Sharpe 3-Book Collection 3: Sharpe's Trafalgar, Sharpe's Prey, Sharpe's Rifles (61 page)

“You need protection,” Sharpe said, “and you’ve just lost all your male servants.”

“The city needs them more than I do,” Skovgaard had answered, “and Aksel has promised to find me some men. They will be cripples, probably, but a one-legged man can fire a musket.” Skovgaard had sounded bitter. “And there are plenty of cripples in Copenhagen, Lieutenant, thanks to your last attack.”

The bitterness had intrigued Sharpe. “Why didn’t you break with Britain then?” he asked.

Skovgaard had shrugged. “My dear wife was alive. Besides, when Nelson attacked, I could see some justice in the British cause. We were denying them trade and the lifeblood of a nation is trade. But now? Now we deny you nothing except what is undeniably ours. Besides, I have never done anything to jeopardize Denmark. I simply assisted Britain to combat France, that is all. Now, alas, we shall be France’s ally.”

Two men in black carrying valises stuffed with papers were waiting for Skovgaard when he returned from watching the Prince’s departure. Sharpe was instantly suspicious, but Skovgaard evidently knew the men and hurried them into his office. “They are from the government,” Aksel Bang told Sharpe.

“What do they want?”

“Perhaps they have come for you, Lieutenant?”

Sharpe ignored that jibe. He walked down the center aisle of the big warehouse. “Where does that lead?” He pointed to a staircase that vanished in the dusty rafters of the high roof. He wanted to check every door and window, looking for any place where men might break into the premises.

“It goes to my upper chamber,” Bang said, meaning a loft, “where I sleep now that Mister Skovgaard has returned.”

“Lost your house, have you?”

“I do not mind,” Bang said unctuously, “it is not my house and it is a blessing to have Miss Astrid back.”

“A blessing for you or for her?”

“For both of us, I think. It is like things were before they moved. It is good.”

Sharpe could find no weaknesses in the warehouse. Too much of value was stored in the place and Skovgaard had made it virtually thiefproof to protect the sacks of indigo, piles of jute and barrels of pungent spices that reminded Sharpe of India. “So what does the government want with Skovgaard?” he asked Bang.

“They want to know if any of these goods belong to British merchants.”

“Why?”

“Because they will confiscate them, of course. We are at war, Lieutenant.”

Sharpe looked at the dusty bays filled with barrels, sacks and crates. “And is any of this stuff British?”

“No. We do not store goods for other merchants. It is all our own.”

“Good,” Sharpe said, meaning there was no excuse for any more visits from officials. He turned on Bang. “Tell me, when you delivered Mister Skovgaard’s letter, did you meet Lavisser?”

Bang blinked with surprise at Sharpe’s forceful tone. “I met Major Lavisser, yes. He was very gracious.”

“Did he ask you questions?”

Bang nodded. “He wanted to know about Mister Skovgaard, so I told him he is a good merchant and a committed Christian.”

“Is that all?”

“It is all God asks of us.”

Sharpe wanted to hit Bang. The man was nothing but a trumped-up clerk, but he had a sly and prickly pride about him. “What else did he ask you about Skovgaard?”

Bang pushed his long hair out of his eyes. “He asked if Mister Skovgaard had much to do with England. I said yes. I said he had many friends there and that he wrote there. That he had been married to an Englishwoman. Does it matter?”

“No,” Sharpe said. Lavisser must have guessed that Sharpe would get in touch with the man whose name had been given him by Lord Pumphrey, so when Skovgaard’s letter arrived it simply confirmed that suspicion. And, with the French on the point of evacuating their diplomatic mission, it must have seemed imperative to act immediately.

“I don’t understand why you ask me these questions,” Bang protested. He was genuinely confused why Skovgaard had moved back into the city and the explanation that his employer merely wanted to avoid the imminent British was made inadequate by Sharpe’s presence and even more inadequate by Skovgaard’s swollen face. “I think,” Bang told Sharpe, “that you have snared Mister Skovgaard in unseemly matters.”

“All you need to know,” Sharpe said, “is that Mister Skovgaard is in danger. So if any strangers come here, fetch me. Don’t let them in. And if anyone asks you about Mister Skovgaard, tell them nothing. Nothing! Don’t even say he’s a Christian because it’s none of their damn business.”

Bang looked mournful at Sharpe’s tone. “He is in danger? Then perhaps Miss Astrid is also in danger?”

