Sharpe’s Trafalgar: The Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805

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.’

‘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?’

‘There are the Austrians,’ Major Dalton suggested, ‘the Russians?’

‘The Austrians, sir!’ Cromwell scoffed. ‘No sooner do the Austrians field an army than it is destroyed! The Russians? Would you trust the Russians to free Europe when they cannot liberate themselves? Have you been to Russia, sir?’

‘No,’ Major Dalton admitted.

‘A land of slaves,’ Cromwell said derisively.

Lord William Hale might have been expected to contribute to this conversation for, as one of the six members of the East India Company’s Board of Control, he must have been familiar with the thinking of the British government, but he was content to listen with a faintly amused smile, though he did raise an eyebrow at Cromwell’s assertion that the Russians were a nation of slaves.

‘The French, sir,’ Cromwell went on hotly, ‘face a rabble of enemies on their eastern frontiers, but none on their west. They can therefore concentrate their armies, sure in the knowledge that no British army will ever touch their shore.’

‘Never?’ the merchant, a solid man called Ebenezer Fairley, asked sarcastically.

Cromwell swung his heavy gaze on this new opponent. He contemplated Fairley for a while, then shook his head. ‘The British, Fairley, do not like armies. They keep a small army. A small army can never defeat Napoleon. Ergo, Napoleon is safe. Ergo, the war is lost. Good God, man, they might already have invaded Britain!’

‘I pray not,’ Major Dalton said fervently.

‘Their army was ready,’ Cromwell boomed with a strange relish in this talk of British defeat, ‘and all they needed was for their navy to command the channel.’

‘Which it cannot do,’ the barrister intervened quietly.

‘And even if they did not invade this year,’ Cromwell went on, ignoring the lawyer, ‘then in time they will succeed in building a navy fit to defeat ours, and when that day comes Britain will have to seek peace. Britain will revert to its natural posture, and its natural posture is to be a small and insignificant island poised off a great continent.’

Lady Grace spoke for the first time. Sharpe had been pleased and surprised to see her at supper, for Captain Chase had suggested that she eschewed company, but she seemed content to be in the cuddy though so far she had taken as little part in the conversation as her husband. ‘So we are doomed to defeat, Captain?’ she suggested.

‘No, ma’am,’ Cromwell answered, softening his pugnacity now that he addressed a titled passenger. ‘We are doomed to a realistic settlement of peace just as soon as the jackanapes politicians recognize what is plain in front of their faces.’

‘Which is?’ Fairley demanded.

‘That the French are more powerful than us, of course!’ Cromwell growled. ‘And until we make peace the prudent man makes money, for we shall need money in a world run by the French. That is why India is important. We should suck the place dry before the French take it from us.’ Cromwell snapped his fingers to instruct the stewards to remove the plates which had held a ragout of salted beef. Sharpe had eaten clumsily, finding the thick silverware unwieldy, and wishing he had dared take out his folding pocket knife which he used at meals when his betters were not present.

Mathilde, the Baroness von Dornberg, smiled gratefully as the captain replenished her wine glass. The baroness, who was almost certainly nothing of the sort, sat on Captain Cromwell’s left while opposite her was Lady Grace Hale. Pohlmann, resplendent in a lace-fringed silk coat, sat next to Lady Grace while Lord William was to the left of Mathilde. Sharpe, as the least important person present, was at the lower end of the table.

The cuddy was an elegant room panelled with wood that had been painted pea-green and gold, while a brass chandelier, bereft of candles, hung from a beam alongside the wide skylight. If the room had not been gently rocking, sometimes shifting a wine glass on the table, Sharpe might have thought himself ashore.

He had said nothing all evening, content to gaze at Lady Grace who, white-faced and aloof, had ignored him since the moment he had been named to her. She had politely offered him a gloved hand, given him an expressionless glance, then turned away. Her husband had frowned at Sharpe’s presence, then imitated his wife by pretending the ensign did not exist.

A dessert of oranges and burnt sugar was served. Pohlmann eagerly spooned the rich sauce into his mouth, then looked at Sharpe. ‘You think the war is lost, Sharpe?’

