Sharpe's Prey

by Bernard Cornwell

  Dunnett must have seen the same. “Two Company! Forward! Forward!” Dunnett shouted and led his men to the churchyard wall, paused a second, then vaulted over. The riflemen followed, conscious that they were being watched by the civilian horsemen and by General Wellesley. Men crouched behind the gravestones, but it seemed the Danes had left. “Got bored waiting for us,” Filmer said.

  “Into the street!” Dunnett called. The other companies were wrapping round the village, while the cavalry, mounted again, was following.

  Sharpe walked round the side of the church to find himself in a small, neat village. A score of men were at the far end of the street, running away. “Encourage them!” Dunnett shouted and some of his riflemen ran to the center of the street, knelt and fired a farewell volley at the fugitives.

  Sergeant Filmer took out his pipe. “Got blisters on my heel,” he said to Sharpe. “It’s Hopkins’s boots, see? They don’t fit.” He pushed tobacco into the clay bowl. “Kept their heads, the lads, didn’t they? Did bloody well, they-“ He never finished the sentence but just pitched hard forward onto the dusty road where blood splashed on the broken white clay of his pipe.

  The shot had come from behind. Sharpe turned and saw smoke drifting from an opening in the church tower. A bell hung in the shadows.

  “Don’t just stand gaping!” Dunnett snarled at him. The Captain, like the rest of his company, had taken shelter between the cottages.

  Then a man showed in the tower, outlined against the bell. He raised a musket as Sharpe raised the rifle. Filmer had been shot in the back and Sharpe felt nothing as he squeezed the trigger. The bullet clanged against the bell, but it had gone clean through the man first. The musket dropped, clattering onto the roof of the church porch, then the body fell to thump onto red tiles and slide down into the graveyard. “You said something, Captain?” Sharpe asked as he fished a new cartridge from his pouch.

  Dunnett walked away. Sharpe finished loading the rifle then walked to the end of the street where a horse trough stood. He bent and drank. He splashed water on his face, then slung the rifle on his shoulder and stared southward. The ground fell gently away. Off to his left the sun winked a myriad reflections from the sea where a British warship’s sails were heaped white. Sharpe wondered if it was the Pucelle with his old friends aboard. Ahead of him the cavalry herded the fugitives, while to the right, about half a mile away in a small valley that was shaded by heavy trees, was a house that struck him as utterly beautiful. It was large, but not grand, low and wide, white-painted with big windows facing a carriage drive, a lake and a garden. Dark bushes had been trimmed into neat squares and cones. It looked comfortable and friendly, and for some reason Sharpe thought of Grace and felt the tears prick his eyes.

  An old man came from the nearest cottage. He looked nervously at the greenjackets, then decided they meant no harm and so walked to Sharpe’s side. He looked up into the rifleman’s face, nodded a greeting, then gazed at the house. “Vygard,” he said proudly.

  The name took a moment to register, then Sharpe looked at the old man. “This is Herfolge?” he asked, nodding toward the village.

  “Ja, Herfolge,” the old man said happily, gesturing to the village, then pointed to the house. “Vygard.”

  Lavisser’s grandfather’s house. Vygard.

  And Lavisser had reached Copenhagen remarkably quickly, much too quickly for a man carrying a heavy chest of gold. And surely, Sharpe thought, Lavisser would not want the gold trapped in a city that might be captured by an enemy?

  “Tak,” he said fervently, “mange tak.”

  Many thanks. For he was going to Vygard.

  Chapter 8

  Vygard’s gates were closed, but not locked. At first Sharpe thought the house was deserted, it was so quiet, then he realized no one would leave an empty house with its shutters open. Red roses grew between the windows. The front lawn was newly scythed, the smooth green marked where the blade’s tip had left almost imperceptible wide curves, and the afternoon air was filled with the scent of cut grass.

  He walked around the side of the house, past the large stables and coach house, through a flower garden that buzzed with bees, then under an archway cut from a box hedge and found himself on a wide lawn that sloped to a lake. In the middle of the grass, beneath a spreading white parasol, a dark-haired woman lay in a chair. She wore a white dress. A straw hat, decorated with a white ribbon, sat with a discarded newspaper, a handbell and a work basket on a small wicker table. Sharpe stopped, expecting her to challenge him or to call for the servants, but then realized she was asleep. It seemed extraordinary: a woman dreaming away the somnolent afternoon while, not a mile away, cavalrymen were rousting terrified fugitives from ditches and hedgerows.

