“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 the Shornecliffe barracks and could expect little mercy from Colonel Beckwith unless Sir David Barid 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 Koge, 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, or, indeed, a 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 Jager, 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.