Bernard Cornwell – 1807 09 Sharpe’s Prey

“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.”

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