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. 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.
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 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.
“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 that 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.
Darkness came gently to the cloud-filled sky. The wind was chill from the east as the whole city waited. It seemed, for a time, as though there would be no bombardment this second night, but then a great flash seared across the western dark and a streak of red, thin as a needle scratch, climbed toward the clouds. The red scratch reached its topmost height and there hovered for a heartbeat before it began to fall.
And then the other mortars fired, their sound joining to make a gigantic thunderclap that rolled about the city as the fuse trails whipped upward and the first bomb hurtled down toward the houses.
“We can go,” Sharpe said.
The three men walked through streets lit by distant fire. Sharpe could tell from the trails of the fuses that the bombardment was sparing the citadel this night, instead dropping its bombs close to the streets that had already been burned. The missiles from the fleet streaked overhead, while rocket traces, thick and glowing, curved above the rooftops. Sharpe, like his two companions, carried a thirteen-inch bomb in a leather bag hung from his shoulder. It was surprisingly heavy.
He led Hopper and Clouter into the alley behind Lavisser’s house. It was black dark between the high close walls, though the backs of the big houses on Bredgade were reddened by the far-off flames. No bombs had touched this quarter of the city that lay near the royal palaces.
Sharpe dropped his bomb beside the gate that led into Lavisser’s courtyard. Then he knelt, took out the tinderbox and struck the steel on flint. The charred linen glowed and he blew on it until it burst into flames that he touched to the quick fuse, then he ran back down the alley and crouched beside Hopper and Clouter. He could see the tiny red glow of the fuse, then it vanished and he lowered his head as he waited, but no explosion came and he wondered if the bomb had some other fault. Perhaps its powder was wet? “Bloody thing,” he snarled, looking up, and just then the bomb caught the fire and the alley was filled with screaming shards of metal that rattled and ricocheted from the brick walls. Flame and smoke boiled up, while Lavisser’s gate was ripped from its hinges and, propelled by a blast of heated smoke, slammed across the yard.
“Yours, Hopper,” Sharpe said, and the three men ran to the smoky gateway and Sharpe again lit the tinder. Hopper held his bomb out, Sharpe put the fire to the fuse, then the bomb was rolled like a bowling ball into the courtyard’s center. The three men sheltered behind the wall. Someone shouted from the house. Sharpe suspected men were stationed in the carriage house and that they would be the first into the yard to investigate the first explosion, which was why he was sending them the second bomb. A voice shouted quite close, then Hopper’s bomb cracked the night apart, searing the alley with sudden flame light and filling the yard with more thick smoke.
Clouter was already at the gate with the third bomb. Sharpe struck the flint, blew on the charred linen and lit the fuse. He took the bomb from Clouter, stepped through the gate and ran a few paces into the smoke until he could just see where the steps went down to the basement entrance. The fuse hissed by his belly. He stopped, gauged the distance and heaved the shell over the remnants of the shattered gate. The bomb landed on the stones short of the steps, wobbled for a second, then toppled over. Hopper and Clouter had their backs against the stable wall. Both were staring up through the smoke. A musket fired from an upper window and the ball smacked into the cobbles beside Sharpe, who stepped back and almost tripped on a body. So someone had been caught by the second bomb. Then the third exploded, blasting its flame straight up the back of the house. Glass shattered in a dozen windows.
“Come on!” Sharpe shouted. He had the rifle in his right hand as he ran down the steps and pushed through the ruins of the splintered door. He found himself in a kitchen lit by the flaming scraps of the blown door. No one was in sight. He jumped the burning wood, crossed the flagstone floor and pushed open the farther door to see a dark staircase going upward. Pistol shots sounded behind him and he snatched a glance to see that Clouter was firing up into the yard. “You need help?”
“They’re dead!” Clouter said, then backed away from the doorway and started reloading. An oilcloth covering a table by the window had caught fire. Sharpe ignored it, running up the stairs instead. Hopper came with him. Sharpe pushed open the door at the top to find himself in a wide hallway. There was a man on the stairs above, but he turned and vanished before Sharpe could aim the rifle. Clouter came up from the kitchen and behind him the smoke thickened with alarming speed.
