Sharpe 3-Book Collection 3: Sharpe's Trafalgar, Sharpe's Prey, Sharpe's Rifles (70 page)

“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.

He stepped into the boat, still confused.

T
HE LAUNCH, INSTEAD OF
taking Sharpe to the
Pucelle
, carried him only as far as the
Vesuvius
, a bomb ship anchored much closer to the harbor mouth. Captain Chase was waiting aboard to the evident apprehension of the
Vesuvius
’s commander, a mere lieutenant, who was in awe of having a genuine post captain aboard his vessel. Sharpe and Collier, being officers, were formally whistled aboard at the bomb ship’s waist while the launch’s crew scrambled over the bows. “I thought we’d spend the day here,” Chase explained. “I’m sending my crew into the city with you, Sharpe, and it’s much less far to pull from here than from the
Pucelle
. I brought dinner with me.”

“And weapons, sir?”

“Hopper has your arsenal.”

Sharpe still had the rifle he had borrowed at Køge, but he had asked Chase for more weapons and Hopper had brought them from the
Pucelle
. There was a heavy cutlass, two pistols and one of the massive seven-barreled guns that Sharpe had used at Trafalgar. It was a naval weapon of stunning ferocity and limited usefulness. The seven barrels, each of a half-inch diameter, were clustered so they could be fired together, but the gun, which had been designed to fire down from the rigging onto an enemy deck, took an age to reload. Nevertheless, used once and used right, it was devastating. Sharpe hung the squat, heavy gun next to the rifle on his shoulder and strapped the cutlass round his waist. “Good to have a proper blade again. So you’re coming into the city, Hopper?”

“Captain wanted the best, sir,” Hopper said, then hesitated. “The lads and me, sir . . .”

“You’re the best,” Sharpe said.

“No, sir.” Hopper shook his head to indicate that Sharpe had mis-understood him. He was a huge man with a tarred pigtail and a skin smothered in tattoos, who now blushed. “Me and the lads, sir,” he said, shifting uncomfortably and unable to meet Sharpe’s gaze, “we wanted to say how sorry we were, sir. She was a proper lady.”

“She was.” Sharpe smiled, touched by the words. “Thank you, Hopper.”

“They were going to send you a gift for your child,” Chase told him a few moments later when the two men were ensconced in the
Vesuvius
’s small after cabin. “They made a crib from some of the
Pucelle
’s timbers broken at Trafalgar. It was probably burned in the galley fire when they heard the news. Sad days, Richard, sad days. So. You’re ready for tonight?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Young Collier’s in charge of the landing party,” Chase said. “I wanted to go myself, but the Admiral refused me permission. The wretched man said I was too valuable!”

“He’s right, sir.”

“He’s a tedious bore, Richard, who should be in charge of some canting little chapel instead of a fleet. But Collier knows his business.” Sharpe was dubious that an officer as young as Collier should command the landing party, but Chase was blithely confident. The men, once ashore, were to go to the inner harbor and there board a ship. Any ship, Chase said, because once safely aboard they would hide on the lower decks. “Effectively the ships are laid up,” Chase explained, “which means no one’s aboard except possibly a few fellows who’ll light the fuses and you can wager ten years’ salary to a farthing that they’ll be wallowing in the officers’ quarters. Collier’s fellows can wait down below and the only risk, frankly, is if the Danes are doing any work aboard. One carpenter down in the ship’s well and we’ll have to start cutting throats.”

“When do you cut the fuses?” Sharpe asked.

“Collier will have to judge the moment,” Chase said, and the careless answer worried Sharpe even though it was none of his business. He was going into the city to hunt Lavisser while the cutting of the Danish fleet’s fuses was Collier’s responsibility and again Sharpe wondered if the young Midshipman was really the right man, but Chase would not abide any doubts. “He’ll do splendidly, Richard, just splendidly. Now, how about some dinner? I’ve brought chine, tongue and cold hog’s puddings.”

“Hog’s puddings?”

“Devonshire food, Sharpe, real food! I do like a hog’s pudding.”

Sharpe slept that afternoon, rocked into dreams by the small waves. When he woke it was a rainy dusk and the ship was alive with shouts, the sound of a capstan creaking and the shuffle of men’s feet. The ship, it seemed, was being adjusted. The two huge mortars in the
Vesuvius
’s belly were fixed, so to aim their shells the whole ship had to be pointed at the target and this was achieved by tightening or loosening the cables of four anchors that held the gun ship in a tensioned web. “There! No! Too far!” a midshipman shouted. “Larboard bow anchor let go two steps!”

