Sharpe's Trafalgar (8 page)

Cromwell sat on his bunk bed, placed his elbows on the charts and fixed his eyes on Sharpe.
“I was put aside for God, Mister Sharpe, and it makes for a lonely life. I was denied a
proper education. Other men go to Oxford or Cambridge, they are immersed in knowledge,
but I was sent to sea for my parents believed I would be beyond earthly temptation if I
was far from any shore. But I taught myself, Mister Sharpe. I learned from books”—he waved at
the shelves—”and discovered that I am well named. I am peculiar, Mister Sharpe, in my
opinions, apprehensions and conclusions.” He shook his head sadly, rippling his long
hair which rested on the shoulders of his heavy blue coat. “All around me I espy educated
men, rational men, conventional men and, above all, sociable men, but I have
discovered that no such creature ever did a great thing. It is among the lonely, Mister
Sharpe, that true greatness occurs.” He scowled, as though that burden was almost too heavy
to bear. “You too, I think, are a peculiar man,” Cromwell went on. “You have been plucked by
destiny from your natural place among the dregs of society and have been translated into
an officer. And that”—he leaned forward and jabbed a finger at Sharpe—”must make for
loneliness.”

“I have never lacked friends,” Sharpe said, evading the embarrassing
conversation.

“You trust yourself, Mister Sharpe,” Cromwell boomed, ignoring Sharpe’s words, “as I
have learned to trust myself in the knowledge that no one else can be trusted. We have been
set aside, you and I, as lonely men doomed to watch the traffic of those who are not
peculiar. But today, Mister Sharpe, I am going to insist that you put your mistrust
aside. I shall demand that you trust me.”

“In what, sir?”

Cromwell paused as the tiller ropes creaked and groaned beneath him, then glanced up at a
telltale compass fixed above the bunk. “A ship is a small world, Mister Sharpe,” he said,
“and I am appointed the ruler of that world. Upon this vessel I am lord of all, and the
power of life and death is granted to me, but I do not crave such power. What I crave,
Mister Sharpe, is order. Order!” He slapped a hand on the charts. “And I will not abide
thievery on my ship!”

Sharpe sat up in indignation. “Thievery! Are you ... “

“No!” Cromwell interrupted him. “Of course I am not accusing you. But there will be
thievery, Mister Sharpe, if you continue to flaunt your wealth.”

Sharpe smiled. “I’m an ensign, sir, lowest of the low. You said yourself I’d been plucked
out of my place, and you know there’s no money down there. I’m not wealthy.”

“Then what, Mister Sharpe, is sewn into the seams of your garment?” Cromwell asked.

Sharpe said nothing. A king’s ransom was sewn into the hems of his coat, the tops of his
boots and the waistband of his trousers, and the jewels in his coat were showing because of
the frailty of the red-dyed cloth.

“Sailors are keen-eyed fellows, Mister Sharpe,” Cromwell growled. He looked irritated
when the gun fired from the main deck, as though the sound had interrupted his thinking.
“Sailors have to be keen-eyed,” he continued, “and mine are clever enough to know that a
soldier hides his plunder on his person, and they’re keen-eyed enough to note that Mister
Sharpe does not take off his coat, and one night, Mister Sharpe, when you go forrard to the
heads, or when you take the air on the deck, a keen-eyed sailor will come at you from behind.
A belaying pin? A strike at your skull? A splash in the night? Who would miss you?” He
smiled, revealing long yellow teeth, then touched the hilt of one of the pistols on the
table. “If I were to shoot you now, strip your body and then push you through the scuttle,
who would dare contradict my story that you had attacked me?”

Sharpe said nothing.

Cromwell’s hand stayed on the pistol. “You have a chest in your cabin?”

“Yes, sir.”

“But you don’t trust my sailors. You know they will break through its lock in a matter of
seconds.”

“They would too,” Sharpe said.

