Sharpe's Trafalgar (21 page)

The wind freshened at dusk and the Pucelle once again heeled to its pressure. Night fell
and officers went around the ship to make certain that not a single lantern was alight
anywhere on board except for one feeble, red-shielded binnacle lamp that gave the
helmsman a glimpse of the compass. The course was changed a few points westward in hope of
closing on the far ship. The wind rose still more so that the sea could be heard coursing
down the ship’s black and yellow flanks.

Sharpe slept, woke, slept again. No one disturbed his night. He was up before dawn and
found that the rest of the ship’s officers, even those who should have been sleeping, were
on the quarterdeck. “She’ll see us before we see her,” Chase said, meaning that the rising
sun would silhouette the Pucelle’s topsails against the horizon, and for a few minutes he
considered rousting the off-duty watch to help the topmen bring in everything above the
mains, but he reckoned the loss of speed would be a worse result and so he kept his canvas
aloft. The men with the best eyesight were all high in the rigging. “If we’re lucky,” Chase
confided in Sharpe, “we may catch her by nightfall.”

“That soon?”

“If we’re lucky,” the captain said again, then reached out and touched the wooden
rail.

The eastern sky was gray now, streaked with cloud, but soon a leak of pink, like the dye
from a redcoat’s jacket seeping in the rain onto uniform trousers, suffused the gray. The
ship quivered to the seas, left a white wake, raced. The pink turned red, and deeper red,
glowing like a furnace over Africa. “They’ll have seen us by now,” Chase said, and took a
speaking trumpet from the rail. “Keep your eyes sharp!” he called to the lookouts, then
flinched. “That was unnecessary,” he chided himself, then corrected the damage by
raising the trumpet again and promising a week’s worth of rum ration to the man who first
sighted the enemy. “He deserves to be dead drunk,” Chase said.

The east flared to brilliance and became too bright to look at as the sun at last inched
above the horizon. Night had gone, the sea was spread naked under the burning sky and the
Pucelle was alone.

For the distant sail had vanished.

Captain Llewellyn was angry. Everyone on board was irritated. The loss of the other
ship had caused morale to plummet on the Pucelle so that small mistakes were constantly
being made. The bosun’s mates were lashing out with their rope ends, officers were
snarling, the crew was sullen, but Captain Llewellyn Llewellyn was genuinely angry and
apprehensive.

Before the ship sailed from England he had taken aboard a crate of grenades. “They’re
French ones,” he told Sharpe, “so I’ve no idea what’s in them. Powder, of course, and some
kind of fulminate. They’re made of glass. You light it, you throw it and you pray that it
kills someone. Devilish things, they are, quite devilish.”

But the grenades were lost. They were supposed to be in the forward magazine deep on the
orlop deck, but a search by Llewellyn’s lieutenant and two sergeants had failed to find the
devices. To Sharpe the loss of the grenades was just another blow of ill fortune on a day
that seemed ill-starred for the Pucelle, but Llewellyn reckoned it was far more serious
than that. “Some fool might have put them in the hold,” he said. “We bought them from the Viper
when she was being refitted. They took them in an action off Antigua and their captain
didn’t want them. Reckoned they were too dangerous. If Chase finds them in the hold he’ll
crucify me, and I don’t blame him. Their proper place is in a magazine.”

A dozen marines were organized into a search party and Sharpe joined them in the deep
hold where the rats ruled and the ship’s stink was foully concentrated. Sharpe had no need
to be there, Llewellyn had not even asked him to help, but he preferred to be doing
something useful rather than endure the bad-tempered disappointment that had soured the
deck ever since daybreak.

It took three hours, but eventually a sergeant found the grenades in a box that had the
word “biscuit” stenciled on its lid. “God knows what’s in the magazines, then,” Llewellyn
said sarcastically. “They’re probably full of salt beef. That bloody man Cowper!” Cowper
was the ship’s purser, in charge of the Pucelle’s supplies. The purser was not quite an
officer, but was generally treated as one, and he was thoroughly disliked. “It’s the
fate of pursers,” Llewellyn had told Sharpe, “to be hated. It is why God put them on earth.
They are supposed to supply things, but rarely can, and if they do then the things are
usually the wrong size or the wrong color or the wrong shape.” Pursers, like the army’s
sutlers, could trade on their own account, and their venality was famous. “Cowper
probably hid them,” Llewellyn said, “thinking he could sell them to some benighted savage.
Bloody man!” Now, having cursed the purser, the Welshman took one of the grenades from the
box and handed it to Sharpe. “Packed with scrap metal, see? That thing could go off like case
shot!”

