Bernard Cornwell Box Set: Sharpe's Triumph , Sharpe's Tiger , Sharpe's Fortress

by Bernard Cornwell

  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 Britis
h.

  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 turnips on his plate as if trying to work out precisely what he had been served. “We must just 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, n
ow 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 obvious 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.”