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

‘How did you become Lord William’s secretary?’ Sharpe now asked him.

Braithwaite thought about the question as though a trap lay within it, then decided it was safe to answer. ‘His original secretary died in Calcutta. Of snake-bite, I believe, and his lordship was kind enough to offer me the position.’

‘Now you regret taking it?’

‘Indeed I do not!’ Braithwaite said sharply. ‘His lordship is a prominent man. He is intimate with the Prime Minister.’ This was confided in an admiring tone. ‘Indeed the report we work on will not just be for the Board of Control, but will go directly to Pitt himself! Much depends on his lordship’s conclusions. Maybe even a cabinet post? His lordship could well become Foreign Secretary within a year or two, and what would that make me?’

‘An overworked secretary,’ Sharpe said.

‘But I will have influence,’ Braithwaite insisted earnestly, ‘and his lordship will have one of the grandest houses in London. His wife will preside over a salon of wit and vast influence.’

‘If she’ll ever talk to anyone,’ Sharpe commented drily. ‘She don’t say a word to me.’

‘Of course she doesn’t,’ Braithwaite said crossly. ‘She is accustomed to nothing but the highest discourse.’ The secretary looked to the quarterdeck, but if he hoped to see Lady Grace he was disappointed. ‘She is an angel, Sharpe,’ he blurted out. ‘One of the best women I have ever had the privilege of meeting. And with a mind to match! I have a degree from Oxford, Mister Sharpe, yet even I cannot match her ladyship’s knowledge of the Georgics.’

Whatever the hell they were, Sharpe thought. ‘She is a rare-looking woman,’ he said mildly, wondering whether that would provoke Braithwaite into another burst of candour.

It did. ‘Rare-looking?’ Braithwaite asked sarcastically. ‘She is a beauty, Mister Sharpe, the very quintessence of feminine virtue, looks and intelligence.’

Sharpe laughed. ‘You’re in love with her, Braithwaite.’

The secretary gave Sharpe a withering look. ‘If you were not a soldier with a reputation for savagery, Sharpe, I should deem that statement impertinent.’

‘I might be the savage,’ Sharpe said, rubbing salt into the secretary’s wounded pride, ‘but I’m the one who had supper with her tonight.’

Though Lady Grace had neither spoken with him that night, nor even appeared to notice his presence in the cuddy where the food was scarcely better than the slop provided in steerage. The richer passengers were served the dead goats that were stewed and served in a vinegar sauce and Captain Cromwell was particularly fond of peas and pork, though the peas were dried to the consistency of bullets and the meat was salted to the texture of ancient leather. There was a suet pudding most nights, then port or brandy, coffee, cigars and whist. Eggs and coffee were served for breakfast, luxuries that never appeared in steerage, but Sharpe was not invited to share breakfast with the privileged folk.

On the nights when he ate in steerage Sharpe would go on deck afterwards and watch the sailors dancing to a four-man orchestra of two violins, a flute and a drummer who beat his hands on the end of a half-barrel. One night there was a sudden and violent down-pour of rain that drummed on the sails. Sharpe stood bare-chested, head back and mouth agape to drink the clean water, but most of the rain which fell on the ship seemed to find its way between decks that became ever more rank. Everything seemed to rot, rust or grow fungus. On Sundays the purser held divine service and the four-man orchestra played while the passengers, the richer standing on the quarterdeck and the less privileged beneath them on the main deck, sang ‘Awake, my soul, and with the sun thy daily stage of duty run’. Major Dalton sang gustily, beating time with his hand. Pohlmann seemed amused by the services, while Lord William and his wife, contravening the captain’s orders, did not bother to attend. When the hymn was done the purser read a toneless prayer that Sharpe and those other passengers who were paying attention found alarming. ‘O most glorious and gracious Lord God, who dwellest in heaven, but beholdest all things below; Look down, we beseech thee, and hear us, calling out of the depths of misery and out of the jaws of this death which is ready now to swallow us up. Save, Lord, or else we perish.’

Yet they did not perish and the sea and the miles slipped endlessly by, untouched by any speck of land or hostile sail. At noon the officers solemnly sighted the sun with their sextants, then hurried to Captain Cromwell’s cabin to work out the mathematics, though, in the middle of the third week, a day at last came when the sky was so thick with cloud that no sight could be taken. Captain Cromwell was overheard to remark that the Calliope was in for a blow, and all day he strode about the quarterdeck with a look of grim pleasure. The wind rose slowly but surely, making the passengers stagger on the canted deck and hold onto their hats. Many of those who had overcome their early seasickness now succumbed again, and the spray breaking on the ship’s bluff bows rattled on the sails as it flew down the deck. Late in the afternoon it began to rain so heavily that grey veils hid all but the closest vessels of the convoy.

