Sharpe’s Prey: The Expedition to Copenhagen, 1807

‘One where you might die, Sharpe,’ Baird said with relish. He drained his glass of port and poured another. ‘We’re sending a guardsman to Copenhagen. Our interest in Copenhagen is supposed to be secret, but I dare say every French agent in London already knows it. This fellow is going there tomorrow and I want someone to keep him alive. He’s not a real soldier, Sharpe, but an aide to the Duke of York. Not one of those’ – he saw Sharpe glancing at the table of theatre-goers – ‘but the same sort of creature. He’s a courtier, Sharpe, not a soldier. You won’t find a better man for standing sentinel over the royal piss pot, but you wouldn’t want to follow him into a breach, not if you wanted to win.’

‘He’s going tomorrow?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Aye, I know, short notice. We had another man ready to hold his hand, but he was the fellow who was murdered two days ago. So the Duke of York tells me to find a replacement. I thought of you, but didn’t know where you were, then God sent me to the theatre and I find you guzzling ale afterwards. Well done, God. And you won’t mind slitting a few Frog throats?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Our bloody guardsman says he doesn’t need a protector. Says there’s no danger, but what does he know? And his master, the Duke, insists he takes a companion, someone who knows how to fight and, by God, Sharpe, you know how to fight. Almost as well as me!’

‘Almost, sir,’ Sharpe agreed.

‘So you’re under orders, Sharpe.’ The General gripped the port bottle by the neck and pushed back his chair. ‘Are you sleeping here?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘So am I, and I’ve got a carriage coming at seven o’clock to take us to Harwich.’ Baird stood, then paused. ‘It’s a strange thing, Sharpe, but if you do your job properly you’ll stop a war. Odd thing for a soldier to do, don’t you think? Where’s our advancement if we can’t fight? But all the same I doubt we’ll be beating our swords into ploughshares any time soon, not unless the Frogs suddenly see sense. So till tomorrow, young man.’ Baird gave Sharpe a brusque nod and went back to his companions, while Sharpe, with a start of surprise, realized he had not been told why the guardsman was being sent to Copenhagen, nor been asked whether he was willing to go with him. Baird, it appeared, had taken his assent for granted, and Baird, Sharpe reckoned, was right, for, like it or not, he was a soldier.

The General was in a foul mood at seven o’clock next morning. His aide, a Captain Gordon, mimed the cause of Baird’s ill temper by tipping an imaginary bottle to his lips, thus cautioning Sharpe to tact. Sharpe kept silent, settling on the carriage’s front seat, while Baird grumbled that London stank, the weather was wretched and the coach seats lumpy. The vehicle lurched as the inn servants strapped the General’s luggage on the roof, then there was a further delay as a final passenger appeared and insisted that his own luggage be secured alongside Baird’s. The newcomer was a civilian who looked about thirty years old. He was very thin and had a frail, birdlike face on which, astonishingly, a black velvet beauty patch was glued. He wore a silver coat edged with white lace and carried a gold-topped stick from which a silk handkerchief hung. His hair, black as gunpowder, had been smoothed with a perfumed oil and tied with a silver ribbon. He climbed into the coach and, without a word, sat opposite Sharpe. ‘You’re late, my lord,’ Baird snapped.

The young man raised a gloved hand, fluttered his fingers as if to suggest Baird was being extremely tiresome and then closed his eyes. Baird, denied sport with his lordship, frowned at Sharpe instead. ‘There’s still blood on the coat, Sharpe.’

‘Sorry, sir. Tried to wash it out.’ The carriage jerked forward.

‘Can’t have you going to Denmark in a bloody coat, man.’

‘One supposes, Sir David,’ Captain Gordon cut in smoothly, ‘that Lieutenant Sharpe will not be wearing uniform in Denmark. The object is secrecy.’

‘Object, my arse,’ the General said helpfully. ‘He’s my nephew,’ he informed Sharpe, referring to Captain Gordon, ‘and talks like a bloody lawyer.’

