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

‘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 you haven’t crossed Peculiar’s palm with silver, Sharpe, he’ll like as not have you down in lower steerage with the rats. Main-deck 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 tinsmithing 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 ardour, 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.’

They took their breakfast in the shade of a wide verandah that looked out on a small garden, a road and the sea. Chase was gracious, generous and apparently oblivious of the vast gulf that existed between a mere ensign, the lowest of the army’s commissioned ranks, and a post captain who was officially the equivalent of an army colonel, though on board his own ship such a man outranked the very powers of heaven. Sharpe had been conscious of that wide gulf at first, but it had gradually dawned on him that Joel Chase was genuinely good-natured and Sharpe had warmed to the naval officer whose gratitude was unstinting and heartfelt. ‘Do you realize that bugger Panjit really could have had me in front of the magistrates?’ Chase enquired. ‘Dear God, Sharpe, that would have been a pickle! And Nana Rao would have vanished, and who’d have believed me if I said the dead had come back to life? Do have more ham, please. It would have meant an enquiry at the very least, and almost certainly a court martial. I’d have been damned lucky to have survived with my command intact. But how was I to know he had a private army?’

‘We came out of it all right, sir.’

‘Thanks to you, Sharpe, thanks to you.’ Chase shuddered. ‘My father always said I’d be dead before I was thirty, and I’ve beaten that by five years, but one day I’ll jump into trouble and there’ll be no ensign to pull me out.’ He patted the bag which held the money he had taken from Nana Rao and Panjit. ‘And between you and me, Sharpe, this cash is a windfall. A windfall! D’you think we could grow mangoes in England?’

‘I don’t know, sir.’

‘I shall try. Plant a couple in a warm spot of the garden and who knows?’ Chase poured coffee and stretched out his long legs. He was curious why Sharpe, a man in his late twenties, should only be an ensign, but he made the enquiry with an exquisite tact and once he discovered that Sharpe had been promoted from the ranks he was genuine in his admiration. ‘I once had a captain who’d come up through the hawse-hole,’ he told Sharpe, ‘and he was damned good! Knew his business. Understood what went on in the dark places where most captains dare not look. I reckon the army’s lucky in you, Sharpe.’

‘I’m not sure they think so, sir.’

‘I shall whisper in some ears, Sharpe, though if I don’t catch the
Revenant
there’ll be precious few who’ll listen to me.’

‘You’ll catch her, sir.’

‘I pray so, but she’s a fast beast. Fast and slippery. All French ships are. God knows, the buggers can’t sail them, but they do know how to build ’em. French ships are like French women, Sharpe. Beautiful and fast, but hopelessly manned. Have some mustard.’ Chase pushed the jar across the table, then petted a skinny black kitten as he stared past the palm trees towards the sea. ‘I do like coffee,’ he said, then pointed out to sea. ‘There’s the
Calliope
.’

Sharpe looked, but all he could see was a mass of shipping far out in the harbour beyond the shallower water which was busy with scores of bumboats, launches and fishing craft.

‘She’s the one drying her topsails,’ Chase said, and Sharpe saw that one of the far ships had hung out her topmost sails, but at this distance she looked like the other dozen East Indiamen that would sail home together to protect themselves against the privateers who haunted the Indian Ocean. From the shore they looked like naval ships, for their hulls were banded black and white to suggest that massive broadsides were concealed behind closed gunports, but the ruse would not mislead any privateer. Those ships, their hulls stuffed with the riches of India, were the greatest prizes any corsair or French naval captain could wish to take. If a man wanted to live and die rich then all he needed to do was capture an Indiaman, which is why the great ships sailed in convoy.

‘Where’s your ship, sir?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Can’t see her from here.’ Chase said. ‘She’s careened on a mudbank on the far side of Elephanta Island.’

‘Careened?’

‘Tipped on her side so we can polish her bum.’

‘What’s she called?’

Chase looked abashed. ‘
Pucelle
,’ he said.

‘
Pucelle
? Sounds French.’

‘It is French, Sharpe. It means a virgin.’ Chase pretended to be offended as Sharpe laughed. ‘You’ve heard of
la Pucelle d’Orléans
?’ he asked.

‘No, sir.’

‘The maid of Orleans, Sharpe, was Joan of Arc, and the ship was named for her and I just trust she doesn’t end up like Joan, burned to a crisp.’

‘But why would you name a boat for a Frenchwoman, sir?’ Sharpe asked.

‘We didn’t. The Frogs did. She was a French boat till Nelson took her at the Nile. If you capture a ship, Sharpe, you keep the old name unless it’s really obnoxious. Nelson took the
Franklin
at the Nile, an eighty-gun thing of great beauty, but the navy will be damned if it has a ship named after a traitorous bloody Yankee so we call her the
Canopus
now. But my ship kept her name, and she’s a lovely beast. Lovely and fast. Oh my God, no.’ He sat up straight, staring towards the road. ‘Oh, God, no!’ These last words were prompted by the sight of an open carriage that had slowed and now stopped just beyond the garden gate. Chase, who had been genial until this moment, suddenly looked bitter.

