Sharpe's Prey

CHAPTER 11

Sharpe spent much of the day in a cramped storeroom above the arch of the orphanage gateway. He told Hopper and Clouter he was watching for Lavisser, but he did not really expect to see the renegade. He was thinking instead. Thinking about leaving Britain, thinking about Grace and about Astrid. Thinking about the army and about Wapping, and while he brooded, Hopper and Clouter took turns standing guard near Ole Skovgaard’s bed, which had been placed under the inside stairs because the orphanage was so crowded with folk made homeless by the bombardment. A Danish flag hung across the small space to make it private and the two seamen were there, not to protect the patient against Lavisser, but rather from the intrusion of children excited by the bombardment and its upheavals. Astrid tended her father, or else helped calm the children.

Hopper brought Sharpe some bread and cheese toward evening and the two men ate in the storeroom, which had a small barred window looking down the street toward the houses of Nyboden. “He’s sleeping,” Hopper said, meaning Ole Skovgaard. Skovgaard’s fingers had been splinted and his wounds bandaged. “He ain’t sleeping well,” Hopper went on, “but he won’t for a while, will he?” He pushed a jug of water toward Sharpe. “I was thinking, sir, that either Clouter or me ought to go and see Captain Chase.”

Sharpe nodded. “He’ll be worrying.”

“Just to let him know we’re still ticking,” Hopper said. “Doesn’t matter which of us goes, sir, but the Captain, sir, he’ll want to know what’s going to happen.”

“If I knew, I’d tell you,” Sharpe said.

“I thought we’d wait till the bombs start again, then go. No one takes a blind bit of notice when the bombs are dropping.”

Sharpe gazed down the street where a lame sweeper was brushing litter toward a wheelbarrow. “What we do,” Sharpe said, “really depends on what the Danes do. On whether they surrender or not.”

“Have to drop a few more bombs than we did last night,” Hopper said scathingly. “It’s no good annoying them, is it? You have to bloody hurt them.”

“If they surrender,” Sharpe said, “then there isn’t a problem. We’ll just take Mister Skovgaard to a British surgeon. But if they don’t surrender… “ He left the thought unfinished.

“Then we’ll be dodging this Captain Lavatory?”

Sharpe nodded. “Though I think we’re safe enough here.”

Hopper nodded. “So when it’s dark, sir, and the bombs start up, I’ll sneak back to the Captain.”

“Tell Captain Chase I’ll stay here till Mister Skovgaard can be moved.” Sharpe did not know what else he could do. He knew he should hunt Lavisser down, but guarding Ole Skovgaard now seemed the more important task. “And when it’s all over, Hopper, you, me and Clouter are going to go digging in that house. There ought to be forty-three thousand melted guineas somewhere under the ashes.”

“Forty-three thousand?”

“Give or take a handful.”

Hopper whistled. “Captain Lavatory will already be digging though, won’t he?”

“It’ll still be too hot,” Sharpe said.

“So pray the buggers surrender, eh?” Hopper stared down the shadowed street. “Look at that silly bugger! Sweeping up a bombed city! You should get some sleep, sir, you look like a rag.” He frowned at the small storeroom. “You ain’t got room to make a proper cot in here, sir, why not go to the chapel? It’s quiet enough there.”

“Wake me before you leave.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

It was quiet in the chapel, though Sharpe could not sleep. He sat at the very back in a white-painted pew and stared at the stained glass window above the simple altar. It was getting darker outside and the details of the window were obscured, but the golden hair of the children and Christ’s silver halo showed up brightly. There were words scrolled around the halo, but they were in Danish so he could not read them.

He heard the door open and turned to see that Astrid had come to join him. “You look very thoughtful,” she said.

“I was just wondering what those words say,” Sharpe said, “up on the window.”

Astrid peered up at the dark glass. “Lader de sind Bom,” she read, “komme til mig.”

“I’m none the wiser.”

“Let the little children come to me,” she translated. “It’s from the Gospels.”

“Ah.”

Astrid smiled. “You sound disappointed.”

“I thought it might be ‘Be sure your sin will find you out.’ ”

“So you do have some religion?”

“Do I?”

She took his hand and held it silently for a while, then she sighed. “Why would anyone hurt another man so much?”

“Because it’s war,” Sharpe said.

“Because the world is cruel,” Astrid said. She stared up at the window. Christ’s halo and eyes were piercing white, the rest was darkening. “From now on,” she said, “he will be half blind, toothless and never able to hold a pen again.” She squeezed Sharpe’s hand. “And I will have to look after him.”

