Sharpe's Trafalgar

by Bernard Cornwell

She lay silent for a while, then stroked his hair. “I dream sometimes of William’s death,” she said softly. “Not when I’m asleep, but when I’m awake. That’s dreadful.”

  “It’s human,” Sharpe said. “I think of it too.”

  “I wish he’d fall overboard,” she said. “Or slip down a ladder. He won’t though.” Not without help, Sharpe thought, and he pushed that idea away. Killing Braithwaite was one thing—the private secretary had been a blackmailer—but Lord William had done nothing except be haughty and married to a woman Sharpe loved. Yet Sharpe did think of killing him, though how it could be done he did not know. Lord William was hardly likely to descend into the hold and he was never on deck in the dark of the night when a man might be pushed over the side. “If he died,” Grace said quietly, “I’d be wealthy. I would sell the London house and live in the country. I’d make a great library with a fireplace, walk the dogs, and you could live with me. I’d be Mrs. Richard Sharpe.”

  For a moment Sharpe thought he had misheard her, then he smiled. “You’d miss society,” he said.

  “I hate society,” she said vehemently. “Vapid conversation, stupid people, endless rivalry. I shall be a recluse, Richard, with books from the floor to the ceiling.”

  “And what will I do?”

  “Make love to me,” she said, “and glower at the neighbors.”

  “I reckon I could manage that,” Sharpe said, knowing it was a dream, except that all it would take was one man’s death to make the dream come true. “Is there a gunport in your husband’s cabin?” he asked, knowing he should not ask the question.

  “Yes, why?”

  “Nothing,” he said, but he had been wondering whether he could go into the cabin at night and overpower Lord William and heave him through the gunport, but then he dismissed the idea. Lord William’s cabin, like Sharpe’s, was under the poop and close to the ship’s wheel, and Sharpe doubted he could commit murder and dispose of the body without alerting the officer on watch. Even the creak of the opening gun-port would be too loud.

  “He’s never ill,” Grace said on another afternoon when she had risked coming to Sharpe’s cabin. “He’s never ill.”

  Sharpe knew what she was thinking and he was thinking it himself, but he doubted Lord William would have the decency to die of some convenient disease. “Perhaps he’ll be killed in the fight with the Revenant,” Sharpe said.

  Grace smiled. “He’ll be down below, my love, safe beneath the water line.”

  “He’s a man!” Sharpe said, surprised. “He’ll have to fight.”

  “He’s a politician, my dear, and he assassinates, he does not fight. He will tell me his life is too precious to be risked, and he will really believe it! Though when we reach England he will modestly claim to have played a part in the Revenanfs defeat and I, like a loyal wife, will sit there and smile while the company admires him. He is a politician.”

  Footsteps sounded outside the cabin, in the space behind the wheel and under the overhang of the poop. Sharpe listened apprehensively, expecting the steps to go away as they usually did, but this time they came right to his door. Grace clutched his hand, then shuddered as a knock sounded. Sharpe did not respond, then the bolted door shook as someone tried to force it open. “Who is it?” Sharpe called, pretending to have been asleep.

  “Midshipman Collier, sir.”

  “What do you want?”

  “You’re wanted in the captain’s quarters, sir.”

  “Tell him I’ll be there in a minute, Harry,” Sharpe said. His heart was racing.

  “You should go,” Grace whispered.

  Sharpe dressed, buckled his sword belt, leaned over to kiss her, then slipped out of the door. Chase was standing by the larboard shrouds, gazing at the dot on the horizon that was the Revenant. “You wanted me, sir?” Sharpe asked.

  “Not me, Sharpe, not me,” Chase said. “It’s Lord William who wants you.

  “Lord William?” Sharpe could not keep the surprise from his voice.

  Chase raised an eyebrow as if to suggest that Sharpe had brought this trouble on himself, then jerked his head toward his dining cabin. Sharpe felt a rising panic, subdued it by telling himself Braithwaite had not left a damning letter, straightened his red coat, then went to the dining cabin’s door beneath the poop.

  Lord William’s voice invited him to come in, Sharpe obeyed and was negligently waved toward a chair. Lord William was alone in the room, sitting at the long table which was covered with books and papers. He was writing, and the scratch of his pen seemed ominous. He wrote for a long time, ignoring Sharpe. The skylight above the table was open and the wind rustled the papers on the table. Sharpe stared at his lordship’s gray hair, not one out of place.

