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

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