Sharpe's Trafalgar (2 page)

Sharpe sidled toward the steps, elbowing the beggars aside..The crowd was jeering at the
defeated British seamen, Panjit and Nana Rao were laughing, while the petitioners,
emboldened by the success of the bodyguards, jostled each other for a chance to kick the
fallen men. Some of the bodyguards were wearing the sailors’ tarred hats while another
pranced in triumph with Chase’s cocked hat on his head. The captain was a prisoner, his arms
pinioned by two men.

One of the bodyguards had stayed with Panjit and saw Sharpe edging toward the steps. He
came down fast, shouting that Sharpe should go back, and when the cloaked beggar did not obey
he aimed a kick at him. Sharpe grabbed the man’s foot and kept it swinging upward so that the
bodyguard fell on his back and his head struck the bottom step with a sickening thump that
went unnoticed in the noisy celebration of the British defeat. Panjit was shouting for
quiet, holding his hands aloft. Nana Rao was laughing, his shoulders heaving with
merriment, while Sharpe was in the shadow of the bushes at the side of the steps.

The victorious bodyguards pushed the petitioners and beggars away from the bruised and
bloodied sailors who, disarmed, could only watch as their disheveled captain was
ignominiously hustled to the bottom of the steps. Panjit shook his head in mock sadness.
“What am I to do with you, Captain?”

Chase shook his hands free. His fair hair was darkened by blood that trickled down his
cheek, but he was still defiant. “I suggest,” he said, “that you give me Nana Rao and pray to
whatever god you trust that I do not bring you before the magistrates.”

Panjit looked pained. “It is you, Captain, who will be in court,” he said, “and how will
that look? Captain Chase of His Britannic Majesty’s navy, convicted of forcing his way
into a private house and there brawling like a drunkard? I think, Captain Chase, that you
and I had better discuss what terms we can agree to avoid that fate.” Panjit waited, but
Chase said nothing. He was beaten. Panjit frowned at the bodyguard who had the captain’s hat
and ordered the man to give it back, then smiled. “I do not want a scandal any more than you,
Captain, but I shall survive any scandal that this sad affair starts, and you will not, so I
think you had better make me an offer.”

A loud click interrupted Panjit. It was not a single click, but more like a loud
metallic scratching that ended in the solid sound of a pistol being cocked, and Panjit
turned to see that a red-coated British officer with black hair and a scarred face was
standing beside his cousin, holding a blackened pistol muzzle at Nana Rao’s temple.

The bodyguards glanced at Panjit, saw his uncertainty, and some of them hefted their
staves and moved toward the steps, but Sharpe gripped Nana Rao’s hair with his left hand and
kicked him in the back of the knees so that the merchant dropped hard down with a cry of hurt
surprise. The sudden brutality and Sharpe’s evident readiness to pull the trigger checked
the bodyguards. “I think you’d better make me an offer,” Sharpe said to Panjit, “because
this dead cousin of yours owes me fourteen pounds, seven shillings and threepence
ha’penny.”

“Put the pistol away,” Panjit said, waving his bodyguards back. He was nervous. Dealing
with a courteous naval captain who was an obvious gentleman was one thing, but the
red-coated ensign looked wild, and the pistol’s muzzle was grinding into Nana Rao’s skull
so that the merchant whimpered with pain. “Just put the pistol away,” Panjit said
soothingly.

“You think I’m daft?” Sharpe sneered. “Besides, the magistrates can’t do anything to me if
I shoot your cousin. He’s already dead! You said so yourself. He’s nothing but ashes in the
river.” He twisted Nana Rao’s hair, making the kneeling man gasp. “Fourteen pounds,” Sharpe
said, “seven shillings and threepence ha’penny.”

“I’ll pay it!” Nana Rao gasped.

“And Captain Chase wants his money too,” Sharpe said.

“Two hundred and sixteen guineas,” Chase said, brushing off his hat, “though I think we
deserve a little more for having worked the miracle of bringing Nana Rao back to life!”

Panjit was no fool. He looked at Chase’s seamen who were picking up their capstan bars and
readying themselves to continue the fight. “No magistrates?” he asked Sharne.

“I hate magistrates,” Sharpe said.

Panjit’s face betrayed a flicker of a smile. “If you were to let go of my cousin’s hair,”
he suggested, “then I think we can all talk business.”

Sharpe let go of Nana Rao, lowered the flint of the pistol and stepped back. He stood
momentarily to attention. “Ensign Sharpe, sir,” he introduced himself to Chase.

