Sharpe's Prey

by Bernard Cornwell

  “So you’ll be safe.”

  “If Copenhagen is to suffer,” Skovgaard said with a trace of his old asperity, “then I will share it. How can I look my workmen in the face if I leave them to endure a siege alone? And you, Lieutenant, what will you do?”

  “I’ll stay with you, sir,” Sharpe said grimly. “I was sent to protect someone from the French, and it’s you now. And Lavisser’s still living. So I’ve work to do. And to start I need a spade.”

  “A spade?”

  “You’ve got three dead bodies in the house. Where I come from we bury them.”

  “But... “ Astrid began to protest, but her voice trailed away.

  “That’s right, miss,” Sharpe said, “if you can’t explain them, hide them.”

  It took him most of what remained of the night, but he dug a shallow trench in the soft soil by the back wall of the garden and laid the three Frenchmen inside. He patted the earth down and covered it with some bricks he found beside the carriage house.

  And then, in a gray and weary dawn, he slept.

  Eleven miles north of Ole Skovgaard’s house was the insignificant village of Vedb‘k. It lay on the sea, halfway between Copenhagen and the fortress at Helsingor. The village held a handful of houses, a church, two farms and a small fleet of fishing boats. Tarred sheds lined the beach where nets hung to dry on tall poles and the burning charcoal of the herring smokers shimmered the air above the sand.

  Work started early in Vedb‘k. There were cows to be miled and fishing boats to be hauled down to the sea, yet this morning, at dawn, no one worked. The herring fires were dying and the people of the village were ignoring their duties and standing instead on the low grassy ridge that backed the beach. They said little, but just stared seaward.

  Where a fleet had appeared in the night. Closest to the beach were gun brigs and bomb ships that had moored so their great cannons and mortars could threaten any Danish troops who might appear on the shore. Beyond those small ships were frigates and, farther out still, the great ships of the line, all of them with their gunports open. There was no enemy threatening the fleet, but the guns were ready.

  Between the ships of the line and the frigates was moored a host of transport ships around each of which was a smaller fleet of tenders, launches and longboats that nuzzled the bigger hulls like so many suckling pigs. Horses were being slung out of holds and lowered into the boats. No one in Vedb‘k had ever seen so many ships, not at one time. At least a dozen of the village men had been sailors, yet even they had not seen such a fleet, not in Copenhagen, London, Hamburg or in any other great port.

  Someone began ringing the church bell as an alarm, but the pastor hurried back into the village to silence it. “We have already sent a messenger,” he told the enthusiastic bell-ringer. “Sven has ridden to Horsholm.” There was a police barracks in Horsholm, though what use the police would be the pastor did not know. They could hardly arrest a whole army, though doubtless they would send a warning to Copenhagen.

  Folk from Horsholm and from the lesser villages nearby were already coming to Vedbask to see the ships. The pastor worried that the spectators might resemble an army and he did his best to disperse them. “Jarl! Your cows are lowing. They must be milked.”

  “I have girls to do that.”

  “Then find them. There is work to do.”

  But no one moved. Instead they watched as the first small boats headed for the shore. “Will they kill us?” a woman asked.

  “Only the ugly ones,” someone answered and there was nervous laughter. The man who had made the bad joke had been a sailor and he had a great telescope that he had propped on his wife’s shoulder. He could see a field gun being lifted out of a ship’s belly and slung on a whip into one of the bigger launches. “Now they’re sending a cannon to shoot Ingrid,” he announced. Ingrid was his mother-in-law and as big as a Holstein cow.

  A young lieutenant in the blue uniform of the Danish militia arrived on horseback. He was the son of a wheelwright in Sandbjerg and the only shots he had ever heard fired had been volleys of musketry emptied in the sand dunes as the militia practiced. “If you are going to fight them,” the pastor said, “then perhaps you should go down onto the beach. Otherwise, Christian, take off your jacket so they don’t realize you are a soldier. How is your mother?”

  “She’s still coughing. And sometimes there is blood.”

  “Keep her warm this coming winter.”

  “We will, we will.” The Lieutenant stripped off his uniform jacket.

