Sharpe's Prey

CHAPTER 4

Lavisser hesitated. “Would they hear a pistol shot on the frigate?” he asked.

“Probably,” Sharpe said. “Sound carries over water. Why?”

“I’m worried the priming got wet, but I don’t want to alarm the Cleopatra. They might think we’re in trouble.”

“Priming didn’t get wet,” Sharpe said. “Water only came up to our ankles.”

“You’re probably right.” Lavisser bolstered the pistol. “I think it’s best if you wait here, Richard. If Samuels landed us in the right place then Herfolge’s at least an hour’s walk. I’ll see you at dawn and, with any luck, I’ll bring a cart and horse to get this damn gold out of here.” He climbed a dune. “You’ll stay with Mister Sharpe, Barker?”

“I will, sir,” Barker acknowledged.

“You know what to do,” Lavisser said cheerfully, turning away.

“Do you have the key to the chest?” Sharpe called after the guardsman.

Lavisser half turned. He was nothing but a shadow on the dune’s crest. “Surely you don’t need it, Richard?”

“I’d like to get those pistols.”

“If you must. Barker has the key. I’ll see you in two or three hours.” Lavisser waved and disappeared down the other side of the dune.

Sharpe peered at Barker’s dark shape. “The key?”

“I’m looking for it.” Barker’s answer was surly. He began to rummage through a valise and Sharpe, as he waited, walked up the dune. It was cold for summer, but he supposed that was because the sea was so chill. From the dune’s top he could just see the frigate as a tracery of dark rigging against the eastern sky while inland there was only a feeble and faraway scrap of hazed and flickering light. Captain Samuels had said that fog was likely in this weather and the smeared scrap of light suggested it was forming over the flat farmlands. The ground seemed to rock as Sharpe became accustomed to being on land again. He could smell hay, salt and seaweed. “Been to Denmark before, Barker?” he called down to the beach.

“No,” Barker said.

“So where’s the key?” Sharpe asked.

“I reckon he didn’t give it me.”

“It’s customary, Barker, to address officers as ‘sir.’” Sharpe could not conceal his dislike for the servant, who was plainly employed for his size and his capacity for violence rather than for any skills as a valet. Sharpe rooted through his pack until he found the picklock, then went back to the beach where he knelt beside the chest.

“What are you doing, sir?” Barker asked, putting a sarcastic stress on the last word.

“Fetching my pistols,” Sharpe said, taking hold of the padlock.

A bang made him turn. The launch must have reached the frigate which was now sheeting home her foresails to turn away from land and the bang had merely been the wind slatting the canvas, but it saved Sharpe’s life. He saw the gleam in Barker’s hand, realized it was a knife that was about to bury itself in his neck and so threw himself to one side before scrambling away from the chest. He let go of the picklock, hurled a handful of sand into Barker’s eyes and drew his saber, then heard the click of a gun being cocked and knew that Barker, careless of any noise, must have had a pistol hidden beneath his long coat. Sharpe just ran, going up the dune where he snatched up his pack and then down the sandy slope into the darkness behind the beach.

He had hardly thought since the banging sail had made him turn. He had just reacted, but now he crouched in the coarse grass and watched the crest of the dune for Barker’s shadow. Sweet Jesus, he thought, but he had been fooled. He should have bloody known when Lavisser had claimed Barker possessed the chest’s key. No man would entrust a fortune in gold to a servant like Barker.

So Lord Pumphrey had been right when he suggested there was something odd about this whole mission, but in his wildest imaginings Sharpe had not thought things were this warped. Lavisser wanted him dead. What else did Lavisser want? There was no way of knowing that, and now was not the time to speculate, for Barker had come to the dune’s top and pointed the pistol into the shadows. He was waiting for Sharpe to move, just waiting, but the fog was thickening as the southern summer wind crossed the cold northern sea. Sharpe stayed motionless. Far inland a bell tolled four times. The small light had vanished, obscured by the growing fog.

Barker moved northward a few paces and Sharpe broke cover and ran southward. Barker heard him, and that was what Sharpe wanted, for he half hoped Barker would try a long shot. Once the gun was discharged it would take too long to reload and Sharpe would be on the servant like a terrier onto a rat, but Barker was no fool. He held his fire and instead followed Sharpe in hope of getting close enough for the pistol not to miss.

Sharpe went to ground in black shadows between two low dunes. The fog was blanching the first hint of dawn and muffling the small sounds of the wind and waves. Barker had lost him again, though the servant had a rough idea of where Sharpe was and now crouched on the skyline. The man was no soldier, or else he would have sought the lower ground for at night it was impossible to see down into the hollows. A man could see upward against the sky, but not down. Sharpe watched the hulking servant, then raked his fingers through the sand and grass to come up with a scrap of wood and two pebbles that he flicked southward one after the other. They made tiny noises as they landed and Barker, hearing them, moved toward the small sounds.

Sharpe went back northward. He crept, feeling ahead of him to make sure he did not trample any stiff grass. He found two more pieces of wood that he hurled away into the misty dark, hoping to lure Barker farther south, and only when he had lost sight of the man did he stand and cross the dunes back to the beach. He needed to find the picklock, but it had vanished in the trampled sand about the chest. He searched quickly, sifting handfuls of sand, but he could not find it and suddenly he heard Barker returning. The servant had given up his hunt and was coming back to guard the gold so Sharpe abandoned the weapons locked in the chest and went back across the dunes.

He headed inland until he reached a damp vegetable field edged with a ditch. He moved northward now, following the ditch which was half silted with blown sand. A bird flew up from a nest, startling him, then he saw he had come to a rough track, deep rutted by cartwheels, that headed inland. He was about to follow it, then heard hoofbeats and so he scuttled back to the ditch and lay in its damp grass.

The hoofbeats sounded like a whole troop of cavalry, but Sharpe could see nothing in the soft fog. He lay motionless, the hat shadowing his face from the wan early light. Then he saw a shape in the whiteness, another, and suddenly there were a half-dozen horsemen in sight. They all wore long red jackets with pale-blue collars and cuffs. Their breeches were black, edged with white piping, and their hats were black bicornes, elaborately plumed with white feathers. Their long straight swords hung from sashes of yellow silk and suggested they were dragoons. A second group appeared, all of them going slowly because of the fog, and then a shabby cart materialized. It was pulled by a plodding pony and was hung with remnants of seaweed. Sharpe guessed the cart was normally used to fetch weed from the beach to use as fertilizer and now it had come for the gold.