“But they will not dare break into my chest!” Cromwell declared, gesturing beneath the
table where a vast iron-bound teak chest stood. “I want you to yield me your treasure now,
Mister Sharpe, and I will sign for it and I will store it, and when we reach our
destination you will be given it back. It is a normal procedure.” He at last removed
his hand from the gun and reached onto the bookshelf, taking down a small box that was
filled with papers. “I have some money belonging to Lord William Hale in that chest, see?”
He handed one of the papers to Sharpe who saw that it acknowledged receipt of one hundred
and seventy guineas in native specie. The paper had been signed by Peculiar Cromwell and,
on Lord William’s behalf, by Malachi Braithwaite, MA Oxon. “I have possessions of Major
Dalton,” Cromwell said, producing another piece of paper, “and jewels belonging to the
Baron von Dornberg.” He showed Sharpe that receipt. “And more jewels belonging to Mister
Fazackerly.” Fazackerly was the barrister. “This”—Cromwell kicked the chest—”is the
safest place on the ship, and if one of my passengers is carrying valuables then I want
those valuables out of temptation’s way. Do I make myself plain, Mister Sharpe?”

“Yes, sir.”

“But you are thinking that you do not trust me?”

“No, sir,” Sharpe said, who was thinking just that.

“I told you,” Cromwell growled, “it is a normal procedure. You entrust your valuables
to me and I, as a captain in the service of the East India Company, give you a receipt.
If I were to lose the valuables, Mister Sharpe, then the Company would reimburse you. The
only way you can lose them is if the ship sinks or if it is taken by enemy action, in which
case you must have recourse to your insurers.” Cromwell half smiled, knowing full well that
Sharpe’s treasure would not be insured.

Sharpe still said nothing.

“Thus far, Mister Sharpe,” Cromwell said in a low voice, “I have requested you to comply
with my wishes. If needs be, I can insist.”

“No need to insist, sir,” Sharpe said, for, in truth, Cromwell was right in suggesting
that every sharp-eyed sailor in the ship would note the badly hidden jewels. Each and
every day Sharpe was aware of the stones, and they were a burden to him and would stay a
burden until he could sell them in London, and that burden would be lifted if he yielded
the stones into the Company’s keeping. Besides, he had been reassured by the fact that
Pohlmann had entrusted so many jewels to the captain’s keeping. If Pohlmann, who was
nobody’s fool, trusted Cromwell then Sharpe surely could.

Cromwell gave him a small pair of scissors and Sharpe cut the hem of his coat. He did not
reveal the stones in his waistband, nor in his boots, for they were not obvious to even a
searching glance, but he did place on the table a growing heap of rubies, diamonds and
emeralds that he stripped from the red coat’s seams.

Cromwell separated the stones into three piles, then weighed each pile on a small and
delicate balance. He carefully noted the results, locked the jewels away, then gave
Sharpe a receipt which both he and Sharpe had signed. “I thank you, Mister Sharpe,” Cromwell
said gravely, “for you have made my mind easier. The purser will find a seaman who can sew
up your coat,” he added, standing.

Sharpe also stood, ducking his head under the low beams. “Thank you, sir.”

“I’ve no doubt I’ll see you at dinner soon. The baron seems fond of your company. You
know him well?”

“I met him once or twice in India, sir.”

“He seems a strange man, not that I know him at all. But an aristocrat? Dirtying his
hands with trade?” Cromwell shuddered. “I suppose they do things differently in
Hanover.”

“I imagine they do, sir.”

“Thank you, Mister Sharpe.” Cromwell tucked his keys into a pocket and nodded to
indicate that Sharpe could leave.

Major Dalton was on the quarterdeck, reveling in the gun practice. “No one’s matched
your marksmanship, Sharpe,” the Scotsman said. “I’m proud of you! Upholding the honor of
the army.”

Lady Grace gave Sharpe one of her disinterested glances, then turned back to look at
the horizon. “Tell me, sir,” Sharpe said to the major, “would you trust an East India
captain?”

“If you can’t trust such a man, Sharpe, then the world is coming to an end.”

“We wouldn’t want that, sir, would we?”

Sharpe gazed at Lady Grace. She stood beside her husband, lightly touching his arm to
keep her balance on the swaying deck. Dog and cat, he thought.

And he felt like being scratched.

The boredom on the ship was palpable. Some passengers read, but Sharpe, who still found
reading difficult, obtained no relief from the few books he borrowed from Major Dalton,
who spent his time making notes for a memoir he planned to write about the war against the
Mahrattas. “I doubt anyone will read it, Sharpe,” the major admitted modestly, “but it
would be a pity if the army’s successes were not recorded. You would oblige me with your
best recollections?”

