Sharpe 3-Book Collection 3: Sharpe's Trafalgar, Sharpe's Prey, Sharpe's Rifles (74 page)

“Some coffee,” Bang declared, “coffee and jute.”

“You do take me for a bloody fool, Aksel,” Sharpe said. He drew out his pocket knife.

“I have done nothing!” Bang glared at him.

Sharpe smiled and unfolded the blade. “Coffee and jute? No, Aksel, you were selling a soul, and now you’re going to tell me all about it.”

“I have told you the truth!” Bang declared indignantly.

Sharpe pushed him against the crate, then held the blade just under Bang’s left eye. “We’ll take this one first, Aksel. Eyeballs just pop out. It’s not even very painful at first. We’ll have the left one, then the right, and after that I’ll fill the sockets with salt. You’ll be screaming then.”

“No! Please!” Bang screamed now, and feebly tried to push Sharpe away. Sharpe pressed the cold blade into the flesh and Bang squealed like a gelded pig. “No!” he wailed.

“Then tell me the truth, Aksel,” Sharpe said, pressing harder. “I’ll exchange the truth for your eyes.”

The tale was not told straight for Bang desperately wanted to justify himself. Mister Skovgaard, he said, was a traitor to Denmark. He had been supplying news to the British and were not the British the enemies of Denmark? And Ole Skovgaard was a mean, tight-fisted man. “I have worked for him two years now and he has not raised my wages once. A man must have prospects, he must have prospects.”

“Go on,” Sharpe said. He tossed the knife into the air and Bang watched it circle and glitter, then gave a start when the handle slapped back into Sharpe’s hand. “I’m listening,” Sharpe said.

“It is not right what Mister Skovgaard was doing,” Bang said. “He is a traitor to Denmark.” He gave a small whimper, not because of anything Sharpe had done, but because Astrid, in a swathing green robe, had come down to the warehouse. Bang’s scream must have woken her and she was carrying Sharpe’s rifle, half expecting a thief, but now laid the weapon down and looked inquisitively at Sharpe.

“Aksel’s telling us a story,” Sharpe said, “of how he sold your father for twenty pieces of gold.”

“No!” Bang protested.

“Don’t piss on me!” Sharpe shouted, frightening Astrid as much as Bang. “Tell the damned truth!”

The damned truth was that a man had approached Bang and persuaded him that his patriotic duty was to betray Skovgaard. “For Denmark,” Bang insisted. He claimed to have agonized over his decision, but it seems the agony was helped by a promise of gold and when Skovgaard suggested that the two of them attend a prayer meeting Bang had let his new friend know where and when the prayers would be offered. A coach had been waiting beside the church and Skovgaard had been snatched from the street in an instant.

Astrid had gone pale. She just stared at Bang, scarce crediting what she heard. Sharpe put the knife close to Bang’s eye again. “So you sold him, Aksel, then celebrated with gin?”

“They said it would make me feel better,” Bang admitted sadly. “I did not know it was gin.”

“What the hell did you think it was? The milk of human kindness?” Sharpe was tempted to thrust the knife home, but instead he stepped back. “So you’ve given Astrid’s father to Lavisser?”

“I do not know Major Lavisser,” Bang insisted, as though that made his offense less heinous.

“That’s what you did,” Sharpe said. “I was there an hour ago and the house was guarded like a newly built outpost. You gave him to the French, Aksel.”

“I gave him to Danes!”

“You gave him to the French, you bloody fool. And God knows what they’re doing to him. They pulled two teeth before.”

“They promised me they would not hurt him.”

“You pathetic bastard,” Sharpe said. He looked at Astrid. “You want me to kill him?”

She shook her head. “No, no.”

“He bloody deserves it,” Sharpe said. But instead he took Bang out to the yard where there was a brick-built stable that had a solid door with a heavy padlock. Sharpe locked Bang inside, then investigated the handcart that had been placed beside the yard gate. Eight unexploded bombs lay on the cart. They were probably safe, but in the morning he would pull out the wooden fuse plugs and pour water into the charges just to make sure. He went back to the warehouse, pocketed the guineas, and then climbed the stairs. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Astrid was shivering, though it was hardly cold. “Those men,” she said falteringly.

“The same men as before,” Sharpe said, “and they’ve got the house in Bredgade tight as a prison.”

“What are they doing to him?”

“Asking him questions,” Sharpe said. And he did not doubt that the questions would eventually be answered, which meant that those answers had to stay in Copenhagen. The list of names had to be kept from the French, but that meant getting into the house on Bredgade and Sharpe could not do that without help.

