Sharpe's Trafalgar by Bernard Cornwell
Lord William, visibly irritated at being ignored by Chase, was waiting to catch the captain’s attention, but something Tufnell said caused Chase to ignore his lordship and turn back to the other passengers. “I want to know everything you can tell me,” Chase said urgently, “about the man posing as the Baron von Dornberg’s servant.”
Most of the passengers looked puzzled. Major Dalton commented that the baron had been a decent sort of chap, a bit loud-mouthed, but that no one had really remarked on the servant. “He kept himself to himself,” Dalton said.
“He spoke French to me once,” Sharpe said.
“He did?” Chase spun around eagerly.
“Only the once,” Sharpe said, “but he spoke English and German too. Claimed he was Swiss. But I don’t know that he was really a servant at all.”
“What do you mean?”
“He was wearing a sword, sir, when he left the ship. Not many servants wear swords.”
“Hanoverian servants might,” Fairley said. “Foreign folk, strange ways.”
“So what do we know about the baron?” Chase asked.
“He was a buffoon,” Fairley growled.
“He was decent enough,” Dalton protested, “and he was generous.”
Sharpe could have provided a far more detailed answer, but he was still reluctant to admit that he had deceived the Calliope for so long. “It’s a strange thing, sir,” he said instead to Chase, “and I didn’t really think about it lentil after the baron had left the ship, but he looked just like a fellow called Anthony Pohlmann.”
“Did he, Sharpe?” Dalton asked, surprised.
“Same build,” Sharpe said. “Not that I ever saw Pohlmann except through a telescope.” Which was not true, but Sharpe had to cover his tracks.
“Who,” Chase interrupted, “is Anthony Pohlmann?”
“He’s a Hanoverian soldier, sir, who led the Mahratta armies at Assaye.”
“Sharpe,” Chase said seriously, “are you sure?”
“He looked like him,” Sharpe replied, reddening, “very like.”
“God save me,” Chase said in his Devonian accent, then frowned in thought. Lord William approached him again, but Chase distractedly waved his lordship away and Lord William, already insulted by the captain’s disregard, looked even more offended. “But the main point,” Chase went on, “is that von Dornberg and his servant, if he is a servant, are now on the Revenant. Hopper!”
“Sir?” the bosun called from the main deck.
“I want all Pucelles back on board fast, but you wait with my barge. Mister Horrocks! Here, please!” Horrocks was the Pucelle’s fourth lieutenant who would command the small prize crew, just three men, that Chase would leave aboard the Calliope. The men were not needed to sail the ship, for Tufnell and the Calliope’s own seamen could do that, but they were to stay aboard the Indiaman to register Chase’s claim on the vessel which would now sail to Cape Town where the French prisoners would be given into the care of the British garrison and the ship could be revictualed for its journey back to Britain and the waiting lawyers. Chase gave Horrocks his orders, stressing that he was to accede to Lieutenant Tufnell in all matters of sailing the Calliope, but he also instructed Horrocks to select twenty of the Calliope’s best seamen and press them into the Pucelle. “I don’t like doing it,” he told Sharpe, “but we’re short-handed. Poor fellows won’t be happy, but who knows? Some may even volunteer.” He did not sound hopeful. “What about you, Sharpe? Will you sail with us?”
“Me, sir?”
“As a passenger,” Chase hurriedly explained. “We’re going your way, as it happens, and you’ll reach England far quicker by sailing with me than staying aboard this scow. Of course you want to come. Clouter!” he called to one of his barge crew in the ship’s waist. “You’ll bring Mister Sharpe’s dunnage on deck. Lively now! He’ll show you where it is.”
Sharpe protested. “I should stay here, sir,” he said. “I don’t want to be in your way.”
“Don’t have time to discuss it, Sharpe,” Chase said happily. “Of course you’re coming with me.” The captain at last turned to Lord William Hale who had been growing ever more angry at Chase’s lack of attention. Chase walked away with his lordship as Clouter, the big black man who had fought so hard on the night Sharpe had first met Chase, climbed to the quarterdeck. “Where do we go, sir?” Clouter asked.
