Guineas. The golden horsemen of Saint George. Sharpe lifted one, looking at the image of the saint lancing the writhing dragon. Rich, thick, gold coins, and the chest had enough to suborn a kingdom, but it could spare a little for Lieutenant Sharpe and so he stole fifteen of the heavy coins that he secreted in his pockets before restoring the bags. He was just putting the last one in place when there was the thud of feet dropping down the companionway ladder immediately outside the cabin. Sharpe closed the chest lid and sat on it to hide the absence of a padlock. The cabin door opened and Barker came in with a bucket. He saw Sharpe and paused.
Sharpe pretended to be pulling on his boots. He looked up at the hulking Barker who had to stoop beneath the beams. “So you were a footpad, Barker?”
“That’s what the Captain told you.” Barker put the bucket down.
“Where?” Sharpe asked.
Barker hesitated, as if suspecting a trap in the question, then shrugged. “Bristol.”
“Don’t know it,” Sharpe said airily. “And now you’re reformed?”
“Am I?”
“Are you?”
Barker grimaced. “I’m looking for Mister Lavisser’s coat.”
Sharpe could see the padlock in a corner of the cabin and hoped Barker did not notice it. “So what will you do if the French interfere with us?”
Barker scowled at Sharpe. It seemed as if he had not understood the question, or else he just hated talking to Sharpe, but then he sneered. “How will they even know we’re there? The master speaks Danish and you and I will keep our gobs shut.” He plucked a coat from a hook on the back of the door and left without another word.
Sharpe waited for his steps to fade, then restored the padlock to the hasp. He did not like Barker and the feeling was evidently mutual. On the face of it the man made a strange servant for Lavisser, yet Sharpe had met plenty of gentlemen who liked to mix with brutes from the gutter. Such men enjoyed listening to the stories and felt flattered by the friendships, and presumably Lavisser shared their taste. Maybe, Sharpe reflected, that explained why Lavisser was being so friendly to himself.
Next day he used two of the guineas to bribe the ship’s Master-at-Arms who made the gold vanish into a pocket with the speed of a conjurer and an hour later brought Sharpe a well-honed cutlass and two heavy sea-service pistols with a bag of cartridges. “I’d be obliged, sir, if Captain Samuels didn’t know about this,” the Master-at-Arms said, “on account that he’s a flogger when he’s aggravated. Keep ’em hidden till you’re ashore, sir.” Sharpe promised he would. There would be no difficulty in keeping the promise during the voyage, but he did not see how he was to carry the weapons off the ship without Captain Samuels seeing them, then thought of the chest. He asked Lavisser to put them with the gold.
Lavisser laughed when he saw the cutlass and heavy-barreled guns. “You couldn’t wait till we reached Vygârd?”
“I like to know I’m armed,” Sharpe said.
“Armed? You’ll look like Bluebeard if you carry that lot! But if it makes you happy, Richard, why not? Your happiness is my prime concern.” Lavisser took the chest’s key from a waistcoat pocket and raised the lid. “A sight to warm your chill heart, eh?” he said, indicating the dull gray bags. “A fortune in every one. I fetched it myself from the Bank of England and, Lord, what a fuss! Little men in pink coats demanding signatures, enough keys to lock up half the world, and deep suspicion. I’m sure they thought I was going to steal the gold. And why not? Why don’t you and I just divide it and retire somewhere gracious? Naples? I’ve always wanted to visit Naples where I’m told the women are heart-breakingly beautiful.” Lavisser saw Sharpe’s expression and laughed. “For a man up from the ranks, Richard, you’re uncommonly easy to shock. But I confess I’m tempted. I suffer the cruel fate of being the younger son. My wretched brother will become earl and inherit the money while I am expected to fend for myself. You find that risible, yes? Where you come from everyone fends for themselves, so I shall do the same.” He put Sharpe’s new weapons on the gray bags, then closed the chest. “The gold will go to Prince Frederick,” he said, securing the padlock, “and there will be peace on earth and goodwill to all mankind.”
