Sharpe's Prey

CHAPTER 8

Vygard’s gates were closed, but not locked. At first Sharpe thought the house was deserted, it was so quiet, then he realized no one would leave an empty house with its shutters open. Red roses grew between the windows. The front lawn was newly scythed, the smooth green marked where the blade’s tip had left almost imperceptible wide curves, and the afternoon air was filled with the scent of cut grass.

He walked around the side of the house, past the large stables and coach house, through a flower garden that buzzed with bees, then under an archway cut from a box hedge and found himself on a wide lawn that sloped to a lake. In the middle of the grass, beneath a spreading white parasol, a dark-haired woman lay in a chair. She wore a white dress. A straw hat, decorated with a white ribbon, sat with a discarded newspaper, a handbell and a work basket on a small wicker table. Sharpe stopped, expecting her to challenge him or to call for the servants, but then realized she was asleep. It seemed extraordinary: a woman dreaming away the somnolent afternoon while, not a mile away, cavalrymen were rousting terrified fugitives from ditches and hedgerows.

The back of the house was heavy with wisteria among which a white-painted door stood invitingly open. A basket of pears and crab apples lay on the threshold. Sharpe stepped over it into the cool of a long stone-flagged corridor hung with pictures of churches and castles. A rack held a dozen wlaking sticks and two umbrellas. A dog was sleeping in an alcove. It woke as Sharpe passed, but instead of barking it just thumped its tail on the floor.

He opened a door at random and found himself in a long, elegantly furnished parlor with a white marble chimney breast that made him shudder as he remembered his ordeal in Skovgaard’s flues. The room’s windows overlooked the sleeping woman and Sharpe stood between the thick curtains and wondered who she was. Lavisser’s cousin? She was much too young to be his grandmother. She seemed to have an incongruous musket propped beside her chair, then Sharpe saw it was a pair of crutches. The newspaper on the wicker table, weighted down by the work basket, stirred in the wind.

So where would Lavisser put his gold? Not in this room with its well-stuffed chairs, thick rugs and gilt-framed portraits. Sharpe went into the main hall. A curving white staircase lay to his right and, beyond it, an open door. He peered through the door and found a small parlor that had been turned into a bedroom. Presumably the woman on crutches could not climb the stairs and so a bed had been placed under the window. Books were piled on the white-painted window seat while newspapers lay across the bed and on a heavy leather valise that was overflowing with discarded petticoats. There were initials gilded on the valise’s lid. MLV.

He wondered if the “L” stood for Lavisser, then dismissed the idea, and just then the name Visser came to him. Lavisser, Visser, Madame Visser. And in Skovgaard’s house his last pistol ball had struck someone, provoking a yelp of pain and leaving blood on the floor. The woman in the garden had crutches.

He looked through the valise and found nothing with a name on it. He opened the books, but none was inscribed with an owner’s name, though all, he thought, were in French. He went back to the big parlor and stared through the window at the sleeping woman. She was Lavisser’s accomplice, she was French, she was the enemy. Sharpe reckoned he could spend all day searching the house for gold, but why bother when Madame Visser could probably tell him where it was?

He went back into the passage where the dog thumped its tail in welcome for a second time, crossed the lawn and stood behind the chair where he unslung the rifle from his shoulder. “Madame Visser?” he asked.

“Oui?” She sounded startled, then went silent as she heard the weapon being cocked. She turned very slowly.

“We met last week,” Sharpe said. “I’m the man who shot you.”

“Then I hope you suffer all the torments of hell,” she said calmly. She spoke English well. A disturbingly good-looking woman, Sharpe thought, with an elegant face, dark hair and the eyes of a huntress. Those eyes, instead of showing fear, looked amused now. Her white dress had delicate lace at its neckline and hems and looked so feminine that Sharpe had to remind himself of Ole Skovgaard’s verdict on this woman: merciless, he had said. “So what do you want?” she asked.

“Where is Lavisser’s gold?”

She laughed. Not a pretend laugh, but genuine laughter. “Lieutenant Sharpe, isn’t it? Major Lavisser told me your name. Sharpe. Not very appropriate, is it?” She looked him up and down. “So were you fighting up the hill?”

“Wasn’t much of a fight.”

“I can’t imagine it was. Proper troops against farm boys, what does one expect? But my husband will be very disappointed. He and his friend rode up to watch. Did you see them? Perhaps you shot two gentlemen on horseback while you were culling the peasantry?” She was still twisted awkwardly in the chair. “Why don’t you stand in front of me,” she suggested, “where I can see your face properly.”

Sharpe moved, keeping the rifle pointed at her.

Madame Visser still seemed amused rather than frightened by the weapon’s threat. “Did you really come to find the gold? Major Lavisser probably took it with him and if that’s all you came for then you might as well go away again.”

“I think it’s here,” Sharpe said.

“Then you are a fool,” she said and reached out for the small handbell on the wicker table. She picked it up but did not ring it. “So what are you going to do, fool? Shoot me?”

