Sharpe's Trafalgar (16 page)

“I’m sorry,” Sharpe said.

“Not the first blood I’ve seen, lad. And worse things happen at sea, they tell me.”

“You should all leave!” Lord William had come into Pohlmann’s quarters. “Just leave!” he
snapped pettishly.

“This ain’t your room,” Fairley growled, “and if you were a half a man, my lord, neither
Sharpe nor this corpse would be here.”

Lord William gaped at Fairley, but just then Lady Grace, her hair ragged, stepped over the
splinters of the partition. Her husband tried to push her back, but she shook him off and
stared down at the corpse, then up at Sharpe. “Thank you, Mister Sharpe,” she said.

“Glad I could be of service, my lady,” Sharpe replied, then turned and braced himself as
Major Dalton led a Frenchman into the crowded cabin. “This is the new captain of the
ship,” Dalton said. “He’s an officier marinier, which I think is the equivalent of our
petty officer.”

The Frenchman was an older man, balding, with a face weathered and browned by long
service at sea. He had no uniform, for he was not a wardroom officer, but evidently a
senior seaman who seemed quite unmoved by Bursay’s death. It was plain that the marine had
already explained the circumstance for he asked no questions, but simply made a clumsy
and embarrassed bow to Lady Grace and muttered an apology.

Lady Grace acknowledged the apology in a voice still shaking from fear. “Merci,
monsieur.”

The officier marinier spoke to Dalton who translated for Sharpe’s benefit. “He
regrets Bursay’s actions, Sharpe. He says the man was an animal. He was a petty officer
till a month ago, when Montmorin promoted him. He told him he was on his honor to behave
like a gentleman, but Bursay had no honor.”

“I’m forgiven?” Sharpe asked, amused.

“You defended a lady, Sharpe,” Dalton said, frowning at Sharpe’s light tone. “How can
any reasonable man object?”

The Frenchman made arrangements for a sheet of canvas to be nailed over the broken
partition and for the lieutenant’s body to be taken away. He also insisted that the
lanterns be removed from the window.

Sharpe stood the lanterns on the empty sideboard. “I’ll sleep in here,” he announced,
“just in case any other bloody Frenchman gets lonely.”

Lord William opened his mouth to protest, then thought better of it. The corpse was taken
away and a piece of frayed sailcloth nailed over the partition. Then Sharpe slept in
Pohlmann’s bed as the ship sailed on, taking him to captivity.

The next two days were tedious. The wind was light so the ship rolled and made slow
progress, so slow that Tufnell guessed it would take nearer six days to reach Mauritius, and
that was good, for it meant there was more time for a British warship to see the great
captured Indiaman wallowing in the long swells. None of the passengers could go on deck
and the heat in the cabins was stifling. Sharpe passed the time as best he could. Major
Dalton lent him a book called Tristram Shandy, but Sharpe could make neither head nor tail
of it. Just lying and staring at the ceiling was more rewarding. The barrister tried to
teach Sharpe backgammon, but Sharpe was not interested in gambling and so Fazackerly
went off to find more willing prey. Lieutenant Tufnell showed him how to tie some knots, and
that passed some hours between the meals which were all burgoo enlivened with dried peas.
Mrs. Fairley embroidered a shawl, her husband growled and paced and fretted, Major
Dalton attempted to compile an accurate account of the battle at Assaye which needed
Sharpe’s constant advice, the ship sailed slowly on and Sharpe did not see Lady Grace
during the daytime.

She came to his cabin on the second night, arriving while he was asleep and waking him
by putting a hand on his mouth so he did not cry out. “The maid’s asleep,” she whispered, and
in the silence that followed Sharpe could hear Lord William’s drug-induced snores beyond
the makeshift canvas screen.

She lay beside Sharpe, one leg across his, and did not speak for a long time. “When he came
in,” she finally whispered, “he said he wanted my jewels. That was all. My jewels. Then
he told me he was going to cut William’s throat if I didn’t do what he wanted.”

“It’s all right,” Sharpe tried to soothe her.

She shook her head abruptly. “And then he told me that he hated all aristos. That was
what he said, ‘aristos,’ and said we should all be guillotined. He said he was going to kill
us both and claim that William had attacked him and that I had died of a fever.”