Next evening the frigate passed the northernmost tip of Jutland. The low headland was called the Skaw and it showed dull and misty in the gray twilight. A beacon burned at its tip and the light stayed in view as the Cleopatra turned south toward the Kattegat. Captain Samuels was plainly worried about that narrow stretch of water, in one place only three miles wide, which was the entrance to the Baltic and guarded on its Swedish bank by the great cannon of Helsingborg and on the Danish by the batteries of Helsingør’s Kronborg Castle. The frigate had seen few other ships between Harwich and the Skaw, merely a handful of fishing boats and a wallowing Baltic trader with her main deck heavily laden with timber, but now, sailing into the narrowing gut between Denmark and Sweden, the traffic was heavier. “What we don’t know”—Captain Samuels deigned to speak to Sharpe and Lavisser on the morning after they had passed the Skaw—“is whether Denmark is still neutral. We can pass Helsingør by staying close to the Swedish shore, but the Danes will still see us pass and know we’re up to no good.”
The Swedes, Sharpe gathered, were allied to the British. “Not that it means much,” Lavisser said. “Their king is mad too. Strange, isn’t it? Half the bloody kings of Europe are foaming maniacs. The Swedes won’t fight for us, but they’re on our side, while the Danes don’t want to fight anyone. They’re strictly neutral, poor darlings, but their fleet has complicated matters. They’ll have to fight to protect it or else take the bribe. Of course, if the French have already sent a bigger bribe then they might already have declared war on Britain.”
There was no alternative but to pass through the narrow strait. Lavisser and Sharpe were to be put ashore south of Køge, close to a village called Herfølge where Lavisser’s grandparents had their estate, and Køge Bay lay south of Helsingør and Copenhagen. They could have avoided Helsingør by sailing west about Zealand, the island on which Copenhagen lay, but that was a much longer voyage and time was short. “We have to see the Prince before the British fleet and army arrive,” Lavisser said. “D’you think they’d really bombard Copenhagen?”
“Why not?” Sharpe asked.
“Can you really imagine British gunners killing women and children?”
“They’ll aim for the walls,” Sharpe said, “for the defenses.”
“They will not,” Lavisser said. “They’ll bloody pulverize the city! Cathcart won’t want to, though. He’s squeamish.” Cathcart was the commanding General. “Let’s hope the bribe works, eh?”
They passed Helsingør in the afternoon. Guns sounded from the fortress, but their noise was diffused for they were not loaded with ball or shell, but instead were merely responding to the salute that Captain Samuels ordered fired in honor of the Danish flag. Sharpe gazed at the flag through his telescope, seeing a white cross against a red field. Captain Samuels was also staring toward the fortress, but he was looking for the splashes of water that would betray the fall of round shot. None showed, which proved the Danes were merely saluting. “So they’re still neutral,” Captain Samuels grunted.
“They’ll do all they can to stay neutral,” Lavisser offered his opinion. “They’re a small country, Captain, and they don’t want to pick a fight unless they’re forced to it.” He borrowed Sharpe’s telescope and stared at the massive Kronborg Castle which, from this distance, looked more like a palace than a fortress. The copper sheathing of its spires and steeply pitched roof glowed green above the drifting white smoke left by the guns. A frigate, anchored in the Helsingør Roads, was setting her sails in an evident attempt to follow the Cleopatra. “Does she mean trouble?” Lavisser asked.
Captain Samuels shook his head. “She’ll not catch us,” he said dismissively, “and besides, there’s liable to be a fog with this wind.”
Lavisser looked back to the castle. “Something is rotten in the state
of Denmark,” he intoned portentously.
“There is?” Sharpe asked.
The guardsman laughed. “It is from Hamlet, my dear Richard, which takes place in that very same castle. I was taken there as a child and I was quite convinced I saw the old king’s ghost wandering the battlements, but alas, it was only my imagination. Then, years later, I acted the part at Eton. Bloody Pumphrey played Ophelia and a very convincing girl he made too. I was supposed to kiss him in one scene and he appeared to enjoy it so much that I squeezed his balls until he squealed like a pig.” He smiled at the memory, then leaned on the rail to gaze at the low green shore. “I wish there really was something rotten in Denmark. It’s a dull country, Richard, dull, religious, hidebound and cautious. It’s inhabited by small people who lead little lives.”
“We must all seem like that to you.”
Lavisser was instantly contrite. “No, no. Forgive me. I was born to privilege, Richard, and I forget that others are not.”