“I did once, why not again?”

“I don’t think you will,” she said, then rang the bell vigorously. “There,” she exclaimed, “I’m still alive.”

Sharpe found her good looks unsettling. He lowered the rifle’s muzzle. “Where did I shoot you?”

“In the leg,” she said. “You have given me a scar on the thigh and I think I hate you.”

“Should have been in your head,” Sharpe said.

“But the wound does well,” she went on. “Thank you for asking.” She turned as a sleepy-eyed servant girl came from the house. She spoke to the girl in Danish and the maid curtseyed and then ran back indoors. “I’ve sent for help,” Madame Visser said, “so if you have any sense you’ll leave now.”

She was right, Sharpe thought. He should leave, but the gold was a lure and finding it would be a sweet revenge on Lavisser. “I’m looking for the bastard’s gold,” he told her, “and you can send for all the servants you want.” He used the rifle’s muzzle to open the work basket that weighted the newspaper.

“You think I keep a thousand guineas in there?” Madame Visser asked with amusement.

Sharpe had been looking for a pistol, but the only things in the basket were folded papers and a lethally long hatpin. He backed away. “A thousand guineas?” he asked. “What about the other forty-two thousand?”

For the first time since he had woken her Madame Visser looked discomfited. “Forty-two thousand?”

“He stole forty-three thousand guineas,” Sharpe said. “What did he tell you? That it was a thousand?” She said nothing and he knew he had surprised her. “So which room did he use here?” he asked her.

She shrugged. “Upstairs, I suppose.” She frowned at Sharpe. “Forty-three thousand?” She sounded disbelieving.

“All except for fifteen guineas that I stole off him.”

“I imagine he took it to Copenhagen,” Madame Visser said.

“Or hid it here,” Sharpe said.

She nodded. “There are cellars and attics.” She shrugged. “What will you do with it?”

“Return it to the British.”

Madame Visser smiled. “I think, Lieutenant, you will keep it. And my silence will cost you five thousand.”

He backed away. “Cheap, aren’t you?”

She just smiled and blew him a kiss. He still backed away, unsure whether she had a pistol hidden under her skirts, but she did not move, just watched as he went back into the house.

He went upstairs. He considered searching the bedrooms, but decided Lavisser would not leave a fortune where any servant could filch from it and so he looked for the attic stairs and found them behind a small door. The loft was dusty, but lit by small dormer windows, and it was also crammed with chests, valises and crates. His hopes rose.

There was no gold. There were chests filled with ancient papers, crates of old toys and piles of moth-eaten clothes. There was a child’s sledge, a rocking horse and a model ship that was rigged with cobwebs. But no guineas. He could not search all the boxes, but he could lift them and detect from their weight whether gold was stored inside, and there was none. Damn, he thought. So search the cellars. Madame Visser had sent for help and even though no one had yet disturbed him he knew he did not have much time.

He ran down the narrow, uncarpeted attic stairs, then crossed the landing and went down the big curving stairs and there in the hall, of all people, was Captain Warren Dunnett. A half-dozen riflemen were with him, their grubby uniforms looking out of place in the elegant setting. Dunnett smiled as Sharpe came downstairs. “You’re under arrest, Lieutenant.”

“Don’t be daft,” Sharpe said. He saw the surprise on Dunnett’s face, then pushed past the six riflemen who looked embarrassed.

“Sharpe!” Dunnett called.

“Go boil your head,” Sharpe answered. He went down the passage, past the dog, and so out into the back garden where Madame Visser was now attended by Captain Murray and two black-coated civilians in breeches and riding boots. The maid, Sharpe guessed, must have run to the village and appealed to the British.

Captain Murray, a decent man who commanded a company of greenjackets, shook his head sadly. “What were you thinking of, Sharpe?”

“Thinking of nothing,” Sharpe protested. Dunnett and his men had followed him onto the lawn. “Do you know who this woman is?” Sharpe asked Murray.

“She’s my wife, Lieutenant,” one of the two civilians answered, “and I am an accredited French diplomat.”

“Last week,” Sharpe said, “I watched that bitch pull a man’s teeth because he was a British agent.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Dunnett snapped. He stepped toward Sharpe and held out his hand. “Give me your pistol, Lieutenant, and your saber.”

“Captain!” Madame Visser said reprovingly. “Perhaps Lieutenant Sharpe has been affected by battle? I am told it makes some men insane. I think you should place him in a hospital.”

“We shall arrest him, ma’am,” Dunnett said enthusiastically. “Give me your rifle, Sharpe.”

“Bloody take it,” Sharpe said. The anger was rising dangerously in him.

“Richard,” Captain Murray said emolliently. He took Sharpe’s elbow and showed surprise when his hand was shaken off. “This isn’t the place, Richard,” he said softly. “We can sort things out back at the village.”

“There’s nothing to bloody sort out! I didn’t do anything here!”

“You trespassed, Richard, and it ain’t a serious offense.”

