Читать книгу Sharpe’s Prey: The Expedition to Copenhagen, 1807 - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 10

‘I never forget a face,’ Major General Sir David Baird said. He had taken a step back, alarmed by the ferocity of the scowl with which Sharpe had greeted him. ‘It is Sharpe, isn’t it?’ Baird asked, but was now met with a stare of incomprehension. ‘Well, is it or isn’t it?’ Baird demanded brusquely.

Sharpe, recovering from his astonishment, nodded. ‘It is, sir.’

‘I helped save you from a flogging once, and now you’re an officer. The Lord’s providences are incomprehensible, Mister Sharpe.’

‘They are, sir.’

Baird, a huge man, tall and muscled, was in a red uniform coat that was heavy with epaulettes and gold braid. He scowled at his companions, the group who had just arrived with wet umbrellas and painted women. ‘Those young men over there are aides to the Duke of York,’ he said, ‘and His Majesty insisted they take me to the theatre. Why? I cannot tell. Have you ever been forced into a theatre, Sharpe?’

‘Once, sir.’ And everyone had stared at Grace and talked of her behind their hands and she had endured it, but wept afterwards.

‘She Stoops to Conquer, what kind of name for an entertainment is that?’ Baird asked. ‘I was asleep by the end of the prologue so I’ve no idea. But I’ve been thinking of you lately, Mister Sharpe. Thinking of you and looking for you.’

‘For me, sir?’ Sharpe could not hide his puzzlement.

‘Is that blood on your coat? It is! Good God, man, don’t tell me the bloody Frogs have landed.’

‘It was a thief, sir.’

‘Not another one? A captain of the Dirty Half Hundred was killed just two days ago, not a hundred yards from Piccadilly! It must have been footpads, the bastards. I hope you hurt the man?’

‘I did, sir.’

‘Good.’ The General sat opposite Sharpe. ‘I heard you’d been commissioned. I congratulate you. You did a fine thing in India, Sharpe.’

Sharpe blushed. ‘I did my duty, sir.’

‘But it was a hard duty, Sharpe, a very hard duty. Good God! Risking the Tippoo’s cells? I spent enough time in that black bastard’s hands not to wish it on another man. But the fellow’s dead now, God be thanked.’

‘Indeed, sir,’ Sharpe said. He had killed the Tippoo himself, though he had never admitted it, and it had been the Tippoo’s jewels that had made Sharpe a rich man. Once.

‘And I keep hearing your name,’ Baird went on with an indecent relish. ‘Making scandal, eh?’

Sharpe winced at the accusation. ‘Was that what I was doing, sir?’

Baird was not a man to be delicate. ‘You were once a private soldier and she was the daughter of an earl. Yes, Sharpe, I’d say you were making scandal. So what happened?’

‘She died, sir.’ Sharpe felt the tears threatening, so looked down at the table. The silence stretched and he felt an obscure need to fill it. ‘Childbirth, sir. A fever.’

‘And the child with her?’

‘Yes, sir. A boy.’

‘Good Christ, man,’ Baird said bluffly, embarrassed by the tears that dropped onto the table. ‘You’re young. There’ll be others.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You!’ This peremptory demand was to one of the serving girls. ‘A bottle of port and two glasses. And I’ll take some cheese if you’ve anything edible.’

‘Lady Grace’s family,’ Sharpe said, suddenly needing to tell the story, ‘claimed the child wasn’t mine. Said it had been her husband’s, and so the lawyers baked me in a pie. Took everything, they did, because the child died after its mother. They said it was the heir to her husband, see?’ His tears were flowing now. ‘I don’t mind losing everything, sir, but I do mind losing her.’

‘Pull yourself together, man,’ Baird snapped. ‘Stop snivelling.’

‘I’m sorry, sir.’

‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,’ Baird said, ‘and you don’t piddle away your damned life because you don’t like His dispositions.’

Sharpe sniffed and looked up into Baird’s scarred face. ‘Piddling away my life?’

‘I’ve been keeping an eye on you, Sharpe,’ Baird said. ‘D’you know how many lives you saved by blowing that mine in Seringapatam? Scores! And my life among them. If it weren’t for you, Sharpe, I’d be dead.’ He emphasized this by stabbing Sharpe’s chest with a big forefinger. ‘Dead and buried, d’you doubt it?’

Sharpe did not, but he said nothing. Baird had led the assault on the Tippoo Sultan’s stronghold and the General had led from the front. The Scotsman would indeed be dead, Sharpe thought, if Sharpe, a private then, had not blown the mine that had been intended to trap and annihilate the storming party. Dust and stones, Sharpe remembered, and flame billowing down a sunlit street and the air filling with smoke and the noise rolling about him like a thousand trundling barrels, and then in the silence afterwards that was not silent at all, the moaning and screaming and the pale flames crackling.

‘Wellesley made you up, didn’t he?’ Baird asked.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Not like Wellesley to do a man a favour,’ the General observed sourly. ‘Tight-fisted, he is.’ Baird had never liked Sir Arthur Wellesley. ‘So why did he do it? For Seringapatam?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Yes, sir, no, sir, what are you, Sharpe? A bloody schoolboy? Why did the man promote you?’

Sharpe shrugged. ‘I was useful to him, sir. At Assaye.’

‘Useful?’

‘He was in trouble,’ Sharpe said. The General had been unhorsed, was surrounded and doomed, but Sergeant Sharpe had been there and it was the Indians who died instead.

‘In trouble?’ Baird sneered at Sharpe’s modesty. ‘It must have been desperate trouble if it persuaded Wellesley to do you a favour. Though how much of a favour was it?’ The question was a shrewd one and Sharpe did not try to answer it, but it seemed Baird knew the answer anyway. ‘Wallace wrote to me after you joined his regiment,’ the General went on, ‘and told me that you were a good soldier, but a bad officer.’

Sharpe bridled. ‘I tried my best, sir.’ Wallace had been the commanding officer of the 74th, a Scottish regiment, and Sharpe had joined it after he had been commissioned by Sir Arthur Wellesley. It had been Wallace who had recommended Sharpe to the 95th, but Sharpe was no happier in the new regiment. Still a failure, he thought.