“They must do it twice a day,” Chase said. “The tide affects it, I gather.”

“What are they aiming at?”

“That big fort.” Chase pointed toward the citadel that loomed above the small fishing pier where Sharpe hoped to land that night. “They’ll drop the bombs straight down its gullet. Shall we finish the tongue for supper? Then you’ll leave at midnight.”

The launch was being readied. The rudder pintles were greased so they would not squeak and the tholes, which held the oars, were wrapped in rags while the hull and oars were painted black with Stockholm tar. The launch crew looked like pirates for they were hung with weapons and all dressed in dark clothes. A Danish seaman from the
Pucelle
’s larboard watch had been made an honorary member of the launch crew for the expedition. “Can you trust the man?” Sharpe asked Chase.

“Trust him with my life, Richard. He’s been a Pucelle longer than I have. And Collier needs a fellow who can talk the language.”

The night fell. The clouds made it utter dark, so black that Sharpe wondered how the launch would ever find its way into the harbor mouth, but Chase reassured him. He pointed to a distant lantern that glowed a pale blue. “That’s hanging from one of the
Pucelle
’s yardarms and we’re going to put another lantern on the
Vesuvius
’s foremast, and as long as young Collier keeps the two blue lights in line then he’ll go straight as an arrow. The navy does try to anticipate these problems.” He paused. “Would you very much mind, Richard, if I didn’t see you away? I’m feeling somewhat sickly. Just something I ate. I need sleep. Do you feel well?”

“Very.”

“I wish you joy, Richard,” Chase said, clapped his shoulder and walked aft.

It seemed a strangely abrupt farewell, and it did not seem right that Chase should be sleeping when the launch crew left, but Sharpe suspected Chase’s sickness was as much to do with nervousness as an upset stomach. Sharpe himself was nervous. He was about to try and pierce an enemy stronghold, and doing it in a launch that offered no hiding place if they were discovered. He watched Chase go to the after quarters, then went and waited in the
Vesuvius
’s well deck where the great mortars crouched and where Hopper and his men honed knives and cutlasses.

It seemed an age until Collier ordered the embarkation and then it took another long while for all the men, encumbered with their weapons and carrying bags of food and skins of water, to clamber down the bomb ship’s side into the tar-stinking launch. The men were oddly excited, almost giggly, so much so that Collier snapped at them to be quiet, then sensibly checked that none of them had loaded weapons for he feared the accidental discharge of a pistol or musket. Rain had started to fall. It was not heavy, merely an insistent drizzle that found its way down Sharpe’s upturned collar.

The launch was crowded. It usually had a crew of a dozen men, but now held fifteen. They had embarked over the side of
Vesuvius
that lay farthest from the city and, at Collier’s order, the men now rowed a few strokes to take them clear of the bomb ship. The great oars were silent in the tholes, though once they were a few yards from the
Vesuvius
Collier ordered the men to stop rowing. “The tide will take us in,” he whispered to Sharpe. There was no need to whisper for they were still more than half a mile from the shore, but already they were feeling vulnerable.

The launch drifted. Every now and then the stroke or bow side oars would pull a brief correction to keep the pale-blue lanterns in line. The blue was very pale, almost white, and Sharpe, twisting about on the rear thwart, marveled that the men could distinguish those two lamps from all the other lights in the fleet. Most of the time the crew stayed still and silent, listening for the telltale splashes and creaks that would betray the presence of a Danish guard boat. There was bound to be at least one enemy boat patroling the harbor boom to prevent just such an incursion as this one by the
Pucelle
’s darkened launch.

A few lights burned in the city, their reflections glimmering long and shakily on the black water. A wind gusted cold out of the east, splashing small waves against the launch. Sharpe shivered. He could smell the harbor now, its water made rank by all the sewage and rot that was penned up by the long quays. A small flame flared and died on the ramparts of the citadel and Sharpe supposed it was a sentinel lighting a pipe. He turned to see that the lanterns of the British fleet now looked very far away and were blurred by the rain, then a hiss from the launch’s bows made everyone go still. Sharpe heard a splash nearby and the groan of an oar in its rowlock. An enemy guard boat was close and Sharpe waited, scarce daring to breathe, but the next splash was fainter. He thought he saw a flash of white water from an oar, but he could not be certain. Collier and his men were bending low as if they might hide from the patroling enemy in the dark of the sea’s surface.