“Lieutenant Sharpe!” Dunnett was becoming impatient. “You will give me your weapons now or I shall order my men to take them.”

“Parole, Warren, parole,” Murray suggested.

Madame Visser watched Sharpe with mock sympathy and a half-smile. She had won and was enjoying his humiliation. Then a new voice sounded angrily from the arch in the box hedge. “What the devil is going on?” the voice demanded, and the group on the lawn turned to see that Sir Arthur Wellesley, attended by three aides, had come to the house. “Someone tells me an officer was plundering here?” The General was plainly furious as he strode across the grass. “My God, I will not abide plundering, especially by officers. How can you expect obedience from the men when officers are corrupt?”

“I took nothing!” Sharpe protested.

“It’s you,” Wellesley said in a distant tone. Madame Visser, struck by the General’s good looks, was smiling at him while her husband bowed stiffly and introduced himself. Wellesley spoke to them in fluent French, Dunnett and Murray stood back and Sharpe stared down at the wicker table and cursed his impulsiveness.

Wellesley turned cold eyes on Sharpe. “Monsieur Visser tells me you were annoying his wife.”

“I put a bullet through her leg, sir,” Sharpe said, “if that’s what he means.”

“You did what?” Wellesley snapped.

“Last week, sir, in Copenhagen. She was pulling a man’s teeth at the time, and he was one of our agents.”

Wellesley stared at him, Madame Visser chuckled. “He’s mad, sir,” Captain Dunnett said.

“I fear the sun or else the strain of battle has gone to his head, Sir Arthur,” Madame Visser said gently. “I hurt my leg falling from a horse. Otherwise I would have ridden with my husband to witness your great victory. Instead I stayed here and Lieutenant Sharpe threatened me with a rifle, then said he would search the house for gold.” She shrugged. “It is sad, I think, but perhaps you do not pay your officers properly?”

“Is that true, Sharpe?” Wellesley’s voice was as cold as Sharpe had ever heard it.

“Of course it isn’t true, sir,” Sharpe said. He was not looking at Sir Arthur, but at the work basket. A hatpin, he thought, she had a hatpin in the work basket. My God, it was a wild chance, but perhaps the only one he had. Sir Arthur, confronted with an attractive woman, was talking to her in French and doubtless believing everything she said and in a moment he would confirm Dunnett’s order to have Sharpe arrested and so, while the General was distracted, Sharpe stooped and pulled the newspaper from beneath the work basket. It was a copy of the Berlingske Tidende, nothing strange about that, but Madame Visser still made an ineffectual lunge to grab it back from him.

Wellesley frowned. “What the devil… “ he began, then watched as Sharpe unfolded the paper and held it up to the sun. Tiny dots of light sparked on the page. Monsieur Visser and the other civilian stepped back as if to suggest they had nothing to do with whatever happened next and Sharpe just gazed at the pricks of sunlight and felt a great surge of relief. He was safe. “Sir?” he said.

Wellesley came and stood beside him, then took the paper and held it high. He stared at the pinpricks for a very long while. Dunnett, not understanding what was happening, fidgeted. Madame Visser sat still, saying nothing. The General still examined the tiny dots of light. “I’m told, sir,” Sharpe said, “that each pinprick beneath a letter is… “

“I know how the system works, thank you, Sharpe,” Wellesley said coldly. He read off each letter to decipher the hidden message, then finally lowered the newspaper. “You were employed on some obscure business for Sir David Baird, am I right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Lord Pumphrey was entangled in the affair, yes?”

“Yes, sir.”

“He woke me in London to ask my opinion of you, Sharpe.”

“He did, sir?” Sharpe could not hide his surprise.

“The message is in French, Sharpe,” the General said, carefully folding the paper, “and so far as I can see, it instructs their agents in the city to obey the Crown Prince’s instructions to burn the fleet. I imagine General Cathcart will be interested.” Wellesley thrust the folded paper back to Sharpe. “Take it to him, Sharpe. It looks as if your business is unfinished. Can you still sit on a horse?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You never did it well. Let us pray you have learned better.” He turned to one of his aides. “You will arrange for Lieutenant Sharpe to go north now. Right now! Madame? You are a diplomat, so I must leave you inviolate.”

“Such a pity,” Madame Visser said, clearly entranced by Sir Arthur.

Captain Dunnett seethed, Murray smiled and Madame Visser just shook her head at Sharpe.

Who blew her a kiss.

Then rode north.

The dinner was held in one of the big houses in Copenhagen’s suburbs, a house very similar to the one where Skovgaard had lost his two teeth. A dozen men sat about the table that was presided over by General Sir William Cathcart, tenth Baron Cathcart and commander of His Britannic Majesty’s army in Denmark. He was a heavyset and gloomy man with a perpetual look of worry that was being exacerbated by the thin, intense man sitting to his right. Francis Jackson was from the Foreign Office and had been sent to Holstein to negotiate with the Crown Prince long before Cathcart’s forces had left Britain. The Danes had refused Jackson’s demands and now he had come to Copenhagen to insist that Cathcart bombard the city. “I don’t like the notion,” Cathcart grumbled.

