Sharpe's Trafalgar (5 page)

That evening, when the last boats had delivered their passengers and baggage to the
convoy, the Calliope’s bosun shouted for the topmen to go aloft. Thirty other seamen
came to the lower deck and shipped the capstan bars, then began to trudge around and around,
inching up the great anchor cable that came through the hawsehole, along the lower deck
and down into the ship’s belly. The cable seeped a foul-smelling mud that two seamen
ineffectually tried to wash overboard with pails of water, but much of the diluted mud
swilled aft into the steerage compartments. The topsails were dropped, then the headsails
were unfurled as the anchor came clear of the bottom and the ship’s head swung away from
land as the mainsails were dropped. The steerage passengers were not allowed to leave
their quarters until the sails were hoisted and Sharpe sat on his trunk listening to the
rush of feet overhead, the scraping of ropes along the deck and the creak of the ship’s
timbers. It was a half-hour after the anchor had been hauled that Binns, the young
officer, shouted that the deck was clear, and Sharpe could go up the stairs to see that the
ship had still not cleared the harbor. A red swollen sun, streaked by black clouds, hovered
above the roofs and palm trees of Bombay. The scent of the land came strong. Sharpe leaned on
the gunwale and stared at India. He doubted he would see it again and was sad to be
leaving. The rigging creaked and the water gurgled down the ship’s side. On the
quarterdeck, where the richer passengers took the air, a woman waved to the distant
shore. The ship tilted to a stronger gust of wind and a cannon near Sharpe scraped on the
deck until it was checked by its lashings.

The channel veered nearer the shore, taking the ship close to a temple with a brightly
colored tower carved with monkeys, gods and elephants. The big driver sail on the mizzen
was just being loosed and its canvas slapped and cracked, then bellied with the wind to lean
the ship further over. Behind the Calliope the other great ships of the convoy were
turning away from the anchorage, showing white water at their stems and filling their
high masts and tangled rigging with creamy yellow sails. An East India Company frigate
that would escort the convoy as far as the Cape of Good Hope sailed just ahead of the
Calliope. The frigate’s bright ensign, thirteen stripes of red and white with the union flag
in the upper staff quadrant, streamed bright in the sun’s red glow. Sharpe looked for
Captain Joel Chase’s ship, but the only Royal Navy vessel he could see was a small schooner
with four cannon.

The Calliope’s seamen tidied the deck, stowing the loose sheets in wooden tubs and
checking the lashings of the ship’s boats that were stored on the spare spars which ran like
vast rafters between the quarterdeck and the forecastle. A dark-skinned man in a fishing
canoe paddled out of the ship’s way, then gaped up at the great black and white wall that
roared past him. The temple was fading now, lost in the glare of the sun, but Sharpe stared
at the tower’s black outline and wished again that he was not leaving. He had liked India,
finding it a playground for warriors, princes, rogues and adventurers. He had found
wealth there, been commissioned there, fought in its hills and on its ancient battlements.
He was leaving friends and lovers there, and more than one enemy in his grave, but for what?
For Britain? Where no one waited for him and no adventurers rode from the hills and no
tyrants lurked behind red battlements.

One of the wealthy passengers came down the steep steps from the quarterdeck with a
woman on his arm. Like most of the Calliope’s passengers he was a civilian and was
elegantly dressed in a long dark-green coat, white breeches and an old-fashioned
tricorne. The woman on his arm was plump, dressed in gauzy white, fair-haired, and
laughing. The two spoke a foreign language, one Sharpe did not know. German? Dutch?
Swedish? Everything the foreign couple saw, from the lashed guns to the crates of hens to
the first seasick passengers leaning over the rail, amused them. The man was explaining
the ship to his companion. “Boom!” he cried, pointing to one of the guns, and the woman
laughed, then staggered as a gust of wind made the big ship lurch. She whooped in mock alarm
and clung to the man’s elbow as they staggered on forrard.

“Know who that is?” It was Braithwaite, Lord William Male’s secretary, who had sidled
alongside Sharpe.

“No.” Sharpe was brusque, instinctively disliking anyone connected with Lord
William.

“That was the Baron von Dornberg,” Braithwaite said, evidently expecting Sharpe to be
impressed. The secretary watched the baron help his lady up to the forecastle where
another gust of wind threatened to snatch her wide-brimmed hat.

“Never heard of him,” Sharpe said churlishly.