‘Not easy, coming up from the ranks,’ Baird admitted. ‘But if Wallace says you’re a good soldier, then that’s a compliment. And I need a good soldier. I’ve been ordered to find a man who can look after himself in a difficult situation. Someone who ain’t afraid of a fight. I remembered you, but wasn’t sure where to find you. I should have known to look in the Frog Prick. Eat your steak, man. I can’t abide good meat getting cold.’

Sharpe finished the beef as the General’s port and cheese were put on the table. He let Baird pour him a glass before he spoke again. ‘I was thinking of leaving the army, sir,’ he admitted.

Baird looked at him in disgust. ‘To do what?’

‘I’ll find work,’ Sharpe said. Maybe he would go to Ebenezer Fairley, the merchant who had shown him friendship on the voyage home from India, or perhaps he would thieve. That was how he had started in life. ‘I’ll get by,’ he said belligerently.

Sir David Baird cut the cheese which crumbled under his knife. ‘There are three kinds of soldier, Sharpe,’ he said. ‘There are the damned useless ones, and God knows there’s an endless supply of those. Then there are the good solid lads who get the job done, but would piss in their breeches if you didn’t show them how their buttons worked. And then there’s you and me. Soldiers’ soldiers, that’s who we are.’

Sharpe looked sceptical. ‘A soldier’s soldier?’ he asked.

‘We’re the men who clean up after the parade, Sharpe. The carriages and kings go by, the bands play, the cavalry prances past like bloody fairies, and what’s left is a mess of dung and litter. We clean it up. The politicians get the world into tangles, then ask their armies to make things right. We do their dirty work, Sharpe, and we’re good at it. Very good. You might not be the best officer in King George’s army, but you’re a bloody fine soldier. And you like the life, don’t tell me you don’t.’

‘Being a quartermaster?’ Sharpe sneered.

‘Aye, that too. Someone has to do it, and as often as not they give it to a man up from the ranks.’ He glared at Sharpe and then, unexpectedly, grinned. ‘So you’ve fallen out with Colonel Beckwith too, have you?’

‘I reckon so, sir, yes.’

‘How?’

Sharpe considered the question and decided it could not be answered truthfully. He could not say he did not fit into the mess, it was too vague, too self-pitying, so he answered with a half-truth. ‘They’ve marched off, sir, and left me to clean up the barracks. I’ve fought more battles than any of them, seen more enemies and killed more men than all of them put together, but that don’t count. They don’t want me, sir, so I’m getting out.’

‘Don’t be such a bloody fool,’ Baird growled. ‘In a year or two, Sharpe, there’s going to be enough war for every man jack in this army. So far all we’ve been doing is pissing around the edge of the French, but sooner or later we’re going to have to tackle the bastards head on. We’ll need all the officers we can get then, and you’ll have your chance. You might be a quartermaster now, but ten years from now you’ll be leading a battalion, so just be patient.’

‘I’m not sure Colonel Beckwith will want me back, sir. I’m not supposed to be in London. I’m supposed to be at Shorncliffe.’

‘Beckwith will do what I tell him,’ Baird growled, ‘and I’ll tell him to kiss your bum if you do this job for me.’

Sharpe liked Baird. Most soldiers liked Baird. He might be a general, but he was as tough as any man in the ranks. He could outswear the sergeants, outmarch the Rifles and outfight any man in green or scarlet. He was a fighter, not a bureaucrat. He had risen high enough in the army, but there were rumours that he had enemies higher still, men who disliked his bluntness. ‘What kind of job, sir?’ Sharpe asked.

‘One where you might die, Sharpe,’ Baird said with relish. He drained his glass of port and poured another. ‘We’re sending a guardsman to Copenhagen. Our interest in Copenhagen is supposed to be secret, but I dare say every French agent in London already knows it. This fellow is going there tomorrow and I want someone to keep him alive. He’s not a real soldier, Sharpe, but an aide to the Duke of York. Not one of those’ – he saw Sharpe glancing at the table of theatre-goers – ‘but the same sort of creature. He’s a courtier, Sharpe, not a soldier. You won’t find a better man for standing sentinel over the royal piss pot, but you wouldn’t want to follow him into a breach, not if you wanted to win.’

‘He’s going tomorrow?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Aye, I know, short notice. We had another man ready to hold his hand, but he was the fellow who was murdered two days ago. So the Duke of York tells me to find a replacement. I thought of you, but didn’t know where you were, then God sent me to the theatre and I find you guzzling ale afterwards. Well done, God. And you won’t mind slitting a few Frog throats?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Our bloody guardsman says he doesn’t need a protector. Says there’s no danger, but what does he know? And his master, the Duke, insists he takes a companion, someone who knows how to fight and, by God, Sharpe, you know how to fight. Almost as well as me!’

‘Almost, sir,’ Sharpe agreed.

‘So you’re under orders, Sharpe.’ The General gripped the port bottle by the neck and pushed back his chair. ‘Are you sleeping here?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘So am I, and I’ve got a carriage coming at seven o’clock to take us to Harwich.’ Baird stood, then paused. ‘It’s a strange thing, Sharpe, but if you do your job properly you’ll stop a war. Odd thing for a soldier to do, don’t you think? Where’s our advancement if we can’t fight? But all the same I doubt we’ll be beating our swords into ploughshares any time soon, not unless the Frogs suddenly see sense. So till tomorrow, young man.’ Baird gave Sharpe a brusque nod and went back to his companions, while Sharpe, with a start of surprise, realized he had not been told why the guardsman was being sent to Copenhagen, nor been asked whether he was willing to go with him. Baird, it appeared, had taken his assent for granted, and Baird, Sharpe reckoned, was right, for, like it or not, he was a soldier.

