Sharpe 3-Book Collection 3: Sharpe’s Trafalgar, Sharpe’s Prey, Sharpe’s Rifles

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.

Pohlmann gave Sharpe a glance full of curiosity and not a little hostility. ‘I scarcely know the man,’ he answered stiffly. ‘I met him once or twice when he was ashore in Bombay, because it seemed sensible if we were to get decent accommodation, but otherwise I know him about as well as you do. Why do you ask?’

‘I was wondering if you knew him well enough to find out why he left the convoy?’

Pohlmann laughed, his suspicions allayed by Sharpe’s explanation. ‘I don’t think I know him that well, but Mister Tufnell tells me we are to sail to the east of Madagascar while the convoy goes to the west. We shall make faster time, he reckons, and be home at least two weeks ahead of the other ships. And that will increase the value of the cargo in which the captain has a considerable interest.’ Pohlmann drew on the cigar. ‘You disapprove of his initiative?’

‘There’s safety in numbers,’ Sharpe said mildly.

‘There’s safety in speed, too. Tufnell says we should make at least ninety miles a day now.’ The German threw the remains of his cigar overboard. ‘I must change for supper.’

There was something wrong, Sharpe reckoned, but he could not place it. If Lady Grace was right, then Pohlmann and the captain talked frequently, but Pohlmann claimed he scarcely knew Cromwell, and Sharpe was inclined to believe her ladyship, though for the life of him he could not see how it affected anyone other than Pohlmann and Cromwell.

Two days later land was sighted far to the west. The shout from the masthead brought a rush of passengers to the starboard rail, though no one could see the land unless they were willing to climb into the high rigging, but a belt of thick cloud on the horizon showed where the distant coast lay. ‘Cape East on Madagascar,’ Lieutenant Tufnell announced, and all day the passengers stared at the cloud as though it portended something significant. The cloud was gone the following day, though Tufnell told Sharpe they were still following the Madagascar coast which now lay well beyond the horizon. ‘The next landfall will be the African shore,’ Tufnell said, ‘and there we’ll find a quick current to carry us round to Cape Town.’

The two men spoke on the darkened quarterdeck. It was well past midnight on the second day since the sighting of Cape East and the third night in succession that Sharpe had gone in the small hours to the quarterdeck in hope that Lady Grace would be on the poop. He needed to ask permission to be on the quarterdeck, but the watch officer had welcomed his company every night, unaware why Sharpe wanted to be there. The Lady Grace had not appeared on either of the first two nights, but as Sharpe now stood beside the lieutenant he heard the creak of a door and the sound of soft shoes climbing the stairs to the poop deck. Sharpe waited until the lieutenant went to talk with the helmsman, then he turned and went to the poop deck himself.

A thin sabre-curve of moon glistened on the sea and offered just enough light for Sharpe to see Lady Grace, swathed in a dark cloak, standing beside the stern lantern. She was alone, with no maid to chaperone her, and Sharpe joined her, standing a pace to her left with his hands, like hers, on the rail and he stared, like her, at the smooth, moon-silvered wake that slipped endlessly into the dark. The great mizzen driver sail loomed pale above them.

Neither spoke. She glanced at him when he joined her, but did not walk away. She just stared at the ocean.

‘Pohlmann,’ Sharpe said very quietly, for two panes of the cuddy’s skylight were open and he did not want to be overheard if anyone was below, ‘claims he does not know Captain Cromwell.’

‘Pohlmann?’ Lady Grace asked, frowning at Sharpe.

‘The Baron von Dornberg is no baron, my lady.’ Sharpe was breaking his word to Pohlmann, but he did not care, not when he was standing close enough to smell Lady Grace’s perfume. ‘His name is Anthony Pohlmann and he was once a sergeant in a Hanoverian regiment that was hired by the East India Company, but he deserted. He became a freelance soldier instead, and a very good one. He was the commander of the enemy army at Assaye.’