Sharpe was again invited to be Pohlmann’s guest for supper and, when he went below to change into his least dirty shirt and to pull on his coat that had been neatly mended by a foretop man, he found the steerage slopping with water and vomit. Children cried, a tethered dog yelped. Braithwaite was draped over a gun, heaving dry. Every time the ship dipped to the wind water forced its way through the locked gunports and rippled across the deck, and when she buried her bows into the sea a veritable flood came through the hawseholes and rolled down the sopping planks.

Water cascaded down the companionway as Sharpe climbed back to the remains of the daylight. He staggered across the quarterdeck where six men hung onto the wheel and banged through the poop door where he was thrown across the small hallway before cannoning back into the cuddy where only the captain, Major Dalton, Pohlmann, Mathilde and Lord William and Lady Grace waited. The other three passengers were all either seasick or were eating in their own cabins.

‘You’re the baron’s guest again?’ Cromwell asked pointedly.

‘You surely do not mind Mister Sharpe being my guest?’ Pohlmann enquired hotly.

‘He eats from your purse, Baron, not mine,’ Cromwell growled, then waved Sharpe into his usual chair. ‘For God’s sake, sit, Mister Sharpe.’ He held up a massive hand, then paused as the ship rolled. The bulkheads shifted alarmingly and the cutlery slid across the table. ‘May the good Lord bless these victuals,’ Cromwell said, ‘and make us grateful for their sustenance, in the name of the Lord, amen.’

‘Amen,’ Lady Grace said distantly. Her husband looked pale and gripped the table’s edge as if it might alleviate the boat’s quick motion. Lady Grace, on the other hand, was quite unaffected by the weather. She wore a red dress, cut low, and had a string of pearls around her slim neck. Her dark hair was piled at her crown and held in place with pearl-encrusted pins.

Fiddles had been placed about the table so that the knives, forks, spoons, glasses, plates and cruets would not slide off, but the lurching of the ship made the meal a perilous experience. Cromwell’s steward served a thick soup first. ‘Fresh fish!’ Cromwell boasted. ‘All caught this morning. I have no idea what kind of fish they were, but no one has yet died of an unknown fish on my ship. They’ve died of other things, of course.’ The captain eagerly spooned the bony gruel into his mouth, expertly holding the plate so that the contents did not spill as the ship tilted. ‘Men fall from the upper works, folk die of fever and I’ve even had a passenger kill herself for unrequited love, but I’ve never had one die of fish poison.’

‘Unrequited love?’ Pohlmann asked, amused.

‘It happens, Baron, it happens,’ Cromwell said with relish. ‘It is a well-attested phenomenon that a sea voyage spurs the baser instincts. You will forgive me mentioning the matter, milady,’ he added hastily to Lady Grace, who ignored his coarseness.

Lord William took one taste of the fish soup and turned away, leaving his plate to slop itself empty on the table. Lady Grace managed a few spoonfuls, but then, disliking the taste, pushed the malodorous mess away. The major ate heartily, Pohlmann and Mathilde greedily and Sharpe warily, not wanting to disgrace himself with a display of ill manners in front of Lady Grace. Fish bones were caught in his teeth and he tried to extricate them subtly, for he had seen Lady Grace shudder whenever Pohlmann spat them onto the table.

‘Cold beef and rice next,’ the captain announced, as though he were offering a treat. ‘So tell me, Baron, how did you make your fortune? You traded, is that right?’

‘I traded, Captain, yes.’

Lady Grace looked up sharply, frowned, then pretended the conversation did not interest her. The wine decanters rattled in their metal cage. The whole ship creaked, groaned and shuddered whenever a stronger wave exploded at her bows.

‘In England,’ Cromwell said pointedly, ‘the aristocracy do not trade. They think it beneath them.’

‘English lords have land,’ Pohlmann said, ‘but my family lost its estates a hundred years ago, and when one does not possess land one must work for a living.’

‘Doing what, pray?’ Cromwell demanded. His long wet hair lay lank on his shoulders.

‘I buy, I sell,’ Pohlmann said, evidently unworried by the captain’s inquisition.

‘And successfully, too!’ Captain Cromwell appeared to be making conversation to take his guests’ minds off the ship’s pitching and rolling. ‘So now you take your profits home, and quite right too. So where is home? Bavaria? Prussia? Hesse?’