The General was in a foul mood at seven o’clock next morning. His aide, a Captain Gordon, mimed the cause of Baird’s ill temper by tipping an imaginary bottle to his lips, thus cautioning Sharpe to tact. Sharpe kept silent, settling on the carriage’s front seat, while Baird grumbled that London stank, the weather was wretched and the coach seats lumpy. The vehicle lurched as the inn servants strapped the General’s luggage on the roof, then there was a further delay as a final passenger appeared and insisted that his own luggage be secured alongside Baird’s. The newcomer was a civilian who looked about thirty years old. He was very thin and had a frail, birdlike face on which, astonishingly, a black velvet beauty patch was glued. He wore a silver coat edged with white lace and carried a gold-topped stick from which a silk handkerchief hung. His hair, black as gunpowder, had been smoothed with a perfumed oil and tied with a silver ribbon. He climbed into the coach and, without a word, sat opposite Sharpe. ‘You’re late, my lord,’ Baird snapped.

The young man raised a gloved hand, fluttered his fingers as if to suggest Baird was being extremely tiresome and then closed his eyes. Baird, denied sport with his lordship, frowned at Sharpe instead. ‘There’s still blood on the coat, Sharpe.’

‘Sorry, sir. Tried to wash it out.’ The carriage jerked forward.

‘Can’t have you going to Denmark in a bloody coat, man.’

‘One supposes, Sir David,’ Captain Gordon cut in smoothly, ‘that Lieutenant Sharpe will not be wearing uniform in Denmark. The object is secrecy.’

‘Object, my arse,’ the General said helpfully. ‘He’s my nephew,’ he informed Sharpe, referring to Captain Gordon, ‘and talks like a bloody lawyer.’

Gordon smiled. ‘Do you have civilian clothes, Sharpe?’

‘I do, sir.’ Sharpe indicated his pack.

‘I suggest you don them once you’re aboard your ship,’ Gordon said.

‘“I suggest you don them.”’ Baird mimicked his nephew’s voice. ‘Bloody hellfire. Doesn’t this bloody carriage move at all?’

‘Traffic, Sir David,’ Gordon said emolliently. ‘Essex vegetables for the Saturday market.’

‘Essex bloody vegetables,’ the General complained. ‘I’m forced into a bloody theatre, Gordon, then subjected to Essex vegetables. I should have you all shot.’ He closed his bloodshot eyes.

The carriage, drawn by six horses, went first to the Tower of London where, after Sir David had sworn at the sentries, they were allowed through the gates to discover a cart guarded by a dozen guardsmen who appeared to be under the command of a very tall and very good-looking man in a pale-blue coat, silk stock, white breeches and black boots. The young man bowed as Baird clambered down from the carriage. ‘I have the gold, Sir David.’

‘I should damn well hope you do,’ Sir David growled. ‘Is there a jakes in this damn place?’

‘That way, sir.’ The young man pointed.

‘This is Sharpe,’ Baird said harshly. ‘He’s replacing Willsen, God rest his soul, and this’ – Baird was talking to Sharpe now – ‘is the man you’re keeping alive. Captain Lavisser, or should I say Captain and Major Lavisser? The bloody Guards need two ranks. Bloody fools.’

Lavisser gave Sharpe a rather startled look when he heard that the rifleman was to replace the dead Willsen, but then, as the General went to find the lavatory, the guardsman smiled and his face, which had looked sour and cynical to Sharpe, was suddenly full of friendly charm. ‘So you’re to be my companion?’ he asked.

‘So it seems, sir.’

‘Then I trust we shall be friends, Sharpe. With all my heart.’ Lavisser thrust out a hand. Sharpe took it clumsily, embarrassed by Lavisser’s effusive friendliness. ‘Poor Willsen,’ the Captain went on, clasping Sharpe’s hand in both of his. ‘To be murdered in the street! And he leaves a widow, it seems, and a daughter too. Just a child, just a child.’ He looked pained, then turned to see his guardsmen struggling to move a great wooden chest from the cart. ‘I think the gold should go inside the carriage,’ he suggested.

‘Gold?’ Sharpe asked.

Lavisser turned to him. ‘You’ve not been told the purpose of our journey?’

‘I’m to keep you alive, sir, that’s all I know.’

‘For which I shall be eternally grateful. But our purpose, Sharpe, is to carry gold to the Danes. Forty-three thousand guineas! We travel rich, eh?’ Lavisser hauled open the carriage door, motioned his men to bring the chest of gold, then noticed the carriage’s last passenger, the pale civilian in the silver coat. Lavisser looked astonished. ‘God, Pumps! Are you here?’

Pumps, if that was his real name, merely fluttered his fingers again, then shifted his elegantly booted feet as the gold was manhandled onto the carriage floor. An escort of twenty dragoons took their places ahead of the carriage, then Sir David Baird came back and complained that the chest took up all the coach’s leg room. ‘I suppose we’ll have to endure it,’ he grumbled, then rapped on the coach’s roof to signal that the journey could begin.

The General’s mood improved as the coach jolted through the soot-grimed orchards and vegetable fields about Hackney where a fitful sun chased shadows over woods and low hills. ‘You know Lord Pumphrey?’ Baird asked Lavisser, indicating the frail young man who still seemed to be asleep.

‘William and I were at Eton together,’ Lavisser answered.

Pumphrey opened his eyes, peered at Lavisser as though surprised to see him, shuddered and closed his eyes again.

‘You and I should have been to Eton,’ Baird said to Sharpe. ‘We’d have learned useful things, like which side of the pot to piss in. Did you have breakfast, Lavisser?’

‘The Lieutenant of the Tower was very hospitable, thank you, sir.’

‘They like guardsmen in the Tower,’ Baird said, implying that real soldiers would not be so welcome. ‘Captain Lavisser’ – he spoke to Sharpe now – ‘is an aide to the Duke of York. I told you that, didn’t I? But did I tell you how useless His Royal Highness is? Bloody man thinks he’s a soldier. He buggered up his campaign in Holland in ’99 and now he’s Commander in Chief. That’s what happens to you, Sharpe, when you’re the King’s son. Fortunately’ – Baird, who was plainly enjoying himself, turned to Lavisser – ‘fortunately for you royal camp-followers the army has still got one or two real soldiers. Lieutenant Sharpe is one of them. He’s a rifleman in case you don’t recognize that bloodstained green rag, and he’s a thug.’

