“I won’t.”

“He’ll be weeping on you. He’ll be claiming he’s thirsty or hungry or dying, but don’t listen. If you or the maids open that door he’ll jump on you. That’s what he wants.”

“He just wants money,” she said bitterly.

“He wants you, love. He thinks that if your father vanished then you’d cling to him. He wants you, the warehouse, the money, everything.” He hefted the seven-barreled gun. “Keep the house locked,” he warned her. “No one comes or goes except me. And I’ll be back.”

It was almost dawn. The fires were going out slowly, though the fiercest of the blazes still lit a darkness in which no bombs fell, just a greasy ash that dropped like black snow in the dying night. Houses burned white hot and the water spurted by the feeble pumps was turned to steam that joined the thick smoke smearing the sky all across Zealand. Water was scarce for the city’s supply had been cut and the pumps had to wait for barrels to be fetched from the harbor and that took time, yet slowly the clanking pumps and the small rain contained the fires. The tired men could smell roasted flesh in the embers. Coffins were laid in the streets, while the hospitals were filled with whimpering people.

Sharpe headed toward the harbor.

To give John Lavisser hell.

CHAPTER 10

Captain Joel Chase scarcely dared believe his luck. All night his men had scrambled from ship to ship and found not a living Danish soul aboard the great warships. The fleet had been stripped of its seamen who had been sent to serve the great guns on the city walls, stand guard on the ramparts or carry water to the fire pumps. Chase had worried that perhaps the laid-up ships were being used as dormitories for the crews, but there were no slung hammocks and Chase realized that no sailor would be allowed to live aboard in case some fool should drop a speck of glowing tobacco near a fuse. The crews had evidently been billeted in the city and the Danish fleet had become the kingdom of rats and of Chase’s men, who worked in the dark to sever fuses and dump incendiaries overboard. Where the incendiaries were on open decks, easily visible to a casual inspection, they were left, but the bundles on the lower decks were eased through gunports and lowered to the harbor’s stinking water.

Sharpe came back to the inner harbor just before dawn. A small mist drifted through the fleet’s rigging as he crouched under the forepeak of the Christian VII. “Pucelle!” he hissed, “Pucelle!”

“Sharpe?” It was Midshipman Collier who, with two men, was serving as Chase’s picket.

“Help me aboard. Where’s the Captain?”

Chase was in the captain’s cabin on board the Skiold where, in the small light of a shielded lantern, he combed through the charts of the Baltic. “Extraordinary detail, Richard! Far better than our own. See this shoal off Riga? Not even marked on my charts. Tommy Lister, a splendid fellow, almost lost the Naiad on that shoal and the fools in Admiralty swore it wasn’t there. We’ll take these. You’ll have a brandy? This captain does himself well.”

“What I want,” Sharpe said, “is two or three men.”

“When people say two or three,” Chase said, pouring the brandies, “they usually mean four or five.”

“Two will do,” Sharpe said.

“And for what?” Chase asked. He sat on the cushioned bench under the stern window and listened to Sharpe. The city clocks struck four and a thin gray light began to show at the Skiold’s stern windows as Sharpe finished. Chase sipped his brandy. “So let me summarize,” he said. “There is a man, this Skovgaard, who may or may not be alive, but whose rescue would be in Britain’s best interest?”

“If he’s alive,” Sharpe said dourly.

“Which he probably ain’t,” Chase agreed, “in which case you think there may be a list of names that can be retrieved?”

“I hope so.”

“And whether there is or isn’t,” Chase said, “you’d still like this fellow Lavisser killed?”

“Yes, sir.”

Chase listened to the gulls screaming overhead. “The trouble, Richard,” he said after a while, “is that none of this is official. Lord Pumphrey took very great care, did he not, to make sure nothing was written down? No signed orders. That way he can’t take the blame if anything goes wrong. It’s dirty work, Richard, dirty work.”

“If the French have got the list of names off Skovgaard, sir, then they’ve got to be stopped.”

Chase appeared not to hear Sharpe. “And what authority does Pumphrey have to issue such orders anyway? He’s not a military man. Anything but, in fact.”

Sharpe had said nothing of Pumphrey’s veiled threat about a murder in Wapping, nor did he think Chase would want to hear of it. “If it wasn’t for Pumphrey, sir,” he said instead, “you wouldn’t be here.”

“I wouldn’t?” Chase sounded dubious.

“It was the newspaper, sir, that told us the Danes’ plan to burn this fleet. I took it to Lord Pumphrey and he arranged the rest.”

“He’s a busy little fellow, isn’t he?” Chase gazed fixedly out of the stern window, though the only thing visible there were the bows of another warship. He thought Sharpe’s argument was weak and suspected there was something unsaid, but he did recognize the importance of safeguarding Skovgaard’s correspondents. He sighed. “I do dislike dirty work,” he said mildly, “and especially when it comes from the Foreign Office. They expect the navy to clean the world for them.”

“I have to do it, sir,” Sharpe said, “with or without your help.”

“Have to?” Chase asked. “Truly?”

Sharpe paused. If he was to stay in Denmark, then what did it matter if he was suspected of a murder in far-off London? But if Skovgaard was dead, would he stay? Or would Astrid return to Britain? It was all too complicated. What was simple was that Skovgaard’s names needed to be salvaged and Lavisser needed to be buried. That was simple enough to understand. “Yes, sir,” he said, “I have to.”

Midshipman Collier knocked on the cabin door, then entered without waiting to be bidden. “Sorry to interrupt, sir, but it looks like there’s a pumping party beating the bounds.”

“Then we’d best be moving,” Chase said.

“Pumping party?” Sharpe asked.

“Ships leak, Richard!” Chase said cheerfully, getting to his feet. “Can’t just leave ‘em floating here. They’ll all end up in the mud. So they’re sending fellows to pump all the bilges. It won’t take them long, but we should still hide.”

“Won’t they find your cut fuses?”

“They’ll notice nothing. We took care. Thank you, Mister Collier. Everyone back to the rat hole!” Chase scooped up the charts and smiled at Sharpe. “Will Hopper and Clouter be enough for you?”

Sharpe hardly believed his ears for a second. “Hopper and Clouter, sir?”

“I’m not sure I approve, Richard, but I do trust your judgment. And those two are my best fellows so they should keep you out of harm’s way. But do bring them back alive, I beg you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“There’s nothing else you need?”

“Quick fuse, sir.”

“Plenty of that!” Chase said brightly.

It was past eight in the morning when Sharpe left. The pumping party was working its way down the row of bigger ships, but none of the Danes noticed the three men drop through the Christian VII’s hawsehole onto the quay. All three were armed. Hopper had another seven-barreled gun, two pistols and a cutlass, while Clouter had a boarding axe and two pistols. They crossed the bridge and no one remarked on them. Just a fortnight before, an armed man received curious glances in Copenhagen, but now a British rifleman and two British seamen could carry enough ordnance to fillet a company and be ignored. Nor was the sight of two pigtailed men, one with a face covered in tattoos and the other black, unusual, for Copenhagen was well used to sailors. It was simply thought they were going to the walls where the remaining Danish guns had opened fire on the British batteries. A few folk wished Sharpe and his companions good morning and received grunts in reply.