Inferno

Chapter 92

Svane Reden, Copenhagen

Renzi listened politely; the nurse was taking great risk in concealing them.

‘And then the gunboats returned in victory, after sinking nearly half the English fleet!’ Frue Rosen finished, not quite smothering a burst of pride.

‘Are you sure? Half?’ he teased.

‘That’s what they’re saying in the market, m’ lord.’

They were in the billiards room where lights could not be seen from the outside. By now they were used to moving about in the dimness of the deserted mansion.

Renzi gave a half-smile. It was past the point where he could logically deduce the truth. Since the news that Copenhagen had been completely surrounded he’d tried to reason out the course of events but nothing made sense. He’d accepted the landing as necessary if the Danes had not been impressed by the armada brought against them. But since then not only had they been cut off from all succour but he’d heard guns and sharp musketry exchanges, a full-scale war that could have only one ending. Why weren’t the Danish treating for some kind of honourable armistice?

‘I beg you’ll excuse our dining tonight, my lord,’ Frue Rosen said humbly. ‘There’s only this bacon with your cabbage, all I could get.’ Crestfallen, she held up a sorry-looking piece of meat.

‘Why, that’s wonderful!’ Hetty said, with forced enthusiasm. ‘Our thyme will go so nicely with it. I’ll fetch some for you when it’s dark.’ There was a herb garden on the roof that had gone far in making their increasingly bleak rations palatable, all that Frue Rosen could find in her daily expedition.

Days had turned into weeks. Rumours flew and Renzi realised that the situation was worsening. This was a siege and everyone knew what happened when a city fell.

He kept his fears from the ladies. It was conceivable that the Danish command could eventually see reason and come to an arrangement but all the time they dragged it out the tensions and frustrations would build until the British, with time not on their side, would be forced to resort to drastic measures.

Two days later reports came of a dreadful clash-at-arms near the Citadel when many university students had apparently gone gladly to their deaths at the hands of the English. In the same desperate engagement General Peymann, governor and gallant leader of resistance, had been wounded at the head of his troops and carried back.

The mood had changed.

Frue Rosen returned with tales of hunger and want: families scavenging and dogs killed for meat, bands of roaming vigilantes and militia turned out against looters. She came back with less and less, bread and fresh vegetables near unobtainable, meat at ruinous prices, milk an impossible luxury.

Surely the people had suffered enough in upholding the honour of the Danish nation and could now reluctantly capitulate. A depressing mood of hopelessness hung over the city but it was shot through with defiance. Several times a day columns of volunteers passed with a jaunty, stubborn air, armed only with poles tied with sickles or hay-forks.

Then the water failed. The steady gush from street-corner pumps and stand-pipes slackened and turned to a sad trickle, which despairing citizens queued to catch in any utensil to hand.

That siege-breaking move by the beleaguerers should have brought a final conclusion but it did not. A proclamation of defiance was issued by the Citadel that left no room for weakness.

Renzi knew then that the end game would be brutal, bloody and sudden. The Danes had resisted heroically to unreasonable lengths. The British could not abandon the contest so would be forced into the last sanction: a terrible storming by force of the city against the ramparts and fortifications, a savage slaughter that would end with soldiery flooding in to sack Copenhagen with vengeful barbarity.

Something of his mood communicated itself to the others. Cecilia clung to him with an unspoken devotion while Hetty retreated into herself. Frue Rosen wore a haunted, stricken look.