by any of the crew on the quarterdeck. She used the stairs that went from the roundhouse down to the great cabin, then through a door which led to the main-deck steerage. She crept between the canvas screens and so out through another door on to the open deck. Then, taking her hand, Sharpe would lead her down into the warm stink of the lower-deck steerage and to his narrow cot where, with a greed that astonished them both, they would cling to each other as though they drowned. The very thought of her made Sharpe dizzy. He was besotted by her, drunk with her, insane for her.

He waited. The rigging creaked. The great mast shifted imperceptibly with gusts of wind. He could hear an officer pacing the quarterdeck, hear the slap of hands on the wheel spokes and the grating of the rudder ropes. The ensign flapped at the stern, the sea ran down the ship’s flanks and still Sharpe waited. He stared up at the stars visible through the sails and thought they looked like the bivouac fires of a great army encamped across the sky.

He closed his eyes, wishing she would come and wishing that the voyage could last for ever. He wished they could be lovers on a ship sailing in an endless night beneath a spread of stars, for once the Calliope reached England she would go away from him. She would go to her husband’s house in Lincolnshire and Sharpe would go to Kent to join a regiment he had never seen.

Then the door opened and she was there, crouching beside him in her vast boat cloak. ‘Come to the poop deck,’ she whispered.

He wanted to ask why, but he bit the question back for there had been an urgency in her voice and he reckoned that if it was important to her then it was important to him too, and so he let her take his hand and lead him back into the main-deck steerage. These berths cost the same as the lower deck, but they were much drier and airier. It was pitch black, for no lights were allowed after nine o’clock except in the roundhouse day cabins where deadlights could be fixed across the small portholes. Lady Grace twined her fingers in his as they groped and felt their way to the door leading to the great cabin, then up the stairs. ‘As I left my cabin,’ she whispered to him at the top of the stairs, ‘I saw Pohlmann go into the cuddy.’

She led him to the door which opened onto the back of the quarterdeck and they stepped out, risking the eyes of the helmsman and the duty officer, but if they were seen no one remarked it. They climbed to the poop deck and Lady Grace gestured at the skylight above the cuddy cabin from which, in contravention of Captain Cromwell’s orders, a faint light gleamed.

Creeping softly as children who have stayed up long after their bedtime, Sharpe and Lady Grace went close to the skylight. Four of its ten panes were propped open and Sharpe could hear the murmur of men’s voices. Lady Grace peeped over the edge, then drew back. ‘They’re there,’ she mouthed in his ear.

Sharpe looked through one of the dirty panes and saw three men’s heads bent over the long table. One was Cromwell, the second Pohlmann and Sharpe did not recognize the third. They seemed to be examining a chart, then Pohlmann straightened up and Sharpe ducked back. The smell of cigar smoke came through the open panes.

‘Morgen früh,’ said a voice, only it was not Pohlmann who spoke in German, but another man. Sharpe risked leaning forward again and saw it was Pohlmann’s servant, the man who spoke French and claimed to be Swiss.

‘Morgen früh,’ Pohlmann repeated.

‘These things ain’t certain, Baron,’ Cromwell said.

‘You have done well this far, my friend, so I am sure all will go well tomorrow,’ Pohlmann answered and Sharpe heard the clink of glasses, then he and Grace shrank back because a hand came into sight to close the open panes. The dim light was extinguished and a moment later Sharpe heard Cromwell’s growling voice talking to the helmsman on the quarterdeck.

‘We can’t go down now,’ Grace whispered in his ear.

They went to the dark corner between the signal cannon and the taffrail and there, crouched in the shadows, they kissed, and only then did Sharpe ask if she had heard the German words.

‘They mean “tomorrow morning”,’ Grace said.

‘And the man who said them first,’ Sharpe said, ‘is supposed to be Pohlmann’s servant. What’s a servant doing drinking with his master? I’ve heard him speak French, too, but he claims to be Swiss.’