He put his hands on Astrid’s shoulders. “I’m going out again,” he told her, “but I’ll be back, I promise I’ll be back. Stay here. Can you keep the warehouse closed? And don’t let Aksel out.”

“I won’t.”

“He’ll be weeping on you. He’ll be claiming he’s thirsty or hungry or dying, but don’t listen. If you or the maids open that door he’ll jump on you. That’s what he wants.”

“He just wants money,” she said bitterly.

“He wants you, love. He thinks that if your father vanished then you’d cling to him. He wants you, the warehouse, the money, everything.” He hefted the seven-barreled gun. “Keep the house locked,” he warned her. “No one comes or goes except me. And I’ll be back.”

It was almost dawn. The fires were going out slowly, though the fiercest of the blazes still lit a darkness in which no bombs fell, just a greasy ash that dropped like black snow in the dying night. Houses burned white hot and the water spurted by the feeble pumps was turned to steam that joined the thick smoke smearing the sky all across Zealand. Water was scarce for the city’s supply had been cut and the pumps had to wait for barrels to be fetched from the harbor and that took time, yet slowly the clanking pumps and the small rain contained the fires. The tired men could smell roasted flesh in the embers. Coffins were laid in the streets, while the hospitals were filled with whimpering people.

Sharpe headed toward the harbor.

To give John Lavisser hell.

C
APTAIN JOEL CHASE
scarcely dared believe his luck. All night his men had scrambled from ship to ship and found not a living Danish soul aboard the great warships. The fleet had been stripped of its seamen who had been sent to serve the great guns on the city walls, stand guard on the ramparts or carry water to the fire pumps. Chase had worried that perhaps the laid-up ships were being used as dormitories for the crews, but there were no slung hammocks and Chase realized that no sailor would be allowed to live aboard in case some fool should drop a speck of glowing tobacco near a fuse. The crews had evidently been billeted in the city and the Danish fleet had become the kingdom of rats and of Chase’s men, who worked in the dark to sever fuses and dump incendiaries overboard. Where the incendiaries were on open decks, easily visible to a casual inspection, they were left, but the bundles on the lower decks were eased through gunports and lowered to the harbor’s stinking water.

Sharpe came back to the inner harbor just before dawn. A small mist drifted through the fleet’s rigging as he crouched under the forepeak of the
Christian VII.
“Pucelle!”
he hissed,
“Pucelle!”

“Sharpe?” It was Midshipman Collier who, with two men, was serving as Chase’s picket.

“Help me aboard. Where’s the Captain?”

Chase was in the captain’s cabin on board the
Skiold
where, in the small light of a shielded lantern, he combed through the charts of the Baltic. “Extraordinary detail, Richard! Far better than our own. See this shoal off Riga? Not even marked on my charts. Tommy Lister, a splendid fellow, almost lost the
Naiad
on that shoal and the fools in Admiralty swore it wasn’t there. We’ll take these. You’ll have a brandy? This captain does himself well.”

“What I want,” Sharpe said, “is two or three men.”

“When people say two or three,” Chase said, pouring the brandies, “they usually mean four or five.”

“Two will do,” Sharpe said.

“And for what?” Chase asked. He sat on the cushioned bench under the stern window and listened to Sharpe. The city clocks struck four and a thin gray light began to show at the
Skiold
’s stern windows as Sharpe finished. Chase sipped his brandy. “So let me summarize,” he said. “There is a man, this Skovgaard, who may or may not be alive, but whose rescue would be in Britain’s best interest?”

“If he’s alive,” Sharpe said dourly.

“Which he probably ain’t,” Chase agreed, “in which case you think there may be a list of names that can be retrieved?”

“I hope so.”

“And whether there is or isn’t,” Chase said, “you’d still like this fellow Lavisser killed?”

“Yes, sir.”

Chase listened to the gulls screaming overhead. “The trouble, Richard,” he said after a while, “is that none of this is official. Lord Pumphrey took very great care, did he not, to make sure nothing was written down? No signed orders. That way he can’t take the blame if anything goes wrong. It’s dirty work, Richard, dirty work.”

“If the French have got the list of names off Skovgaard, sir, then they’ve got to be stopped.”

Chase appeared not to hear Sharpe. “And what authority does Pumphrey have to issue such orders anyway? He’s not a military man. Anything but, in fact.”