The horsemen and the cart vanished onto the beach. Sharpe darted across the track and found shelter in another ditch. He heard muffled voices and thought he detected anger. But who was angry, and why? Had the dragoons captured Lavisser, or had they been sent by him? Sharpe raised his head, but could see nothing. He crawled inland, staying low so that he did not appear as a dark patch in the lightening fog. What the hell was he to do? The clink of a curb-chain made him lie flat again. The horsemen had evidently spread into the fog to search for him, but they were looking too far to the south. They called to each other, sounding oddly cheerful now, and Sharpe sensed they were a group of friends rather than a military unit. All were apparently officers, judging by the sashes, and none was shouting orders. They laughed as they kicked their horses through the wet soil of the vegetable field, then they were gone to the south and Sharpe kept crawling. Go inland, he thought, and find shelter. Find trees. Find anything that would hide him and then work out what to do. Maybe, he thought, he should just wait. A British army was supposedly coming to Denmark, but the thought of emerging from some barn or ditch to a welcoming committee of supercilious officers was more than he could bear. They would say he had failed again, but what else could he do?

The voices and hoofbeats sounded again and Sharpe dropped into the mud. He must have been closer to the track than he had thought, for he could hear the squeal and rumble of the cart. Then he heard Barker’s voice. He was apologizing, but his apology was cut short when Lavisser interrupted him. “It’s a pity, Barker,” the guardsman said, “but it’s not a tragedy. And what can he do to us? I quite liked the fellow, but he’s still an encumbrance and quite useless. Pitifully useless.”

Useless? Sharpe raised his head to see that Lavisser was wearing the Danish uniform. He must have gone back home to his grandfather, changed into the uniform, joined his waiting friends and so become wealthy. All in an hour or two. Then damn him, Sharpe thought. Damn him. He watched the cart and the cavalrymen fade into the fog.

Get to Copenhagen, he thought. He felt in his pocket and found the piece of paper that Lord Pumphrey had given him in Harwich. There was just enough light to read the elegant handwriting. “Ole Skovgaard, Ulfedt’s Plads,” it read, and Sharpe stared at it. Was that a name? Or an address? Then he guessed the comma meant that Ole Skovgaard was the man’s name and Ulfedt’s Plads was where he lived, and that, Pumphrey had said, was in Copenhagen, so get there fast. Be useful.

He pushed the scrap of paper back into his coat pocket, checked that Lavisser and the other horsemen were truly gone from sight, then stood.

And that was when the dragoon sprang the trap.

It was an old trick. The cavalrymen had left one horseman behind, reckoning that Sharpe would think himself safe when he saw the riders leave and so come out of hiding.

Which Sharpe dutifully did and the last dragoon, waiting by the dunes, saw the rifleman appear as a dark shape in the field.

The dragoon should have shouted immediately. He should have called his companions back, but he wanted all the credit for capturing the missing Englishman and so he drew his sword and raked his spurs back. Sharne heard the hooves, turned and saw the big horse being spurred but saw, too, that the horseman was right-handed, understood that the horse would therefore go to his own right and knew that the dragoon would lean from the saddle to chop with the sword, and knew, too, that there was no time to draw his own saber. Or perhaps he knew none of that, but instinctively realized it in the space of a heartbeat and understood how to react.

The cavalryman shouted, more to frighten Sharpe than summon his companions, but the horseman was too confident and too inexperienced. He believed Sharpe would stand like a scarecrow and be beaten down by the flat of his sword and the last thing he expected was for the rifleman to swing the heavy pack hard into the side of his horse’s head. The horse slewed away and the dragoon, already swinging his heavy sword, found his horse going one way while he was leaning the other. Lavisser had cautioned him that the Englishman was dangerous so he had intended to stun Sharpe with the weight of his heavy straight blade, but instead he flailed for balance. Sharpe let go of his pack, seized the dragoon’s sword arm and simply tugged. The man yelped as he was jerked from the saddle, then the breath was thumped out of him as he fell into the rnud. He yelped again as Sharpe dropped onto his belly. “Bloody fool,” Sharpe said.

The horse, shaking its head, had stopped. There was a pistol bolstered on its saddle.

Sharpe was angry. It did not take much to make him angry, not since Grace died, and he hit the man hard. Too hard. He found a fist-sized stone in the field’s mud and used it to break the dragoon’s jaw. The man moaned as blood trickled into his long fair mustache. “Bloody fool,” Sharpe said again. He stood and kicked the man. He thought about taking the sword, for a heavy cavalry sword was a much better weapon than a light saber, but the blade had fallen some feet away and the scabbard was secured by a complicated buckle and meanwhile the man’s shout must have been heard by the other dragoons, for a voice called urgently out of the fog. Lavisser and his companions were coming back so Sharpe rescued his pack and ran to the horse. He put his left foot in the stirrup, hopped clumsily as the horse sidled nervously away, then managed to haul himself into the saddle. He fiddled his right foot into the second stirrup, turned the horse north, and kicked his heels back. The fallen man watched him sadly.

Sharpe swerved back to the beach. He could hear hoofbeats and knew the other dragoons would soon be in full pursuit. Once across the dunes and on the beach he turned south and kicked the horse into a gallop. Sharpe clung on for dear life, the pack bouncing against his right thigh and the saber scabbard clanging like a cracked bell. He rode past the jumble of hoofprints where he and Lavisser had come ashore, then turned inland again. He was riding in a circle, hoping that the changes of direction would confuse his pursuers. He crossed the dunes, let the horse find its own way over the ditch, then curbed it in the field. He listened, but could hear nothing except his horse’s harsh breathing.