A reddish glow now showed above the citadel’s ramparts, cast by the lanterns in its central courtyard. The launch was drifting faster now, carried in by the fierce tide. Sharpe could not see the pier and he tried not to think of the big Danish guns in the embrasures above him. Just one barrel, loaded with canister, could turn the launch into a mess of bloodstained kindling. The first of the city clocks struck one.

Then the launch bumped into an obstacle. Sharpe gripped the gunwale, sticky with its coating of tar. His first thought was that they had drifted into the boom, or perhaps struck a rock, then he realized that the bow men were clambering out of the launch. They had reached the pier, guided unerringly by the blue leading lights. He heard thumps as the big bags of food and ammunition were heaved upward. “We’ll just leave the boat here,” Collier whispered, “let it drift.”

Sharpe groped his way forward, then scrambled awkwardly up to the wooden staging which smelt of fish. “So where now, Richard?” a low voice asked him.

Sharpe turned, astonished. “Sir?”

“Shh.” Captain Chase grinned in the dark. “Admiral Gambier thinks I’m ill, but I couldn’t possibly let these lads come without me.” His lads were all grinning. They had known the Captain was coming, which was why they had been so excited when they left the
Vesuvius
. “So where to, Richard?” Chase asked.

“You shouldn’t be here, sir,” Sharpe said fiercely.

“Not you too, for God’s sake. Besides, a little late to tell me, don’t you think?” Chase was wearing his uniform, but now draped a boat cloak over his shoulders. “Lead on, Richard, lead on.”

Sharpe took them along the pier, always aware of the huge guns not a hundred paces away, then left down the path where he had walked with Astrid. Their boots seemed loud. Then, not twenty paces from the pier, a voice challenged from the garden where a battery of field guns had been placed behind fascines.

Chase’s Danish seaman answered. There was a brief laugh from the darkness, then another rattle of words. The other seamen had stopped, hands on weapons, but the tone of the exchange was reassuring and Chase led them on. “What did you tell him?” the Captain asked when they were clear of the battery.

“The truth,” the man said. “I told him we were British sailors come to capture the fleet.”

“You did?” Chase sounded alarmed.

“My mother said I’d go to hell if I lied, sir. Then I told him our boat had sprung a leak and we were walking back. He thinks we’re the guard-boat crew.”

Chase chuckled. There was just enough light seeping from lamps in the city to cast a damp shine on the road beside the harbor quay, which was heaped with barrels of food stockpiled for a siege. “Does this strike you as damned odd, Richard?” Chase asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“My God, we’re in an enemy fortress!” Chase peered down alleys, plainly disappointed that there was so little to see. The city seemed asleep, not just the civilians, but the garrison too. There was an innocence here, Sharpe thought. Copenhagen might be under siege, yet still the city wanted to carry on with its ordinary life. No one wanted war and Sharpe sensed that the folk perversely believed it would go away if they ignored it. All that Denmark asked was to be left in peace while Europe went mad, but the Danes had ships and so they must have war whether they liked it or not.

They passed the Amalienborg Palace. There must have been sentries there, but none challenged the group of men whose footsteps echoed from the palace walls. A cat squealed somewhere and rats skittered in the dark. The quay, which had been almost empty on the day the Crown Prince had left for Holstein, was now crowded with moored craft, most of them merchantmen that had taken refuge from the British fleet. The wind slanted the persistent rain through their high rigging. “I keep thinking I shall wake up and discover this is a dream,” Chase said.

“We’re not at the inner harbor yet,” Sharpe warned. Surely the Danes would guard their fleet? Yet the bridge had no sentries. The masts and rigging of the warships tangled the dark, dimly lit by a brazier that glowed outside a guardhouse that stood close to the two half-built ships on the slipways. Sharpe assumed it was a guardhouse, for there was a small covered booth for a sentry, but the booth was empty.

Chase led them down the stone quay that separated the inner and outer harbors. It was suddenly all ridiculously easy. The Danes had packed their fleet into the basin, gunwale to gunwale, and the bows of the warships touched the quay so that their bowsprits soared above the stones. Chase gestured at the very first ship and his men, with a practiced ease, scrambled into the netting rigged under the beakhead. Then, one by one, they vanished inside the bows. Sharpe waited till the last bundle had been passed up, then followed more clumsily.