Some of the men passed the time by practicing with small arms or fighting mock duels
with sword and sabers up and down the main deck until they were running with sweat. During
the second week of the voyage there was a sudden enthusiasm for target practice, using
the ship’s heavy sea-service muskets to fire at empty bottles hurled into the waves, but
after five days Captain Cromwell declared that the fusillades were depleting the
Calliope’s powder stores and the pastime ceased. Later that week a seaman claimed to have
spied a mermaid at dawn and for a day or two the passengers hung on the rails vainly
searching the empty sea for another glimpse. Lord William scornfully denied the
existence of such creatures, but Major Dalton had seen one when he was a boy. “It was
exhibited in Edinburgh,” he told Sharpe, “after the poor creature had washed ashore on
Inchkeith Rock. It was a very dark room, I remember, and she was somewhat hairy.
Bedraggled, really. She was very ill-smelling, but I recall her tail and seem to
remember she was very well endowed above.” He blushed. “Poor lass, she was dead as a
bucket.”

A strange sail was sighted one morning and there was an hour’s excitement as the gun
crews mustered, the convoy clumsily closed up and the Company frigate set her
studdingsails to investigate the stranger, which turned out to be an Arab dhow on course
for Cochin and certainly no threat to the big Indiamen.

The passengers in the stern, the rich folk who inhabited the roundhouse and the great
cabin, played whist. Another group played the game in steerage, but Sharpe had never
learned to play and, besides, was not tempted to wager. He was aware that large sums were
being won and lost, and though it was forbidden by the Company rules, Captain Cromwell
made no objection. Indeed he sometimes played a hand himself. “He wins,” Pohlmann told
Sharpe, “he always wins.”

“And you lose?”

“A little.” Pohlmann shrugged as though it did not matter.

Pohlmann was sitting on one of the lashed guns. He often came and talked with Sharpe,
usually about Assaye where he had suffered such a great defeat. “Your William Dodd,” he
told Sharpe, “claimed that Sir Arthur was a cautious general. He isn’t.” He always called
Dodd “your William Dodd,” as though the renegade redcoat had been a colleague of
Sharpe’s.

“Wellesley’s bull-headed,” Sharpe said admiringly. “He sees a chance and snatches
it.”

“And he’s gone home to England?”

“Sailed last year,” Sharpe said. Sir Arthur, as befitted his rank, had sailed on the
Trident, Admiral Rainier’s flagship, and was probably in Britain by now.

“He will be bored at home,” Pohlmann said.

“Bored? Why?”

“Because our dour Captain Cromwell is right. Britain cannot fight France in Europe. She
can fight her at the ends of the world, but not in Europe. The French army, my dear Sharpe, is
a horde. It is not like your army. It doesn’t depend on jailbirds, failures and drunkards,
but is conscripted. It is therefore huge.”

Sharpe grinned. “The jailbirds, failures and drunkards cooked your goose.”

“So they did,” Pohlmann acknowledged without taking offense, “but they cannot stand
against the vast armies of France. No one can. Not now. And when the French decide to build a
proper navy, my friend, then you will see the world dance to their tunes.”

“And you?” Sharpe asked. “Where will you be dancing?”

“Hanover?” Pohlmann suggested. “I shall buy a big house, fill it with women and watch the
world from my windows. Or perhaps I shall live in France. The women are more beautiful
there and I have learned one thing in my life, Sharpe, and that is that women do like money.
Why do you think Lady Grace married Lord William?” He jerked his head toward the
quarterdeck where Lady Grace, accompanied by her maid, walked up and down. “How goes your
campaign with the lady?”

“It doesn’t,” Sharpe grunted, “and there isn’t a campaign.”

Pohlmann laughed. “Then why do you accept my invitations to supper?”

The truth, and Sharpe knew it, was that he was obsessed with the Lady Grace. From the
moment he woke in the morning until he finally slept he thought of little but her. She
seemed untouchable, unemotional, unapproachable, and that only made his obsession
worse. She had spoken to him once, then never again, and when Sharpe did meet her at
sup-pertime in the captain’s cuddy and tried to engage her in conversation she turned
away as though his presence offended her.