“Then I’ll have to look after you, won’t I?”

“Will you?”

He nodded. The question, he thought, was not would he, but could he? Could he live here? Could he deal with a querulous Ole Skovgaard, with a strange language and the stifling respectability? Then Astrid rested her head on his shoulder and he knew he did not want to lose her. He sat silent, watching the dark suffuse the window, and he thought of Lord Pumphrey’s confidence that the next few years would bring enough war to guarantee promotion and he reflected that he had never proved himself as an officer. He had shown he was a soldier, but he was still floundering as an officer. A company of greenjackets, he thought, and a French enemy to be humbled, that was a dream that would be worth pursuing. But a man must make choices, and that thought made him squeeze Astrid’s fingers.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing,” Sharpe said, and he saw Christ’s dark-blue robe turn purple and His white eyes flash livid red. You must be dreaming, he thought, then the colors faded to darkness again and he heard the thump and he instinctively put his arms around Astrid and covered her body with his as the bomb exploded beyond the window and the stained glass, all its blues and golds and scarlets and greens, shattered into a thousand shards that screamed through the chapel. Smoke boiled after it, and then there was silence broken only by the skittering of broken glass across the chapel floor. It was like an indrawing of breath.

Before the other bombs began to fall.

The British had fired close to five thousand bombs on the first night of the bombardment and they had watched the fires rage beyond the walls and had been certain that another night of pain would persuade the Danes to surrender the city. They fired far fewer bombs the second night, a mere two thousand, thinking that would be sufficient to satisfy the garrison’s honor, but in the morning, when the smoke covered the city like a pall, no message came from the city, the Danish flag still flew above the citadel and the guns on the shot-scarred ramparts opened a defiant fire. So now, on the third night, they would drown Copenhagen in fire. All day they had replenished the magazines, hauling wagon after wagon of bombs to the batteries, and as soon as darkness fell the great guns began their battering until the very ground seemed to throb with the hammering of the mortars and the recoil of howitzers. The sky flickered with fuse traces and was tangled with smoke trails.

The gunners had changed their aim, planning to devastate new areas of the city. Bombs and carcasses rained onto the cathedral and the university, while other shells reached deeper into the maze of streets to punish the defenders for their stubbornness. The bomb ships quivered with each discharge and rocket trails whipped fire across the clouds. The seven engines did their best. The teams of men pumped the long handles to spurt sea-water on the flames, but as new fires sprang up so the men deserted the machines to go and protect their families. The streets were overwhelmed by panicked refugees. Bombs cracked down, the flames roared, walls collapsed, the city burned.

General Peymann stood on the citadel wall and watched the fires spring up in a dozen places. He saw spires and steeples outlined by fire, saw them fall and watched the sparks spew in pillars of red through which the bombs crashed down. Pigeons, woken from their nests, flew about the flames until they fell burning. Why, Peymann wondered, did they not fly away? A rocket struck the cathedral’s dome and bounced up into the sky where it exploded just as a bomb crashed though the dome’s tiles. The whole of Skindergade was alight, then a carcass broke through the roof of Skovgaard’s warehouse on Ulfedt’s Plads and the sugar caught fire. The flames spread with brutal speed, making the district as bright as day. A school in Suhmsgade that had become a home for refugees was struck by three bombs. The shops on Frederiksborggade and in Landemaerket were burning and Peymann felt an immense and impotent anger as he watched the destruction. “Is Major Lavisser here?” the General asked an aide.

“I saw him a few moments ago, sir.”

“Tell him to burn the fleet.”

“Burn it?” The aide was horrified, for such an order meant that Peymann knew the city could not hold.

“Burn the ships,” Peymann said grimly, flinching as a flight of bombs crashed into the university. The British, he realized, were not short of bombs. They were unleashing hundreds onto a city that could either surrender or be obliterated. The distillery opposite Skovgaard’s warehouse was struck and the stills exploded blue fire that ran like burning quicksilver down alleys and gutters. Even from the citadel’s walls Peymann could hear screams in the streets. “Tell Major Lavisser to light the fuses quickly!” he called after the aide. He hoped that the British, seeing the fleet burning, would stop their terrible bombardment, though he knew it would be at least an hour or two before the ships could be fired because hundreds of refugees had gathered around the inner harbor in the certain knowledge that the British would not aim their mortars at the district where the fleet was stored, and those folks would have to be persuaded to move away before the fierce heat of the burning ships made the area untenable.