  The back of the house was heavy with wisteria among which a white-painted door stood invitingly open. A basket of pears and crab apples lay on the threshold. Sharpe stepped over it into the cool of a long stone-flagged corridor hung with pictures of churches and castles. A rack held a dozen wlaking sticks and two umbrellas. A dog was sleeping in an alcove. It woke as Sharpe passed, but instead of barking it just thumped its tail on the floor.

  He opened a door at random and found himself in a long, elegantly furnished parlor with a white marble chimney breast that made him shudder as he remembered his ordeal in Skovgaard’s flues. The room’s windows overlooked the sleeping woman and Sharpe stood between the thick curtains and wondered who she was. Lavisser’s cousin? She was much too young to be his grandmother. She seemed to have an incongruous musket propped beside her chair, then Sharpe saw it was a pair of crutches. The newspaper on the wicker table, weighted down by the work basket, stirred in the wind.

  So where would Lavisser put his gold? Not in this room with its well-stuffed chairs, thick rugs and gilt-framed portraits. Sharpe went into the main hall. A curving white staircase lay to his right and, beyond it, an open door. He peered through the door and found a small parlor that had been turned into a bedroom. Presumably the woman on crutches could not climb the stairs and so a bed had been placed under the window. Books were piled on the white-painted window seat while newspapers lay across the bed and on a heavy leather valise that was overflowing with discarded petticoats. There were initials gilded on the valise’s lid. MLV.

  He wondered if the “L” stood for Lavisser, then dismissed the idea, and just then the name Visser came to him. Lavisser, Visser, Madame Visser. And in Skovgaard’s house his last pistol ball had struck someone, provoking a yelp of pain and leaving blood on the floor. The woman in the garden had crutches.

  He looked through the valise and found nothing with a name on it. He opened the books, but none was inscribed with an owner’s name, though all, he thought, were in French. He went back to the big parlor and stared through the window at the sleeping woman. She was Lavisser’s accomplice, she was French, she was the enemy. Sharpe reckoned he could spend all day searching the house for gold, but why bother when Madame Visser could probably tell him where it was?

  He went back into the passage where the dog thumped its tail in welcome for a second time, crossed the lawn and stood behind the chair where he unslung the rifle from his shoulder. “Madame Visser?” he asked.

  “Oui?” She sounded startled, then went silent as she heard the weapon being cocked. She turned very slowly.

  “We met last week,” Sharpe said. “I’m the man who shot you.”

  “Then I hope you suffer all the torments of hell,” she said calmly. She spoke English well. A disturbingly good-looking woman, Sharpe thought, with an elegant face, dark hair and the eyes of a huntress. Those eyes, instead of showing fear, looked amused now. Her white dress had delicate lace at its neckline and hems and looked so feminine that Sharpe had to remind himself of Ole Skovgaard’s verdict on this woman: merciless, he had said. “So what do you want?” she asked.

  “Where is Lavisser’s gold?”

  She laughed. Not a pretend laugh, but genuine laughter. “Lieutenant Sharpe, isn’t it? Major Lavisser told
me your name. Sharpe. Not very appropriate, is it?” She looked him up and down. “So were you fighting up the hill?”

  “Wasn’t much of a fight.”

  “I can’t imagine it was. Proper troops against farm boys, what does one expect? But my husband will be very disappointed. He and his friend rode up to watch. Did you see them? Perhaps you shot two gentlemen on horseback while you were culling the peasantry?” She was still twisted awkwardly in the chair. “Why don’t you stand in front of me,” she suggested, “where I can see your face properly.”

  Sharpe moved, keeping the rifle pointed at her.

  Madame Visser still seemed amused rather than frightened by the weapon’s threat. “Did you really come to find the gold? Major Lavisser probably took it with him and if that’s all you came for then you might as well go away again.”

  “I think it’s here,” Sharpe said.

  “Then you are a fool,” she said and reached out for the small handbell on the wicker table. She picked it up but did not ring it. “So what are you going to do, fool? Shoot me?”

  “I did once, why not again?”