‘Hanover,’ Pohlmann said, ‘but I have been thinking that perhaps I should buy a house in London. Lord William can give me advice, no doubt?’ He smiled across the table at Lord William who, for answer, abruptly stood, clutched a napkin to his mouth and bolted from the cuddy. Spray spattered on the closed panes of the skylight and some dripped through onto the table.

‘My husband is a poor sailor,’ Lady Grace said calmly.

‘And you, my lady, are not?’ Pohlmann asked.

‘I like the sea,’ she said, almost indignantly. ‘I have always liked the sea.’

Cromwell laughed. ‘They say, my lady, that those who would go to sea for pleasure would visit hell as a pastime.’

She shrugged, as if what others said made no difference to her. Major Dalton took up the burden of the conversation. ‘Have you ever been seasick, Sharpe?’

‘No, sir, I’ve been lucky.’

‘Me neither,’ Dalton said. ‘My mother always believed beefsteak was a specific against the condition.’

‘Beefsteak, fiddlesticks,’ Cromwell growled. ‘Only rum and oil will serve.’

‘Rum and oil?’ Pohlmann asked with a grimace.

‘You force a pint of rum down the patient’s throat and follow it with a pint of oil. Any oil will do, even lamp oil, for the patient will void it utterly, but next day he’ll feel lively as a trivet.’ Cromwell turned a jaundiced eye on Lady Grace. ‘Should I send the rum and oil to your cabin, my lady?’

Lady Grace did not even bother to reply. She gazed at the panelling where a small oil painting of an English country church swayed to the ship’s motion.

‘So how long will this storm last?’ Mathilde asked in her accented English.

‘Storm?’ Cromwell cried. ‘You think this is a storm? This, ma’am, is nothing but a blow. Nothing but a morsel of wind and rain that will do no harm to man or ship. A storm, ma’am, is violent, violent! This is gentle to what we might meet off the Cape.’

No one had the stomach for a dessert of suet and currants, so instead Pohlmann suggested a hand of whist in his cabin. ‘I have some fine brandy, Captain,’ he said, ‘and if Major Dalton is willing to play we can make a foursome? I know Sharpe won’t play.’ He indicated himself and Mathilde as the other players, then smiled at Lady Grace. ‘Unless I could persuade you to play, my lady?’

‘I don’t,’ she said in a tone suggesting that Pohlmann had invited her to wallow in his vomit. She stood, somehow managing to stay graceful despite the lurching of the ship, and the men immediately pushed their chairs back and stepped aside to let her leave the cabin.

‘Stay and finish your wine, Sharpe,’ Pohlmann said, leading his whist players out.

Sharpe was left alone in the cuddy. He finished his wine, then fetched the decanter from its metal frame on the sideboard, and poured himself another glass. Night had fallen and the frigate, anxious that the convoy should not scatter in the darkness, was firing a gun every ten minutes. Sharpe told himself he would stay for three guns, then make his way into the foetid hold and try to sleep.

Then the door opened and Lady Grace came back into the cuddy. She had a scarf about her neck, hiding the pearls and the smooth white skin of her shoulders. She gave Sharpe an unfriendly glance and ignored his awkward greeting. Sharpe expected her to leave straightaway, assuming she had merely come to fetch something she had left in the cuddy, but to his surprise she sat in Cromwell’s chair and frowned at him. ‘Sit down, Mister Sharpe.’

‘Some wine, my lady?’

‘Sit down,’ she said firmly.

Sharpe sat at the opposite end of the table. The empty brass chandelier swung from the beam, reflecting flashes of the candlelight that came from the two shielded lanterns on the bulkheads. The flickering flames accentuated the high bones of Lady Grace’s face. ‘How well do you know the Baron von Dornberg?’ she asked abruptly.

Sharpe blinked, surprised by the question. ‘Not well, my lady.’

‘You met him in India?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Where?’ she demanded peremptorily. ‘How?’

Sharpe frowned. He had promised not to give away Pohlmann’s identity, so he would need to treat Lady Grace’s insistence tactfully. ‘I served with a Company exploring officer for a while, ma’am,’ he said, ‘and he frequently rode behind enemy lines. That’s when I met P— the baron.’ He thought for a second or two. ‘I maybe met him four times, perhaps five?’

‘Which enemy?’

‘The Mahrattas, ma’am.’

‘So he was a friend to the Mahrattas?’

‘I imagine so, ma’am.’

She stared at him as if she was weighing the truth of his words. ‘He seems very attached to you, Mister Sharpe.’