Gordon smiled. ‘Do you have civilian clothes, Sharpe?’

‘I do, sir.’ Sharpe indicated his pack.

‘I suggest you don them once you’re aboard your ship,’ Gordon said.

‘“I suggest you don them.”’ Baird mimicked his nephew’s voice. ‘Bloody hellfire. Doesn’t this bloody carriage move at all?’

‘Traffic, Sir David,’ Gordon said emolliently. ‘Essex vegetables for the Saturday market.’

‘Essex bloody vegetables,’ the General complained. ‘I’m forced into a bloody theatre, Gordon, then subjected to Essex vegetables. I should have you all shot.’ He closed his bloodshot eyes.

The carriage, drawn by six horses, went first to the Tower of London where, after Sir David had sworn at the sentries, they were allowed through the gates to discover a cart guarded by a dozen guardsmen who appeared to be under the command of a very tall and very good-looking man in a pale-blue coat, silk stock, white breeches and black boots. The young man bowed as Baird clambered down from the carriage. ‘I have the gold, Sir David.’

‘I should damn well hope you do,’ Sir David growled. ‘Is there a jakes in this damn place?’

‘That way, sir.’ The young man pointed.

‘This is Sharpe,’ Baird said harshly. ‘He’s replacing Willsen, God rest his soul, and this’ – Baird was talking to Sharpe now – ‘is the man you’re keeping alive. Captain Lavisser, or should I say Captain and Major Lavisser? The bloody Guards need two ranks. Bloody fools.’

Lavisser gave Sharpe a rather startled look when he heard that the rifleman was to replace the dead Willsen, but then, as the General went to find the lavatory, the guardsman smiled and his face, which had looked sour and cynical to Sharpe, was suddenly full of friendly charm. ‘So you’re to be my companion?’ he asked.

‘So it seems, sir.’

‘Then I trust we shall be friends, Sharpe. With all my heart.’ Lavisser thrust out a hand. Sharpe took it clumsily, embarrassed by Lavisser’s effusive friendliness. ‘Poor Willsen,’ the Captain went on, clasping Sharpe’s hand in both of his. ‘To be murdered in the street! And he leaves a widow, it seems, and a daughter too. Just a child, just a child.’ He looked pained, then turned to see his guardsmen struggling to move a great wooden chest from the cart. ‘I think the gold should go inside the carriage,’ he suggested.

‘Gold?’ Sharpe asked.

Lavisser turned to him. ‘You’ve not been told the purpose of our journey?’

‘I’m to keep you alive, sir, that’s all I know.’

‘For which I shall be eternally grateful. But our purpose, Sharpe, is to carry gold to the Danes. Forty-three thousand guineas! We travel rich, eh?’ Lavisser hauled open the carriage door, motioned his men to bring the chest of gold, then noticed the carriage’s last passenger, the pale civilian in the silver coat. Lavisser looked astonished. ‘God, Pumps! Are you here?’

Pumps, if that was his real name, merely fluttered his fingers again, then shifted his elegantly booted feet as the gold was manhandled onto the carriage floor. An escort of twenty dragoons took their places ahead of the carriage, then Sir David Baird came back and complained that the chest took up all the coach’s leg room. ‘I suppose we’ll have to endure it,’ he grumbled, then rapped on the coach’s roof to signal that the journey could begin.

The General’s mood improved as the coach jolted through the soot-grimed orchards and vegetable fields about Hackney where a fitful sun chased shadows over woods and low hills. ‘You know Lord Pumphrey?’ Baird asked Lavisser, indicating the frail young man who still seemed to be asleep.

‘William and I were at Eton together,’ Lavisser answered.

Pumphrey opened his eyes, peered at Lavisser as though surprised to see him, shuddered and closed his eyes again.

‘You and I should have been to Eton,’ Baird said to Sharpe. ‘We’d have learned useful things, like which side of the pot to piss in. Did you have breakfast, Lavisser?’