“The dunnage will wait for a while,” Sharpe answered. He did not want to leave the Calliope, not while Lady Grace was aboard, but first he would have to invent some pressing excuse to refuse Chase’s invitation. He could think of none offhand, but the thought of abandoning Lady Grace was unbearable. If the worst came to the worst, he decided, he would risk offending Chase by simply refusing to change ships.
Chase was now pacing up and down beneath the poop, listening to Lord William who was doing most of the talking. Chase was nodding, but eventually the captain seemed to shrug resignedly, then turned abruptly to rejoin Sharpe. “Damn,” he said bitterly, “damn and double damn. You still standing here, Clouter? Go and fetch Mister Sharpe’s dunnage! Nothing too heavy. No pianofortes or four poster beds.”
“I told him to wait,” Sharpe said.
Chase frowned. “You’re not going to argue with me, are you, Sharpe? I have quite enough troubles. His bloody lordship claims he needs to reach Britain swiftly and I couldn’t deny that we’re on our way into the Atlantic.”
“The Atlantic?” Sharpe asked, astonished.
“Of course! I told you I was going your way. And besides, that’s where the Revenant is gone. I’ll swear on it. I’m even risking my reputation on it. And Lord William tells me he is carrying government dispatches, but is he? I don’t know. I think he just wants to be on a larger and safer ship, but I can’t refuse him. I’d like to, but I can’t. Damn his eyes. You’re not listening to this, are you, Clouter? These are words for your superiors and betters. Damn! So now I’m hoisted with bloody Lord William Hale and his bloody wife, their bloody servants and his bloody secretary. Damn!”
“Clouter,” Sharpe said energetically, “lower-deck steerage, larboard side. Hurry!” He almost sang as he jumped down the stairs. Grace was going with him!
Sharpe hid his elation as he made his farewells. He was sorry to part from Ebenezer Fairley and from Major Dalton, both of whom pressed invitations on him to visit their homes. Mrs. Fairley clasped Sharpe to her considerable bosom and insisted he took a bottle of brandy and another of rum with him. “To keep you warm, dear,” she said, “and to stop Ebenezer from guzzling them.”
A longboat from the Pucelle carried the pressed men away from the Calliope. They were mostly the youngest seamen and they went to replace those of Chase’s crew who had succumbed to disease during the Pucelle’s long cruise. They looked morose, for they were exchanging good wages for poor. “But we’ll cheer them up,” Chase said airily. “There’s nothing like a dose of victory to cheer a tar.”
Lord William had insisted that his expensive furniture be taken to the Pucelle, but Chase exploded in anger, saying that his lordship could either travel without furniture or not travel at all, and his lordship had icily given way, though he did convince Chase that his collection of official papers must go with him. Those were all brought from his cabin and taken to the Pucelle, then Lord William and his wife left the Calliope without making any farewells. Lady Grace looked utterly distraught as she left. She had been weeping and was now making a huge effort to appear dignified, but she could not help giving Sharpe a despairing glance as she was lowered by a rope and tackle into Chase’s barge. Malachi Braithwaite clambered down the Calliope’s side after her and gave Sharpe a venomously triumphant look as if to suggest that he would now enjoy Lady Grace’s company while Sharpe was marooned on the Calliope. Lady Grace gripped the gunwale of the barge with a white-knuckled hand, then the wind snatched at her hat, lifting its brim, and as she caught the hat she saw Sharpe swing out of the entry port and begin to clamber down the ship’s side and, for a heartbea
“Good-bye, Sharpe! Write to me!” Dalton called.
“Good luck, lad!” Fairley boomed.
Chase descended the ladder last and took his place in the sternsheets. “All together now!” Hopper shouted and the oarsmen dug in their red and white blades and the barge slid away from the Calliope.
The stench of the Pucelle reached across the water. It was the smell of a huge crew crammed into a wooden ship, the stink of unwashed bodies, of body waste, of tobacco, tar, salt and rot, but the ship herself loomed high and mighty, a great sheer wall of gunports, crammed with men, powder and shot.
“Good-bye!” Dalton called a last time.
And Sharpe joined the hunter, seeking revenge, going home.
