Someone squealed in pain, then Lavisser and the woman disappeared into the night. Smoke writhed about the room as Sharpe ran to Skovgaard’s side. The Dane stared in astonishment, blood trickling down his long chin. Sharpe ducked down behind the desk so that he offered no target to anyone in the garden. The second man he had shot was lying against the wall, twitching, and his pistol was on the floor. Sharpe picked the weapon up, then hurled the lantern into the fireplace. The lamp glass shattered and the study was plunged into darkness.
He went to the window, knelt and peered into the garden. He could see no one, so he closed the metal shutters and put the bar into place. Lavisser, it seemed, had fled. The three shots, coming in such quick succession, must have convinced him that he was up against more than one man.
“Mister Sharpe?” Skovgaard said from the darkness. His voice was slurred.
“Aren’t you glad Britain sent an aging lieutenant?” Sharpe asked savagely. He crossed to the desk and leaned on it so his face was close to Skovgaard. “And damn you, you bloody fool.” He spat the words. “Damn you to bloody hell and all the bloody way back, but I was not sent to kill the Crown Prince.”
“I believe you,” Skovgaard said humbly. His voice was thick because of the blood in his mouth.
“And that was your hero Lavisser, you fat-headed bastard.”
Sharpe, still angry, went to the parlor. “Your father needs water and towels,” he told Astrid curtly, then picked up the lamp and went back to the study.
There were shouts outside the house. The coachmen and stable boys had evidently been woken by the shots and were now asking for reassurance from Skovgaard or his daughter. “Are those the two men who were with you earlier?” Sharpe asked Skovgaard who was still tied to the chair.
Skovgaard jerked his head toward the shutters. “That is them,” he said indistinctly.
“Are they guards?”
“A coachman and a groom.”
Sharpe cut Skovgaard free and the Dane went to the window to reassure the men outside while Sharpe knelt beside the wounded Frenchman, except he was a dead man now. He had bled to death. Sharpe swore.
Skovgaard frowned. “Lieutenant… “
“I know, you hate base language and after what you did to me I don’t give a bugger. But I hoped this one was alive. He could have told us who was with Lavisser. But the bastard’s dead.”
“I know who they were,” Skovgaard said bitterly, then his daughter came into the room and screamed when she saw her father. She ran to him and he clasped her to his bloodied nightgown and patted her back. “It’s all right, dearest.” Skovgaard spoke in English, then he saw the sooty marks on the big rug. His eyes widened and he stared, first at the black footprints, then at Sharpe. “Is that how you escaped?”
“Yes.”
“Good God,” Skovgaard said faintly. A maid had brought water and towels and Skovgaard sat at the desk and rinsed his mouth out. “I only had six teeth left,” he said, “and now there are just four.” Two bloody teeth lay on the desk next to his ivory false teeth and the broken lenses of his reading spectacles.
“You should have listened to me when I first came here,” Sharpe growled.
“Mister Sharpe!” Astrid chided him.
“It’s true,” her father said.
Astrid turned a troubled gaze on Sharpe. “The man in there”—she gestured toward the parlor—“He’s still sleeping.”
“Three dead?” Skovgaard sounded incredulous.
“I wish it had been five.” Sharpe put the two good pistols on the desk. “Your guns,” he said. “I was going to steal them. Why didn’t you keep a pair in your bedroom?”
“I did,” Skovgaard said, “only they took Astrid first. They said they’d hurt her if I didn’t come out.”
“So who were they?” Sharpe asked. “I know one is your patriotic Lavisser. But the others?”
Skovgaard looked weary. He spat a mix of blood and spittle into a bowl, then smiled wanly when a maid brought him a robe that he wrapped about the bloody nightshirt. “The woman,” he said, “is called Madame Visser. She is at the French embassy. Ostensibly she is merely the wife of the ambassador’s secretary, but in truth she seeks information. She collates messages from throughout the Baltic.” He hesitated. “She does for the French, Lieutenant, what I do, what I did, for the British.”
“A woman does that?” Sharpe could not hide his surprise, earning a reproachful look from Astrid.
“She is very clever,” Skovgaard said, “and without mercy.”
“And what did she want?”
Skovgaard rinsed his mouth out again, then patted his lips with a towel. He tried to put in his false teeth, but his raw gums were too painful and made him wince. “They wanted names from me,” he said, “the names of my correspondents.”
Sharpe paced the room. He felt frustrated. He had killed three men and wounded a fourth if the blood on the small rug by the shutters was any indication, but it had all happened too quickly and his anger was still high, still unslaked. So Lavisser was in French pay? And Lavisser had almost given Britain’s Baltic spymaster to the enemy, except that a rifleman had been waiting. “So what now?” Sharpe asked Skovgaard.
The Dane shrugged.
“You tell the authorities about this?” Sharpe nodded toward the dead men behind Skovgaard’s desk.
“I doubt anyone would believe us,” Skovgaard said. “Major Lavisser is a hero. I am a merchant and you are what? An Englishman. And my erstwhile affection for Britain is well known in Denmark. If you were the authorities, who would you believe?”
“So you’ll just wait for them to try again?” Sharpe asked.
Skovgaard glanced at his daughter. “We shall move back to our house in the city. It will be safer there, I think. The neighbors are closer and it is next to the warehouse so I don’t have to travel. Much safer, I think.”
“Just stay here,” Sharpe suggested.
Skovgaard sighed. “You forget, Lieutenant, that your army is coming. They will lay siege to Copenhagen and this house lies outside the walls. Within a week, I suspect, there will be British officers quartered here.”
“So you’ll be safe.”
“If Copenhagen is to suffer,” Skovgaard said with a trace of his old asperity, “then I will share it. How can I look my workmen in the face if I leave them to endure a siege alone? And you, Lieutenant, what will you do?”
“I’ll stay with you, sir,” Sharpe said grimly. “I was sent to protect someone from the French, and it’s you now. And Lavisser’s still living. So I’ve work to do. And to start I need a spade.”
“A spade?”
“You’ve got three dead bodies in the house. Where I come from we bury them.”
“But… “ Astrid began to protest, but her voice trailed away.
“That’s right, miss,” Sharpe said, “if you can’t explain them, hide them.”
It took him most of what remained of the night, but he dug a shallow trench in the soft soil by the back wall of the garden and laid the three Frenchmen inside. He patted the earth down and covered it with some bricks he found beside the carriage house.
And then, in a gray and weary dawn, he slept.
Eleven miles north of Ole Skovgaard’s house was the insignificant village of Vedbæk. It lay on the sea, halfway between Copenhagen and the fortress at Helsingør. The village held a handful of houses, a church, two farms and a small fleet of fishing boats. Tarred sheds lined the beach where nets hung to dry on tall poles and the burning charcoal of the herring smokers shimmered the air above the sand.
Work started early in Vedbæk. There were cows to be miled and fishing boats to be hauled down to the sea, yet this morning, at dawn, no one worked. The herring fires were dying and the people of the village were ignoring their duties and standing instead on the low grassy ridge that backed the beach. They said little, but just stared seaward.
Where a fleet had appeared in the night. Closest to the beach were gun brigs and bomb ships that had moored so their great cannons and mortars could threaten any Danish troops who might appear on the shore. Beyond those small ships were frigates and, farther out still, the great ships of the line, all of them with their gunports open. There was no enemy threatening the fleet, but the guns were ready.