The Cleopatra stayed closer to the Swedish shore, making it seem to any who watched that she was on passage to Stralsund in northern Prussia where a British garrison was stationed, but on the night after they had passed Copenhagen the frigate left the well-traveled sea lane and turned west to beat her way into Køge Bay. She was alone now. The Danish frigate had long abandoned her stern chase of the British ship and Køge Bay was empty. The moon showed occasionally through spreading clouds and the low white chalk cliffs of the approaching coast seemed to shine with an unnatural brilliance. The frigate turned northward until the cliffs faded into long beaches and it was there that Captain Samuels hove to and ordered the launch to be lowered.
The heavy chest was slung overboard by a whip rove to a yardarm, then Sharpe, Lavisser and Barker climbed down to the waiting launch. Sharpe, like his companions, was in civilian clothes. He wore a brown coat, black breeches and boots, a white stock and a brown tricorne hat that Grace had always said made him look like a bad-tempered farmer. His rifleman’s uniform was in the pack slung on his back.
The launch crew rowed through the dark. The moon was gone behind clouds that now smothered the sky, while well to the north, beyond Copenhagen, a thunderstorm roiled the night. Lightning split the blackness with snake tongues of fire, but no rain fell on Køge Bay and the sound of the thunder faded before it reached the launch. The only sounds were the creak of the muffled oars and the splash of water on the launch’s hull.
There was no surf, just a gentle breaking of small waves on a shelving beach. The launch’s keel grated on sand and a sailor leaped overboard to hold the boat steady while half a dozen men carried the chest of gold ashore. Sharpe, Lavisser and Barker followed, splashing through the shallows. The Midshipman in charge of the launch wished them good fortune, then the launch was heaved back from the beach and the sound of its muffled oars died swiftly away. A cold wind rattled grains of sand against Sharpe’s boots.
He was in Denmark.
And Captain Lavisser drew his pistol.
CHAPTER 4
LAVISSER HESITATED. “Would they hear a pistol shot on the frigate?” he asked.
“Probably,” Sharpe said. “Sound carries over water. Why?”
“I’m worried the priming got wet, but I don’t want to alarm the Cleopatra. They might think we’re in trouble.”
“Priming didn’t get wet,” Sharpe said. “Water only came up to our ankles.”
“You’re probably right.” Lavisser holstered the pistol. “I think it’s best if you wait here, Richard. If Samuels landed us in the right place then Herfølge’s at least an hour’s walk. I’ll see you at dawn and, with any luck, I’ll bring a cart and horse to get this damn gold out of here.” He climbed a dune. “You’ll stay with Mister Sharpe, Barker?”
“I will, sir,” Barker acknowledged.
“You know what to do,” Lavisser said cheerfully, turning away.
“Do you have the key to the chest?” Sharpe called after the guardsman.
Lavisser half turned. He was nothing but a shadow on the dune’s crest. “Surely you don’t need it, Richard?”
“I’d like to get those pistols.”
“If you must. Barker has the key. I’ll see you in two or three hours.” Lavisser waved and disappeared down the other side of the dune.
Sharpe peered at Barker’s dark shape. “The key?”
“I’m looking for it.” Barker’s answer was surly. He began to rummage through a valise and Sharpe, as he waited, walked up the dune. It was cold for summer, but he supposed that was because the sea was so chill. From the dune’s top he could just see the frigate as a tracery of dark rigging against the eastern sky while inland there was only a feeble and faraway scrap of hazed and flickering light. Captain Samuels had said that fog was likely in this weather and the smeared scrap of light suggested it was forming over the flat farmlands. The ground seemed to rock as Sharpe became accustomed to being on land again. He could smell hay, salt and seaweed. “Been to Denmark before, Barker?” he called down to the beach.
“No,” Barker said.
“So where’s the key?” Sharpe asked.
“I reckon he didn’t give it me.”
“It’s customary, Barker, to address officers as ‘sir.’ ” Sharpe could not conceal his dislike for the servant, who was plainly employed for his size and his capacity for violence rather than for any skills as a valet. Sharpe rooted through his pack until he found the picklock, then went back to the beach where he knelt beside the chest.
“What are you doing, sir?” Barker asked, putting a sarcastic stress on the last word.
“Fetching my pistols,” Sharpe said, taking hold of the padlock.
