‘The honour and pleasure are entirely mine,’ the Baron von Dornberg answered in excellent English, then returned Braithwaite’s courtesy by removing his tricorne hat and making a low bow. Straightening, he looked at Sharpe and Sharpe found himself staring into a familiar face, though now that face was decorated with a big waxed moustache. He looked at the baron, and the baron looked astonished for a second, then recovered himself and winked at Sharpe.
Sharpe wanted to say something, but feared he would laugh aloud and so he simply offered the baron a stiff nod.
But von Dornberg would have none of Sharpe’s formality. He spread his powerful arms and gave Sharpe a bear-like embrace. ‘This is one of the bravest men in the British army,’ he told his woman, then whispered in Sharpe’s ear. ‘Not a word, I beg you, not a pippy squeak.’ He stepped back. ‘May I name the Baroness von Dornberg? This is Mister Richard Sharpe, Mathilde, a friend and an enemy from a long time ago. Don’t tell me you travel in steerage, Mister Sharpe?’
‘I do, my lord.’
‘I am shocked! The British do not know how to treat their heroes. But I do! You shall come and dine with us in the captain’s cuddy. I shall insist on it!’ He grinned at Sharpe, offered Mathilde his arm, inclined his head to Braithwaite and walked on.
‘I thought you said you didn’t know him!’ Braithwaite said, aggrieved.
‘I didn’t recognize him with his hat on,’ Sharpe said. He turned away, unable to resist a grin. The Baron von Dornberg was no baron, and Sharpe doubted he had traded for any diamonds, no matter how many he carried, for von Dornberg was a rogue. His true name was Anthony Pohlmann and he had once been a sergeant in the Hanoverian army before he deserted for the richer service of an Indian prince, and his talent for war had brought him ever swifter promotion until, for a time, he had led a Mahratta army that was feared throughout central India. Then, one hot day, his forces met a much smaller British army between two rivers at a village called Assaye, and there, in an afternoon of dusty heat and red-hot guns and bloody slaughter, Anthony Pohlmann’s army had been shredded by sepoys and Highlanders. Pohlmann himself had vanished into the mystery of India, but now he was here on the Calliope as a celebrated passenger.
‘How did you meet him?’ Braithwaite demanded.
‘Can’t remember now,’ Sharpe said vaguely. ‘Somewhere or other. Can’t really remember.’ He turned to stare at the shore. The land was black now, punctured by sparks of firelight and outlined by a grey sky smeared with a city’s smoke. He wished he was back there, but then he heard Pohlmann’s loud voice and turned to see the German introducing his woman to Lady Grace Hale.
Sharpe stared at her ladyship. She was above him, on the quarterdeck, seemingly oblivious of the folk crowded on the main deck below. She offered Pohlmann a limp hand, inclined her head to the fair-haired woman and then, without a word, turned regally away. ‘That is Lady Grace,’ Braithwaite told Sharpe in an awed voice.
‘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 travelling after practising in the Supreme Court in Bengal, the third was a grey-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?’
‘No,’ Major Dalton admitted.
‘A land of slaves,’ Cromwell said derisively.
Lord William Hale might have been expected to contribute to this conversation for, as one of the six members of the East India Company’s Board of Control, he must have been familiar with the thinking of the British government, but he was content to listen with a faintly amused smile, though he did raise an eyebrow at Cromwell’s assertion that the Russians were a nation of slaves.
‘The French, sir,’ Cromwell went on hotly, ‘face a rabble of enemies on their eastern frontiers, but none on their west. They can therefore concentrate their armies, sure in the knowledge that no British army will ever touch their shore.’
‘Never?’ the merchant, a solid man called Ebenezer Fairley, asked sarcastically.
Cromwell swung his heavy gaze on this new opponent. He contemplated Fairley for a while, then shook his head. ‘The British, Fairley, do not like armies. They keep a small army. A small