“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 why not lose my wits?”
“I’ll look after you,” Sharpe promised.
“Once we’re off this boat,” she said quietly, “I doubt we’ll ever meet again.”
“No,” Sharpe protested, “no.”
“Shh,” she whispered, and covered his mouth with hers.
By dawn she was gone. The view from the stern window was unchanged. No British warship was in pursuit, there was just the endless Indian Ocean stretching away to a hazed horizon. The wind was fresher so that the ship rolled and thumped, dislodging the chess pieces that Major Dalton had arrayed on the stern seat in a plan of the battle of Assaye. “You must tell me,” the major said, “what happened when Sir Arthur was unhorsed.”
“I think you must ask him, Major.”
“But you know as much as he, surely?”
“I do,” Sharpe agreed, “but I doubt he’s fond of telling the story, or of having it told. You might do better to say he fought off a group of the enemy and was rescued by his aides.”
“But is that true?”
“There’s truth in it,” Sharpe said and would say no more. Besides, he could not remember exactly what had happened. He remembered sliding off his horse and slashing the saber in hay-making cuts; he remembered Sir Arthur being dazed and standing in the shelter of a cannon’s wheel and he remembered killing, but what he remembered clearest of all was the Indian swordsman who had deserved to kill him, for the man had swung his tulwar in a scything stroke that had struck the nape of Sharpe’s neck. That stroke should have beheaded Sharpe, but he had been wearing his hair in the soldier’s queue, bound around a leather bag that would normally have been filled with sand, only instead Sharpe had concealed the great ruby from the Tippoo Sultan’s hat in the bag and the tulwar cold. The blow had released the ruby and Sharpe remembered how, when the vicious fight was over, Sir Arthur had picked up the stone and held it out to him with a puzzled expression. The general had been too confused to recognize what it was and probably thought it was nothing but a prettily colored pebble that Sharpe had collected. Goddamn Cromwell had the pretty pebble now.
“What was Sir Arthur’s horse called?” Dalton asked.
“Diomed,” Sharpe said. “He was very fond of that horse.” He could remember the gush of blood that spilled onto the dry ground when the pike was pulled from Diomed’s chest.
Dalton questioned Sharpe till late afternoon, making notes for his memoir. “I have to do something with my retirement, Sharpe. If ever I see Edinburgh again.”
“Are you not married, sir?”
“I was. A dear lady. She died.” The major shook his head, then stared wistfully through the stern window. “We had no children,” he said softly, then frowned as a sudden rush of feet sounded from the quarterdeck. A voice could be heard shouting, and a heartbeat later the Calliope yawed to larboard and the sails hammered like guns firing. One by one the sails were sheeted home and the ship, after momentarily wallowing in the swells, was sailing smooth again, only this time she was beating up into the wind on a course as near northerly as the small crew could hold. “Something’s excited the Frenchies,” the major said.