‘Me, sir?’ Sharpe was startled at being addressed.

‘You, Sharpe, yes, you,’ Pohlmann said. ‘Do you think the war is lost?’

Sharpe hesitated, wondering whether the wisest course was to say something harmless and let the conversation go on again without him, but he had been offended by Cromwell’s defeatism. ‘It certainly isn’t over, my lord,’ he said to Pohlmann.

Cromwell recognized the challenge. ‘What do you mean by that, sir, eh? Explain yourself.’

‘A fight ain’t lost till it’s finished, sir,’ Sharpe said, ‘and this one ain’t done.’

‘An ensign speaks,’ Lord William murmured scornfully.

‘You think a rat has a chance against a terrier?’ Cromwell demanded, just as scornfully.

Pohlmann held up a hand to stop Sharpe from responding. ‘I think Ensign Sharpe knows a good deal about fighting, Captain,’ the German said. ‘When I first met him he was a sergeant, and now he is a commissioned officer.’ He paused, letting that statement cause its stir of surprise. ‘What does it take for a sergeant to become an officer in the British army?’

‘Damned luck,’ Lord William said laconically.

‘It takes an act of outstanding bravery,’ Major Dalton observed quietly. He raised his wine glass to Sharpe. ‘Honoured to make your acquaintance, Sharpe. I didn’t place the name when we were introduced, but I recall you now. I’m honoured.’

Pohlmann, enjoying his mischief, toasted Sharpe with a sip of wine. ‘So what was your act of outstanding bravery, Mister Sharpe?’

Sharpe reddened. Lady Grace was staring at him, the first notice she had taken of him since the company had sat to dinner.

‘Well, Sharpe?’ Captain Cromwell insisted.

Sharpe was tongue-tied, but was rescued by Dalton. ‘He saved Sir Arthur Wellesley’s life,’ the major said quietly.

‘How? Where?’ Pohlmann demanded.

Sharpe caught the German’s eye. ‘At a place called Assaye, sir.’

‘Assaye?’ Pohlmann said, frowning slightly. It had been at Assaye that his army and his ambitions had been wrecked by Wellesley. ‘Never heard of it,’ he said lightly, leaning back in his chair.

‘And you were first over the wall at Gawilghur, Sharpe,’ the major said. ‘Isn’t that right?’

‘Me and Captain Campbell were first across, sir. But it were lightly defended.’

‘Is that where you fetched the scar, Sharpe?’ the major enquired, and the whole table gazed at Sharpe. He looked uncomfortable, but there was no denying the power of his face, nor the suggestion of violence that was contained in the scar. ‘It wasn’t a bullet, was it?’ the major insisted. ‘No bullet makes that kind of scar.’

‘It were a sword, sir,’ Sharpe answered. ‘Man called Dodd.’ He looked at Pohlmann as he spoke and Pohlmann, who had once commanded and heartily disliked the renegade Dodd, half smiled.

‘And does Mister Dodd still live?’ the German asked.

‘He’s dead, sir,’ Sharpe said flatly.

‘Good.’ Pohlmann raised his glass to Sharpe.

The major turned to Cromwell. ‘Mister Sharpe is a very considerable soldier, Captain. Sir Arthur told me that if you find yourself in a bad fight then you can ask for no one better at your side.’

The news that General Wellesley had said any such thing pleased Sharpe, but Captain Cromwell had not been deflected from his argument and was now frowning at the ensign. ‘You think,’ the captain demanded, ‘that the French can be defeated?’

‘We’re at war with them, sir,’ Sharpe retorted, ‘and you don’t go to war unless you mean to win.’

‘You go to war,’ Lord William said icily, ‘because small-minded men can see no alternative.’

‘And if every war has a winner,’ Cromwell said, ‘it must by ineluctable logic also have a loser. If you want my advice, young man, leave the army before some politician has you killed in an ill-considered attack on France. Or, more likely, the French invade Britain and kill you along with the rest of the redcoats.’