The aide ran down the firestep to the scorched courtyard, but found no sign of Major Lavisser. The General’s orderly said he thought the Major had gone to Bredgade and so the aide followed, but as he left the citadel a bomb landed five paces behind him and the shattering case broke his spine and threw him into the moat. The university was on fire, its library making a roaring sound as the flames devoured the shelves. The city’s separate fires were joining now, becoming higher and brighter, larger and fiercer. “Come,” the General gestured to the rest of his aides, “we shall do what we can.” There was little he could do for the city had no defense against this horror, but he could not just watch. There were people to be rescued and survivors to be comforted.

The bomb ships were throwing their shells over the citadel and one crashed into the orphanage chapel to splinter the roof and explode among the organ pipes. Astrid screamed as flames began to flicker from the organ’s shattered casing. Sharpe took her hand and dragged her into the courtyard. “The children!” she shouted.

“We’ll get them out,” Sharpe said, but where? He stood under the flagpole and stared up at the sky. The bombs, he thought, were going just to the south of the orphanage, which meant the graveyard to the north might be the safest place. “The cemetery!” he shouted to Astrid. “Take them to the cemetery!” She nodded just as a bomb slammed into the courtyard to make a small crater in which it sat malevolently, smoke hissing from its burning fuse until Hopper stepped to it and plucked the burning match clean out of the plug. “I’m going to the Captain, sir!”

Sharpe almost called Hopper back, but there were plenty of adults to help rescue the children and so he let the big man go. He ran into the building and found Clouter beside Ole Skovgaard’s bed. “There’s a cemetery that should be safe,” he told Clouter. “Take him there. Can you carry the bed as well?”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“The cemetery’s that way.” He pointed, then dropped his rifle and seven-barreled gun in a corner. “Then come back and help with the children,” he shouted after Clouter.

Someone was ringing the orphanage bell as though people needed any warning. The chapel was burning and another bomb had exploded in the kitchens so that the whole building was now lurid with flame. There were screams as another bomb crashed into a dormitory. The children were panicking. Sharpe ran up the outer stairs and shouted in his sergeant’s voice at a score of screaming children who were jostling on the balcony at the stairhead. They knew no English, but they froze, more scared of him than of the flames and noise. “You!” He grabbed a girl. “Downstairs. You next!” He made them go in single file down the stairs. More adults were coming to help and Sharpe ran into the burning dormitory. Two children were plainly dead, their small broken bodies laced with blood, but a third was crouching, screaming, her hands tight over her bloodied face and Sharpe picked her up and carried her to the balcony where he pushed her into a woman’s arms. The fire in the kitchens had broken through the roof, but no more bombs had come, though a dozen or more exploded just to the south where a row of houses was burning.

Astrid had been directing people into the sailors’ cemetery, but now ran back through the gate’s archway and up the stairs. “There are still the cripples,” she told Sharpe.

“Where?”

She pointed to a corner room and Sharpe ran round the open balcony to find six terrified children in their beds. Clouter had come back to the courtyard and Sharpe simply carried the children out to the balcony one by one and threw them down to the seaman who caught and handed them to other adults who had come to help. Sharpe tossed the last child down just as a bomb splintered through the remnants of the chapel and exploded in its doorway to slash metal fragments and slivers of wood across the yard. No one was touched. Sharpe had blood on his back where scraps of the stained glass window had slit through his coat and jacket, but he was unaware of it. “Is that all?” he shouted to Astrid over the thump of bombs and the sound of fire.

“That’s all!”

The last of the children had been carried to the graveyard and Clouter was alone in the courtyard. “Get out!” Sharpe shouted to him, then he took Astrid’s hand and led her around the balcony toward the stairhead. The burning dormitory was like a furnace as he passed, then a bomb crashed through the outside staircase, splintering its steps. A carcass followed, hissing tongues of white fire in the courtyard. Sharpe pulled Astrid into the main landing and ran down the inside stairs to find Clouter in the small hallway. “I told you to get out.”

“Came to get this,” Clouter said, brandishing Hopper’s seven-barreled gun. Sharpe picked up his own weapons. Tiles were clattering into the courtyard as more bombs hit the building, and he hoped to God the gunners were not shifting their aim northward for then the cemetery would be under fire. “All we have to do now,” he told Clouter, “is look after Mister Skovgaard.” The orphanage shuddered as two new bombs exploded. A child’s doll, its hair burning bright, skidded across the smoke-filled yard as Sharpe led Astrid and Clouter toward the gate, then he suddenly twisted to his right and shouted a warning.

