‘I don’t want to intrude, Major.’
‘No intrusion, no intrusion! You shall be my guest. I’ve also donated some wine and you can help drink it. Red coat, I fear, Sharpe. Dinner might be a mere cold collation, but Peculiar rightly insists there are no shirtsleeves on the quarterdeck.’
Sharpe had an hour before the dinner was to be served and he went below to brush the red coat and, to his astonishment, found Malachi Braithwaite seated on his travelling chest. The secretary was becoming ever more morose as the voyage continued and now looked up at Sharpe with resentful eyes.
‘Lost your own quarters, Braithwaite?’ Sharpe asked brusquely.
‘I wanted to see you, Sharpe.’ The secretary seemed nervous, unable to meet Sharpe’s eyes.
‘You could have found me on deck,’ Sharpe said and waited, but Braithwaite said nothing, just watched as Sharpe draped the red coat over the edge of the hanging cot and began to brush it vigorously. ‘Well?’ Sharpe asked.
Braithwaite still hesitated. His right hand was fiddling with a loose thread hanging from the sleeve of his faded black coat, but he finally summoned the courage to look at Sharpe, opened his mouth to speak, then lost his courage and closed it again. Sharpe scrubbed at a patch of dirt and finally the secretary found his voice. ‘You entertain a woman at nights,’ he blurted out accusingly.
Sharpe laughed. ‘What if I do? Didn’t they teach you about women at Oxford?’
‘A particular woman,’ Braithwaite said in a tone so filled with resentment that he sounded like a spitting serpent.
Sharpe put the brush on top of his barrel of arrack and turned on the secretary. ‘If you’ve got something to say, Braithwaite, then bloody say it.’
The secretary reddened. The fingers of his right hand were now drumming on the edge of the chest, but he forced himself to continue the confrontation. ‘I know what you’re doing, Sharpe.’
‘You don’t know a bloody thing, Braithwaite.’
‘And if I inform his lordship, as I should, then you can be assured that you will have no career in His Majesty’s army.’ It had taken almost all Braithwaite’s courage to voice the threat, but he was encouraged by a rancour that was eating him like a tapeworm. ‘You’ll have no career, Sharpe, none!’
Sharpe’s face betrayed no emotion as he stared at the secretary, but he was privately appalled that Braithwaite had discovered his secret. Lady Grace had been in this squalid cabin for two nights running, coming long after dark and leaving well before dawn, and Sharpe had thought no one had noticed. They had both believed they were being discreet, but Braithwaite had seen and now he was bitter with envy. Sharpe picked up the brush. ‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’
‘And I’ll ruin her too,’ Braithwaite hissed, then started violently back as Sharpe threw down the brush and turned on him. ‘And I know you deposited valuables with the captain!’ the secretary went on hurriedly, holding up both hands as if to ward off a blow.
Sharpe hesitated. ‘How do you know that?’
‘Everyone knows. It’s a ship, Sharpe. People talk.’
Sharpe looked into the secretary’s shifty eyes. ‘Go on,’ he said softly.
‘My silence can be purchased,’ Braithwaite said defiantly.
Sharpe nodded as though he were considering the bargain. ‘I’ll tell you how I’ll buy your silence, Braithwaite, a silence, by the way, about nothing because I don’t know what you’re talking about. I reckon Oxford addled your brain, but let’s suppose, just for a minute, that I think I know what you’re suggesting. Shall we agree to that?’
Braithwaite nodded cautiously.
‘And a ship is a very small place, Braithwaite,’ Sharpe said, seating himself beside the gangly secretary, ‘and you can’t escape me on board this ship. And that means that if you open your sordid mouth to tell anyone anything, if you say even one bloody word, then I’ll kill you.’
‘You don’t understand …’
‘I do understand,’ Sharpe interrupted, ‘so shut your mouth. In India, Braithwaite, there are men called jettis who kill by wringing their victims’ necks like chickens.’ Sharpe put his hands on Braithwaite’s head and began to twist it. ‘They twist it all the bloody way round, Braithwaite.’
‘No!’ the secretary gasped. He fumbled at Sharpe’s hands with his own, but he lacked the strength to free himself.
‘They twist it till their victim’s eyes are staring out over his arse and his neck gives way with a crack.’
‘No!’ Braithwaite could barely speak, for his neck was being twisted hard round.
‘It’s not really a crack,’ Sharpe went on in a conversational tone, ‘more a kind of grating creak, and I’ve often wondered if I could do it myself. It’s not that I’m afraid of killing, Braithwaite. I wouldn’t have you think that. I’ve killed men with guns, with swords, with knives and with my bare hands. I’ve killed more men, Braithwaite, than you can imagine in your worst nightmare, but I’ve never wrung a man’s neck till it creaked. But I’ll start with you. If you do anything to hurt me, or anything to hurt any lady I know, then I’ll twist your head like a cork in a bloody bottle, and it’ll hurt. My God, it’ll hurt.’ Sharpe gave the secretary’s neck a sudden jerk. ‘It’ll hurt more than you know, and I promise you that it will happen if you say so much as one single bloody word. You’ll be dead, Braithwaite, and I won’t give a rat’s droppings about doing it. It’ll be a real pleasure.’ He gave the secretary’s neck a last twist, then let go.
Braithwaite gasped for breath, massaging his throat. He gave Sharpe a scared glance, then tried to stand, but Sharpe hauled him back onto the chest. ‘You’re going to make me a promise, Braithwaite,’ Sharpe said.
‘Anything!’ All the fight had gone from the man now.
‘You’ll say nothing to anybody. And I’ll know if you do, I’ll know, and I’ll find you, Braithwaite. I’ll find you and I’ll wring your scrawny neck like a chicken.’
‘I won’t say a word!’
‘Because your accusations are false, aren’t they?’
‘Yes.’ Braithwaite nodded eagerly. ‘Yes, they are.’
‘You’re having dreams, Braithwaite.’
‘I am, I am.’
‘Then go. And remember I’m a killer, Braithwaite. When you were at Oxford learning to be a bloody fool I was learning how to kill folk. And I learned well.’
Braithwaite fled and Sharpe stayed seated. Damn, he thought, damn and damn and damn again. He reckoned he had frightened the secretary into silence, but Sharpe was still scared. For if Braithwaite had found out, who else might discover their secret? Not that it mattered for Sharpe, but it mattered mightily to Lady Grace. She had a reputation to lose. ‘You’re playing with fire, you bloody fool,’ he told himself, then retrieved his brush and finished cleaning his coat.
Pohlmann seemed surprised that Sharpe should be a guest at dinner, but he greeted him effusively and shouted at the steward to fetch another chair onto the quarterdeck. A trestle table had been placed forward of the Calliope’s big wheel, spread with white linen and set with silverware. ‘I was going to invite you myself,’ Pohlmann told Sharpe, ‘but in the excitement of seeing the Jonathon I quite forgot.’
There was no precedence at this table, for Captain Cromwell was not dining with his passengers, but Lord William made sure he took the table’s head, then cordially invited the baron to sit beside him. ‘As you know, my dear baron, I am compiling a report on the future policy of His Majesty’s government towards India and I would value your opinion on the remaining Mahratta states.’
‘I’m