“Upstairs,” Sharpe said. There were men up there, men who knew they were coming, men who would have guns, but he did not dare wait. The fire was flickering beneath him. “Wait here,” he told the two sailors. He hung the rifle on his shoulder and took the seven-barreled gun instead. He did not want to charge the stairs, but if he gave the men upstairs any longer then they would barricade themselves. He swore, nerved himself, and ran.
He took the stairs three at a time. Up to the half landing where there were two closed doors. He ignored them. His instinct said that the house’s inhabitants were higher up, so he swung round the corner of the landing and took the next stairs at a run and saw a half-open door ahead of him and saw a musket barrel there and he threw himself down just as the musket flamed. The bullet cracked into a portrait high on the stairwell wall and Sharpe heaved himself up, pushed the seven-barreled gun over the lip of the top stair and pulled the trigger.
The seven bullets shredded the lower half of the door. A man screamed. Sharpe pulled out a pistol and fired again, then Hopper and Clouter were behind him and each of them fired into the door before running past Sharpe. “Wait!” he called. He wanted to be first into the room, not out of heroism, but because he had promised Captain Chase to look after the two men, but Clouter, the axe in his hand, had already shoulder-charged the door and tumbled through. “Pucelle,” the black man was shouting, “Pucelle!” just as if he was boarding an enemy ship.
Sharpe followed just as Hopper fired his seven-barreled gun inside the room. An enemy’s bullet whipped past Sharpe’s head as he went through the door. He slid on the polished floorboards, crouching as he moved and turning the rifle down the length of the room that was an elegant study with portraits, bookshelves, a desk and a sofa. A man was flopping by the desk, jerking in pain from one of Hopper’s bullets. Another man was by the shuttered window with Clouter’s boarding axe buried in his neck. “There’s a live one behind the desk,” Hopper said.
Sharpe gave his empty volley gun to Hopper. “Reload it,” he said, then he stalked toward the desk. He heard the scrape of a ramrod in a barrel and so knew his enemy was effectively unarmed. He took three more quick steps and saw a man crouching with a half-loaded pistol. Sharpe had hoped to find Lavisser, but the man was no one he recognized. The man looked up and shook his head. “Non, monsieur, non!”
Sharpe fired. The bullet took the man in the skull, fountaining blood across the desk and onto the dying man at Sharpe’s feet.
There was a fourth man in the room. He was naked and tied to a sofa in an alcove, but he was alive, though Sharpe almost gagged when he saw him. He was alive by a miracle, for Ole Skovgaard had been half blinded and tortured and he seemed oblivious of the fight that had filled the room with choking powder smoke.
Clouter, bloodied boarding axe in one big hand, crossed to the sofa and swore softly. Sharpe grimaced at the sight of the empty eye socket, the bloodied mouth and the raw fingertips where the nails had been pulled before the fingers’ bones had been broken. He put down his rifle, took out his clasp knife and sliced the ropes that secured Skovgaard. “Can you hear me?” he asked. “Can you hear me?”
Skovgaard raised a tentative hand. “Lieutenant?” He could hardly speak, for his bloody mouth was toothless.
“We’re taking you home,” Sharpe said, “taking you home.”
Hopper fired a pistol down the stairwell and Clouter went to help him. Skovgaard pointed feebly at the desk and Sharpe crossed to it and saw a pile of papers spattered with the blood of the man he had just shot. There were names on the sheets, names and names, a list of the correspondents that London wanted protected. Hans Bischoff in Bremen, Josef Gruber in Hanover, Carl Friederich of Königsberg. There were Russian names, Prussian names, seven pages of names and Sharpe snatched the papers up and thrust them into a pocket. Clouter fired down the stairs. Hopper had reloaded one of the seven-barreled guns and now shouldered Clouter aside, but it seemed no one was threatening for he held his fire.
There were velvet curtains hanging inside the closed shutters. Sharpe seized one and tugged hard, ripping it from its hoops. He wrapped the naked Skovgaard in the red velvet, then lifted him. Skovgaard moaned in pain. “You’re going home,” Sharpe said. Smoke was coming up the stairwell. “Who’s down there?” Sharpe asked Clouter.