‘The Swiss, dearest,’ Lady Grace said, ‘speak German and French.’

‘They do?’ Sharpe asked. ‘I thought they talked Swiss.’ She laughed. Sharpe was sitting with his back against the gunwale and she was straddling his lap, her knees either side of his chest. ‘I don’t know,’ he went on, ‘maybe they were just saying that we turn west tomorrow? We’ve been sailing south for days, we have to go west soon.’

‘Not too soon,’ she said. ‘I would like this voyage to last for ever.’ She leaned forward and kissed his nose. ‘I thought you were going to be appallingly rude to William at dinner.’

‘I held my tongue, didn’t I?’ he asked. ‘But only because my shin’s black and blue.’ He touched a finger to her face, marvelling at the delicacy of her looks. ‘I know he’s your husband, my love, but he’s stuffed to his muzzle with rubbish. Wanting officers to speak Latin! What use is Latin?’

Lady Grace shrugged. ‘If the enemy is coming to kill you, Richard, who do you want defending you? A properly educated gentleman who can construe Ovid, or some barbarian cutthroat with a back like a washboard?’

Sharpe pretended to think. ‘If you put it like that, of course, then I’ll take the Ovid fellow.’ She laughed, and it seemed to Sharpe that this was a woman born to happiness, not misery. ‘I missed you,’ he said.

‘I missed you,’ she answered.

He put his hands under the big black cloak to find that she was naked under her nightgown and then they forgot the next morning, forgot Cromwell, forgot Pohlmann and forgot the mysterious servant, for the Calliope was shrouded in the night, sailing beneath a slivered moon as it carried its star-crossed lovers to nowhere.

Captain Peculiar Cromwell was on the quarterdeck all next morning, pacing from larboard to starboard, glowering at the binnacle, pacing again, and his restlessness infected the ship so that the passengers became nervous and constantly glanced at the captain as if expecting him to lose his temper. Speculation flew round the main deck until it was finally agreed that Cromwell was expecting a storm, but the captain made no preparations. No sail was shortened or lashings inspected.

Ebenezer Fairley, the nabob who had responded so angrily to Lord William’s assertions about Latin, came down to the main deck in search of Sharpe. ‘I was hoping, Mister Sharpe, that you were not upset by those fools at dinner yesterday,’ he boomed.

‘By Lord William? No.’

‘Man’s a halfwit,’ Fairley said savagely, ‘saying we should speak Latin! What’s the use of Latin? Or of Greek? He makes me ashamed to be an Englishman.’

‘I took no offence, Mister Fairley.’

‘And his wife’s no better! Treats you like dirt, don’t she? And she won’t even speak to my wife.’

‘She’s a beauty, though,’ Sharpe said wistfully.

‘A beauty?’ Fairley sounded disgusted. ‘Well, aye, I suppose if you like getting splinters every time you touch her.’ He sniffed. ‘But what have either of them ever done except learn Latin? Have they ever planted a field of wheat? Set up a factory? Dug a canal? They were born, Sharpe, that’s all that ever happened to them, they were born.’ He shuddered. ‘I tell you, Sharpe, I’m not a radical man, not me! But there are times when I wouldn’t mind seeing a guillotine outside Parliament. I could find business for it, I tell you.’ Fairley, a tall and heavy-faced man, glanced up at Cromwell. ‘Peculiar’s in an itchy mood.’

‘Folk say there’s a storm coming.’

‘God save the ship, then,’ Fairley said, ‘because I’m carrying three thousand pounds of cargo in this bottom, but we should be safe. I chose the Calliope, Mister Sharpe, because she has a reputation. A good one. Fast and seaworthy, she is, and Peculiar’s a good seaman for all his scowls. This hold, Mister Sharpe, is fair stuffed with valuables because the ship’s got a good name. You can’t beat a good name in business. Did they really flog you?’

‘They did, sir.’