Lavisser, who had taken no offence as his master was insulted, looked puzzled. ‘He’s a what, sir?’

‘You weren’t in India, were you?’ Sir David asked, making the question sound like an accusation. ‘A thug, Lavisser, is a killer; a brute, conscienceless and efficient killer. I’m a thug, Lavisser, and so is Mister Sharpe. You are not, and nor are you, Gordon.’

‘I nightly give thanks to the Almighty for that providence,’ Baird’s aide said happily.

‘Sharpe’s a good thug,’ Baird said. ‘He came up from the ranks and you don’t do that by being delicate. Tell ’em what you did in Seringapatam, Sharpe.’

‘Must I, sir?’

‘Yes,’ Baird insisted, so Sharpe told the story as briefly as he could. Lavisser listened politely, but Lord Pumphrey, whose presence was still a mystery to Sharpe, opened his eyes and paid very close attention, so close that he unsettled Sharpe. His lordship said nothing, however, when the lame tale was done.

Lavisser spoke instead. ‘You impress me, Mister Sharpe,’ he said fulsomely, ‘you impress me mightily.’ Sharpe did not know what to say, so gazed out of the window at a small wheatfield that looked rain-beaten. Beyond the damp wheat stood a haystack, reminding him that Grace had died between haymaking and the harvest a year before. He felt a lump in his throat. God damn it, he thought, God damn it, would it never go? He could see her in his mind’s eye, see her sitting on the terrace with her hands on her swollen belly, laughing at some poor jest. Oh, Christ, he thought, but let it pass.

He became aware that Sir David Baird was now talking about Copenhagen. The Danish King, it seemed, was mad, and the country was ruled instead by the Crown Prince. ‘Is it true you know him?’ Baird demanded of Lavisser.

‘The Crown Prince knows me, sir,’ Lavisser said carefully. ‘My grandfather is one of his chamberlains, so I have that introduction. And my master, the Duke, is his first cousin.’

‘That will be enough?’

‘More than enough,’ Lavisser said firmly. Lord Pumphrey took a watch from his pocket, fumbled with the catch, consulted it and yawned.

‘Boring you, my lord?’ Baird growled.

‘I am forever entertained by your company, Sir David,’ Lord Pumphrey said in a very high-pitched voice. He pronounced each word very distinctly, which imbued the statement with an odd authority. ‘I am enthralled by you,’ he added, tucking the watch away and closing his eyes.

‘Bloody fool,’ Sir David muttered, then looked at Sharpe. ‘We’re talking about the Danish fleet,’ he explained. ‘It’s a damn great fleet that’s holed up in Copenhagen and doing bugger all. Just mouldering away. But the Frogs would like to get their damned hands on it and replace the ships we took from them at Trafalgar. So they’re thinking of invading little Denmark and stealing their ships.’

‘And if the French do invade,’ Lavisser smoothly continued the General’s explanation, ‘then they will dominate the entrance to the Baltic and so cut off Britain’s trade. Denmark is neutral, of course, but such circumstances have hardly deterred Bonaparte in the past.’

‘It’s the Danish fleet he’s after,’ Baird insisted, ‘because the bloody man will use it to invade Britain. So we have to stop him stealing it.’

‘How do you do that, sir?’ Sharpe asked.

Baird grinned greedily. ‘By stealing it first, of course. The Foreign Office have a fellow over there trying to persuade the Danish government to send their ships to British ports, but they’re saying no. Captain Lavisser is going to change their minds.’

‘You can do that?’ Sharpe asked him.

Lavisser shrugged. ‘I intend to bribe the Crown Prince, Sharpe.’ He patted the wooden chest. ‘We are carrying Danegeld, and we shall dazzle His Majesty with glitter and befuddle him with treasure.’

Lord Pumphrey groaned. Everyone ignored him as Baird took up the explanation. ‘Captain Lavisser’s going to bribe the Crown Prince, Sharpe, and if the Frogs catch wind of what he’s doing they’ll do their best to stop him. A knife in the back will do that very effectively, so your job is to protect Lavisser.’

Sharpe felt no qualms at such a task, indeed he rather hoped he would get a chance to tangle with some Frenchmen. ‘What happens if the Danes won’t give us the fleet, sir?’ he asked Baird.

‘Then we invade,’ the General said.

‘Denmark?’ Sharpe was astonished. The woman at the Frog Prick had suggested as much, but it still seemed surprising. Fighting Denmark? Denmark was not an enemy!

‘Denmark,’ Baird confirmed. ‘Our fleet’s ready and waiting in Harwich and the Danes, Sharpe, ain’t got no choice. They either put their fleet under our protection or I’ll bloody take it from them.’

‘You, sir?’

‘Lord Cathcart’s in charge,’ Baird allowed, ‘but he’s an old woman. I’ll be there, Sharpe, and God help the Danes if I am. And your friend Wellesley’ – he said the name sourly – ‘is tagging along to see if he can learn something.’

‘He’s no friend of mine, sir,’ Sharpe said. It was true that Wellesley had made him into an officer, but Sharpe had not seen the General since India. Nor did he relish any such meeting. Grace had been a cousin of Wellesley’s, a very distant cousin, but disapproval of her behaviour had spread into the furthest reaches of her aristocratic family.

‘I’m your friend, Mister Sharpe,’ Baird said wolfishly, ‘and I don’t mind admitting I want you to fail. A fight in Denmark? I could relish that. No more talk of a man who can only fight in India.’ The bitterness was naked. Baird felt he had been unfairly treated in India, mostly because Wellesley had been offered the preferments that Baird believed he deserved. No wonder he wanted war, Sharpe thought.