He kicked the beast on. He crossed two more ditches, then turned northward again until he came to the rutted track where he turned west, then north again where a path branched away between windbent trees. His instinct told him he had lost his pursuers, but he doubted they would have given up the chase quite yet. They would be looking for him and, as the sun rose, the fog began to thin. The horse would be a liability soon, for Lavisser and his companions would be searching for a horseman in this flat, featureless landscape and so, reluctantly, Sharpe slid out of the saddle. He unbuckled the girth and took the saddle off the beast, then slapped its rump to drive it into a pasture. With any luck the other horsemen would simply see a grazing horse, not an abandoned cavalry mount.

He threw away the pistol. It had not been loaded and its ammunition must have been with its rider, so Sharpe tossed it into the ditch where he had hidden the saddle and walked on north. He hurried now, using the last vestiges of the fog to cover his escape. By midmorning, when the sun at last burned the mist away, Sharpe had gone to earth in a ditch from where he could just see his pursuers. They were far off, staring across the fields. He watched them for an hour or more, until at last they abandoned the search and rode inland.

Sharpe waited in case another man had been left behind. He was getting hungry, but there was nothing he could do about that. The sky was clouding over, threatening rain. Still he waited until he was certain there was no one looking for him, then he climbed from the ditch and walked through drab fields in a flat land. He kept the dunes to his right to make sure he was going north. He passed white-painted farms with red-tiled roofs and big barns, crossed earth roads and waded wide drainage ditches and, in the afternoon, just as it began to rain, he had to cut deep inland to skirt a fishing village. He splashed through a stream and threaded through a wood of oak and ash to find himself in the park of a vast mansion with two lofty towers. The windows were shuttered and a dozen men, their heads protected from the rain by hoods of sacking, were scything the big lawn. He walked along the edge of the park, climbed a wall and was back in the drab fields, though ahead of him the sky was smeared with a haze of smoke, evidence of a town, and he prayed it was Copenhagen, though he sensed that he was still far to the south. He could only judge the distance by the time it had taken the Cleopatra to sail down the coast and he reckoned the city was probably a two- or three-day walk.

The town, though he did not know it, was Koge. He smelt it before he saw it. There was the familiar reek of a brewery and the pungent odor of smoking fish that made his hunger even more acute. He thought of going into the town to beg or steal food, but when he came close to Koge’s southern edge he saw two men in dark uniforms standing beside the road. They were sheltering from the rain as best they could, but when a carriage rattled along the road they stopped it and Sharpe saw one of them climb onto the step and peer through the window. The man saw nothing suspicious, jumped down and made a brief salute. So they were searching for someone and Sharpe knew who it was. Lavisser had made him into a hunted man.

He told himself he had endured hunger before and so he struck inland again. The rain fell harder as night descended, but it hid him as he walked and walked, always keeping the smell of the town and its scatter of dim lights on his right-hand side. He crossed a major road, followed a track northward, then crossed more fields. His boots were clogged with mud, his clothes were soaked and the pack was biting into the small of his back and his shoulders. He walked till he could not endure another pace, then he slept in a wood where he was woken by a heavy rain that thrashed the trees just before dawn. His belly ached and he was shivering. He remembered the bedroom he had shared with Grace, its fireplace and the wide windows that led to a balcony. He had been careless, he now knew, in thinking that idyll could last forever. He had sold his Indian jewels and used the money to make a haven while the lawyers bickered over her dead husband’s will, but then Grace died and the same lawyers pounced like weasels on the property Sharpe had bought. He had put the house in Grace’s name, saying that she needed the safety of her own home while he soldiered abroad, and that quixotic gallantry had lost him everything. Worse, he had lost her. Grace, he thought, Grace, and the self-pity swept over him so that he tipped his face to the rain as if it could wash away his tears.

Bloody fool, he told himself. Be useful. Pull yourself together. The woman is dead and you do not help her memory by collapsing. Get up, he told himself, walk. Sniveling and feeling sorry for himself would do nothing. Be useful. He got up, pulled on the pack and went to the wood’s edge.

And there his fortune changed. A farm lay just a hundred yards away. It had a long low white-painted house, two barns, a windmill and a dairy. It looked prosperous and busy. Two men were driving a big herd of cattle toward the dairy while a dozen laborers gathered in the yard. All had haversacks slung on their shoulders and Sharpe reckoned that was dinner; bread and cheese, perhaps. He watched from the wood’s edge. The rain eased. Most of the men went westward with a small cart laden with spades and forks, but three vanished inside the smaller of the two barns. Sharpe waited, hunger biting. The bigger barn had wide-open doors. Get inside there, he reckoned, and he could scout the rest of the farm, maybe even sneak into the kitchen or dairy to steal food. He never once thought of the guineas in his pack. He could have bought food, but his instinct was not to show himself. Live as he had learned to live before he met Grace.

The dairy herd was driven back to pasture and then no one moved in the farm for a while until two children, school bags swinging, walked down the lane. When they had gone from sight Sharpe broke cover and ran across the damp pasture, crossed a ditch and sprinted the last few yards into the big barn. He half expected a shout of protest or a dog to start barking, but he was unseen. He slipped through the doors to find a vast wagon loaded high with hay. A haversack, like the ones the laborers had been carrying, lay discarded on the wagon’s seat and Sharpe scooped it up as he climbed the vehicle’s high side which was a wooden grille designed to keep the hay in place. He scrabbled a hole for himself in the hay, took off his pack and greatcoat, then opened the stolen haversack to find bread, cheese, a big piece of ham, a sausage and a stone bottle which, uncorked, proved to hold ale.

He ate half the bread and all the cheese. He reckoned he could stay here for hours, but it was more important to reach Copenhagen and find Skovgaard. He was about to clamber out of the wagon when a strange clatter sounded beneath him. He went still. The clattering was loud, wood against stone. The sound puzzled Sharpe until he recognized it as footsteps. Wooden shoes, Sharpe finally realized, banging on the barn’s flagstones. Then a man’s voice shouted a protest, presumably for his stolen dinner, another man laughed, and Sharpe heard the heavy sound of hooves and the clink of chains. A team was being hitched to the hay-wain. The voices went on, and a woman said something soothing that provoked more laughter. It all seemed to take forever. Sharpe stayed where he was, half buried in the wagon’s high load.

