Bernard Cornwell – 1807 09 Sharpe’s Prey

Lavisser shook his head. “All doctors were ordered to the hospitals.”

So Lavisser and Barker looked for Ole Skovgaard in Copenhagen’s hospitals. That search took them all morning as they went from ward to ward where hundreds of burn victims lay in awful pain, but Skovgaard was nowhere to be found. A morning wasted, and Lavisser was in a grim mood when he went to see what was left of Bredgade, but the house was a smoking ruin and the gold, if it was still there, was nothing but a molten mass deep in its cellars. But at least Jules, one of the Frenchmen left behind when the diplomats fled Copenhagen, was still in the undamaged coach house and Jules wanted his own revenge on Sharpe.

“We know where he is,” Barker insisted.

“Ulfedt’s Plads?” Lavisser suggested.

“Where else?”

“You, me and Jules,” Lavisser said, “and three of them? I think we must improve those odds.”

Barker and Jules went to watch Ulfedt’s Plads while Lavisser went to the citadel where General Peymann had his quarters, but the General had been up all night and had now taken to his bed and it was midafter-noon before he woke and Lavisser was able to spin his tale. “A child was killed playing with an unexploded bomb, sir,” he said, “and I fear there’ll be more such deaths. There are too many bombs lying in the streets.”

Peymann blew on his coffee to cool it. “I thought Captain Nielsen was dealing with that problem,” the General observed.

“He’s overwhelmed, sir. I need a dozen men.”

“Of course, of course.” Peymann signed the necessary order and Lavisser woke a reluctant lieutenant and ordered him to assemble a squad.

The Lieutenant wondered why his men needed muskets to collect unexploded missiles, but he was too tired to argue. He just followed Lavisser to Ulfedt’s Plads where two civilians waited beside a warehouse. “Knock on the door, Lieutenant,” Lavisser ordered.

“I thought we were here to collect bombs, sir.”

Lavisser took the man aside. “Can you be discreet, Lieutenant?”

“As well as the next man.” The Lieutenant was offended by the question.

“I could not be frank with you before, Lieutenant. God knows there are too many rumors circling the city already and I didn’t want to start more, but General Peymann has been warned that there are English spies in Copenhagen.”

“Spies, sir?” The Lieutenant’s eyes widened. He was nineteen and had only been an officer for two months and so far his most responsible duty had been making certain that the citadel’s flag was hoisted at each sunrise.

“Saboteurs, more like,” Lavisser embroidered his tale. “The British, we think, are running out of bombs. They will probably fire a few tonight, but we think they will be relying on their agents in the city to do more damage. The General believes the men are hiding on these premises.”

The Lieutenant snapped at his men to fix bayonets, then hammered on Skovgaard’s door which was opened by a frightened maid. She screamed when she saw the bayonets, then said that her master and mistress had disappeared.

“What about the Englishman?” Lavisser asked over the Lieutenant’s shoulder.

“He hasn’t come back, sir,” the maid said. “None of them have, sir.”

“Search the premises,” Lavisser ordered the soldiers. He sent some of the men into the warehouse and others up the stairs of the house while he, Jules and Barker went to Skovgaard’s office.

They found no list of names there. They did find a metal box crammed with money, but no names. The Lieutenant discovered an unloaded musket upstairs, but then the terrified maids told the Lieutenant that Mister Bang was locked in the old stables. The Lieutenant took that news down to the office.

“Mister Bang?” Lavisser said, stuffing money into his coat pocket.

“The fellow who sold us Skovgaard,” Barker reminded him.

The padlock was prized from the door and a startled Aksel Bang stumbled into the waning daylight. He was nervous and indignant, and so bewildered that he was hardly able to talk sense and so, to calm him down, Lavisser ordered the maids to make some tea, then he took Bang upstairs and settled him in Skovgaard’s parlor where Bang told how Lieutenant Sharpe had come back to the city and how Bang had tried to arrest him. The story was a little tangled there, for Bang was unwilling to admit how easily he had been overpowered, but Lavisser did not pursue the details. Bang did not know how many men were helping Sharpe, but he had heard their voices in the yard and knew there must be at least two or three.

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