‘The Lieutenant of the Tower was very hospitable, thank you, sir.’

‘They like guardsmen in the Tower,’ Baird said, implying that real soldiers would not be so welcome. ‘Captain Lavisser’ – he spoke to Sharpe now – ‘is an aide to the Duke of York. I told you that, didn’t I? But did I tell you how useless His Royal Highness is? Bloody man thinks he’s a soldier. He buggered up his campaign in Holland in ’99 and now he’s Commander in Chief. That’s what happens to you, Sharpe, when you’re the King’s son. Fortunately’ – Baird, who was plainly enjoying himself, turned to Lavisser – ‘fortunately for you royal camp-followers the army has still got one or two real soldiers. Lieutenant Sharpe is one of them. He’s a rifleman in case you don’t recognize that bloodstained green rag, and he’s a thug.’

Lavisser, who had taken no offence as his master was insulted, looked puzzled. ‘He’s a what, sir?’

‘You weren’t in India, were you?’ Sir David asked, making the question sound like an accusation. ‘A thug, Lavisser, is a killer; a brute, conscienceless and efficient killer. I’m a thug, Lavisser, and so is Mister Sharpe. You are not, and nor are you, Gordon.’

‘I nightly give thanks to the Almighty for that providence,’ Baird’s aide said happily.

‘Sharpe’s a good thug,’ Baird said. ‘He came up from the ranks and you don’t do that by being delicate. Tell ’em what you did in Seringapatam, Sharpe.’

‘Must I, sir?’

‘Yes,’ Baird insisted, so Sharpe told the story as briefly as he could. Lavisser listened politely, but Lord Pumphrey, whose presence was still a mystery to Sharpe, opened his eyes and paid very close attention, so close that he unsettled Sharpe. His lordship said nothing, however, when the lame tale was done.

Lavisser spoke instead. ‘You impress me, Mister Sharpe,’ he said fulsomely, ‘you impress me mightily.’ Sharpe did not know what to say, so gazed out of the window at a small wheatfield that looked rain-beaten. Beyond the damp wheat stood a haystack, reminding him that Grace had died between haymaking and the harvest a year before. He felt a lump in his throat. God damn it, he thought, God damn it, would it never go? He could see her in his mind’s eye, see her sitting on the terrace with her hands on her swollen belly, laughing at some poor jest. Oh, Christ, he thought, but let it pass.

He became aware that Sir David Baird was now talking about Copenhagen. The Danish King, it seemed, was mad, and the country was ruled instead by the Crown Prince. ‘Is it true you know him?’ Baird demanded of Lavisser.

‘The Crown Prince knows me, sir,’ Lavisser said carefully. ‘My grandfather is one of his chamberlains, so I have that introduction. And my master, the Duke, is his first cousin.’

‘That will be enough?’

‘More than enough,’ Lavisser said firmly. Lord Pumphrey took a watch from his pocket, fumbled with the catch, consulted it and yawned.

‘Boring you, my lord?’ Baird growled.

‘I am forever entertained by your company, Sir David,’ Lord Pumphrey said in a very high-pitched voice. He pronounced each word very distinctly, which imbued the statement with an odd authority. ‘I am enthralled by you,’ he added, tucking the watch away and closing his eyes.

‘Bloody fool,’ Sir David muttered, then looked at Sharpe. ‘We’re talking about the Danish fleet,’ he explained. ‘It’s a damn great fleet that’s holed up in Copenhagen and doing bugger all. Just mouldering away. But the Frogs would like to get their damned hands on it and replace the ships we took from them at Trafalgar. So they’re thinking of invading little Denmark and stealing their ships.’

‘And if the French do invade,’ Lavisser smoothly continued the General’s explanation, ‘then they will dominate the entrance to the Baltic and so cut off Britain’s trade. Denmark is neutral, of course, but such circumstances have hardly deterred Bonaparte in the past.’