“You are no ensign, Sharpe, but a ministering angel.” Chase climbed the steps with an
outstretched hand. Despite the blood on his face he was a good-looking man with a
confidence and friendliness that seemed to come from a contented and good-natured
character. “You are the deus ex machina, Ensign, as welcome as a whore on a gundeck or a
breeze in the horse latitudes.” He spoke lightly, but there was no doubting the fervency of
his thanks and, instead of shaking Sharpe’s hand, he embraced him. “Thank you,” he whispered,
then stepped back. “Hopper!”

“Sir?” The huge bosun with the tattooed arms who had been laying enemies left and right
before he was overwhelmed stepped forward.

“Clear the decks, Hopper. Our enemies wish to discuss surrender terms.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“And this is Ensign Sharpe, Hopper, and he is to be treated as a most honored friend.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Hopper said, grinning.

“Hopper commands my barge crew,” Chase explained to Sharpe, “and those battered
gentlemen are his oarsmen. This night may not go down as one of our greater victories,
gentlemen”—Chase was now addressing his bruised and bleeding men—”but a victory it still
is, and I thank you.”

The yard was cleared, chairs were fetched from the house, and terms discussed.

It had been a guinea, Sharpe thought, exceedingly well spent.

“I rather liked the fellows,” Chase said.

“Panjit and Nana Rao? They’re rogues,” Sharpe said. “I liked them too.”

“Took their defeat like gentlemen!”

“They got off light, sir,” Sharpe said. “Must have made a fortune on that fire.”

“Oldest trick in the bag,” Captain Chase said. “There used to be a fellow on the Isle of
Dogs who claimed thieves had cleaned out his chandlery on the night before some foreign ship
sailed, and the victims always fell for it.” Chase chuckled and Sharpe said nothing. He had
known the man Chase spoke of, and had even helped him clear the warehouse one night, but he
thought it best to be silent. “But you and I are all right, Sharpe, other than a scratch and a
bruise,” Chase went on, “and that’s all that matters, eh?”

“We’re all right, sir,” Sharpe agreed. The two men, followed by Chase’s barge crew, were
walking back through the pungent alleys of Bombay and both were carrying money. Chase had
originally contracted with Rao to supply his ship with rum, brandy, wine and tobacco, and
now, instead of the two hundred and sixteen guineas he had paid the merchant, he was
carrying three hundred, while Sharpe had two hundred rupees, so all in all, Sharpe
reckoned, it had been a good evening’s work, especially as Panjit had promised to supply
Sharpe with the bed, blankets, bucket, lantern, chest, arrack, tobacco, soap and filter
machine, all to be delivered to the Calliope at dawn and at no cost to Sharpe. The two
Indians had been eager to placate the Englishmen once they realized that Chase and Sharpe
had no intention of telling the rest of the fleeced victims that Nana Rao still lived, and so
the merchants had fed their unwanted guests, plied them with arrack, paid the money, sworn
eternal friendship and bid them good night. Now Chase and Sharpe groped their way through the
dark city.

“God, this place stinks!” Chase said.

“You’ve not been here before?” Sharpe asked, surprised.

“I’ve been five months in India,” Chase said, “but always at sea. Now I’m living ashore for
a week, and it stinks. My God, how the place stinks!”

“No more than London,” Sharpe said, which was true, but here the smells were different.
Instead of coal fumes there was bullock-dung smoke and the rich odors of spices and sewage. It
was a sweet smell, ripe even, but not unpleasant, and Sharpe was thinking back to when he had
first arrived and how he had recoiled from the smell that he now thought homely and even
enticing. “I’ll miss it,” he admitted. “I sometimes wish I wasn’t going back to
England.”

“Which ship are you on?”

“The Calliope.”

Chase evidently found that amusing. “So what do you make of Peculiar?”

“Peculiar?” Sharpe asked.

“Peculiar Cromwell, of course, the Captain.” Chase looked at Sharpe. “Surely you’ve met
him!”

“I haven’t. Never heard of him.”

“But the convoy must have arrived two months ago,” Chase said.

“It did.”

“Then you should have made an effort to see Peculiar. That’s his real name, by the way,
Peculiar Cromwell. Odd, eh? He was navy once, most of the East Indiamen captains were navy,
but Peculiar resigned because he wanted to become rich. He also believed he should have
been made admiral without spending tedious years as a mere captain. He’s an odd soul, but
he sails a tidy ship, and a fast one. I can’t believe you didn’t make the effort to meet
him.”

