Free Sharpe 3-Book Collection 3: Sharpe's Trafalgar, Sharpe's Prey, Sharpe's Rifles by Bernard Cornwell

deck, putting misery into a mother’s heart. Her son put his foot down and there was nothing beneath him but void. Do you want your mother to have a broken heart, Mister Sharpe?’
    Sharpe decided this was no time to explain that he had long been orphaned. ‘No, sir.’
    Cromwell glared around the main deck which was crowded with the men who formed the gun crews. ‘What is it that you notice about these men, Mister Sharpe?’
    ‘Notice, sir?’
    ‘They are in shirtsleeves, Mister Sharpe. All except you and me are in shirtsleeves. I keep my coat on, Sharpe, because I am captain of this ship and it is meet and right that a captain should appear formally dressed before his crew. But why, I ask myself, does Mister Sharpe keep on his wool jacket on a hot day? Do you believe you are captain of this scow?’
    ‘I just feel the cold, sir,’ Sharpe lied.
    ‘Cold?’ Cromwell sneered. He put his right foot on a crack between the deck planks and, when he lifted the shoe, a string of melting tar adhered to his sole. ‘You are not cold, Mister Sharpe, you are sweating. Sweating! So come with me, Mister Sharpe.’ The captain turned and led Sharpe up to the quarterdeck. The passengers watching the gunnery made way for the two men and Sharpe was suddenly conscious of Lady Grace’s perfume, then he followed Cromwell down the companionway into the great cabin where the captain had his quarters. Cromwell unlocked his door, pushed it open and gestured that Sharpe should go inside. ‘My home,’ the captain grunted.
    Sharpe had expected that the captain would have one of the stern cabins with their big wide windows, but it was more profitable to sell such accommodation to passengers and Cromwell was content with a smaller cabin on the larboard side. It was still a comfortable home. A bunk bed was built into a wall of bookshelves while a table, hinged to the bulkhead, was smothered in unrolled charts that were weighted down with three lanterns and a pair of long-barrelled pistols. The daylight streamed in through an opened porthole, above which the sea’s reflection rippled on the white painted ceiling. Cromwell unlocked a small cupboard to reveal a barometer and, beside it, what appeared to be a fat pocket watch hanging from a hook. ‘Three hundred and twenty-nine guineas,’ Cromwell told Sharpe, tapping the timepiece.
    ‘I’ve never owned a watch,’ Sharpe said.
    ‘It is not a watch, Mister Sharpe,’ Cromwell said in disgust, ‘but a chronometer. A marvel of science. Between here and Britain I doubt it will lose more than two seconds. It is that machine, Mister Sharpe, that tells us where we are.’ He blew a fleck of dust from the chronometer’s face, tapped the barometer, then carefully closed and locked the cupboard. ‘I keep my treasures safe, Mister Sharpe. You, on the other hand, flaunt yours.’
    Sharpe said nothing, and the captain waved at the cabin’s only chair. ‘Sit down, Mister Sharpe. Do you wonder about my name?’
    Sharpe sat uneasily. ‘Your name?’ He shrugged. ‘It’s unusual, sir.’
    ‘It is peculiar,’ Peculiar Cromwell said, then gave a harsh laugh that betrayed no amusement. ‘My people, Mister Sharpe, were fervent Christians and they named me from the Bible. “The Lord has chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself,” the book of Deuteronomy, chapter fourteen, verse two. It is not easy, Mister Sharpe, living with such a name. It invites ridicule. In its time that name has made me a laughing stock!’ He said these last words with extraordinary force, as though resenting all the folk who had ever mocked him, but Sharpe, perched on the edge of the chair, could not imagine anyone mocking the harsh-voiced, heavy-faced Peculiar Cromwell.
    Cromwell sat on his bunk bed, placed his elbows on the charts and fixed his eyes on Sharpe. ‘I was put aside for God, Mister Sharpe, and it makes for a lonely life. I was denied a proper education. Other men go to Oxford or Cambridge, they are