‘And you became an officer?’ Fairley shook his head in rueful admiration. ‘I’ve made a fortune in my time, Sharpe, a rare fortune, and you don’t make a fortune without knowing men. If you want to work for me just say the word. I might be going home to rest my backside, but I’ve still got a business to run and I need good men I can trust. I do business in India, in China and wherever in Europe the damned French let me, and I need capable men. I can only promise you two things, Sharpe, that I’ll work you like a dog and pay you like a prince.’

‘Work for you, sir?’ Sharpe was astonished.

‘You don’t speak Latin, do you? There’s an advantage. And you don’t know trade either, but you can learn that a damned sight easier than you can learn Latin.’

‘I like being a soldier.’

‘Aye, I can see that. And Dalton tells me you’re good at it. But one day, Sharpe, some halfwit like William Hale will make peace with the French because he’s too damned scared of defeat and on that day the army will spit you out like a biscuit weevil.’ He felt inside a waistcoat pocket stretched tight across a paunch that remained undiminished by the ship’s execrable food. ‘Here.’ He passed Sharpe a slip of pasteboard. ‘It’s what my wife calls a carte de visite. Call on me when you want a job.’ The card gave Fairley’s address, Pallisser Hall. ‘I grew up near that house,’ Fairley said, ‘and my father used to clean out its gutters with his bare hands. Now it’s mine. I bought his lordship out.’ He smiled, pleased with himself. ‘There’s no storm coming. Peculiar’s got fleas in his trousers, that’s all. And so he should.’

‘He should?’

‘I’m not happy that we lost the convoy, Sharpe. I don’t approve, but on board ship it’s Peculiar’s word that counts, not mine. You don’t buy a dog and bark yourself, Sharpe.’ He fished a pocket watch out and clicked open its lid. ‘Almost dinner time. The remnants of that tongue, no doubt.’

Midday came and still nothing explained Cromwell’s nervousness. Pohlmann appeared on deck, but went nowhere near the captain, and a few minutes later Lady Grace, attended by her maid, took the air before going to the cuddy for dinner. The wind was lighter than it had been for days, making the Calliope rock in the swell, and some pale-faced passengers were clinging to the lee rail. Lieutenant Tufnell was reassuring. There was no storm coming, he said, for the glass in the captain’s cabin was staying high. ‘The wind’ll be back,’ he told the passengers on the main deck.

‘Are we turning west today?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Tomorrow, probably,’ Tufnell said, ‘southwest, anyway. I rather think our gamble hasn’t paid off and that we should have gone through the Straits. Still, we’re a quick sailor and we should make up the time in the Atlantic.’

‘Sail ho!’ a lookout called from the mainmast. ‘Sail on the larboard bow!’

Cromwell snatched up a speaking trumpet. ‘What kind of sail?’

‘Topsail, sir, can’t see more.’

Tufnell frowned. ‘A topsail means a European ship. Perhaps another Jonathon?’ He looked up at Cromwell. ‘You want to wear ship, sir?’

‘We shall stand on, Mister Tufnell, we stand on.’

‘Wear ship?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Turn away from whoever it is,’ Tufnell said. ‘It don’t matter if it’s a Jonathon, but we don’t want to be playing games with a Frenchie.’

‘The Revenant?’ Sharpe suggested.

‘Don’t even say the name,’ Tufnell answered grimly, reaching out to touch the wooden rail to avert the ill fortune of Sharpe’s suggestion. ‘But if we wore now we could outrun her. She’s coming upwind, whoever she is.’

The lookout shouted again. ‘She’s a French ship, sir.’

‘How do you know?’ Cromwell called back.

‘Cut of her sails, sir.’

Tufnell looked pained. ‘Sir?’ he appealed to Cromwell.

‘The Pucelle is a French-made ship, Mister Tufnell,’ Cromwell snapped. ‘Most likely it’s the Pucelle. We stand on.’

‘Powder on deck, sir?’ Tufnell asked.

Cromwell hesitated, then shook his head. ‘Probably another whaler, Mister Tufnell, probably another whaler. Let us not become unduly excited.’