Then, at last, the driver flicked his whip and the haywain eased forward as the horses took its vast weight on their harnesses. The wagon went out from the barn’s shadow and creaked and groaned and rattled as it gained speed over the yard. A man and a woman called what Sharpe presumed was a farewell.

The cloud was shredding so that strips of blue showed as the wagon lurched along a farm track. It was going inland and Sharpe was happy to let it carry him, but where would it go once it reached the road? He prayed it would turn north. He ducked down as more voices sounded, then peered from the hay to see that it was a group of men clearing a ditch who had called to the driver. A field of wheat grew beyond, very close to harvest.

The wagon turned north. It splashed through a deep ford, groaned up a slope and then the horses settled into a plodding walk on a well-surfaced road that was wide and empty. A drift of tobacco smoke came to Sharpe. The driver must have lit a pipe. So where was he going? Copenhagen seemed as good an answer as any for the city, like London, surely had an insatiable demand for hay, but even if the wagon was bound elsewhere it was going in the right direction and Sharpe burrowed deeper, settled himself and fell asleep.

He woke close to midday. The wagon, so far as he could judge, was still going northward through a gentle countryside of small villages with painted houses and plain churches, all with roofs of bright red tiles. The road was busier now, mostly with pedestrians who called out greetings to the driver. Another haywain ambled a half-mile behind. The road led directly towards a blur of dirty smoke on the horizon that told Sharpe the wagon was heading for a city. He reckoned it had to be Copenhagen.

But Lavisser, he warned himself, could have reached the city the day before.

Lavisser. How Sharpe was to revenge himself on Lavisser he did not know, but he would. The anger was in him again because he had been fooled by the guardsman’s attentive friendliness on the boat. Sharpe had believed the man’s sympathy and so revealed his own feelings, and all the while Lavisser had been plotting his death. So Lavisser would suffer. By God he would suffer. Sharpe would eviscerate the bastard and have him screaming. Sharpe might not know how he would do it yet, but he did know where. In Copenhagen.

Sharpe reached the city as evening was falling. The wagon creaked through a district of lavish houses, each standing in its own wide garden, then skirted the end of what looked like a wide canal that protected the city’s walls. A causeway led over a smaller moat to one of the city’s gates, this one a massive pair of metal-studded doors set in a wide tunnel that led through the layered ramparts. The haywain stopped among a group of other carts and more elegant carriages. Voices sounded close. Sharpe suspected soldiers were searching all the traffic, but if so they were content merely to ask the driver some questions. None bothered to clamber up the wagon’s high sides and after a while the driver clicked his tongue, the horses took the wagon’s weight and the vehicle lurched on through the long dark tunnel to emerge into the heart of the city.

Sharpe, bedded down in the hay, could only see gables, roofs and spires. The sun was low in the west, gleaming on red tiles and green copper. The evening wind billowed a white curtain from a high window. He smelled coffee, then an organ sounded from a church, filling the air with great chords. Sharpe pulled on his greatcoat, took hold of his pack and waited until the wagon turned into a narrower street, then he climbed over the wooden trellis at the vehicle’s rear and dropped down to the cobbles. A girl watched him from a doorway as he tried to rid himself of the wisps of hay that smothered his clothes. A woman, leading a child by the hand, crossed the narrow street rather than go close by him and Sharpe, looking down at his muddied trousers, was not surprised. He looked like a tramp, but a tramp with a saber.

It was time to find Lord Pumphrey’s man so Sharpe buttoned his greatcoat and walked toward the wider street. It was almost dark, but it looked a prosperous city. Shopkeepers were shuttering their premises while yellow lamplight spilled from hundreds of windows. A giant wooden pipe hung above a tobacco shop; laughter and the clink of glasses came from a tavern. A crippled sailor, his pigtail thick with tar, swung on crutches down the pavement. Big carriages rolled briskly down a wide street where small boys swept the horse dung toward wooden holding boxes. It was like London, but not like London. Much cleaner, for a start. Sharpe gaped at a soaring spire that was formed by the entwined tails of four copper dragons. He also saw, more usefully, that every street and alley was clearly marked with a name. That was not like London where a visitor found his way by guesswork and by God.

An elderly man, bearded and carrying a bundle of books wrapped in string, saw Sharpe gaping up at the street name. He said something in Danish and Sharpe just shrugged. “Vous etes Frangais?” the man asked.

“American,” Sharpe said. It did not seem wise to admit to being English at a time when a British fleet and army was sailing to assault Denmark.

“American!” The old man seemed delighted. “You are lost, perhaps?”

“I am.”

“You seek a hostel, yes?”

“I’m looking for a place called… “ What the hell was it? “Elfins Platz?” he guessed. “A man called Ole Stoveguard?” He knew he had got the names wrong and sorted though his pockets for Lord Pumphrey’s scrap of paper. “Ulfedt’s Plads,” Sharpe read the unfamiliar name awkwardly. Two or three other passersby had stopped now, for it seemed that if someone was lost in Copenhagen then the citizens regarded it as their duty to offer help.

“Ah! Ulfedt’s Plads. It is a short walk,” the old man said, “but everything in Copenhagen is a short walk. We are not like Paris or London. Have you been to those cities?”

“No.”

“Washington, now, is that big?”

“Pretty big,” Sharpe said, who had no idea.

“Do all men carry swords in America?” The old man, not content with directing him to Ulfeldt’s Plads, was now walking with him.

“Most of us,” Sharpe said.

“We have lost the habit in Denmark,” the old man said, “except for the soldiers, of course, and a handful of our aristocracy who think it is a badge of rank.” He chuckled, then sighed. “I fear, alas, we shall all have to wear swords soon.”

“You will? Why?”

“We are warned that the British are coming again. I pray it isn’t so, for I remember the last time when their Lord Nelson came. Six years ago! I had a son on the Dannebroge and he lost a leg.”

“I’m sorry,” Sharpe said awkwardly. He vaguely remembered hearing about Nelson’s attack on Copenhagen, but it had happened when he was in India and the news had not provoked much interest in the regiment.

