Sharpe 3-Book Collection 3: Sharpe's Trafalgar, Sharpe's Prey, Sharpe's Rifles (26 page)

And just after the sun set, when the west was a furnace blaze, a last bright ray was reflected off a distant sail.

‘Sail on the larboard quarter!’ the lookout shouted. ‘Sail on the larboard quarter.’

Sharpe did not hear the cry. At that moment he would not have heard the last trump, but the rest of the ship heard the news and seemed to quiver with excitement. For the hunt was not lost, it still ran, and the quarry was again in sight.

The happy days followed.

The far ship was indeed the
Revenant
. Chase had never seen the French warship at close quarters and, try as he might, he could not bring the
Pucelle
near enough to see her name, but some of the seamen pressed from the
Calliope
recognized the cut of the Frenchman’s spanker sail. Sharpe stared through his glass and could see nothing strange about that vast sail which hung at the stern of the enemy ship, but the seamen were certain it had been ill-repaired and, as a consequence, hung unevenly. Now the Frenchman raced the
Pucelle
homewards. The ships were almost twins and neither could gain an advantage on the other without the help of weather and the god of winds sent them an equal share.

The
Revenant
was to the west and the two ships sailed northwest to clear the great bulge of Africa and Chase reckoned that would grant the
Pucelle
an advantage once they were north of the equator for then the Frenchman must come eastwards to make his landfall. At night Chase worried he would lose his prey, but morning after morning she was there, ever on the same bearing, sometimes hull down, sometimes nearer, and none of Chase’s seamanship could close the gap any more than Montmorin’s skills could open it. If Chase edged westwards to try and narrow the distance between them then the French ship would inch ahead and Chase would revert to his previous course and curse the lost ground. He prayed constantly that Montmorin would turn eastwards to offer battle, but Montmorin resisted the temptation. He would take his ship to France, or at least to a harbour belonging to France’s ally, Spain, and the men he carried would spur the French into another attempt to make India a British graveyard.

‘He’ll still have to get through our blockade,’ Chase said after supper one evening, then shrugged and tempered his optimism. ‘Though that shouldn’t be difficult.’

‘Why not?’ Sharpe asked.

‘It ain’t a close blockade off Cadiz,’ Chase explained. ‘The big ships stay well out to sea, beyond the horizon. There’ll only be a couple of frigates inshore and Montmorin will brush those aside. No, we have to catch him.’ The captain frowned. ‘You can’t move a pawn sideways, Sharpe!’

‘You can’t?’ They spoke during the first watch which, perversely, ran from eight in the evening until midnight, a time when Chase craved company, and Sharpe had become accustomed to sharing brandy with the captain who was teaching him to play chess. Lord William and Lady Grace were frequent guests, and Lady Grace enjoyed playing the game and was evidently good at it, for she always made Chase frown and fidget as he stared at the board. Lord William preferred to read after supper, though he did once deign to play against Chase and checkmated him inside fifteen minutes. Holderby, the fifth lieutenant, was a keen player, and when he was invited for supper he liked helping Sharpe play against Chase. Sharpe and Lady Grace scrupulously ignored each other during those evenings.

The trade winds blew them northwards, the sun shone, and Sharpe would ever remember those weeks as bliss. With Braithwaite dead, and Lord William Hale immersed in the report he was writing for the British government, Sharpe and Lady Grace were free. They used circumspection, for they had no choice, yet Sharpe still suspected the ship’s crew knew of their meetings. He dared not use her cabin, for fear that Lord William might demand entrance, but she would go to his, gliding across the darkened quarterdeck in a black cloak and usually waiting for the brief commotion as the watch changed until she slipped through Sharpe’s unlocked door which lay close enough to the first lieutenant’s quarters, where Lord William slept, for folk to assume it was there she went, but even so it was hard to remain unseen by the helmsmen. Johnny Hopper, the bosun of Chase’s crew, grinned at Sharpe knowingly, and Sharpe had to pretend not to notice, though he also reckoned the secret was safe with the crew for they liked him and universally disliked the contemptuous Lord William. Sharpe and Grace told each other that they were being discreet, but night after night and even sometimes by day they risked discovery. It was reckless, but neither could resist. Sharpe was delirious with love, and he loved her all the more because she made light of the vast gulf that separated them. She lay with him one afternoon, when a scrap of sunlight spearing through a chink in the scuttle’s deadlight was scribing an oval shape on the opposite bulkhead, and she mentally added up the number of rooms in her Lincolnshire house. ‘Thirty-six,’ she decided, ‘though that doesn’t include the front hall or the servants’ quarters.’