The ladies withdrew a short while later and the men drank a glass of port, but the atmosphere was stiff and Pohlmann, plainly bored, excused himself from the company and gestured that Sharpe should follow him back to the starboard roundhouse cabin where Mathilde was now sprawled on a silk-covered sofa. Facing her on a matching sofa was an elderly man who was talking animatedly in German when Pohlmann entered, but who immediately stood and bowed his head respectfully. Pohlmann seemed surprised to see him and gestured the man to the door. ‘I won’t need you tonight,’ he said in English.

‘Very good, my lord,’ the man, evidently Pohlmann’s servant, answered in the same language, then, with a glance at Sharpe, left the cabin. Pohlmann peremptorily ordered Mathilde to take some air on the poop, then, when she had gone, he poured two large brandies and gave Sharpe a mischievous grin. ‘My heart,’ he said, clasping a dramatic hand to his breast, ‘almost flopped over and died when I first saw you.’

‘Would it matter if they knew who you were?’ Sharpe asked.

Pohlmann grinned. ‘How much credit will merchants give Sergeant Anthony Pohlmann, eh? But the Baron von Dornberg! Ah! They queue to give the baron credit. They trip over their fat feet to pour guineas into my purse.’

Sharpe looked about the big cabin that was furnished with two sofas, a sideboard, a low table, a harp and an enormous teak bed with ivory inlays on the headboard. ‘But you must have done well in India,’ Sharpe said.

‘For a former sergeant, you mean?’ Pohlmann laughed. ‘I do have some loot, my dear Sharpe, but not as much as I would have liked and nowhere near as much as I lost at Assaye, but I cannot complain. If I am careful I shall not need to work again.’ He looked at the hem of Sharpe’s red coat where the jewels made small lumps in the threadbare cloth. ‘I see you did well in India too, eh?’

Sharpe was aware that the fraying, thinning cloth of his coat was increasingly an unsafe place to hide the diamonds, emeralds and rubies, but he did not want to discuss them with Pohlmann so gestured at the harp instead. ‘You play?’

‘Mein Gott, no! Mathilde plays. Very badly, but I tell her it is wonderful.’

‘She’s your wife?’

‘Am I a numbskull? A blockhead? Would I marry? Ha! No, Sharpe, she was whore to a rajah and when he tired of her I took her over. She is from Bavaria and wants babies, so she is a double fool, but she will keep my bed warm till I see home and then I shall find something younger. So you killed Dodd?’

‘Not me, a friend killed him.’

‘He deserved to die. A very horrid man.’ Pohlmann shuddered. ‘And you? You travel alone?’

‘Yes.’

‘In the rat hole, eh?’ He looked at the hem of Sharpe’s coat. ‘You keep your jewels until you reach England and travel in steerage. But more important, my cautious friend, will you reveal who I am?’

‘No,’ Sharpe said with a smile. The last time he had seen Pohlmann the Hanoverian had been hiding in a peasant’s hut in the village of Assaye. Sharpe could have arrested him and gained credit for capturing the commander of the beaten army, but he had always liked Pohlmann and so he had looked the other way and let the big man escape. ‘But I reckon my silence is worth something, though,’ Sharpe added.

‘You want Mathilde every other Friday?’ Pohlmann, assured that his secret was safe with Sharpe, could not hide his relief.

‘A few invitations to supper, perhaps?’

Pohlmann was surprised by the modesty of the demand. ‘You so like Captain Cromwell’s company?’

‘No.’

Pohlmann laughed. ‘Lady Grace,’ he said softly. ‘I saw you, Sharpe, with your tongue lolling like a dog. You like them thin, do you?’

‘I like her.’

‘Her husband doesn’t,’ Pohlmann said. ‘We hear them through the partition.’ He jerked his thumb at the wall which divided the big roundhouse. The bulkhead was made from thin wooden panelling which could be struck down into the hold if only one passenger travelled in the lavish quarters. ‘The captain’s steward tells me their cabin is twice as big as this one and divided into two. He has one part and she the other. They are like, what do you say? Dog and cat?’

‘Cat and dog,’ Sharpe said.

