Sharpe's Prey Page 8

  “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 saber, but nothing else. Nothing useful. He complained of it to Lavisser who said Sharpe could be amply supplied in Vygard. “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 Vygard?” Sharpe asked.

  “Near Koge 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 Vygard 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 Vygard, 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 rne, 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 gray 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 up his boots. He looked up at the hulking Barker who had to stoop beneath the beams. “So you were a footpad, Barker?”

  “That’s what the Captain told you.” Barker put the bucket down.

  “Where?” Sharpe asked.

  Barker hesitated, as if suspecting a trap in the question, then shrugged. “Bristol.”

  “Don’t know it,” Sharpe said airily. “And now you’re reformed?”

  “Am I?”

  “Are you?”

  Barker grimaced. “I’m looking for Mister Lavisser’s coat.”

  Sharpe could see the padlock in a corner of the cabin and hoped Barker did not notice it. “So what will you do if the French interfere with us?”

  Barker scowled at Sharpe. It seemed as if he had not understood the question, or else he just hated talking to Sharpe, but then he sneered. “How will they even know we’re there? The master speaks Danish and you and I will keep our gobs shut.” He plucked a coat from a hook on the back of the door and left without another word.

  Sharpe waited for his steps to fade, then restored the padlock to the hasp. He did not like Barker and the feeling was evidently mutual. On the face of it the man made a strange servant for Lavisser, yet Sharpe had met plenty of gentlemen who liked to mix with brutes from the gutter. Such men enjoyed listening to the stories and felt flattered by the friendships, and presumably Lavisser shared their taste. Maybe, Sharpe reflected, that explained why Lavisser was being so friendly to himself.

  Next day he used two of the guineas to bribe the ship’s Master-at-Arms who made the gold vanish into a pocket with the speed of a conjurer and an hour later brought Sharpe a well-honed cutlass and two heavy sea-service pistols with a bag of cartridges. “I’d be obliged, sir, if Captain Samuels didn’t know about this,” the Master-at-Arms said, “on account that he’s a flogger when he’s aggravated. Keep ‘em hidden till you’re ashore, sir.” Sharpe promised he would. There would be no difficulty in keeping the promise during the voyage, but he did not see how he was to carry the weapons off the ship without Captain Samuels seeing them, then thought of the chest. He asked Lavisser to put them with the gold.

  Lavisser laughed when he saw the cutlass and heavy-barreled guns. “You couldn’t wait till we reached Vygard?”

  “I like to know I
’m armed,” Sharpe said.

  “Armed? You’ll look like Bluebeard if you carry that lot! But if it makes you happy, Richard, why not? Your happiness is my prime concern.” Lavisser took the chest’s key from a waistcoat pocket and raised the lid. “A sight to warm your chill heart, eh?” he said, indicating the dull gray bags. “A fortune in every one. I fetched it myself from the Bank of England and, Lord, what a fuss! Little men in pink coats demanding signatures, enough keys to lock up half the world, and deep suspicion. I’m sure they thought I was going to steal the gold. And why not? Why don’t you and I just divide it and retire somewhere gracious? Naples? I’ve always wanted to visit Naples where I’m told the women are heart-breakingly beautiful.” Lavisser saw Sharpe’s expression and laughed. “For a man up from the ranks, Richard, you’re uncommonly easy to shock. But I confess I’m tempted. I suffer the cruel fate of being the younger son. My wretched brother will become earl and inherit the money while I am expected to fend for myself. You find that risible, yes? Where you come from everyone fends for themselves, so I shall do the same.” He put Sharpe’s new weapons on the gray bags, then closed the chest. “The gold will go to Prince Frederick,” he said, securing the padlock, “and there will be peace on earth and goodwill to all mankind.”

  Next evening the frigate passed the northernmost tip of Jutland. The low headland was called the Skaw and it showed dull and misty in the gray twilight. A beacon burned at its tip and the light stayed in view as the Cleopatra turned south toward the Kattegat. Captain Samuels was plainly worried about that narrow stretch of water, in one place only three miles wide, which was the entrance to the Baltic and guarded on its Swedish bank by the great cannon of Helsingborg and on the Danish by the batteries of Helsingor’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 th Skaw-“is whether Denmark is still neutral. We can pass Helsingor by staying close to the Swedish shore, but the Danes will still see us pass and know we’re up to no good.”

  The Swedes, Sharpe gathered, were allied to the British. “Not that it means much,” Lavisser said. “Their king is mad too. Strange, isn’t it? Half the bloody kings of Europe are foaming maniacs. The Swedes won’t fight for us, but they’re on our side, while the Danes don’t want to fight anyone. They’re strictly neutral, poor darlings, but their fleet has complicated matters. They’ll have to fight to protect it or else take the bribe. Of course, if the French have already sent a bigger bribe then they might already have declared war on Britain.”

  There was no alternative but to pass through the narrow strait. Lavisser and Sharpe were to be put ashore south of Koge, close to a village called Herforge where Lavisser’s grandparents had their estate, and Koge Bay lay south of Helsingor and Copenhagen. They could have avoided Helsingor by sailing west about Zealand, the island on which Copenhagen lay, but that was a much longer voyage and time was short. “We have to see the Prince before the British fleet and army arrive,” Lavisser said. “D’you think they’d really bombard Copenhagen?”

  “Why not?” Sharpe asked.

  “Can you really imagine British gunners killing women and children?”

  “They’ll aim for the walls,” Sharpe said, “for the defenses.”

  “They will not,” Lavisser said. “They’ll bloody pulverize the city! Cathcart won’t want to, though. He’s squeamish.” Cathcart was the commanding General. “Let’s hope the bribe works, eh?”

