“You don’t have to like it,” Jackson said. He peered at the lamb and trunips on his plate as if trying to work out precisely what he had been served. “We must do it.”

“And swiftly,” Lord Pumphrey supported Jackson. The small, birdlike Pumphrey was seated to Cathcart’s left, thus completing the Foreign Office’s encirclement of the General. His lordship had chosen a white coat edged with gold braid that gave him a vaguely military look, though it was spoiled by the beauty spot that had been fixed to his cheek again. “The weather will become our enemy soon,” he said. “Is that not true, Chase?”

Captain Joel Chase of the Royal Navy, seated at the table’s far end, nodded. “The Baltic becomes very adverse in late autumn, my lord,” Chase answered in his rich Devonshire accent. “Fogs, gales, all the usual nuisances.” Chase had been invited ashore to dine with Cathcart, a courtesy that was extended every night to some naval officer, and he had brought his First Lieutenant, Peel, who had drunk too much and was now fast asleep in his chair. Chase, who had taken care to sit beside Sharpe, now leaned toward the rifleman. “What do you think, Richard?”

“We shouldn’t do it,” Sharpe said. He was sitting far enough from Cathcart for his comment to go unheard.

“We will, though,” Chase said softly. The tall, fair-haired naval Captain commanded the Pucelle, the ship on which Sharpe had served at Trafalgar and he had greeted Sharpe with obviovis delight. “My dear Richard! How good to see you. And I am so very sorry.” The two men had not met since Grace’s death and it had been aboard Chase’s ship that Grace and Sharpe had loved so passionately. “I did write,” Chase had told Sharpe, “but the letter was returned.”

“Lost the house,” Sharpe said bleakly.

“Hard, Richard, hard.”

“How are things on the Pucelle, sir?”

“We struggle by, Richard, struggle by. Let me think, who will you recall? Hopper’s still my bosun, Clouter thrives with a few fingers missing and young Collier has his lieutenant’s exams next month. He ought to pass so long as he doesn’t confuse his trigonometry.”

“What’s that?”

“Tedious stuff that you forget the day after the lieutenant’s exam,” Chase said. He had insisted on sitting next to the rifleman even though seniority should have placed him much closer to Lord Cathcart. “The man’s a bore,” he told Sharpe, “cautious and boring. He’s as bad as the Admiral. No, not quite. Gambier’s a Bible-thumper. Keeps asking if I’ve been washed in the blood of the Lamb.”

“And have you?”

“Bathed, sluiced, washed, drenched and soaked, Sharpe. Reeking of blood.” Chase had smiled, now he listened to the conversation at the table’s far end before leaning close to Sharpe again. “The truth is, Richard, they don’t want to assault the city because it’s too well walled. So we’ll unleash the mortars. Not much choice. It’s either that or have you fellows assault a breach.”

“There are women and children inside,” Sharpe protested too loudly.

Lord Pumphrey, who had been responsible for bringing Sharpe to the dinner, overheard the comment. “There are women, children and ships, Sharpe, ships.”

“Aye, but will there be any ships?” Chase asked.

“There had better bloody be ships,” Sir David Baird growled.

Cathcart ignored Baird, staring instead at Chase whose question had raised alarm around the table. Jackson, the senior diplomat, pushed a gristly scrap of lamb to one side of his plate. “The Danes,” he said, “will surely be reluctant to burn their fleet. They’ll wait till the very last minute, will they not?”

“Last minute or not,” Chase said energetically, “they’ll still burn it and ships burn fast. Remember the Achille, Richard?”

“The Achille?” Pumphrey asked.

“French seventy-four, my lord, burned at Trafalgar. One minute she was fighting, next minute an incandescent wreck. Incandescent.” He pronounced each syllable cheerfully. “We risk a city full of dead women and children in return for a pile of damp ashes.”

Cathcart, Jackson and Pumphrey all frowned at him. Lieutenant Peel woke himself up by snoring abruptly and looked about the table, startled. “The message concealed in the newspaper,” Lord Pumphrey said, “is presumably addressed to Lavisser?”

“We can assume so,” Jackson agreed, crumbling a piece of bread.

“And it grants him permission from his French masters to carry out the Danish orders to deprive us of the fleet.”

“Agreed,” Jackson said carefully.

“The good news,” Cathcart intervened, “is tha thanks to Mister”—

He paused, unable to remember Sharpe’s name—”thanks to the Lieutenant’s watchfulness, we intercepted the message.”

Lord Pumphrey smiled. “We can be quite certain, my lord, that more than one copy was sent. It would be usual in such circumstances to take such a wise precaution. We can also be certain that, because Monsieur and Madame Visser are protected by diplomatic agreement, they are free to send more such messages.”

“Precisely so,” Jackson said.

“Ah.” Cathcart shrugged and leaned back in his chair.

“And we shall look remarkably foolish,” Lord Pumphrey continued mildly, “if we were to capture the city and find, as Captain Chase so delicately phrases it, a pile of damp ashes.”

“Damn it, man,” Cathcart said, “we want the ships!”

“Prize money,” Chase whispered to Sharpe. “More wine?”

“But how to stop the ships being fired?” Pumphrey asked the table at large.

“Pray for rain,” Lieutenant Peel suggested, then blushed. “Sorry.”

General Baird frowned. “They’ll have their incendiaries ready,” he observed.

“You can explain that, Sir David?” Jackson asked.

“They’ll have stuffed the ships with incendiaries,” Baird said. “Canvas bales filled with saltpeter, mealed powder, sulphur, resin and oil”—Baird listed the ingredients with an indecent relish—”and once the fuses are lit those boats will be pure flames in three minutes. Pure flames!” He smiled, then used a candle to light a dark cigar.

“Dear God,” Jackson murmured.

“It probably isn’t sufficient then,” Lord Pumphrey spoke very judiciously, “to remove Captain Lavisser from the city?”

“Remove him?” Cathcart asked, startled.

Lord Pumphrey, so small and frail, drew a finger across his throat, then shrugged. “The message suggests that our renegade is the officer charged with delivering the order to burn the fleet, but alas, if he is absent then someone else will surely give the order.”

Everyone stared at the diminutive Pumphrey. Baird, approving the idea of killing Lavisser, smiled, but most of the other officers looked shocked. Jackson just shook his head sadly. “One devoutly wishes that such a simple solution would obviate our problem, but, alas, the Danes will have other men ready to start a conflagration.” He sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “It will be a terrible defeat,” he mused, “if we were to come this far and lose the prize.”

“But, damn it, the Frogs won’t get the ships!” Cathcart protested. “That’s the point, ain’t it?”

“A most craven defeat,” Jackson said, ignoring the General’s words, “for all the King’s horses and all the King’s men to have come this far merely to provoke a bonfire. We shall be the laughingstock of Europe.” He made the last observation to Cathcart with the obvious insinuation that his lordship would be the butt of the joke.

General Baird signaled a waiter to bring the decanter of port. “Will the ships be fully manned?” he demanded.

No one answered, but most looked to Chase for an answer. The naval Captain shrugged as if to suggest he did not know. Sharpe hesitated, then spoke up. “The sailors have been added to the garrison, sir.”

“So how many men are left aboard?” Baird demanded.

“Two or three,” Chase opined. “The ships aren’t in danger where they are, so why have crews aboard? Besides, I’m sure they’re en flûte.”