Sharpe's Trafalgar (12 page)

“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 forever. 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 Tufhell 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
forever. 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 friih,” 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.