Sharpe thought of her constantly, and constantly watched for her, though he took good
care not to show his obsession. But it was there, gnawing at him, filling the tedious
hours as the Calliope thumped her way across the Indian Ocean. The winds stayed kind and
each day the first officer, Lieutenant Tufnell, reported on the convoy’s progress:
seventy-two miles, sixty-eight miles, seventy miles, always about the same
distance.

The weather was fine and dry, yet even so the ship seemed to be rotting with damp below
the decks. Even in the tropic winds that blew the convoy southwestward some water slopped
through the closed lower gun-ports, and the lower-deck steerage where Sharpe slept was
never dry; his blankets were damp, the timbers of the ship were dank, indeed the whole
Calliope, wherever the sun did not shine, was weeping with water, stinking and
decaying, fungus-ridden and rat-infested. Seamen constantly manned the ship’s four
pumps and the water slopped out of the elm tubes ito gutters on the lower deck which led the
stinking bilge water overboard, but however much they pumped, more always needed to be
sucked out of the hull.

The goats had an infection and most died in the first fortnight so there was no fresh
milk for the steerage passengers. The fresh food was soon used up, and what was left was
salted, tough, rancid and monotonous. The water was foul, discolored and stank, useful
only for making strong tea, and though Sharpe’s filtering machine removed some of the
impurities, it did nothing to improve the taste, and after two weeks the filter was so
clogged with brown muck that he hurled the machine into the ocean. He drank arrack and sour
beer or, in Captain Cromwell’s cuddy, the wine which was little better than vinegar.

Breakfast was at eight every morning. The steerage passengers were divided into
groups often and the men took it in turn to fetch each mess a cauldron of burgoo from the
galley in the forecastle. The burgoo was a mixture of oatmeal and scraps of beef fat that
had simmered all night on the galley stove. Dinner was at midday and was another burgoo,
though this sometimes had larger scraps of meat or fibrous pieces of dried fish floating in
the burned and lumpy oatmeal. On Sundays there was salt fish and ship’s biscuits that were
as hard as stone, yet even so were infested with weevils that needed to be tapped out. The
biscuits had to be chewed endlessly so that it was like masticating a dried brick that
was occasionally enlivened by the juice of an insect that had escaped the tapping. Tea
was served at four, but only to the passengers who traveled in the stern of the ship, while
the steerage passengers had to wait for supper, which was more dried fish, biscuits and a
hard cheese in which red worms made miniature tunnels. “Human beings should not be
expected to eat such things,” Malachi Braithwaite said, shuddering after one
particularly evil supper. He had joined Sharpe on the main deck to watch the sun set in
red-gold splendor.

“You ate them on the way out, didn’t you?” Sharpe asked.

“I traveled out as a private secretary to a London merchant,” Braithwaite said
grandly, “and he accommodated me in the great cabin and fed me at his own expense. I
told his lordship as much, but he refuses the expense.” He sounded hurt. Braithwaite was
a proud man, but poor, and very aware of any insults to his self-esteem. He spent his
afternoons in the roundhouse where, he told Sharpe, Lord William was compiling a report
for the Board of Control. The report would suggest the future governance of India and
Braithwaite enjoyed the work, but late every afternoon he was dismissed back to the
lower deck and his gnawing misery. He was ashamed of being made to travel steerage, he
hated being one of the gun crews and he detested fetching the mess cauldrons, believing
that chore put him in the place of a menial servant, no better than Lord William’s valet or
Lady Grace’s maid. “I am a secretary,” he protested once to Sharpe. “I was at Oxford!”

“How did you become Lord William’s secretary?” Sharpe now asked him.

Braithwaite thought about the question as though a trap lay within it, then decided it
was safe to answer. “His original secretary died in Calcutta. Of snake-bite, I believe,
and his lordship was kind enough to offer me the position.”

“Now you regret taking it?”

“Indeed I do not!” Braithwaite said sharply. “His lordship is a prominent man. He is
intimate with the Prime Minister.” This was confided in an admiring tone. “Indeed the
report we work on will not just be for the Board of Control, but will go directly to Pitt
himself! Much depends on his lordship’s conclusions. Maybe even a cabinet post? His
lordship could well become Foreign Secretary within a year or two, and what would that
make me?”