‘He barks and she hisses. Still, I wish you joy. The gods alone know what they must make of us. They probably think we are bull and cow. Shall we join Mathilde on deck?’ Pohlmann took two cigars from the side-board. ‘The captain says we should not smoke on board. We must chew tobacco instead, but he can roger himself.’ He lit the cigars, handed one to Sharpe and then led him out onto the quarterdeck and up the stairs to the poop deck. Mathilde was standing at the rail, staring down at a seaman who was lighting the lamp in the binnacle, the only light which was allowed on the ship after dark, while Lady Grace was at the taffrail, standing beneath the huge stern lantern that would not be lit on this voyage so long as there was a danger of the Revenant or another French ship seeing the convoy. ‘Go and talk to her.’ Pohlmann leered, digging an elbow into Sharpe’s ribs.

‘I’ve got nothing to say to her.’

‘So you are not really brave after all,’ Pohlmann said. ‘I dare say you wouldn’t think twice about charging a line of guns like those I had at Assaye, but a beautiful woman makes you shiver, yes?’

Lady Grace stood solitary and slim, wrapped in a cloak. A maid attended her, but the girl stood at the side of the deck as though she was nervous of her ladyship. Sharpe was also nervous. He wanted to talk to her, but he knew he would stumble over his words, so instead he stood beside Pohlmann and stared forrard past the great bulk of the sails to where the rest of the convoy was just visible in the gathering night. Far forrard, on the fo’c’sle, a violin was being played and a group of sailors danced the hornpipe.

‘Were you really promoted from the ranks?’ a cold voice asked and Sharpe turned to see that Lady Grace had appeared at his side.

He instinctively touched his forelock. For a moment he felt struck dumb and his tongue seemed stuck to his palate, but then he managed to nod. ‘Yes, ma’am. Milady.’

She looked into his eyes and was tall enough not to need to look up. Her big eyes were dim in the twilight, but at supper Sharpe had seen they were green. ‘It must be a difficult circumstance,’ she said, still using a distant voice as though she was being reluctantly forced into this conversation.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Sharpe said again, and knew he was sounding like a fool. He was tense, a muscle was twitching in his left leg, his mouth was dry and his belly felt sour, the same sensations that a man got when he was waiting for battle. ‘Before it happened, ma’am,’ he blurted out, wanting to say anything other than a monosyllabic response, ‘I wanted it badly, but afterwards? I reckon I shouldn’t have wanted it at all.’

Her face was expressionless. Beautiful, but expressionless. She ignored Pohlmann and Mathilde, but just stared down at the quarterdeck before looking back to Sharpe. ‘Who makes it most difficult,’ she asked, ‘the men or the officers?’

‘Both, ma’am,’ Sharpe said. He saw that the smoke from his cigar was annoying her and so he tossed it overboard. ‘The men don’t think you’re a proper officer, and the other officers … well, it’s like a working dog ending up on the hearth rug. The lap dogs don’t like it.’

She half smiled at that. ‘You must tell me,’ she said in a voice which still suggested she was merely making polite conversation, ‘just how you saved Arthur’s life.’ She paused, and Sharpe saw there was a nervous tic in her left eye that caused it to quiver every few seconds. ‘He’s a cousin,’ she went on, ‘but quite far removed. None of the family thought he’d amount to anything.’

It had taken Sharpe a second or two to realize that she meant Sir Arthur Wellesley, the cold man who had promoted Sharpe. ‘He’s the best general I’ve ever seen, ma’am,’ Sharpe said.

‘And you would know?’ she asked sceptically.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Sharpe said firmly, ‘I would know.’

‘So how did you save his life?’ she insisted.

Sharpe hesitated. The aroma of her perfume was heady. He was about to say something vague of battle, confusion and blurred memory, but just then Lord William appeared on the quarterdeck and, without a word, Lady Grace turned to the poop stairs. Sharpe watched her go, conscious of his heart thumping against his ribs. He was still trembling. He had been dizzied by her.

Pohlmann was laughing softly. ‘She likes you, Sharpe.’

‘Don’t be daft.’