  “I don’t think you will,” she said, then rang the bell vigorously. “There,” she exclaimed, “I’m still alive.”

  Sharpe found her good looks unsettling. He lowered the rifle’s muzzle. “Where did I shoot you?”

  “In the leg,” she said. “You have given me a scar on the thigh and I think I hate you.”

  “Should have been in your head,” Sharpe said.

  “But the wound does well,” she went on. “Thank you for asking.” She turned as a sleepy-eyed servant girl came from the house. She spoke to the girl in Danish and the maid curtseyed and then ran back indoors. “I’ve sent for help,” Madame Visser said, “so if you have any sense you’ll leave now.”

  She was right, Sharpe thought. He should leave, but the gold was a lure and finding it would be a sweet revenge on Lavisser. “I’m looking for the bastard’s gold,” he told her, “and you can send for all the servants you want.” He used the rifle’s muzzle to open the work basket that weighted the newspaper.

  “You think I keep a thousand guineas in there?” Madame Visser asked with amusement.

  Sharpe had been looking for a pistol, but the only things in the basket were folded papers and a lethally long hatpin. He backed away. “A thousand guineas?” he asked. “What about the other forty-two thousand?”

  For the first time since he had woken her Madame Visser looked discomfited. “Forty-two thousand?”

  “He stole forty-three thousand guineas,” Sharpe said. “What did he tell you? That it was a thousand?” She said nothing and he knew he had surprised her. “So which room did he use here?” he asked her.

  She shrugged. “Upstairs, I suppose.” She frowned at Sharpe. “Forty-three thousand?” She sounded disbelieving.

  “All except for fifteen guineas that I stole off him.”

  “I imagine he took it to Copenhagen,” Madame Visser said.

  “Or hid it here,” Sharpe said.

  She nodded. “There are cellars and attics.” She shrugged. “What will you do with it?”

  “Return it to the British.”

  Madame Visser smiled. “I think, Lieutenant, you will keep it. And my silence will cost you five thousand.”

  He backed away. “Cheap, aren’t you?”

  She just smiled and blew him a kiss. He still backed away, unsure whether she had a pistol hidden under her skirts, but she did not move, just watched as he went back into the house.

  He went upstairs. He considered searching the bedrooms, but decided Lavisser would not leave a fortune where any servant could filch from it and so he looked for the attic stairs and found them behind a small door. The loft was dusty, but lit by small dormer windows, and it was also crammed with chests, valises and crates. His hopes rose.

  There was no gold. There were chests filled with ancient papers, crates of old toys and piles of moth-eaten clothes. There was a child’s sledge, a rocking horse and a model ship that was rigged with cobwebs. But no guineas. He could not search all the boxes, but he could lift them and detect from their weight whether gold was stored inside, and there was none. Damn, he thought. So search the cellars. Madame Visser had sent for help and even though no one had yet disturbed him he knew he did not have much time.

  He ran down the narrow, uncarpeted attic stairs, then crossed the landing and went down the big curving stairs and there in the hall, of all people, was Captain Warren Dunnett. A half-dozen riflemen were with him, their grubby uniforms looking out of place in the elegant setting. Dunnett smiled as Sharpe came downstairs. “You’re under arrest, Lieutenant.”

  “Don’t be daft,” Sharpe said. He saw the surprise on Dunnett’s face, then pushed past the six riflemen who looked embarrassed.

  “Sharpe!” Dunnett called.

  “Go boil your head,” Sharpe answered. He went down the passage, past the dog, and so out into the back garden where Madame Visser was now attended by Captain Murray and two black-coated civilians in breeches and riding boots. The maid, Sharpe guessed, must have run to the village and appealed to the British.

  Captain Murray, a decent man who commanded a company of greenjackets, shook his head sadly. “What were you thinking of, Sharpe?”

  “Thinking of nothing,” Sharpe protested. Dunnett and his men had followed him onto the lawn. “Do you know who this woman is?” Sharpe asked Murray.

  “She’s my wife, Lieutenant,” one of the two civilians answered, “and I am an accredited French diplomat.”

  “Last week,” Sharpe said, “I watched that bitch pull a man’s teeth because he was a British agent.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Dunnett snapped. He stepped toward Sharpe and held out his hand. “Give me your pistol, Lieutenant, and your saber.”