Sharpe forgot his dinner and climbed to the foredeck where he trained his telescope on the approaching ship. It was still hull down, but he could see two layers of sails above the skyline and make out the flattened shape of the foresails as they fought to gain a purchase on the wind. He lent the glass to the sailors who crowded the foredeck and none liked what they saw. ‘That ain’t the Pucelle,’ one grunted. ‘She’s got a dirty streak on her fore topsail.’

‘Could have washed the sail,’ another suggested. ‘Captain Chase ain’t a man to let dirt stay on a sail.’

‘Well, if it ain’t the Pucelle,’ the first man said, ‘it’s the Revenant, and we shouldn’t be standing on. Shouldn’t be standing on. Don’t make sense.’

Tufnell had gone to the maintop with his own telescope. ‘French warship, sir!’ he called down to the quarterdeck. ‘Black hoops on the mast!’

‘The Pucelle has black hoops,’ Cromwell shouted back. ‘Can you see her flag?’

‘No, sir.’

Cromwell stood irresolute for a moment, then gave an order to the helmsman so that the Calliope clumsily turned towards the west. Sailors ran to man the sheets, trimming the great sails to the wind’s new angle.

‘She’s turning with us, sir!’ Tufnell shouted.

The Calliope was going faster now and her bluff bows were thumping into the waves, and each thump sent a tremor through her tons of oak timbers. The passengers were silent. Sharpe stared through the telescope and saw that the far ship’s hull was above the horizon now and it was painted black and yellow like a wasp.

‘French colours, sir!’ Tufnell shouted.

‘Peculiar left it too bloody late,’ a seaman near Sharpe said. ‘Bloody man thinks he can walk on water.’

Sharpe turned and stared across the main deck at Peculiar Cromwell. Maybe, he thought, the captain had been expecting this. Morgen früh, Sharpe thought, morgen früh, only the rendezvous had come a few minutes late, but then he dismissed the idea. Surely Cromwell had not expected this? But then Sharpe saw Pohlmann gazing forrard with a glass and he remembered that Pohlmann had once commanded French officers. Had he stayed in touch with the French after Assaye? Was he allied with the French? No, Sharpe thought, no. It seemed unthinkable, but then Lady Grace came to the quarterdeck rail and she stared straight at Sharpe, looked pointedly at Cromwell, then back to Sharpe and he knew she was thinking the same unthinkable thought. ‘Are we going to fight?’ a passenger asked.

A seaman laughed. ‘Can’t fight a French seventy-four! And she’ll have big guns, not like our eighteen-pounders.’

‘Can we outrun her?’ Sharpe asked.

‘If we’re lucky.’ The man spat overboard.

Cromwell kept giving the helmsman orders, demanding a point closer to the wind or three points off the wind, and to Sharpe it seemed that the captain was trying to coax the last reserves of speed from the Calliope, but the sailors on the foredeck were disgusted. ‘Just slows us down,’ one of them explained. ‘Every time you turn the rudder it slows you. He should leave well alone.’ He looked at Sharpe. ‘I should hide that glass, sir. Some Frenchie would like that, and yon ship has the legs of us.’

Sharpe ran below. He would have to fetch his jewels from Cromwell’s cabin, but there were other things he also wanted to save and so he stuffed the precious telescope inside his shirt and tied his red officer’s sash across it, then he pulled on his red coat, buckled his sword belt and pushed the pistol into his trouser pocket. Other passengers were trying to hide their more valuable possessions, the children were crying, and then, far away, muffled by distance and the ship’s hull, Sharpe heard a gun.

He climbed back to the main deck and asked Cromwell’s permission to be on the quarterdeck. Cromwell nodded, then looked with amusement at Sharpe’s sabre. ‘Expecting a fight, Mister Sharpe?’

‘Can I retrieve my valuables from your cabin, Captain?’ Sharpe asked.

