“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 groan-ings 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 papers. ‘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 toward 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 tricolor, 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 center 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, traveling 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 gun-decks. The Pucelle was dishing out slaughter and the smoke billowed from her sides, starting at the bows and working down to her stern.