“It turned out for the best,” the old man went on. “Edvard is a minister now, in Randers. It is safer, I think, being a minister than a naval officer. There are Lutherans in America?”

“Oh, yes,” Sharpe said, having no idea what a Lutheran was.

“I am glad to hear it,” the old man said. He had led Sharpe down a narrow street that emerged into a small square. “This is Ulfedt’s Plads.” He gestured to the square. “You will be all right now?” he asked anxiously.

Sharpe reassured and thanked the old man, then fished out the scrap of paper and read the name in the fading light. Ole Skovgaard. One side of the square was occupied by a gin distillery, another by a huge warehouse and between them were small shops: a cooperage, a wheelwright’s and a cutlery store. He walked along the shops, looking for Skovgaard’s name, then saw it painted in faded white letters high on the big warehouse wall.

The warehouse had a high archway and, next to it, a smaller door with a polished brass knocker. The smaller door belonged to a house that was evidently attached to the warehouse for the “S” of the Skovgaard sign was painted on its bricks. Sharpe rapped the knocker. He was nervous. Lord Pumphrey had made it plain that Skovgaard was a last resort, but Sharpe did not know where else he could seek help. He knocked again, heard a window being thrown up and stepped back to see a face peering down in the gloom. “Mister Skovgaard?” he called.

“Oh no,” the man said unhelpfully.

“Are you Mister Skovgaard?”

There was a pause. “You are English?” the man asked cautiously.

“I need to see Mister Skovgaard.”

“It is too late!” the man said disapprovingly, ignoring the lingering light in the summer sky.

Sharpe swore under his breath. “Is Mister Skovgaard there?”

“You will wait there, please.” The window slammed down, there were footsteps on the stairs and, a moment later, the door was laboriously unbolted and unlocked. It opened to reveal a tall and lugubrious young man with long light-brown hair and a palely anxious face. “You are English?” the man asked.

“Are you Ole Skovgaard?”

“Oh no! No!” The young man frowned. “I am Aksel Bang. I am Mister Skovgaard’s overseer. Is that the word? I dwell here now. Mister Skovgaard has moved to Vester Filled.”

“Where’s that?” Sharpe asked.

“Vester Faslled is not far, it is not far. It is where the city is growing.” Bang frowned at the mud and hay on Sharpe’s clothes. “You are English?”

“My name’s Sharpe. Richard Sharpe.”

Bang ignored the introduction. “Mister Skovgaard insists the English are taken to him. It is his rule, you understand? I need a coat and then I shall take you to Vester Faslled. You will tarry here, please.” He vanished down the hallway and returned a moment later with a coat and a wide-brimmed hat. “Mister Skovgaard did dwell here,” he explained as he shut and carefully locked the door, “but he has bought a house outside the city. He went from this place a month ago. Not so long, I think, but Vester Fselled is not so far. It is where the new houses are. Not five years ago it was all meadow, now it is houses. You have just come to Copenhagen perhaps?”

“Yes.”

“My English is not so good,” Bang said, “but I practice. You know how I practice? By reading the Scripture in English. That is good, I think. There is an English church here, did you know that?”

“No.”

“Is there a Danish church in London?”

Sharpe confessed ignorance. He was becoming increasingly nervous, for he knew he looked odd. His coat was filthy and his boots were caked with mud, but it was the saber that seemed to attract most glances of disapproval, so Sharpe hitched the scabbard up into his left armpit and so hid it under his coat. He had just done that when a man lurched from an alley and startled Sharpe by trying to embrace him. Aksel Bang hurried Sharpe on. “That man is a bibber of wine,” he said disapprovingly, “a drunkard. That is bad.”

“You’ve never been drunk?”

“I abhor liquor. It is the devil’s drink. I have never touched a drop and with God’s help I never will. Never! We have not so many drunkards in Copenhagen, but there are some.” He looked at Sharpe earnestly. “I trust you are born again into Christ Jesus?”

“I trust so too,” Sharpe growled, hoping that answer would deter Bang. Sharpe did not much care about his own soul at that moment, he was far more worried by the city gate that lay just ahead of them. He brushed hay off his coat and hitched the saber up again. The gate was inside the long tunnel that led through the thick walls and it was wide open, but there were men in blue uniforms standing in the light of two great lanterns suspended from the tunnel’s roof. Were they searching for Sharpe? It seemed likely, but Sharpe hoped they were only investigating the incoming traffic.

“God so loved the world,” Aksel Bang said, “that He sent His only Son. You have surely heard that piece of Scripture?”

The tunnel was very close now. A uniformed man with a bushy mustache and a shouldered musket came from the guardhouse, glanced at Bang and Sharpe, then struck flint on steel to light a pipe. He sucked on the flame and his eyes, reflecting the small fire, stared hard at Sharpe. “How do you say that verse in Danish?” Sharpe asked Bang.

“The sâledes elskede Gud Verden, at han gav sin Søm den enbârne,” Aksel Bang recited happily, “for at hver den, som tror pa ham, ikke skal fortahes, men have et evigt luv.” Sharpe tried not to look at the mustached guard, hoping that the sound of Danish would mislead the sentries. The saber scabbard was high at his side, awkwardly trapped beneath his coat by his left elbow. He kept his head down, pretending to be paying close attention to Bang’s fervent words. Their footsteps echoed under the arch. Sharpe smelt the tobacco as he walked past the guard. He felt conspicuous, sure that one of the men would reach out and take his elbow, but they were out of the gate tunnel and crossing a wide-open area that lay between the walls and the canal-like lakes that protected the city’s landward ramparts. Sharpe sighed with relief.

“Beautiful words,” Bang said happily.

“Indeed,” Sharpe said, his relief making him sound fervent.

Bang finally abandoned Sharpe’s soul. “You have met Mister Skovgaard before?” he asked.

“No.” They were on a causeway that crossed the canal and Sharpe at last was feeling safe.

“I ask because it is rumored that England is sending an army to take our fleet. Is that true, do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

Bang glanced at the saber scabbard that Sharpe had let drop now that they were out of the city and in the less populated suburbs. “I think you are a soldier, perhaps,” Bang said.

“I was,” Sharpe said curtly.

