“I just feel the cold, sir,” Sharpe lied.
“Cold?” Cromwell sneered. He put his right foot on a crack between the deck planks and, when he lifted the shoe, a string of melting tar adhered to his sole. “You are not cold, Mister Sharpe, you are sweating. Sweating! So come with me, Mister Sharpe.” The captain turned and led Sharpe up to the quarterdeck. The passengers watching the gunnery made way for the two men and Sharpe was suddenly conscious of Lady Grace’s perfume, then he followed Cromwell down the companion-way into the great cabin where the captain had his quarters. Cromwell unlocked his door, pushed it open and gestured that Sharpe should go inside. “My home,” the captain grunted.
Sharpe had expected that the captain would have one of the stern cabins with their big wide windows, but it was more profitable to sell such accommodation to passengers and Cromwell was content with a smaller cabin on the larboard side. It was still a comfortable home. A bunk bed was built into a wall of bookshelves while a table, hinged to the bulkhead, was smothered in unrolled charts that were weighted down with three lanterns and a pair of long-barreled pistols. The daylight streamed in through an opened porthole, above which the sea’s reflection rippled on the white painted ceiling. Cromwell unlocked a small cupboard to reveal a barometer and, beside it, what appeared to be a fat pocket watch hanging from a hook. “Three hundred and twenty-nine guineas,” Cromwell told Sharpe, tapping the timepiece.
“I’ve never owned a watch,” Sharpe said.
“It is not a watch, Mister Sharpe,” Cromwell said in disgust, “but a chronometer. A marvel of science. Between here and Britain I doubt it will lose more than two seconds. It is that machine, Mister Sharpe, that tells us where we are.” He blew a fleck of dust from the chronometer’s face, tapped the barometer, then carefully closed and locked the cupboard. “I keep my treasures safe, Mister Sharpe. You, on the other hand, flaunt yours.”
Sharpe said nothing, and the captain waved at the cabin’s only chair. “Sit down, Mister Sharpe. Do you wonder about my name?”
Sharpe sat uneasily. “Your name?” He shrugged. “It’s unusual, sir.”
“It is peculiar,” Peculiar Cromwell said, then gave a harsh laugh that betrayed no amusement. “My people, Mister Sharpe, were fervent Christians and they named me from the Bible. ‘The Lord has chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself,’ the book of Deuteronomy, chapter fourteen, verse two. It is not easy, Mister Sharpe, living with such a name. It invites ridicule. In its time that name has made me a laughing stock!” He said these last words with extraordinary force, as though resenting all the folk who had ever mocked him, but Sharpe, perched on the edge of the chair, could not imagine anyone mocking the harsh-voiced, heavy-faced Peculiar Cromwell.
Cromwell sat on his bunk bed, placed his elbows on the charts and fixed his eyes on Sharpe. “I was put aside for God, Mister Sharpe, and it makes for a lonely life. I was denied a proper education. Other men go to Oxford or Cambridge, they are immersed in knowledge, but I was sent to sea for my parents believed I would be beyond earthly temptation if I was far from any shore. But I taught myself, Mister Sharpe. I learned from books”—he waved at the shelves—”and discovered that I am well named. I am peculiar, Mister Sharpe, in my opinions, apprehensions and conclusions.” He shook his head sadly, rippling his long hair which rested on the shoulders of his heavy blue coat. “All around me I espy educated men, rational men, conventional men and, above all, sociable men, but I have discovered that no such creature ever did a great thing. It is among the lonely, Mister Sharpe, that true greatness occurs.” He scowled, as though that burden was almost too heavy to bear. “You too, I think, are a peculiar man,” Cromwell went on. “You have been plucked by destiny from your natural place among the dregs of society and have been translated into an officer. And that”—he leaned forward and jabbed a finger at Sharpe—”must make for loneliness.”