“You don’t have to like it,” Jackson said. He peered at the lamb and trunips on his plate as if trying to work out precisely what he had been served. “We must do it.”

“And swiftly,” Lord Pumphrey supported Jackson. The small, birdlike Pumphrey was seated to Cathcart’s left, thus completing the Foreign Office’s encirclement of the General. His lordship had chosen a white coat edged with gold braid that gave him a vaguely military look, though it was spoiled by the beauty spot that had been fixed to his cheek again. “The weather will become our enemy soon,” he said. “Is that not true, Chase?”

Captain Joel Chase of the Royal Navy, seated at the table’s far end, nodded. “The Baltic becomes very adverse in late autumn, my lord,” Chase answered in his rich Devonshire accent. “Fogs, gales, all the usual nuisances.” Chase had been invited ashore to dine with Cathcart, a courtesy that was extended every night to some naval officer, and he had brought his First Lieutenant, Peel, who had drunk too much and was now fast asleep in his chair. Chase, who had taken care to sit beside Sharpe, now leaned toward the rifleman. “What do you think, Richard?”

“We shouldn’t do it,” Sharpe said. He was sitting far enough from Cathcart for his comment to go unheard.

“We will, though,” Chase said softly. The tall, fair-haired naval Captain commanded the Pucelle, the ship on which Sharpe had served at Trafalgar and he had greeted Sharpe with obviovis delight. “My dear Richard! How good to see you. And I am so very sorry.” The two men had not met since Grace’s death and it had been aboard Chase’s ship that Grace and Sharpe had loved so passionately. “I did write,” Chase had told Sharpe, “but the letter was returned.”

“Lost the house,” Sharpe said bleakly.

“Hard, Richard, hard.”

“How are things on the Pucelle, sir?”

“We struggle by, Richard, struggle by. Let me think, who will you recall? Hopper’s still my bosun, Clouter thrives with a few fingers missing and young Collier has his lieutenant’s exams next month. He ought to pass so long as he doesn’t confuse his trigonometry.”

“What’s that?”

“Tedious stuff that you forget the day after the lieutenant’s exam,” Chase said. He had insisted on sitting next to the rifleman even though seniority should have placed him much closer to Lord Cathcart. “The man’s a bore,” he told Sharpe, “cautious and boring. He’s as bad as the Admiral. No, not quite. Gambier’s a Bible-thumper. Keeps asking if I’ve been washed in the blood of the Lamb.”

“And have you?”

“Bathed, sluiced, washed, drenched and soaked, Sharpe. Reeking of blood.” Chase had smiled, now he listened to the conversation at the table’s far end before leaning close to Sharpe again. “The truth is, Richard, they don’t want to assault the city because it’s too well walled. So we’ll unleash the mortars. Not much choice. It’s either that or have you fellows assault a breach.”

“There are women and children inside,” Sharpe protested too loudly.

Lord Pumphrey, who had been responsible for bringing Sharpe to the dinner, overheard the comment. “There are women, children and ships, Sharpe, ships.”

“Aye, but will there be any ships?” Chase asked.

“There had better bloody be ships,” Sir David Baird growled.

Cathcart ignored Baird, staring instead at Chase whose question had raised alarm around the table. Jackson, the senior diplomat, pushed a gristly scrap of lamb to one side of his plate. “The Danes,” he said, “will surely be reluctant to burn their fleet. They’ll wait till the very last minute, will they not?”

“Last minute or not,” Chase said energetically, “they’ll still burn it and ships burn fast. Remember the Achille, Richard?”

“The Achille?” Pumphrey asked.

“French seventy-four, my lord, burned at Trafalgar. One minute she was fighting, next minute an incandescent wreck. Incandescent.” He pronounced each syllable cheerfully. “We risk a city full of dead women and children in return for a pile of damp ashes.”

Cathcart, Jackson and Pumphrey all frowned at him. Lieutenant Peel woke himself up by snoring abruptly and looked about the table, startled. “The message concealed in the newspaper,” Lord Pumphrey said, “is presumably addressed to Lavisser?”

“We can assume so,” Jackson agreed, crumbling a piece of bread.

“And it grants him permission from his French masters to carry out the Danish orders to deprive us of the fleet.”

“Agreed,” Jackson said carefully.

“The good news,” Cathcart intervened, “is tha thanks to Mister”—

He paused, unable to remember Sharpe’s name—”thanks to the Lieutenant’s watchfulness, we intercepted the message.”

Lord Pumphrey smiled. “We can be quite certain, my lord, that more than one copy was sent. It would be usual in such circumstances to take such a wise precaution. We can also be certain that, because Monsieur and Madame Visser are protected by diplomatic agreement, they are free to send more such messages.”

“Precisely so,” Jackson said.