“The buttons on your coat, yes? And the sword. I wanted to be a soldier, but my father believed I should learn business and Mister Skovgaard is a very able teacher. I am lucky, I think. He is a good man.”

“And rich?” Sharpe asked sourly. They had left the road to walk through a cemetery, but beyond the graveyard’s low wall he could see big houses standing in tree-shaded gardens.

“He is wealthy, yes,” Bang said, “but in matters of the spirit he is poor. His son died, as did his wife, God bless their souls, as did his daughter’s husband and her son. Four deaths in three years! Now all that is left is Mister Skovgaard and Astrid.”

Something in Bang’s voice made Sharpe glance at him. So that was how the land lay. Skovgaard had a daughter and no son, which meant the daughter would inherit. “And the daughter,” Sharpe asked, “she hasn’t married again?”

“Not yet,” Bang said with studied carelessness, then he unlatched the cemetery gate and waved Sharpe through.

They walked up a street edged with trees until they reached a white-painted gate beyond which lay one of the big houses. Its bricks and red roof tiles were hardly discolored, suggesting the house was only a year or two old. Back in the city a church sclock struck half past eight, the sound echoed by other church bells in the suburbs as Bang led Sharpe up the long carriage drive.

An elderly servant, soberly dressed in a brown suit with silver buttons, opened the door. He did not seem surprised to see Aksel Bang, though he frowned at the mud and hay on Sharpe’s coat. Bang spoke in Danish to the servant who bowed and left. “You will tarry here, please,” Bang told Sharpe, “and I shall tell Mister Skovgaard of your coming.” Bang disappeared down a short paneled corridor while Sharpe looked around the tiled hall. A crystal chandelier hung above him, an eastern rug was underfoot and from one of the closed doors came the sound of tinkling music. A spinet or harpsichord, Sharpe was not sure which. He took off his hat and caught sight of himself in a gilt-framed looking glass that hung above a spindly table on which a china bowl held a pile of visiting cards. He grimaced at his reflection, picked some more hay off his coat and tried to smooth his hair. The music had stopped and Sharpe, still staring at the mirror, saw the door behind him open.

He turned and for the first time since Grace had died he felt his heart leap.

A girl dressed all in black stood looking at him with an expression of astonished delight. She was tall, very fair-haired and blue-eyed. Later, much later, Sharpe would notice she had a wide forehead, a generous mouth, a long straight nose and a quick laugh, but at that moment he just stared at her and she stared back and the welcoming look of pleasure on her face died to be replaced by a puzzled sadness. She said something in Danish.

“I’m sorry,” Sharpe said.

“You are English?” she asked, sounding surprised.

“Yes, miss.”

She stared at him oddly, then shook her head. “You look so like someone else”—she paused—“someone I knew.” There were tears in her eyes. “I am Skovgaard’s daughter,” she introduced herself. “Astrid.”

“Richard Sharpe, miss,” he said. “You speak good English.”

“My mother was English.” She glanced down the corridor. “You are here to see my father?”

“I hope so.”

“Then I am sorry to have disturbed you,” she said.

“You were playing?” Sharpe asked.

“I am not good.” She offered him a quick and embarrassed smile. “I have to practice.” She gave him a last puzzled look, then went back into the room. She left the door ajar and, after a moment, a few solitary notes sounded again.

Two men came to fetch Sharpe. Like the servant who had answered the door, they were both dressed in brown, but these men were much younger. They also looked fit and hard. One jerked his head and Sharpe obediently followed them down the short passage. The door at the end squeaked alarmingly but opened into an elegant room where Aksel Bang was standing beside a thin man who was sitting at a desk, his head bowed. Sharpe dropped his pack, coat and hat on a chair and waited. The door squealed shut behind him, then the two young men, evidently guards, stood not far behind him.

The room was a study, but large enough to hold a small dance. Bookcases filled with forbidding leather volumes lined two walls, the third had tall glass doors opening onto a garden while the fourth was paneled in a pale wood that surrounded a carved marble hearth above which hung a portrait of a gloomy man dressed in preacher’s black with Geneva bands. Then the man behind the desk laid down his pen, unhooked a pair of spectacles from his ears and looked up at Sharpe. He blinked with apparent astonishment when he saw his visitor’s face, but hid whatever surprised him. “I am Ole Skovgaard,” he said in a gravelly voice, “and Aksel has forgotten your name.”

“Lieutenant Richard Sharpe, sir.”

“An Englishman,” Skovgaard said disapprovingly. “An Englishman,” he said again, “yet you look just like my poor son-in-law, God rest his soul. You did not meet Nils, did you, Aksel?”

“I did not enjoy that privilege, sir,” Bang said, bobbing his head with pleasure at being addressed by his employer.

“He looked exactly like that Englishman,” Skovgaard said. “The resemblance is, what is the word? Extraordinary.” He shook his head in wonderment. He had sunken cheeks, a tall forehead and an expression of severe disapproval. He looked to be in his fifties, though his fair hair had no gray yet. “Do you spell your name with an ‘e’?” he asked and, when Sharpe confirmed the spelling, hooked the spectacles over his ears and made a note with a scratching quill. “And you are a lieutenant, yes? In the navy or the army? And what regiment?” His English was perfect. He wrote down Sharpe’s answers, blew on the wet ink, then toyed with an ivory letter opener as he looked Sharpe up and down. After a while he gave a small shrug then turned to Bang. “Perhaps, Aksel, you would wait in the parlor with Miss Astrid?”

“Of course, of course.” Bang looked absurdly pleased as he hurried from the room.

“Tell me, Lieutenant Sharpe,” Skovgaard said, “what brings you to my house?”

“I was told you’d help me, sir.”

“By whom?”

“By Lord Pumphrey, sir.”

“I have never heard of Lord Pumphrey,” Skovgaard said bleakly. He stood and crossed to a side table. He was dressed all in black and had a black crepe mourning band about his right sleeve. He was so thin he looked like a skeleton walking. He selected a pipe from a rack, filled it with tobacco from a jar that had a painted dragon circling its belly, then carried a silver tinderbox back to his desk. He struck the charred linen alight, transferred the flame to a spill and lit the pipe. He waited till the tobacco was burning evenly. “Why would this Lord Pumphrey believe I would help you?”