Sharpe had never handled a grenade before. The old British ones, long discarded for
being ineffective, had resembled a miniature shell that had been launched from a
bowl-like attachment at the front of a musket, but this French weapon was made of a
dark-green glass. The light was poor in the hold, but he held the grenade close to one of the
marine’s lanterns and saw that the interior of the glass globe, which was about the size of
a decent suet pudding, was packed with scraps of metal. A fuse protruded from one side,
sealed with a ring of melted wax. “You light the fuse,” Llewellyn said, “throw the damn thing,
and I suppose the glass container shatters when it falls. The lit fuse communicates to
the powder and that’s the end of a Frenchman.” He paused, frowning at the glass ball. “I
hope.” He took the grenade back and fondled it like a baby. “I wonder if Captain Chase
would let us try one. If we had men standing by with buckets of water?”

“Make a dirty mark on his nice clean deck?” Sharpe asked.

“I suppose he won’t,” Llewellyn said sadly. “Still, if it comes to a battle I’ll give
some to the boys up the masts and they can hurl them onto the enemy decks. They have to be
good for something.”

“Chuck ‘em overboard,” Sharpe advised.

“Dear me, no! I don’t want to hurt the fish, Sharpe!”

Llewellyn, hugely relieved by the discovery, had the precious grenades taken to the
forward magazine and Sharpe followed the marines up the ladder to the orlop deck which,
being beneath the water line, was almost as dark as the hold. The marines went forrard,
while Sharpe went toward the stern, intending to climb to Chase’s dining cabin for midday
dinner, but he could not use the companionway up to the lower deck for a man in a faded
black coat was clambering unsteadily down the ladder. Sharpe instinctively waited,
then saw that it was Malachi Braithwaite who so cautiously descended the rungs. Sharpe
stepped swiftly back into the surgeon’s cabin where the red-painted walls and table
waited for battle’s casualties and from there he watched Braithwaite take a lantern from
a hook beside the companionway. The secretary fumbled with a tinderbox, blew on the
charred linen to make a flame and lit the oil lamp. He put the lamp on the deck, then grunted
as he heaved up the aft hatch of the hold to release a stench of bilge water and rot.
Braithwaite shuddered, nerved himself, then took the lantern and clambered down into the
ship’s depths.

Sharpe followed. There were moments in life, he thought, when fate played into his hands.
There had been such a moment when he met Sergeant Hakeswill and joined the army, and another
on the battlefield at Assaye when a general had been unhorsed, and now Braithwaite was
alone in the hold. Sharpe stood by the hatch and watched Braithwaite’s lantern bob as the
secretary went slowly down the ladder, and then went aft toward the place where the
officers’ dunnage was stored.

Sharpe dropped down the ladder and carefully pulled the hatch shut behind him. He went
stealthily, though any noise his shoes made on the rungs was masked by the creak of the great
pine masts which protruded down through all the decks to be rooted in the elmwood keel. The
sound of the flexing masts was magnified in the hold, which also reverberated to the
squelching clatter of the ship’s six pumps, the sound of the sea and the grating screech of
the rudder turning on its pintles.

This after part of the hold was isolated from the forward part of the ship by a great
heap of water butts and vinegar barrels that stretched from the planking above the bilge to
the beams of the orlop deck twelve feet above. Those beams were supported by great shafts of
oak that, in the dim lantern light, looked like the pillars of an old, smoke-darkened
church. Braithwaite threaded his way between the oak pillars, climbing the gentle rise of
the ship’s hull toward a stack of shelves at the very back of the hold that shielded a small
space in the stern that was known as the lady hole because it provided the safest place on
board during a battle. There was nothing valuable kept on the shelves, merely the
officers’ unwanted dunnage, but Lord William had brought so much luggage to the Pucelle
that some of it had to be stored here, and Sharpe, crouching in the shadow of some casks of
pungent salt beef, watched the secretary climb a short ladder to find a leather case which
he hauled from the top shelf and carried awkwardly back to the deck. He took a key from his
pocket and unlocked the case which proved to be crammed with papers. Nothing there, Sharpe
thought, for any light-fingered seamen to filch, though he did not doubt that some of them
would already have picked the case’s lock in hope of better spoils. Braithwaite leafed
through the papers, found what he wanted, relocked the case and carried it back up the
ladder where he clumsily pushed it past the wooden bar that kept the shelf’s contents from
spilling in a high sea. The secretary was muttering to himself and snatches of his words
carried to Sharpe. “I’m an Oxford man, not a slave! It could have waited till we reached
England. Get in there, damn you!”