‘She is panting for you,’ Pohlmann said.

‘My dear Sharpe! My dear Sharpe!’ It was the Scotsman, Major Dalton, climbing from the quarterdeck. ‘There you are! You vanished! I would speak with you, Sharpe, if you can be kind enough to spare me a few moments. Like you, Sharpe, I was at Assaye, but I’m still utterly confused as to what happened there. We must talk, indeed we must. My dear baron, baroness’ – he took off his hat and bowed – ‘my compliments, and perhaps you will forgive two soldiers reminiscing?’

‘I will forgive you, Major,’ Pohlmann said expansively, ‘but I will also leave you, for I know nothing of soldiering, nothing! Your conversation would be one long mystery to me. Come, my Liebchen, come.’

So Sharpe talked of battle, and the ship trembled to the sea, and the tropical darkness fell.

‘Number four gun!’ Lieutenant Tufnell, the Calliope’s first officer, shouted. ‘Fire!’

The eighteen-pounder leaped back, jerking to a halt as its breeching rope took the vast strain of the weapon’s recoil. Scraps of paint flew from the taut hemp, for Captain Cromwell was insistent that the gun tackles, like every other piece of equipment on deck, were painted white. It was for that reason that only one gun was being fired, for Cromwell did not want to disturb the other thirty-one cannons that had polished barrels and freshly painted tackle, so each gun crew, half made up of the ship’s crew and half of passengers, was taking it in turn to fire number four gun. The eighteen-pounder, its muzzle blackened by powder, hissed as the barrel was sponged out. A great cloud of smoke drifted in the wind to keep the ship company.

‘Shot fell short, sir!’ Binns, the young officer, piped from the poop where, equipped with a telescope, he watched the fall of shot. The Chatham Castle, another ship of the convoy, was periodically loosing empty casks in its wake to serve as targets for the Calliope’s gun.

It was the turn of number five gun’s crew to fire. The seaman in charge was a wizened man with long grey hair that he wore tied in a great bun into which he had stuck a marlin spike. ‘You’ – he pointed at Malachi Braithwaite who, to his great displeasure, was expected to serve on a gun crew despite being private secretary to a peer – ‘shove two of them black bags down the gun when I gives the word. Him’ – he pointed at a lascar seaman – ‘rams it and you’ – he peered at Braithwaite again – ‘puts the shot in and the blackie rams that as well and none of you landlubbers gets in his way, and you’ – he looked at Sharpe – ‘aims the piece.’

‘I thought that was your job,’ Sharpe said.

‘I’m half blind, sir.’ The seaman offered Sharpe a toothless grin then turned on the other three passengers. ‘The rest of you,’ he said, ‘helps the other blackies haul the gun forrard on those two lines there, and once you’ve done that you stand out the bleeding way and cover your ears. If it comes to a fight the best thing you can do is fall to your knees and pray to the Almighty that we surrender. You’ll fire the gun, sir?’ he asked Sharpe. ‘And you knows as to stand to one side unless you want to be buried at sea. Bag of reeds here, sir, lanyard there, sir, and it’s best to fire on the uproll if you don’t want to make us look like lubberly fools. You ain’t going to hit nothing, sir, because no one ever does. We only practise because the Company says we must, but we ain’t never fired a gun in anger and I hopes and prays we never will.’

The cannon was equipped with a flintlock, just like a musket, which fired the powder packed inside a hollow reed which was inserted in the touch-hole and so carried the flame down to the main charge. Once the gun was loaded all Sharpe had to do was aim it, stand aside, and jerk the lanyard which triggered the lock. Braithwaite and the lascar put the powder and shot into the barrel, the lascar rammed it down, Sharpe pushed a sharpened wire through the touch-hole to pierce the canvas powder bag, then slid the reed into place. The other crew members clumsily hauled the gun until its barrel protruded through the main deck’s gunwale. There were handspikes available, great club-like wooden levers that could be used to turn the gun left or right, but none of the crews used them. They were not seriously trying to aim the gun, merely going through the obligatory motions of practice so that the logbook could confirm that the Company regulations had been fulfilled.