‘But I was pleased to discover,’ Lord William went on, ‘in the few moments I have been able to devote to Homer, that my Greek is as fresh as ever. There were a few words that escaped me, but young Braithwaite recalled them. He was not much use, Braithwaite, but his Greek was excellent.’
‘He was an odious man,’ Lady Grace said.
‘I did not realize you had remarked him,’ Lord William said, then shifted the book so that the lantern light fell on the page. He traced the lines with his finger, mouthing the words silently.
Lady Grace listened to the guns, then started when the first shot struck the Pucelle and made all the ship’s timbers quiver. Lord William merely raised an eyebrow, then went on with his reading. More shots struck home, their sound dulled by the decks above. Opposite Lady Grace, where the hull’s inner planking was joined to a rib, water wept through a seam and every time a swell passed under the hull the water would bulge in the seam, then run down to vanish into the hold beyond the dunnage shelves. She restrained an urge to press a finger against the seam which was stuffed with a narrow strip of frayed oakum, and she remembered Sharpe telling her how, as a small child in the foundling home, he had been forced to pick apart great mats of tarred rope that had been used as fenders on London’s docks. His job had been to extract the hemp strands which were then sold to the shipyards to be used as caulking for planks. His fingernails were still ragged and black, though that, he said, was the result of firing a flintlock musket. She thought of his hands, closed her eyes and wondered at the madness that had swamped her. She was still in its thrall. The ship shook again, and she had a sudden terror of being trapped in this cramped space as the Pucelle sank.
‘I am reading about Penelope,’ Lord William said, ignoring the frequent crashes as the enemy shot hacked into the Pucelle. ‘She is a remarkable woman, is she not?’
‘I have always thought as much,’ Lady Grace said, opening her eyes.
‘The quintessence, would you not say, of fidelity?’ Lord William asked.
Grace looked into her husband’s face. He was sitting to her left, perched on the opposite side of the narrow space. He seemed amused. ‘Her fidelity is always praised,’ she said.
‘Have you ever wondered, my dear, why I took you to India?’ Lord William asked, closing the book after carefully marking his place with what appeared to be a folded letter.
‘I hoped it was because I could be of use to you,’ she answered.
‘And so you were,’ Lord William said. ‘Our necessary visitors were entertained most properly and I have not one single complaint about the manner in which you organized our household.’
Grace said nothing. The rudder, so close behind them, creaked in its pintles. The enemy gunfire was a constant succession of dull thumps, sometimes rising to a thunderous crescendo, then lulling again into the steadier banging.
‘But of course,’ Lord William went on, ‘a good servant can run a household quite as well as a wife, if not better. No, my dear, I confess it was not for that reason that I wished you to accompany me, but rather, forgive me, because I feared you would find it hard to imitate Penelope if I were to leave you at home for such a long period.’
Grace, who had been watching the water well and spill from the seam, looked at her husband. ‘You are offensive,’ she said coldly.
Lord William ignored her words. ‘Penelope, after all,’ he went on, ‘stayed faithful to her husband through all the long years of his exile, but would a modern woman show the same forbearance?’ Lord William pretended to mull over this question. ‘What do you think, my dear?’
‘I think,’ she said acidly, ‘that I would need to be married to Odysseus to answer such a question.’
Lord William laughed. ‘Would you like that, my dear? Would you like to be married to a warrior? Though is Odysseus such a great warrior? It always seems to me that he is a trickster before he is a soldier.’
‘He is a hero,’ Grace insisted.
‘As, I am sure, all husbands are to their wives,’ Lord William said placidly, then looked up at the deck beams as a double blow shook the ship. A wave heaved up the stern, making him reach out a hand to steady himself. Feet scraped on the deck above, where the ship’s first wounded were going under the surgeon’s knife. Then a particularly loud crash, sounding very close by, made Lady Grace cry aloud. There was the ominous sound of gushing water that stopped abruptly as the carpenter, finding the hole in the ship’s water line, hammered a shaped plug into the shot hole. Lady Grace wondered how far beneath the water line they were. Five feet? Captain Chase had been certain that no shot could penetrate the lady hole, explaining that the sea water slowed the cannon balls instantly, but the terrible sounds suggested that every part of the Pucelle could be wounded. The ship’s pumps clattered, though once the Pucelle opened fire the men would be too busy at the guns to bother with the pumps. The ship was full of noises: the creaking of the mast roots in the hold, the gurgle of water, the sucking gulps of the pump, the groanings of strained timbers, the shriek of the rudder on its metal hangings, the banging of the enemy guns and the tearing crashes of the shots striking home. Lady Grace, assaulted by the cacophony, had one hand at her mouth and the other clasped to her belly where she carried Sharpe’s child.