Sharpe had said nothing of Pumphrey’s veiled threat about a murder in Wapping, nor did he think Chase would want to hear of it. “If it wasn’t for Pumphrey, sir,” he said instead, “you wouldn’t be here.”

“I wouldn’t?” Chase sounded dubious.

“It was the newspaper, sir, that told us the Danes’ plan to burn this fleet. I took it to Lord Pumphrey and he arranged the rest.”

“He’s a busy little fellow, isn’t he?” Chase gazed fixedly out of the stern window, though the only thing visible there were the bows of another warship. He thought Sharpe’s argument was weak and suspected there was something unsaid, but he did recognize the importance of safeguarding Skovgaard’s correspondents. He sighed. “I do dislike dirty work,” he said mildly, “and especially when it comes from the Foreign Office. They expect the navy to clean the world for them.”

“I have to do it, sir,” Sharpe said, “with or without your help.”

“Have to?” Chase asked. “Truly?”

Sharpe paused. If he was to stay in Denmark, then what did it matter if he was suspected of a murder in far-off London? But if Skovgaard was dead, would he stay? Or would Astrid return to Britain? It was all too complicated. What was simple was that Skovgaard’s names needed to be salvaged and Lavisser needed to be buried. That was simple enough to understand. “Yes, sir,” he said, “I have to.”

Midshipman Collier knocked on the cabin door, then entered without waiting to be bidden. “Sorry to interrupt, sir, but it looks like there’s a pumping party beating the bounds.”

“Then we’d best be moving,” Chase said.

“Pumping party?” Sharpe asked.

“Ships leak, Richard!” Chase said cheerfully, getting to his feet. “Can’t just leave ’em floating here. They’ll all end up in the mud. So they’re sending fellows to pump all the bilges. It won’t take them long, but we should still hide.”

“Won’t they find your cut fuses?”

“They’ll notice nothing. We took care. Thank you, Mister Collier. Everyone back to the rat hole!” Chase scooped up the charts and smiled at Sharpe. “Will Hopper and Clouter be enough for you?”

Sharpe hardly believed his ears for a second. “Hopper and Clouter, sir?”

“I’m not sure I approve, Richard, but I do trust your judgment. And those two are my best fellows so they should keep you out of harm’s way. But do bring them back alive, I beg you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“There’s nothing else you need?”

“Quick fuse, sir.”

“Plenty of that!” Chase said brightly.

It was past eight in the morning when Sharpe left. The pumping party was working its way down the row of bigger ships, but none of the Danes noticed the three men drop through the
Christian VII
’s hawsehole onto the quay. All three were armed. Hopper had another seven-barreled gun, two pistols and a cutlass, while Clouter had a boarding axe and two pistols. They crossed the bridge and no one remarked on them. Just a fortnight before, an armed man received curious glances in Copenhagen, but now a British rifleman and two British seamen could carry enough ordnance to fillet a company and be ignored. Nor was the sight of two pigtailed men, one with a face covered in tattoos and the other black, unusual, for Copenhagen was well used to sailors. It was simply thought they were going to the walls where the remaining Danish guns had opened fire on the British batteries. A few folk wished Sharpe and his companions good morning and received grunts in reply.

Sharpe unlocked Skovgaard’s door. Astrid heard him and came from the office with her black sleeves protected from ink by white cotton sheaths. She looked alarmed at the sight of Hopper and Clouter, for both were huge men, but they snatched off their straw hats and tugged their forelocks.

“They’re staying here today,” Sharpe told her.

“Who are they?”

“Friends,” Sharpe said. “I need them to get your father out. But I can’t do it until the bombardment starts again. Is there somewhere they can sleep?”

“The warehouse,” Astrid suggested. She told Sharpe she had sent the workers away when they had arrived just after dawn. She had promised the men their wages, but said her father wanted them to help look for survivors among the burned houses. She had then ordered the maids to clean the long-neglected attics, while she had gone to her father’s office and pulled out the big ledgers. “There is never time to check the figures properly,” she told Sharpe once Clouter and Hopper were settled in the empty warehouse, “and I know he wants it done.” She worked in silence for a while, then Sharpe saw an inked entry in one of the columns suddenly dissolve as a tear splashed on it. Astrid cuffed her face. “He’s dead, isn’t he?” she asked.

“We don’t know.”

“And it will have been painful.”

“We don’t know,” Sharpe said again.

“We do,” she said, looking up at him.

“I can’t go back there till the bombardment starts,” Sharpe said bleakly.

