A thin saber-curve of moon glistened on the sea and offered just enough light for Sharpe to see Lady Grace, swathed in a dark cloak, standing beside the stern lantern. She was alone, with no maid to chaper-one her, and Sharpe joined her, standing a pace to her left with his hands, like hers, on the rail and he stared, like her, at the smooth, moon-silvered wake that slipped endlessly into the dark. The great mizzen driver sail loomed pale above them.
Neither spoke. She glanced at him when he joined her, but did not walk away. She just stared at the ocean.
“Pohlmann,” Sharpe said very quietly, for two panes of the cuddy’s skylight were open and he did not want to be overheard if anyone was below, “claims he does not know Captain Cromwell.”
“Pohlmann?” Lady Grace asked, frowning at Sharpe.
“The Baron von Dornberg is no baron, my lady.” Sharpe was breaking his word to Pohlmann, but he did not care, not when he was standing close enough to smell Lady Grace’s perfume. “His name is Anthony Pohlmann and he was once a sergeant in a Hanoverian regiment that was hired by the East India Company, but he deserted. He became a freelance soldier instead, and a very good one. He was the commander of the enemy army at Assaye.”
“Their commander?” She sounded surprised.
“Yes, ma’am. He was the enemy general.”
She stared at the sea again. “Why have you protected him?”
“I like him,” Sharpe said. “I’ve always liked him. He once tried to make me an officer in the Mahratta army and I confess I was tempted. He said he’d make me rich.”
She smiled at that. “You want to be rich, Mister Sharpe?”
“It’s better than being poor, milady.”
“Yes,” she said, “it is. So why are you telling me about Pohlmann now?”
“Because he lied to me, ma’am.”
“Lied to you?”
“He told me he didn’t know the captain, and you told me that he does.”
She turned to him again. “Perhaps I lied to you?”
“Did you?”
“No.” She glanced at the cuddy’s skylight, then walked to the far corner of the deck where a small signal cannon was lashed to the gunwale. She stood in the corner between the cannon and the taffrail and Sharpe, after a moment’s hesitation, joined her there. “I don’t like it,” she said quietly.
“Don’t like what, ma’am?”
“That we’re sailing to the east of Madagascar. Why?”
Sharpe shrugged. “Pohlmann tells me we’re trying to race ahead of the convoy. Get to London first and bring the cargo to market.”
“No one sails outside Madagascar,” she said, “no one! We’re losing the Agulhas Current, which means we’ll make slower time. And by coming this way we go much closer to the Ile-de-France.”
“Mauritius?” Sharpe asked.
She nodded. Mauritius, or the Ile-de-France, was the enemy base in the Indian Ocean, an island fortress for raiders and warships with a main harbor protected by treacherous coral reefs and stone forts. “I told William all this,” she said bitterly, “but he laughed at me. What would I know? Cromwell knows his business, he says, and I should just leave well alone.” She fell silent and Sharpe was suddenly and awkwardly aware that she was crying. The realization astonished him, for one moment she had been as aloof as ever, and now she was weeping. She stood with her hands on the rail as the tears ran silently down her cheeks. “I hated India,” she said after a while.
“Why, milady?”
“Everything dies in India,” she said bitterly. “Both my dogs died, and then my son died.”
“Oh, God, I’m sorry.”
She ignored his sympathy. “And I almost died. Fever, of course.” She sniffed. “And there were times when I wished I would die.”
“How old was your son?”
“Three months,” she said softly. “He was our first and he was so small and perfect, with little fingers and he was just beginning to smile. Just beginning to smile and then he rotted away. Everything rots in India. It turns black and it rots!” She began to cry harder, her shoulders heaving with sobs and Sharpe simply turned her and drew her toward him and she went to him and wept onto his shoulder.