‘It’s the Danish fleet he’s after,’ Baird insisted, ‘because the bloody man will use it to invade Britain. So we have to stop him stealing it.’

‘How do you do that, sir?’ Sharpe asked.

Baird grinned greedily. ‘By stealing it first, of course. The Foreign Office have a fellow over there trying to persuade the Danish government to send their ships to British ports, but they’re saying no. Captain Lavisser is going to change their minds.’

‘You can do that?’ Sharpe asked him.

Lavisser shrugged. ‘I intend to bribe the Crown Prince, Sharpe.’ He patted the wooden chest. ‘We are carrying Danegeld, and we shall dazzle His Majesty with glitter and befuddle him with treasure.’

Lord Pumphrey groaned. Everyone ignored him as Baird took up the explanation. ‘Captain Lavisser’s going to bribe the Crown Prince, Sharpe, and if the Frogs catch wind of what he’s doing they’ll do their best to stop him. A knife in the back will do that very effectively, so your job is to protect Lavisser.’

Sharpe felt no qualms at such a task, indeed he rather hoped he would get a chance to tangle with some Frenchmen. ‘What happens if the Danes won’t give us the fleet, sir?’ he asked Baird.

‘Then we invade,’ the General said.

‘Denmark?’ Sharpe was astonished. The woman at the Frog Prick had suggested as much, but it still seemed surprising. Fighting Denmark? Denmark was not an enemy!

‘Denmark,’ Baird confirmed. ‘Our fleet’s ready and waiting in Harwich and the Danes, Sharpe, ain’t got no choice. They either put their fleet under our protection or I’ll bloody take it from them.’

‘You, sir?’

‘Lord Cathcart’s in charge,’ Baird allowed, ‘but he’s an old woman. I’ll be there, Sharpe, and God help the Danes if I am. And your friend Wellesley’ – he said the name sourly – ‘is tagging along to see if he can learn something.’

‘He’s no friend of mine, sir,’ Sharpe said. It was true that Wellesley had made him into an officer, but Sharpe had not seen the General since India. Nor did he relish any such meeting. Grace had been a cousin of Wellesley’s, a very distant cousin, but disapproval of her behaviour had spread into the furthest reaches of her aristocratic family.

‘I’m your friend, Mister Sharpe,’ Baird said wolfishly, ‘and I don’t mind admitting I want you to fail. A fight in Denmark? I could relish that. No more talk of a man who can only fight in India.’ The bitterness was naked. Baird felt he had been unfairly treated in India, mostly because Wellesley had been offered the preferments that Baird believed he deserved. No wonder he wanted war, Sharpe thought.

They reached Harwich in the evening. The fields surrounding the small port were filled with tented camps while the damp pastures were crammed with cavalry and artillery horses. Guns were parked in the town streets and were lined wheel to wheel on the stone quay where, beside a small pile of expensive leather baggage, a man as tall and broad as Baird stood waiting. The man was dressed in servant’s black and Sharpe at first took him to be a labourer wanting a tip for carrying the baggage onto a boat, but then the man bowed his head to Lavisser who clapped him familiarly on the shoulder. ‘This is Barker,’ Lavisser told Sharpe, ‘my man. And this is Lieutenant Sharpe, Barker, who has replaced the unfortunate Willsen.’

Barker turned a flat gaze on Sharpe. Another thug, Sharpe thought, a hardened, scarred and formidable thug. He nodded at the servant who did not return the greeting, but just looked away.

‘Barker was a footpad, Sharpe,’ Lavisser said enthusiastically, ‘before I taught him manners and morals.’

‘Don’t see why you need me,’ Sharpe said, ‘if you’ve got a footpad on your side.’

‘I doubt I do need you, Sharpe,’ Lavisser said, ‘but our masters insist I have a protector, so come you must.’ He gave Sharpe another of his dazzling smiles.