“It is not your fault, Richard.” She put the quill down. “I am so tired.”

“Then go and rest. I’ll take the boys something to eat.”

She went upstairs. Sharpe found bread, cheese and ham, then ate with Hopper and Clouter. Aksel Bang rattled the door in the yard, but went silent when Sharpe growled that he was in a killing mood.

It was almost midday when Sharpe went upstairs. He opened the bedroom door silently to find thick curtains drawn and the room dark, yet he sensed Astrid was awake. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“For what?”

“For everything,” he said, “everything.” He sat on the bed. Despite the dark he could see her face and the astonishing gold of her hair on the pillow.

He thought he ought to explain exactly who Hopper and Clouter were, but when he began she just shook her head. “I thought you would never come upstairs,” she said.

“I’m here,” Sharpe said.

“Then don’t leave.”

“Never,” he promised.

“I have been so lonely,” Astrid said, “since Nils died.”

And I, Sharpe thought, since Grace. He hung his cutlass on a chair and eased off his boots. A cold wind spat rain from the east and drifted smoke from the city’s ruins. The guns on the walls fired on and Sharpe and Astrid, eventually, slept.

T
HE GUNS
on the city’s western walls fired all day. They fired till the rain falling on their barrels turned to instant vapor. Shot and shell ploughed into the British batteries, but the earth-filled fascines soaked up all the violence and behind their screens and parapets the British gunners stacked more ammunition for the mortars.

The city smoldered. The last flames were put out, but embers glowed deep in ruined houses and churches, and every now and then those embers would spark the fuse of an unexploded bomb and the blast would rattle the city’s windows and folk would duck into doorways and wait for the next missile to fall. They would peer anxiously skyward and see that no fuses left smoke trails in the sky. There was just silence.

General Peymann toured the damaged streets, shuddering at the sight of gaunt scorched walls and at the smell of roasted flesh buried in ash. “How many homeless?” he asked.

“Hundreds,” was the bleak answer.

“Can they live on the ships?”

“Not if we have to burn the fleet,” an aide answered. “It could take hours to get folk ashore.”

“The churches are coping,” another aide said, “and if you order it, sir, the university will open its doors.”

“Of course it must! Of course it must!” Peymann watched as a group of sailors dragged charred rafters aside to retrieve a body. He did not want to know how many were dead. Too many. He knew he must visit the hospitals and he dreaded it, but it was his duty. For now, though, he must prepare the city for more horror, and he ordered that the breweries must donate their largest casks which should be placed at street corners and filled with seawater. The British had somehow cut the city’s fresh water supply, which meant the fire pumps were ever running short, but the casks would help. Or he hoped they would help. In truth he knew it was a futile gesture, for the city had no real protection. It just had to endure. He walked the ruined streets, edging between the fallen piles of masonry and the smoking ruins that had been Studiestræde, Peder Huitfeldts Stræde, St Peters Stræde and Kannikestræde. “How many shells did they use last night?”

“Four thousand?” an aide estimated. “Five, perhaps?”

“And how many do they have left?” That was the question. When would the British guns run out of ammunition? For then they would have to wait for more to be fetched from England, and by then the nights would be longer and perhaps the Crown Prince would come from Holstein with an army of regular troops that would vastly outnumber the British force. This misery, Peymann thought, could yet be turned to victory. The city just had to survive.

Major Lavisser, his face drawn and somber, picked his way across a spill of fallen bricks. He stopped to pick up a child’s petticoat that had somehow escaped the flames, then threw it away. “I’m late for duty, sir,” he said to Peymann. “I apologize.”

“You had a long night, I’m sure.”

“I did,” Lavisser said, though it had not been spent in fighting fires. He had employed the dark hours by questioning Ole Skovgaard and the memory gave him satisfaction, though he was still worried by the unexplained visitor who had wounded two of his men in the yard. A thief, Barker reckoned, probably a soldier or sailor using the bombardment as an opportunity to plunder the rich houses on Bredgade. Lavisser had worried at first that it might have been Sharpe, but had persuaded himself that the rifleman was long gone back to the British army. Barker was proba-bly right, merely a thief, though a well-armed one.

General Peymann stared up at a shattered church tower where a single bell was suspended from a blackened beam on which a pigeon perched. The remnants of the church pews gave off a choking smoke. A child’s leg protruded from the embers and he turned away, revolted. It was time to visit the hospitals and though he did not want to face the burn victims, he knew he must. “You’re on duty tonight?” he asked Lavisser.