“Someone told me she was ill?” Sharpe suggested.
“Merely highly strung,” Braithwaite said defensively. “Very fine-strung women are prone to fragility, I think, and her ladyship is fine-strung, very fine-strung indeed.” He spoke warmly, unable to take his eyes from Lady Grace, who stood watching the receding shore.
An hour later it was dark, India was gone and Sharpe sailed beneath the stars.
“The war is lost,” Captain Peculiar Cromwell declared, “lost.” He made the statement in a harsh, flat voice, then frowned at the tablecloth. It was the Calliope’s third day out from Bombay and she was running before a gentle wind. She was, as Captain Chase had told Sharpe, a fast ship and the East India Company frigate had ordered Cromwell to shorten sail during the day because she was in danger of outrunning the slower ships. Cromwell had grumbled at the order, then had taken so much canvas from the yards that the Calliope now sailed at the convoy’s rear.
Anthony Pohlmann had invited Sharpe to take supper in the cuddy where Captain Cromwell nightly presided over those wealthier passengers who had paid to travel in the luxurious stern cabins. The cuddy was in the poop, the highest part of the ship, just forward of the two roundhouse cabins that were the largest, most lavish and most expensive. Lord William Hale and the Baron von Dornberg occupied the roundhouse, while beneath them, on the main deck of the ship, the great cabin had been divided into four compartments for the ship’s other wealthy passengers. One was a nabob and his wife who returned to their Cheshire home after twenty profitable years in India, another was a barrister who had been traveling after practicing in the Supreme Court in Bengal, the third was a gray-haired major from the 96th who was retiring from the army, while the last cabin belonged to Pohlmann’s servant who alone among the stern passengers was not invited to eat in the cuddy.
It was the Scottish major, a stocky man called Arthur Dalton, who frowned at Peculiar Cromwell’s declaration that the war was lost. “We’ve beaten the French in India,” the major protested, “and their navy is on its knees.”
“If their navy is on its knees,” Cromwell growled, “why are we sailing in convoy?” He stared belligerently at Dalton, waiting for an answer, but the major declined to take up the cudgels and Cromwell looked triumphantly about the cuddy. He was a tall and heavy-set man with black hair streaked badger white that he wore past his shoulders. He had a long jaw, big yellow teeth and belligerent eyes. His hands, large and powerful, were permanently blackened from the tarred rigging. His uniform coat was cut from a thick blue broadcloth and heavily crusted with brass buttons decorated with the Company’s symbol which was supposed to show a lion holding a crown, but which everyone called “the cat and the cheese.” Cromwell shook his ponderous head. “The war is lost,” he declared again. “Who rules the continent of Europe?”
“The French,” the barrister answered lazily, “but it won’t last. All flash and fire, the French, but there ain’t no substance in them. No substance at all.”
“The whole coast of Europe,” Cromwell said icily, ignoring the lawyer’s scorn, “is in enemy hands.” He paused as a shuddering, grating and scraping noise echoed through the cabin. It punctuated the conversation sporadically and it had taken Sharpe a few moments to realize that it was the sound of the tiller ropes that ran two decks beneath him. Cromwell glanced up at a telltale compass that was mounted on the ceiling, then, deciding all was in order, resumed his argument. “Europe, I tell you, is in enemy hands. The Americans, damn their insolence, are hostile, so our home ocean, sir, is an enemy sea. An enemy sea. We sail there because we have more ships, but ships cost money, and for how long will the British people pay for ships?”
“There are the Austrians,” Major Dalton suggested, “the Russians?”
“The Austrians, sir!” Cromwell scoffed. “No sooner do the Austrians field an army than it is destroyed! The Russians? Would you trust the Russians to free Europe when they cannot liberate themselves? Have you been to Russia, sir?”