‘We are entirely safe here,’ Lord William calmed his wife. ‘Captain Chase assures me that no one dies beneath the water line. Though when I come to think of it, my dear, poor Braithwaite did just that.’ Lord William put his hands together in mock piety. ‘He was killed beneath the water line,’ he intoned.
‘He fell,’ Lady Grace said.
‘Did he?’ Lord William asked, his tone suggesting how much he was enjoying this discussion. A thunderous blow shook the ship, then something scraped quick and hard against the hull. Lord William settled himself more comfortably. ‘I must confess I have wondered whether he did indeed fall.’
‘How else could he have died?’ Grace asked.
‘And what a cogent question that is, my dear.’ Lord William pretended to think about it for a while. ‘Of course, a quite different construction could be placed on the unfortunate man’s death if we were to discover that he was particularly disliked by anyone aboard. Like you? You told me he was odious.’
‘He was,’ Lady Grace said bitterly.
‘But I do not think you could have killed him,’ Lord William said with a smile. ‘Perhaps he had other enemies? Enemies who could make his death appear an accident? Odysseus, in the unlikely event that he could ever have encountered young Braithwaite, would surely have had no trouble disguising such a murder?’
‘He fell,’ Lady Grace insisted tiredly.
‘And yet, and yet,’ Lord William said, frowning in thought. ‘I confess I did not much like Braithwaite. His pathetic ambition was too naked for my tastes. He lacked subtlety and could not disguise his ridiculous envy of privilege. Once in England I should have been forced to relinquish his services, but he must have had a higher opinion of me than I of him, for he chose to confide in me.’
Lady Grace watched her husband. The swaying lanterns made the shadows either side of his body shift ominously. A cannon ball thumped into the lower deck above them and the ship’s ribs carried the harsh sound down into the lady hole, but for once Lady Grace did not flinch at the noise. She was scratching at a shred of oakum with her right hand, trying to imagine how it felt to a small child in a cold foundling home.
‘Perhaps he did not exactly confide in me,’ Lord William said pedantically, ‘for, naturally, I did not encourage intimacy, yet he did have a premonition of his death. Do you think, perhaps, he was possessed of some prophetic powers?’
‘I know nothing of him,’ Grace said distantly.
‘I almost feel sorry for him,’ Lord William said, ‘for he lived in fear.’
‘A sea voyage can engender nervousness,’ Lady Grace said.
‘So much fear,’ Lord William went on, blithely ignoring his wife’s words, ‘that before he died he left a sealed letter among my p
apers. “To be opened,” the letter said, “in the event of my death.” ’ He sneered. ‘Such a very dramatic ascription, wouldn’t you say? So dramatic that I hesitated to obey it, for I expected it to contain nothing more than his pathetic resentments and self-justifications. Indeed, I was so aghast at the thought of hearing from Braithwaite beyond the grave that I very nearly threw the letter overboard, but a Christian sense of duty made me pay him attention, and I confess he did not write uninterestingly.’ Lord William smiled at his wife, then delicately took the folded paper from between the pages of his Odyssey. ‘Here, my dear, is young Braithwaite’s legacy to our connubial happiness. Please read it, for I have been so looking forward to your construal of its contents.’ He held the letter towards her and though Lady Grace hesitated, her heart sinking, she knew she must obey. It was either that or listen as her husband read the letter aloud and so, without a word, she took the paper.
Her husband closed his hand about the hilt of his pistol.
The Pucelle’s bowsprit tore the jib boom from the Spanish ship.
And Lady Grace read her doom.