  No one spoke as the first few launches neared the shore. The sailors at the oars had long pigtails showing under their tarred hats and their passengers were all in red uniforms and had big black shakos that made them seem very tall. One man was holding a flag, but because there was so little wind the banner just hung limply. The launches seemed to be racing each other for the honor of being first ashore. They heaved in the small waves close to the beach, then the first keel scraped on sand and the red-coated men were leaping over the side. “Form them up, Sergeant!”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “You’re not a bloody sailor, Sergeant. A plain yes will do.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  More boats grounded. The soldiers came out fast and the sailors were already pushing the launches off the beach, turning and rowing them back to the transport ships. A lieutenant colonel in a black bicorne hat walked up the beach. He was accompanied by a major and four captains. The villagers moved politely aside as the Lieutenant Colonel pointed to a small hill a half-mile inland. “Three companies to picket that high ground, John. I’ll send the first battery ashore to reinforce you. Colin, your men will stay here in case anyone disputes us.”

  Colin, one of the captains, looked at the villagers. “They seem well disposed, sir.”

  “Keep them that way. Make sure the men behave.”

  The Lieutenant Colonel turned to watch for the boat carrying his horse. The pastor approached him. “May I ask why you are here?” the pastor inquired in good English.

  “Good morning!” The Lieutenant Colonel touched the tasseled tip of his bicorne hat. “A nice one, eh?”

  “Do you mean us harm?” the pastor asked nervously.

  “Nicolson!” the Lieutenant Colonel shouted at a surprised private standing in the front rank of a company drawn up on the beach. “Shoulder your piece! Aim at the sky! Cock! Fire!”

  Nicolson obediently pointed his musket at a wisp of cloud and pulled the trigger. The flint fell on an empty pan. “Not loaded, Father,” the Lieutenant Colonel told the pastor. “We ain’t here to kill decent folk, not on a nice morning. Come to stretch our legs.” He smiled at the pastor. “This your village?”

  “I am pastor here, yes.”

  “I’m afraid you’re going to have soldiery as company all day, so keep the kitchen fires hot, Father, because the rogues like their tea. And if any man gives you any trouble, any trouble at all, just see an officer and we’ll have the bastard hanged. Good day.” He touched his hat again and walked back down the beach to where his horse was being coaxed ashore. The beast had been afloat for over two weeks and it staggered as though it was drunk when it reached the sand. The Lieutenant Colonel’s orderly led it up and down for a while, then held it still while his master mounted. “Inland!” the Colonel called.

  The first three companies marched inland, going to the high ground. More boats were landing now. A battery of field guns was being manhandled ashore and more horses were taking their first unsteady steps. One horse, sprightlier than the rest, escaped its handler and trotted up the beach where it stopped, apparently surprised by the spectators. A gunner ran after it and seized its bridle. He winked at some girls standing just paces away. They giggled.

  Two companies of soldiers in green jackets landed closer to the village and that prompted many of the inhabitants to hurry back in case their houses were being plundered, though when they reached the main street they just discovered the green-jacketed men standing guard on the
ir front doors. An officer was striding up the sandy street. “This is all private property,” he was shouting, “and General Cathcart has given orders that any man who steals anything, I do not care how small or valueless a thing it is, will be hanged. Are you hearing this? You will be hanged! You will dance in the air! So keep your hands to yourselves! You will show respect to all civilians! Rifleman! You, the tall fellow! What’s your name?” He knew all the men in his own company, but the tall man was from another.

  The rifleman, well over six feet tall, feigned astonishment that he should be singled out. “Me, sir? I’m Pat Harper, sir, from Donegal.”

  “What’s in that sack?”

  Rifleman Harper turned an innocent expression on a sack that was lying against a cottage wall a few feet behind him. “Never seen it before in my life, Captain Dunnett, sir. Must have been left by one of the villagers, sir.”

  Dunnett looked suspicious, but accepted the explanation. “You will stand guard here,” he told the men, “until we are relieved. If you apprehend any man trying to thieve anything you will arrest him and bring him to me so that we can have the pleasure of hanging him.”