“Ah.” Cathcart shrugged and leaned back in his chair.

“And we shall look remarkably foolish,” Lord Pumphrey continued mildly, “if we were to capture the city and find, as Captain Chase so delicately phrases it, a pile of damp ashes.”

“Damn it, man,” Cathcart said, “we want the ships!”

“Prize money,” Chase whispered to Sharpe. “More wine?”

“But how to stop the ships being fired?” Pumphrey asked the table at large.

“Pray for rain,” Lieutenant Peel suggested, then blushed. “Sorry.”

General Baird frowned. “They’ll have their incendiaries ready,” he observed.

“You can explain that, Sir David?” Jackson asked.

“They’ll have stuffed the ships with incendiaries,” Baird said. “Canvas bales filled with saltpeter, mealed powder, sulphur, resin and oil”—Baird listed the ingredients with an indecent relish—”and once the fuses are lit those boats will be pure flames in three minutes. Pure flames!” He smiled, then used a candle to light a dark cigar.

“Dear God,” Jackson murmured.

“It probably isn’t sufficient then,” Lord Pumphrey spoke very judiciously, “to remove Captain Lavisser from the city?”

“Remove him?” Cathcart asked, startled.

Lord Pumphrey, so small and frail, drew a finger across his throat, then shrugged. “The message suggests that our renegade is the officer charged with delivering the order to burn the fleet, but alas, if he is absent then someone else will surely give the order.”

Everyone stared at the diminutive Pumphrey. Baird, approving the idea of killing Lavisser, smiled, but most of the other officers looked shocked. Jackson just shook his head sadly. “One devoutly wishes that such a simple solution would obviate our problem, but, alas, the Danes will have other men ready to start a conflagration.” He sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “It will be a terrible defeat,” he mused, “if we were to come this far and lose the prize.”

“But, damn it, the Frogs won’t get the ships!” Cathcart protested. “That’s the point, ain’t it?”

“A most craven defeat,” Jackson said, ignoring the General’s words, “for all the King’s horses and all the King’s men to have come this far merely to provoke a bonfire. We shall be the laughingstock of Europe.” He made the last observation to Cathcart with the obvious insinuation that his lordship would be the butt of the joke.

General Baird signaled a waiter to bring the decanter of port. “Will the ships be fully manned?” he demanded.

No one answered, but most looked to Chase for an answer. The naval Captain shrugged as if to suggest he did not know. Sharpe hesitated, then spoke up. “The sailors have been added to the garrison, sir.”

“So how many men are left aboard?” Baird demanded.

“Two or three,” Chase opined. “The ships aren’t in danger where they are, so why have crews aboard? Besides, I’m sure they’re en flûte.”

“They’re what?” Baird asked.

“En flûte, Sir David. Their guns will have been taken ashore to add to the garrison’s ordnance, so their gunports are empty like a flute’s finger-holes.”

“Why didn’t you damn well say so?”

“And ships en flûte,” Chase went on, “won’t need crews, or nothing more than a couple of fellows to keep an eye on the mooring lines, pump out the bilges and be ready to light the fuses.”

“A couple of fellows, eh?” Baird asked. “Then the question is, I suppose, how do we get a few of our fellows into the inner harbor?” Cathcart just stared at him wide-eyed. Jackson sipped port. “Well?” Baird inquired belligerently.

“I was there last week,” Sharpe said. “Walked in. No guards.”

“You can’t send men into the city! They won’t last an hour!” Cathcart protested.

“Sharpe did,” Lord Pumphrey said in his delicately high voice. He was staring at the chandelier, apparently fascinated by a lengthening strand of wax that threatened to drip into the dessert bowl. “You lasted a good few days, didn’t you, Sharpe?”

“You did?” Cathcart stared at Sharpe.

“I pretended to be an American, sir.”

“What did you do?” Cathcart asked. “Spit tobacco juice everywhere?” He had made his name in the war of American independence and reckoned himself an expert on the erstwhile colonies.

“But even if our fellows can survive in the city,” Captain Chase said, “how do we get them inside?”

Francis Jackson, elegant in a black suit and white silk shirt, snipped the end from a cigar. “How do the Danes infiltrate their messengers into the city?”

“Small boats, close inshore, dark nights,” Chase said shortly.

“There’s a small jetty,” Sharpe said diffidently, “a small wooden pier by the citadel where people go to fish. It’s very close to the fort. Too close, maybe.”

“And right under the guns of the Sixtus Battery,” one of Cathcart’s aides observed.

“But a dark night?” Chase was suddenly enthusiastic. “Muffled oars. Blackened boat. Yes, why not? But why land at the pier? Why not row all the way in?”

“There’s a boom across the outer harbor,” Sharpe said, “and across the inner, but the pier’s outside the boom.”

“Ah. The pier it is, then.” Chase smiled, then looked down the table at Cathcart. “But we’d need the Admiral’s permission to send a launch, my lord, and might I suggest, with all the humility at my command, that this is a service best done by sailors? Unless, of course, you have soldiers who can find their way around a darkened ship at night?”