A small crowd had gathered on the quay to gape at the fleet of great warships that lay in the river’s mouth, while transports, frigates and brigs were either anchored or moored nearer the small harbour where a falling tide was exposing long stretches of mud. Closest to the quay were some ungainly ships, much smaller than frigates, with low freeboards and wide hulls. ‘Bomb ships,’ Gordon, Baird’s nephew, remarked helpfully.

‘They’ve got damn great mortars in their bellies,’ Baird explained, then turned to look at the modest town. ‘A dozen well-manned bomb ships could wipe Harwich off the earth in twenty minutes,’ the General said with unholy relish. ‘It will be interesting to see what they do to a city like Copenhagen.’

‘You would not bombard Copenhagen!’ Captain Gordon sounded shocked.

‘I’d bombard London if the King demanded it,’ Baird said.

‘But not Edinburgh,’ Gordon murmured.

‘You spoke, Gordon?’

‘I remarked that time is getting short, sir. I’m sure Captain Lavisser and Lieutenant Sharpe should be embarking soon.’

Their ship was a frigate, newly painted and moored closer to Felixstowe on the river’s northern bank. ‘She’s called the Cleopatra,’ Baird’s aide said, and it was apparent that the frigate’s crew had seen the carriage’s arrival, for a ship’s boat was now pulling across the river.

A score of officers from the tented camps had gathered lower down the quay and Sharpe saw some green jackets among the scarlet. He did not want to be recognized and so he hid himself behind a great pile of herring barrels and stared down at the mud where gulls strutted and fought over fish bones. He was suddenly cold. He did not want to go to sea, and he knew that was because he had met Grace on a ship. It was made worse because a country gentleman, come in his open carriage to see the ships, was telling his daughters which of the far fleet had been at Trafalgar.

‘There, you see? The Mars? She was there.’

‘Which one is she, Papa?’

‘The black-and-yellow one.’

‘They’re all black and yellow, Papa. Like wasps.’

Sharpe stared at the ships, half listening to the girls tease their father and trying not to think of Grace teasing him, when a precise and high-pitched voice spoke behind him. ‘Are you content, Lieutenant?’

Sharpe turned to see it was Lord Pumphrey, the young and taciturn civilian who had spoken so little during the journey. ‘My lord?’

‘I first heard you were involved in this nonsense very late last night,’ Pumphrey said softly, ‘and I confess your qualities were quite unknown to me. I apologize for that, but I am not very familiar with the army list. My father once thought I should be a soldier, but he concluded I was both too clever and too delicate.’ He smiled at Sharpe who did not smile back. Lord Pumphrey sighed. ‘So I took the liberty of waking one or two acquaintances to discover something about you and they informed me that you are a most resourceful man.’

‘Am I, my lord?’ Sharpe wondered who on earth he and Lord Pumphrey knew in common.

‘I too have resources,’ Pumphrey went on. ‘I work for the Foreign Office, though, for the moment, I am reduced to serving as a civilian aide to Sir David. It quite opens one’s eyes, seeing how the military operate. So, Lieutenant, are you content?’

Sharpe shrugged. ‘It all seems a bit abrupt, my lord, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Distressingly abrupt!’ Pumphrey agreed. He was so thin and frail that it looked as though a puff of wind would blow him off the quay and dump him in the filth below, but that apparent weakness was belied by his eyes which were very intelligent. He took out a snuff box, snapped open its lid and offered some to Sharpe. ‘You don’t use it? I find it calming, and we rather need calm heads at present. This alarming excursion, Lieutenant, is being encouraged by the Duke of York. We at the Foreign Office, who might be expected to know rather more about Denmark than His Royal Highness, profoundly disapprove of the whole scheme, but the Duke, alas, has gained the support of the Prime Minister. Mister Canning wants the fleet and would rather avoid a campaign that will inevitably make Denmark into our enemy. He suggests, too, that a successful bribe will spare the Treasury the expense of such a campaign. These are cogent arguments, Lieutenant, do you not think?’

‘If you say so, my lord.’