“Why should I?” Sharpe asked.

“To make sure you get some privileges aboard, of course. Can I assume you’ll be traveling
in steerage?”

“I’m traveling cheap, if that’s what you mean,” Sharpe said. He spoke bitterly, for though
he had paid the lowest possible rate, his passage was still costing him one hundred and
seven pounds and fifteen shillings. He had thought the army would pay for the voyage, but the
army had refused, saying that Sharpe was accepting an invitation to join the 95th Rifles
and if the 95th Rifles refused to pay his passage then damn them, damn their badly colored
coats, and damn Sharpe. So he had cut one of the precious diamonds from the seam of his red
coat and paid for the voyage himself. He still had a king’s ransom in the precious stones
that he had taken from the Tippoo Sultan’s body in a dank tunnel at Seringapatam, but he
resented using the loot to pay the East India Company. Britain had sent Sharpe to India,
and Britain, Sharpe reckoned, should fetch him back.

“So the clever thing to have done, Sharpe,” Chase said, “would have been to introduce
yourself to Peculiar while he was living ashore and given the greedy bugger a present,
because then he’d have assigned you to decent Quarters. But if vou haven’t crossed
Peculiar’s palm with silver, Sharpe, he’ll like as not have you down in lower steerage with
the rats. Maindeck steerage is much better and doesn’t cost a penny more, but the lower
steerage is nothing but farts, vomit and misery all the way home.” The two men had left the
narrow alleys and were leading the barge crew down a street that was edged with sewage-filled
ditches. It was a tin-smithing quarter and the forges were already burning bright as the
sound of hammers rattled the night. Pale cows watched the sailors pass and dogs barked
frantically, waking the homeless poor who huddled between the ditches and the house
walls. “It’s a pity you’re sailing in convoy,” Chase said.

“Why, sir?”

“Because a convoy goes at the speed of its slowest boat,” Chase explained. “Calliope
could make England in three months if she was allowed to fly, but she’ll have to limp. I wish I
was sailing with you. I’d offer you passage myself as thanks for your rescue tonight, but
alas, I am ghost-hunting.”

“Ghost-hunting, sir?”

“You’ve heard of the Revenant?”

“No, sir.”

“The ignorance of you soldiers,” Chase said, amused. “The Revenant, my dear Sharpe, is a
French seventy-four that is haunting the Indian Ocean. Hides herself in Mauritius,
sallies out to snap up prizes, then scuttles back before we can catch her. I’m here to stifle
her ardor, only before I can hunt her I have to scrape the bottom. My ship’s too slow after
eight months at sea, so we scour off the barnacles to quicken her up.”

“I wish you good fortune, sir,” Sharpe said, then frowned. “But what’s that to do with
ghosts?” He usually did not like asking such questions. Sharpe had once marched in the ranks
of a redcoat battalion, but he had been made into an officer and so found himself in a
world where almost every man was educated except himself. He had become accustomed to
allowing small mysteries to slide past him, but Sharpe decided he did not mind revealing
his ignorance to a man as good-natured as Chase.

“Revenant is the Frog word for ghost,” Chase said. “Noun, masculine. I had a tutor for
these things who flogged the language into me and I’d like to flog it out of him now.” In a
nearby yard a cockerel crowed and Chase glanced up at the sky. “Almost dawn,” he said.
“Perhaps you’ll permit me to give you breakfast? Then my lads will take you out to the
Calliope. God speed your way home, eh?”

Home. It seemed an odd word to Sharpe, for he did not have a home other than the army and he
had not seen England in six years. Six years! Yet he felt no pang of delight at the prospect of
sailing to England. He did not think of it as home, indeed he had no idea where home was, but
wherever that elusive place lay, he was going there.

Chase was living ashore while his ship was cleaned of the weed. “We tip her over, scrape her
copper-sheathed bum clean when the tide’s low, and float her off,” he explained as servants
brought coffee, boiled eggs, bread rolls, ham, cold chicken and a basket of mangoes.
“Bum-scrubbing is a damned nuisance. All the guns have to be shipped and half the contents of
the hold dragged out, but she’ll sail like a beauty when it’s done. Have more eggs than that,
Sharpe! You must be hungry. I am. Like the house? It belongs to my wife’s first cousin. He’s a
trader here, though right now he’s up in the hills doing whatever traders do when they’re
making themselves rich. It was his steward who alerted me to Nana Rao’s tricks. Sit down,
Sharpe, sit down. Eat.”