genuine pleasure to see Sharpe. “We knew we was in for some dirty work when we heard you were coming. You remember Hopper?”
“Hopper is unforgettable,” Sharpe said, grinning at the bosun of the crew who tugged his forelock. “And Clouter!” Sharpe spotted the huge black man whose right hand was now a mangled claw of two fingers, a legacy of Trafalgar. “How are you, Clouter?”
“Right as rain, sir.”
“Shall we go?” Collier asked. Sharpe was watching Lord Pumphrey pick his fastidious way across the dunes. Be sure your sin will find you out, Sharpe thought.
So now he must go back into the city and commit murder.
And find the gold. And look for Astrid. And that last task seemed the most important.
CHAPTER 9
The launch, instead of taking Sharpe to the Pucelle, carried him only as far as the Vesuvius, a bomb ship anchored much closer to the harbor mouth. Captain Chase was waiting aboard to the evident apprehension of the Vesuvius’s commander, a mere lieutenant, who was in awe of having a genuine post captain aboard his vessel. Sharpe and Collier, being officers, were formally whistled aboard at the bomb ship’s waist while the launch’s crew scrambled over the bows. “I thought we’d spend the day here,” Chase explained. “I’m sending my crew into the city with you, Sharpe, and it’s much less far to pull from here than from the Pucelle. I brought dinner with me.”
“And weapons, sir?”
“Hopper has your arsenal.”
Sharpe still had the rifle he had borrowed at Koge, but he had asked Chase for more weapons and Hopper had brought them from the Pucelle. There was a heavy cutlass, two pistols and one of the massive seven-barreled guns that Sharpe had used at Trafalgar. It was a naval weapon of stunning ferocity and limited usefulness. The seven barrels, each of a half-inch diameter, were clustered so they could be fired together, but the gun, which had been designed to fire down from the rigging onto an enemy deck, took an age to reload. Nevertheless, used once and used right, it was devastating. Sharpe hung the squat, heavy gun next to the rifle on his shoulder and strapped the cutlass round his waist. “Good to have a proper clade again. So you’re coming into the city, Hopper?”
“Captain wanted the best, sir,” Hopper said, then hesitated. “The lads and me, sir…”
“You’re the best,” Sharpe said.
“No, sir.” Hopper shook his head to indicate that Sharpe had misunderstood him. He was a huge man with a tarred pigtail and a skin smothered in tattoos, who now blushed. “Me and the lads, sir,” he said, shifting uncomfortably and unable to meet Sharpe’s gaze, “we wanted to say how sorry we were, sir. She was a proper lady.”
“She was.” Sharpe smiled, touched by the words. “Thank you, Hopper.”
“They were going to send you a gift for your child,” Chase told him a few moments later when the two men were ensconced in the Vesuvius‘s small after cabin. “They made a crib from some of the Pucelle’s timbers broken at Trafalgar. It was probably burned in the galley fire when they heard the news. Sad days, Richard, sad days. So. You’re ready for tonight?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Young Collier’s in charge of the landing party,” Chase said. “I wanted to go myself, but the Admiral refused me permission. The wretched man said I was too valuable!”
“He’s right, sir.”
“He’s a tedious bore, Richard, who should be in charge of some canting little chapel instead of a fleet. But Collier knows his business.” Sharpe was dubious that an officer as young as Collier should command the landing party, but Chase was blithely confident. The men, once ashore, were to go to the inner harbor and there board a ship. Any ship, Chase said, because once safely aboard they would hide on the lower decks. “Effectively the ships are laid up,” Chase explained, “which means no one’s aboard except possibly a few fellows who’ll light the fuses and you can wager ten years’ salary to a farthing that they’ll be wallowing in the officers’ quarters. Collier’s fellows can wait down below and the only risk, frankly, is if the Danes are doing any work aboard. One carpenter down in the ship’s well and we’ll have to start cutting throats.”
“When do you cut the fuses?” Sharpe asked.
“Collier will have to judge the moment,” Chase said, and the careless answer worried Sharpe even though it was none of his business. He was going into the city to hunt Lavisser while the cutting of the Danish fleet’s fuses was Collier’s responsibility and again Sharpe wondered if the young Midshipman was really the right man, but Chase would not abide any doubts. “He’ll do splendidly, Richard, just splendidly. Now, how about some dinner? I’ve brought chine, tongue and cold hog’s puddings.”
“Hog’s puddings?”
“Devonshire food, Sharpe, real food! I do like a hog’s pudding.”
Sharpe slept that afternoon, rocked into dreams by the small waves. When he woke it was a rainy dusk and the ship was alive with shouts, the sound of a capstan creaking and the shuffle of men’s feet. The ship, it seemed, was being adjusted. The two huge mortars in the Vesuvius’s belly were fixed, so to aim their shells the whole ship had to be pointed at the target and this was achieved by tightening or loosening the cables of four anchors that held the gun ship in a tensioned web. “There! No! Too far!” a midshipman shouted. “Larboard bow anchor let go two steps!”
“They must do it twice a day,” Chase said. “The tide affects it, I gather.”
“What are they aiming at?”
“That big fort.” Chase pointed toward the citadel that loomed above the small fishing pier where Sharpe hoped to land that night. “They’ll drop the bombs straight down its gullet. Shall we finish the tongue for supper? Then you’ll leave at midnight.”
The launch was being readied. The rudder pintles were greased so they would not squeak and the tholes, which held the oars, were wrapped in rags while the hull and oars were painted black with Stockholm tar. The launch crew looked like pirates for they were hung with weapons and all dressed in dark clothes. A Danish seaman from the Pucelle’s larboard watch had been made an honorary member of the launch crew for the expedition. “Can you trust the man?” Sharpe asked Chase.
“Trust him with my life, Richard. He’s been a Pucelle longer than I have. And Collier needs a fellow who can talk the language.”
The night fell. The clouds made it utter dark, so black that Sharpe wondered how the launch would ever find its way into the harbor mouth, but Chase reassured him. He pointed to a distant lantern that glowed a pale blue. “That’s hanging from one of the Pucelle’s yardarms and we’re going to put another lantern on the Vesuvius’s foremast, and as long as young Collier keeps the two lights in line then he’ll go straight as an arrow. The navy does try to anticipate these problems.” He paused.
“Would you very much mind, Richard, if I didn’t see you away? I’m feeling somewhat sickly. Just something I ate. I need sleep. Do you feel well?”
“Very.”
“I wish you joy, Richard,” Chase said, clapped his shoulder and walked aft.
It seemed a strangely abrupt farewell, and it did not seem right that Chase should be sleeping when the launch crew left, but Sharpe suspected Chase’s sickness was as much to do with nervousness as an upset stomach. Sharpe himself was nervous. He was about to try and pierce an enemy stronghold, and doing it in a launch that offered no hiding place if they were discovered. He watched Chase go to the after quarters, then went and waited in the Vesuvius’s well deck where the great mortars crouched and where Hopper and his men honed knives and cutlasses.
It seemed an age until Collier ordered the embarkation and then it took another long while for all the men, encumbered with their weapons and carrying bags of food and skins of water, to clamber down the bomb ship’s side into the tar-stinking launch. The men were oddly excited, almost giggly, so much so that Collier snapped at them to be quiet, then sensibly checked that none of them had loaded weapons for he feared the accidental
