We'll rant and we'll roar like true British sailors...with a soldier

[simplestgift]

Who: Norrington (abidinglaw ), Hornblower (captainhornblower ), Sharpe (greenjacketed ), Bush (wouldntbetonit ), Kennedy (simplestgift ), and Wellard (bravelad ).
What: Officers' dinner.
When: The 23rd at four o'clock
Where: The captain's cabin of the Britannia
Summary: Archie's feeling like recapturing some of the magic officer dinners used to have when Aubrey and Maturin were here.
Rating: A is for Awkward, B is for Bonaparte, C is for Cinnamon, D is for.../shuts up

So Archie isn't Aubrey, but he's tried to make things warm and have lots of good food.  He's done pretty well, but his attempts to replace the captain of which he was so fond aren't perfect.  The beef is, perhaps, just a tad drier, the pudding a teensy bit too moist, and other such nitpicks, but hey.  One of you try it.

Comments

[simplestgift]

"...A little over one year. January last."

[greenjacketed]

"Not so new at all, then."

[simplestgift]

"There are other reasons for people to turn up in new feather trousers."

[greenjacketed]

"Now, that? That is something I didn't know. They certainly do not seem efficient for anything except, perhaps, a hot day in India."

[simplestgift]

"Is India as bad as the Indies?" Archie's never been.

[greenjacketed]

"Can't say nowt about the Indies but..." Sharpe tilted his head. "Quite liked India, for all its heat and monsoons and the bloody awful vultures."

[simplestgift]

"I quite liked the Indies, for all the heat and Spaniards and slave rebellions."

And mutinies, and getting shot.

[greenjacketed]

"...Quite like Spaniards too, if I'm honest. Some of them."

[simplestgift]

Archie goes quiet and rather prickly at that. "They are a rather charming lot, aren't they?" he mutters after a moment.

[greenjacketed]

"I'll tell you what...your average Spaniard cares a bloody hell more for our fight than your average man back home. Been back, recently. Britain's a right plump country what doesn't even remember there's a war on until there are victories to celebrate. Or ex-soldiers to ignore and cross to the other side of the road to avoid.

But the Spanish? Fighting for their villages and their houses and their ways of life? It's something."

He didn't know what, for certain. But he knew it was something. Their government and their politicians were just as bloody awful as his own but the people. Ah, Sharpe couldn't help but admire many of them.

[simplestgift]

"...The Spaniards join our side, do they?" His tone is slightly ironic.

[greenjacketed]

"Bloody well had to, didn't they? For we kicked Boney's arse straight over their country and to the Pyrenees. And before that, their partisans were devilishly handy."

[simplestgift]

"Seems to me they'll join whatever side seems to be winning."

[greenjacketed]

"Their leaders and their generals, aye. I won't argue with that. But there's men and women in Spain who've welcomed us through thin times."

[simplestgift]

And who'll give Horatio privilege after privilege, pretending to be his friend, just after cramming Archie into a tiny hole in the ground for a month. Then cram Horatio into that same hole, knowing he did nothing to earn it. Knowing he didn't deserve it.

Through thin times. One of the guards had come in every day to shave him for no reason, murmuring to him gently and coaxing him back down when he tried to fling himself against the razor that one time. Archie had picked up some of the soft words in the feeble grasp he'd had of the language before his intense studying with Horatio. He doesn't remember any of them now.

One kind Spaniard among many. It had been a Spaniard who had killed Archie, although he can hardly hold it against him. For all he really knows, he'd been hit by friendly fire.

"Everyone treats allies differently," is all he can say.

[greenjacketed]

"The woman I mentioned. The wise leader of her men? Commandante Teresa Moreno. She wanted nothing so fiercely as she wanted the French out of her country."

Saying her name was even still like dunking his whole body in ice water. Never mind the woman whose answer he waited for back in England. Never mind any pretty women he'd met here. Teresa would always make his heart skip a beat.

"But it's true. There were others...and now that Wellington's moved the supply base from Lisbon to Pasajes. We've liberated their country and their politicians care to gouge us on Customs fees for every barrel of powder we bring."

His last conversation with Nairn before heading home...

[simplestgift]

"...I know. It isn't as though the British don't have men as bad or worse." At least Don Massaredo was a gentleman torturer. He wasn't a madman like Sawyer or a sadist like Simpson.

[greenjacketed]

Hakeswill. Simmerson. From common rank and file to the quality. Some men were rotted to the core.

It was Sharpe's turn to murmur a statement of questionable loyalties: "And many of'em holding commissions, of course. What fine examples those gentlemen set."

[simplestgift]

As always, Eccleston comes to mind.

"Those can be the worst sort. The ones who see everything and do nothing."

[greenjacketed]

"And here's us, cut away from the lot of them. And the men. Bloody hell, how've you lasted a year?"

[simplestgift]

By remembering I have no future except here.

"By reading how it all ends. They have history books in the library, and anyone is someone else's history."

[greenjacketed]

"So I've heard and so a few have tried to tell me.

Does it truly help?"

[simplestgift]

"It...gives you an idea of how things will go. That things will right themselves one way or another, no matter what you do here."

[greenjacketed]

"It's a bit heady, that. Thinking of life with little long-term consequences."

[simplestgift]

"Don't. Some have been here since the beginning, and we may yet be here till the end of our lives. Those who arrive after us, as well. Such consequences are long-term enough."