clatter sounded beneath him. He went still. The clattering was loud, wood against stone. The sound puzzled Sharpe until he recognized it as footsteps. Wooden shoes, Sharpe finally realized, banging on the barn’s flagstones. Then a man’s voice shouted a protest, presumably for his stolen dinner, another man laughed, and Sharpe heard the heavy sound of hooves and the clink of chains. A team was being hitched to the hay-wain. The voices went on, and a woman said something soothing that provoked more laughter. It all seemed to take forever. Sharpe stayed where he was, half buried in the wagon’s high load.
Then, at last, the driver flicked his whip and the haywain eased forward as the horses took its vast weight on their harnesses. The wagon went out from the barn’s shadow and creaked and groaned and rattled as it gained speed over the yard. A man and a woman called what Sharpe presumed was a farewell.
The cloud was shredding so that strips of blue showed as the wagon lurched along a farm track. It was going inland and Sharpe was happy to let it carry him, but where would it go once it reached the road? He prayed it would turn north. He ducked down as more voices sounded, then peered from the hay to see that it was a group of men clearing a ditch who had called to the driver. A field of wheat grew beyond, very close to harvest.
The wagon turned north. It splashed through a deep ford, groaned up a slope and then the horses settled into a plodding walk on a well-surfaced road that was wide and
He woke close to midday. The wagon, so far as he could judge, was still going northward through a gentle countryside of small villages with painted houses and plain churches, all with roofs of bright red tiles. The road was busier now, mostly with pedestrians who called out greetings to the driver. Another haywain ambled a half- mile behind. The road led directly towards a blur of dirty smoke on the horizon that told Sharpe the wagon was heading for a city. He reckoned it had to be Copenhagen.
But Lavisser, he warned himself, could have reached the city the day before.
Lavisser. How Sharpe was to revenge himself on Lavisser he did not know, but he would. The anger was in him again because he had been fooled by the guardsman’s attentive friendliness on the boat. Sharpe had believed the man’s sympathy and so revealed his own feelings, and all the while Lavisser had been plotting his death. So Lavisser would suffer. By God he would suffer. Sharpe would eviscerate the bastard and have him screaming. Sharpe might not know how he would do it yet, but he did know where. In Copenhagen.
Sharpe reached the city as evening was falling. The wagon creaked through a district of lavish houses, each standing in its own wide garden, then skirted the end of what looked like a wide canal that protected the city’s walls. A causeway led over a smaller moat to one of the city’s gates, this one a massive pair of metal-studded doors set in a wide tunnel that led through the layered ramparts. The haywain stopped among a group of other carts and more elegant carriages. Voices sounded close. Sharpe suspected soldiers were searching all the traffic, but if so they were content merely to ask the driver some questions. None bothered to clamber up the wagon’s high sides and after a while the driver clicked his tongue, the horses took the wagon’s weight and the vehicle lurched on through the long dark tunnel to emerge into the heart of the city.
Sharpe, bedded down in the hay, could only see gables, roofs and spires. The sun was low in the west, gleaming on red tiles and green copper. The evening wind billowed a white curtain from a high window. He smelled coffee, then an organ sounded from a church, filling the air with great chords. Sharpe pulled on his greatcoat, took hold of his pack and waited until the wagon turned into a narrower street, then he climbed over the wooden trellis at the vehicle’s rear and dropped down to the cobbles. A girl watched him from a doorway as he tried to rid himself of the wisps of hay that smothered his clothes. A woman, leading a child by the hand, crossed the narrow street rather than go close by him and Sharpe, looking down at his muddied trousers, was not surprised. He looked like a tramp, but a tramp with a saber.
It was time to find Lord Pumphrey’s man so Sharpe buttoned his greatcoat and walked toward the wider street. It was almost dark, but it looked a prosperous city. Shopkeepers were shuttering their premises while yellow lamplight spilled from hundreds of windows. A giant wooden pipe hung above a tobacco shop; laughter and the clink of glasses came from a tavern. A crippled sailor, his pigtail thick with tar, swung on crutches down the pavement. Big carriages rolled briskly down a wide street where small boys swept the horse dung toward wooden holding boxes. It was like London, but not like London. Much cleaner, for a start. Sharpe gaped at a soaring spire that was formed by the entwined tails of four copper dragons. He also saw, more usefully, that every street and alley was clearly marked with a name. That was not like London where a visitor found his way by guesswork and by God.
An elderly man, bearded and carrying a bundle of books wrapped in string, saw Sharpe gaping up at the street name. He said something in Danish and Sharpe just shrugged. “Vous etes Frangais?” the man asked.
“American,” Sharpe said. It did not seem wise to admit to being English at a time when a British fleet and army was sailing to assault Denmark.
“American!” The old man seemed delighted. “You are lost, perhaps?”
“I am.”
“You seek a hostel, yes?”
“I’m looking for a place called… “ What the hell was it? “Elfins Platz?” he guessed. “A man called Ole Stoveguard?” He knew he had got the names wrong and sorted though his pockets for Lord Pumphrey’s scrap of paper. “Ulfedt’s Plads,” Sharpe read the unfamiliar name awkwardly. Two or three other passersby had stopped now, for it seemed that if someone was lost in Copenhagen then the citizens regarded it as their duty to offer help.
“Ah! Ulfedt’s Plads. It is a short walk,” the old man said, “but everything in Copenhagen is a short walk. We are not like Paris or London. Have you been to those cities?”
“No.”
“Washington, now, is that big?”
“Pretty big,” Sharpe said, who had no idea.
“Do all men carry swords in America?” The old man, not content with directing him to Ulfeldt’s Plads, was now walking with him.
“Most of us,” Sharpe said.
“We have lost the habit in Denmark,” the old man said, “except for the soldiers, of course, and a handful of our aristocracy who think it is a badge of rank.” He chuckled, then sighed. “I fear, alas, we shall all have to wear swords soon.”
“You will? Why?”
“We are warned that the British are coming again. I pray it isn’t so, for I remember the last time when their Lord Nelson came. Six years ago! I had a son on the Dannebroge and he lost a leg.”
“I’m sorry,” Sharpe said awkwardly. He vaguely remembered hearing about Nelson’s attack on Copenhagen, but it had happened when he was in India and the news had not provoked much interest in the regiment.
“It turned out for the best,” the old man went on. “Edvard is a minister now, in Randers. It is safer, I think, being a minister than a naval officer. There are Lutherans in America?”
“Oh, yes,” Sharpe said, having no idea what a Lutheran was.
“I am glad to hear it,” the old man said. He had led Sharpe down a narrow street that emerged into a small square. “This is Ulfedt’s Plads.” He gestured to the square. “You will be all right now?” he asked anxiously.
Sharpe reassured and thanked the old man, then fished out the scrap of paper and read the name in the fading light. Ole Skovgaard. One side of the square was occupied by a gin distillery, another by a huge warehouse and between them were small shops: a cooperage, a wheelwright’s and a cutlery store. He walked along the shops, looking for Skovgaard’s name, then saw it painted in faded white letters high on the big warehouse wall.
The warehouse had a high archway and, next to it, a smaller door with a polished brass knocker. The smaller door belonged to a house that was evidently attached to the warehouse for the “S” of the Skovgaard sign was painted on its bricks. Sharpe rapped the knocker. He was nervous. Lord Pumphrey had made it plain that Skovgaard was a last resort, but Sharpe did not know where else he could seek help. He knocked again, heard a window being thrown up and stepped back to see a face peering down in the gloom. “Mister Skovgaard?” he called.
“Oh no,” the man said unhelpfully.