He shouted because there were soldiers in the archway and Lavisser was with them, and the men were bringing their muskets up to their shoulders. Sharpe picked up the shell that Hopper had defused and hurled it one-handed toward the men who, seeing it, flinched away and Sharpe dragged Astrid back through the door. He slammed it shut, shot its bolt then took Astrid by the shoulders. “Do the windows on this floor have bars?”

She looked at him uncertainly, then shook her head. “No.”

“Then find a window, climb out and go to the cemetery. Hurry!” Musket butts were already pounding on the bolted door.

Sharpe pushed Astrid down the corridor then he ran up the stairs and out onto the smoke-wreathed balcony. Clouter followed as Sharpe ran to the undamaged end of the building where he stopped, turned and aimed the seven-barreled gun at the soldiers trying to break the door down. Then he hesitated. His quarrel was with Lavisser, not with the soldiers, but he could not see Lavisser, or Barker, though he did see a man climbing through one of the windows that opened onto the courtyard. Was Lavisser already inside? Flames were flying high to his right, licking at the rafters of the dormitories. He and Clouter were going to be trapped here, Sharpe thought, burned to death. Then one of the soldiers saw them and shouted to his comrades and Sharpe, still unwilling to start a private war in the burning building, pulled Clouter back into the undamaged dormitory. A bomb smashed into the yard and he heard screams. “What are we going to do?” Clouter asked him.

“God knows.” Sharpe slung the seven-barreled gun on his shoulder and went to the windows. They were barred to stop boys from being daredevils and he shook the bars, hoping that they could be loosened and that he and Clouter could drop down into the orphanage garden and make their way unseen to the cemetery, but the iron bars felt frustratingly solid. He swore and tugged again. Clouter saw what he was doing and came to help and the big man gave a grunt as he heaved on an iron rod. It came away in his hand, splintering the wooden sill.

Then Lavisser called from the courtyard. “Sharpe! Sharpe!”

Sharpe turned and went back to the landing. He went cautiously, half expecting a volley, but instead saw that a half-dozen of the soldiers were on the ground, bloodied, twitching and scorched. A bomb had exploded in the group beside the bolted door. But then Sharpe saw that Lavisser was not alone. Astrid was beside him and she was in the grip of a tall, pale-faced man. It was Aksel Bang. God damn it, Sharpe thought, but he had bloody forgotten Bang! “Sharpe?” Lavisser called again.

“What do you want?”

“Just come down, Sharpe, and that’s an end to it.” The city was shuddering, flaming, incandescent. Above the burning chapel Sharpe had an impression of scores of falling bombs and a sky laced with fiery rocket trails. The smoke boiled. He stepped back into the shadow and took the rifle from his shoulder. He could see Lavisser, but not Barker. Was Barker inside? Stalking him?

“End of what?” he called to Lavisser.

“I’m told Miss Skovgaard knows the names I want.”

“Let her go.”

Lavisser smiled. Another bomb crashed into the orphanage and the blast of its smoke and flame whipped the skirts of Lavisser’s coat, but he showed no fear. He just smiled. “I can’t let her go, Richard, you know that. I want the names.”

“I’ve got the names. I’ve got your list.”

“Then bring it down, Richard, and I’ll let Miss Skovgaard go.”

Sharpe knelt and thumbed back the rifle’s cock. Jesus wept, he thought, but this gun had better be accurate. Aksel Bang was no more than twenty paces away, but he was standing behind Astrid with his right arm about her waist. Sharpe could only see Bang’s lugubrious face, the rest of him was hidden by Astrid, but on the range at Shorncliffe Sharpe had been able to put ten bullets out of ten through a target the size of a man’s face at sixty yards.

“What are you waiting for, Richard?” Lavisser called.

“I’m thinking.”

Clouter crouched beside Sharpe. “There’s a big fellow prowling,” Sharpe told him. “Watch out for him.”

Clouter nodded. Sharpe aimed through the bars of the balcony’s balustrade, lining the notch in the rifle’s backsight and the leaf of the foresight on Aksel Bang’s face. Then Sharpe suddenly worried about whether he had wrapped the ball in its scrap of greased leather when he had reloaded the gun. He remembered firing the rifle in the Bredgade house, but when had he reloaded it? He thought when he had arrived at the orphanage last night, but he had given it no thought. Why should he? Loading a gun was like breathing, not something a man thought about. But if he had not used the leather patch then the bullet would not be gripped by the seven spiraling grooves and lands that gave it spin and so made it accurate. And if the ball was unwrapped then it would be fractionally smaller than the barrel’s width and when he fired it would fly out at a slight angle. Very slight, but enough to make it go wide and perhaps strike Astrid.

