Sharpe headed toward the harbor.
To give John Lavisser hell.
Chapter 10
Captain 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. Astr
id 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.
The 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 Studiestoede, Peder Huitfeldts Strasde, St Peters Stoede and Kannikestrasde. “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 probably 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.
“I am, sir.”
“What you might do,” the General suggested, “is find a vantage point. The spire of the Exchange, perhaps? Or the mast crane in Gammelholm? But somewhere safe. I want you to count the bombs as well as you can.”
Lavisser was puzzled. He also suspected that counting bomb flashes was a demeaning duty. “Count them, sir?” he asked with as much asperity as he could muster.
“It is important, Major,” Peymann said emphatically, “for if they fire fewer bombs tonight, we’ll know they’re running out of ammunition. We’ll know we can endure then.” And if they fire more, he thought, but he shied away from that conclusion. A message had been smuggled into the city from the Crown Prince which insisted that the city hold, so Peymann would do his best. “Count the bombs, Major,” he said, “count the bombs. As soon as the firing starts, count the bombs.” There was a chance the bombardment might be renewed during the day, but Peymann doubted it. The British were using the night. Perhaps they believed the darkness increased the terror of the bombardment, or perhaps they hid their deeds from God, but tonight, Peymann was sure, they would start their mischief again and he must judge from the intensity of their bombardment how long they could keep going. And Copenhagen must endure.
“What do I do with Aksel?” Sharpe asked Astrid that afternoon.
“What do you want to do?”
“Kill him.”
“No!” She frowned in disapproval. “Can’t you just let him go?”
“And he’ll have soldiers back here in ten minutes,” Sharpe said. “He’ll just have to wait where he is.”
“Till when?”
“Till the city surrenders,” Sharpe said. Another night like the last, he reckoned, and Copenhagen would give in.
And what then, he wondered? Would he stay? If he did, then he would be joining a nation that was Britain’s enemy and France’s ally, and suppose they wanted him to fight? Would he take off the green uniform and put on a blue one? Or would Astrid go to Britain? And what would he do then, except fight and so strand her in a strange country? A soldier should not marry, he thought.
“What are you thinking?” Astrid asked.
“That it’s time to get ready.” He bent and kissed her, then pulled on his clothes and went down to the yard. The city had the horrid smell of spent powder and a thin veil of smoke still smeared the sky, but at least the rain had stopped. He took bread and water to Bang who watched him sullenly but said nothing. “You’ll stay here, Aksel,” Sharpe told him,
“till it’s all over.”
He relocked the makeshift prison door, then woke Hopper and Clouter. The three of them squatted in the yard where they made new fuses for three of the unexploded bombs. The wooden fuse plugs had to be extracted, the old failed fuse stubs pushed out of the holes in the plugs, and the new quick match inserted. “When we get inside,” Sharpe told them, “we kill everyone.”
“Maids too?” Hopper asked.
“Not women,” Sharpe said, “and not Skovgaard, if he’s alive. We go in, we find him and we get out, and we kill all the men. We’re not going to have time to be particular.” He trimmed the quick fuse, leaving a tiny stub so that the bomb would explode within seconds of being lit.
“How many of the bastards?” Clouter asked.
Sharpe did not know. “Half a dozen?” he guessed. “And I reckon they’re Frogs, not Danes.” He had been wondering who shot at him the previous night, and he had concluded that the French must have left men behind when their embassy went south. “Or they might be Danes who’ve signed up for the Frogs,” he added.
“Same thing,” Hopper said, using his shoe to hammer the wooden plug back into the bomb. “But what are they doing here?”
“They’re spies,” Sharpe said. “There’s a dirty secret war being fought all across Europe and they’re here to kill our spies and we’re here to kill them.”
“Is there extra pay for killing spies?” Clouter asked.
Sharpe grinned. “I can’t promise it, but with any luck you’ll get as much gold as you can carry.” He looked up at the sky. Dusk was close, but the late summer twilight would linger for a time. They must wait.
There was an air of exhaustion over the city. The British batteries were masked and silent. The Danish guns fired on, but slowly, as if they knew their efforts were being wasted on fascines and earthworks. Some howitzers had been brought from the battered citadel and placed behind the wall and their gunners tried to loft shells into the closest British batteries, but no one could see what effect the shots were having.
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