“He said you were a friend of Britain, sir.”

“Did he now? Did he?” Skovgaard sucked on the pipe. The smoke curled to a ceiling that was lavishly molded in plaster. “I am a merchant, Lieutenant Sharpe,” he said, somehow making the rank sound like an insult. “I deal in sugar, tobacco, jute, coffee and indigo. All those items, Lieutenant, must be carried here in ships. That would suggest, would it not, that I am in favor of the Royal Navy, for it helps our own navy protect the sea lanes. Does that make me a friend of Britain?”

Sharpe looked into the merchant’s eyes. They were pale, unfriendly and unsettling. “I was told so, sir,” he said awkwardly.

“Yet Britain, Lieutenant Sharpe, has sent a fleet to the Baltic. Ships of the line, frigates, bomb ships, gun boats and over two hundred transports—enough, I think, to convey twenty thousand men. That fleet passed the Skaw last night. Where do you think it is going?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Sharpe said.

“Russia? I think not. The little swedish garrison at Stralsund, perhaps? But France can take Stralsund whenever she pleases, and throwing more men into its walls merely dooms them. Sweden? Why would Britain send an army to its friends in Sweden? I think that fleet is coming here, Lieutenant Sharpe, here. To Copenhagen. Do you think that is an unreasonable assumption?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Sharpe said feebly.

“You don’t know.” There was acid in Skovgaard’s voice now. He stood again, agitated. “Where else can such a fleet be going?” He paced up and down in front of the empty hearth, trailing tobacco smoke. “Earlier this month, Lieutenant, a peace treaty was signed between France and Russia. The Czar and Napoleon met at Tilsit and, between them, they divided Europe. Do you know this?”

“No, sir.”

“Then I shall educate you, Lieutenant. France and Russia are now friends while Prussia is reduced to a husk. Napoleon commands Europe, Lieutenant, and we all live under his shadow. Yet he lacks one thing, a fleet. Without a fleet he cannot defeat Britain, and there is only one fleet left in Europe that can challenge the Royal Navy.”

“The Danish fleet,” Sharpe said.

“You are not so ignorant as you pretend, eh?” Skovgaard paused to relight the pipe. “There was a secret article in the Treaty of Tilsit, Lieutenant, by which Russia agreed to allow France to take the Danish fleet. That fleet is not Russia’s to give nor France’s to take, but such niceties will not stop Napoleon. He has sent an army to our frontier on the mainland, hoping that we will surrender the fleet rather than fight. But we shall not surrender, Lieutenant, we shall not!” He spoke passionately, but Sharpe heard the hopelessness in his voice. How could little Denmark resist France? “So why,” Skovgaard went on, “does Britain send ships and men to the Baltic?”

“To take the fleet, sir,” Sharpe admitted, and he wondered how Skovgaard had learned of a secret article in a treaty signed by France and Russia. But then, if Lord Pumphrey was right, that was Skovgaard’s business when he was not importing tobacco and jute.

“We are neutral!” Skovgaard protested. “But if Britain attacks us then she will drive us into the arms of France. Is that what Britain wants?”

“It wants the fleet out of French reach, sir.”

“That we can manage without your help,” Skovgaard said. But not if the French invaded, Sharpe thought, and broke the Danish army. The subsequent peace treaty would demand the surrender of the navy, and thus Napoleon would have his warships, but he said none of that aloud, for Skovgaard, he reckoned, knew that truth as well as he did.

“So tell me, Lieutenant,” Skovgaard said, “what brings you to my house?”

So Sharpe told his tale. Told of Lavisser, of the chest of gold, of the mission to the Crown Prince and of his escape from the beach near Koge. Skovgaard listened with an expressionless face, then wanted to know more. Who had sent him exactly? When did Sharpe first know of the mission? What were his qualifications? What was his history? He seemed particularly interested that Sharpe had risen from the ranks. Sharpe did not understand why half the questions were even asked, but he answered as best he could though he resented the inquisition which felt uncomfortably like a magistrate’s interrogation.

Skovgaard at last finished his questions, put down his pipe and took a clean sheet of paper from a desk drawer. He wrote for some time, saying nothing. He finally finished, sanded the ink, folded the paper and dropped a blob of wax to seal it. He then spoke in Danish to one of the two men who still stood behind Sharpe. The door squealed open and, a moment later, Aksel Bang returned to the room. Skovgaard was writing an address above the red sealing wax. “Aksel”—he spoke in English, presumably so Sharpe would understand—”I know it is late, but would you be so kind as to deliver this note?”

Bang took the letter and an expression of surprise showed on his face when he saw the address. “Of course, sir,” he said.

“You need not return here,” Skovgaard said, “unless there is a reply, which I do not expect. I shall see you at the warehouse in the morning.”

“Of course, sir,” Bang said and hurried from the room.

Skovgaard scraped out his exhausted pipe. “Tell me, Lieutenant,” he said, “why you, an army officer of no special distinction, are here? The British government, I assume, employs men to fight the war of secrets. Such men will speak the languages of Europe and have the skills of subterfuge. Yet they sent you. Why?”

“The Duke of York wanted someone to protect Captain Lavisser, sir.”

Skovgaard frowned. “Captain Lavisser is a soldier, is he not? He is also grandson to the Count of Vygard. I would hardly think such a man needs your protection in Denmark? Or anywhere else for that matter.”

“There was more to it than that, sir.” Sharpe frowned, knowing he was doing a bad job of explaining himself. “Lord Pumphrey didn’t really trust Captain Lavisser, sir.”

“They don’t trust him? So they sent him here with gold?” Skovgaard was icily amused.

“The Duke of York insisted,” Sharpe said lamely.

