Sharpe 3-Book Collection 3: Sharpe's Trafalgar, Sharpe's Prey, Sharpe's Rifles

by Bernard Cornwell

  “You’ve been in the city?”

  “It’s a good place,” Sharpe said, “but with very fat churches. You’d best pray God isn’t tempted to take sides, Captain, because there are a terrible number of Danes battering His eardrums.” He grinned at Jens. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes.” Jens, not surprisingly, looked bewildered.

  “You were with the Danes?” the Captain asked.

  “They were only militia,” Sharpe said, “but there was a company of proper troops on the next hill. No artillery though.” He emerged onto the hill top which was horrid with bodies. Welsh bandsmen tended the Danish wounded while a few miserable prisoners stood among the thinning smoke. “Would you know where Sir David is?” Sharpe asked the Captain.

  “He’s at brigade, I think. Over there.” He pointed beyond the ditch. “Last I saw of him he was by some glasshouses.”

  “Are you coming, Jens?” Sharpe asked, and he sounded a lot more cheerful than he felt. For it was time to face the music.

  And time to confess that he had failed.

  CHAPTER 7

  SHARPE WALKED JENS away from the carnage. Once beyond the ditch and out of sight of the two redcoat battalions Sharpe pointed back toward the city. “Get into that lower ground”—he showed Jens how to sneak round the side of the fusiliers—“and then just keep walking.”

  Jens frowned. “You are not American?”

  “I’m not.”

  Jens seemed reluctant to go. “Did you know what would happen back there?”

  “No. But it wasn’t hard to guess, was it? They’re real soldiers, lad. Trained to it.” Sharpe took the remaining pistol from his belt. “You know Ulfedt’s Plads?”

  “Of course.”

  “There’s a man called Skovgaard there. Give this gun to him. Now hurry, before the British capture the rest of the gardens. Keep in those lower trees and then go straight to the gate. Understand?”

  “You’re English?”

  “I’m English.” Sharpe pushed the unprimed gun into Jens’s hand. “And thank you for saving my life. Now go on. Hurry.”

  Jens gave Sharpe a bewildered glance then ran. Sharpe watched until the Dane was safely hidden among the trees, then slung his greatcoat over his shoulder and walked on. Failed, he thought. Failed utterly.

  He climbed a low hill. The newly dug ditch where the fusiliers had fired their volleys had evidently been the beginning of a new Danish outwork that had been captured before they could throw up walls or mount guns, and now red-coated engineers were standing on the hill’s summit from where they trained telescopes on the city walls. They were obviously considering the hill as a place for a battery. The sea could be seen to the south, while on the hill’s northern side, in a gully, a gardener was carefully carrying plants into a greenhouse. Beyond the gully the land rose to a low ridge where a group of mounted British officers watched another battalion advance into the woodlands. Thick smoke smeared the eastern air. The Danes, retreating from the suburbs closer to the city, had set some houses on fire, presumably so that the British could not use them as advance positions. Farther north, out of sight, there was some heavy artillery at work, for the air was being punched by the percussive blasts and the sky was streaked and silting with smoke.

  Major General Sir David Baird had a musket wound on his left hand and another rivulet of blood where a ball had grazed his neck, but he was feeling ebullient. He had led a brigade into the gardens, ejected some Danish regulars, massacred some brave idiots from the militia and now watched as his men secured the southern ground that would finally isolate Copenhagen from the rest of Zealand. Captain Gordon, his aide and nephew, had been wasting his breath by chiding the General for exposing himself to unnecessary danger, but Baird was enjoying himself. He would have liked to keep the advance going, right through the western suburbs, across the lakes and into the city itself. “We could have the fleet by nightfall,” he claimed.

  Lord Pumphrey, the civilian aide from the Foreign Office, looked alarmed at the General’s bellicosity, but Captain Gordon did his best to restrain Sir David. “I doubt Lord Cathcart would want a premature assault, sir,” the aide observed.

  “That’s because Cathcart’s a bloody old woman,” Baird grumbled. Cathcart was the General in command of the army. “A bloody old woman,” Baird said again, then frowned at Lord Pumphrey who was trying to draw his attention. “What is it?” he growled, then saw where his lordship was pointing. A Rifle officer was coming up the path from the greenhouse.

