Sharpe’s Prey: The Expedition to Copenhagen, 1807

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.