They reached Harwich in the evening. The fields surrounding the small port were filled with tented camps while the damp pastures were crammed with cavalry and artillery horses. Guns were parked in the town streets and were lined wheel to wheel on the stone quay where, beside a small pile of expensive leather baggage, a man as tall and broad as Baird stood waiting. The man was dressed in servant’s black and Sharpe at first took him to be a labourer wanting a tip for carrying the baggage onto a boat, but then the man bowed his head to Lavisser who clapped him familiarly on the shoulder. ‘This is Barker,’ Lavisser told Sharpe, ‘my man. And this is Lieutenant Sharpe, Barker, who has replaced the unfortunate Willsen.’

Barker turned a flat gaze on Sharpe. Another thug, Sharpe thought, a hardened, scarred and formidable thug. He nodded at the servant who did not return the greeting, but just looked away.

‘Barker was a footpad, Sharpe,’ Lavisser said enthusiastically, ‘before I taught him manners and morals.’

‘Don’t see why you need me,’ Sharpe said, ‘if you’ve got a footpad on your side.’

‘I doubt I do need you, Sharpe,’ Lavisser said, ‘but our masters insist I have a protector, so come you must.’ He gave Sharpe another of his dazzling smiles.

A small crowd had gathered on the quay to gape at the fleet of great warships that lay in the river’s mouth, while transports, frigates and brigs were either anchored or moored nearer the small harbour where a falling tide was exposing long stretches of mud. Closest to the quay were some ungainly ships, much smaller than frigates, with low freeboards and wide hulls. ‘Bomb ships,’ Gordon, Baird’s nephew, remarked helpfully.

‘They’ve got damn great mortars in their bellies,’ Baird explained, then turned to look at the modest town. ‘A dozen well-manned bomb ships could wipe Harwich off the earth in twenty minutes,’ the General said with unholy relish. ‘It will be interesting to see what they do to a city like Copenhagen.’

‘You would not bombard Copenhagen!’ Captain Gordon sounded shocked.

‘I’d bombard London if the King demanded it,’ Baird said.

‘But not Edinburgh,’ Gordon murmured.

‘You spoke, Gordon?’

‘I remarked that time is getting short, sir. I’m sure Captain Lavisser and Lieutenant Sharpe should be embarking soon.’

Their ship was a frigate, newly painted and moored closer to Felixstowe on the river’s northern bank. ‘She’s called the Cleopatra,’ Baird’s aide said, and it was apparent that the frigate’s crew had seen the carriage’s arrival, for a ship’s boat was now pulling across the river.

A score of officers from the tented camps had gathered lower down the quay and Sharpe saw some green jackets among the scarlet. He did not want to be recognized and so he hid himself behind a great pile of herring barrels and stared down at the mud where gulls strutted and fought over fish bones. He was suddenly cold. He did not want to go to sea, and he knew that was because he had met Grace on a ship. It was made worse because a country gentleman, come in his open carriage to see the ships, was telling his daughters which of the far fleet had been at Trafalgar.

‘There, you see? The Mars? She was there.’

‘Which one is she, Papa?’

‘The black-and-yellow one.’

‘They’re all black and yellow, Papa. Like wasps.’

Sharpe stared at the ships, half listening to the girls tease their father and trying not to think of Grace teasing him, when a precise and high-pitched voice spoke behind him. ‘Are you content, Lieutenant?’

Sharpe turned to see it was Lord Pumphrey, the young and taciturn civilian who had spoken so little during the journey. ‘My lord?’

‘I first heard you were involved in this nonsense very late last night,’ Pumphrey said softly, ‘and I confess your qualities were quite unknown to me. I apologize for that, but I am not very familiar with the army list. My father once thought I should be a soldier, but he concluded I was both too clever and too delicate.’ He smiled at Sharpe who did not smile back. Lord Pumphrey sighed. ‘So I took the liberty of waking one or two acquaintances to discover something about you and they informed me that you are a most resourceful man.’

‘Am I, my lord?’ Sharpe wondered who on earth he and Lord Pumphrey knew in common.

‘I too have resources,’ Pumphrey went on. ‘I work for the Foreign Office, though, for the moment, I am reduced to serving as a civilian aide to Sir David. It quite opens one’s eyes, seeing how the military operate. So, Lieutenant, are you content?’

Sharpe shrugged. ‘It all seems a bit abrupt, my lord, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Distressingly abrupt!’ Pumphrey agreed. He was so thin and frail that it looked as though a puff of wind would blow him off the quay and dump him in the filth below, but that apparent weakness was belied by his eyes which were very intelligent. He took out a snuff box, snapped open its lid and offered some to Sharpe. ‘You don’t use it? I find it calming, and we rather need calm heads at present. This alarming excursion, Lieutenant, is being encouraged by the Duke of York. We at the Foreign Office, who might be expected to know rather more about Denmark than His Royal Highness, profoundly disapprove of the whole scheme, but the Duke, alas, has gained the support of the Prime Minister. Mister Canning wants the fleet and would rather avoid a campaign that will inevitably make Denmark into our enemy. He suggests, too, that a successful bribe will spare the Treasury the expense of such a campaign. These are cogent arguments, Lieutenant, do you not think?’

‘If you say so, my lord.’

‘Cogent indeed, and quite egregiously muddle-headed. It will all end in tears, Lieutenant, which is why the Foreign Office in its ineffable wisdom has attached me to the Danish expedition. I am deputed to pick up the pieces, so to speak.’

Sharpe wondered why his lordship wore a beauty patch on his cheek. It was a woman’s affectation, not a man’s, but Sharpe did not like to ask. Instead he watched two gulls squabble over some fish offal in the mud under the quay. ‘You think it won’t work, my lord?’

Pumphrey gazed at the ships. ‘Shall I just say, Lieutenant, that nothing I have heard suggests that the Danish Crown Prince is venal?’

‘Venal?’ Sharpe asked.

A ghost of a smile showed on his lordship’s face. ‘Nothing I have heard, Sharpe, suggests that the Crown Prince is a man amenable to bribery, and in consequence the Foreign Office is acutely concerned that the whole sorry affair might embarrass Britain.’

‘How?’

‘Suppose the Crown Prince is offended by the offer of a bribe and announces the attempt to the world?’

‘That doesn’t seem so bad,’ Sharpe said dourly.

