Bernard Cornwell Box Set: Sharpe's Triumph , Sharpe's Tiger , Sharpe's Fortress

by Bernard Cornwell

  “Upstairs,” Sharpe said. There were men up there, men who knew they were coming, men who would have guns, but he did not dare wait. The fire was flickering beneath him. “Wait here,” he told the two sailors. He hung the rifle on his shoulder and took the seven-barreled gun instead. He did not want to charge the stairs, but if he gave the men upstairs any longer then they would barricade themselves. He swore, nerved himself, and ran.

  He took the stairs three at a time. Up to the half landing where there were two closed doors. He ignored them. His instinct said that the house’s inhabitants were higher up, so he swung round the corner of the landing and took the next stairs at a run and saw a half-open door ahead of him and saw a musket barrel there and he threw himself down just as the musket flamed. The bullet cracked into a portrait high on the stairwell wall and Sharpe heaved himself up, pushed the seven-barreled gun over the lip of the top stair and pulled the trigger.

  The seven bullets shredded the lower half of the door. A man screamed. Sharpe pulled out a pistol and fired again, then Hopper and Clouter were behind him and each of them fired into the door before running past Sharpe. “Wait!” he called. He wanted to be first into the room, not out of heroism, but because he had promised Captain Chase to look after the two men, but Clouter, the axe in his hand, had already shoulder-charged the door and tumbled through. “Pucelle,” the black man was shouting, “Pucelle!” just as if he was boarding an enemy ship.

  Sharpe followed just as Hopper fired his seven-barreled gun inside the room. An enemy’s bullet whipped past Sharpe’s head as he went through the door. He slid on the polished floorboards, crouching as he moved and turning the rifle down the length of the room that was an elegant study with portraits, bookshelves, a desk and a sofa. A man was flopping by the desk, jerking in pain from one of Hopper’s bullets. Another man was by the shuttered window with Clouter’s boarding axe buried in his neck. “There’s a live one behind the desk,” Hopper said.

  Sharpe gave his empty volley gun to Hopper. “Reload it,” he said, then he stalked toward the desk. He heard the scrape of a ramrod in a barrel and so knew his enemy was effectively unarmed. He took three more quick steps and saw a man crouching with a half-loaded pistol. Sharpe had hoped to find Lavisser, but the man was no one he recognized. The man looked up and shook his head. “Non, monsieur, non!”

  Sharpe fired. The bullet took the man in the skull, fountaining blood across the desk and onto the dying man at Sharpe’s feet.

  There was a fourth man in the room. He was naked and tied to a sofa in an alcove, but he was alive, though Sharpe almost gagged when he saw him. He was alive by a miracle, for Ole Skovgaard had been half blinded and tortured and he seemed oblivious of the fight that had filled the room with choking powder smoke.

  Clouter, bloodied boarding axe in one big hand, crossed to the sofa and swore softly. Sharpe grimaced at the sight of the empty eye socket, the bloodied mouth and the raw fingertips where the nails had been pulled before the fingers’ bones had been broken. He put down his rifle, took out his clasp knife and sliced the ropes that secured Skovgaard. “Can you hear me?” he asked. “Can you hear me?”

  Skovgaard raised a tentative hand. “Lieutenant?” He could hardly speak, for his bloody mouth was toothless.

  “We’re taking you home,” Sharpe said, “taking you home.”

  Hopper fired a pistol down the stairwell and Clouter went to help him. Skovgaard pointed feebly at the desk and Sharpe crossed to it and saw a pile of papers spattered with the blood of the man he had just shot. There were names on the sheets, names and names, a list of the correspondents that London wanted protected. Hans Bischoff in Bremen, Josef Gruber in Hanover, Carl Friederich of Königsberg. There were Russian names, Prussian names, seven pages of names and Sharpe snatched the papers up and thrust them into a pocket. Clouter fired down the stairs. Hopper had reloaded one of the seven-barreled guns and now shouldered Clouter aside, but it seemed no one was threatening for he held his fire.

  There were velvet curtains hanging inside the closed shutters. Sharpe seized one and tugged hard, ripping it from its hoops. He wrapped the naked Skovgaard in the red velvet, then lifted him. Skovgaard moaned in pain. “You’re going home,” Sharpe said. Smoke was coming up the stairwell. “Who’s down there?” Sharpe asked Clouter.