‘We never counted them at home either,’ Sharpe said, and grunted when she dug his ribs with an elbow. They lay on blankets spread on the floor, for the hanging cot was too narrow. ‘So how many servants have you got?’ he asked.

‘In the country? Twenty-three, I think, but that’s just in the house. And in London? Fourteen, and then there are the coachmen and stable boys. I’ve no idea how many of those there are. Six or seven perhaps?’

‘I lose count of mine, too,’ Sharpe said, then flinched. ‘That hurt!’

‘Shh!’ she whispered. ‘Chase will hear. Did you ever have a servant?’

‘A little Arab boy,’ Sharpe said, ‘who wanted to come to England with me. But he died.’ He lay silent, marvelling at the touch of her skin on his. ‘What does your maid think you’re doing?’

‘Lying down in the dark with orders not to be disturbed. I say the sun gives me a headache.’

He smiled. ‘So what will you do when it rains?’

‘I’ll say the rain gives me a headache, of course. Not that Mary cares. She’s in love with Chase’s steward, so she’s glad I don’t need her. She haunts his pantry.’ Grace ran a finger down Sharpe’s belly. ‘Maybe they’ll run away to sea together?’

Sometimes it seemed to Sharpe that he and Grace had run away to sea, and they played a game where they pretended the
Pucelle
was their private ship and its crew their servants and that they would forever be sailing forgiving seas under sunny skies. They never spoke of what waited at journey’s end, for then Grace must go back to her lavish world and Sharpe to his place, and he did not know whether he would ever see her again. ‘We are like children, you and I,’ Grace said more than once, a note of wonder in her voice, ‘irresponsible, careless children.’

In the mornings Sharpe exercised with the marines, in the afternoons he slept, and in the evening he ate his supper with Chase, then waited impatiently until Lord William was in his laudanum-induced sleep and Grace could come to his door. They would talk, sleep, make love, talk again. ‘I haven’t had a bath since Bombay,’ she said one night with a shudder.

‘Nor have I.’

‘But I’m used to having baths,’ she said.

‘You smell good to me.’

‘I stink,’ she said. ‘I stink, and the whole ship stinks. And I miss walking. I love to walk in the country. If I had my way I would never see London again.’

‘You’d like the army,’ Sharpe said. ‘We’re always going for long walks.’

She lay silent for a while, then stroked his hair. ‘I dream sometimes of William’s death,’ she said softly. ‘Not when I’m asleep, but when I’m awake. That’s dreadful.’

‘It’s human,’ Sharpe said. ‘I think of it too.’

‘I wish he’d fall overboard,’ she said. ‘Or slip down a ladder. He won’t though.’ Not without help, Sharpe thought, and he pushed that idea away. Killing Braithwaite was one thing – the private secretary had been a blackmailer – but Lord William had done nothing except be haughty and married to a woman Sharpe loved. Yet Sharpe did think of killing him, though how it could be done he did not know. Lord William was hardly likely to descend into the hold and he was never on deck in the dark of the night when a man might be pushed over the side. ‘If he died,’ Grace said quietly, ‘I’d be wealthy. I would sell the London house and live in the country. I’d make a great library with a fireplace, walk the dogs, and you could live with me. I’d be Mrs Richard Sharpe.’

For a moment Sharpe thought he had misheard her, then he smiled. ‘You’d miss society,’ he said.

‘I hate society,’ she said vehemently. ‘Vapid conversation, stupid people, endless rivalry. I shall be a recluse, Richard, with books from the floor to the ceiling.’

‘And what will I do?’

‘Make love to me,’ she said, ‘and glower at the neighbours.’

‘I reckon I could manage that,’ Sharpe said, knowing it was a dream, except that all it would take was one man’s death to make the dream come true. ‘Is there a gunport in your husband’s cabin?’ he asked, knowing he should not ask the question.

‘Yes, why?’

‘Nothing,’ he said, but he had been wondering whether he could go into the cabin at night and overpower Lord William and heave him through the gunport, but then he dismissed the idea. Lord William’s cabin, like Sharpe’s, was under the poop and close to the ship’s wheel, and Sharpe doubted he could commit murder and dispose of the body without alerting the officer on watch. Even the creak of the opening gunport would be too loud.

