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

[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.]

[greenjacketed]

We...we spoke before the battle. [ an understatement. he'd breakfasted with the admiral. but it wouldn't do to say so. ] One of the more memorable conversations I've ever had. I grieved to hear the news, as I know many others did.

[captainhornblower]

I hope I shall be fortunate enough to meet him one day myself.

[Not that impossible of a hope, really, as Horatio would settle for something very simple, and with the war against France and Spain stretching at least some time still ahead, it's possible.]

[greenjacketed]

...For all I bloody well know, you were at that battle. Will be. However the language works to describe a thing such as this. There's time enough left, for you.

Though I confess, I often forget that it's not 1813, where you are.

[captainhornblower]

I find it's quite simple to forget, especially with those of us somewhat close in time to one another, who belongs to what year.

Should I be at that battle, Major, I will consider it an honour. A shame, though, that I shall not make your acquaintance there.

[greenjacketed]

...Quiet, now. You'd not want to meet me, there. Hell -- I'd not want to meet me there.

[ because there's nothing quite as baffling as an aging ensign with a chip on his shoulder. ]

[captainhornblower]

I've met worse men in worse situations, I assure you, Major.

[greenjacketed]

Of course you have. [ he laughs, finding himself a humourous exit from what was otherwise a pity-parade. ] You're in the bloody navy. It don't get much worse than that.

[captainhornblower]

Because the Army is entirely full of upstanding gentlemen and pleasant circumstances.

[But, despite the words, the tone borders on something lighter, a kind of humour himself.]

[greenjacketed]

Rogues and scoundrels. Rakes and wastrels. The lot of them.

[ said with a weird pride. they were scum of the earth but dammit they were his scum of the earth. ]