  “Two men. Maybe three.”

  “We’ve got to go down,” Sharpe said, “and out of the front door.” He had not seen Lavisser or Barker.

  Hopper was loading the second seven-barreled gun. He had given the first to Clouter. Sharpe could hear the flames downstairs. Bombs were detonating to the west. A maid, eyes wide with terror, ran down the stairs. She seemed not to notice the men in the study door, but just vanished round the half landing. There was a shot from the hallway and the maid screamed. “Jesus Christ,” Sharpe swore.

  Hopper had four of the barrels loaded and decided they were enough. “Do we go?”

  “Go,” Sharpe said.

  Clouter and Hopper went first, then Sharpe carried Skovgaard after them. The two seamen jumped to the half landing and both fired their guns straight down into the smoke that filled the hallway. Sharpe went more slowly, trying to ignore Skovgaard’s soft moans. The maid was lying beside the banisters, blood streaking her gown. Another body lay beside a table in the hall while flames were flickering at the door which led down to the kitchen. The front door was open and Clouter led the way out. Sharpe shouted a warning that Lavisser’s men might be waiting in the street, but the only folk there were neighbors who believed the fire and smoke had been caused by British bombs. One of the women looked alarmed at the sight of the two huge men who burst from the door with their guns, then a murmur of sympathy sounded when the crowd saw Skovgaard in Sharpe’s arms.

  But one woman screamed at the sight of the injured man.

  It was Astrid who ran to meet Sharpe. “What are you doing here?” he asked her.

  “I knew you would be coming here so I came to make sure you were safe.” She gave an involuntary grimace when she saw her father’s face. “Is he alive?”

  “He needs a doctor,” Sharpe said. He reckoned Skovgaard must have resisted for hours before he broke.

  “The hospitals are full,” Astrid said, holding her father’s wrist because his hand was nothing but a broken claw. “They made an announce-ment this morning,” she went on, “that only the worst injured must go to hospital.”

  “He’s badly injured,” Sharpe said, then thought that Lavisser would know that and so the hospitals were exactly where Lavisser would look for Skovgaard. The bombs were thumping steadily, their explosions flashing in the smoky sky. “Not the hospital,” he told Astrid. He thought about Ulfedt’s Plads, then reckoned that was the second place Lavisser would search.

  Astrid touched her father’s cheek. “There’s a good nurse at the orphanage,” she said, “and it’s not far.”

  They carried Skovgaard to the orphanage where the nurse took charge of him. Astrid helped her, while Sharpe took Hopper and Clouter out to the courtyard where they sat under the flagpole. Some of the smaller children were crying because of the noise of the bombs, but they were all safe in their dormitories which were a long way from where any missiles fell. Two women carried milk and water up the outside staircase and glanced fearfully at the three men. “Lavisser wasn’t there,” Sharpe said.

  “Does it matter?” Hopper asked.

  “He wants this list,” Sharpe said, patting his pocket. “These names buy him favor with the French.”

  “There was no gold either,” Clouter growled.

  Sharpe looked surprised, then shook his head. “I clean forgot about the gold,” he said. “I’m sorry.” He rubbed his face. “We can’t go back to the warehouse. Lavisser will look for us there.” And Lavisser, he thought, would take Danish troops with him, claiming he was looking for British agents. “We’ll have to stay here,” he decided.

  “We could go back to the ships?” Clouter suggested.

  “You can if you w
ant,” Sharpe said, “but I’ll stay.” He would stay because he knew Astrid would remain with her father and he would stay with Astrid.

  Hopper began to reload one of the volley guns. “Did you see that nurse?” he asked.

  “I think he wants to stay here, sir,” Clouter said with a grin.

  “We can wait it out here,” Sharpe said. “And thank you, both of you. Thank you.” The bombs lit the sky. By morning, he thought, the Danes must surrender and the British army would come and Lavisser would hide, but Sharpe would find him. If he had to search every damned house in Copenhagen he would find him and kill him. And then he would have finished the job and he could stay here, stay in Denmark, because he wanted a home.