“An overworked secretary,” Sharpe said.

“But I will have influence,” Braithwaite insisted earnestly, “and his lordship will
have one of the grandest houses in London. His wife will preside over a salon of wit and
vast influence.”

“If she’ll ever talk to anyone,” Sharpe commented dryly. “She don’t say a word to
me.”

“Of course she doesn’t,” Braithwaite said crossly. “She is accustomed to nothing but
the highest discourse.” The secretary looked to the quarterdeck, but if he hoped to see
Lady Grace he was disappointed. “She is an angel, Sharpe,” he blurted out. “One of the
best women I have ever had the privilege of meeting. And with a mind to match! I have a
degree from Oxford, Mister Sharpe, yet even I cannot match her ladyship’s knowledge of
the Georgics.”

Whatever the hell they were, Sharpe thought. “She is a rare-looking woman,” he said
mildly, wondering whether that would provoke Braithwaite into another burst of
candor.

It did. “Rare-looking?” Braithwaite asked sarcastically. “She is a beauty, Mister
Sharpe, the very quintessence of feminine virtue, looks and intelligence.”

Sharpe laughed. “You’re in love with her, Braithwaite.”

The secretary gave Sharpe a withering look. “If you were not a soldier with a
reputation for savagery, Sharpe, I should deem that statement impertinent.”

“I might be the savage,” Sharpe said, rubbing salt into the secretary’s wounded pride,
“but I’m the one who had supper with her tonight.”

Though Lady Grace had neither spoken with him that night, nor even appeared to notice
his presence in the cuddy where the food was scarcely better than the slop provided in
steerage. The richer passengers were served the dead goats that were stewed and served in a
vinegar sauce and Captain Cromwell was particularly fond of peas and pork, though the peas
were dried to the consistency of bullets and the meat was salted to the texture of
ancient leather. There was a suet pudding most nights, then port or brandy, coffee, cigars
and whist. Eggs and coffee were served for breakfast, luxuries that never appeared in
steerage, but Sharpe was not invited to share breakfast with the privileged folk.

On the nights when he ate in steerage Sharpe would go on deck afterward and watch the
sailors dancing to a four-man orchestra of two violins, a flute and a drummer who beat
his hands on the end of a half-barrel. One night there was a sudden and violent downpour
of rain that drummed on the sails. Sharpe stood bare-chested, head back and mouth agape to
drink the clean water, but most of the rain which fell on the ship seemed to find its way
between decks that became ever more rank. Everything seemed to rot, rust or grow fungus.
On Sundays the purser held divine service and the four-man orchestra played while the
passengers, the richer standing on the quarterdeck and the less privileged beneath them
on the main deck, sang “Awake, my soul, and with the sun thy daily stage of duty run.” Major
Dalton sang gustily, beating time with his hand. Pohlmann seemed amused by the services,
while Lord William and his wife, contravening the captain’s orders, did not bother to
attend. When the hymn was done the purser read a toneless prayer that Sharpe and those
other passengers who were paying attention found alarming. “O most glorious and
gracious Lord God, who dwellest in heaven, but beholdest all things below; Look down, we
beseech thee, and hear us, calling out of the depths of misery and out of the jaws of this
death which is ready now to swallow us up. Save, Lord, or else we perish.”

Yet they did not perish and the sea and the miles slipped endlessly by, untouched by any
speck of land or hostile sail. At noon the officers solemnly sighted the sun with their
sextants, then hurried to Captain Cromwell’s cabin to work out the mathematics, though,
in the middle of the third week, a day at last came when the sky was so thick with cloud that
no sight could be taken. Captain Cromwell was overheard to remark that the Calliope was in
for a blow, and all day he strode about the quarterdeck with a look of grim pleasure. The
wind rose slowly but surely, making the passengers stagger on the canted deck and hold
onto their hats. Many of those who had overcome their early seasickness now succumbed
again, and the spray breaking on the ship’s bluff bows rattled on the sails as it flew down
the deck. Late in the afternoon it began to rain so heavily that gray veils hid all but the
closest vessels of the convoy.