“He’s a nabob.” Braithwaite spoke the word in awe, meaning that the baron was a man who
had made himself fabulously rich in India and was now carrying his wealth back to
Europe. Such a career was a gamble. A man either died in India or became wealthy. Most
died. “Are you carrying goods?” Braithwaite asked Sharpe.

“Goods?” Sharpe asked, wondering why the secretary was making such an effort to be
pleasant to him.

“To sell,” Braithwaite said impatiently, as though Sharpe was being deliberately
obtuse. “I’ve got peacock feathers,” he went on, “five crates! The plumes fetch a rare price
in London. Milliners buy them. I’m Malachi Braithwaite, by the way.” He held out his hand.
“Lord William’s confidential secretary.”

Sharpe reluctantly shook the offered hand.

“I never did send that letter,” Braithwaite said, smiling meaningfully. “I told him I
did, but I didn’t.” Braithwaite leaned close to make these confidences. He was a few inches
taller than Sharpe, but much thinner, and had a lugubrious face with quick eyes that never
seemed to look at Sharpe for long before darting sideways, almost as though Braithwaite
expected to be attacked at any second. “His lordship will merely assume your colonel
never received the letter.”

“Why didn’t you send it?” Sharpe asked.

Braithwaite looked offended at Sharpe’s curt tone. “We’re to be shipmates,” he
explained earnestly, “for how long? Three, four months? And I don’t travel in the stern like
his lordship, but have to sleep in the steerage, and lower steerage at that! Not even
main-deck steerage.” He plainly resented that humiliation. The secretary was dressed
as a gentleman, with a fashionable high stock and an elaborately tied cravat, but the
cloth of his black coat was shiny, the cuffs were frayed and the collar of his shirt was
darned. “Why should I make unnecessary enemies, Mister Sharpe?” Braithwaite asked. “If I
scratch your back, then maybe you can do me a service.”

“Such as?”

Braithwaite shrugged. “Who knows what eventuality might arise?” he asked airily, then
turned to watch the Baron von Dornberg come back down the forecastle steps. “They say he
made a fortune in diamonds,” Braithwaite murmured to Sharpe, “and his servant isn’t
expected to travel in steerage, but has a place in the great cabin.” He spat that last
information, then composed his face and stepped forward to intercept the baron. “Malachi
Braithwaite, confidential secretary to Lord William Hale,” he introduced himself as he
raised his hat, “and most honored to meet your lordship.”

“The honor and pleasure are entirely mine,” the Baron von Dornberg answered in
excellent English, then returned Braithwaite’s courtesy by removing his tricorne hat
and making a low bow. Straightening, he looked at Sharpe and Sharpe found himself staring
into a familiar face, though now that face was decorated with a big waxed mustache. He
looked at the baron, and the baron looked astonished for a second, then recovered himself
and winked at Sharpe.

Sharpe wanted to say something, but feared he would laugh aloud and so he simply offered
the baron a stiff nod.

But von Dornberg would have none of Sharpe’s formality. He spread his powerful arms and
gave Sharpe a bear-like embrace. “This is one of the bravest men in the British army,” he
told his woman, then whispered in Sharpe’s ear. “Not a word, I beg you, not a pippy squeak.”
He stepped back. “May I name the Baroness von Dornberg? This is Mister Richard Sharpe,
Mathilde, a friend and an enemy from a long time ago. Don’t tell me you travel in steerage,
Mister Sharpe?”

“I do, my lord.”

“I am shocked! The British do not know how to treat their heroes. But I do! You shall come
and dine with us in the captain’s cuddy. I shall insist on it!” He grinned at Sharpe,
offered Mathilde his arm, inclined his head to Braithwaite and walked on.

“I thought you said you didn’t know him!” Braithwaite said, aggrieved.

“I didn’t recognize him with his hat on,” Sharpe said. He turned away, unable to resist
a grin. The Baron von Dornberg was no baron, and Sharpe doubted he had traded for any
diamonds, no matter how many he carried, for von Dornberg was a rogue. His true name was
Anthony Pohlmann and he had once been a sergeant in the Hanoverian army before he
deserted for the richer service of an Indian prince, and his talent for war had brought
him ever swifter promotion until, for a time, he had led a Mahratta army that was feared
throughout central India. Then, one hot day, his forces met a much smaller British army
between two rivers at a village called Assaye, and there, in an afternoon of dusty heat
and red-hot guns and bloody slaughter, Anthony Pohlmann’s army had been shredded by
sepoys and Highlanders. Pohlmann himself had vanished into the mystery of India, but now
he was here on the Calliope as a celebrated passenger.