“He’s the one feeding the fishes now,” Sharpe said. He had heard a splash the previous
morning and knew it was Bursay’s body being launched into eternity.

“You don’t hate aristos, do you?” Grace asked after a long pause.

“I’ve only met you, your husband and Sir Arthur. Is he an aristo?”

She nodded. “His father’s the Earl of Mornington.”

“So I like two out of three,” Sharpe said. “That’s not bad.”

“You like Arthur?”

Sharpe shrugged. “I don’t know that I like him, but I’d like him to like me. I admire
him.”

“But you don’t like William?”

“Do you?”

She paused. “No. My father made me marry him. He’s rich, very rich, and my family isn’t.
He was reckoned a good match, a very good match. I liked him once, but not now. Not now.”

“He hates me,” Sharpe said.

“He’s frightened of you.”

Sharpe smiled. “He’s a lord, though, isn’t he? And I’m nothing.”

“You’re here, though,” Grace said, kissing him on the cheek, “and he isn’t.” She kissed him
again. “And if he found me here I would be ruined. My name would be a disgrace. I would
never see society again. I might never see anyone again.”

Sharpe thought of Malachi Braithwaite and was grateful that the secretary was mewed up
in the steerage where he could not add to his suspicions of Sharpe and Lady Grace. “You
mean your husband would kill you?” Sharpe asked her.

“He’d like to. He might.” She thought about it. “But he’d probably have me declared mad.
It isn’t difficult. He’d hire expensive doctors who’d call me an hysterical lunatic and
a judge would order me locked away. I’d spend the rest of my short life shut in a wing of the
Lincolnshire house being spoon-fed medicines. Only the medicines would be mildly
poisonous so that, mercifully, I wouldn’t live long.”

Sharpe turned to look at her, though it was so dark that he could see little but the blur
of her face. “He could really do that?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said, “but I stay safe by behaving very correctly, and by pretending
that William doesn’t take whores and mistresses. And, of course, he wants an heir. He was
overjoyed when our son was born, but has hated me ever since he died. Which doesn’t stop him
trying to give me another.” She paused. “So my best hope of staying alive is to give him a
son and to behave like an angel, and I swore I would do both, but then I saw you and I
thought why not lose my wits?”

“I’ll look after you,” Sharpe promised.

“Once we’re off this boat,” she said quietly, “I doubt we’ll ever meet again.”

“No,” Sharpe protested, “no.”

“Shh,” she whispered, and covered his mouth with hers.

By dawn she was gone. The view from the stern window was unchanged. No British warship
was in pursuit, there was just the endless Indian Ocean stretching away to a hazed
horizon. The wind was fresher so that the ship rolled and thumped, dislodging the chess
pieces that Major Dalton had arrayed on the stern seat in a plan of the battle of Assaye.
“You must tell me,” the major said, “what happened when Sir Arthur was unhorsed.”

“I think you must ask him, Major.”

“But you know as much as he, surely?”

“I do,” Sharpe agreed, “but I doubt he’s fond of telling the story, or of having it told.
You might do better to say he fought off a group of the enemy and was rescued by his
aides.”

“But is that true?”

“There’s truth in it,” Sharpe said and would say no more. Besides, he could not remember
exactly what had happened. He remembered sliding off his horse and slashing the saber in
hay-making cuts; he remembered Sir Arthur being dazed and standing in the shelter of a
cannon’s wheel and he remembered killing, but what he remembered clearest of all was the
Indian swordsman who had deserved to kill him, for the man had swung his tulwar in a
scything stroke that had struck the nape of Sharpe’s neck. That stroke should have beheaded
Sharpe, but he had been wearing his hair in the soldier’s queue, bound around a leather bag
that would normally have been filled with sand, only instead Sharpe had concealed the
great ruby from the Tippoo Sultan’s hat in the bag and the tulwar cold. The blow had
released the ruby and Sharpe remembered how, when the vicious fight was over, Sir Arthur
had picked up the stone and held it out to him with a puzzled expression. The general had
been too confused to recognize what it was and probably thought it was nothing but a
prettily colored pebble that Sharpe had collected. Goddamn Cromwell had the pretty
pebble now.

“What was Sir Arthur’s horse called?” Dalton asked.

“Diomed,” Sharpe said. “He was very fond of that horse.” He could remember the gush of
blood that spilled onto the dry ground when the pike was pulled from Diomed’s chest.

