Sharpe 3-Book Collection 3. Bernard Cornwell
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Grace, hysterical. The man hit me!’ he protested to anyone who would listen. ‘I tried to stop him, he hit me!’
‘You did nothing!’ Lady Grace said again.
Lord William summoned Lady Grace’s maid who, like him, had been under the marine’s guard in the day cabin. ‘Calm her down, for Christ’s sake,’ he told the girl, then jerked his head to indicate that Sharpe should leave the bedroom.
Sharpe stepped back through the ruined bulkhead to discover that most of the great cabin’s passengers had come upstairs and were now staring at Bursay’s corpse. Ebenezer Fairley shook his head in wonder. ‘When you do a job, lad,’ the merchant said, ‘you do it proper. Can’t be a drop of blood left in him! Most of it’s dripped down onto our bed.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Sharpe said.
‘Not the first blood I’ve seen, lad. And worse things happen at sea, they tell me.’
‘You should all leave!’ Lord William had come into Pohlmann’s quarters. ‘Just leave!’ he snapped pettishly.
‘This ain’t your room,’ Fairley growled, ‘and if you were a half a man, my lord, neither Sharpe nor this corpse would be here.’
Lord William gaped at Fairley, but just then Lady Grace, her hair ragged, stepped over the splinters of the partition. Her husband tried to push her back, but she shook him off and stared down at the corpse, then up at Sharpe. ‘Thank you, Mister Sharpe,’ she said.
‘Glad I could be of service, my lady,’ Sharpe replied, then turned and braced himself as Major Dalton led a Frenchman into the crowded cabin. ‘This is the new captain of the ship,’ Dalton said. ‘He’s an officier marinier, which I think is the equivalent of our petty officer.’
The Frenchman was an older man, balding, with a face weathered and browned by long service at sea. He had no uniform, for he was not a wardroom officer, but evidently a senior seaman who seemed quite unmoved by Bursay’s death. It was plain that the marine had already explained the circumstance for he asked no questions, but simply made a clumsy and embarrassed bow to Lady Grace and muttered an apology.
Lady Grace acknowledged the apology in a voice still shaking from fear. ‘Merci, monsieur.’
The officier marinier spoke to Dalton who translated for Sharpe’s benefit. ‘He regrets Bursay’s actions, Sharpe. He says the man was an animal. He was a petty officer till a month ago, when Montmorin promoted him. He told him he was on his honour to behave like a gentleman, but Bursay had no honour.’
‘I’m forgiven?’ Sharpe asked, amused.
‘You defended a lady, Sharpe,’ Dalton said, frowning at Sharpe’s light tone. ‘How can any reasonable man object?’
The Frenchman made arrangements for a sheet of canvas to be nailed over the broken partition and for the lieutenant’s body to be taken away. He also insisted that the lanterns be removed from the window.
Sharpe stood the lanterns on the empty sideboard. ‘I’ll sleep in here,’ he announced, ‘just in case any other bloody Frenchman gets lonely.’ Lord William opened his mouth to protest, then thought better of it. The corpse was taken away and a piece of frayed sailcloth nailed over the partition. Then Sharpe slept in Pohlmann’s bed as the ship sailed on, taking him to captivity.
The next two days were tedious. The wind was light so the ship rolled and made slow progress, so slow that Tufnell guessed it would take nearer six days to reach Mauritius, and that was good, for it meant there was more time for a British warship to see the great captured Indiaman wallowing in the long swells. None of the passengers could go on deck and the heat in the cabins was stifling. Sharpe passed the time as best he could. Major Dalton lent him a book called Tristram Shandy, but Sharpe could make neither head nor tail of it. Just lying and staring at the ceiling was more rewarding. The barrister tried to teach Sharpe backgammon, but Sharpe was not interested in gambling and so Fazackerly went off to find more willing prey. Lieutenant Tufnell showed him how to tie some knots, and that passed some hours between the meals which were all burgoo enlivened with dried peas. Mrs Fairley embroidered a shawl, her husband growled and paced and fretted, Major Dalton attempted to compile an accurate account of the battle at Assaye which needed Sharpe’s constant advice, the ship sailed slowly on and Sharpe did not see Lady Grace during the daytime.
She came to his cabin on the second night, arriving while he was asleep and waking him by putting a hand on his mouth so he did not cry out. ‘The maid’s asleep,’ she whispered, and in the silence that followed Sharpe could hear Lord William’s drug-induced snores beyond the makeshift canvas screen.
She lay beside Sharpe, one leg across his, and did not speak for a long time. ‘When he came in,’ she finally whispered, ‘he said he wanted my jewels. That was all. My jewels. Then he told me he was going to cut William’s throat if I didn’t do what he wanted.’
‘It’s all right,’ Sharpe tried to soothe her.
She shook her head abruptly. ‘And then he told me that he hated all aristos. That was what he said, “aristos”, and said we should all be guillotined. He said he was going to kill us both and claim that William had attacked him and that I had died of a fever.’
‘He’s the one feeding the fishes now,’ Sharpe said. He had heard a splash the previous morning and knew it was Bursay’s body being launched into eternity.
‘You don’t hate aristos, do you?’ Grace asked after a long pause.
‘I’ve only met you, your husband and Sir Arthur. Is he an aristo?’
She nodded. ‘His father’s the Earl of Mornington.’
‘So I like two out of three,’ Sharpe said. ‘That’s not bad.’
‘You like Arthur?’
Sharpe shrugged. ‘I don’t know that I like him, but I’d like him to like me. I admire him.’
‘But you don’t like William?’
‘Do you?’
She paused. ‘No. My father made me marry him. He’s rich, very rich, and my family isn’t. He was reckoned a good match, a very good match. I liked him once, but not now. Not now.’
‘He hates me,’ Sharpe said.
‘He’s frightened of you.’
Sharpe smiled. ‘He’s a lord, though, isn’t he? And I’m nothing.’
‘You’re here, though,’ Grace said, kissing him on the cheek, ‘and he isn’t.’ She kissed him again. ‘And if he found me here I would be ruined. My name would be a disgrace. I would never see society again. I might never see anyone again.’
Sharpe thought of Malachi Braithwaite and was grateful that the secretary was mewed up in the steerage where he could not add to his suspicions of Sharpe and Lady Grace. ‘You mean your husband would kill you?’ Sharpe asked her.
‘He’d like to. He might.’ She thought about it. ‘But he’d probably have me declared mad. It isn’t difficult. He’d hire expensive doctors who’d call me an hysterical lunatic and a judge would order me locked away. I’d spend the rest of my short life shut in a wing of the Lincolnshire house being spoon-fed medicines. Only the medicines would be mildly poisonous so that, mercifully, I wouldn’t live long.’
Sharpe turned to look at her, though it was so dark that he could see little but the blur of her face. ‘He could really do that?’ he asked.
‘Of course,’ she said, ‘but I stay safe by behaving very correctly, and by pretending that William doesn’t take whores and mistresses. And, of course, he wants an heir. He was overjoyed when our son was born, but has hated me ever since he died. Which doesn’t stop him trying to give me another.’ She paused. ‘So my best hope of staying alive is to give him a son and to behave like an angel, and I swore I would do both, but then I saw you and I thought