‘It would be clumsy,’ Lord Pumphrey said severely, ‘and clumsiness is the grossest offence against good diplomacy. In truth we are bribing half the crowned heads of Europe, but we have to pretend it is not happening. But there’s worse.’ He glanced behind to make sure no one was overhearing the conversation. ‘Captain Lavisser is known to be indebted. He plays steep at Almack’s. Well, so do many others, but the fact of it is worrying.’

Sharpe smiled down at the birdlike Pumphrey. ‘He’s up to his ears in debt and you’re sending him off with a chest full of money?’

‘The Commander in Chief insists, the Prime Minister concurs and we at the Foreign Office cannot possibly suggest that the Honourable John Lavisser is anything other than scrupulously honest.’ Pumphrey said the last word very sourly, implying the opposite of what he had just stated. ‘We merely must tidy things up, Lieutenant, when the enthusiasm has died down. Nasty thing, enthusiasm. And if things do turn out ill then we would appreciate that no one was to know what happened. We don’t want the Duke and the Prime Minister to look like complete fools, do we?’

‘We don’t, my lord?’

Lord Pumphrey shuddered at Sharpe’s levity. ‘If Lavisser fails, Lieutenant, then I want you to bring him and the money out of Copenhagen to the safety of our army. We do not want the Danish government announcing a failed and clumsy attempt at a bribe.’ He took a piece of paper from his pocket. ‘If you need assistance in Copenhagen then this man may provide it.’ He held the paper out to Sharpe, then pulled it back. ‘I have to tell you, Sharpe, that I have worried greatly about revealing this name to you. The man is valuable. I devoutly hope you won’t need his help.’

‘What treason are you talking, my lord?’ Baird demanded loudly.

‘I was merely remarking on the beauty of the scene, Sir David,’ Lord Pumphrey observed in his high-pitched voice, ‘and noting to Lieutenant Sharpe the delicate tracery of the ships’ rigging. I should like a chance to depict the scene in watercolours.’

‘Good God, man, leave that to the proper bloody artists!’ Baird looked appalled. ‘That’s what the idiots are for.’

Lord Pumphrey pressed the piece of paper into Sharpe’s hand. ‘Guard that name, Lieutenant,’ he said softly. ‘You alone possess it.’

Meaning, Sharpe thought, that Lavisser had not been trusted with the man’s name. ‘Thank you, my lord,’ he said, but Lord Pumphrey had already walked away for the Cleopatra’s launch had come to the jetty that gave access to the deep-water channel. The chest was being loaded into the launch’s belly and Baird held out a hand to Lavisser. ‘I’ll bid you farewell, God speed and good fortune,’ Baird said. ‘I’ll allow I won’t mind if you fail, but there’s no point in real soldiers dying if a handful of gold can keep them alive.’ He shook Sharpe’s hand. ‘Keep our guardsman alive, Sharpe.’

‘I will, sir.’

The two officers did not speak as they were rowed out to the Cleopatra which, in her haste to use a favourable wind and tide, was already hauling her anchor. Sharpe could hear the chant of the seamen as they tramped round the capstan and see the quivering cable shedding drops of water and lumps of mud as it came from the grey river. The topmen were aloft, ready to drop the high sails. Sharpe and Lavisser scrambled up the ship’s side to be met by the dutiful squeal of bosuns’ whistles and by a harassed lieutenant who hurried them aft to the quarterdeck while the hulking Barker carried the baggage down below and a dozen seamen hauled a line to bring the gold on deck. ‘Captain Samuels begs to be excused while we get under way,’ the Lieutenant said, ‘and requests that you keep to the stern rail, gentlemen, until the sails are set.’

Lavisser grinned as the Lieutenant hurried away. ‘Meaning that Captain Samuels don’t want us in the way while he makes a muck of getting under sail. And he’s under the eye of the Admiral, no less! Rather like setting the guard at Windsor Castle. I don’t suppose you’ve ever done that, Sharpe? Placed a guard at Windsor?’

‘I haven’t, sir,’ Sharpe said.

‘You do it perfectly, then some decrepit old fool who last saw action fighting against William the Conqueror informs you that Guardsman Bloggs has an ill-set flint in his musket. And for God’s sake stop calling me “sir”,’ Lavisser said with a smile. ‘You make me feel old, and that’s dreadful unkind of you. So what was on that piece of paper little William gave to you?’

‘Little William?’

‘Lord Pumps. He was a pallid little worm at Eton and he’s no better now.’

‘It’s just his address,’ Sharpe said. ‘He says I should report to him when I get back.’

‘Nonsense,’ Lavisser said, though he did not appear offended that Sharpe had lied to him. ‘If my guess is any good then it’s the name of a man in Copenhagen who might help us, a name, I might add, that the suspicious bastards at the Foreign Office refused to give me. Divide and rule, that’s the Foreign Office way. Aren’t you going to tell me the name?’

‘If I remember it,’ Sharpe said. ‘I threw the paper overboard.’

Lavisser laughed at that untruth. ‘Don’t tell me little Pumps told you to keep it secret! He did? Poor little Pumps, he sees conspiracy everywhere. Well, so long as one of us has the name I suppose it don’t matter.’ He looked upwards as the topsails were released. The canvas shook loudly until the seamen sheeted the sails home. Men slid down shrouds and scrambled along spars to loose the mainsails. It was all so very familiar to Sharpe after his long voyage home from India. Captain Samuels, heavy and tall, stood at the white line which marked off the quarterdeck from the rest of the flush-decked frigate. He said nothing, just watched his men.

‘How long a voyage is it?’ Sharpe asked Lavisser.

‘A week? Ten days? Sometimes much longer. It all depends on Aeolus, our god of the winds. May he blow us swiftly and safely.’

Sharpe grunted an acknowledgement, then just stared ashore where the herring smokers made a haze over the land. He leaned on the stern rail, suddenly wishing he was anywhere but at sea.