  “It’s Lieutenant Sharpe, Sir David,” Pumphrey said.

  “Good God.” Baird stared at Sharpe. “Good God. Gordon? Deal with him.” The General, not wanting to be associated with failure, spurred his horse farther along the ridge.

  Gordon dismounted and, accompanied by Lord Pumphrey, walked to meet Sharpe. “So you escaped the city?” Gordon greeted him.

  “I’m here, sir,” Sharpe said.

  Gordon heard the bitterness. He led Sharpe toward the back of the greenhouse where the General’s orderly had a fire going and a kettle boiling. “We heard about Lavisser,” he said gently. “We read the Berlingske Tidende.”

  “He implied you were an assassin,” Lord Pumphrey said with a shudder. “So very distressing for you. We sent a letter to His Royal Highness denying the allegation, of course we did.”

  “It’s all very distressing,” Gordon said, “and I’m very sorry you became involved, Sharpe. But how were we to know?”

  “You don’t know any of it,” Sharpe said angrily.

  “We don’t?” Gordon asked mildly. He paused to organize some cups of tea. “What we learned the day after you left England, Lieutenant”—Gordon turned back to Sharpe—“is that Captain Lavisser, as well as being in debt, faced a prosecution for breach of promise. A woman, of course. She claims the marriage date was settled. One suspects she is also pregnant. He was doubtless eager to flee the country, but was rather clever to persuade the Treasury to fund his escape.”

  “The Foreign Office advised against it,” Lord Pumphrey put in.

  “As you will doubtless remind us frequently,” Gordon said. He shrugged. “I’m sorry, Sharpe. Had we known we should never have let him go.”

  “There’s worse,” Sharpe said.

  “Ah! The tea,” Gordon said, “nature’s soft nurse. No, that’s sleep, isn’t it? But tea’s the next best thing. Thank you, Boswell.” Gordon took a tin mug from the General’s orderly and handed it to Sharpe.

  Lord Pumphrey ignored the offered tea. His lordship no longer sported a beauty spot and he had abandoned his white-laced jacket in favor of a simple brown coat, but he still seemed out of place. He took a pinch of snuff, then shuddered as a Danish prisoner came down the hill. The man was bleeding from a scalp wound and two fusiliers were trying to hold him still while they bandaged his head, but the man kept shaking himself free and staggering a few wild steps. “Tell me what we don’t know,” Lord Pumphrey said, turning his back on the wounded man.

  So Sharpe told them how Barker had tried to kill him, how he had then gone to Skovgaard who had betrayed him to Lavisser, about the French and the battle in the house that did not lie so very far to the north. He told them about Madame Visser and the three dead men and Skovgaard’s bloody gums and the teeth lying on the desk. “Lavisser is working with the French,” Sharpe said. “He’s a goddamn traitor.”

  Lord Pumphrey took the news surprisingly calmly. He said nothing for a while, but just listened to the heavy sound of the artillery to the north. “Gunboats,” he said bleakly. “I am forever astonished by the military. Their budgets are raised each year, yet the weapons are never suitable. It turns out that the Danish gunboats are rather better than ours. They draw less water and carry heavier ordnance and the results are not at all pretty.” He watched as the fusiliers at last wrestled the wounded Dane to the ground, then he walked a few delicate steps northward to escape the man’s moaning. “So Captain Lavisser is still in the city?” he asked Sharpe.

  �
�He was here in these gardens a minute ago,” Sharpe said bitterly. “The bastard was telling me that Bonaparte will want a new ruler for Denmark. Someone like him, but the last I saw of the bastard he was running like a deer.”

  “Of course we shall deny that any of this happened,” Gordon said.

  “Deny it!” Sharpe spoke too loudly.

  “My dear Sharpe,” Gordon remonstrated, “we cannot possibly have it known that the Duke of York had an aide who was on the French payroll. It would be a disastrous revelation.”

  “Calamitous,” Lord Pumphrey agreed.

  “So I trust we can depend on your discretion?” Gordon asked.

