Sharpe's Trafalgar (22 page)

Sharpe tapped the glass scrap against the lantern’s metal, then scratched it on wood to
make a noise like rats’ claws. He reached as far as he could, tapping the glass closer to
Braithwaite. Braithwaite would be listening, trying to make sense of the small noises,
trying to contain a rising terror.

“By what justification,” Braithwaite asked, his voice a tone higher, “can mere birth
bestow such good fortune on one man and deny it to another? Are we lesser men because
our parents were poor? Must we forever tug the forelock because their ancestors were
brutes in plate armor who stole a fortune? You and I should combine, Sharpe. I beg you,
think on it.”

Sharpe was lying flat on the deck now, reaching toward Braithwaite, grinding the glass
on the rough planking, taking the sound ever nearer to the secretary who tried to see
something, anything, in the stygian darkness.

“I never wrote to Colonel Wallace as I was ordered to,” Braithwaite said in
desperation. “That was a favor to you, Sharpe. Can you not apprehend that we’re on the
same side?” He paused, waiting for an answer to come from the pitch darkness, but there was
only the small scraping sound on the deck in front of him. “Speak, Sharpe!” Braithwaite
pleaded. “Or kill Lord William.” Braithwaite’s voice was almost sobbing with fear now. “Her
ladyship will thank you, Sharpe. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Sharpe? Answer me, Sharpe,
for God’s sake, answer me!”

Sharpe tapped the glass fragment on the deck. He could hear Braithwaite’s hoarse
breathing. The secretary lunged out a foot, hoping to find Sharpe, but the shoe struck
nothing. “I beg you, Sharpe, think of me as a friend! I mean you no harm. How could I? When I
so admire your achievements? Her ladyship misconstrued my words, nothing else. She is
finely strung, Sharpe, and I am your friend, Sharpe, your friend!”

Sharpe tossed the glass scrap so that it rattled among the casks somewhere in the hold’s
starboard side. Braithwaite gave a yelp of terror, but held his fire, then sobbed as he
heard more small noises. “Talk to me, Sharpe. We are not brutes, you and I. We have things in
common, we should talk. Talk to me!”

Sharpe gathered a handful of the broken glass, paused, then threw them toward the
secretary who, as the small scraps struck him, screamed and thrust the pistol blindly
forward and pulled the trigger. The small gun flashed blindingly in the hold and the
bullet smacked harmlessly into a timber. Sharpe stood and walked forward, waited for the
echo of the shot to die away. “One bullet, Oxford man,” he said, “then it was my turn.”

“No!” Braithwaite flailed wildly in the dark, but Sharpe kicked him hard, then dropped on
him, pinioned his arms and turned the secretary over so that he lay on his belly.

Sharpe sat on the small of Braithwaite’s back. “Now tell me, Oxford man,” he asked
softly, “just what you wanted of Lady Grace?”

“I’ve written it all down, Sharpe.”

“Written what down, Oxford man?” Sharpe had Braithwaite’s arms held tight.

“Everything! About you and Lady Grace. I’ve left the letter among Lord William’s papers
with instructions to open it if anything should happen to me.”

“I don’t believe you, Oxford man.”

Braithwaite gave a sudden heave, trying to release his arms. “I’m not a fool, Sharpe.
You think I wouldn’t take precautions? Of course I’ve left a letter.” He paused. “Just let
me go,” he went on, “and we can discuss this.”

“So if I let you go,” Sharpe said, still holding tight to Braithwaite’s arms, “you’ll
fetch the letter back from Lord William?”

“Of course I will. I promise.”

“And you’ll apologize to Lady Grace? Tell her you were wrong about your suspicions?”

“Of course I’ll do that. Willingly! Gladly!”

“But you weren’t wrong, Oxford man,” Sharpe said, stooping close to Braithwaite’s head,
“her and me are lovers. Sweat and nakedness in the dark, Oxford man. I couldn’t have you
telling lies to her, saying it never happened, could I? And now you know my secret I’m not
sure I can let you go after all.”

“But there’s a letter, Sharpe!”

“You lie like a bloody rug, Braithwaite. There’s no letter.”

“There is!” Braithwaite cried in despair.