  Captain Dunnett walked on down the street, repeating the orders. Another rifleman looked at Harper. “What’s in the sack, Pat?”

  “Three pullets, Cooper, and they’re dead and they’re also mine, and if you lay your thieving hands on them I’ll stuff their feathers down your gullet until you start shitting angels’ wings.” Rifleman Harper smiled.

  “Where did you find them?”

  “Where I looked for them, of course.”

  “D’you see that girl?” a man called Harris said. They all turned to stare at a young woman with hair like fine-spun gold who was walking up the street. She knew she was being admired so lifted her head high and swung her hips as she strutted before the riflemen. “I think they shot me,” Harris said, “and I’ve gone to heaven.”

  “We’re going to like it here, boys,” Harper said, “so long as they don’t hang us.”

  “Ten to one you’ll be hanged, Harper.” It was Captain Murray, Harper’s company commander, who had appeared beside the house and now peered inside the sack.

  “It’s not mine, Mister Murray,” Harper said, “whatever it is. And I wouldn’t tell you a lie, sir.”

  “Perish the thought, Harper, perish the very thought, but I’ll still expect a cold leg of what’s not yours.”

  Harper grinned. “Very good, sir.”

  Three battalions were on the beach now. The first field guns, hitched to their horses, were going inland to the high ground and still more ships were ghosting in the light wind from the north. No shots had been fired and no one had offered any resistance. The first generals were ashore and their aides laid maps on the sand while a squadron of the 1st Light Dragoons led their unsteady horses into the village where a pump fed a long watering trough.

  “Hey, missus!” A rifleman accosted a woman who just looked at him fearfully. “Tea?” the man said, displaying a handful of loose leaves. “You can boil water?”

  Her husband, who had sailed aboard a Baltic trader that had made several voyages to Leith and Newcastle, understood. “Firewood costs money,” he grumbled.

  “Here.” The rifleman offered a copper. “It’s good coin that! English money, none of your foreign rubbish. Tea, eh?”

  So the riflemen had their tea, the high ground was secured and the British army was ashore.

  Chapter 6

  The clouds at last fled Copenhagen, leaving a rinsed blue sky. A late summer sun glossed the copper roofs and shimmered the harbor where scores of merchant ships, fearing the British fleet that had anchored ten miles to the north, had taken refuge.

  The Amalienborg Palace lay west of the harbor. It was really four small palaces grouped about a courtyard and was gracious rather than grand, intimate instead of intimidating, and it was there, on an upper floor overlooking the harbor, that the Crown Prince made his farewells to the city’s notables. His Majesty was returning to Holstein. He had been in that southern province all summer, but had returned to Copenhagen when he heard that the British fleet had sailed for the Baltic. He had come back to encourage the citizens. Denmark, he said, did not want to fight. It had not started the quarrel and bore no ill will toward Britain, but if the British persisted in their outrageous demand to take the Danish fleet then Denmark would resist. And that, the Crown Prince knew, meant that Copenhagen must suffer, for it was in the capital’s secure inner harbor that the fleet was sheltered.

  Yet the British, the Crown Prince insisted, could not succeed. It was late in the year to begin a siege. It would take weeks to make a breach in the great walls and even then there could be no certainty that an assault would succeed. Besides, long before any breach was practicable, the Prince would bring the Danush army back from Holstein and trounce the beseiging forces. “So the British will not attack the city,” the Prince said forcefully, “but merely threaten it. It is a bluff, gentlemen, a bluff. There is no time for a siege.”

  “Plenty of time for a bombardment,” General Peymann, who had been appointed the commander of Copenhagen’s garrison, noted gloomily.

  “No!” The Prince turned on the General. “No, no, no!” The Prince knew well enough that the city feared a bombardment by mortars and howitzers that could loft their shells over the wall to leave the city a smoking ruin. “The British are not barbarians,” the Prince insisted, “and they will not risk an action that will earn the condemnation of all civilized people. There will be no bombing. The British will threaten it, just as they threaten a siege, but it is all bluff.” Instead, he forecast, the British would blockade the capital and hope that hunger would persuade the garrison to yield. “So we shall fill the city with food,” he told General Peymann, “and you must endure their blockade until the late autumn. Then I shall lead the army back from Holstein.” Holstein was where the bulk of Denmark’s army was guarding the southern frontier, which was threatened by a French army.