Skovgaard stared at Sharpe for a few seconds. “If I might summarize your position, Lieutenant, you are telling me, are you not, that Captain Lavisser has come to Denmark under false pretenses?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re quite right, Lieutenant,” Skovgaard said, “you are so very right!” He spoke with force and an evident dislike of Sharpe. “The Honorable John Lavisser, Lieutenant, arrived in Copenhagen yesterday and presented himself to His Majesty, the Crown Prince. That audience is described in this morning’s Berlingske Tidende.” He lifted a newspaper from his desk, unfolded it and tapped a column of print. “The paper tells us that Lavisser came to fight for Denmark because, in all conscience, he cannot support England. His reward, Lieutenant, is a major’s commission in the Fyn Light Dragoons and an appointment as an aide-de-camp to General Ernst Peymann. Lavisser is a patriot, a hero.” Skovgaard threw down the paper and a new, bitter anger entered his voice. “And it is contemptible of you to suggest he was sent to bribe the Crown Prince! His Majesty is not corrupt. Indeed he is our best hope. The Crown Prince will lead our country against all its enemies, whether they be British or French. If we lost the Prince, Lieutenant, then lesser men, timid men, might make an accommodation with those enemies, but the Prince is stalwart and Major Lavisser, far from coming to corrupt His Majesty, is here to support him.”

“He brought gold, sir.”

“That is hardly a crime,” Skovgaard said sarcastically. “So what is it, Lieutenant, that you want me to do?”

“My orders, sir, were to take Captain Lavisser and the gold back to the British Army if the Prince refused the bribe, sir.”

“And you came here expecting my help in that endeavor?”

“Yes, sir.”

Skovgaard leaned back in the chair and stared at Sharpe with an expression of distaste. His long fingers toyed with the letter opener, then he tossed it on the desk. “It is true, Lieutenant,” he said, “that I have, at times, been of assistance to Great Britain.” He waved a hand as if to suggest that assistance had been trivial, though in truth there were few men in northern Europe more valuable to London. Skovgaard was a Danish patriot, but his marriage to an Englishwoman had given him a fond attachment to a second country that was now sorely tried by the expectation of a British fleet. Skovgaard had never intended to involve himself in the murky business of espionage. At first he had merely passed on to the British embassy whatever news he gathered from the skippers of the Baltic traders who came to his warehouse, and over the years that intelligence had grown until Skovgaard was paying the golden coins of Saint George to a score of men and women in northern Europe. London valued him, but Skovgaard was no longer sure he wanted to help London now that a British fleet was fast approaching Copenhagen. “This is a time,” he said to Sharpe, “when all Danes must choose their allegiance. That is as true of me as it is of Major Lavisser, a man I am not inclined to doubt. He has risen high in your country’s service, Lieutenant. He was a Guards officer, an aide to the Duke of York and a gentleman who, in all conscience, can no longer support what your country is doing. But you? What are you, Lieutenant?”

“A soldier, sir,” Sharpe said bleakly.

“What kind?” The question was caustic. “How old are you? Thirty? And still a second lieutenant?”

“It’s where you start that counts,” Sharpe said bitterly.

“And where will you end?” Skovgaard did not wait for an answer, but instead picked up the Berlingske Tidende. “The newspaper, Lieutenant, tells us more than the mere facts of Major Lavisser’s arrival. Yesterday afternoon, at the invitation of the Crown Prince, Major Lavisser addressed the Defense Commission and I think you should hear his remarks. He warned that Britain is desperate and that she will stoop to the lowest measures to weaken Denmark’s resolve. “If it is a matter of cutting off heads then Britain can do it as well as Madame Guillotine.” Are you listening, Lieutenant? These are Major Lavisser’s words. ‘I have heard, I cannot vouch for its truth, that an army officer whose career is close to an end, a ruffian promoted from the ranks who faces ruin because of scandal at home, has been dispatched to Denmark to assassinate the Crown Prince. I cringe from believing such a thing, but would still encourage every loyal Dane to be watchful,” Skovgaard threw down the paper. “Well, Lieutenant?”

Sharpe stared at him in disbelief.

“And what are you, Lieutenant?” Skovgaard asked. “An aging lieutenant who started in the ranks, yet you wish me to believe that Britain would send such a man to treat with a prince? You?” He looked Sharpe up and down with utter disgust.

“I’ve told you the truth!” Sharpe protested angrily.

“I doubt that,” Skovgaard said, “but it is easy enough to discover. I have sent a note to Major Lavisser asking him to come here in the morning to confirm or deny your account.”

“You invited Lavisser here!” Sharpe protested. “That bastard tried to kill me!”

Skovgaard stiffened. “I deplore base language,” he said. “So, Lieutenant, are you willing to wait here and face Major Lavisser?”

“Like hell I am,” Sharpe said. He turned to fetch his pack and coat. “And damn you, Skovgaard,” he added.

The two young men blocked Sharpe from the door and Skovgaard’s voice turned him back toward the desk where the merchant now held a long-barreled pistol. “I am not willing to risk my Prince’s life, Lieutenant!” Skovgaard said. “You will either stay here of your own accord or I shall detain you until Major Lavisser can give me advice.”

Sharpe was just gauging the distance to the desk and the likelihood that the pistol would be accurate, when one of the two men drew another gun. It was a big one, the kind of pistol that a man would employ to put down a horse, and its great black muzzle was pointed at Sharpe’s head. Skovgaard said something in Danish and the other man, while his companion held the gun steady, took away Sharpe’s saber, then searched his pockets. He found the gold Sharpe had stolen on board the Cleopatra, but Skovgaard sternly ordered him to return it, then the man discovered Sharpe’s small folding knife which went into a drawer of Skovgaard’s desk. Then, with the pistols still threatening him, Sharpe was pushed into the hall. Astrid, Skovgaard’s daughter, watched in astonishment from her doorway, but said nothing.

Sharpe was thrust into a small room that opened from the hall. The door was shut and he heard a key turn in the lock and the sound reminded him that he had lost his picklock on the beach near Koge. There were no windows in the room, and thus no light, but he groped about to discover he was in a small dining room furnished with a wide table and six chairs. It was the kind of room where a small intimate dinner party could be held, warmed by a great fire that would burn in the now empty hearth. The room was now Sharpe’s prison.

He was locked in and feeling like a bloody fool. Lavisser had anticipated him, trapped him and beaten him. The guardsman was forty-three thousand guineas richer and Sharpe had failed.