“Two men. Maybe three.”
“We’ve got to go down,” Sharpe said, “and out of the front door.” He had not seen Lavisser or Barker.
Hopper was loading the second seven-barreled gun. He had given the first to Clouter. Sharpe could hear the flames downstairs. Bombs were detonating to the west. A maid, eyes wide with terror, ran down the stairs. She seemed not to notice the men in the study door, but just vanished round the half landing. There was a shot from the hallway and the maid screamed. “Jesus Christ,” Sharpe swore.
Hopper had four of the barrels loaded and decided they were enough. “Do we go?”
“Go,” Sharpe said.
Clouter and Hopper went first, then Sharpe carried Skovgaard after them. The two seamen jumped to the half landing and both fired their guns straight down into the smoke that filled the hallway. Sharpe went more slowly, trying to ignore Skovgaard’s soft moans. The maid was lying beside the banisters, blood streaking her gown. Another body lay beside a table in the hall while flames were flickering at the door which led down to the kitchen. The front door was open and Clouter led the way out. Sharpe shouted a warning that Lavisser’s men might be waiting in the street, but the only folk there were neighbors who believed the fire and smoke had been caused by British bombs. One of the women looked alarmed at the sight of the two huge men who burst from the door with their guns, then a murmur of sympathy sounded when the crowd saw Skovgaard in Sharpe’s arms.
But one woman screamed at the sight of the injured man.
It was Astrid who ran to meet Sharpe. “What are you doing here?” he asked her.
“I knew you would be coming here so I came to make sure you were safe.” She gave an involuntary grimace when she saw her father’s face. “Is he alive?”
“He needs a doctor,” Sharpe said. He reckoned Skovgaard must have resisted for hours before he broke.
“The hospitals are full,” Astrid said, holding her father’s wrist because his hand was nothing but a broken claw. “They made an announce-ment this morning,” she went on, “that only the worst injured must go to hospital.”
“He’s badly injured,” Sharpe said, then thought that Lavisser would know that and so the hospitals were exactly where Lavisser would look for Skovgaard. The bombs were thumping steadily, their explosions flashing in the smoky sky. “Not the hospital,” he told Astrid. He thought about Ulfedt’s Plads, then reckoned that was the second place Lavisser would search.
Astrid touched her father’s cheek. “There’s a good nurse at the orphanage,” she said, “and it’s not far.”
They carried Skovgaard to the orphanage where the nurse took charge of him. Astrid helped her, while Sharpe took Hopper and Clouter out to the courtyard where they sat under the flagpole. Some of the smaller children were crying because of the noise of the bombs, but they were all safe in their dormitories which were a long way from where any missiles fell. Two women carried milk and water up the outside staircase and glanced fearfully at the three men. “Lavisser wasn’t there,” Sharpe said.
“Does it matter?” Hopper asked.
“He wants this list,” Sharpe said, patting his pocket. “These names buy him favor with the French.”
“There was no gold either,” Clouter growled.
Sharpe looked surprised, then shook his head. “I clean forgot about the gold,” he said. “I’m sorry.” He rubbed his face. “We can’t go back to the warehouse. Lavisser will look for us there.” And Lavisser, he thought, would take Danish troops with him, claiming he was looking for British agents. “We’ll have to stay here,” he decided.
“We could go back to the ships?” Clouter suggested.
“You can if you want,” Sharpe said, “but I’ll stay.” He would stay because he knew Astrid would remain with her father and he would stay with Astrid.
Hopper began to reload one of the volley guns. “Did you see that nurse?” he asked.
“I think he wants to stay here, sir,” Clouter said with a grin.
“We can wait it out here,” Sharpe said. “And thank you, both of you. Thank you.” The bombs lit the sky. By morning, he thought, the Danes must surrender and the British army would come and Lavisser would hide, but Sharpe would find him. If he had to search every damned house in Copenhagen he would find him and kill him. And then he would have finished the job and he could stay here, stay in Denmark, because he wanted a home.