‘Their commander?’ She sounded surprised.

‘Yes, ma’am. He was the enemy general.’

She stared at the sea again. ‘Why have you protected him?’

‘I like him,’ Sharpe said. ‘I’ve always liked him. He once tried to make me an officer in the Mahratta army and I confess I was tempted. He said he’d make me rich.’

She smiled at that. ‘You want to be rich, Mister Sharpe?’

‘It’s better than being poor, milady.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it is. So why are you telling me about Pohlmann now?’

‘Because he lied to me, ma’am.’

‘Lied to you?’

‘He told me he didn’t know the captain, and you told me that he does.’

She turned to him again. ‘Perhaps I lied to you?’

‘Did you?’

‘No.’ She glanced at the cuddy’s skylight, then walked to the far corner of the deck where a small signal cannon was lashed to the gunwale. She stood in the corner between the cannon and the taffrail and Sharpe, after a moment’s hesitation, joined her there. ‘I don’t like it,’ she said quietly.

‘Don’t like what, ma’am?’

‘That we’re sailing to the east of Madagascar. Why?’

Sharpe shrugged. ‘Pohlmann tells me we’re trying to race ahead of the convoy. Get to London first and bring the cargo to market.’

‘No one sails outside Madagascar,’ she said, ‘no one! We’re losing the Agulhas Current, which means we’ll make slower time. And by coming this way we go much closer to the Île-de-France.’

‘Mauritius?’ Sharpe asked.

She nodded. Mauritius, or the Île-de-France, was the enemy base in the Indian Ocean, an island fortress for raiders and warships with a main harbour protected by treacherous coral reefs and stone forts. ‘I told William all this,’ she said bitterly, ‘but he laughed at me. What would I know? Cromwell knows his business, he says, and I should just leave well alone.’ She fell silent and Sharpe was suddenly and awkwardly aware that she was crying. The realization astonished him, for one moment she had been as aloof as ever, and now she was weeping. She stood with her hands on the rail as the tears ran silently down her cheeks. ‘I hated India,’ she said after a while.

‘Why, milady?’

‘Everything dies in India,’ she said bitterly. ‘Both my dogs died, and then my son died.’

‘Oh, God, I’m sorry.’

She ignored his sympathy. ‘And I almost died. Fever, of course.’ She sniffed. ‘And there were times when I wished I would die.’

‘How old was your son?’

‘Three months,’ she said softly. ‘He was our first and he was so small and perfect, with little fingers and he was just beginning to smile. Just beginning to smile and then he rotted away. Everything rots in India. It turns black and it rots!’ She began to cry harder, her shoulders heaving with sobs and Sharpe simply turned her and drew her towards him and she went to him and wept onto his shoulder.

She calmed after a while. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered and half stepped away, but seemed content to let him keep his hands on her shoulders.

‘There’s no need to be sorry,’ Sharpe said.

Her head was lowered and Sharpe could smell her hair, but then she raised her face and looked at him. ‘Have you ever wanted to die, Mister Sharpe?’

He smiled at her. ‘I always reckoned that would be a terrible waste, my lady.’

She frowned at that answer, then, quite suddenly, she laughed and her face, for the first time since Sharpe had met her, was filled with life and he thought he had never seen, nor ever would see, a woman so lovely. So lovely that Sharpe leaned forward and kissed her. She pushed him away and he stepped back, mortified, readying incoherent apologies, but she was only extricating her arms that had been trapped between their bodies and once they were free she snaked them round his neck and pulled his face to hers and kissed him so fiercely that Sharpe tasted blood from her lip. She sighed, then placed her cheek against his. ‘Oh, God,’ she said softly, ‘I wanted you to do that since the moment I first saw you.’

Sharpe hid his astonishment. ‘I thought you hadn’t noticed me.’

‘Then you are a fool, Richard Sharpe.’

‘And you, my lady?’