SHARPE'S TEA ⚔ WRITTEN | VOICE | ACTION

[greenjacketed]

[ he's snug in a corner of the tea shop, with both a brew and a book in hand. the tea is strong; it's uncreamed and unsweetened, and yet it still somehow lacks the bite he's grown accustomed to through flanders, portugal, and spain. instead, this mug is as lightly spiced as the mugs he'd nursed on lonely nights in india. he'd been so much younger, then. and so much more foolish.

another sip and then it's time to get to it. in practice, his message has an intended audince of very few. but fear of his own sentimentality demands that he not approach anyone directly. and so he writes publicly, his script slanty and rough. unpracticed. it takes him a long time to carve out even a brief sentence: ]

Won't be around for a few days --- heading out, took the bloody shilling, got orders to march, &ct.
-- MJR R. SHARPE

[ he loops his pencil 'round the ampersand a few more times, chagrined by its childish slopes. he's no writer. not by any man's account. he's a soldier, he thinks. he knows when to kill and when not to kill, although that line was painfully blurred on the just-passed draft. he should know how to follow orders and protect the colours. but what on earth is a soldiering man to do with orders he didn't understand and no colours to speak of? it gives him a notion. a question, at least.

switching to voice: ] I suppose the village does not have a flag of its own, eh? Don't seeem proper. Perhaps it would've done no good in that last [ shit-hole/dungheap/disaster ] battle. But in future...?

[ he hesitates. he waits. and he lives his day as anxiously as any other day spent waiting to be deployed. a mission, this time? aye. perhaps it'll sooth his nerves and erase from his mind the bloody great cock-up of vaskoth. finally -- if the journal or the tea-shop won't do, feel free to encounter him elsewhere. he's bound to be in good spirits come the evening -- but he bloody well won't drink a drop. not the night before. ]

Comments

voice:

[captainhornblower]

Especially for missions and drafts. [Horatio has to agree. Keep it simple. Give them one, unique flag.

Britannia can fly them both, but only because she's his ship. His bit of home. For going into battle, they only need the one. Something specific to the enclosure, not to any one world its inhabitants might be from.]

[greenjacketed]

Drafts? Certainly. Though some missions aren't so...above board, Captain. If you make my meaning.

[captainhornblower]

The ones that are, Major. [He understands flying false colours or none at all. Has done the first one particular time and violated... several rules of war with it.

But one does what must be done.]

[greenjacketed]

I admit, it would feel rather decent to have one with those of us leaving on the morrow. But we'll make do.

[captainhornblower]

We'll see to having one before the next draft, Major.

[greenjacketed]

[ ah. agreement. that's good and all, but it means they're not doomed for...small talk. ]

I assume your vessel is farin' well...?

[captainhornblower]

She is. Probably won't be able to talk a crew into going out until the weather warms, I'm afraid.

[He doesn't find much issue himself with taking a ship to sea in winter, but most of the lot here aren't sailors.]

[greenjacketed]

I won't blame'em. I've been on ship in cold weather. It takes a rare sort to enjoy it.

[captainhornblower]

It'd be good for them to learn the conditions, all the same. Perhaps next year, though.

[greenjacketed]

...In the early Spring, Captain. When things are on the gentler side of of the season rather than whipping up, as it is now.

[ a beat. ] Not that I'd presume to tell you your craft, of course.

[captainhornblower]

Quite right, Major. Especially for the first winter venture.

[Once they were better taught, he'd see them out in the middle of winter to brave the waters then.]

March or April ought to answer, I think.

[greenjacketed]

I would not be against coming aboard for spell once your crew has been drilled. If you'll have me. Not to sign on but to see -- to see anything that isn't these same hills.

[captainhornblower]

You'd be more than welcome, Major. Might put you to work a bit, manning the helm or loosing or tying off lines. Nothing that requires too much of a sailor's knowledge, but we're wanting for crew. Usually need everyone who's on board to help out somewhere.

[greenjacketed]

I may be no sailor, but I've worked on a navy ship. Before. Once. I'll shift my weight.

[captainhornblower]

Then you'd be more than welcome aboard once the weather's fit for sailing again.

[greenjacketed]

[ but this, of course, leads him to the rather awkward question... ]

I suppose it's hoping too much to ask if you know of the Pucelle, under Captain Joel Chase? Back home? [ only that chase himself had seemed to know the names and captains of every other damn vessel they'd come across, and he half-strains for some kind of connection to home. anything. ]

[captainhornblower]

Pucelle.

I've heard of her by name, but I can't say I've served with her or met her captain.

[greenjacketed]

...She was at Trafalgar, and I was fortunate enough to be with her. Or unfortunate, as the case may be. A naval battle is no place for a Light Company officer.

[captainhornblower]

Trafalgar, Major?

[greenjacketed]

Trafalgar. There was a battle. Against the combined French and Spanish fleets, Captain. I--

[ a pregnant pause. oh, shite. how many people had done this to him? and he'd completely neglected to compare the dates. he isn't a numbers man; he doesn't do math.

but now he recalls something archie kennedy wonce told him. ]

It hasn't happened yet. Christ, my apologies...

[captainhornblower]

The combined French and Spanish. [His voice is soft, appreciative. It doesn't bother him, not too much. Archie, he knows, has read about the future of the war.

It ends, at least, with the fall of Napoleon. Horatio has allowed himself to know that much. The rest... He has shied away from out of a fear to know the fates of himself and, perhaps, others who had served with them.]

It's quite all right, Major, I assure you. These things will happen, especially in so strange a place as this.

[He can't help but offer it:] A British victory, I hope.

[greenjacketed]

[ and now -- come his own time -- spain is their ally. however reluctantly at times. how quickly things change. ]

Nelson prevailed -- militarily if not mortally. And we didn't lose a single bloody ship.

[captainhornblower]

A fine feat.

[Militarily if not mortally.

It takes a moment for him to manage to say something a little more, his voice quiet and a concious blanketing of most emotion.]

At quite a cost, it seems.

[greenjacketed]

[ the silence surprises him. and then...

oh shite. ]

Did you -- that is to say, do you know the Admiral? In your own time?

[ he may be misinterpreting that quietude. he hopes he is. ]

[captainhornblower]

Not personally, no, but I knew men who had served under him, and, for a Navy man, there are few considered finer than him.

[It's easy to forget, even for him, that such men are, in the end, mere mortals themselves.]