  “I am writing a report,” Lord William broke the silence, making Sharpe jump with guilty surprise, “about the political situation in India.” He dipped the nib in an inkwell, drained it carefully, then wrote another sentence before placing the pen on a small silver stand. His cold eyes were pouchy and glassy, probably from the laudanum that he took each night, but they were still filled with their usual distaste for Sharpe. “I would not normally turn to a junior officer for assistance, but I have small choice under the present circumstances. I would like your opinion, Sharpe, on the fighting abilities of the Mahrattas.”

  Sharpe felt a pang of relief. The Mahrattas! Ever since entering the cabin he had been thinking of Braithwaite and his claim to have written a damned letter, but all Lord William wanted was an opinion on the Mahrattas! “Brave men, my lord,” Sharpe said.

  Lord William shuddered. “I suppose I deserve a vulgar opinion, since I requested it of you,” he said tartly, then steepled his fingers and looked at Sharpe over his well-manicured nails. “It is evident to me, Sharpe, that we must eventually take over the administration of the whole Indian continent. In time that will also become evident to the government. The major obstacles to that ambition are the remaining Mahratta states, particularly those governed by Holkar. Let me be specific. Can those states prevent us from annexing their territory?”

  “No, my lord.”

  “Be explicit, please.” Lord William had drawn a clean sheet of paper toward him and had the pen poised.

  Sharpe took a deep breath. “They are brave men, my lord,” he said, risking an irritated glance, “but that ain’t enough. They don’t understand how to fight in our way. They think the secret is artillery, so what they do, sir, is line up all their guns in a great row and put the infantry behind them.”

  “We don’t do that?” Lord William asked, sounding surprised.

  “We put the guns at the sides of the infantry, sir. That way, if the other infantry attacks, we can rake them with crossfire. Kill more men that way, my lord.”

  “And you,” Lord William said acidly as his pen raced over the paper, “are an expert on killing. Go on, Sharpe.”

  “By putting their guns in front, sir, they give their own infantry the idea that they’re protected. And when the guns fall, sir, which they always do, the infantry lose heart. Besides, sir, our lads fire muskets a good deal faster than theirs, so once we’re past the guns it’s really just a matter of killing them.” Sharpe watched the pen scratch, waited until his lordship dipped it into the inkwell again. “We like to get close, my lord. They shoot volleys at a distance, and that’s no good. You have to march up close, very close, till you can smell them, then start firing.”

  “You’re saying their infantry lack the discipline of ours?”

  “They lack the training, sir.” He thought about it. “And no, they’re not as disciplined.”

  “And doubtless,” Lord William said pointedly, “they do not use the lash. But what if their infantry was properly led? By Europeans?”

  “It can be good then, sir. Our sepoys are as good, but the Mahrattas don’t take well to discioline. Thev’re raiders. Pirates. Thev hire infantry from other states, and a man never fights so well when he’s not fighting for his own. And it takes time, my lord. If you gav
e me a company of Mahrattas I’d want a whole year to get them ready. I could do it, but they wouldn’t like it. They’d rather be horsemen, my lord. Irregular cavalry.”

  “So you do not think we need take Monsieur Vaillard’s errand to Paris too seriously?”

  “I wouldn’t know, my lord.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. Did you recognize Pohlmann, Sharpe?”

  The question took Sharpe utterly by surprise. “No,” he blurted with too much indignation.

  “Yet you must have seen him”—Lord William paused to sort through the papers—”at Assaye.” He found the name which, Sharpe suspected, he had never forgotten.

  “Only through a telescope, my lord.”

  “Only through a telescope.” Lord William repeated the words slowly. “Yet Chase assures me you were very certain in your identification of him. Why else would this man-of-war be racing through the Atlantic?”

  “It just seemed obvious, my lord,” Sharpe said lamely.

  “The workings of your mind are a constant mystery to me, Sharpe,” Lord William said, writing as he spoke. “I shall, of course, moderate your opinions by talking to more senior men when I reach London, but your jejune thoughts will make a first draft possible. Perhaps I shall talk to my wife’s distant cousin, Sir Arthur.” The pen scratched steadily. “Do you know where my wife is this afternoon, Mister Sharpe?”

  “No, my lord,” Sharpe said, and was about to ask how he could be expected to know, but bit his tongue in case he heard the wrong answer.