The stern of the French ship was so close that Sharpe felt he could have reached out and touched it. Her name was written in golden letters placed on a black band between two sets of the stern’s lavishly gilded windows. Neptune. The British had a Neptune in the fight, a three-decked ship with ninety-eight guns, while this Neptune was a two-decker, though Sharpe had the impression she was bigger than the Pucelle. Her stern was a foot or more higher than the Pucelle’s forecastle and it was lined with French marines armed with muskets. Their bullets banged on the deck or buried themselves in the hammock nettings. Just beneath the enemy’s gun smoke a shield was carved into the taffrail. The shield was surmounted by an eagle and on either side of the crest were sheaves of wooden flags, all of them, like the shield itself, painted with the French tricolour, but the paint had weathered and Sharpe could see faded gold traces of the old royalist fleur-de-lys beneath the red, white and blue. He fired his musket, obliterating the view with smoke, then Clouter, who had deliberately waited until his carronade could fire directly down the centre line of the French Neptune, pulled the lanyard.
It was the first of the Pucelle’s guns to fire, and it shrieked back on its carriage in a cloud of black smoke. The French marines vanished, shredded to a bloody mist by the cask of musket balls that had been loaded on top of the massive round shot that shattered the painted shield and then struck the Neptune’s mizzenmast with a crack that was drowned by the first guns firing from the Pucelle’s lower decks.
These guns were double-shotted and each had a bundle of grape rammed on top of the twin cannon balls, and they were being fired straight into the Frenchman’s stern windows. The glass panes and their frames disappeared as the heavy missiles whipped down the lengths of the Neptune’s two gundecks. Cannon barrels were hurled from their carriages, men were eviscerated, and still the shots came, gun after gun, as the Pucelle slowly, so slowly, travelling at an old man’s walking pace, inched past the stern to bring the successive larboard gunports to bear. The guns on the starboard side were firing into the Spaniard’s bow, breaking the heavy timber apart to send their murderous shots down her gundecks. The Pucelle was dishing out slaughter and the smoke billowed from her sides, starting at the bows and working down to her stern.
The Neptune’s mizzenmast went overboard. Sharpe heard the screams of the marksmen in her rigging, watched them fall, then rammed a new ball down his musket. The starboard carronade, loaded like Clouter’s with musket balls and a vast round shot, had swept the Spaniard’s forecastle clean of men. Blood dripped from the forecastle scuppers while the figurehead of the monk with a cross had been turned into matchwood. A big crucifix was fastened to the Spanish ship’s mizzenmast, but when Chase’s stern carronades blasted down the smaller ship’s length the hanging Christ’s left arm was torn away and then his legs were broken.
The Pucelle had ripped away a part of the Frenchman’s ensign, while the rest was in the water with the fallen mizzenmast. Chase wanted to turn his ship to larboard and lay her alongside the Neptune and batter her hull into bloody ruin, but the smaller Spanish ship rammed the Pucelle and inadvertently turned her to starboard. There was a tearing, grating, grinding sound as the two hulls juddered together, then the Spanish captain, fearing he would be boarded, backed his topsails and the smaller ship fell away astern. Her starboard gunports had been closed, but now a few opened as the surviving gunners crossed from larboard. The guns fired into the Pucelle. Captain Llewellyn’s marines were firing up into the Spanish rigging. Smoke obscured the smaller ship. Chase thought about putting his helm hard down and closing on her, but he was already past and so he shouted at the quartermaster to turn the ship north towards the cauldron of fire and smoke that surrounded the Victory. The flagship’s hull could not be seen amidst that stinking fog, but, judging from the masts, Chase reckoned there was a Frenchman on either side of her. ‘Pull in the studdingsails,’ he ordered. The sails, which projected either side of the ship, were only useful in a following wind and now the Pucelle would turn to place the small wind on her larboard flank. The sail-handlers streamed out along the yards. One, struck by a musket ball, collapsed over the mainyard, then fell to leave a long trail of blood down the mainsail.
