The channel veered nearer the shore, taking the ship close to a temple with a brightly colored tower carved with monkeys, gods and elephants. The big driver sail on the mizzen was just being loosed and its canvas slapped and cracked, then bellied with the wind to lean the ship further over. Behind the Calliope the other great ships of the convoy were turning away from the anchorage, showing white water at their stems and filling their high masts and tangled rigging with creamy yellow sails. An East India Company frigate that would escort the convoy as far as the Cape of Good Hope sailed just ahead of the Calliope. The frigate’s bright ensign, thirteen stripes of red and white with the union flag in the upper staff quadrant, streamed bright in the sun’s red glow. Sharpe looked for Captain Joel Chase’s ship, but the only Royal Navy vessel he could see was a small schooner with four cannon.
The Calliope’s seamen tidied the deck, stowing the loose sheets in wooden tubs and checking the lashings of the ship’s boats that were stored on the spare spars which ran like vast rafters between the quarterdeck and the forecastle. A dark-skinned man in a fishing canoe paddled out of the ship’s way, then gaped up at the great black and white wall that roared past him. The temple was fading now, lost in the glare of the sun, but Sharpe stared at the tower’s black outline and wished again that he was not leaving. He had liked India, finding it a playground for warriors, princes, rogues and adventurers. He had found wealth there, been commissioned there, fought in its hills and on its ancient battlements. He was leaving friends and lovers there, and more than one enemy in his grave, but for what? For Britain? Where no one waited for him and no adventurers rode from the hills and no tyrants lurked behind red battlements.
One of the wealthy passengers came down the steep steps from the quarterdeck with a woman on his arm. Like most of the Calliope’s passengers he was a civilian and was elegantly dressed in a long dark-green coat, white breeches and an old-fashioned tricorne. The woman on his arm was plump, dressed in gauzy white, fair-haired, and laughing. The two spoke a foreign language, one Sharpe did not know. German? Dutch? Swedish? Everything the foreign couple saw, from the lashed guns to the crates of hens to the first seasick passengers leaning over the rail, amused them. The man was explaining the ship to his companion. “Boom!” he cried, pointing to one of the guns, and the woman laughed, then staggered as a gust of wind made the big ship lurch. She whooped in mock alarm and clung to the man’s elbow as they staggered on forrard.
“Know who that is?” It was Braithwaite, Lord William Male’s secretary, who had sidled alongside Sharpe.
“No.” Sharpe was brusque, instinctively disliking anyone connected with Lord William.
“That was the Baron von Dornberg,” Braithwaite said, evidently expecting Sharpe to be impressed. The secretary watched the baron help his lady up to the forecastle where another gust of wind threatened to snatch her wide-brimmed hat.
“Never heard of him,” Sharpe said churlishly.
“He’s a nabob.” Braithwaite spoke the word in awe, meaning that the baron was a man who had made himself fabulously rich in India and was now carrying his wealth back to Europe. Such a career was a gamble. A man either died in India or became wealthy. Most died. “Are you carrying goods?” Braithwaite asked Sharpe.
“Goods?” Sharpe asked, wondering why the secretary was making such an effort to be pleasant to him.
“To sell,” Braithwaite said impatiently, as though Sharpe was being deliberately obtuse. “I’ve got peacock feathers,” he went on, “five crates! The plumes fetch a rare price in London. Milliners buy them. I’m Malachi Braithwaite, by the way.” He held out his hand. “Lord William’s confidential secretary.”
Sharpe reluctantly shook the offered hand.
“I never did send that letter,” Braithwaite said, smiling meaningfully. “I told him I did, but I didn’t.” Braithwaite leaned close to make these confidences. He was a few inches taller than Sharpe, but much thinner, and had a lugubrious face with quick eyes that never seemed to look at Sharpe for long before darting sideways, almost as though Braithwaite expected to be attacked at any second. “His lordship will merely assume your colonel never received the letter.”