Sharpe’s Prey: The Expedition to Copenhagen, 1807

‘Don’t you bloody lad me,’ Sharpe said. ‘I’m grown now, Jem. I’m a soldier, Jem, an officer, and I’ve learned to kill.’

‘No!’

‘Yes,’ Sharpe said, and the bitterness was unassuageable now, drenching him, consuming him, and the years of pain and misery were driving his right arm as he sawed the blade hard and fast across Hocking’s throat. Hocking’s last shout was abruptly cut short as a fountain of blood sprang up. The big man heaved, but Sharpe was snarling and still slicing down with the blade, cutting through muscle and gullet and a flood of blood until the steel juddered against the bone. Hocking’s breath bubbled at his opened neck as Sharpe stood and stabbed the sabre down so hard that the blade flexed as its tip drove into the back of Hocking’s skull. ‘One in the eye, Jem,’ Sharpe snarled, ‘you bastard.’ The door shook as the men outside tried to force the bolt from its seating. Sharpe kicked the door. ‘We ain’t done,’ he shouted.

There was a sudden silence outside. But how many men were out there? And the two pistol shots would have been heard. Men would be watching the rat shed, knowing that there would be pickings to be had from the violence. Bloody fool, Sharpe told himself. Grace had forever told him he had to think before he let his anger rule his actions, and he had not really meant to kill Hocking, only to rob him. No, that was not true, he had wanted to kill Hocking for years, but he had done it clumsily, angrily, and now he was trapped. There were still some coins on the table, one of them a guinea, and he threw them onto the bed. ‘Emily?’

‘Sir?’ a small voice whimpered.

‘That money’s for you. Hide it. And stay hidden yourself now. Lie down.’

Still silence outside, but that meant nothing. Sharpe blew out the oil lamp, then pulled on his coat and pack. He hung the satchel across his chest, dragged the sabre free of Hocking’s face, then went to the door and slid the bolt back as silently as he could. He lifted the latch and eased the door ajar. He reckoned the two men only had one pistol between them, but both would have knives and cudgels and he half expected them to charge when they saw the door crack open, but instead they waited. They knew Sharpe had to come out eventually and so they were waiting for him. He crouched and felt for the badger cage that had been thrown at him. He placed the cage beside the door and slid its hinged flap open.

A small light came from the shed’s far end, just enough to reveal a heavy dark shadow that crept out of the cage and snuffled its way forward. It was a big beast that tried to turn back into the storeroom’s darkness, but Sharpe nudged it with his sabre tip and the animal lumbered out into the larger space.

The pistol banged, flashing the dark with searing light. The badger squealed, then a club broke its spine. Sharpe had pulled the door open and was through it before the men outside realized they were wasting effort on an animal. The sabre hissed and one man yelped, then Sharpe scythed the blade back at the second man who ducked away. Sharpe did not wait, but ran to the back of the shed where he remembered an alley that led to a noxious ditch up which small lighters could be dragged from the Thames. One of the two men was following him, blundering in the shed’s darkness. Sharpe shouldered the door open and ran down the alley. Two men were there, but both stepped aside when they saw the sabre. Sharpe twisted right and ran towards the big warehouse where tobacco was stored and where, in his childhood, a gang of counterfeiters had forged their coins.

‘Catch him!’ a voice shouted and Sharpe heard a rush of feet.

He twisted into another alley. The shouting was loud now. Men were pursuing him, not to avenge Hocking whom they did not even know was dead, but because Sharpe was a stranger in their gutters. The wolves had found their courage and Sharpe ran, the sabre in his hand, as the hue and cry filled the dark behind. The pack, greatcoat and satchel were heavy, the lanes were foot-clogging with mud and dung, and he knew he must find a lair soon, so he twisted into a narrow passage that ran past the Mint’s great wall, twisted left, right, left again and at last saw a dark doorway where he could crouch and catch his breath. He listened as men pounded past the alley’s entrance, then leaned back as the noise of the hunt faded northwards.

