Sharpe's Prey

far-off London? But if Skovgaard was dead, would he stay? Or would Astrid return to Britain? It was all too complicated. What was simple was that Skovgaard’s names needed to be salvaged and Lavisser needed to be buried. That was simple enough to understand. “Yes, sir,” he said, “I have to.”

Midshipman Collier knocked on the cabin door, then entered without waiting to be bidden. “Sorry to interrupt, sir, but it looks like there’s a pumping party beating the bounds.”

“Then we’d best be moving,” Chase said.

“Pumping party?” Sharpe asked.

“Ships leak, Richard!” Chase said cheerfully, getting to his feet. “Can’t just leave ‘em floating here. They’ll all end up in the mud. So they’re sending fellows to pump all the bilges. It won’t take them long, but we should still hide.”

“Won’t they find your cut fuses?”

“They’ll notice nothing. We took care. Thank you, Mister Collier. Everyone back to the rat hole!” Chase scooped up the charts and smiled at Sharpe. “Will Hopper and Clouter be enough for you?”

Sharpe hardly believed his ears for a second. “Hopper and Clouter, sir?”

“I’m not sure I approve, Richard, but I do trust your judgment. And those two are my best fellows so they should keep you out of harm’s way. But do bring them back alive, I beg you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“There’s nothing else you need?”

“Quick fuse, sir.”

“Plenty of that!” Chase said brightly.

It was past eight in the morning when Sharpe left. The pumping party was working its way down the row of bigger ships, but none of the Danes noticed the three men drop through the Christian VII’s hawsehole onto the quay. All three were armed. Hopper had another seven-barreled gun, two pistols and a cutlass, while Clouter had a boarding axe and two pistols. They crossed the bridge and no one remarked on them. Just a fortnight before, an armed man received curious glances in Copenhagen, but now a British rifleman and two British seamen could carry enough ordnance to fillet a company and be ignored. Nor was the sight of two pigtailed men, one with a face covered in tattoos and the other black, unusual, for Copenhagen was well used to sailors. It was simply thought they were going to the walls where the remaining Danish guns had opened fire on the British batteries. A few folk wished Sharpe and his companions good morning and received grunts in reply.

Sharpe unlocked Skovgaard’s door. Astrid heard him and came from the office with her black sleeves protected from ink by white cotton sheaths. She looked alarmed at the sight of Hopper and Clouter, for both were huge men, but they snatched off their straw hats and tugged their forelocks.

“They’re staying here today,” Sharpe told her.

“Who are they?”

“Friends,” Sharpe said. “I need them to get your father out. But I can’t do it until the bombardment starts again. Is there somewhere they can sleep?”

“The warehouse,” Astrid suggested. She told Sharpe she had sent the workers away when they had arrived just after dawn. She had promised the men their wages, but said her father wanted them to help look for survivors among the burned houses. She had then ordered the maids to clean the long-neglected attics, while she had gone to her father’s office and pulled out the big ledgers. “There is never time to check the figures properly,” she told Sharpe once Clouter and Hopper were settled in the empty warehouse, “and I know he wants it done.” She worked in silence for a while, then Sharpe saw an inked entry in one of the columns suddenly dissolve as a tear splashed on it. Astrid cuffed her face. “He’s dead, isn’t he?” she asked.

“We don’t know.”

“And it will have been painful.”

“We don’t know,” Sharpe said again.

“We do,” she said, looking up at him.

“I can’t go back there till the bombardment starts,” Sharpe said bleakly.

“It is not your fault, Richard.” She put the quill down. “I am so tired.”

“Then go and rest. I’ll take the boys something to eat.”

She went upstairs. Sharpe found bread, cheese and ham, then ate with Hopper and Clouter. Aksel Bang rattled the door in the yard, but went silent when Sharpe growled that he was in a killing mood.

It was almost midday when Sharpe went upstairs. He opened the bedroom door silently to find thick curtains drawn and the room dark, yet he sensed Astrid was awake. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“For what?”

“For everything,” he said, “everything.” He sat on the bed. Despite the dark he could see her face and the astonishing gold of her hair on the pillow.

He thought he ought to explain exactly who Hopper and Clouter were, but when he began she just shook her head. “I thought you would never come upstairs,” she said.

“I’m here,” Sharpe said.

“Then don’t leave.”

“Never,” he promised.

“I have been so lonely,” Astrid said, “since Nils died.”

And I, Sharpe thought, since Grace. He hung his cutlass on a chair and eased off his boots. A cold wind spat rain from the east and drifted smoke from the city’s ruins. The guns on the walls fired on and Sharpe and Astrid, eventually, slept.

The guns on the city’s western walls fired all day. They fired till the rain falling on their barrels turned to instant vapor. Shot and shell ploughed into the British batteries, but the earth-filled fascines soaked up all the violence and behind their screens and parapets the British gunners stacked more ammunition for the mortars.

The city smoldered. The last flames were put out, but embers glowed deep in ruined houses and churches, and every now and then those embers would spark the fuse of an unexploded bomb and the blast would rattle the city’s windows and folk would duck into doorways and wait for the next missile to fall. They would peer anxiously skyward and see that no fuses left smoke trails in the sky. There was just silence.

General Peymann toured the damaged streets, shuddering at the sight of gaunt scorched walls and at the smell of roasted flesh buried in ash. “How many homeless?” he asked.

“Hundreds,” was the bleak answer.

“Can they live on the ships?”

“Not if we have to burn the fleet,” an aide answered. “It could take hours to get folk ashore.”

“The churches are coping,” another aide said, “and if you order it, sir, the university will open its doors.”

“Of course it must! Of course it must!” Peymann watched as a group of sailors dragged charred rafters aside to retrieve a body. He did not want to know how many were dead. Too many. He knew he must visit the hospitals and he dreaded it, but it was his duty. For now, though, he must prepare the city for more horror, and he ordered that the breweries must donate their largest casks which should be placed at street corners and filled with seawater. The British had somehow cut the city’s fresh water supply, which meant the fire pumps were ever running short, but the casks would help. Or he hoped they would help. In truth he knew it was a futile gesture, for the city had no real protection. It just had to endure. He walked the ruined streets, edging between the fallen piles of masonry and the smoking ruins that had been Studiestoede, Peder Huitfeldts Strasde, St Peters Stoede and Kannikestrasde. “How many shells did they use last night?”

“Four thousand?” an aide estimated. “Five, perhaps?”

“And how many do they have left?” That was the question. When would the British guns run out of ammunition? For then they would have to wait for more to be fetched from England, and by then the nights would be longer and perhaps the Crown Prince would come from Holstein with an army of regular troops that would vastly outnumber the British force. This misery, Peymann thought, could yet be turned to victory. The city just had to survive.

Major Lavisser, his face drawn and somber, picked his way across a spill of fallen bricks. He stopped to pick up a child’s petticoat that had somehow escaped the flames, then threw it away. “I’m late for duty, sir,” he said to