  NEXT MORNING General Peymann called a council in the Amalien-borg Palace. Coffee was served in royal china to men who were dirty with soot and ash, and whose faces were pale and drawn from another night of fighting fires and carrying horribly burned people to the crowded hospitals. “I thought there were fewer bombs last night,” the General observed.

  “They fired just under two thousand, sir,” Major Lavisser reported, “and that includes rockets.”

  “And the night before?” Peymann tried to remember.

  “Nearer five thousand,” an aide answered.

  “They are running short of ammunition,” the General declared, unable to conceal a triumphant note. “I doubt we’ll receive more than a thousand missiles tonight. And tomorrow? Perhaps none at all. We shall hold on, gentlemen, we shall hold on!”

  The superintendent of the King Frederick Hospital offered a sobering report. There were no more beds available, not even now they had taken over the Maternity Hospital next door, and there was a severe shortage of salves, bandages and fresh water, but he still expressed a cautious optimism. If the bombardment got no worse then he thought the hospitals would cope.

  A city engineer reported that an old well in Bjornegaden was yield-ing copious amounts of fresh water and that three other abandoned wells, capped when the city began piping supplies from north Zealand, were to be opened during the day. The deputy mayor said there was no shortage of food. Some cows had died in the night, he said, but plenty were left.

  “Cows?” Peymann asked.

  “The city needs milk, sir. We brought two herds into the city.”

  “Then I think,” General Peymann concluded, “that when all is said and done we might congratulate ourselves. The British have thrown their worst at us, and we have survived.” He pulled the large-scale map of the city toward him. The engineers had inked over the streets worst affected by the first night’s bombardment, and now Peymann looked at the light pencil hatching which showed the effects of the second night’s assault. The newly penciled areas were much smaller, merely a short length of street near the Nørre Gate and some houses in Skindergade. “At least they missed the cathedral,” he said.

  “And there was also damage here.” An aide leaned over the table and tapped Bredgade. “Major Lavisser’s house was destroyed, and the neighboring houses lost their roofs to fire.”

  Peymann frowned at Lavisser. “Your house, Major?”

  “My grandfather’s house, sir.”

  “Tragic!” Peymann said. “Tragic.”

  “We think it must have been a rocket, sir,” the first aide said. “It’s so far from the rest of the damaged streets.”

  “I trust no one was hurt?” Peymann inquired earnestly.

  “We fear some servants might have been trapped,” Lavisser answered, “but my grandfather, of course, is with the Crown Prince.”

  “Thank God for that,” Peymann said, “but you must take some time today to rescue what you can of your grandfather’s property. I am so very sorry, Major.”

  “We must all share in the city’s suffering, sir,” Lavisser declared, a sentiment that brought murmurs of agreement about the table.

  A naval pastor ended the council by thanking God for helping the city to endure its ordeal, for the manifold blessings that would doubtless flow from victory and begging the Almighty to shower His saving grace upon the wounded and the bereaved. “Amen,” General Peymann boomed, “amen.”

  A weak sun was shining through the pall of smoke that smothered the city when Lavisser emerged into the palace courtyard where Barker was waiting. “They prayed, Barker,” he said, “they prayed.”

  “Do a lot of that here, sir.”

  “So what do you make of it?”

  Barker, while his master had been attending the council meeting, had done his best to explore the ruins of Bredgade. “It’s still too hot to get into, sir, and it’s a heap of rubble anyway. Smoking, it is, but Jules, he got out.”

  “Only Jules?”

  “He was the only one I found, sir. Rest are dead or in hospital, I reckon. And Jules swears it were Sharpe.”

  “It can’t be!”

  “He says three men came out the house, sir. Two were sailors and the other was a tall man, black hair and scar on the cheek.”

  Lavisser swore.

  “And,” Barker went on implacably, “the man with the scarred face was carrying Skovgaard.”

  Lavisser swore again. “And the gold?” he asked.

  “That’s probably still in Bredgade, sir. Melted, probably, but it’ll be there.”

  Lavisser said nothing for a while. The gold could be salvaged and it could certainly wait, but he could expect no advancement from the French if he did not give them the list of names that had been so painfully extracted from Skovgaard. That list would open the Emperor’s largesse to Lavisser, make him Prince of Zealand or Duke of Holstein or even, in his most secret dreams, King of Denmark. “Did Jules say anything about the list?”