‘Cogent indeed, and quite egregiously muddle-headed. It will all end in tears, Lieutenant, which is why the Foreign Office in its ineffable wisdom has attached me to the Danish expedition. I am deputed to pick up the pieces, so to speak.’

Sharpe wondered why his lordship wore a beauty patch on his cheek. It was a woman’s affectation, not a man’s, but Sharpe did not like to ask. Instead he watched two gulls squabble over some fish offal in the mud under the quay. ‘You think it won’t work, my lord?’

Pumphrey gazed at the ships. ‘Shall I just say, Lieutenant, that nothing I have heard suggests that the Danish Crown Prince is venal?’

‘Venal?’ Sharpe asked.

A ghost of a smile showed on his lordship’s face. ‘Nothing I have heard, Sharpe, suggests that the Crown Prince is a man amenable to bribery, and in consequence the Foreign Office is acutely concerned that the whole sorry affair might embarrass Britain.’

‘How?’

‘Suppose the Crown Prince is offended by the offer of a bribe and announces the attempt to the world?’

‘That doesn’t seem so bad,’ Sharpe said dourly.

‘It would be clumsy,’ Lord Pumphrey said severely, ‘and clumsiness is the grossest offence against good diplomacy. In truth we are bribing half the crowned heads of Europe, but we have to pretend it is not happening. But there’s worse.’ He glanced behind to make sure no one was overhearing the conversation. ‘Captain Lavisser is known to be indebted. He plays steep at Almack’s. Well, so do many others, but the fact of it is worrying.’

Sharpe smiled down at the birdlike Pumphrey. ‘He’s up to his ears in debt and you’re sending him off with a chest full of money?’

‘The Commander in Chief insists, the Prime Minister concurs and we at the Foreign Office cannot possibly suggest that the Honourable John Lavisser is anything other than scrupulously honest.’ Pumphrey said the last word very sourly, implying the opposite of what he had just stated. ‘We merely must tidy things up, Lieutenant, when the enthusiasm has died down. Nasty thing, enthusiasm. And if things do turn out ill then we would appreciate that no one was to know what happened. We don’t want the Duke and the Prime Minister to look like complete fools, do we?’

‘We don’t, my lord?’

Lord Pumphrey shuddered at Sharpe’s levity. ‘If Lavisser fails, Lieutenant, then I want you to bring him and the money out of Copenhagen to the safety of our army. We do not want the Danish government announcing a failed and clumsy attempt at a bribe.’ He took a piece of paper from his pocket. ‘If you need assistance in Copenhagen then this man may provide it.’ He held the paper out to Sharpe, then pulled it back. ‘I have to tell you, Sharpe, that I have worried greatly about revealing this name to you. The man is valuable. I devoutly hope you won’t need his help.’

‘What treason are you talking, my lord?’ Baird demanded loudly.

‘I was merely remarking on the beauty of the scene, Sir David,’ Lord Pumphrey observed in his high-pitched voice, ‘and noting to Lieutenant Sharpe the delicate tracery of the ships’ rigging. I should like a chance to depict the scene in watercolours.’

‘Good God, man, leave that to the proper bloody artists!’ Baird looked appalled. ‘That’s what the idiots are for.’

Lord Pumphrey pressed the piece of paper into Sharpe’s hand. ‘Guard that name, Lieutenant,’ he said softly. ‘You alone possess it.’

Meaning, Sharpe thought, that Lavisser had not been trusted with the man’s name. ‘Thank you, my lord,’ he said, but Lord Pumphrey had already walked away for the Cleopatra’s launch had come to the jetty that gave access to the deep-water channel. The chest was being loaded into the launch’s belly and Baird held out a hand to Lavisser. ‘I’ll bid you farewell, God speed and good fortune,’ Baird said. ‘I’ll allow I won’t mind if you fail, but there’s no point in real soldiers dying if a handful of gold can keep them alive.’ He shook Sharpe’s hand. ‘Keep our guardsman alive, Sharpe.’