  Sharpe sipped the tea and watched the smoke trails in the northern sky. They were too thick to be the fuses of shells so he decided they had to be rockets. He had not seen any rockets since India. “If I’m still a Rifle officer,” he said, “then I’ll be discreet. You can order me to be discreet.” It was an attempt at blackmail. Sharpe had abandoned his place at the Shorncliffe barracks and he could expect little mercy from Colonel Beckwith unless Sir David Baird spoke for him, but Baird had only promised him support if he succeeded in Copenhagen. And he had failed, but it was clear no one wanted that failure known.

  “Of course you’re still a Rifle officer,” Gordon said forcefully, “and Sir David will be happy to explain the circumstances to your Colonel.”

  “So long, of course, as you keep quiet,” Pumphrey said.

  “I’ll keep silent,” Sharpe promised.

  “But tell me about Skovgaard,” Lord Pumphrey said. “You think he’s in danger?”

  “Bloody hell, yes, my lord,” Sharpe said vigorously, “but he wouldn’t let me stay because he’s not happy with Britain at the moment. He’s got half a dozen old men with even older muskets guarding him, but they won’t last two minutes against Lavisser and Barker.”

  “I do hope you’re wrong,” Lord Pumphrey said quietly.

  “I wanted to stay,” Sharpe said, “but he wouldn’t let me. Said he’d trust in God.”

  “But your part’s over now,” Gordon declared. “Lavisser’s a renegade, the gold is gone and we’ve been thoroughly humbugged. But it’s not your fault, Sharpe, not your fault at all. You behaved creditably and I shall so inform your Colonel. You know your regiment’s here?”

  “I guessed as much, sir.”

  “They’re down south, near a place called Køge, I think. You’d best take yourself off there.”

  “And what of Lavisser?” Sharpe asked.

  “I suspect we shall never see him again,” Gordon said bleakly. “Oh, we’ll capture the city, but I’ve no doubt the Honorable John will conceal himself from us and we’re hardly likely to search every attic and cellar for him. And I suspect His Majesty’s Treasury can afford the loss of forty-three thousand guineas, don’t you? Is there much food in the city?”

  “Food?” Sharpe was momentarily thrown by the change of subject.

  “Well stocked up on victuals, are they?”

  “Yes, sir. Carts and ships were arriving all the time I was there. Packed with grain.”

  “Tragic,” Gordon murmured.

  Sharpe frowned when he realized why Gordon had asked the question. If the city had plenty of food then it could hold out against a prolonged blockade. But there was an alternative to blockade or, indeed, siege and Sharpe shuddered. “You can’t bombard the place, sir.”

  “No?” It was Lord Pumphrey who made the inquiry. “And why not?”

  “Women and children, my lord.”

  Lord Pumphrey sighed. “Women, children and ships, Sharpe. Pray do not forget the ships. That is why we are here.”

  Gordon smiled. “The good news, Sharpe, is that we found the underground pipes that carry fresh water to the city. So we cut them. Maybe thirst will force a surrender? But we can’t wait too long. The weather in the Baltic will have our fleet running for home before too many weeks. Fragile things, ships.” He took a notebook from his pocket, tore out a page and scribbled some words. “There, Sharpe, your pass. If you walk north you’ll find a large red-brick house that passes as our headquarters. Someone will know if there’s a unit going south and they’ll make sure you go with them. I do apologize, profoundly, for having involved you in this nonsense. And remember, do, that none of this ever happened, eh?” He tossed away the dregs of his tea.

  “It was a bad dream, Lieutenant,” Pumphrey said, then he and Gordon went back to Baird.

  “Seen him off?” Baird asked Gordon.

  “I sent him back to his regiment, sir, and you’re going to sign a letter of recommendation that I shall forward to his Colonel.”

  Baird frowned. “I am? Why?”

  “Because no one will then associate you with a man who has turned out to be the Duke of York’s aide and a French spy.”

  “Bloody hellfire,” Baird said.

  “Precisely,” Lord Pumphrey said.

  Sharpe walked north and Jens went east, but the young shipwright did not take Sharpe’s advice. He should have kept walking toward the city as Sharpe had advised him, but he could not resist going north through the trees to discover the source of some sporadic musketry. Some skirmishers of the King’s German Legion saw him. They were Jäger, hunters, equipped with rifles, and they saw the pistol in Jens’s hand and put three bullets in his chest.