  Peymann, an old man, straightened ponderously. He was white-haired, corpulent and had never led troops into battle, but he had a reassuring presence. There was something about the 72-year-old Ernst Peymann that suggested he could not be broken and the Prince was sure that Peymann, above all the other generals, could give the city confidence, though Peymann’s next words smacked of nervousness. “It would be better, Your Majesty, if you came sooner.”

  “It can’t be done. Can’t be done.” The Prince went to a window that overlooked the harbor. Three small ships, all low in the water because of the weight of grain they were bringing to the city, were mooring among the swarm of Danish gunboats being readied for battle. The Prince looked down at a table on which a map had been spread to catch the window’s light. A valet followed him, holding the Prince’s hat, sword and sash, but the Prince ignored him. “The British navy,” he explained, “will surely blockade Zealand and we cannot ferry the army back if British ships are waiting.”

  Peymann stared gloomily at the map as if seeking inspiration. He found it in the sheer size of Zealand, the island on which Copenhagen stood. “Three thousand square miles,” he said. “They cannot watch the whole coast!”

  “They only need watch the harbors, sir,” Captain, now Major, Lavisser pointed out respectfully.

  “And that they can do with ships to spare,” the Prince added, “but they’re not cats, Peymann, they’re not cats.”

  “They are most assuredly not, sire,” Peymann said. The General was plainly confused by the Prince’s declaration, but did not like to admit his puzzlement.

  “They cannot see in the dark,” the Prince explained anyway, “which means that when the long nights of winter come we can bring the army back to Zealand.” He lowered his head so the valet could drape the sash over his shoulder, then raised his arms for the sword belt to be buckled. “We must wait for the long nights,” he declared, “which means you must defend Copenhagen for two months, General, just two months.”

  “We can hold
two months,” Peymann said firmly, “unless they bombard.”

  “They won’t,” the Prince said firmly. “The British will not want the deaths of innocent civilians on their conscience.”

  “I do know that General Lord Cathcart is opposed to bombardment,” Major Lavisser said, “though doubtless some of his subordinates will urge it on him.”

  “Lord Cathcart leads the army, does he not?” the Prince asked. “So let us hope he exercises his authority.”

  “We could send the women and children away,” Peymann suggested, his face brightening at the thought. “There would be fewer mouths to feed.”

  “Do that,” the Prince said, “and you invite the British to bombard the city. No, the women stay and the British, I assure you, will not commit a slaughter of the innocents. Two months, General! Hold the walls for two months and I shall bring the army back and we shall crush them like lice! Like lice!” The Prince pulled on white gloves. His optimism was genuine. Until the British fleet had sailed, the biggest threat facing Denmark had been the French army on the southern frontier, but the arrival of the British would almost certainly deter any French attack. Why should the French assault Denmark when the British were turning Denmark into France’s new ally? So there would be no fight in Holstein and when the longer nights blinded the enemy fleet the army could be brought back to Zealand where it would hugely outnumber the British forces. “We shall win,” the Prince told Peymann, “so long as you hold for two months. And you can hold, General. The walls are thick, the guns are plentiful!”

  Peymann nodded agreement. Like all the others in the room he now wished that the government had spent more on Copenhagen’s defenses in the last few years, but even so the ramparts were adequate. The walls were massive and reinforced by bastions, batteries and forts. To the west the city looked over its own wealthy suburbs, but between those houses and the city there was an open space for the guns to kill attackers and a ring of canal-like lakes that served as a wide moat. The walls were not in the best of repair, but they mounted nearly two hundred guns, while out in the suburbs, wherever high ground might offer British batteries a vantage point, new strongholds were being constructed of earth, stone and timber. The city had a garrison of five and a half thousand troops, which was not enough to man all those new forts, but Peymann had four thousand well-trained seamen who had been the crews of the warships secured in Copenhagen’s harbor, and the militia was being overwhelmed by volunteers. “We can give a good account of ourselves for two months,” Peymann declared.