“I hate having women on board,” Chase said savagely. “It’s bad luck, you know that? Women and rabbits, both bring bad luck.” He touched the polished table in his day cabin to avert the ill fortune. “Not that there aren’t women on board already,” he admitted. “There’s at least six Portsmouth whores down below who I’m not supposed to know about, and I suspect one of the gunners has his wife hidden away, but that ain’t the same as having her ladyship and her maid out on the open deck feeding the crew’s filthy fantasies.”
Sharpe said nothing. The elegant cabin stretched the whole width of the ship and was lit by a wide stern window through which he could see the far-off Calliope already hull down on the horizon. The windows were curtained in flowered chintz which matched the cushions spread along the window seat, and the deck was carpeted with canvas painted in a black and white checkerboard pattern. There were two tables, a sideboard, a deep leather armchair, a couch and a revolving bookcase, though the air of genteel domesticity was somewhat spoiled by the presence of two eighteen-pounder cannons that pointed toward red-painted gunports. Forward of the day cabin, and on the ship’s starboard side, were Chase’s sleeping quarters, while forward on the larboard side was a dining cabin that could seat a dozen in comfort. “And I’ll be damned if I’ll move out for Lord goddamn bloody Hale,” Chase grumbled, “though he plainly expects me to. He can go back to the first lieutenant’s quarters and his damned wife can go into the second lieutenant’s cabin, which is how they sailed from Calcutta. Lord knows why they sleep apart, but they do. I shouldn’t have told you that.”
“I didn’t hear it,” Sharpe said.
“The bloody secretary can go in Horrocks’s cabin,” Chase decided. Horrocks was the lieutenant who had been made prize master of the Calliope. “And the first lieutenant can have the master’s cabin. He died three days ago. No one knows why. He tired of life, or life tired of him. God alone knows where the second will go. He’ll turf out the third, I suppose, who’ll kick out someone else, and so on down to the ship’s cat that will get chucked overboard, poor thing. God, I hate having passengers, especially women! You’ll have my quarters.”
“Your quarters?” Sharpe asked in astonishment.
“Sleeping cabin,” Chase said, “through that door there. Good Lord above, Sharpe, I’ve got this damn great room!” He gestured about the lavish day cabin with its elegant furniture, framed portraits and curtained windows. “My steward can hang my cot in here, and yours can go in the small cabin.”
“I can’t take your cabin!” Sharpe protested.
“Of course you can! It’s a damned poky little hole, anyway, just right for an insignificant ensign. Besides, Sharpe, I’m a fellow who likes some company and as captain I can’t go to the wardroom without an invitation and the officers don’t invite me much. Can’t blame them. They want to relax, so I end up in lonely state. So you can entertain me instead. D’you play chess? No? I shall teach you. And you’ll take supper with me tonight? Of course you will.” Chase, who had taken off his uniform coat, stretched out in a chair. “Do you really think the baron might have been Pohlmann?”
“He was,” Sharpe said flatly.
Chase raised an eyebrow. “So sure?”
“I recognized him, sir,” Sharpe admitted, “but I didn’t tell any of the Calliope’s officers. I didn’t think it was important.”
Chase shook his head, more in amusement than disapproval. “It wouldn’t have done any good if you had told them. And Peculiar would probably have killed you if you had, and as for the others, how were they to know what was happening? I only hope to God I do!” He straightened to find a piece of paper on the larger table. “We, that is His Britannic Majesty’s navy, are looking for a gentleman named Vaillard. Michel Vaillard. He’s a bad lad, our Vaillard, and it seems he is trying to return to Europe. And how better to travel than disguised as a servant? No one looks at servants, do they?”
“Why are you searching for him, sir?”
“It seems, Sharpe, that he has been negotiating with the last of the Mahrattas who are terrified that the British will take over what’s left of their territory, so Vaillard has concluded a treaty with one of their leaders, Holkar?” He looked at the paper. “Yes, Holkar, and Vaillard is taking the treaty back to Paris. Holkar agrees to talk peace with the British, and in the meantime Monsieur Vaillard, presumably with the help of your friend Pohlmann, arranges to supply Holkar with French advisers, French cannon and French muskets. This is a copy of the treaty.” He flicked the paper over to Sharpe who saw that it was in French, though someone had helpfully written a translation between the lines. Holkar, the ablest of the Mahratta war leaders and a man who had evaded the army of Sir Arthur Wellesley, but who was now being pressed by other British forces, had undertaken to open peace negotiations and, under their cover, raise an enormous army which would be equipped by his allies, the French. The treaty even listed those princes in British territory who could be relied on to rebel if such an army attacked out of the north.