Sharpe was holding the secretary’s arms above his back, pushing them painfully
forward, and now he shoved them hard to dislocate both at the shoulders. Braithwaite gave
a whimper of pain, then screamed for help as Sharpe gripped one of his ears and turned his
head sideways. Sharpe was trying to find a purchase with his right hand on Braithwaite’s
face and Braithwaite attempted to bite him, but Sharpe smacked his face, then gripped a
handful of hair and ear and twisted the head hard. “God knows how they did it,” Sharpe said,
“those bloody jettis, but I watched them, so it must be possible.” He wrenched
Braithwaite’s head again and the secretary’s frantic protest was stilled as his throat was
constricted. His breath became a harsh gasping, but still he fought back, trying to heave
Sharpe from his back, and Sharpe, amazed that the jettis had made this look so easy, clamped
his hands on Braithwaite’s head and wrenched it with all his strength. The secretary’s
breathing became a scratchy whimper, hardly audible over the cacophony of creaking and
clanking in the hold, but he still twitched and so Sharpe took a deep breath, then twisted a
second time and was rewarded with a small grating scrunch that he reckoned was the spine
twisting out of alignment in Braithwaite’s neck.

The secretary was still now. Sharpe put a finger on Braithwaite’s neck, trying and
failing to find a pulse. He waited. Still no pulse, no twitches, no breathing, and so
Sharpe felt around the deck until he discovered the pistol which he put into his pocket,
then he stood and heaved the dead man onto his shoulder and staggered forward, pitched left
and right by the motion of the ship, until he blundered into the mizzen ladder. He dropped
the body there, climbed the ladder and heaved open the hatch to the astonishment of a
seaman who was passing. Sharpe nodded a greeting, closed the hatch on the corpse and on the
rats that scrabbled in the dark, then climbed on into the daylight. He chucked the pistol
out of his cabin’s scuttle. No one noticed.

Dinner was salt pork, peas and biscuits. Sharpe ate well.

Captain Chase assumed that the Revenant, if indeed it was the Revenant that had been
glimpsed on the horizon, had seen the Pucelle’s topsails the previous day despite the
cloud bank, and so had turned westward in the night. “That’ll slow her down,” he insisted,
recovering some of his usual optimism. The wind was fair, for even though the Pucelle
had now drawn far enough offshore to lose the advantage of the current, they were in the
latitudes where the southeast trades blew. “The wind can only get stronger,” Chase said,
“and the barometer’s rising, which is good.”

Flying fish skittered away from the Pucelle’s hull. The ill feeling that had pervaded
the ship all morning dissipated beneath the warm sun and under the captain’s renewed
optimism. “We know she’s no faster than us,” Chase said, “and we’re on the inside of the
bend from now to Cadiz.”

“How far is that?” Sharpe asked. He was taking the air on the quarterdeck after sharing
dinner with Chase.

“Another month,” Chase said, “but we ain’t out of trouble yet. We should do well as far
as the equator, but after that we could be becalmed.” He drummed his fingers on the rail.
“But with God’s help we’ll catch her first.”

“You haven’t seen my secretary, have you, Chase?” Lord William appeared on deck to
interrupt the conversation.

“Not a sign of him,” Chase said happily.

“I need him,” Lord William said petulantly. Lord William had persuaded Chase to allow
him to use his dining cabin as an office. Chase had been reluctant to yield the room with
its lavish table, but had decided it was better to keep Lord William happy rather than
have him scowling about the ship in frustration.

Chase turned to the fifth lieutenant, Holderby. “Did his lordship’s secretary take
dinner in the wardroom?” he asked.

“No, sir,” Holderby said, “haven’t seen the fellow since breakfast.”

“Have you seen him, Sharpe?” his lordship inquired coldly. He did not like talking to
Sharpe, but condescended to ask the question.

“No, my lord.”

“I asked him to fetch a memorandum about our original agreement with Holkar. Damn him, I
need it!”

“Perhaps he’s still looking for it,” Chase suggested.

“Or he’s seasick, my lord?” Sharpe added. “The wind’s freshened.”

“I’ve looked in his cabin,” Lord William complained, “and he’s not there.”

“Mister Collier!” Chase summoned the midshipman who was pacing up and down the
weather deck. “We have a missing secretary. The tall gloomy fellow who dresses in black.
Look below decks for him, will you? Tell him he’s wanted in my dining cabin.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Collier said and dived below to start his search.

Lady Grace, attended by her maid, strolled onto the deck and stood a studious distance
from Sharpe. Lord William turned on her. “Have you seen Braithwaite?”

“Not since this morning,” Lady Grace said.

“The wretched man has disappeared.”

Lady Grace shrugged, suggesting that Braithwaite’s fate was none of her concern, then
turned to watch the flying fish skim over the waves.

“I do hope the bugger hasn’t fallen overboard,” Chase said. “He’s got a long swim if he
has.”

“He had no business being on deck,” Lord William said in annoyance.