Lavisser leaned on the rail beside him. ‘You ain’t happy, Sharpe,’ the guardsman said. Sharpe frowned at the words, which struck him as intrusive. He said nothing, but was acutely aware of Lavisser so close beside him. ‘Let me guess.’ The Guards Captain raised his eyes to the wheeling gulls and pretended to think for a while, then looked at Sharpe again. ‘My guess, Sharpe, is that you met Lady Grace Hale on shipboard and that you’ve not been afloat since.’ He held up a cautionary hand when he saw the anger in Sharpe’s eyes. ‘My dear Sharpe, please don’t mistake me. I feel for you, indeed I do. I met the Lady Grace once. Let me see? It must be a dozen years or more ago and I was only a sprat of fifteen, but I could spot a beauty even then. She was lovely.’

Sharpe said nothing, just watched Lavisser.

‘She was lovely and she was clever,’ the Guards Captain went on softly, ‘and then she was married off to a tedious old bore. And you, Sharpe, forgive my being forward, gave her a time of happiness. Isn’t that something to remember with satisfaction?’ Lavisser waited for Sharpe to respond, but the rifleman said nothing. ‘Am I right?’ Lavisser asked gently.

‘She left me in bloody misery,’ Sharpe admitted. ‘I can’t seem to shake it. And, yes, being on a ship brings it back.’

‘Why should you shake it?’ Lavisser asked. ‘My dear Sharpe, may I call you Richard? That’s kind of you. My dear Richard, you should be in mourning. She deserves it. The greater the affection, the greater the mourning. And it’s been cruel for you. All the gossip! It’s no one’s business what you and Lady Grace did.’

‘It was everyone’s business,’ Sharpe said bitterly.

‘And it will pass,’ Lavisser said gently. ‘Gossip is ephemeral, Richard, it vanishes like dew or smoke. Your grief remains, the rest of the world will forget. They’ve mostly forgotten already.’

‘You haven’t.’

Lavisser smiled. ‘I’ve been racking my brains all day trying to place you. It only came to me as we climbed aboard.’ A rush of feet interrupted them as seamen came aft to secure the mizzen sheets. The great sail banged above their heads, then was brought under control and the frigate picked up speed. Her ensign, blue because the fleet’s commander was an Admiral of the Blue, flapped crisply in the evening wind. ‘The grief will pass, Richard,’ Lavisser went on in a low voice, ‘it will pass. I had a sister who died, a dear thing, and I grieved for her. It’s not the same, I know, but we should not be ashamed of demonstrating our feelings. Not when it is grief for a lovely woman.’

‘It won’t stop me doing my job,’ Sharpe said stoically, fighting off the tears that threatened.

‘Of course it won’t,’ Lavisser said fervently, ‘nor, I trust, will it stop you from enjoying the fleshpots of Copenhagen. They are meagre and few, I can assure you, but such as they are we shall enjoy.’

‘I can’t afford fleshpots,’ Sharpe said.

‘Don’t be so dull, Richard! We’re sailing with forty-three thousand of the government’s guineas and I intend to steal as many of them as I decently can without getting caught.’ He smiled so broadly and with such infectious enjoyment that Sharpe had to laugh. ‘There!’ Lavisser said. ‘You see I shall be good for you!’

‘I hope so,’ Sharpe replied. He was watching the Cleopatra’s rippling wake. The tide was ebbing and the wind was out of the west so that the anchored ships presented their sterns to the frigate’s quarterdeck. The ugly bomb ships sat low in the water. One was called Thunder, another Vesuvius, then there was Aetna with Zebra close by. The frigate sailed so close to Zebra that Sharpe could look down into her welldeck which was stuffed with what looked like coils of rope, put there to cushion the shock of the two great mortars that squatted in the ship’s belly. The mortars were capped with tompions, but Sharpe guessed they threw a shell about a foot across and, because the flash of their firing would blast up into the air to lob the bombs in a high arc, the forward stays of the Zebra were not made of hemp, but of thick chain. Another eight guns, carronades by the look of them, were mounted aft of the mainmast. An ugly vessel, Sharpe thought, but a brute with massive teeth, and there were sixteen of the bomb ships moored or anchored in the river, along with a host of gun brigs that were shallow-draught vessels armed with heavy cannon. These were not ships designed to fight other ships, but to hammer targets ashore.

The Cleopatra was picking up speed now as the crew trimmed the big sails. She leaned to larboard and the water began to gurgle and seethe at her stern. The dusk was drawing in, shadowing the big seventy-fours that were the workhorses of the British fleet. Sharpe recognized some of the ships’ names from Trafalgar: the Mars, the Minotaur, the Orion and the Agamemnon, but most he had never seen before. The Goliath, belying her name, was dwarfed by the Prince of Wales, a 98-gun monster which flew the Admiral’s pennant. A gunport opened at the Prince of Wales’s bow to return the salute that the Cleopatra was firing as she passed. The sound of the guns was huge, the smoke thick and the tremor of the cannon, even though they were unshotted, shook the deck beneath Sharpe’s feet.

Only one ship, another seventy-four, lay beyond the Prince of Wales. She was a good-looking ship and Sharpe had learned enough in his voyage home from India to recognize that she was French-built, one of the many ships that had been captured from the enemy. Water gushed from her pumps as the Cleopatra sailed by and Sharpe looked up to see men pausing in their work to watch the sleek frigate pass. Then the Cleopatra left the seventy-four behind and Sharpe could read the gold-painted name scrolled across her stern. Pucelle. His heart leaped. The Pucelle! His own ship, the ship he had been aboard at Trafalgar and which was captained by his friend, Joel Chase, though whether Chase was still a captain, or aboard the Pucelle or even alive, Sharpe did not know. He just knew that he and Grace had known happiness on board the ship that had been named by her French builders for Joan of Arc, la pucelle or the virgin. He wanted to wave at the ship, but it was too far for him to recognize anyone aboard.

‘You’re welcome, gentlemen.’ Captain Samuels, dark-faced, grey-haired and scowling, had come to greet his guests. ‘Lieutenant Dunbar will show you your quarters.’ He frowned at Sharpe, who had turned to stare at the Pucelle again. ‘You find my remarks tedious, Lieutenant?’