Cromwell scowled. ‘All in good time, Sharpe, all in good time. I’m busy now and will thank you to let me try and save the ship.’

Sharpe went to the rail. The French ship still looked a long way off, but now Sharpe could see the seas breaking white at the enemy’s stem and a shredding puff of smoke drifting just ahead of its bows. ‘They fired’ – Major Dalton, his heavy claymore at his waist, joined Sharpe at the rail – ‘but the ball fell a long mile short. Tufnell says they weren’t trying to hit us, they just want us to heave to.’

Ebenezer Fairley came to Sharpe’s other side. ‘We should have stayed with the convoy,’ he spat in disgust.

‘A ship like that,’ Dalton said, gazing at the French warship’s massive flank which was thick with gunports, ‘could have chewed up the whole convoy.’

‘We’d have sacrificed the Company frigate,’ Fairley said. ‘That’s what the frigate is for.’ He drummed nervous fingers on the rail. ‘She’s a fast sailor.’

‘So are we,’ Major Dalton said.

‘She’s bigger,’ Fairley said brusquely, ‘and bigger ships sail faster than small ones.’ He turned. ‘Captain!’

‘I am busy, Fairley, busy.’ Cromwell did not look at the merchant.

‘Can you outrun her?’

‘If I am left in peace to practise my trade, perhaps.’

‘What about my cash?’ Lord William demanded. He had joined his wife on deck.

‘The French,’ Cromwell decreed, ‘do not make war on private individuals. The ship and its cargo might be lost, but they will respect private property. If I have time, my lord, I will unlock my cabin. But for now, gentlemen, perhaps you will all let me sail this ship without yapping at me?’

Sharpe glanced at Lady Grace, but she ignored him and he looked back at the French warship. Fairley thumped the rail in his frustration. ‘That bloody Frenchman will make a tidy profit,’ the merchant said bitterly. ‘This hull and cargo must be worth sixty thousand pound. Sixty thousand! Maybe more.’

Twenty for the French, Sharpe thought, twenty for Pohlmann and twenty for Cromwell, a captain who fervently believed the war was lost and that the French would win. A captain who had declared that a man must make his fortune before the French took over the world. And twenty thousand pounds was a real fortune, a sum on which a man could live for ever. ‘They’ve still got to catch us,’ Sharpe tried to reassure Fairley, ‘and they’ll have to get the ship and its cargo back to France. That won’t be easy.’

Fairley shook his head. ‘Doesn’t work like that, Mister Sharpe. They’ll take us to Mauritius and sell the cargo there. There are plenty of neutrals ready to buy this cargo. And like as not they’ll sell the ship too. Next thing you know she’ll be called the George Washington and be sailing out of Boston.’ He spat across the rail. The tiller ropes creaked as Cromwell demanded yet another correction.

‘What about us?’ Sharpe asked.

‘They’ll send us home,’ Fairley said, ‘eventually. Don’t know about you or the major, seeing as you’re in uniform. They might put you in prison.’

‘They’ll parole us, Sharpe,’ Dalton reassured the younger man, ‘and we’ll live at liberty in Port Louis. I hear it’s a pleasant kind of place. And a good-looking young fellow like you will find a surfeit of bored young ladies.’

The Revenant, for it could be no other ship, fired again. Sharpe saw a monstrous billow of white smoke appear high on her bows and a few seconds later the sound of the cannon came rumbling across the water. A fountain of white spray showed a half-mile short of the Calliope.

‘Closer,’ Dalton grunted.

‘We should fire back,’ Fairley growled.

‘She’s too big for us,’ Dalton said sadly.

The two ships were on converging courses and the Calliope was still ahead, but Cromwell’s frequent course corrections were slowing her. ‘A few shots into her rigging might slow her down,’ Fairley suggested.

‘We’ll soon be showing her our stern,’ Dalton said. ‘No guns will bear.’

‘Then move a gun,’ Fairley said angrily. ‘Good God, there must be something we can do!’