A man and a woman were seated in the carriage which was driven by an Indian dressed in yellow and black livery. Two native footmen, arrayed in the same livery, now hurried to open the carriage door and unfold the steps, allowing the man, who was dressed in a white linen jacket, to step down to the pavement. A beggar immediately swung on short crutches and calloused stumps towards the carriage, but one of the footmen fended the man off with a sharp kick and the coachman completed the rout with his whip. The white-jacketed man was middle-aged and had a face that reminded Sharpe of Sir Arthur Wellesley. Maybe it was the prominent nose, or perhaps it was the cold and haughty look the man wore. Or perhaps it was just that everything about him, from his carriage to the liveried servants, spoke of privilege.

‘Lord William Hale,’ Chase said, investing every syllable with dislike.

‘Never heard of him.’

‘He’s on the Board of Control,’ Chase explained, then saw Sharpe’s raised eyebrow. ‘Six men, Sharpe, who are appointed by the government to make certain that the East India Company doesn’t do anything foolish. Or rather that, if it does, no blame attaches itself to the government.’ He looked sourly at Lord William who had paused to speak with the woman in the carriage. ‘That’s his wife and I’ve just brought the two of them from Calcutta so they could go home on the same convoy as yourself. You should pray they aren’t on the
Calliope
.’

Lord William was grey-haired and Sharpe assumed his wife would also be middle-aged, but when she lowered her white parasol Sharpe had a clear view of her ladyship and the breath was checked in his throat. She was much younger than Lord William, and her pale, slender face had a haunting beauty, almost a sadness, that struck Sharpe with the force of a bullet. He stared at her, entranced by her.

Chase smiled at Sharpe’s smitten expression. ‘She was born Grace de Laverre Gould, third daughter of the Earl of Selby. She’s twenty years younger than her husband, but just as cold.’

Sharpe could not take his eyes from her ladyship, for she was truly beautiful; breathtakingly, achingly, untouchably beautiful. Her face was pale as ivory, sharp-shadowed as she leaned towards her husband, and framed by heavy loops of black hair that were pinned to appear artless, but which even Sharpe could tell must have taken her maid an age to arrange. She did not smile, but just gazed solemnly into her husband’s face. ‘She looks sad rather than cold,’ Sharpe said.

Chase mocked the wistfulness in Sharpe’s voice. ‘What does she have to be sad about? Her beauty is her fortune, Sharpe, and her husband is as rich as he is ambitious as he is clever. She’s on her way to being wife of the Prime Minister so long as Lord William doesn’t put a foot wrong and, believe me, he steps as lightly as a cat.’

Lord William concluded the conversation with his wife, then gestured for a footman to open Chase’s gate. ‘You might have taken a house with a carriage drive,’ he admonished the naval captain as he strode up the short path. ‘It’s devilish annoying being pestered by beggars every time one makes a call.’

‘Alas, my lord, we sailors are so inept on land. I cannot entice your wife to take some coffee?’

‘Her ladyship is not well.’ Lord William ran up the verandah steps, gave Sharpe a careless glance, then held a hand towards Chase as if expecting to be given something. He must have noted the blood that was still crusted in Chase’s fair hair, but he made no mention of it. ‘Well, Chase, can you settle?’

Chase reluctantly found the big leather bag which held the coins he had taken from Nana Rao and counted out a substantial portion that he gave to Lord William. His lordship shuddered at the thought of handling the grubby currency, but forced himself to take the money and pour it into his coat’s tail pockets. ‘Your note,’ he said, and handed Chase a scrap of paper. ‘You haven’t received new orders, I suppose?’

‘Alas no, my lord. We are still ordered to find the
Revenant
.’

‘I was hoping you’d be going home instead. It is crucial I reach London quickly.’ He frowned, then, without another word, turned away.

‘You did not give me a chance, my lord,’ Chase said, ‘to introduce my particular friend, Mister Sharpe.’

Lord William bestowed a second brief look at Sharpe and his lordship saw nothing to contradict his first opinion that the ensign was penniless and powerless, for he merely looked, calculated and glanced away without offering any acknowledgement, but in that brief meeting of eyes Sharpe had received an impression of force, confidence and arrogance. Lord William was a man who had more than his share of power, he wanted more and he would not waste time on those who had nothing to give him.

‘Mister Sharpe served under Sir Arthur Wellesley,’ Chase said.

‘As did many thousands of others, I believe,’ Lord William said carelessly, then frowned. ‘There is a service you can do me, Chase.’

‘I am, of course, entirely at your lordship’s convenience,’ Chase said politely.

‘You have a barge and a crew?’

‘All captains do,’ Chase said.

‘We must reach the
Calliope
. You could take us there?’

‘Alas, my lord, I have promised Mr Sharpe the barge,’ Chase said, ‘but I am sure he will gladly share it with you. He too is bound for the
Calliope
.’