He grimaced when he realized his jacket was soaked in blood. That must wait. For now he sheathed the sabre, hid the scabbard beneath his greatcoat and then, with the pack in his hand, he went westwards through alleys and lanes he half remembered from childhood. He felt safer as he passed the Tower where yellow lights flared through high narrow windows, but he constantly looked behind in case anyone followed. Most of his pursuers had stayed as a pack, but some cleverer ones might have stalked him more silently. By now they knew he was worth killing, not just for the value of his sabre and his coat’s silver buttons, but for the coins he had thieved from Hocking. He was any man’s prey. The city streets were empty and twice he thought he heard footsteps behind him, but he saw no one. He went on west.

The streets became busier once he passed Temple Bar and he reckoned he was safer now, though he still looked back. He hurried along Fleet Street, then turned north into a confusing tangle of narrow alleys. It had begun to rain, he was tired. A crowd of men streamed from a tavern and Sharpe instinctively turned away from them, going into a wider street he recognized as High Holborn. He stopped there to catch his breath. Had he been followed?

Yellow light streamed from windows across the street. Go to Seven Dials, he thought, and find Maggie Joyce. The rain was coming down harder now, drumming on the roof of a parked carriage. Another carriage splashed by and its dim lamps showed a green-and-yellow painted board on the building with the glowing windows. Two watchmen, buttons shining on blue coats and with long staves in their hands, walked slowly past. Had the watch heard the hue and cry? They would be looking for a bloodstained army officer if they had and Sharpe decided he should go to earth. The carriage lamps had revealed that the tavern was the French Horn. The place had once been popular with the musicians from the theatre in nearby Drury Lane, but more recently it had been bought by an old soldier who was partial to any officer who happened to be in town, and throughout the army it was now known as the Frog Prick.

Beefsteak, Sharpe thought. Steak and ale, a bed and a warm fire. He had wanted to leave the army, but he was still an officer, so the Frog Prick would welcome him. He hefted the pack, crossed the street and climbed the steps.

No one took any notice of him. Perhaps half the patrons in the half-filled taproom were officers, though many of those in civilian clothes might also have been in the army. Sharpe knew none of them. He found an empty table in a shadowed spot by the wall and dropped his pack and took off his rain-soaked coat. A red-haired woman whose apron straps were decorated with the shako plates of a dozen regiments acknowledged that the tavern had a bed to spare for the night. ‘But you’ll have to share it,’ she went on, ‘and I’ll thank you not to wake the gentleman when you go up there. He went to bed early.’ She suddenly grimaced as she realized there was blood on Sharpe’s green jacket.

‘A thief tried to take this,’ Sharpe explained, patting the satchel. ‘You can give me a pail of cold water?’

‘You’ll want something to clean your boots too?’ she asked.

‘And a pot of ale,’ Sharpe said, ‘and a steak. A thick one.’

‘Haven’t seen many riflemen lately,’ the woman said. ‘I hear they’re going abroad.’

‘I hear the same.’

‘Where to?’ she asked.

‘No one knows,’ he said.

She leaned close to him. ‘Copenhagen, sweetheart,’ she whispered, ‘and just make sure you come home in one piece.’

‘Copen—’ Sharpe began.

‘Shh.’ She put a finger to her lips. ‘You ever got a question about the army, darling, you come to the Frog Prick. We know the answers two days before the Horse Guards ask the questions.’ She grinned and walked away.

Sharpe opened the satchel and tried to guess how much cash was inside. At least twenty pounds, he reckoned. So crime does pay, he told himself, and shifted his chair so that his back was to the room. Twenty pounds. A man could make a good start in a new life with twenty pounds.

Twenty pounds! A decent night’s work, he thought, though he was angry at himself for having botched the killing. He had been lucky to escape unscathed. He doubted he would be in trouble with the law, for Wapping folk were reluctant to call in the constables. Plenty of men had seen that it was a Rifle officer who had been with Hocking and who, presumably, had done the murder in the back of Beaky Malone’s Tavern, but Sharpe doubted the law would care or even know. Hocking’s body would be carried to the river and dumped on the ebbing tide to drift ashore at Dartford or Tilbury. Gulls would screech over his guts and peck out his remaining eye. No one would hang for Jem Hocking.

