Sharpe 3-Book Collection 3: Sharpe's Trafalgar, Sharpe's Prey, Sharpe's Rifles (27 page)

‘And you,’ Lord William said acidly as his pen raced over the paper, ‘are an expert on killing. Go on, Sharpe.’

‘By putting their guns in front, sir, they give their own infantry the idea that they’re protected. And when the guns fall, sir, which they always do, the infantry lose heart. Besides, sir, our lads fire muskets a good deal faster than theirs, so once we’re past the guns it’s really just a matter of killing them.’ Sharpe watched the pen scratch, waited until his lordship dipped it into the inkwell again. ‘We like to get close, my lord. They shoot volleys at a distance, and that’s no good. You have to march up close, very close, till you can smell them, then start firing.’

‘You’re saying their infantry lack the discipline of ours?’

‘They lack the training, sir.’ He thought about it. ‘And no, they’re not as disciplined.’

‘And doubtless,’ Lord William said pointedly, ‘they do not use the lash. But what if their infantry was properly led? By Europeans?’

‘It can be good then, sir. Our sepoys are as good, but the Mahrattas don’t take well to discipline. They’re raiders. Pirates. They hire infantry from other states, and a man never fights so well when he’s not fighting for his own. And it takes time, my lord. If you gave me a company of Mahrattas I’d want a whole year to get them ready. I could do it, but they wouldn’t like it. They’d rather be horsemen, my lord. Irregular cavalry.’

‘So you do not think we need take Monsieur Vaillard’s errand to Paris too seriously?’

‘I wouldn’t know, my lord.’

‘No, you wouldn’t. Did you recognize Pohlmann, Sharpe?’

The question took Sharpe utterly by surprise. ‘No,’ he blurted with too much indignation.

‘Yet you must have seen him’ – Lord William paused to sort through the papers – ‘at Assaye.’ He found the name which, Sharpe suspected, he had never forgotten.

‘Only through a telescope, my lord.’

‘Only through a telescope.’ Lord William repeated the words slowly. ‘Yet Chase assures me you were very certain in your identification of him. Why else would this man-of-war be racing through the Atlantic?’

‘It just seemed obvious, my lord,’ Sharpe said lamely.

‘The workings of your mind are a constant mystery to me, Sharpe,’ Lord William said, writing as he spoke. ‘I shall, of course, moderate your opinions by talking to more senior men when I reach London, but your jejune thoughts will make a first draft possible. Perhaps I shall talk to my wife’s distant cousin, Sir Arthur.’ The pen scratched steadily. ‘Do you know where my wife is this afternoon, Mister Sharpe?’

‘No, my lord,’ Sharpe said, and was about to ask how he could be expected to know, but bit his tongue in case he heard the wrong answer.

‘She has a habit of vanishing,’ Lord William said, his grey eyes now steady on Sharpe.

Sharpe said nothing. He felt like a mouse under a cat’s gaze.

Lord William turned to look at the bulkhead which divided the dining cabin from Sharpe’s cabin. He could have been gazing at the picture of Chase’s old frigate, the
Spritely
, which hung there. ‘Thank you, Sharpe,’ he said, looking back at last. ‘Close the door firmly, will you? The latch is imperfectly aligned with its socket.’

Sharpe left. He was sweating. Did Lord William know? Had Braithwaite really written a letter? Jesus, he thought, Jesus. Playing with fire. ‘Well?’ Captain Chase had come to stand beside him, an amused expression on his face.

‘He wanted to know about the Mahrattas, sir.’

‘Don’t we all?’ Chase enquired sweetly. He looked up at the sails, leaned to see the compass, smiled. ‘The ship’s orchestra is giving a concert tonight on the forecastle,’ he said, ‘and we’re all invited to attend after supper. Do you sing, Sharpe?’

‘Not really, sir.’

‘Lieutenant Peel sings. It’s a pleasure to hear him. Captain Llewellyn should sing, being Welsh, but doesn’t, and the lower-deck larboard gun crews make a splendid choir, though I shall have to order them not to sing the ditty about the admiral’s wife for fear of offending Lady Grace, yet even so it should be a wonderful evening.’

Grace had left his cabin. Sharpe closed the door, shut his eyes and felt the sweat trickle beneath his shirt. Playing with fire.