Dalton questioned Sharpe till late afternoon, making notes for his memoir. “I have to
do something with my retirement, Sharpe. If ever I see Edinburgh again.”

“Are you not married, sir?”

“I was. A dear lady. She died.” The major shook his head, then stared wistfully through
the stern window. “We had no children,” he said softly, then frowned as a sudden rush of
feet sounded from the quarterdeck. A voice could be heard shouting, and a heartbeat later
the Calliope yawed to larboard and the sails hammered like guns firing. One by one the
sails were sheeted home and the ship, after momentarily wallowing in the swells, was
sailing smooth again, only this time she was beating up into the wind on a course as near
northerly as the small crew could hold. “Something’s excited the Frenchies,” the major
said.

No one knew what had caused the northward turn, for no other ship was visible from the
cabin portholes, though it was possible a lookout high in the rigging had seen some
topsails on the southern horizon. The motion of the ship was more uncomfortable now for
she was slamming into the waves and heeling over. Then, when the supper was carried to the
passengers, the officier marinier ordered that no lights were to be shown, and promised
that anyone who disobeyed him would be thrust down into the ship’s hold where fetid
seawater slopped and rats ruled.

“So there is another ship,” Dalton said.

“But has she seen us?” Sharpe wondered.

“Even if she has,” Dalton said gloomily, “what can we do?”

Sharpe prayed it was the Pucelle, Captain Chase’s French-built warship that was as quick
a sailor as the Revenant. “There is one thing,” he said.

“What?”

“I need Tufnell,” Sharpe said, and he went down to the officers’ quarters in the great
cabin and hammered on the lieutenant’s door and, after a brief conversation, took the
lieutenant and Dalton to Ebenezer Fairley’s cabin.

The merchant was robed for bed and had a tasseled nightcap falling over the left side of
his face, but he listened to Sharpe, then grinned. “Come on in, lad. Mother! You’ll have to
get up again. We’ve got some mischief to make.”

The problem was a lack of tools, but Sharpe had his pocket knife, Tufnell had a short
dagger and the major produced a dirk and the three men first pulled up the painted canvas
carpet in Fairley’s sleeping cabin, then attacked a floorboard.

The board was made of oak over two inches thick. It was old oak, seasoned and hard, but
Sharpe could see no alternative except to make a hole in the deck and hope that it was in
the right place. The men took it in turns to hack and scratch and carve and cut the wood, while
Mrs. Fairley produced a kitchen steel from a traveling chest and periodically
sharpened the three blades that were slowly, so very slowly, digging through the plank.

They made two cuts, a foot apart, and it took till well past midnight to cut through the
board and lift the section out. They worked in the dark, but once the hole was made Fairley
lit a lantern that he shielded with one of his wife’s cloaks and the three men peered into
the darkness below. At first Sharpe could see nothing. He could hear the grating of the
tiller rope, but he could not see it, and then, when Fairley dropped the lantern into the
hole, he saw the great hemp rope just a foot or so away. Every few seconds the taut rope
would move an inch or more and the creaking sound would echo through the stern.

The rope was fastened to the tiller which was the bar that turned the Calliope’s great
rudder. From the tiller the rope went to both sides of the ship where it ran through pulleys
before returning to the center of the ship where two more pulleys led the rope up to the
ship’s wheel which was really two wheels, one in front of the other, so that as many men as
possible could heave on the spokes when the ship was in heavy seas and high winds. The twin
wheels were connected by a hefty wooden drum around which the tiller rope was tightly wound
so that a turn of the wheel pulled on the rope and transferred the motion to the tiller bar.
Cut that rope and the Calliope would be rudderless for a while.

“But when to cut it, eh?” Fairley asked.

“Wait for daylight?’ Dalton suggested.

“It’ll take some cutting,” Sharpe said, for the rope was near three inches thick. It ran
in a space between the main and lower decks and Fairley put the canvas carpet back into
place, not only to disguise the hole, but to keep the rats from coming up into his
cabin.

“How long will it take to replace that rope?” the merchant asked Tufnell.

“A good crew could do it in an hour.”

“They’ll have some good seamen,” the merchant said, “so we’d best not waste their efforts
now. We’ll see what morning brings.”