At least Sharpe hoped no one would hang for Jem Hocking.

But he was still a wanted man. He had run out of Wapping with a small fortune and there were plenty of men who would like to find him and take that fortune away. Hocking’s mastiffs for a start, and they would look for him in just such a tavern as the Frog Prick. So stay here one night, he told himself, then get out of London for a while. Just as he made that decision there was a sudden commotion at the tavern door that made him fear his pursuers had already come for him, but it was only a boisterous group of men and women hurrying out of the rain. The men shook water from umbrellas and plucked cloaks from the women’s shoulders. Sharpe suspected they had come from the nearby theatre, for the women wore scandalously low-cut dresses and had heavily made-up faces. They were actresses, probably, while the men were all army officers, gaudy in scarlet coats, gold braid and red sashes, and Sharpe looked away before any could catch his eye. ‘Good liquor, I stoutly maintain,’ one of the red-coated officers called, ‘gives genius a better discerning!’ That odd statement provoked a cheer. Tables and chairs were shifted to make room for the party which was evidently known to a score of men in the room. ‘You look in the pink of perfection, my dear,’ the officer told one of the women, and was mocked for his gallantry by his fellows.

Sharpe scowled at his ale. Grace had loved the theatre, but it was not his world, not any more, so damn it, he thought. He would not be an officer much longer. He had money now, so he could go into the world and start again. He drank the ale, gulping it down, suddenly aware of how thirsty he was. He needed a wash. He needed to soak his jacket in cold water. All in good time, he thought. Bed first, sleep or try to sleep. Try to sleep instead of thinking about Grace, and in the morning think what to do with the rest of his life.

Then a heavy hand dropped on his shoulder. ‘I’ve been looking for you,’ a harsh voice said, ‘and here you are.’

And Sharpe, trapped, could not move.

CHAPTER THREE

‘I never forget a face,’ Major General Sir David Baird said. He had taken a step back, alarmed by the ferocity of the scowl with which Sharpe had greeted him. ‘It is Sharpe, isn’t it?’ Baird asked, but was now met with a stare of incomprehension. ‘Well, is it or isn’t it?’ Baird demanded brusquely.

Sharpe, recovering from his astonishment, nodded. ‘It is, sir.’

‘I helped save you from a flogging once, and now you’re an officer. The Lord’s providences are incomprehensible, Mister Sharpe.’

‘They are, sir.’

Baird, a huge man, tall and muscled, was in a red uniform coat that was heavy with epaulettes and gold braid. He scowled at his companions, the group who had just arrived with wet umbrellas and painted women. ‘Those young men over there are aides to the Duke of York,’ he said, ‘and His Majesty insisted they take me to the theatre. Why? I cannot tell. Have you ever been forced into a theatre, Sharpe?’

‘Once, sir.’ And everyone had stared at Grace and talked of her behind their hands and she had endured it, but wept afterwards.

‘She Stoops to Conquer, what kind of name for an entertainment is that?’ Baird asked. ‘I was asleep by the end of the prologue so I’ve no idea. But I’ve been thinking of you lately, Mister Sharpe. Thinking of you and looking for you.’

‘For me, sir?’ Sharpe could not hide his puzzlement.

‘Is that blood on your coat? It is! Good God, man, don’t tell me the bloody Frogs have landed.’

‘It was a thief, sir.’

‘Not another one? A captain of the Dirty Half Hundred was killed just two days ago, not a hundred yards from Piccadilly! It must have been footpads, the bastards. I hope you hurt the man?’

‘I did, sir.’

‘Good.’ The General sat opposite Sharpe. ‘I heard you’d been commissioned. I congratulate you. You did a fine thing in India, Sharpe.’

Sharpe blushed. ‘I did my duty, sir.’

‘But it was a hard duty, Sharpe, a very hard duty. Good God! Risking the Tippoo’s cells? I spent enough time in that black bastard’s hands not to wish it on another man. But the fellow’s dead now, God be thanked.’

‘Indeed, sir,’ Sharpe said. He had killed the Tippoo himself, though he had never admitted it, and it had been the Tippoo’s jewels that had made Sharpe a rich man. Once.