“Sharpe! I’m waiting!” Lavisser peered up at the dark doorway. “Bring me the list!”

“Let her go!” Sharpe shouted.

“Please don’t be tedious, Richard. Just come down. Or do you want me to describe what I plan to do to the lovely Astrid if you don’t come down?”

Sharpe fired. He could not see where the bullet went, for the doorway was immediately filled with a fog of powder smoke, but he heard Astrid scream and Sharpe immediately knew he had made a mistake. He should have fired at Lavisser, not Bang. Bang did not have the guts to do anything on his own initiative, but Sharpe had picked him because he was holding Astrid and now Sharpe dashed through the smoke to lean on the balustrade and he saw that Bang was on his back, spreadeagled, and where his face had been there was only a great patch of broken bone, cartilage and bloody flesh. Astrid had vanished. Lavisser was staring at Bang in disbelief, then Sharpe saw the movement to his right and he dropped to one knee as Barker fired the musket. The ball plucked at Sharpe’s hair and scored a slash across the side of his skull and he was dazed, but not disabled, and he was screaming a war shout as he charged down the balcony and rammed the muzzle of the unloaded rifle into Barker’s groin. Another musket flashed and Sharpe felt the wind of the ball passing and he saw there was a second man behind Barker, but Clouter shouted at Sharpe to drop, and he did, and the volley gun flamed and roared as loud as an exploding bomb. The second man was snatched backward as two shells cracked through the rafters of the dormitory where Sharpe and Clouter had sheltered.

Barker was writhing on the balcony. “No!” he shouted at Sharpe who had drawn one of his pistols.

“Yes,” Sharpe said.

“I let you live!” Barker shouted.

“More bloody fool you,” Sharpe said and aimed the pistol. He fired and the ball took Barker under the chin, and then a musket banged from the courtyard and tore a splinter from the balustrade beside Sharpe. Clouter fired back with both his pistols, then crouched to reload the volley gun. Sharpe slid his last pistol along the balcony to the black man. “Wait there,” he told him.

“Where are you going?” Clouter asked.

“To find the bastard,” Sharpe said. Lavisser had vanished, so Sharpe took the volley gun from his shoulder, stepped over Barker’s corpse, and stalked along the landing. Flames were terrible to his right, threatening to roast him, but he ran past them into cooler air and came to the door leading to the inside stairs and saw Lavisser there, on the half landing, and Sharpe brought the volley gun to his shoulder, but Lavisser was quicker to raise his pistol and Sharpe ducked back. “I’m not going to shoot, Richard!” Lavisser called. “I just want to talk!”

Sharpe waited. His head was ringing and blood was dripping from his ear. A bomb exploded in the courtyard, twitching the bloodied bodies of the dead infantrymen. A carcass was burning there and its flames set fire to a soldier’s ammunition pouch which crackled angrily. “I’m not going to shoot,” Lavisser said again, closer now. “Talk to me. Are you there?”

“I’m here,” Sharpe said.

Lavisser, the pistol held away from his body to show he meant no harm, stepped cautiously onto the balcony. “See?” He gestured with the pistol. “No more shooting, Richard.”

Sharpe had the volley gun at his waist and it’s seven barrels were pointing at Lavisser. He kept it there.

Lavisser glanced at the gun, then smiled. “Your woman’s safe. She ran out through the arch.”

“My woman?”

“Mister Bang seemed to think she was sweet on you.”

“Bang was an idiot.”

“My dear Richard, they’re all idiots. This is Denmark! Dull, insufferably dull. It threatens to be the most respectable country on God’s earth.” He flinched as a bomb fell into the storeroom over the archway, but he did not take his eyes from Sharpe. “Our gunners are showing rare form tonight. Mister Bang says you’re going to stay here.”

“So?”

“So am I, Richard, and I could do with a friend who isn’t insufferably respectable.”

Sharpe took a step forward for the heat behind him was growing intolerable. Lavisser stepped back. He still held the pistol out to one side. Clouter was walking down the far side of the balcony now, then he nimbly leaped off the balustrade onto the mast-rigged flagpole. The tarred ratlines were burning, but he scrambled down with such practiced speed that he came to no harm.

“So what’s the price of your friendship?” Sharpe asked Lavisser. “The list in my pocket?”

