Sharpe 3-Book Collection 3: Sharpe's Trafalgar, Sharpe's Prey, Sharpe's Rifles Page 4

  ‘The money?’ Sharpe asked.

  ‘A cargo of indigo, sir, saltpetre, silver bars and silk. Enough to make us all rich a thousand times over.’ He grinned, then left Sharpe to contemplate the tiny space that would be his home for the next four months.

  The rear wall of his cabin was the curving side of the ship. The ceiling was low, and crossed by heavy black beams in which some hooks rusted. The floor was the deck, thickly scarred with old nail-holes where previous passengers had hammered down their chests. The remaining three walls were made of dirty canvas, but it was a heaven compared to the accommodation he had been given when he had sailed from Britain to India. Then, a private, he had been content with a hammock and fourteen inches of space in which to swing it.

  He squatted in the cabin’s entrance, where a lantern offered some light, and unfolded the ship’s rules. They were printed, though some additions had been inked in afterwards. He was forbidden to go on the quarterdeck unless invited by the ship’s captain or the officer of the watch, and to that prohibition someone had added the warning that, even if he was so invited, he was never to come between the captain and the weather rail. Sharpe did not even know what the weather rail was. Upon going on deck he was required to touch his hat to the quarterdeck, even if the captain was not in sight. Gambling was forbidden. The purser would hold divine service, weather permitting, each Sunday and passengers were required to attend unless excused by the ship’s surgeon. Breakfast would be supplied at eight o’clock in the morning, dinner at midday, tea would be served at four o’clock and supper at eight. All male passengers were required to acquaint themselves with the quarter bill which allocated their action stations. No unshielded flames were to be lit below decks and all lanterns must be extinguished by nine o’clock at night. Smoking was forbidden because of the danger of fire, and passengers who chewed tobacco were to use the spittoons. Spitting on the deck was strictly forbidden. No passenger was to climb the rigging without permission of a ship’s officer. Passengers in steerage, like Sharpe, were prohibited from entering the great cabin or the roundhouse unless invited. There would be no foul language aboard.

  ‘Christ all-bloody-mighty,’ a sailor grumbled as he struggled with Sharpe’s barrel of arrack. Two other seamen were carrying his bed and another pair were bringing his chest. ‘Got any rope, sir?’ one of them asked.

  ‘No.’

  The sailor produced a length of hemp rope and showed Sharpe how to secure the wooden chest and the heavy hogshead which virtually filled the small space. Sharpe gave the sailor a rupee as thanks, then hammered the nails through the chest’s corners into the deck and roped the barrel to one of the beams on the ship’s side. The bed was a wooden cot, the size of a coffin, which he hung from the hooks in the beams. He suspended the bucket alongside. ‘It’s best to piss through the after gunport when it ain’t underwater,’ the sailor had told him, ‘and save your bucket for solids, if you sees my meaning, sir. Or go on deck and use the heads which are forrard, but not in heavy seas, sir, for you’re likely to go overboard and no one will be any the wiser. Specially at night, sir. Many a good man has gone to see the angels through being caught short on a bad night.’

  A woman was protesting loudly at the accommodation on the deck’s far side, while her husband was meekly asserting that they could afford no better. Two small children, hot and sweating, were bawling. A dog barked until it was silenced by a kick. Dust sifted from the overhead beam as a passenger in the main-deck steerage hammered in a staple or a nail. Goats bleated.The bilge pump clattered and sucked and gulped and spat filthy water into the sea.

  Sharpe sat on the chest. There was just enough light for him to read the paper that Captain Chase had pressed on him. It was a letter of introduction to Chase’s wife at the captain’s house near Topsham in Devon. ‘Lord knows when I’ll see Florence and the children again,’ Chase had said, ‘but if you’re in the west country, Sharpe, do go and introduce yourself. The house ain’t much. A dozen acres, run-down stable block and a couple of barns, but Florence will make you welcome.’

  No one else would, Sharpe thought, for no one waited for him in England; no hearth would blaze for his return and no family would greet him. But it was home. And, like it or not, he was going there.

  CHAPTER 2

  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 round and round, inching up the great anchor cable that came through the hawse-hole, 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 harbour. 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 coloured 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 ove
r 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 Hale’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 honoured to meet your lordship.’

  ‘The honour 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 moustache. 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 grey 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 travelling after practising in the Supreme Court in Bengal, the third was a grey-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.’