“They’ve been clever, Vaillard and Pohlmann,” Chase said. “Used British ships to go home! Quickest way, you see. They suborned your fellow, Cromwell, and must have sent a message to Mauritius arranging a rendezvous.”
“How did we get a copy of their treaty?” Sharpe asked.
“Spies?” Chase guessed. “Everything became vigorous after you left Bombay. The admiral sent a sloop to the Red Sea in case Vaillard decided to go overland and he sent the Porcupine to overhaul the convoy and told me to keep my eyes skinned as well, because stopping that damned Vaillard is our most important job. Now we know where the bloody man is, or we think we do, so I’ll have to pursue him. They’re going back to Europe and we are too. It’s back home for us, Sharpe, and you’re going to see just how fast a French-built warship can sail. The trouble is that the Revenant’s just as quick and she’s the best part of a week in front of us.”
“And if you catch her?”
“We beat her to smithereens, of course,” Chase said happily, “and make certain Monsieur Vaillard and Herr Pohlmann go to the fishes.”
“And Captain Cromwell with them,” Sharpe said vengefully.
“I think I’d rather take him alive,” Chase said, “and hang him from the yardarm. Nothing cheers up a jack tar’s spirit so much as seeing a captain swinging on a generous length of Bridport hemp.”
Sharpe looked through the stern window to see the Calliope was just a smudge of sails on the horizon. He felt like a cask thrown into a fast river, being swept away to some unknown destination on a journey over which he had no control, but he was glad it was happening, for he was still with Lady Grace. The very thought of her sparked a warm feeling in his breast, though he knew it was a madness, an utter madness, but he could not escape it. He did not even want to escape it.
“Here’s Mister Harold Collier,” Chase said, responding to a knock on the door that brought into the cabin the diminutive midshipman who had commanded the boat that had carried Sharpe out to the Calliope so long ago
The boy was touchingly proud of his ship while Sharpe was awed by it. It was a vast thing, much bigger than the Calliope, and young Harry Collier rattled off its statistics as he took Sharpe through the lavish dining cabin where another eighteen-pounder squatted. “She’s 178 feet long, sir, not counting her bowsprit, of course, and 48 in the beam, sir, and 175 feet to the main truck which is the very top of the mainmast, sir, and mind your head, sir. She was French-built out of two thousand oak trees and she weighs close to two thousand tons, sir—mind your head—and she’s got seventy-four guns, sir, not counting the carronades, of course, and we’ve six of them, all thirty-two-pounders, and there’s six hundred and seventeen men aboard, sir, not counting the marines.”
“How many of those?”
“Sixty-six, sir. This way, sir. Mind your head, sir.”
Collier led Sharpe onto the quarterdeck where eight long guns lay behind their closed ports. “Eighteen-pounders, sir,” Collier squeaked, “the babies on the ship. Just six a side, sir, including the four in the stern quarters.” He slithered down a perilously steep companionway to the main deck. “This is the weather deck, sir. Thirty-two guns, sir, all twenty-four-pounders.” The center of the main deck, or weather deck, was open to the sky, but the forward and aft sections of the deck were planked over where the forecastle and quarterdeck were built. Collier led Sharpe forward, weaving nimbly between the huge guns and the mess tables rigged between them, ducking under hammocks where men of the off-duty watch slept, then swerving around the anchor capstan and down another ladder into the stygian darkness of the lower deck, which held the ship’s biggest guns, each throwing a ball of thirty-two pounds. “Thirty of these big guns, sir,” he said proudly, “mind your head, sir, fifteen a side, and we’re lucky to have so many. There’s a shortage of these big guns, they tell us, and some ships are even driven to put eighteen-pounders on their lower deck, but not Captain Chase, he wouldn’t abide that. I told you to mind your head, sir.”