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]

...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. ]

[captainhornblower]

Sometimes those are the best to have by your side when things go wrong.

[Styles, for instance, comes to his mind.]

[greenjacketed]

Thugs, aye. General Baird called'em thugs.

[captainhornblower]

Damned useful in the right hands. And loyal to the right officer. Most of the time.

[greenjacketed]

Dunno how you lads manage it on the ships, but in the army? It often comes down to the sergeants you choose.

[captainhornblower]

It starts with the captain. His influence controls the rest of the ship, for good or ill.

[greenjacketed]

Good or ill. Aye. But is control ever a certainty? I've seen 'talions where the men look more ofteen to their sergeants than to their officers.

[ hence his earlier comment. ]

[captainhornblower]

If the captain and his officers-- his lieutenants especially but also the midshipman-- can at least pretend to agree on all points regarding discipline and apply it as evenly as possible, control rarely falters.

Now, when you have a break in the chain of command. Whether you separate them or there is discord between them...

Then all hell can break loose.

[greenjacketed]

You needn't explain to me as though I were a bloody simpleton, Captain. We're making conversation, not giving lessons.

[ for sharpe had been probing for specifics on the naval way, and instead he'd gotten vaguel platitudes about leadership. this leads to an unfortunate misunderstanding: sharpe assumes hornblower is talking this way because he is, in the end, a jumped-up ranker. not a propr officer. ] I have been out of the ranks for a decade. It ain't like I'm green to command.