  Nothing was working well. But Copenhagen was surrounded, the Danish fleet was trapped and Sharpe had survived.

  GENERAL CASTENSCHIOLD had been ordered to harry the southern flank of the British forces blockading Copenhagen and he was not a man to ignore such orders. He dreamed of glory and dreaded defeat and his moods swung between optimism and a deep gloom.

  The core of his force was a handful of regular soldiers, but most of his fourteen thousand men were from the militia. A few of those were well trained and decently armed, but far more were new recruits, some still wearing their wooden clogs and most carrying weapons that belonged in farmyards rather than on battlefields. They were country boys, or else from the small Danish towns of southern Zealand.

  “They are enthusiastic,” an aide told the General.

  That only made Castenschiold even more worried. Enthusiastic men would rush into battle with no knowledge of its realities, yet duty and patriotism demanded that he take his inadequate force north to attack the British troops encircling the capital and he tried to persuade himself that there was a real chance of surprise. Perhaps he could drive so deep into the British-held ground that he could reach the siege works about Copenhagen before the redcoats knew of his presence, and in his secret and slightly guilty dreams he imagined his men slaughtering the hapless enemy and throwing down their newly dug batteries, but in his heart he knew the outcome would not be so happy. But it had to be tried and he dared not allow his pessimism to show. “Are there any enemy south of Roskilde?” he asked an aide.

  “A few,” was the airy answer.

  “How many? Where?” Castenschiold demanded savagely and waited while the aide sifted through the dozens of messages sent by loyal people. Those reports said that enemy troops had appeared in Køge, but not many. “What is not many?” Castenschiold inquired.

  “Fewer than five thousand, sir. The schoolmaster in Ejby says six thousand, but I’m sure he exaggerates.”

  “Schoolmasters can usually count reliably,” Castenschiold said sourly. “And who leads these troops?”

  “A man called”—the aide paused as he sought the right piece of paper—“Sir Arthur Wellesley.”

  “Whoever he is,” Castenschiold said.

  “He fought in India, sir,” the aide said, “at least the schoolmaster says he did. It seems some officers were billeted in the school, sir, and they said Sir Arthur gained a certain reputation in India.” The aide tossed down the schoolmaster’s carefully written letter. “I’m sure it isn’t hard to beat Indians, sir.”

  “You are?” Castenschiold asked sarcastically. “Let us hope this Sir Arthur underestimates us as you underestimate him.” Cas
tenschiold’s dream of piercing the British lines about Copenhagen was dying fast, for even a handful of British troops would be sufficient to detect his approach and warn their comrades. And if the five or six thousand men were under the command of an experienced general then Castenschiold doubted he would even get past them. But it had to be tried, the Crown Prince had ordered it, and so Castenschiold gave the order to move north.

  It was a glorious late-summer day. Castenschiold’s army marched on three roads, filling the warm air with dust. They had a handful of field guns, though all were very old and the Captain who commanded the battery was not at all sure their barrels would endure too much firing. “They’ve been used for ceremonial purposes, sir,” he told the General. “For salutes on the King’s birthday. Haven’t had an actual ball up their gullets in fifteen years.”

  “But they should fire well enough?” Castenschiold asked.

  “They should, sir,” the Captain said, though his voice was dubious.

  “Then make sure they do,” the General snapped. The presence of the guns gave his men confidence, though they did little for Castenschiold himself. He would rather have had a battery of new artillery, but all the new field guns were in Holstein, waiting for a French invasion that now seemed unlikely to happen. Why should the French invade Denmark when the British were forcing the Danes to become France’s ally? Which meant the best troops and guns of the Danish army were all stranded in Holstein and the British navy was blocking them from the island of Zealand, and General Castenschiold was realistic enough to know that the best Danish generals were also in Holstein, which meant that the hopes of Denmark were pinned on one middle-aged and punctilious general who had a single ancient battery of unreliable artillery and fourteen thousand inadequately trained troops. Yet still he dared dream of glory.

  A squadron of cavalry trotted through the fields of stubble. They looked fine and the sound of their laughter was reassuring. Ahead, up on the northern horizon, there was the smallest gray cloud. Castenschiold fancied that was the smoke from the big guns at Copenhagen, though he could not be sure.