The case was finally stowed away, Braithwaite came down the ladder, pocketed the sheet
of paper, collected his lantern and started back toward the larger ladder that lay
alongside the mizzenmast and led to the closed hatch. He did not see Sharpe. He thought he
was alone in the hold until a hand suddenly grasped his collar. “Hello, Oxford man,”
Sharpe said.

“Jesus!” Braithwaite swore and shuddered. Sharpe took the lantern from the secretary’s
nerveless hand and placed it on top of a cask, then spun Braithwaite around and pushed him
hard so that he fell onto the deck.

“I had an interesting conversation with her ladyship the other day,” Sharpe said.
“It seems you’re blackmailing her.”

“You’re being ridiculous, Sharpe, ridiculous.” Braithwaite thrust himself backward
until he could go no further, then sat with his back against the water casks where he
brushed at the dirt on his trousers and coat.

“Do they teach blackmail at Oxford?” Sharpe asked. “I thought they only taught you
useless things like Latin and Greek, but I’m wrong, am I? They give lectures in blackmail
and housebreaking, maybe? Pocket-slitting on the side, perhaps?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You know what I’m talking about, Braithwaite,” Sharpe said. He picked up the lantern and
walked slowly toward the terrified secretary. “You’re blackmailing Lady Grace. You
want her jewels, don’t you, and maybe more? You’d like her in your bed, wouldn’t you? You’d
like to go where I’ve been, Braithwaite.”

Braithwaite’s eyes widened. He was scared, but he was not so witless as to miss the
significance of Sharpe’s words. Sharpe had admitted the adultery, and that meant
Braithwaite was about to die, for Sharpe could not afford to let him live and tell the tale.
“I just came to fetch a memorandum, Sharpe,” the secretary babbled in apparent panic,
“that’s all. I came to fetch this paper. Just a memorandum, Sharpe, for Lord William’s
report. Let me show you,” and he put a hand in his pocket to fetch the paper and brought
out, not a memorandum, but a small pistol. It was the kind of gun designed to be carried
in a purse or pocket for use against cutthroats or highwaymen and Braithwaite, his hand
shaking, dragged back the flint. “I’ve carried this ever since you threatened me, Sharpe.”
His voice was suddenly more confident as he leveled the pistol.

Sharpe dropped the lantern.

It hit the deck, there was a shudder of light, then the smash of glass and utter
darkness. Sharpe twisted aside, half expecting to hear the pistol crack, but Braithwaite
had retained enough nerve to hold his fire.

“You’ve got one shot, Oxford man,” Sharpe said. “One shot, then it’s my turn.”

Silence, except for the clatter of the pumps and the noise of the masts and the
scratching of rats’ feet in the bilge.

“I’m used to this,” Sharpe said. “I’ve crawled in the darkness before, Braithwaite, and
killed men. Cut their gizzards. I did it outside Gawilghur on a dark night. Cut two men’s
throats, Braithwaite, slit them back to the spine.” He was crouching behind a cask so that
if Braithwaite did fire then the secretary would merely inflict a wound on a barrel of
salt beef. Sharpe kept his body behind the cask and reached out with his left hand, scraping
his nails on the plank deck. “I slit their gizzards, Oxford man.”

“We can come to an agreement, Sharpe,” Braithwaite said nervously. He had not moved
since the hold went dark. Sharpe knew that, for he would have heard. He reckoned Braithwaite
was waiting until he went close and then he would fire. Just like ship-to-ship fighting.
Let the bugger get close, then fire.

“What kind of agreement, Oxford man?” Sharpe asked, then scratched the deck again, making
little noises that would be magnified by the secretary’s fear. He found a shard of
broken lantern glass and scraped it on the wood.

“You and I should be friends, Sharpe,” Braithwaite said. “You and I? We ain’t like them. My
father is a parson. He doesn’t make much. Three hundred a year? That may sound like a
competence to you, but it’s nothing, Sharpe, nothing. Yet people like William Hale are
born to fortunes. They abuse us, Sharpe, they grind us down. They think we’re dirt.”