“Europe didn’t deserve the Emperor,” Sir David Baird retorted hotly, “but we have him. Come, sir, try the ragout of beef.”
General Cathcart, who had never wanted to bombard the city, said nothing. The smell of smoke filled the dining room, taking away his appetite, though every now and then he would glance from the windows to see the masts of the captured fleet and wonder how much of their value would be given him in prize money. More than enough to buy an estate in his native Scotland, that was for sure.
Not far away, in Bredgade, a dozen sailors had finished hauling blackened beams and scorched bricks from a gaping hole. Now they squatted in a circle and chipped away at dozens of curious black lumps that, when broken apart with a boarding axe, gleamed like a newly risen sun. Not all of the gold had melted, some of the coins were still in the charred remnants of their bags, and Captain Chase was making piles of guineas. “I’m not sure we got it all, Richard.”
“Enough,” Sharpe said.
“Oh enough, certainly enough, more than I ever dreamed!”
Lord Pumphrey was watching over the excavation. He had appeared unexpectedly, accompanied by a dozen soldiers, and announced that he was there to look after the Treasury’s interests. “Though I shall do as Nelson did at Copenhagen,” he told Sharpe, “and turn a blind eye. I do not, after all, have a great love for the Treasury. Who does? But we must return something to them.”
“Must we?”
“I like to think they will owe me a favor, so yes. But do help yourself, Richard, while my blind eye is watching.”
Sharpe gave Pumphrey the list of names. “Lavisser’s dead, my lord.”
“You cheer me, Sharpe, you do cheer me.” Pumphrey peered at the papers. “Is that blood?”
“Yes, my lord.”
Pumphrey looked up at Sharpe, saw the anger that was still in the rifleman, so said nothing more of the blood. Nor did he ask him about the blood in his hair or the scorch marks on the green jacket. “Thank you, Sharpe. And Skovgaard?”
“Alive, sir, barely. I’m going to see him now. Last night’s bombs burned his warehouse, nothing left of it at all, but he’s got a house outside the city walls in Vester Faelled. You want to come?”
“I think I shall wait before I pay my respects,” Pumphrey said, then held out a hand to hold Sharpe back. “But tell me, will he move to Britain? He can hardly stay here.”
“He can’t?”
“My dear Sharpe, we shall stay here a month, at the most two, and then the French will be very firmly in the Danish saddle. How long do you think Mister Skovgaard will last then?”
“I think, my lord, that he would go to hell before he went to Britain,” Sharpe said, “so you’ll have to find another way to protect him. And his daughter.”
“His daughter?”
“She knows as much as he does. What will you do, my lord?”
“Sweden, perhaps?” Lord Pumphrey suggested. “I’d prefer them both to be in Britain, but I do promise you, Sharpe, I do promise you upon my honor, that the French will not trouble them.”
Sharpe looked hard at Pumphrey who almost shivered under the intensity of the gaze, but then Sharpe nodded, satisfied with the promise, and walked away. His pockets were heavy with gold. Chase and his men would become rich this day, and doubtless Lord Pumphrey would skim a share before he returned the gold to the Treasury, but Sharpe, despite the weight in his pockets, would not be rich.
Nor would he stay in Denmark. Ole Skovgaard had forbidden his daughter to marry the Englishman. Sick as Skovgaard was, he had summoned the force to utter the refusal and Astrid would not disobey him. Now, when Sharpe came to the big house in Vester Faslled, she looked close to tears. “He will not change his mind,” she said.
“I know.”
“He hates Britain now,” she said, “and he hates you, and he says you are not a Christian and I cannot… “ She shook her head, unable to go on, then frowned as Sharpe took lumps of blackened gold and handfuls of coins distorted by heat from his pockets. “You think that will change his mind?” Astrid asked. “Money will not persuade him.”
“It’s not for him. Nor for you, unless you want it,” Sharpe said as he took the last guinea and added it to the rest on the harpsichord. The house had been a billet for British officers during the bombardment and the fine wooden floor was marked with boot nails and the rugs were smeared with dried mud. “You said you wanted to rebuild the orphanage,” Sharpe said, “so now you can.”
“Richard!” Astrid tried to push the gold back to him, but he would not take it.
“I don’t want it,” he said. He did want it, he wanted it badly, but he had stolen enough guineas in the last month and, besides, he wanted Astrid’s dream to come true even more than he wanted this gold. “Give it to the children,” he said, and then she just wept and he held her.
“I cannot go against my father’s wishes,” she said at last. “It would not be right.”
“No,” he said, and he did not really understand her obedience but he did understand that it was important to her. He stroked her hair. “Someone told me this was a very respectable society,” he said, “and I reckon I wouldn’t have fitted. I’m not godly enough, so maybe it’s for the best. But one day, who knows, perhaps I’ll come back?”
He walked away, going through the nearby cemetery where a great pit was being dug for the fire-shrunken dead.
That night, in Amalienborg Palace, Lord Pumphrey carefully took part of the gold and stored it in his valise. The remaining gold—he reckoned it was worth about nine thousand pounds—would be returned to the Bank of England and the Honorable John Lavisser could conveniently be blamed for all that was missing. “You could let Sharpe take it back,” he told Sir David Baird next day.
“Why Sharpe?”
“Because I want him out of Copenhagen,” Pumphrey said.
“What’s he done now?”
“What he has done,” Pumphrey said in his precise voice, “is exactly what I asked him to do, and he has done it exceedingly well. I commend him to you, Sir David. But among the things I asked him to do was to keep two people alive, which he did, only it is no longer in His Majesty’s interest that they should live.” Pumphrey smiled and drew a delicate finger across his throat.
Baird raised a cautionary hand. “Tell me no more, Pumphrey. I don’t want to be privy to your dirty world.”
“How very wise you are, Sir David. But remove Sharpe quickly, if you would be so kind. He has an inconveniently gallant soul and I don’t want to make an enemy of him. He could be useful to me again.”
The city still spewed smoke when Sharpe left. Autumn was in the air, brought by a cold wind from Sweden, but the sky was clear, spoiled only by the great feathered smear of smoke that drifted across Zealand. The smoke stayed in Sharpe’s sight even when the city vanished beneath the Pucelle’s horizon. Astrid, he thought, Astrid, and at least he no longer thought only of Grace, and he was still confused, except he did now know what he was doing. He was going back to the barracks, back to his quartermaster’s duties, but at least with the promise that he would not be left behind when the regiment next sailed to war. And there would be war. France was beneath that smoke-filled horizon and she was the mistress of all Europe now, and until France was beaten there would be no peace. It was a soldier’s world now, and he was a soldier.
Chase joined him at the stern rail. “You’ve got some leave coming, haven’t you?”
“A month, sir. I’m not due at Shorncliffe till October.”
“Then you’ll come to Devon with me. It’s time you met Florence, a dear soul! We can go shooting, perhaps? I won’t take a refusal, Richard.”
“Then I won’t offer you one, sir.”
“There, look! Kronborg Castle.” Chase pointed at the green copper roofs that shone in the sunset. “Know what happened there, Richard?”
“Hamlet.”