There was no ceremony for that final corpse, but then no one who had died that day had received any ceremony. The corpse was brought to the quarterdeck and, in the deepening dusk, thrown into the sea. It seemed cold suddenly. The wind had a cutting edge and Sharpe shivered. Chase watched the body float away on the waves, then shook his head in puzzlement. “He must have decided to join the fight,” Chase said. “Can you credit it?”

“Every man was expected to do his duty, sir,” Sharpe said stolidly.

“So they were, and so they did, but no one expected him to fight or to fetch a bullet in the head. Poor fellow. He was braver than I ever thought. Does his wife know?”

“I shall tell her, sir.”

“Would you?” Chase asked. “Yes, of course you will. No one better, but I’m grateful to you, Richard, grateful.” He turned to watch the fleet, its stern lanterns already lit, struggling under half sail in the rising wind. Only the Victory was dark, with not a single light showing. “Oh, poor Nelson,” Chase lamented, “poor England.”

Sharpe, as soon as he was back aboard the Pucelle, had gone down to the cockpit which was as fetid and bloody as the one on the Revenant. Pickering had been sawing at a man’s thigh bone, sweat dripping from his face into the mangled flesh. The patient, a leather pad between his teeth, was twitching as the blunt saw grated on bone. Two seamen held him down, and neither they nor the surgeon had noticed Sharpe go through to the gunroom where he lifted the lady-hole hatch to see blood spattered on its underside. Lord William lay sprawled in the narrow space, his skull gaping bloodily where the pistol bullet had exited. Grace had been huddled with her arms about her knees, shaking, and she half screamed as the hatch was opened, then she shuddered with relief when she saw it was Sharpe. “Richard? It is you?” She was crying again. “They’re going to hang me, Richard. They’re going to hang me, but I had to shoot him. He was going to kill me. I had to shoot him.”

Sharpe had dropped down into the lady hole. “They ain’t going to hang you, my lady,” he said. “He died on deck. That’s what everyone will think. He died on deck.”

“I had to do it!” she wailed.

“The Frogs did it.” Sharpe took the pistol from her and shoved it into a pocket, then he put his hands under Lord William’s armpits and heaved him up, trying to push the corpse through the hatch, but the body was awkward in the narrow space.

“They’ll hang me,” Grace cried.

Sharpe let the corpse drop, then turned and crouched beside her. “No one will hang you. No one will know. If they find him down here, I’ll say I shot him, but with a little luck I can get him up on deck and everyone will think the Frogs did it.”

She put her arms around his neck. “You’re safe. Oh, God, you’re safe. What happened?”

“We won,” Sharpe said. “We won.” He kissed her, then held her tight for an instant before he went back to struggle with the corpse. If Lord William was found here, no one would believe he had been killed by the enemy and Chase would be honor bound to hold an inquiry into the death, so the body had to be taken up above the orlop deck, but the hatch was narrow and Sharpe could not get the corpse through, but then a hand reached down and took hold of Lord William’s bloody collar and heaved him effortlessly upward.

Sharpe had cursed under his breath. He cursed because someone else now knew that Lord William had been shot in the lady hole, and when he had clambered up into the dimly lit gunroom he found it was Clouter who, one-handed, was proving as able as most men with two hands. “I saw you come down here, sir,” Clouter said, “and was going to give you these.” He had held out Sharpe’s jewels, all of them, and Major Dalton’s watch, and Sharpe had taken them and then tried to return some of the emeralds and diamonds to Clouter.

“I did nothing,” the big man protested.

“You saved my life, Clouter,” Sharpe said and folded the big black fingers around the stones, “and now you’re going to save it again. Can you get that bastard up on deck?”

Clouter grinned. “Up where he died, sir?” he asked and Sharpe scarce dared believe that Clouter had so quickly understood the problem and its solution. He just stared at the tall black man who grinned again. “You should have shot the bastard weeks ago, sir, but the Frogs did it for you and there ain’t a man aboard who won’t say the same.” He stooped and hauled the corpse onto his shoulder as Sharpe helped Lady Grace up through the hatch. He told her to wait while he went with Clouter to the quarterdeck and there, in the gathering dusk and rising wind, Lord William had been heaved overboard.

No one had taken any notice of the body being carried through the ship, for what was one more corpse being brought up from the surgeon’s knife? “He was braver than I thought,” Chase had said.

Sharpe went back to the cockpit where Lady Grace stared white-faced and wide-eyed as Pickering tied off blood vessels, then sewed the flap of skin over the newly made stump. Sharpe took her arm and led her into one of the midshipmen’s tiny cabins at the rear of the cockpit. He closed the door, though that hardly gave them privacy for the doors were made of wooden slats through which anyone could have seen them, but no one had eyes for the cabin.

“I want you to know what happened,” Lady Gace said when she was alone with Sharpe in the midshipman’s cabin, but then she could say no more.

“I know what happened,” Sharpe said.

“He was going to kill me,” she said.

“Then you did the right thing,” Sharpe said, “but the rest of the world thinks he died a brave man’s death. They think he went on deck to fight, and he was shot. That’s what Chase thinks, it’s what everybody thinks. Do you understand?”

She nodded. She was shivering, but not with cold. Her husband’s blood flecked her hair.

“And you waited for him,” Sharpe said, “and he did not come back.”

She turned to look at the gunroom door that hid the lady-hole hatch. “But the blood,” she wailed, “the blood!”

“The ship is full of blood,” Sharpe said, “too much blood. Your husband died on deck. He died a hero.”

“Yes,” she said, “he did.” She gazed at him, her eyes huge in the dark, then held him fiercely. He could feel her body shaking. “I thought you must be dead,” she said.

“Not even a scratch,” Sharpe replied, stroking her hair.

She shuddered, then pulled her head back to look at him. “We’re free, Richard,” she said with a note of surprise. “Do you realize that? We’re free!”

“Yes, my lady, we’re free.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Whatever we want,” Sharpe said, “whatever we can.”

She held him and he held her and the ship leaned to the weather and the wounded moaned and the last scraps of smoke vanished in the night as the storm wind rose from the darkening west to batter ships already pounded past endurance. But Sharpe had his woman, he was free, and he was at last going home.