“Miss Astrid too,” Sharpe said. “So just be watchful. Watch and pray, eh?”

“But maybe I should accompany Miss Astrid?” Bang sounded cheerful suddenly. “She goes to the orphanage.”

“To the where?”

“The orphanage! Every day she goes. I can go with her, yes?”

“You?” Sharpe could not keep the contempt from his voice. “And what will you do if she’s attacked? Pray for her? Bloody hell, Bang, if anyone goes with her, it’s me.”

Bang made no protest, but there was resentment on his face when, later that afternoon, Sharpe and Astrid left the warehouse together. Sharpe had brushed his clothes and hidden Skovgaard’s two fine pistols under his coat. He wore his saber. More men were wearing weapons, he noted. It had suddenly become fashionable since the British had landed.

He also carried a big basket which contained crushed barley, rice and herrings. “We’re taking it to the orphanage,” Astrid explained.

“Orphanage?”

“It is an orphanage,” she said, “and a hospital for children as well. It is where my son died.”

“I’m sorry.”

“He was very little, not even a year. He was called Nils like his father.” There were tears in her eyes, but she forced a smile and said they would walk the long way around, going along the harbor quay where the Prince had embarked that morning. Sharpe’s first instinct was to protest that his job was to protect her and that he could do that best if she went straight to the orphanage and back home, then he realized he did not want to be in Skovgaard’s gloomy warehouse. Skovgaard himself was safe enough. He was in his office, he had a musket and had testily promised that he would allow no strangers into the warehouse, which meant Sharpe need not hurry back. Besides, Sharpe would rather be walking with Astrid and so the two of them strolled in the sunlight, though they were forced to stop every few yards to greet Astrid’s friends or acquaintances. She introduced him as an American seaman which prompted no surprise, only enthusiastic welcomes. “It is a very little city,” she explained after another such meeting, “and most people know each other.”

“It seems a good city,” Sharpe said.

She nodded. “And I like living inside the walls. The house in Vester Fælled can be lonely.” She paused to show Sharpe the scorched walls of what had once been a great building. “That was the Christiansborg Palace,” she said sadly. “It was where the King lived before the big fire.”

“Another war?”

“Just a fire. A great fire. Almost a third of the city was burned. And it is still not all repaired.” The ruined palace was sheathed in a tracery of scaffolding while makeshift huts, built in the remnants of great rooms, showed where some folk evidently still sheltered. “Poor Copenhagen.” Astrid sighed.

They walked on past the Amalienborg Palace from where the Crown Prince had made his departure. A public path led through the central courtyard and the handful of blue-coated guards took no notice of the folk strolling in the afternoon sunshine. A dozen farm carts, heaped with grain or turnips, were parked by the palace. The city was stocking itself for a siege.

A few hundred yards beyond the palace was a small public garden dominated by the great citadel that guarded the harbor channel. The garden, which was mostly lawn with a few scattered trees, was the fort’s esplanade; the killing ground for the cannon that just showed in the high embrasures. The grass was piled with round shot and cluttered with ammunition tenders, but even here folk took the air, ignoring the soldiers who were sorting the round shot and shells according to their calibers. Sharpe suspected the Danes planned to make a new battery here, one that could fire across the harbor mouth where a small wooden jetty held a dozen men placidly fishing. “They are always here,” Astrid said, “but I’ve never seen them catch anything.” She pointed northward to where, on the horizon, a dirty gray mass showed like a low-lying cloud. Sharpe had seen just such a sight on the morning of Trafalgar. It was a fleet. “Your friends,” Astrid said sadly, “and they’re coming here.”

“I wish they weren’t.”

She sat on a bench facing the sea. “You look so like Nils,” she said.

“That must be hard.”

She nodded. “He was lost at sea. We don’t know how. He was a captain, you see? He called his ship the
Astrid
and he was carrying sugar from the West Indies. When he didn’t come home I thought perhaps his ship was being mended, but it wasn’t so. We heard he had sailed and then there was a big storm just a few days after. We waited, but he never came. But I used to see him every day. I would see a stranger in the street and think, that is Nils! He has come back, then the stranger would turn and it would not be Nils.” She was not looking at Sharpe as she spoke, but staring out to sea, and Sharpe wondered if she had come here in her early widowhood to look for her husband. “Then I saw you in the house”—she turned her big eyes on Sharpe—“and I knew it was Nils. For a moment I was so happy.”