NEXT MORNING General Peymann called a council in the Amalien-borg Palace. Coffee was served in royal china to men who were dirty with soot and ash, and whose faces were pale and drawn from another night of fighting fires and carrying horribly burned people to the crowded hospitals. “I thought there were fewer bombs last night,” the General observed.
“They fired just under two thousand, sir,” Major Lavisser reported, “and that includes rockets.”
“And the night before?” Peymann tried to remember.
“Nearer five thousand,” an aide answered.
“They are running short of ammunition,” the General declared, unable to conceal a triumphant note. “I doubt we’ll receive more than a thousand missiles tonight. And tomorrow? Perhaps none at all. We shall hold on, gentlemen, we shall hold on!”
The superintendent of the King Frederick Hospital offered a sobering report. There were no more beds available, not even now they had taken over the Maternity Hospital next door, and there was a severe shortage of salves, bandages and fresh water, but he still expressed a cautious optimism. If the bombardment got no worse then he thought the hospitals would cope.
A city engineer reported that an old well in Bjornegaden was yield-ing copious amounts of fresh water and that three other abandoned wells, capped when the city began piping supplies from north Zealand, were to be opened during the day. The deputy mayor said there was no shortage of food. Some cows had died in the night, he said, but plenty were left.
“Cows?” Peymann asked.
“The city needs milk, sir. We brought two herds into the city.”
“Then I think,” General Peymann concluded, “that when all is said and done we might congratulate ourselves. The British have thrown their worst at us, and we have survived.” He pulled the large-scale map of the city toward him. The engineers had inked over the streets worst affected by the first night’s bombardment, and now Peymann looked at the light pencil hatching which showed the effects of the second night’s assault. The newly penciled areas were much smaller, merely a short length of street near the Nørre Gate and some houses in Skindergade. “At least they missed the cathedral,” he said.
“And there was also damage here.” An aide leaned over the table and tapped Bredgade. “Major Lavisser’s house was destroyed, and the neighboring houses lost their roofs to fire.”
Peymann frowned at Lavisser. “Your house, Major?”
“My grandfather’s house, sir.”
“Tragic!” Peymann said. “Tragic.”
“We think it must have been a rocket, sir,” the first aide said. “It’s so far from the rest of the damaged streets.”
“I trust no one was hurt?” Peymann inquired earnestly.
“We fear some servants might have been trapped,” Lavisser answered, “but my grandfather, of course, is with the Crown Prince.”
“Thank God for that,” Peymann said, “but you must take some time today to rescue what you can of your grandfather’s property. I am so very sorry, Major.”
“We must all share in the city’s suffering, sir,” Lavisser declared, a sentiment that brought murmurs of agreement about the table.
A naval pastor ended the council by thanking God for helping the city to endure its ordeal, for the manifold blessings that would doubtless flow from victory and begging the Almighty to shower His saving grace upon the wounded and the bereaved. “Amen,” General Peymann boomed, “amen.”
A weak sun was shining through the pall of smoke that smothered the city when Lavisser emerged into the palace courtyard where Barker was waiting. “They prayed, Barker,” he said, “they prayed.”
“Do a lot of that here, sir.”
“So what do you make of it?”
Barker, while his master had been attending the council meeting, had done his best to explore the ruins of Bredgade. “It’s still too hot to get into, sir, and it’s a heap of rubble anyway. Smoking, it is, but Jules, he got out.”
“Only Jules?”
“He was the only one I found, sir. Rest are dead or in hospital, I reckon. And Jules swears it were Sharpe.”
“It can’t be!”
“He says three men came out the house, sir. Two were sailors and the other was a tall man, black hair and scar on the cheek.”
Lavisser swore.
“And,” Barker went on implacably, “the man with the scarred face was carrying Skovgaard.”
Lavisser swore again. “And the gold?” he asked.
“That’s probably still in Bredgade, sir. Melted, probably, but it’ll be there.”
Lavisser said nothing for a while. The gold could be salvaged and it could certainly wait, but he could expect no advancement from the French if he did not give them the list of names that had been so painfully extracted from Skovgaard. That list would open the Emperor’s largesse to Lavisser, make him Prince of Zealand or Duke of Holstein or even, in his most secret dreams, King of Denmark. “Did Jules say anything about the list?”