“Cite a verse from the Bible,” Lord Pumphrey observed quietly, “that justifies such an expedition and I am sure Lord Gambier will grant permission.”

One or two men smiled, the others wondered whether the prickly Admiral really would authorize such a gamble. “He’ll give permission when he knows his prize money depends on it,” Baird growled.

There was an embarrassed silence. Prize money, though much appreciated, was rarely acknowledged openly. Every senior officer, army and navy, stood to make a small fortune if the Danes refused to surrender, for then the ships would be prizes of war and worth real money.

“I suspect Lieutenant Sharpe should go with your sailors,” Lord Pumphrey suggested. “He has a certain knowledge of the city.”

“I’m sure we’d welcome him,” Chase said, then looked at his friend. “Would you come?”

Sharpe thought of Astrid. “Yes, sir,” he said.

“But if it were done,” Lord Pumphrey said, “then ‘twere well it were done quickly. Your fellows will be ready to open the bombardment in a day or two, will they not?”

“If we bombard,” Cathcart growled.

“We must,” Jackson insisted.

The argument returned to its old course, whether or not to bomb the city. Sharpe sipped port, listened to Copenhagen’s bells ring the hour, and thought of Astrid.

The devil lurched up the slope and stuck at the top. “For God’s sake push, you heathen bastards!” A sergeant, muddied to his waist, snarled at a dozen men. “Push!” The devil’s eight horses were whipped, the men heaved at the wheels and the devil threatened to slide down the heap of clay. “Put your bloody backs into it!” the Sergeant bellowed. “Push!”

“Much too painful to watch,” Lord Pumphrey said and turned his back. It was the morning after Cathcart’s dinner and his lordship was feeling distinctly fragile. He and Sharpe were on a dune not far from where the devil was stuck and his lordship had an easel on which a very small piece of paper was pinned. He also had a box of watercolor paints, a tumbler of water and a set of brushes with which he was making a picture of Copenhagen’s skyline. “I do thank the Lord I was never intended for the army,” his lordship went on, touching a brush to the paper. “So very noisy.”

The devil inched over the heap of clay and trundled down to the battery. It was a grotesquely heavy cart made for transporting mortars. The mortar carriage rode on the cart while the barrel was slung beneath the rear axle. The battery already possessed six long-barreled twenty-four-pounder guns that had been fetched ashore from a ship of the line; now it was being equipped with as many mortars.

They were evil looking weapons. Just metal pots, really, squat and fat and short. The carriage was a chunk of wood in which the pot was set so it was pointing high into the air with a wedge at its front to change the elevation, though most gunners preferred to adjust their weapon’s range by varying the amount of powder in the charge. Sharpe, watching the men maneuver the devil beneath the three-legged gin that would lift the heavy barrel off the ground and onto the carriage, tried to imagine the gun being fired. There would be no recoil, for the carriage had no wheels or trails and the gun was not being fired horizontally, so instead of leaping back the squat mass of wood and iron would simply try and bury itself in the earth. The mortars being assembled in this battery were all ten-inch weapons, not the biggest, but he imagined the smoking balls arcing high into the clouding sky and thumping down inside Copenhagen.

Lord Pumphrey must have guessed his thoughts. “These guns will be firing at the citadel, Sharpe. Does that assuage your tender conscience?”

Sharpe wondered if he should tell Pumphrey about the orphans in the city, then decided such a description would be wasted on his lordship. “General Cathcart doesn’t seem to want to bombard either, my lord.”

“General Cathcart will do what his political masters instruct him to do,” Pumphrey observed, “and in the absence of any Minister of the Crown he will have to listen to Mister Jackson whether he likes it or not.”

“Not to you, my lord?” Sharpe asked mischievously.

“I am a minion, Sharpe,” Pumphrey claimed, touching his brush to the paint and frowning at his picture. “I am a lowly figure of absolutely no importance. Yet, of course, I shall use whatever small influence I can muster to encourage Cathcart to bombard the city. Beginning tomorrow night, I hope.”

“Tomorrow?” Sharpe was surprised it would be so soon.

“Why ever not? The guns should be ready and the sooner it’s done the better so we can be spared this dreadful discomfort and return to London.” Pumphrey looked quizzically at Sharpe. “But why are you squeamish? Your reputation doesn’t suggest squeamishness.”

“I don’t mind killing men,” Sharpe said, “but I never had a taste for slaughtering women and children. Too easy.”

“Easy victories are the best ones,” Pumphrey said, “and usually the cheapest. And cheapness, you must remember, is the greatest desideratum of governments. I refer, of course, to their expenditure, not to their emoluments. If a man in government cannot become rich then he doesn’t deserve the privileges of office.” He flicked the brush across the top of the paper, smearing clouds out of the grayish paint. “The trouble is,” he said, “that I never know when to finish.”

“Finish?”