“I’m sorry,” Sharpe said awkwardly. He knew how she felt, forever since Grace’s death he would see a dark-haired woman in the street and think it was Grace. He felt the same leap of the heart and knew the same dull ache that followed the disappointment.

Gulls cried above the harbor channel. “Do you think we’re really in danger?” Astrid asked.

“You know what your father does?”

She nodded. “I’ve helped him in the last few years. Since Mother died. He corresponds, Lieutenant, that is all. He corresponds.”

“With folk in Europe and in Britain.”

“Yes.” She stared at the British fleet. “He does business all over the Baltic and all through the north German states, so he has scores of men who write to him. If a French column of artillery passes through Magdeburg then he will know within a week.”

“And he tells the British?”

“Yes.”

“Dangerous work,” Sharpe said.

“Not really. His correspondents know how to write safely. That’s why I help my father, because his eyes are not so good as they were. Some of the best ones send him newspapers. The French do not mind newspapers going to Denmark, especially if they are from Paris and full of praise for the Emperor, but if you open the paper and hold it against a window you can see that someone had pushed a pin hundreds of times through the pages. Each pinprick is under a letter and I just read the letters off in order and that is the message.” She shrugged. “It is not so dangerous.”

“But the French know who he is now,” Sharpe said. “They want to know who writes to him, who sticks those pins in the newspapers. They want to stop the messages and your father can give them the names. So it is dangerous.”

Astrid said nothing for a while. She gazed at a gunboat that was being rowed out of the harbor. There was a heavy boom made from chained logs protecting the entrance, but it had been hauled aside to let the gunboat pass. The ship had a tall mast on which a sail was furled, but the small wind was against the ungainly craft and so a score of oarsmen were pulling on long sweeps to crawl out of the channel. The boat had an ugly bill of a bow on which two heavy and very long-barreled cannons were mounted. Twenty-four-pounders, Sharpe guessed. Guns that could fire a long way and hit hard, and there were a score of other gunboats tethered against the far quay where powder and shot were being unloaded from carts. Other boats were bringing food into the city. “I hoped the danger was past,” Astrid said after a long while, “now that the French are gone. But at least it stops life being dull.”

“Is life dull?” Sharpe asked.

She smiled. “I go to church, I do the accounts and I look after Father.” She shrugged. “It must sound very dull to you.”

“My life’s become dull,” Sharpe said, thinking of his job as a quartermaster.

“You!” She was teasing him, her eyes bright. “You are a soldier! You climb chimneys and kill people!” She gave a shudder. “Your life is much too exciting.”

Sharpe stared at the gunboat. The rowers, stripped to the waist, were hauling hard, but the boat was making little progress. He could see the tide rippling against the piers of the jetty and the gunboat was fighting the flood, but the oarsmen pulled on as though every burning muscle would help turn back the British. “I’m thirty years old,” he said, “and I’ve been a soldier for fourteen years. Before that I was a child. I was nothing.”

“No one is nothing,” Astrid protested.

“I was nothing!” Sharpe sounded angry. “I was born into nothing, raised into nothing, expected to do nothing. But I had a talent. I can kill.”

“That is not good.”

“So I became a soldier and I learned when to kill and when not to kill. I became something, an officer, but now they don’t want me. I’m not a gentleman, see? I’m not like Lavisser. He’s a gentleman.” He knew he had sounded jealous and angry and was embarrassed. He had forgotten, too, the reason for being with Astrid and he guiltily turned and looked at the folk taking the summer air on the fort’s esplanade, but no one appeared to be taking any undue notice of the two of them. No Frenchmen were lurking and there was no sign of Barker or Lavisser. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said.

“Sorry, why?”

“Tide has turned,” Sharpe said, changing the subject and nodding at the gunboat. “Those lads are making some progress now.”

“We must make some progress too,” Astrid said, standing. Then she laughed. “You make me feel very rich.”

“Rich? Why?”

“To have a manservant carrying the basket! Only the folk living on Amaliegade and Bredgade can afford such luxuries.” They walked westward, skirting the moat of the vast citadel until they came to a poorer quarter of the city, though even here the houses were neat and clean. The single-story homes had been built to a pattern, were brightly painted and in good repair. “This is the sailors’ quarter,” Astrid told Sharpe. “Nyboder, it is called. They all have ovens! One oven for every two houses. It is nice, I think.”