“He reckoned it was inside when the house burned, sir.”
Lavisser used the efficacious word. “All that work wasted,” he said. “Wasted!”
Barker stared up at the pigeons on the palace roof. He thought his own night had been wasted, for Lavisser had insisted that he watch and count the falling bombs with him. Barker would have preferred to guard Bredgade, but Lavisser had instructed Barker to count the gun flashes from the fleet while Lavisser counted the shots from the land batteries. A real waste, Barker thought, for if he had been in Bredgade then Sharpe would have died and Skovgaard might still be revealing names. “We have to find Skovgaard again, sir,” Barker said.
“How?” Lavisser asked sourly, then answered his own question. “He has to be in hospital, doesn’t he?”
“At a doctor’s?” Barker suggested.
Lavisser shook his head. “All doctors were ordered to the hospitals.”
So Lavisser and Barker looked for Ole Skovgaard in Copenhagen’s hospitals. That search took them all morning as they went from ward to ward where hundreds of burn victims lay in awful pain, but Skovgaard was nowhere to be found. A morning wasted, and Lavisser was in a grim mood when he went to see what was left of Bredgade, but the house was a smoking ruin and the gold, if it was still there, was nothing but a molten mass deep in its cellars. But at least Jules, one of the Frenchmen left behind when the diplomats fled Copenhagen, was still in the undamaged coach house and Jules wanted his own revenge on Sharpe.
“We know where he is,” Barker insisted.
“Ulfedt’s Plads?” Lavisser suggested.
“Where else?”
“You, me and Jules,” Lavisser said, “and three of them? I think we must improve those odds.”
Barker and Jules went to watch Ulfedt’s Plads while Lavisser went to the citadel where General Peymann had his quarters, but the General had been up all night and had now taken to his bed and it was midafternoon before he woke and Lavisser was able to spin his tale. “A child was killed playing with an unexploded bomb, sir,” he said, “and I fear there’ll be more such deaths. There are too many bombs lying in the streets.”
Peymann blew on his coffee to cool it. “I thought Captain Nielsen was dealing with that problem,” the General observed.
“He’s overwhelmed, sir. I need a dozen men.”
“Of course, of course.” Peymann signed the necessary order and Lavisser woke a reluctant lieutenant and ordered him to assemble a squad.
The Lieutenant wondered why his men needed muskets to collect unexploded missiles, but he was too tired to argue. He just followed Lavisser to Ulfedt’s Plads where two civilians waited beside a warehouse. “Knock on the door, Lieutenant,” Lavisser ordered.
“I thought we were here to collect bombs, sir.”
Lavisser took the man aside. “Can you be discreet, Lieutenant?”
“As well as the next man.” The Lieutenant was offended by the question.
“I could not be frank with you before, Lieutenant. God knows there are too many rumors circling the city already and I didn’t want to start more, but General Peymann has been warned that there are English spies in Copenhagen.”
“Spies, sir?” The Lieutenant’s eyes widened. He was nineteen and had only been an officer for two months and so far his most responsible duty had been making certain that the citadel’s flag was hoisted at each sunrise.
“Saboteurs, more like,” Lavisser embroidered his tale. “The British, we think, are running out of bombs. They will probably fire a few tonight, but we think they will be relying on their agents in the city to do more damage. The General believes the men are hiding on these premises.”
The Lieutenant snapped at his men to fix bayonets, then hammered on Skovgaard’s door which was opened by a frightened maid. She screamed when she saw the bayonets, then said that her master and mistress had disappeared.
“What about the Englishman?” Lavisser asked over the Lieutenant’s shoulder.
“He hasn’t come back, sir,” the maid said. “None of them have, sir.”
“Search the premises,” Lavisser ordered the soldiers. He sent some of the men into the warehouse and others up the stairs of the house while he, Jules and Barker went to Skovgaard’s office.
