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.
