“Finish?”
“Painting, Sharpe, painting. Too much and the painting will be heavy. Watercolor should be light, suggestive, nothing more.” He stepped back and frowned at the painting. “I think it’s almost there.”
Sharpe looked at the painting. “I think it’s very good, my lord.” He did, too. Pumphrey had wonderfully caught the city’s near magical look with its green spires and domes and red roofs. “I think it’s really good.”
“How very kind you are, Sharpe, how very kind.” Pumphrey seemed genuinely pleased, then shuddered as the Sergeant cursed the men hauling on the lines that would hoist the mortar barrel. There were now fifteen batteries ringing the city’s western edge, the closest ones hard against the protective canal, while offshore the British bomb ships were anchored in an arc facing the citadel and the Sixtus Battery which together guarded the harbor entrance. The Danish gun ships were staying home. In the first few days they had done serious damage to the Royal Navy’s gun ships, for they drew less water and carried heavier ordnance, but the establishment of British shore batteries had driven them away and the city was now effectively locked in a metal embrace.
The boom of the big guns was constant, but they were all Danish as the cannon on the city walls kept a steady fire on the closest British batteries, but the shots were burying themselves in the great bulwarks of earth-filled fascines that protected the guns and mortars. Sharpe, from his vantage point on the dune, could see the smoke wreathing the wall. The city’s copper spires and red roofs showed above the churning cloud. Closer to him, among the big houses and gardens, the earth was scarred by the newly dug British batteries. A dozen houses were burning there, fired by the Danish shells that hissed across the canal. Three windmills had their sails tethered against a blustering wind that blew the smoke westward and fretted the moored fleet that filled the sea lanes to the north of Copenhagen. Over three hundred transport ships were anchored there, a wooden town afloat. The Pucelle was one of the closest big ships and Sharpe was waiting for its launch to come ashore so that tonight, if the clouds thickened to obscure the moon, they could try to enter the city. He looked at the spires again and thought of Astrid. It was odd that he could not conjure her face to his memory, but nor could he ever see Grace in his mind’s eye. He had no portrait.
“The Danes, of course, might just surrender now,” Pumphrey said. “It would be the sensible thing to do.” He was touching little smears of lighter green to highlight the city spires.
“I’ve learned one thing as a soldier,” Sharpe said, “which is that the sensible thing never gets done.”
“My dear Sharpe”—Pumphrey pretended to be impressed—”we’ll make a staff officer of you yet!”
“God forbid, my lord.”
“You don’t like the staff, Sharpe?” Pumphrey was teasing.
“What I’d like, sir, is a company of riflemen and to do some proper fighting against the Frogs.”
“You’ll doubtless get your wish.”
Sharpe shook his head. “No, my lord. They don’t like me. They’ll keep me a quartermaster.”
“But you have friends in high places, Sharpe,” Pumphrey said.
“High and hidden.”
Pumphrey frowned at his picture, suddenly unhappy with it. “Sir David will not forget you, I can assure you, and Sir Arthur, I think, keeps an eye on you.”
“He’d like to see me gone, my lord,” Sharpe said, not hiding his bitterness.
Lord Pumphrey shook his head. “I suspect you mistake his customary coldness toward all men as a particular distaste for yourself. I asked him for an opinion on you and it was very high, Sharpe, very high. But he is, I grant you, a difficult man. Very distant, don’t you think? And talking of distance, Lady Grace Hale was an extremely remote cousin. I doubt he cares one way or the other.”
“Were we talking of that, my lord?”
“No, Sharpe, we were not. And I do apologize.”
Sharpe watched as the mortar was lowered into its carriage. “What about you, my lord?” he asked. “What’s a civilian doing as an aide to a general?”
“Offering sound advice, Sharpe, offering sound advice.”
“That’s not usual, is it, my lord?”
“Sound advice is very unusual indeed.”
“It’s not usual, is it, my lord, for a civilian to be given a place on the staff?”
Lord Pumphrey shivered inside his heavy coat, though the day was not particularly cold. “You might say, Sharpe, that I was imposed on Sir David. You know he was in trouble?”
“I heard, sir.”
Baird’s career had suffered after India. He had been captured by a French privateer on his way home, spent three years as a prisoner, and on his release was sent as Governor to the Cape of Good Hope where he had foolishly allowed a subordinate to make an unauthorized raid on Buenos Aires, a whole ocean away, and the disastrous foray had led to demands for Baird’s dismissal. He had been exonerated, but the taint of disgrace still lingered. “The General,” Lord Pumphrey said, “has all the martial virtues except prudence.”
“And that’s what you give him?”
“The Duke of York was unwise enough to enroll Sir David’s help in facilitating Lavisser’s outrageous scheme. We advised against, as you know, but we also pulled a string or two to make certain that someone could keep an eye on matters. I am that all-seeing eye. And, as I said, I proffer advice. We want no more irresponsible adventures.”
Sharpe smiled. “Which is why you’re sending me back into Copenhagen, my lord?”
Pumphrey returned the smile. “If Lavisser lives, Lieutenant, then he will inevitably spread stories about the Duke of York, and the British government, in its infinite wisdom, does not want the French newspapers to be filled with salacious tales of Mary Ann Clarke.”
“Mary Ann Clarke?”
“A very beautiful creature, Sharpe, but not, alas, the Duke’s wife. The Duchess is a Prussian princess and has, I am sure, many merits, but she seems to lack Miss Clarke’s more lubricious skills.”
Sharpe saw a launch appear between two of the bomb ketches. “So you want Lavisser dead, my lord?”
“I would never presume to issue such an order,” Pumphrey said smoothly. “I merely note that you have a reputation for resourcefulness and therefore rely on you to do what is needful. And might I remind you that several thousand guineas are missing? I understand you looked for them in Vygârd?”
“I was going to return them to you, my lord.”
“The thought never once crossed my mind that you would not, Sharpe,” Pumphrey said with a smile. He watched a round shot from the citadel skip across the small waves and finally sink just short of a British gunboat. “There is, as it happens, another service you could render us in Copenhagen. That message you so cleverly intercepted? It was about more than burning the fleet, Sharpe. There was a gnomic sentence at the end to the effect that Paris is still demanding the list of names. I suspect that means Skovgaard, don’t you?”
“I’m sure it does.”
“You tell me he’s taken precautions?”
“He thinks so. He thinks God is looking after him. And he reckons I’m evil.”
“I do so dislike religious enthusiasm,” Pumphrey said, “but do call on him, if you would be so kind. Just to make sure he’s alive.” Pumphrey frowned. “What is most important, Sharpe, is not the gold. It is not Lavisser’s miserable life, nor even the unhappy chance that the Paris newspapers will spread tittle-tattle about Miss Clarke. What is important is that the French do not discover the identities of Skovgaard’s correspondents. It is a pity that they have even learned his identity, for I fear he cannot possibly be kept safe when we’re gone from here, but once this business is over I shall attempt to persuade him to move to Britain.”
“I doubt he’ll want to.”
“I find most men prefer living to dying,” Lord Pumphrey said, then stepped back to look at his painting. He shook his head in disappointment, tossed the brush down, emptied the water tumbler and closed the box of paints, evidently abandoning his efforts. “It will be sad to lose Skovgaard’s services, but doubtless another man can be found to receive messages. Do you think that’s your launch? Then might I wish you joy of the hunt in Copenhagen?” Pumphrey offered Sharpe a hand.