“Do you really care about the men on that list?” Lavisser asked. “Who are they? Unknown merchants in Prussia and Hanover? Let the French have them and the French will look after us. What do you want to be, Richard? A general in the Danish army? It can be arranged, believe me. You want a title? The Emperor is remarkably generous with titles. Everything is new in Europe, Richard. The old titles mean nothing! If you can take power then you can be a lord, a prince, an archduke or a king.” Lavisser glanced down into the courtyard where Clouter was threatening him with the reloaded volley gun. “Is your black friend going to shoot me?”

“Let him be, Clouter!”

“Aye aye, sir.” Clouter lowered the weapon.

Sharpe again stepped forward, forcing Lavisser another pace back toward the burning chapel. Lavisser was worrying now and began to swing the pistol to face Sharpe, but Sharpe twitched his own volley gun and Lavisser obediently held the pistol out to his right side again. “I’m serious, Richard,” he said. “You and me? We can be like wolves in a land of woolly baa-lambs.”

“I’m still wearing British uniform,” Sharpe said, “or hadn’t you noticed?”

“And what will Britain do for you?” Lavisser asked. “You think it will ever accept you? Besides, you’re staying here. You’re going to need money, Richard, money and friends. I offer you both. You really think you could endure Denmark without either?” He smiled with sudden relief because Sharpe had at last moved the seven-barreled gun so that it no longer pointed at Lavisser’s waist. Now, instead, it was aimed to the side. “I confess I would like your friendship, Richard,” Lavisser said.

“Why?”

“Because you’re a rogue,” Lavisser said, “and I like rogues. I always have. And you’re efficient, impressively efficient. Like our gunners tonight.” The gunners had turned Copenhagen into hell. Great swathes of the city were burning, the flames leaping high above the remaining spires and it seemed to Sharpe, glancing above Lavisser’s head, that a bow of fire like a rainbow of pure flame was arched across the city. It was a glimpse of the world’s ending, of hell’s vengeance. It was efficient, right enough.

“I’m a thug,” Sharpe said, “remember?”

“I aspire to be the same,” Lavisser said. “This world is ruled by thugs. What is the Emperor but a thug? What is the Duke of York but another thug? Albeit a dim one. Thugs win, Richard. To the powerful go the spoils.”

“I just have one problem,” Sharpe said. The heat was burning his back, but he stayed still. “You threatened Astrid.”

“Don’t be absurd, Richard,” Lavisser said with a smile. “Do you really think I meant it? Of course not. I like her far too much. Not as you do, of course, though I must say I admire your taste.” He glanced at the volley gun and saw it was still pointed away from him. “I would never have hurt her, Richard.”

“You wouldn’t?”

“No! What do you take me for, Richard?”

“A bastard,” Sharpe said, “a lying bloody bastard,” and he pulled the volley gun’s trigger. The seven bullets whipped up into the smoke and snatched the pistol out of Lavisser’s hand. They also ripped his hand and wrist into bloody shreds so that Lavisser gaped at it, then shrieked as the pain struck.

“You bastard,” Sharpe said, “you utter bloody bastard,” and he tossed the seven-barreled gun down to Clouter and drew the cutlass, which he shoved hard into Lavisser’s chest to drive him back and Lavisser snatched at his own sword hilt with his left hand, but he could not draw the weapon across his body, and Sharpe speared his chest with the cutlass point again and Lavisser staggered back a further step, then saw that the balcony ended at a doorway that had once led to the chapel’s gallery and now opened onto an inferno.

“No!” he screamed and tried to lurch forward, but Sharpe was quicker. He rammed the heavy blade at Lavisser’s chest, jarring him hard back, and Lavisser teetered on the doorway’s edge. Beneath him was the red-hot fire of burning pews and bibles. “No!”

“Go to hell,” Sharpe said and pushed again, but this time Lavisser caught hold of the cutlass blade with his good hand and clung on to the steel to keep himself from falling.

“Pull me back,” he said to Sharpe, “please. Please!”

Sharpe let go of the cutlass and Lavisser fell back into the burning chapel. He screamed as he fell, his arms outspread, then thumped into the flames.

The balcony lurched under Sharpe. He vaulted the rail and jumped down to the yard. The archway was filled with smoke and brilliant with flames, but Sharpe reckoned they could dash through safely enough. He took the seven-barreled gun from Clouter then looked at the fire that roared and boiled in the archway. “Are you feeling lucky, Clouter?”

“Luckier than that poor bastard, sir.”

“Then go!”

They ran.