Sharpe almost swore as the wine glass slid away from him and fell over the fiddle. The glass smashed on the floor, splashing wine across the canvas rug. ‘I did him a service, ma’am, the last time we met. It was after a fight.’

‘He was on the other side?’ she interrupted him.

‘He was with the other side, ma’am,’ Sharpe said carefully, disguising the truth that Pohlmann had been the general commanding the other side. ‘And he was caught up in the rout. I could have captured him, I suppose, but he didn’t seem to pose any harm, so I let him go. He’s grateful for that, I’m sure.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, and seemed about to stand.

‘Why, ma’am?’ Sharpe asked, hoping she would stay.

She relaxed warily, then stared at him for a long time, evidently considering whether to answer, then let go of the table and shrugged. ‘You heard the captain’s conversation with the baron tonight?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘They appear as strangers to each other?’

‘Indeed they do,’ Sharpe agreed, ‘and Cromwell told me as much himself.’

‘Yet almost every night, Mister Sharpe, they meet and talk. Just the two of them. They come in here after midnight and sit across the table from each other and talk. And sometimes the baron’s manservant is here with them.’ She paused. ‘I frequently find it hard to sleep and if the night is fine I will go on deck. I hear them through the skylight. I don’t eavesdrop,’ she said acidly, ‘but I hear their voices.’

‘So they know each other a great deal better than they pretend?’ Sharpe said.

‘So it would seem,’ she answered.

‘Odd, ma’am,’ Sharpe said.

She shrugged as if to suggest that Sharpe’s opinion was of no interest to her. ‘Perhaps they merely play backgammon,’ she said distantly.

She again looked as though she would leave and Sharpe hurried to keep the conversation going. ‘The baron did tell me he might go to live in France, ma’am.’

‘Not London?’

‘France or Hanover, he said.’

‘But you can hardly expect him to confide in you,’ she said scornfully, ‘on the basis of your very slight acquaintance.’ She stood.

Sharpe pushed back his chair and hurried to open the door. She nodded thanks for his courtesy, but a sudden wave heaved the Calliope and made Lady Grace stagger and Sharpe instinctively put a hand out to check her and the hand encircled her waist and took her weight so that she was leaning against him with her face just inches from his. He felt a terrible desire to kiss her and he knew she would not object for, though the ship steadied, she did not step away. Sharpe could feel her slender waist beneath the soft material of her dress. His mind was swimming because her eyes, so large and serious, were on his, and once again, as he had the very first time he glimpsed her, he sensed a melancholy in her face, but then the quarterdeck door banged open and Cromwell’s steward swore as he carried a tray towards the cuddy. Lady Grace twisted from Sharpe’s arm and, without a word, went through the door.

‘Raining buckets, it is,’ the steward said. ‘A bloody fish would drown on deck, I tell you.’

‘Bloody hell,’ Sharpe said, ‘bloody hell.’ He picked the decanter up by the neck, tipped it to his mouth and drained it.

The wind and rain stayed high throughout the night. Cromwell had shortened sail at nightfall and those few passengers who braved the deck at dawn found the Calliope plunging beneath low dark clouds from which black squalls hissed across a white-capped sea. Sharpe, lacking a greatcoat, and unwilling to soak his coat or shirt, went on deck bare-chested. He turned towards the quarterdeck and respectfully bowed his head in acknowledgement of the unseen captain, then half ran and half walked towards the forecastle where the breakfast burgo waited to be fetched. He found a group of sailors at the galley, one of them the grey-haired commander of number five gun, who greeted Sharpe with a tobacco-stained grin. ‘We’ve lost the convoy, sir.’

‘Lost it?’

‘Gone to buggery, ain’t it?’ The man laughed. ‘And not by accident if I knows a thing about it.’

‘And what do you know about it, Jem?’ a younger man asked.

‘More’n you know, and more’n you’ll ever learn.’

‘Why no accident?’ Sharpe asked.

Jem ducked his head to spit tobacco juice. ‘The captain’s been at the wheel since midnight, sir, so he has, and he’s been steering us hard south’ards. Had us on deck in dark of night, hauling the sails about. We be running due south now, sir, instead of sou’west.’

‘The wind changed,’ a man observed.

‘Wind don’t change here!’ Jem said scornfully. ‘Not at this time of year! Wind here be steady as a rock out of the nor’east. Nine days in ten, sir, out the nor’east. You don’t need to steer a ship out of Bombay, sir. You clear the Balasore Roads, hang your big rags up the sticks, and this wind’ll blow you to Madagascar straight as a ball down a tavern alley, sir.’