The French Neptune was slowed by her trailing mizzenmast. Her crew slashed at the fallen rigging with axes, trying to lose the broken mast overboard. The Pucelle was off her quarter now and Chase’s larboard gunners had reloaded and poured shot after shot into the Frenchman, firing through the lingering smoke of their first broadside. The noise of the guns filled the sky, made the sea quiver, shook the ship. Clouter had reloaded the larboard carronade, a slow job, but there was no target close and he would not waste the giant shot on the Neptune which had at last released the wreckage of its mast and was drawing away. He rammed another cask of musket balls into the short barrel, then waited for another target to come within the short gun’s range.
But the Pucelle was suddenly in a patch of open sea with no enemy near. She had pierced the line, but the Neptune had gone north while the Spaniard had disappeared in smoke astern and there were no ships in front except for an enemy frigate that was a quarter-mile off and ships of the line did not stoop to fight frigates when there were battleships to engage. A long line of French and Spanish battleships was coming from the south, but none was in close range and so Chase continued towards the churning smoke, lit by gun-flashes, that marked where Nelson’s beleaguered flagship lay. There was honour to be gained in defeating a flagship and the Victory, like the Royal Sovereign, was drawing enemy ships like flies. Four other British ships were in action close to the Victory, but the enemy had seven or eight, and no more help would arrive for a time because the Britannia was such a slow sailor. The French Neptune looked to be going to join that mêlée, and so Chase followed. The sail-handlers, short numbered because so many were manning the guns, sheeted home the sails as the Pucelle swung round. The sea was littered with floating wreckage. Two bodies drifted past. A seagull perched on one, sometimes pecking at the man’s face which had been torn open by gunfire and washed white by the sea.
The Pucelle’s wounded were carried below and the dead jettisoned. The cannon barrel that had been thrown off its carriage was lashed tight so that it would not shift with the ship’s rolling and crush a man. Lieutenants redistributed gunners among the crews, making up the numbers where too many had died or been injured. Chase stared aft at the Spanish ship. ‘I should have laid alongside her,’ he told Haskell ruefully.
‘There’ll be others, sir.’
‘By God I want a prize today!’ Chase said.
‘Plenty to go round, sir.’
The nearest enemy ship now was a two-decker that was laid alongside the bigger Victory. Chase could see the smoke of the Victory’s guns spewing out from the narrow space between the two ships and he imagined the horror in the Frenchman’s lower decks as the three tiers of British guns mangled men an
d timber, but he also saw that the French upper decks were crowded. The French captain appeared to have abandoned his gundecks altogether and assembled his whole crew on the forecastle, open weather deck and quarterdeck where they were armed with muskets, pikes, axes and cutlasses. ‘They want to board Victory!’ Chase exclaimed, pointing.
‘By God, sir, so they do.’
Chase could not see the French ship’s name, for the powder smoke curled round her stern, but her captain was plainly a bold man, for he was willing to lose his own ship if, thereby, he could capture Nelson’s flagship. His seamen had grappled the bigger Victory and dragged her close, his gunners had closed their ports and seized their cutlasses and now the French sought a way across to Nelson’s deck. The Victory was higher than the Frenchman, and the two ships’ tumblehomes meant that even when their hulls were touching, the rails were still thirty or more feet apart. The Victory’s guns were pounding the Frenchman’s hull, while the French ship had scores of men in the rigging, and those men were pouring a lethal musket fire down onto the flagship’s exposed decks. They had almost cleared those decks, so that now the British fought from their lower decks while the French sought a way to cross to the flagship’s virtually unguarded upper decks. The French captain planned to pour hundreds of men onto the Victory. He would make his name, be an admiral by nightfall and carry Nelson as a prisoner back to Cadiz.
Chase had climbed a few feet up the mizzen shrouds to see what was happening, and what he saw appalled him. He could not see the admiral, or Captain Hardy. A few red-coated marines crouched under the cover of the carronades and put up a feeble fire to counter the lashing musketry that still ripped down from the French masts, while on the Victory’s farther side another enemy ship fired into her hull.
Chase dropped down the rigging. ‘Starboard a point,’ he said to the helmsman, then took a speaking trumpet from the shattered rail. ‘Clouter! Have you got musket balls loaded?’
‘Full of them, sir!’