The city surrendered next morning. Seven thousand bombs had fallen in the night and some of the streets blazed so fiercely that no one could get within a hundred paces. Charred pages of the university’s library had rained across a hundred square miles of Zealand, while the cathedral was a gaunt frame of scorched stone in which a heap of embers smoked like the pit. Bodies lay in neat rows in parks, squares and on the harbor quays. There were not nearly enough coffins, so folk whose homes were undamaged brought their sheets and did their best to make the dead decent. The fleet was whole, unburned and captured. No one had come to light the fuses and even if they had the ships would not have burned for Captain Chase had stripped the incendiaries away.

British soldiers fought the flames while a redcoat military band played outside the Amalienborg Palace. General Peymann listened to the unfamiliar music and tried to pay attention to the flattering remarks made by the city’s new masters, but he could not rid himself of a feeling of gross injustice. “There were women and children here,” he said again and again, but he spoke in Danish and the British officers, who dined off the palace’s finest porcelain plates, did not understand him. “We did not deserve this,” he finally protested, insisting one of his own aides offered a translation.

“Europe didn’t deserve the Emperor,” Sir David Baird retorted hotly, “but we have him. Come, sir, try the ragout of beef.”

General Cathcart, who had never wanted to bombard the city, said nothing. The smell of smoke filled the dining room, taking away his appetite, though every now and then he would glance from the windows to see the masts of the captured fleet and wonder how much of their value would be given him in prize money. More than enough to buy an estate in his native Scotland, that was for sure.

Not far away, in Bredgade, a dozen sailors had finished hauling blackened beams and scorched bricks from a gaping hole. Now they squatted in a circle and chipped away at dozens of curious black lumps that, when broken apart with a boarding axe, gleamed like a newly risen sun. Not all of the gold had melted, some of the coins were still in the charred remnants of their bags, and Captain Chase was making piles of guineas. “I’m not sure we got it all, Richard.”

“Enough,” Sharpe said.

“Oh enough, certainly enough, more than I ever dreamed!”

Lord Pumphrey was watching over the excavation. He had appeared unexpectedly, accompanied by a dozen soldiers, and announced that he was there to look after the Treasury’s interests. “Though I shall do as Nelson did at Copenhagen,” he told Sharpe, “and turn a blind eye. I do not, after all, have a great love for the Treasury. Who does? But we must return something to them.”

“Must we?”

“I like to think they will owe me a favor, so yes. But do help yourself, Richard, while my blind eye is watching.”

Sharpe gave Pumphrey the list of names. “Lavisser’s dead, my lord.”

“You cheer me, Sharpe, you do cheer me.” Pumphrey peered at the papers. “Is that blood?”

“Yes, my lord.”

Pumphrey looked up at Sharpe, saw the anger that was still in the rifleman, so said nothing more of the blood. Nor did he ask him about the blood in his hair or the scorch marks on the green jacket. “Thank you, Sharpe. And Skovgaard?”

“Alive, sir, barely. I’m going to see him now. Last night’s bombs burned his warehouse, nothing left of it at all, but he’s got a house outside the city walls in Vester Faelled. You want to come?”

“I think I shall wait before I pay my respects,” Pumphrey said, then held out a hand to hold Sharpe back. “But tell me, will he move to Britain? He can hardly stay here.”

“He can’t?”

“My dear Sharpe, we shall stay here a month, at the most two, and then the French will be very firmly in the Danish saddle. How long do you think Mister Skovgaard will last then?”

“I think, my lord, that he would go to hell before he went to Britain,” Sharpe said, “so you’ll have to find another way to protect him. And his daughter.”

“His daughter?”

“She knows as much as he does. What will you do, my lord?”

“Sweden, perhaps?” Lord Pumphrey suggested. “I’d prefer them both to be in Britain, but I do promise you, Sharpe, I do promise you upon my honor, that the French will not trouble them.”

Sharpe looked hard at Pumphrey who almost shivered under the intensity of the gaze, but then Sharpe nodded, satisfied with the promise, and walked away. His pockets were heavy with gold. Chase and his men would become rich this day, and doubtless Lord Pumphrey would skim a share before he returned the gold to the Treasury, but Sharpe, despite the weight in his pockets, would not be rich.

Nor would he stay in Denmark. Ole Skovgaard had forbidden his daughter to marry the Englishman. Sick as Skovgaard was, he had summoned the force to utter the refusal and Astrid would not disobey him. Now, when Sharpe came to the big house in Vester Faslled, she looked close to tears. “He will not change his mind,” she said.

“I know.”

“He hates Britain now,” she said, “and he hates you, and he says you are not a Christian and I cannot… “ She shook her head, unable to go on, then frowned as Sharpe took lumps of blackened gold and handfuls of coins distorted by heat from his pockets. “You think that will change his mind?” Astrid asked. “Money will not persuade him.”