“Painting, Sharpe, painting. Too much and the painting will be heavy. Watercolor should be light, suggestive, nothing more.” He stepped back and frowned at the painting. “I think it’s almost there.”

Sharpe looked at the painting. “I think it’s very good, my lord.” He did, too. Pumphrey had wonderfully caught the city’s near magical look with its green spires and domes and red roofs. “I think it’s really good.”

“How very kind you are, Sharpe, how very kind.” Pumphrey seemed genuinely pleased, then shuddered as the Sergeant cursed the men hauling on the lines that would hoist the mortar barrel. There were now fifteen batteries ringing the city’s western edge, the closest ones hard against the protective canal, while offshore the British bomb ships were anchored in an arc facing the citadel and the Sixtus Battery which together guarded the harbor entrance. The Danish gun ships were staying home. In the first few days they had done serious damage to the Royal Navy’s gun ships, for they drew less water and carried heavier ordnance, but the establishment of British shore batteries had driven them away and the city was now effectively locked in a metal embrace.

The boom of the big guns was constant, but they were all Danish as the cannon on the city walls kept a steady fire on the closest British batteries, but the shots were burying themselves in the great bulwarks of earth-filled fascines that protected the guns and mortars. Sharpe, from his vantage point on the dune, could see the smoke wreathing the wall. The city’s copper spires and red roofs showed above the churning cloud. Closer to him, among the big houses and gardens, the earth was scarred by the newly dug British batteries. A dozen houses were burning there, fired by the Danish shells that hissed across the canal. Three windmills had their sails tethered against a blustering wind that blew the smoke westward and fretted the moored fleet that filled the sea lanes to the north of Copenhagen. Over three hundred transport ships were anchored there, a wooden town afloat. The Pucelle was one of the closest big ships and Sharpe was waiting for its launch to come ashore so that tonight, if the clouds thickened to obscure the moon, they could try to enter the city. He looked at the spires again and thought of Astrid. It was odd that he could not conjure her face to his memory, but nor could he ever see Grace in his mind’s eye. He had no portrait.

“The Danes, of course, might just surrender now,” Pumphrey said. “It would be the sensible thing to do.” He was touching little smears of lighter green to highlight the city spires.

“I’ve learned one thing as a soldier,” Sharpe said, “which is that the sensible thing never gets done.”

“My dear Sharpe”—Pumphrey pretended to be impressed—”we’ll make a staff officer of you yet!”

“God forbid, my lord.”

“You don’t like the staff, Sharpe?” Pumphrey was teasing.

“What I’d like, sir, is a company of riflemen and to do some proper fighting against the Frogs.”

“You’ll doubtless get your wish.”

Sharpe shook his head. “No, my lord. They don’t like me. They’ll keep me a quartermaster.”

“But you have friends in high places, Sharpe,” Pumphrey said.

“High and hidden.”

Pumphrey frowned at his picture, suddenly unhappy with it. “Sir David will not forget you, I can assure you, and Sir Arthur, I think, keeps an eye on you.”

“He’d like to see me gone, my lord,” Sharpe said, not hiding his bitterness.

Lord Pumphrey shook his head. “I suspect you mistake his customary coldness toward all men as a particular distaste for yourself. I asked him for an opinion on you and it was very high, Sharpe, very high. But he is, I grant you, a difficult man. Very distant, don’t you think? And talking of distance, Lady Grace Hale was an extremely remote cousin. I doubt he cares one way or the other.”

“Were we talking of that, my lord?”

“No, Sharpe, we were not. And I do apologize.”

Sharpe watched as the mortar was lowered into its carriage. “What about you, my lord?” he asked. “What’s a civilian doing as an aide to a general?”

“Offering sound advice, Sharpe, offering sound advice.”

“That’s not usual, is it, my lord?”

“Sound advice is very unusual indeed.”

“It’s not usual, is it, my lord, for a civilian to be given a place on the staff?”

Lord Pumphrey shivered inside his heavy coat, though the day was not particularly cold. “You might say, Sharpe, that I was imposed on Sir David. You know he was in trouble?”

“I heard, sir.”

Baird’s career had suffered after India. He had been captured by a French privateer on his way home, spent three years as a prisoner, and on his release was sent as Governor to the Cape of Good Hope where he had foolishly allowed a subordinate to make an unauthorized raid on Buenos Aires, a whole ocean away, and the disastrous foray had led to demands for Baird’s dismissal. He had been exonerated, but the taint of disgrace still lingered. “The General,” Lord Pumphrey said, “has all the martial virtues except prudence.”

“And that’s what you give him?”

“The Duke of York was unwise enough to enroll Sir David’s help in facilitating Lavisser’s outrageous scheme. We advised against, as you know, but we also pulled a string or two to make certain that someone could keep an eye on matters. I am that all-seeing eye. And, as I said, I proffer advice. We want no more irresponsible adventures.”

Sharpe smiled. “Which is why you’re sending me back into Copenhagen, my lord?”