‘I’m sorry, sir. I was aboard that ship once.’

‘The Pucelle?’

‘Didn’t she take the Revenant at Trafalgar, sir?’

‘What if she did? There were easy pickings at that battle, Lieutenant.’ The envy of a man who had not sailed with Nelson was naked in Samuels’s voice.

‘You were there, sir?’ Sharpe asked, knowing it would needle the Captain.

‘I was not, but nor were you, Lieutenant, and now you will show me the courtesy of remarking my words.’ He went on to tell them the rules of the ship, that they were not to smoke aboard, not to climb the rigging and that they must salute the quarterdeck. ‘You will take your meals in the officers’ mess and I’ll thank you not to get in the crew’s way. I’ll do my duty, God knows, but that doesn’t mean I must like it. I’m to put you and your damned cargo ashore by stealth and that I’ll do, but I’ll be glad to see the back of you both and get back to some proper sailoring.’ He left them as abruptly as he had come.

‘I do love feeling welcome,’ Lavisser murmured.

Sharpe stared aft again, but the Pucelle was lost in the dark loom of the land. She was gone and he was sailing away again. Sailing to a war, or to stop a war, or to be tangled in treachery, but whatever it was, he was still a soldier.

Sharpe was a soldier without weapons. He had come aboard the Cleopatra with his official-issue sabre, but nothing else. Nothing useful. He complained of it to Lavisser who said Sharpe could be amply supplied in Vygârd. ‘It’s the house where my mother grew up and it’s rather beautiful.’ He sounded wistful. ‘My grandfather has anything you might need; pistols, swords, everything, though I truly doubt we’ll encounter trouble. I’m sure the French do have agents in Copenhagen, but they’re hardly likely to try murder.’

‘Where’s Vygârd?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Near Køge where our hospitable Captain is supposed to put us ashore.’ They were eleven days out of Harwich, sailing a sunlit sea. Lavisser was leaning on the stern rail where he looked as though he did not have a care in the world. He wore no hat and his golden hair lifted in the wind. He had blue eyes and a sharp-cut face, so that he looked like one of his Viking ancestors who had sailed this same cold sea. ‘You really won’t need weapons, Richard,’ Lavisser went on. ‘We’ll simply borrow a carriage from Vygârd to carry the gold to Copenhagen, conclude our business with the Crown Prince and so have the satisfaction of preserving peace.’

Lavisser had spoken confidently, but Sharpe recalled Lord Pumphrey’s doubts that the Danish Crown Prince was a man open to bribery. ‘What if the Crown Prince refuses?’ he asked.

‘He won’t,’ Lavisser said. ‘My grandfather is his chamberlain and he tells me that the bribe is the Prince’s own suggestion.’ He smiled. ‘He needs money, Sharpe, to rebuild the Christiansborg Palace that got burned down a few years back. It will all be very easy and we shall go home as heroes. Where’s the danger? There are no Frogs in Vygârd, none in my grandfather’s town house in Bredgade, and the Prince’s own guards will keep the bastards well out of our way. You really do not need weapons, Richard. Indeed, I don’t wish to offend you, but your own presence, though utterly welcome, is also superfluous.’

‘Things can go wrong,’ Sharpe said stubbornly.

‘How very true. An earthquake could devastate Copenhagen. Maybe there will be a plague of toads. Perhaps the four horsemen of the apocalypse will ravage Denmark. Richard! I’m going home. I’m calling on a prince to whom I am distantly related. Like me, he’s half English. Did you know that? His mother is King George’s sister.’

Lavisser was persuasive, but Sharpe felt naked without proper weapons and other men who were senior to Lavisser had thought it wise to give the guardsman protection and so Sharpe went below to the tiny cabin that he shared with Lavisser and there pulled open his pack. His civilian clothes were inside, the good clothes that Grace had bought for him, along with the telescope that had been a grudging gift from Sir Arthur Wellesley. But at the very bottom of the canvas pack, hidden and half forgotten, was his old picklock. He pulled it out, then unfolded the slightly rusting picks. Grace had discovered it once and wondered what on earth it was. She had laughed in disbelief when he told her. ‘You could be hanged for possessing such a thing!’ she had declared.

‘I keep it for old times’ sake,’ Sharpe had explained lamely.

‘You’ve never used it, surely?’

‘Of course I’ve used it!’

‘Show me! Show me!’

He had shown her how to pick a lock, a thing he had done scores of times in the past. He was out of practice now, but the picks still made brief work of the padlock which secured the great chest in which the government money was stored. There were plenty of weapons on board the Cleopatra, but to get some Sharpe knew he would have to cross some tar-stained hands with gold.

Sharpe had money of his own. He had taken twenty-four pounds, eight shillings and fourpence halfpenny from Jem Hocking and the bulk of that had been in coppers and small silver which Sergeant Matthew Standfast, the new owner of the Frog Prick, had been happy to exchange for gold. ‘At a price, sir,’ Standfast had insisted.

‘A price?’

‘Filthy stuff!’ Standfast had poked the grimy coppers. ‘I’ll have to boil them in vinegar! What have you been doing, Lieutenant? Robbing poor boxes?’ He had exchanged the twenty-four pounds, eight shillings and fourpence halfpenny for twenty-two shining guineas that were now safely wrapped in one of Sharpe’s spare shirts.

He could have used his own money to get weapons, but he did not see why he should. Britain was sending him to Denmark and it was Britain’s enemies who threatened Lavisser, so Britain, Sharpe reckoned, should pay, and that meant taking gold from the big chest that half filled the cabin that Sharpe and Lavisser shared. Sharpe had to edge one of the hanging cot beds aside to open the chest’s lid. Inside were layers of grey canvas bags secured with wire ties that were sealed with crimped lead tags blobbed with red wax. Sharpe lifted three bags from the top layer and selected a lower bag that he slit with his knife.

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-barrelled 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 grey 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 heartbreakingly 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 grey 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 grey twilight. A beacon burned at its tip and the light stayed in view as the Cleopatra turned south towards 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.’