Two mornings later there was an island visible far off to the south and west. The
Revenant
must have passed quite close to the island in the night, but at dawn she was well to its north. Cloud hung above the small scrap of grey which was all Sharpe could see of the island’s summit through his telescope. ‘It’s called St Helena,’ Chase told him, ‘and belongs to the East India Company. If we weren’t otherwise engaged, Sharpe, we’d make a stop there for water and vegetables.’

Sharpe gazed at the ragged scrap of land isolated in an immensity of ocean. ‘Who lives there?’

‘Some miserable Company officials, a handful of morose families, and a few wretched black slaves. Clouter was a slave there. You should ask him about it.’

‘You freed him?’

‘He freed himself. Swam out to us one night, climbed the anchor cable and hid away till we were at sea. I’ve no doubt the East India Company would like him back, but they can whistle in the wind for him. He’s far too good a seaman.’

There were a score of black seamen like Clouter aboard, another score of lascars, and a scattering of Americans, Dutchmen, Swedes, Danes and even two Frenchmen. ‘Why would a man be called Clouter?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Because he clouted someone so hard that the man didn’t wake up for a week,’ Chase said, amused, then took the speaking trumpet from the rail and hailed Clouter who was among the men lounging on the forecastle. ‘Would you like me to put in to St Helena, Clouter? You can visit your old friends.’

Clouter mimed cutting his throat and Chase laughed. It was small gestures like that, Sharpe reckoned, that made the
Pucelle
a happy ship. Chase was easy in command and that ease did not diminish his authority, but simply made the men work harder. They were proud of their ship, proud of their captain and Sharpe did not doubt they would fight for him like fiends, but Capitaine Louis Montmorin had the same reputation and when the two ships met it would doubtless prove a grim and bloody business. Sharpe watched Chase for he reckoned he had still a lot to learn about the subtle business of leading men. He saw that the captain did not secure his authority by recourse to punishment, but rather by expecting high standards and rewarding them. He also hid his doubts. Chase could not be certain that Pohlmann’s servant really was Michel Vaillard, and he did not know for sure that he could catch the
Revenant
even if the Frenchman was aboard, and if he failed then the lords of the Admiralty would take a dim view of his initiative in taking the
Pucelle
so far from her proper station. Sharpe knew Chase worried about those things, yet the crew never received a hint of their captain’s doubts. To them he was certain, decisive and confident, and so they trusted him. Sharpe noted it and resolved to imitate it, and then he wondered whether he really would stay in the army. Perhaps Lord William would die? Perhaps Lord William would have a sleepless night and stroll the poop deck in the dark?

And then, Sharpe wondered, what? A library with a fireplace? Grace happy with books, and he with what? And, as he asked himself those questions, he would sheer away from their answers, for they involved a murder that Sharpe feared. A man could kill a secretary and pass it off as a fall from a ladder, but a peer of England was not so easily destroyed. Nor had Sharpe any right to kill Lord William. He probably would, he thought, if the chance came, but he knew it would be wrong and he dimly apprehended that such a wrong would leave a scar on his future. He often surprised himself by realizing he had a conscience. Sharpe knew plenty of men, dozens, who would kill for the price of a pot of ale, yet he was not among them. There had to be a reason, and selfishness was not enough. Even love was not enough.

Provoke Lord William to a duel? He thought about that, but he suspected Lord William would never stoop to fight a mere ensign. Lord William’s weapons were more subtle; memoranda to the Horse Guards, letters to senior officers, quiet words in the right ears and at their end Sharpe would be nothing. So forget it, Sharpe told himself, let the dream go, and he tried to lose himself in the work of the ship. He and Llewellyn were holding a competition among the marines to see who could fire the most musket shots in three minutes and the men were improving, though none could yet match Sharpe. He practised them, encouraged them, swore at them, and morning after morning they filled the ship’s forecastle deck with powder smoke until Sharpe reckoned the marines were as good as any redcoat company. He practised with the cutlass, fighting Llewellyn up and down the weather deck, slashing and hacking, parrying and slicing until the sweat ran down his face and chest. Some of the marines practised with boarding pikes which were eight-foot ash staffs tipped with slender steel spikes that Llewellyn claimed were marvellously effective for clearing narrow passageways on enemy ships. The Welshman also encouraged the use of boarding axes which had vicious blades on short handles. ‘They’re clumsy,’ Llewellyn admitted, ‘but, by God, they put the fear of Christ into the Froggies. A man don’t fight long with one of those buried in his skull, Sharpe, I can tell you. It cools his ardour, it does.’