  “She has a habit of vanishing,” Lord William said, his gray eyes now steady on Sharpe.

  Sharpe said nothing. He felt like a mouse under a cat’s gaze.

  Lord William turned to look at the bulkhead which divided the dining cabin from Sharpe’s cabin. He could have been gazing at the picture of Chase’s old frigate, the Spritely, which hung there. “Thank you, Sharpe,” he said, looking back at last. “Close the door firmly, will you? The latch is imperfectly aligned with its socket.”

  Sharpe left. He was sweating. Did Lord William know? Had Braithwaite really written a letter? Jesus, he thought, Jesus. Playing with fire. “Well?” Captain Chase had come to stand beside him, an amused expression on his face.

  “He wanted to know about the Mahrattas, sir.”

  “Don’t we all?” Chase inquired sweetly. He looked up at the sails, leaned to see the compass, smiled. “The ship’s orchestra is giving a concert tonight on the forecastle,” he said, “and we’re all invited to attend after supper. Do you sing, Sharpe?”

  “Not really, sir.”

  “Lieutenant Peel sings. It’s a pleasure to hear him. Captain Llewellyn should sing, being Welsh, but doesn’t, and the lower deck larboard gun crews make a splendid choir, though I shall have to order them not to sing the ditty about the admiral’s wife for fear of offending Lady Grace, yet even so it should be a wonderful evening.”

  Grace had left his cabin. Sharpe closed the door, shut his eyes and felt the sweat trickle beneath his shirt. Playing with fire.

  Two mornings later there was an island visible far off to the south and west. The Revenant must have passed quite close to the island in the night, but at dawn she was well to its north. Cloud hung above the small scrap of gray which was all Sharpe could see of the island’s summit through his telescope. “It’s called St. Helena,” Chase told him, “and belongs to the East India Company. If we weren’t otherwise engaged, Sharpe, we’d make a stop there for water and vegetables.”

  Sharpe gazed at the ragged scrap of land isolated in an immensity of ocean. “Who lives there?”

  “Some miserable Company officials, a handful of morose families, and a few wretched black slaves. Clouter was a slave there. You should ask him about it.”

  “You freed him?”

  “He freed himself. Swam out to us one night, climbed the anchor cable and hid away till we were at sea. I’ve no doubt the East India Company would like him back, but they can whistle in the wind for him. He’s far too good a seaman.”

  There were a score of black seamen like Clouter aboard, another score of lascars, and a scattering of Americans, Dutchmen, Swedes, Danes and even two Frenchmen. “Why would a man be called Clouter?” Sharpe asked.

  “Because he clouted someone so hard that the man didn’t wake up for a week,” Chase said, amused, then took the speaking trumpet from the rail and hailed Clouter who was among the men lounging on the forecastle. “Would you like me to put in to St. Helena, Clouter? You can visit your old friends.”

  Clouter mimed cutting his throat and Chase laughed. It was small gestures like that, Sharpe reckoned, that made the Pucelle a happy ship. Chase was easy in command and that ease did not diminish his authority, but simply made the men work harder. They were proud of their ship, proud of their captain and Sharpe did not doubt they would fight for him like fiends, but Capitaine Louis Montmorin had the same reputation and when the two ships met it would doubtless prove a grim and bloody business. Sharpe watched Chase for he reckoned he had still a lot to learn about the subtle business of leading men. He saw that the captain did not secure his authority by recourse to punishment, but rather by expecting high standards and rewarding them. He also hid his doubts. Chase could not be certain that Pohlmann’s servant really was Michel Vaillard, and he did not know for sure that he could catch the Revenant even if the Frenchman was aboard, and if he failed then the lords of the Admiralty would take a dim view of his initiative in taking the Pucelle so far from her proper station. Sharpe knew Chase worried about those things, yet the crew never received a hint of their captain’s doubts. To them he was certain, decisive and confident, and so they trusted him. Sharpe noted it and resolved to imitate it, and then he wondered whether he really would stay in the army. Perhaps Lord William would die? Perhaps Lord William would have a sleepless night and stroll the poop deck in the dark?