Pumphrey returned the smile. “If Lavisser lives, Lieutenant, then he will inevitably spread stories about the Duke of York, and the British government, in its infinite wisdom, does not want the French newspapers to be filled with salacious tales of Mary Ann Clarke.”

“Mary Ann Clarke?”

“A very beautiful creature, Sharpe, but not, alas, the Duke’s wife. The Duchess is a Prussian princess and has, I am sure, many merits, but she seems to lack Miss Clarke’s more lubricious skills.”

Sharpe saw a launch appear between two of the bomb ketches. “So you want Lavisser dead, my lord?”

“I would never presume to issue such an order,” Pumphrey said smoothly. “I merely note that you have a reputation for resourcefulness and therefore rely on you to do what is needful. And might I remind you that several thousand guineas are missing? I understand you looked for them in Vygârd?”

“I was going to return them to you, my lord.”

“The thought never once crossed my mind that you would not, Sharpe,” Pumphrey said with a smile. He watched a round shot from the citadel skip across the small waves and finally sink just short of a British gunboat. “There is, as it happens, another service you could render us in Copenhagen. That message you so cleverly intercepted? It was about more than burning the fleet, Sharpe. There was a gnomic sentence at the end to the effect that Paris is still demanding the list of names. I suspect that means Skovgaard, don’t you?”

“I’m sure it does.”

“You tell me he’s taken precautions?”

“He thinks so. He thinks God is looking after him. And he reckons I’m evil.”

“I do so dislike religious enthusiasm,” Pumphrey said, “but do call on him, if you would be so kind. Just to make sure he’s alive.” Pumphrey frowned. “What is most important, Sharpe, is not the gold. It is not Lavisser’s miserable life, nor even the unhappy chance that the Paris newspapers will spread tittle-tattle about Miss Clarke. What is important is that the French do not discover the identities of Skovgaard’s correspondents. It is a pity that they have even learned his identity, for I fear he cannot possibly be kept safe when we’re gone from here, but once this business is over I shall attempt to persuade him to move to Britain.”

“I doubt he’ll want to.”

“I find most men prefer living to dying,” Lord Pumphrey said, then stepped back to look at his painting. He shook his head in disappointment, tossed the brush down, emptied the water tumbler and closed the box of paints, evidently abandoning his efforts. “It will be sad to lose Skovgaard’s services, but doubtless another man can be found to receive messages. Do you think that’s your launch? Then might I wish you joy of the hunt in Copenhagen?” Pumphrey offered Sharpe a hand.

“Is there a reward for a successful hunt, my lord?” Sharpe asked.

“The gold is not enough?” Pumphrey inquired. “Then perhaps your reward will be the joy of catching your prey.”

“I’m tired of being a quartermaster, my lord.”

“Ah! You look for advancement!” Pumphrey smiled. “Let me see what I can offer you, Sharpe, though you may not like it.”

“Like it?” Sharpe asked, puzzled.

“After you left Harwich, Sharpe,” Lord Pumphrey said with evident enjoyment, “and before we ourselves embarked on a most uncomfortable vessel, a strange report came from London. A distressing murder in Wapping, of all places. Nothing strange in that, of course, except that a dozen witnesses swear that the criminal was an army officer. What do you make of that, Sharpe?” He waited for an answer, but Sharpe said nothing. Pumphrey shrugged. “Look after my trivial errand, Sharpe, and I shall make certain you remain an army officer, even a despised quartermaster. As for staying a quartermaster, well, I’m sure that in the proper time your own merits will elevate you far above that station and I anticipate observing your career with pride, knowing that I preserved it at a time of crisis. And, I promise you, I shall do my trivial best to advance your interests.” He looked up at the sky. “It clouds over very nicely. Forgive me if I don’t wave you farewell. I shall catch my death of cold if I stay here.”

“My lord—” Sharpe began.

Pumphrey silenced him by holding up a hand. Then he folded his easel and picked up the paint box. “The man in Wapping was decapitated, they say, quite decapitated! Do give my regards to John Lavisser, won’t you?” He walked away.

Bastard, Sharpe thought, bastard. He liked him, though. Then he turned and walked to the boat. Midshipman Collier was in charge. He had grown since Trafalgar, and was now a young man who smiled with genuine pleasure to see Sharpe. “We knew we was in for some dirty work when we heard you were coming. You remember Hopper?”

“Hopper is unforgettable,” Sharpe said, grinning at the bosun of the crew who tugged his forelock. “And Clouter!” Sharpe spotted the huge black man whose right hand was now a mangled claw of two fingers, a legacy of Trafalgar. “How are you, Clouter?”

“Right as rain, sir.”

“Shall we go?” Collier asked. Sharpe was watching Lord Pumphrey pick his fastidious way across the dunes. Be sure your sin will find you out, Sharpe thought.

So now he must go back into the city and commit murder.

And find the gold. And look for Astrid. And that last task seemed the most important.