The Revenant fired again and this time the ball bounced across the waves like a stone skipping across a pond and finally sank a quarter-mile short of the Calliope. ‘The gun’s getting warmer,’ Dalton said. ‘Another minute or two and she’ll be thumping us.’

Lady Grace abruptly walked across the deck to stand between Dalton and Sharpe. ‘Major’ – she spoke very loudly, so that her husband would know she talked to the respectable Dalton and not to Sharpe – ‘you think he will catch us?’

‘I pray not, ma’am,’ Dalton said, removing his cocked hat. ‘I pray not.’

‘We won’t fight?’ she asked.

‘We cannot,’ Dalton said.

She was wearing wide skirts that, because of her closeness to Sharpe, crushed up against his trousers and he felt her fingers tap his leg. He surreptitiously dropped his hand and she clutched it fiercely, unseen by anyone. ‘But the French will treat us well?’ she asked Dalton.

‘I am sure they will, my lady,’ the major said, ‘and there are a score of gentlemen aboard this ship ready to protect you.’

Grace dropped her voice to scarce above a whisper and, at the same time, gripped Sharpe’s fingers so hard that it hurt. ‘Look after me, Richard,’ she murmured, then turned and walked back to her husband.

Major Dalton followed her, evidently eager to add more reassurance, and Ebenezer Fairley offered Sharpe a crooked grin. ‘So that’s how it is, eh?’

‘What is?’ Sharpe asked, not looking at the merchant.

‘My family always had good ears. Good ears and good eyes. You and her, eh?’

‘Mister Fairley …’ Sharpe began to protest.

‘Don’t be daft, lad. I’m not going to say a word. But you’re a sly one, aren’t you? And so’s she. Good for you, lad, and good for her too. So she ain’t as bad as I thought, eh?’ He frowned suddenly as Cromwell demanded another tweak of the wheel. ‘Cromwell!’ Fairley turned angrily on the captain. ‘Stop fiddling with the rudder, man!’

‘I’ll thank you to go below, Mister Fairley,’ Cromwell said calmly. ‘This is my quarterdeck.’

‘A fair piece of the cargo is mine!’

‘If you do not go below, Fairley, I shall have the bosun escort you.’

‘Damn your insolence,’ Fairley growled, but obediently left the deck.

The Revenant fired again and this time the round shot sank within a few yards of the Calliope’s counter and close enough to spray the gilded stern with water. Cromwell had seen the fountain of water show above his taffrail and its proximity made up his mind. ‘Haul down the colours, Mister Tufnell.’

‘But, sir …’

‘Haul down the colours!’ Cromwell bellowed angrily at Tufnell. ‘Point her upwind,’ he added to the helmsman. The ensign came flapping down from the mizzen gaff and, at the same time, the Calliope turned her bows right round into the wind so that all the great sails hammered against the masts and rigging like demented wings. ‘Furl sails!’ Cromwell shouted. ‘Lively now!’

The wheel turned to and fro by itself, responding to the surges of water that beat against the rudder. Cromwell glowered at his passengers on the quarterdeck. ‘I apologize,’ he snarled, sounding anything other than apologetic.

‘My cash,’ Lord William demanded.

‘Is safe!’ Cromwell snapped. ‘And I have work to do before the Frenchies arrive.’ He stalked off the deck.

It took a few minutes for the Revenant to catch up with the Calliope, but then the French warship hove to off the starboard quarter and lowered a boat. The rail of the French ship was thick with men who stared at their rich prize. All French seamen dreamed of a fat Indiaman loaded with valuables, but Sharpe doubted that any Frenchman had ever gained a prize as easily as this. This ship had been given to the French. He could not prove it, but he was certain of it, and he turned to stare at Pohlmann who, catching his eye, offered a rueful shrug.

Bastard, Sharpe thought, bastard. But for now he had other things to worry about. He must stay near her ladyship and he must be wary of Braithwaite, but, above all, he had to survive. Because there had been treachery and Sharpe wanted revenge.