A bang made him turn. The launch must have reached the frigate which was now sheeting home her foresails to turn away from land and the bang had merely been the wind slatting the canvas, but it saved Sharpe’s life. He saw the gleam in Barker’s hand, realized it was a knife that was about to bury itself in his neck and so threw himself to one side before scrambling away from the chest. He let go of the picklock, hurled a handful of sand into Barker’s eyes and drew his saber, then heard the click of a gun being cocked and knew that Barker, careless of any noise, must have had a pistol hidden beneath his long coat. Sharpe just ran, going up the dune where he snatched up his pack and then down the sandy slope into the darkness behind the beach.
He had hardly thought since the banging sail had made him turn. He had just reacted, but now he crouched in the coarse grass and watched the crest of the dune for Barker’s shadow. Sweet Jesus, he thought, but he had been fooled. He should have bloody known when Lavisser had claimed Barker possessed the chest’s key. No man would entrust a fortune in gold to a servant like Barker.
So Lord Pumphrey had been right when he suggested there was something odd about this whole mission, but in his wildest imaginings Sharpe had not thought things were this warped. Lavisser wanted him dead. What else did Lavisser want? There was no way of knowing that, and now was not the time to speculate, for Barker had come to the dune’s top and pointed the pistol into the shadows. He was waiting for Sharpe to move, just waiting, but the fog was thickening as the southern summer wind crossed the cold northern sea. Sharpe stayed motionless. Far inland a bell tolled four times. The small light had vanished, obscured by the growing fog.
Barker moved northward a few paces and Sharpe broke cover and ran southward. Barker heard him, and that was what Sharpe wanted, for he half hoped Barker would try a long shot. Once the gun was discharged it would take too long to reload and Sharpe would be on the servant like a terrier onto a rat, but Barker was no fool. He held his fire and instead followed Sharpe in hope of getting close enough for the pistol not to miss.
Sharpe went to ground in black shadows between two low dunes. The fog was blanching the first hint of dawn and muffling the small sounds of the wind and waves. Barker had lost him again, though the servant had a rough idea of where Sharpe was and now crouched on the skyline. The man was no soldier, or else he would have sough
t the lower ground for at night it was impossible to see down into the hollows. A man could see upward against the sky, but not down. Sharpe watched the hulking servant, then raked his fingers through the sand and grass to come up with a scrap of wood and two pebbles that he flicked southward one after the other. They made tiny noises as they landed and Barker, hearing them, moved toward the small sounds.
Sharpe went back northward. He crept, feeling ahead of him to make sure he did not trample any stiff grass. He found two more pieces of wood that he hurled away into the misty dark, hoping to lure Barker farther south, and only when he had lost sight of the man did he stand and cross the dunes back to the beach. He needed to find the picklock, but it had vanished in the trampled sand about the chest. He searched quickly, sifting handfuls of sand, but he could not find it and suddenly he heard Barker returning. The servant had given up his hunt and was coming back to guard the gold so Sharpe abandoned the weapons locked in the chest and went back across the dunes.
He headed inland until he reached a damp vegetable field edged with a ditch. He moved northward now, following the ditch which was half silted with blown sand. A bird flew up from a nest, startling him, then he saw he had come to a rough track, deep rutted by cartwheels, that headed inland. He was about to follow it, then heard hoofbeats and so he scuttled back to the ditch and lay in its damp grass.
The hoofbeats sounded like a whole troop of cavalry, but Sharpe could see nothing in the soft fog. He lay motionless, the hat shadowing his face from the wan early light. Then he saw a shape in the whiteness, another, and suddenly there were a half-dozen horsemen in sight. They all wore long red jackets with pale-blue collars and cuffs. Their breeches were black, edged with white piping, and their hats were black bicornes, elaborately plumed with white feathers. Their long straight swords hung from sashes of yellow silk and suggested they were dragoons. A second group appeared, all of them going slowly because of the fog, and then a shabby cart materialized. It was pulled by a plodding pony and was hung with remnants of seaweed. Sharpe guessed the cart was normally used to fetch weed from the beach to use as fertilizer and now it had come for the gold.
Bernard Cornwell Box Set: Sharpe's Triumph , Sharpe's Tiger , Sharpe's Fortress Page 43