  They passed Helsingor in the afternoon. Guns sounded from the fortress, but their noise was diffused for they were not loaded with ball or shell, but instead were merely responding to the salute that Captain Samuels ordered fired in honor of the Danish flag. Sharpe gazed at the flag through his telescope, seeing a white cross against a red field. Captain Samuels was also staring toward the fortress, but he was looking for the splashes of water that would betray the fall of round shot. None showed, which proved the Danes were merely saluting. “So they’re still neutral,” Captain Samuels grunted.

  “They’ll do all they can to stay neutral,” Lavisser offered his opinion. “They’re a small country, Captain, and they don’t want to pick a fight unless they’re forced to it.” He borrowed Sharpe’s telescope and stared at the massive Kronborg Castle which, from this distance, looked more like a palace than a fortress. The copper sheathing of its spires and steeply pitched roof glowed green above the drifting white smoke left by the guns. A frigate, anchored in the Helsingor Roads, was setting her sails in an evident attempt to follow the Cleopatra. “Does she mean trouble?” Lavisser asked.

  Captain Samuels shook his head. “She’ll not catch us,” he said dismissively, “and besides, there’s liable to be a fog with this wind.”

  Lavisser looked back to the castle. “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,” he intoned portentously.

  “There is?” Sharpe asked.

  The guardsman laughed. “It is from Hamlet, my dear Richard, which takes place in that very same castle. I was taken there as a child and I was quite convinced I saw the old king’s ghost wandering the battlements, but alas, it was only my imagination. Then, years later, I acted the part at Eton. Bloody Pumphrey played Ophelia and a very convincing girl he made too. I was supposed to kiss him in one scene and he appeared to enjoy it so much that I squeezed his balls until he squealed like a pig.” He smiled at the memory, then leaned on the rail to gaze at the low green shore. “I wish there really was something rotten in Denmark. It’s a dull country, Richard, dull, religious, hidebound and cautious. It’s inhabited by small people who lead little lives.”

  “We must all seem like that to you.”

  Lavisser was instantly contrite. “No, no. Forgive me. I was born to privilege, Richard, and I forget that others are not.”

  The Cleopatra stayed closer to the Swedish shore, making it seem to any who watched that she was on passage to Stralsund in northern Prussia where a British garrison was stationed, but on the night after they had passed Copenhagen the frigate left the well-traveled sea lane and turned west to beat her way into Koge Bay. She was alone now. The Danish frigate had long abandoned her stern chase of the British ship and Koge Bay was empty. The moon showed occasionally through spreading clouds and the low white chalk cliffs of the approaching coast seemed to shine with an unnatural brilliance. The frigate turned northward until the cliffs faded into long beaches and it was there that Captain Samuels hove to and ordered the launch to be lowered.

  The heavy chest was slung overboard by a whip rove to a yardarm, then Sharpe, Lavisser and Barker climbed down to the waiting launch. Sharpe, like his companions, was in civilian clothes. He wore a brown coat, black breeches and boots, a white stock and a brown tricorne hat that Grace had always said made him look like a bad-tempered farmer. His rifleman’s uniform was in the pack slung on his back.

  The launch crew rowed through the dark. The moon was gone behind clouds that now smothered the sky, while well to the north, beyond Copenhagen, a thunderstorm roiled the night. Lightning split the blackness with snake tongues of fire, but no rain fell on Koge Bay and the sound of the thunder faded before it reached the launch. The only sounds were the creak of the muffled oars and the splash of water on the launch’s hull.

  There was no surf, just a gentle breaking of small waves on a shelving beach. The launch’s keel grated on sand and a sailor leaped overboard to hold the boat steady while half a dozen men carried the chest of gold ashore. Sharpe, Lavisser and Barker followed, splashing through the shallows. The Midshipman in charge of the launch wished them good fortune, then the launch was heaved back from the beach and the sound of its muffled oars died swiftly away. A cold wind rattled grains of sand against Sharpe’s boots.

  He was in Denmark.


  And Captain Lavisser drew his pistol.

  Chapter 4

  Lavisser hesitated. “Would they hear a pistol shot on the frigate?” he asked.

  “Probably,” Sharpe said. “Sound carries over water. Why?”

  “I’m worried the priming got wet, but I don’t want to alarm the Cleopatra. They might think we’re in trouble.”

  “Priming didn’t get wet,” Sharpe said. “Water only came up to our ankles.”

  “You’re probably right.” Lavisser bolstered the pistol. “I think it’s best if you wait here, Richard. If Samuels landed us in the right place then Herfolge’s at least an hour’s walk. I’ll see you at dawn and, with any luck, I’ll bring a cart and horse to get this damn gold out of here.” He climbed a dune. “You’ll stay with Mister Sharpe, Barker?”

  “I will, sir,” Barker acknowledged.

  “You know what to do,” Lavisser said cheerfully, turning away.

  “Do you have the key to the chest?” Sharpe called after the guardsman.

  Lavisser half turned. He was nothing but a shadow on the dune’s crest. “Surely you don’t need it, Richard?”

  “I’d like to get those pistols.”

  “If you must. Barker has the key. I’ll see you in two or three hours.” Lavisser waved and disappeared down the other side of the dune.

  Sharpe peered at Barker’s dark shape. “The key?”

  “I’m looking for it.” Barker’s answer was surly. He began to rummage through a valise and Sharpe, as he waited, walked up the dune. It was cold for summer, but he supposed that was because the sea was so chill. From the dune’s top he could just see the frigate as a tracery of dark rigging against the eastern sky while inland there was only a feeble and faraway scrap of hazed and flickering light. Captain Samuels had said that fog was likely in this weather and the smeared scrap of light suggested it was forming over the flat farmlands. The ground seemed to rock as Sharpe became accustomed to being on land again. He could smell hay, salt and seaweed. “Been to Denmark before, Barker?” he called down to the beach.