“I doubt he’s drowned, my lord,” Chase said reassuringly. “If he had fallen then
someone would have seen him.”

“What do you do then?” Sharpe asked.

“Stop the ship and make a rescue,” Chase said, “if we can. Did I ever tell you about
Nelson in the Minerva?”

“Even if you had,” Sharpe said, “you’d tell me again.”

Chase laughed. “Back in ‘ninety-seven, Sharpe, Nelson commands the Minerva. Fine
frigate! He was being pursued by two Spanish ships of the line and a frigate when some
halfwit falls overboard. Tom Hardy was aboard, wonderful man, he captains the Victory
now, and Hardy took a boat to rescue the fellow. See the picture, Sharpe? Minerva fleeing
for her life, close pursued by three Spaniards and Hardy and his boat crew, with the wet
fellow aboard, can’t row hard enough to catch up. So what does Nelson do? He backs his
topsails! Can you credit it? Backs his topsails. By God, he said, I won’t lose Hardy. Now
the Dons can’t make head nor tail of this. Why’s the fellow stopping? They think he must have
reinforcements coming, so the silly buggers haul their own wind. Hardy catches up, gets
aboard, and the Minerva takes off like a scalded cat! What a great man Nelson is.”

Lord William scowled and stared westward. Sharpe gazed up at the mainsail, trying to
trace a rope from its beginning, through blocks and tackles, down to the belaying pins
beside the gunwales. Hammocks were being aired over the netting racks in which they were
stuffed during battle to stop musket bullets. A solitary sea bird, white and long-winged,
curved close to the ship then soared away into the blue. Mister Cowper, the purser, was
counting the boarding pikes racked around the mainmast’s trunk. He licked a pencil, made a
note in a book, shot a scared look at Chase and waddled away. Holderby, who had the deck,
ordered a bosun’s mate forrard to ring the ship’s bell. Chase, still thinking about
Nelson, smiled.

“Captain! Sir! Captain!” It was Harry Collier, erupting into sight on the weather
deck from beneath the quarterdeck.

“Calm down, Mister Collier,” Chase said. “The ship isn’t on fire, is it?”

“No, sir. It’s Mister Braithwaite, sir, he’s dead, sir!” Everyone on the quarterdeck
stared down at the small boy.

“Go on, Mister Collier,” Chase said. “He can’t have just died! Men don’t just die. Well,
the master did, but he was old. Braithwaite was young. Did he fall? Was he strangled? Did he
kill himself? Enlighten me.”

164 I

“He fell in the hold, sir, looks like he broke his neck. Off the ladder, sir.”

“Careless,” Chase said, and turned away.

Lord William frowned, did not know what to say, so turned on his heel and stalked back
toward the dining cabin, then thought better of it and hurried back to the railing.
“Midshipman?”

“Sir?” Collier hauled off his cocked hat. “My lord?”

“Was there a piece of paper in his hand?”

“I didn’t see, sir.”

“Then pray look, Mister Collier, pray look,” Lord William said, “and bring it to my cabin
if you find such a thing.” He walked away again. Lady Grace looked at Sharpe who met her eye,
kept his expression neutral, then turned to gaze up the mainmast.

The body was brought onto the deck. It was plain that poor Braithwaite had slipped off the
ladder and fallen, breaking his neck in the process, but it was strange, the surgeon
commented with a frown, that the secretary had dislocated both his arms.

“Caught them in the ladder’s rungs?” Sharpe suggested.

“That could be so, that could be so,” Pickering allowed. He did not seem convinced, but
nor was he minded to probe the mystery. “But at least it was a quick end.”

“One hopes so,” Sharpe said piously.

“Probably struck his head on a barrel.” Pickering twisted the corpse’s head, looking
for a mark, but finding none. He stood up, dusting his hands. “Happens once every voyage,”
he said cheerfully, “sometimes more. We have practical jokers, Mister Sharpe, who like
to grease the rungs with soap. Usually when they believe the purser might be using a
ladder. It usually ends with a broken leg and much hilarity, but our Mister Braithwaite
was less fortunate.” He wrenched the dislocated arms back into place. “Ugly sort of
bugger, wasn’t he?”

Braithwaite’s body was stripped and then placed in his sleeping cot and the sailmaker
sewed a stretch of old, frayed sailcloth as a lid for the makeshift coffin. The final
stitch, as was customary, was threaded through the corpse’s nose to make certain he was
truly dead. Three eighteen-pounder cannon balls had been placed in the coffin that was
laid on a plank beside the starboard entry port.