“It was because I was carrying a message for a rebel.”
“Who?”
“A man called Charles. Do you know him?”
“Of course I know him. He’s my friend. My God, he’s the only man in Santiago I can really trust. What did the message say?”
“I don’t know. It was in code.”
Cochrane’s face had gone pale. “So who was it from?” He asked the question in a voice that suggested he was afraid of hearing the answer.
“Napoleon.”
“Oh, dear God.” Cochrane paused. “And Bautista has the message now?”
“Yes.”
Cochrane swore. “How in hell’s name did you become Boney’s messenger?”
“He tricked me into carrying it.” Sharpe explained as best he could, though the explanation sounded lame.
Cochrane, who had seemed appalled when he first heard of the intercepted message, now appeared more interested in the Emperor. “How was he?” he asked eagerly.
“He was bored,” Sharpe said. “Bored and fat.”
“But alert? Energetic? Quick?” The one-word questions were fierce.
“No. He looked terrible.”
“How?” Cochrane asked.
“He’s out of condition. He’s fat and pale.”
“But he made sense to you?” Cochrane asked urgently. “His brain is still working? He’s not lunatic?”
“Christ, no! He made perfect sense!”
Cochrane paused, drawing on his cigar. “You liked him?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Funny, isn’t it? You fight a man most of your life and end up liking the bugger.”
“You met him?” Sharpe asked.
Cochrane shook his head. “I wanted to. When I was on my way here I wanted to call at Saint Helena, but the winds were wrong and we were already late.” Cochrane had crossed to the rail where he stopped to gaze at the O’Higgins. She was a handsome ship, a fifty-gun battleship that had once sailed in the Spanish Navy and had been renamed by her captors. Her solidity looked wonderfully reassuring compared to the fragility of the half-sinking Espiritu Santo. ‘They should have killed Bonaparte,” Cochrane said suddenly. ‘They should have stood him against a wall and shot him.”
“You surprise me,” Sharpe said.
“I do?” Cochrane blew a plume of cigar smoke toward his flagship. “Why?”
“You don’t seem a vengeful man, that’s why.”
“I don’t want vengeance.” Cochrane paused, his eyes resting again on the O’Higgins which rocked her tall masts against the darkening sky. “I feel sorry for Bonaparte. He’s only a young man. It’s unfair to lock up a man like that. He set the world on fire, and now he’s rotting away. It would have been kinder to have killed him. They should have given him a last salute, a flourish of trumpets, a blaze of glory, and a bullet in his heart. That’s how I’d like to go. I don’t want to make old bones.” He drank from his bottle. “How old is Bonaparte?”
“Fifty,” Sharpe said. Just seven years older than himself, he thought.
“I’m forty-five,” Cochrane said, “and I can’t imagine being cooped up on an island forever. My God, Bonaparte could fight a hundred battles yet!”
“That’s exactly why they’ve cooped him up,” Sharpe said.
“I can’t help feeling for the man, that’s all. And you say he’s unwell? But not badly ill?”
“He suffers from nothing that a day’s freedom and the smell of a battlefield wouldn’t cure.”
“Splendid! Splendid!” Cochrane said delightedly.
Sharpe frowned. “What I don’t understand is why Napoleon would be writing in code to your friend Charles.”
“You don’t?” Cochrane asked, as if such a lack of understanding was extraordinary. “It’s simple, really. Charles is a curious fellow; always writing to famous people to seek their versions of history. He doubtless asked the Emperor about Austerlitz or Waterloo or whatever. Nothing to it, Sharpe, nothing at all.”
“And he wrote in code?” Sharpe asked in disbelief.
“How the hell would I know? You must ask Charles or the Emperor, not me.” Cochrane dismissed the matter testily, then leaned over the gunwale to shout a rude greeting at the last longboats to bring men from the O’Higgins.
Those last reinforcements were a group of Chilean Marines under the command of Major Miller, a portly Englishman who, resplendent in a blue uniform coat, had a tarred moustache with upturned tips. “Proud to meet you, Sharpe, proud indeed.” Miller clicked his heels in formal greeting. “I was with the Buffs at Oporto, you will doubtless recall that great day? I was wounded there, recovered for Albuera, and what a bastard of a fight that was, got wounded again, was patched up for that bloody business in the Roncesvalles Pass, got shot again and was invalided out of the service with a game leg. So now I’m fighting for Cochrane. The money’s better if we ever get paid, and I haven’t been shot once. This old ship’s a bit buggered, isn’t she?”