Sharpe's Trafalgar (10 page)

“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 gray 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 toward 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 southward.

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 gray. 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 fetid 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 toward 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 white-caps 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 saber-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 chaper-one 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 Ile-de-France.”

“Mauritius?” Sharpe asked.

She nodded. Mauritius, or the Ile-de-France, was the enemy base in the Indian Ocean,
an island fortress for raiders and warships with a main harbor 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 toward
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 around 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.”