Sharpe 3-Book Collection 3: Sharpe's Trafalgar, Sharpe's Prey, Sharpe's Rifles (11 page)

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 towards 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 whitecaps 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 sabre-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 chaperone 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 Île-de-France.’

‘Mauritius?’ Sharpe asked.

She nodded. Mauritius, or the Île-de-France, was the enemy base in the Indian Ocean, an island fortress for raiders and warships with a main harbour 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 towards 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 round 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.’

‘Why?’

There was a murmur of voices from the quarterdeck and a sudden glow of light as the compass in the lantern-lit binnacle was unshielded. Lady Grace stepped away from Sharpe and he from her, and both instinctively turned to stare at the sea. The binnacle light vanished. Lady Grace said nothing for a while and Sharpe wondered if she was regretting what had happened, but then she spoke softly. ‘You’re like a weed, Richard. You can grow anywhere. A big, strong weed and you’ve probably got thorns and stinging leaves. But I was like a rose in a garden: trained and cut back and pampered, but not allowed to grow anywhere except where the gardener wanted me.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m not seeking your pity, Richard. You should never waste pity on the privileged. I’m just talking to find out why I’m here with you.’

‘Why are you?’

‘Because I’m lonely,’ she answered firmly, ‘and unhappy and because you intrigue me.’ She reached out and touched a very gentle finger to the scar on his right cheek. ‘You’re a horribly good-looking man, Richard Sharpe, but if I met you in a London street I’d be very frightened of your face.’

‘Bad and dangerous,’ Sharpe said, ‘that’s me.’

‘And I’m here,’ Lady Grace went on, ‘because there is a joy in doing things we know we should not do. What Captain Cromwell calls our baser instincts, I suppose, and I suppose it will end in tears, but that does not preclude the joy.’ She frowned at him. ‘You look very cruel sometimes. Are you cruel?’

‘No,’ Sharpe said. ‘Perhaps to the King’s enemies. Perhaps to my enemies, but only if they’re as strong as I am. I’m a soldier, not a bully.’

She touched the scar again. ‘Richard Sharpe, my fearless soldier.’

‘I was terrified of you,’ Sharpe admitted. ‘From the moment I saw you.’

‘Terrified?’ She seemed genuinely puzzled. ‘I thought you despised me. You looked at me so grimly.’

‘I never said I didn’t despise you,’ Sharpe said in mock seriousness, ‘but from the moment I saw you I wanted to be with you.’

She laughed. ‘You can be with me here,’ she said, ‘but only on fine nights. I come here when I can’t sleep. William sleeps in the stern cabin,’ she explained, ‘and I sleep on the sofa in the day cabin. My maid uses a truckle bed there.’

‘You don’t sleep with him?’ Sharpe dared to ask.

‘I have to go to bed with him,’ she admitted, ‘but he takes laudanum every night because he insists he cannot sleep. He takes too much and he sleeps like a hog, so when he’s asleep I go to the day cabin.’ She shuddered. ‘And the drug makes him costive, which makes him even more bad-tempered.’

‘I have a cabin,’ Sharpe said.

She looked at him, unsmiling, and Sharpe feared he had offended her, but then she smiled. ‘To yourself?’

He nodded. ‘You’ll like it. It’s seven foot by six with walls of damp wood and clammy canvas.’

‘And you swing in your lonely hammock there?’ she asked, still smiling.

‘Hammock be blowed,’ Sharpe said, ‘I’ve a proper hanging cot with a damp mattress.’

She sighed. ‘And not six months ago a man offered me a palace with walls of carved ivory, a garden of fountains, and a pavilion with a bed of gold. He was a prince, and I must say he was very delicate about it.’