They found no list of names there. They did find a metal box crammed with money, but no names. The Lieutenant discovered an unloaded musket upstairs, but then the terrified maids told the Lieutenant that Mister Bang was locked in the old stables. The Lieutenant took that news down to the office.
“Mister Bang?” Lavisser asked, stuffing money into his coat pocket.
“The fellow who sold us Skovgaard,” Barker reminded him.
The padlock was prized from the door and a startled Aksel Bang stumbled into the waning daylight. He was nervous and indignant, and so bewildered that he was hardly able to talk sense and so, to calm him down, Lavisser ordered the maids to make some tea, then he took Bang upstairs and settled him in Skovgaard’s parlor where Bang told how Lieutenant Sharpe had come back to the city and how Bang had tried to arrest him. The story was a little tangled there, for Bang was unwilling to admit how easily he had been overpowered, but Lavisser did not pursue the details. Bang did not know how many men were helping Sharpe, but he had heard their voices in the yard and knew there must be at least two or three.
“And Mister Skovgaard’s daughter was helping these Englishmen?” Lavisser asked.
“Not willingly, not willingly,” Bang insisted. “She must have been deceived.”
“Of course.”
“But her father, now, he was always on the English side,” Bang said vengefully, “and he made Astrid help him. She didn’t want to, of course, but he made her.”
Lavisser sipped his tea. “So Astrid knows as much as her father?”
“Oh yes,” Bang said.
“She knows the names of her father’s correspondents?” Lavisser asked.
“What he knows,” Bang said, “she knows.”
“Does she now,” Lavisser said to himself. He lit a candle, for dusk was darkening the room. “You did well, Lieutenant,” he said, careful to flatter Bang by using his militia rank, “when you handed Skovgaard to the police.”
A small doubt nagged Bang. “Lieutenant Sharpe said that it was you who had taken Skovgaard, sir.”
“He said what?” Lavisser looked astonished, then unleashed his charming smile. “Of course not! I have no authority in that area. No, Mister Skovgaard was taken for questioning by the police, but, alas, he escaped. The confusion of the bombing, you understand? And our problem is that Lieutenant Sharpe and his English helpers are somewhere in the city. They may already have rescued Mister Skovgaard. General Peymann thought we would find them here, but alas.” He shrugged. “I suspect they are hiding, but you, Lieutenant, know Mister Skovgaard better than anyone.”
“True,” Bang said.
“And who knows how they are deceiving Astrid?” Lavisser asked in a worried tone.
“They are deceiving her!” Bang said angrily, and spilled out his resentment of Sharpe. The Englishman, he said, had promised Astrid he would stay in Denmark. “And she believes him!” Bang said. “She believes him! He has turned her head.”
And a pretty head it was too, Lavisser thought, and filled with knowledge that he needed. “I fear for her, Lieutenant,” he said gravely, “I truly do.” He stood and stared out of the window so that Bang would not see his amusement. So Sharpe was in love? Lavisser smiled at that realization. The darkening sky was banded in black cloud and soon, he thought, the first bombs would start falling unless the British had exhausted their stocks, in which case the city would be spared until more could be fetched from England. “They are doubtless holding poor Astrid as a hostage”—he turned back to Bang—“and we must find them.”
“They could be anywhere,” Bang said helplessly.
“Mister Skovgaard was injured by a bomb when he escaped,” Lavisser lied smoothly. “He needs a doctor, we think, but he’s not in any of the hospitals.”
Bang shook his head. “His doctor lives in Vester Fælled.”
“And he certainly can’t have gone there,” Lavisser said, “so where would he hide? What is it?” He had been alarmed by a sudden wide-eyed look on Bang’s face.
But Bang was smiling. “Mister Skovgaard needs medical help?” he asked. “Then I know where they are.”
“You do?”
“You will give me a gun?” Bang asked eagerly. “I can help you?”
“I should expect nothing less from a loyal Dane,” Lavisser said unctuously.
“Then I shall take you to them,” Bang said.
For he knew exactly where they were.
To the west a red flash lit the sky and the first bomb climbed into the dark.
Then the other guns hammered, their discharge ringing the city with flame-shot smoke.
And the bombs were falling again.