“It’s not for him. Nor for you, unless you want it,” Sharpe said as he took the last guinea and added it to the rest on the harpsichord. The house had been a billet for British officers during the bombardment and the fine wooden floor was marked with boot nails and the rugs were smeared with dried mud. “You said you wanted to rebuild the orphanage,” Sharpe said, “so now you can.”

“Richard!” Astrid tried to push the gold back to him, but he would not take it.

“I don’t want it,” he said. He did want it, he wanted it badly, but he had stolen enough guineas in the last month and, besides, he wanted Astrid’s dream to come true even more than he wanted this gold. “Give it to the children,” he said, and then she just wept and he held her.

“I cannot go against my father’s wishes,” she said at last. “It would not be right.”

“No,” he said, and he did not really understand her obedience but he did understand that it was important to her. He stroked her hair. “Someone told me this was a very respectable society,” he said, “and I reckon I wouldn’t have fitted. I’m not godly enough, so maybe it’s for the best. But one day, who knows, perhaps I’ll come back?”

He walked away, going through the nearby cemetery where a great pit was being dug for the fire-shrunken dead.

That night, in Amalienborg Palace, Lord Pumphrey carefully took part of the gold and stored it in his valise. The remaining gold—he reckoned it was worth about nine thousand pounds—would be returned to the Bank of England and the Honorable John Lavisser could conveniently be blamed for all that was missing. “You could let Sharpe take it back,” he told Sir David Baird next day.

“Why Sharpe?”

“Because I want him out of Copenhagen,” Pumphrey said.

“What’s he done now?”

“What he has done,” Pumphrey said in his precise voice, “is exactly what I asked him to do, and he has done it exceedingly well. I commend him to you, Sir David. But among the things I asked him to do was to keep two people alive, which he did, only it is no longer in His Majesty’s interest that they should live.” Pumphrey smiled and drew a delicate finger across his throat.

Baird raised a cautionary hand. “Tell me no more, Pumphrey. I don’t want to be privy to your dirty world.”

“How very wise you are, Sir David. But remove Sharpe quickly, if you would be so kind. He has an inconveniently gallant soul and I don’t want to make an enemy of him. He could be useful to me again.”

The city still spewed smoke when Sharpe left. Autumn was in the air, brought by a cold wind from Sweden, but the sky was clear, spoiled only by the great feathered smear of smoke that drifted across Zealand. The smoke stayed in Sharpe’s sight even when the city vanished beneath the Pucelle’s horizon. Astrid, he thought, Astrid, and at least he no longer thought only of Grace, and he was still confused, except he did now know what he was doing. He was going back to the barracks, back to his quartermaster’s duties, but at least with the promise that he would not be left behind when the regiment next sailed to war. And there would be war. France was beneath that smoke-filled horizon and she was the mistress of all Europe now, and until France was beaten there would be no peace. It was a soldier’s world now, and he was a soldier.

Chase joined him at the stern rail. “You’ve got some leave coming, haven’t you?”

“A month, sir. I’m not due at Shorncliffe till October.”

“Then you’ll come to Devon with me. It’s time you met Florence, a dear soul! We can go shooting, perhaps? I won’t take a refusal, Richard.”

“Then I won’t offer you one, sir.”

“There, look! Kronborg Castle.” Chase pointed at the green copper roofs that shone in the sunset. “Know what happened there, Richard?”

“Hamlet.”

“My God, you’re right.” Chase tried to hide his surprise. “I asked young Collier when we were coming the other way and he didn’t have the first idea!”

“Did he die?”

“Who? Collier? Of course not, he’s right as rain.”

“Hamlet, sir.”

“Of course he died. Don’t you know the play? Maybe you don’t,” Chase added in a hurry. “Not everyone does.”

“What’s it about?”

“A fellow who can’t make up his mind, Sharpe, and dies of indecision. A lesson to us all.”

Sharpe smiled. He was remembering Lavisser’s fulsome friendliness when they had sailed past Kronborg, and how Lavisser had quoted some words from the play, and how Sharpe had liked the guardsman then. And he remembered how tempted he had been on the burning balcony. Part of him had wanted to take Lavisser’s friendship, to take the gold and the opportunity and the adventure, but in the end he had pulled the trigger because he had to live with himself. Though God alone knew where that would take him.

Night fell. The smoke of a broken city vanished in the dark.

And Sharpe sailed home, a soldier.