  And then, Sharpe wondered, what? A library with a fireplace? Grace happy with books, and he with what? And, as he asked himself those questions, he would sheer away from their answers, for they involved a murder that Sharpe feared. A man could kill a secretary and pass it off as a fall from a ladder, but a peer of England was not so easily destroyed. Nor had Sharpe any right to kill Lord William. He probably would, he thought, if the chance came, but he knew it would be wrong and he dimly apprehended that such a wrong would leave a scar on his future. He often surprised himself by realizing he had a conscience. Sharpe knew plenty of men, dozens, who would kill for the price of a pot of ale, yet he was not among them. There had to be a reason, and selfishness was not enough. Even love was not enough.

  Provoke Lord William to a duel? He thought about that, but he suspected Lord William would never stoop to fight a mere ensign. Lord William’s weapons were more subtle; memoranda to the Horse Guards, letters to senior officers, quiet words in the right ears and at their end Sharpe would be nothing. So forget it, Sharpe told himself, let the dream go, and he tried to lose himself in the work of the ship. He and Llewellyn were holding a competition among the marines to see who could fire the most musket shots in three minutes and the men were improving, though none could yet match Sharpe. He practiced them, encouraged them, swore at them, and morning after morning they filled the ship’s forecastle deck with powder smoke until Sharpe reckoned the marines were as good as any redcoat company. He practiced with the cutlass, fighting Llewellyn up and down the weather deck, slashing and hacking, parrying and slicing until the sweat ran down his face and chest. Some of the marines practiced with boarding pikes which were eight-foot ash staffs tipped with slender steel spikes that Llewellyn claimed were marvelously effective for clearing narrow passageways on enemy ships. The Welshman also encouraged the use of boarding axes which had vicious blades on short handles. “They’re clumsy,” Llewellyn admitted, “but, by God, they put the fear of Christ into the Froggies. A man don’t fight long with one of those buried in his skull, Sharpe, I can tell you. It cools his ardor, it does.”

  They crossed the equator and,
because everyone aboard had crossed it before, there was no need to put them through the ordeal of being dressed in women’s clothes, shaved with a cutlass and dipped in sea water. Nevertheless one of the seamen dressed himself as Neptune and went around the ship with a makeshift trident and demanded tribute from men and officers alike. Chase ordered a double rum ration, hung out a larger studdingsail that the sailmaker had stitched, and watched the Revenant on the northwestern horizon.

  Then the calms came. For a week the two ships made scarce forty miles, but just lay on a glassy sea in which their reflections were almost mirror perfect. The sails hung and the powder smoke belched by gun practice made a cloud about each ship that did not shift so that, from a distance, the Revenant looked like a patch of fog rigged with masts and sails. Lieutenant Haskell tried to time the Frenchman’s volleys by watching the cloud twitch in his telescope. “Only one shot every three minutes and twenty seconds,” he finally concluded.

  “They’re not trying their hardest,” Chase said. “Montmorin’s not going to let me know how well his men are trained. You may be assured they’re a good deal faster than that.”

  “How fast are we?” Sharpe asked Llewellyn.

  The Welshman shrugged. “On a good, day, Sharpe? Three broadsides in five minutes. Not that we ever fire a broadside proper. Fire all the guns together, Sharpe, and the bloody ship would fall to bits! But we fire in a ripple, see? One gun after the other. Pretty to watch, it is, and after that the guns fire as they’re loaded. The faster crews will easily do three shots in five minutes, but the bigger guns are slower. But our lads are good. There aren’t many Frenchmen who can do three shots in five minutes.”

  Some days Chase tried to tow the ship closer to the Revenant, but the Frenchman was also using his boats to tow and so the foes kept their stations. One day a freak breeze carried the Revenant almost beyond the horizon, leaving the Pucelle stranded, but next day it was the British ship’s turn to be wafted northward while the Revenant lay becalmed. The Pucelle ghosted along, drawing nearer and nearer to the enemy, the ripples of her passage scarcely disturbing the glasslike sea, and foot by foot, yard by yard, cable by cable, she gained on the Revenant despite the best efforts of the French oarsmen who were out ahead in their ship’s longboats. Still the Pucelle closed the gap until at last Captain Chase had the tompion pulled from the barrel of his forward larboard twenty-four-pounder. The gun was already loaded, for all the guns were left charged, and the gunner took off the lead touch-hole cover and screwed a flintlock into place. The captain had gone to the forward end of the weather deck, where the Pucelle’s goats were penned, and crouched beside the open gunport. “We’ll load with chain after the first shot,” he decided.