  “Captain!” Madame Visser said reprovingly. “Perhaps Lieutenant Sharpe has been affected by battle? I am told it makes some men insane. I think you should place him in a hospital.”

  “We shall arrest him, ma’am,” Dunnett said enthusiastically. “Give me your rifle, Sharpe.”

  “Bloody take it,” Sharpe said. The anger was rising dangerously in him.

  “Richard,” Captain Murray said emolliently. He took Sharpe’s elbow and showed surprise when his hand was shaken off. “This isn’t the place, Richard,” he said softly. “We can sort things out back at the village.”

  “There’s nothing to bloody sort out! I didn’t do anything here!”

  “You trespassed, Richard, and it ain’t a serious offense.”

  “Lieutenant Sharpe!” Dunnett was becoming impatient. “You will give me your weapons now or I shall order my men to take them.”

  “Parole, Warren, parole,” Murray suggested.

  Madame Visser watched Sharpe with mock sympathy and a half-smile. She had won and was enjoying his humiliation. Then a new voice sounded angrily from the arch in the box hedge. “What the devil is going on?” the voice demanded, and the group on the lawn turned to see that Sir Arthur Wellesley, attended by three aides, had come to the house. “Someone tells me an officer was plundering here?” The General was plainly furious as he strode across the grass. “My God, I will not abide plundering, especially by officers. How can you expect obedience from the men when officers are corrupt?”

  “I took nothing!” Sharpe protested.

  “It’s you,” Wellesley said in a distant tone. Madame Visser, struck by the General’s good looks, was smiling at him while her husband bowed stiffly and introduced himself. Wellesley spoke to them in fluent French, Dunnett and Murray stood back and Sharpe stared down at the wicker table and cursed his impulsiveness.

  Wellesley turned cold eyes on Sharpe. “Monsieur Visser tells me you were annoying his wife.”

  “I put a bullet through her leg, sir,” Sharpe said, “if that’s what he means.”

  “You did what?” Wellesley snapped.

  “Last week, sir, in Copenhagen. She was pulling a man’s teeth
at the time, and he was one of our agents.”

  Wellesley stared at him, Madame Visser chuckled. “He’s mad, sir,” Captain Dunnett said.

  “I fear the sun or else the strain of battle has gone to his head, Sir Arthur,” Madame Visser said gently. “I hurt my leg falling from a horse. Otherwise I would have ridden with my husband to witness your great victory. Instead I stayed here and Lieutenant Sharpe threatened me with a rifle, then said he would search the house for gold.” She shrugged. “It is sad, I think, but perhaps you do not pay your officers properly?”

  “Is that true, Sharpe?” Wellesley’s voice was as cold as Sharpe had ever heard it.

  “Of course it isn’t true, sir,” Sharpe said. He was not looking at Sir Arthur, but at the work basket. A hatpin, he thought, she had a hatpin in the work basket. My God, it was a wild chance, but perhaps the only one he had. Sir Arthur, confronted with an attractive woman, was talking to her in French and doubtless believing everything she said and in a moment he would confirm Dunnett’s order to have Sharpe arrested and so, while the General was distracted, Sharpe stooped and pulled the newspaper from beneath the work basket. It was a copy of the Berlingske Tidende, nothing strange about that, but Madame Visser still made an ineffectual lunge to grab it back from him.

  Wellesley frowned. “What the devil... “ he began, then watched as Sharpe unfolded the paper and held it up to the sun. Tiny dots of light sparked on the page. Monsieur Visser and the other civilian stepped back as if to suggest they had nothing to do with whatever happened next and Sharpe just gazed at the pricks of sunlight and felt a great surge of relief. He was safe. “Sir?” he said.

  Wellesley came and stood beside him, then took the paper and held it high. He stared at the pinpricks for a very long while. Dunnett, not understanding what was happening, fidgeted. Madame Visser sat still, saying nothing. The General still examined the tiny dots of light. “I’m told, sir,” Sharpe said, “that each pinprick beneath a letter is... “

  “I know how the system works, thank you, Sharpe,” Wellesley said coldly. He read off each letter to decipher the hidden message, then finally lowered the newspaper. “You were employed on some obscure business for Sir David Baird, am I right?”