They crossed the equator and, because everyone aboard had crossed it before, there was no need to put them through the ordeal of being dressed in women’s clothes, shaved with a cutlass and dipped in sea water. Nevertheless one of the seamen dressed himself as Neptune and went round the ship with a makeshift trident and demanded tribute from men and officers alike. Chase ordered a double rum ration, hung out a larger studdingsail that the sailmaker had stitched, and watched the
Revenant
on the northwestern horizon.

Then the calms came. For a week the two ships made scarce forty miles, but just lay on a glassy sea in which their reflections were almost mirror perfect. The sails hung and the powder smoke belched by gun practice made a cloud about each ship that did not shift so that, from a distance, the
Revenant
looked like a patch of fog rigged with masts and sails. Lieutenant Haskell tried to time the Frenchman’s volleys by watching the cloud twitch in his telescope. ‘Only one shot every three minutes and twenty seconds,’ he finally concluded.

‘They’re not trying their hardest,’ Chase said. ‘Montmorin’s not going to let me know how well his men are trained. You may be assured they’re a good deal faster than that.’

‘How fast are we?’ Sharpe asked Llewellyn.

The Welshman shrugged. ‘On a good, day, Sharpe? Three broadsides in five minutes. Not that we ever fire a broadside proper. Fire all the guns together, Sharpe, and the bloody ship would fall to bits! But we fire in a ripple, see? One gun after the other. Pretty to watch, it is, and after that the guns fire as they’re loaded. The faster crews will easily do three shots in five minutes, but the bigger guns are slower. But our lads are good. There aren’t many Frenchmen who can do three shots in five minutes.’

Some days Chase tried to tow the ship closer to the
Revenant
, but the Frenchman was also using his boats to tow and so the foes kept their stations. One day a freak breeze carried the
Revenant
almost beyond the horizon, leaving the
Pucelle
stranded, but next day it was the British ship’s turn to be wafted northwards while the
Revenant
lay becalmed. The
Pucelle
ghosted along, drawing nearer and nearer to the enemy, the ripples of her passage scarcely disturbing the glasslike sea, and foot by foot, yard by yard, cable by cable, she gained on the
Revenant
despite the best efforts of the French oarsmen who were out ahead in their ship’s longboats. Still the
Pucelle
closed the gap until at last Captain Chase had the tompion pulled from the barrel of his forward larboard twenty-four-pounder. The gun was already loaded, for all the guns were left charged, and the gunner took off the lead touch-hole cover and screwed a flintlock into place. The captain had gone to the forward end of the weather deck, where the
Pucelle
’s goats were penned, and crouched beside the open gunport. ‘We’ll load with chain after the first shot,’ he decided.

Chain shot looked at first glance like ordinary round shot, but the ball was split into two halves and when it left the gun the halves separated. They were joined by a short length of chain and the two hemispheres whirled through the air, the chain between them, to slice and tear at the enemy’s rigging. ‘Long range for chain shot,’ the gunner told Chase.

‘We’ll get closer,’ Chase said. He was hoping to disable the
Revenant
’s sails, then close and finish her with solid shot. ‘We’ll get closer,’ he said again, stooping to the gun and staring at the enemy that was now almost within range. The gilding on her stern reflected the sunlight, the tricolour hung limp from the mizzen gaff and her rail was crowded with men who must have been wondering why the wind was fickle enough to favour the British. Sharpe was staring through a telescope, hoping for a glimpse of Peculiar Cromwell’s long hair and blue coat, or of Pohlmann and his servant, but he could not make out the individuals who stood watching the
Pucelle
glide closer. He could see the ship’s name on her stern, see the water being pumped from her bilges and the copper, now pale green, at her water line.

Then the longboats towing the
Revenant
were suddenly called back. Chase grunted. ‘They probably plan to tow her head round,’ he suggested, ‘to show us her broadside. Drummer!’

A marine boy stepped forward. ‘Sir?’

‘Beat to quarters,’ Chase said, then held up a hand. ‘No, belay that! Belay!’

The wind was not so fickle after all, and the
Revenant
’s boats had not been recalled to turn the ship, but rather because Montmorin had seen the flickering cat’s-paws of wind ruffling the water at his stern. Now her sails lifted, stretched and tightened and the Frenchman was suddenly sliding ahead, just out of cannon range. ‘Damn,’ Chase said mildly, ‘damn and blast his French luck.’ The flintlock was dismounted, the tompion hammered into the muzzle, the gunport closed and the twenty-four-pounder secured.