“How did you meet him?” Braithwaite demanded.

“Can’t remember now,” Sharpe said vaguely. “Somewhere or other. Can’t really
remember.” He turned to stare at the shore. The land was black now, punctured by sparks of
firelight and outlined by a gray sky smeared with a city’s smoke. He wished he was back
there, but then he heard Pohlmann’s loud voice and turned to see the German introducing his
woman to Lady Grace Hale.

Sharpe stared at her ladyship. She was above him, on the quarterdeck, seemingly
oblivious of the folk crowded on the main deck below. She offered Pohlmann a limp hand,
inclined her head to the fair-haired woman and then, without a word, turned regally away.
“That is Lady Grace,” Braithwaite told Sharpe in an awed voice.

“Someone told me she was ill?” Sharpe suggested.

“Merely highly strung,” Braithwaite said defensively. “Very fine-strung women are
prone to fragility, I think, and her ladyship is fine-strung, very fine-strung indeed.”
He spoke warmly, unable to take his eyes from Lady Grace, who stood watching the receding
shore.

An hour later it was dark, India was gone and Sharpe sailed beneath the stars.

“The war is lost,” Captain Peculiar Cromwell declared, “lost.” He made the statement in
a harsh, flat voice, then frowned at the tablecloth. It was the Calliope’s third day out from
Bombay and she was running before a gentle wind. She was, as Captain Chase had told
Sharpe, a fast ship and the East India Company frigate had ordered Cromwell to shorten
sail during the day because she was in danger of outrunning the slower ships. Cromwell
had grumbled at the order, then had taken so much canvas from the yards that the Calliope
now sailed at the convoy’s rear.

Anthony Pohlmann had invited Sharpe to take supper in the cuddy where Captain
Cromwell nightly presided over those wealthier passengers who had paid to travel in the
luxurious stern cabins. The cuddy was in the poop, the highest part of the ship, just
forward of the two roundhouse cabins that were the largest, most lavish and most
expensive. Lord William Hale and the Baron von Dornberg occupied the roundhouse, while
beneath them, on the main deck of the ship, the great cabin had been divided into four
compartments for the ship’s other wealthy passengers. One was a nabob and his wife who
returned to their Cheshire home after twenty profitable years in India, another was a
barrister who had been traveling after practicing in the Supreme Court in Bengal, the
third was a gray-haired major from the 96th who was retiring from the army, while the last
cabin belonged to Pohlmann’s servant who alone among the stern passengers was not
invited to eat in the cuddy.

It was the Scottish major, a stocky man called Arthur Dalton, who frowned at Peculiar
Cromwell’s declaration that the war was lost. “We’ve beaten the French in India,” the
major protested, “and their navy is on its knees.”

“If their navy is on its knees,” Cromwell growled, “why are we sailing in convoy?” He
stared belligerently at Dalton, waiting for an answer, but the major declined to take
up the cudgels and Cromwell looked triumphantly about the cuddy. He was a tall and
heavy-set man with black hair streaked badger white that he wore past his shoulders. He had
a long jaw, big yellow teeth and belligerent eyes. His hands, large and powerful, were
permanently blackened from the tarred rigging. His uniform coat was cut from a thick blue
broadcloth and heavily crusted with brass buttons decorated with the Company’s symbol
which was supposed to show a lion holding a crown, but which everyone called “the cat and
the cheese.” Cromwell shook his ponderous head. “The war is lost,” he declared again. “Who
rules the continent of Europe?”

“The French,” the barrister answered lazily, “but it won’t last. All flash and fire, the
French, but there ain’t no substance in them. No substance at all.”

“The whole coast of Europe,” Cromwell said icily, ignoring the lawyer’s scorn, “is in
enemy hands.” He paused as a shuddering, grating and scraping noise echoed through the
cabin. It punctuated the conversation sporadically and it had taken Sharpe a few
moments to realize that it was the sound of the tiller ropes that ran two decks beneath
him. Cromwell glanced up at a telltale compass that was mounted on the ceiling, then,
deciding all was in order, resumed his argument. “Europe, I tell you, is in enemy
hands. The Americans, damn their insolence, are hostile, so our home ocean, sir, is an
enemy sea. An enemy sea. We sail there because we have more ships, but ships cost money,
and for how long will the British people pay for ships?”