  “He reckoned it was inside when the house burned, sir.”

  Lavisser used the efficacious word. “All that work wasted,” he said. “Wasted!”

  Barker stared up at the pigeons on the palace roof. He thought his own night had been wasted, for Lavisser had insisted that he watch and count the falling bombs with him. Barker would have preferred to guard Bredgade, but Lavisser had instructed Barker to count the gun flashes from the fleet while Lavisser counted the shots from the land batteries. A real waste, Barker thought, for if he had been in Bredgade then Sharpe would have died and Skovgaard might still be revealing names. “We have to find Skovgaard again, sir,” Barker said.

  “How?” Lavisser asked sourly, then answered his own question. “He has to be in hospital, doesn’t he?”

  “At a doctor’s?” Barker suggested.

  Lavisser shook his head. “All doctors were ordered to the hospitals.”

  So Lavisser and Barker looked for Ole Skovgaard in Copenhagen’s hospitals. That search took them all morning as they went from ward to ward where hundreds of burn victims lay in awful pain, but Skovgaard was nowhere to be found. A morning wasted, and Lavisser was in a grim mood when he went to see what was left of Bredgade, but the house was a smoking ruin and the gold, if it was still there, was nothing but a molten mass deep in its cellars. But at least Jules, one of the Frenchmen left behind when the diplomats fled Copenhagen, was still in the undamaged coach house and Jules wanted his own revenge on Sharpe.

  “We know where he is,” Barker insisted.

  “Ulfedt’s Plads?” Lavisser suggested.

  “Where else?”

  “You, me and Jules,” Lavisser said, “and three of them? I think we must improve those odds.”

  Barker and Jules went to watch Ulfedt’s Plads while Lavisser went to the citadel where General Peymann had his quarters, but the General had been up all night and had now taken to his bed and it was midafternoon before he woke and Lavisser was able to spin his tale. “A child was killed playing with an unexploded bomb, sir,” he said, “and I fear there’ll be more such deaths. There are too many bombs lying in the streets.”

  Peymann blew on his coffee to cool it. “I thought Captain Nielsen was dealing with that problem,” the General observed.

  “He’s overwhelmed, sir. I need a doze
n men.”

  “Of course, of course.” Peymann signed the necessary order and Lavisser woke a reluctant lieutenant and ordered him to assemble a squad.

  The Lieutenant wondered why his men needed muskets to collect unexploded missiles, but he was too tired to argue. He just followed Lavisser to Ulfedt’s Plads where two civilians waited beside a warehouse. “Knock on the door, Lieutenant,” Lavisser ordered.

  “I thought we were here to collect bombs, sir.”

  Lavisser took the man aside. “Can you be discreet, Lieutenant?”

  “As well as the next man.” The Lieutenant was offended by the question.

  “I could not be frank with you before, Lieutenant. God knows there are too many rumors circling the city already and I didn’t want to start more, but General Peymann has been warned that there are English spies in Copenhagen.”

  “Spies, sir?” The Lieutenant’s eyes widened. He was nineteen and had only been an officer for two months and so far his most responsible duty had been making certain that the citadel’s flag was hoisted at each sunrise.

  “Saboteurs, more like,” Lavisser embroidered his tale. “The British, we think, are running out of bombs. They will probably fire a few tonight, but we think they will be relying on their agents in the city to do more damage. The General believes the men are hiding on these premises.”

  The Lieutenant snapped at his men to fix bayonets, then hammered on Skovgaard’s door which was opened by a frightened maid. She screamed when she saw the bayonets, then said that her master and mistress had disappeared.

  “What about the Englishman?” Lavisser asked over the Lieutenant’s shoulder.

  “He hasn’t come back, sir,” the maid said. “None of them have, sir.”

  “Search the premises,” Lavisser ordered the soldiers. He sent some of the men into the warehouse and others up the stairs of the house while he, Jules and Barker went to Skovgaard’s office.

  They found no list of names there. They did find a metal box crammed with money, but no names. The Lieutenant discovered an unloaded musket upstairs, but then the terrified maids told the Lieutenant that Mister Bang was locked in the old stables. The Lieutenant took that news down to the office.