‘So why has he turned south?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Because we’re a fast ship, sir, and it was grating Peculiar’s nerves to be tied to them slow old tubs of the convoy. You watch him, sir, he’ll have us hanging our shirts in the rigging to catch the wind and we’ll fly home like a seagull.’ He winked. ‘First ship home gets the best prices for the cargo, see, sir?’

The cook ladled the burgoo into Sharpe’s cauldron and Jem opened the forecastle door for Sharpe who almost collided with Pohlmann’s servant, the elderly man who had been so relaxed on his master’s sofa on the first night Sharpe had visited the cabin.

‘Pardonnez-moi,’ the servant said instinctively, stepping hastily back so that Sharpe did not spill the burgoo down his grey clothes.

Sharpe looked at him. ‘Are you French?’

‘I’m Swiss, sir,’ the man said respectfully, then stood aside, though he still looked at Sharpe, who thought the man’s eyes were not like a servant’s eyes. They were like Lord William’s eyes, confident, clever and knowing. ‘Good morning, sir,’ the servant said respectfully, offering a slight bow, and Sharpe stepped past him and carried the steaming burgoo down the rain-slicked main deck towards the aft companionway.

Cromwell chose that moment to appear at the quarterdeck rail and, just as Jem had forecast, he wanted every stitch of sail aloft. He bellowed at the topmen to start climbing, then took a speaking trumpet from the rail and hailed the first lieutenant who was making his way forward. ‘Fly the jib boom spritsail, Mister Tufnell. Lively now! Mister Sharpe, you’ll oblige me by getting dressed. This is an Indiaman, not some sluttish Tyne collier.’

Sharpe went below to eat breakfast and when he came back to the deck, properly dressed, Cromwell had gone to the poop from where he was watching north for fear that the Company frigate might appear to order him back to the convoy, but neither Cromwell, nor the men aloft, saw any sign of the other ships. It appeared that Cromwell had escaped the convoy and could now let Calliope show her speed. And show it she did, for every sail that had been handed at nightfall was now back on the yards, stretching to the wet wind, and the Calliope seemed to churn the sea to cream as she raced southwards.

The wind moderated during the day and the clouds scudded themselves ragged so that by nightfall the sky was again clear and the sea was blue green instead of grey. There was an air of ebullience on board, as though by freeing itself of the convoy the Calliope had brightened everyone’s life. There was the sound of laughter in steerage, and cheers when Tufnell rigged wind scoops to air out the foetid decks. Passengers joined the seamen in dances below the forecastle as the sun sank in a blaze of orange and gold.

Pohlmann brought Sharpe a cigar before supper. ‘I won’t invite you to eat with us tonight,’ he said. ‘Joshua Fazackerly is donating the wine, which means he will feel entitled to bore us all with his legal recollections. It will likely prove a tedious meal.’ He paused, blowing a plume of smoke towards the mainsail. ‘You know why I liked the Mahrattas? There were no lawyers among them.’

‘No law, either,’ Sharpe said.

Pohlmann gave him a sideways glance. ‘True. But I like corrupt societies, Richard. In a corrupt society the biggest rogue wins.’

‘So why go home?’

‘Europe is being corrupted,’ Pohlmann said. ‘The French talk loudly of law and reason, but beneath the talk there is nothing but greed. I understand greed, Richard.’

‘So where will you live?’ Sharpe asked. ‘London, Hanover or France?’

‘Maybe in Italy? Maybe Spain? No, not Spain. I could not stomach the priests. Maybe I shall go to America? They say rogues do well there.’

‘Or perhaps you’ll live in France?’

‘Why not? I have no quarrel with France.’

‘You will if the Revenant finds us.’

‘The Revenant?’ Pohlmann asked innocently.

‘French warship,’ Sharpe said.

Pohlmann laughed. ‘It would be like, how do you say? Finding a needle in a haystack? Although I have always thought it would be easy to find a needle in a haystack. Simply take a girl onto the stack and make love, and you could be quite certain the needle will find her bum. Have you ever made love on a haystack?’

‘No.’

‘I don’t recommend it. It is like those beds the Indian magicians sleep on. But if you do, Richard, make sure you are the one on top.’

Sharpe gazed out across the darkening ocean. There were no whitecaps any more, just an endless vista of slow-heaving waves. ‘How well do you know Cromwell?’ He blurted the question out, torn between a reluctance to raise the German’s suspicions and a desire not to believe in those suspicions at all.