‘He’s never ill,’ Grace said on another afternoon when she had risked coming to Sharpe’s cabin. ‘He’s never ill.’

Sharpe knew what she was thinking and he was thinking it himself, but he doubted Lord William would have the decency to die of some convenient disease. ‘Perhaps he’ll be killed in the fight with the
Revenant
,’ Sharpe said.

Grace smiled. ‘He’ll be down below, my love, safe beneath the water line.’

‘He’s a man!’ Sharpe said, surprised. ‘He’ll have to fight.’

‘He’s a politician, my dear, and he assassinates, he does not fight. He will tell me his life is too precious to be risked, and he will really believe it! Though when we reach England he will modestly claim to have played a part in the
Revenant
’s defeat and I, like a loyal wife, will sit there and smile while the company admires him. He is a politician.’

Footsteps sounded outside the cabin, in the space behind the wheel and under the overhang of the poop. Sharpe listened apprehensively, expecting the steps to go away as they usually did, but this time they came right to his door. Grace clutched his hand, then shuddered as a knock sounded. Sharpe did not respond, then the bolted door shook as someone tried to force it open. ‘Who is it?’ Sharpe called, pretending to have been asleep.

‘Midshipman Collier, sir.’

‘What do you want?’

‘You’re wanted in the captain’s quarters, sir.’

‘Tell him I’ll be there in a minute, Harry,’ Sharpe said. His heart was racing.

‘You should go,’ Grace whispered.

Sharpe dressed, buckled his sword belt, leaned over to kiss her, then slipped out of the door. Chase was standing by the larboard shrouds, gazing at the dot on the horizon that was the
Revenant
. ‘You wanted me, sir?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Not me, Sharpe, not me,’ Chase said. ‘It’s Lord William who wants you.’

‘Lord William?’ Sharpe could not keep the surprise from his voice.

Chase raised an eyebrow as if to suggest that Sharpe had brought this trouble on himself, then jerked his head towards his dining cabin. Sharpe felt a rising panic, subdued it by telling himself Braithwaite had not left a damning letter, straightened his red coat, then went to the dining cabin’s door beneath the poop.

Lord William’s voice invited him to come in, Sharpe obeyed and was negligently waved towards a chair. Lord William was alone in the room, sitting at the long table which was covered with books and papers. He was writing, and the scratch of his pen seemed ominous. He wrote for a long time, ignoring Sharpe. The skylight above the table was open and the wind rustled the papers on the table. Sharpe stared at his lordship’s grey hair, not one out of place.

‘I am writing a report,’ Lord William broke the silence, making Sharpe jump with guilty surprise, ‘about the political situation in India.’ He dipped the nib in an inkwell, drained it carefully, then wrote another sentence before placing the pen on a small silver stand. His cold eyes were pouchy and glassy, probably from the laudanum that he took each night, but they were still filled with their usual distaste for Sharpe. ‘I would not normally turn to a junior officer for assistance, but I have small choice under the present circumstances. I would like your opinion, Sharpe, on the fighting abilities of the Mahrattas.’

Sharpe felt a pang of relief. The Mahrattas! Ever since entering the cabin he had been thinking of Braithwaite and his claim to have written a damned letter, but all Lord William wanted was an opinion on the Mahrattas! ‘Brave men, my lord,’ Sharpe said.

Lord William shuddered. ‘I suppose I deserve a vulgar opinion, since I requested it of you,’ he said tartly, then steepled his fingers and looked at Sharpe over his well-manicured nails. ‘It is evident to me, Sharpe, that we must eventually take over the administration of the whole Indian continent. In time that will also become evident to the government. The major obstacles to that ambition are the remaining Mahratta states, particularly those governed by Holkar. Let me be specific. Can those states prevent us from annexing their territory?’

‘No, my lord.’

‘Be explicit, please.’ Lord William had drawn a clean sheet of paper towards him and had the pen poised.

Sharpe took a deep breath. ‘They are brave men, my lord,’ he said, risking an irritated glance, ‘but that ain’t enough. They don’t understand how to fight in our way. They think the secret is artillery, so what they do, sir, is line up all their guns in a great row and put the infantry behind them.’

‘We don’t do that?’ Lord William asked, sounding surprised.

‘We put the guns at the sides of the infantry, sir. That way, if the other infantry attacks, we can rake them with crossfire. Kill more men that way, my lord.’