Gordon smiled. “The good news, Sharpe, is that we found the underground pipes that carry fresh water to the city. So we cut them. Maybe thirst will force a surrender? But we can’t wait too long. The weather in the Baltic will have our fleet running for home before too many weeks. Fragile things, ships.” He took a notebook from his pocket, tore out a page and scribbled some words. “There, Sharpe, your pass. If you walk north you’ll find a large red-brick house that passes as our headquarters. Someone will know if there’s a unit going south and they’ll make sure you go with them. I do apologize, profoundly, for having involved you in this nonsense. And remember, do, that none of this ever happened, eh?” He tossed away the dregs of his tea.
“It was a bad dream, Lieutenant,” Pumphrey said, then he and Gordon went back to Baird.
“Seen him off?” Baird asked Gordon.
“I sent him back to his regiment, sir, and you’re going to sign a letter of recommendation that I shall forward to his Colonel.”
Baird frowned. “I am? Why?”
“Because no one will then associate you with a man who has turned out to be the Duke of York’s aide and a French spy.”
“Bloody hellfire,” Baird said.
“Precisely,” Lord Pumphrey said.
Sharpe walked north and Jens went east, but the young shipwright did not take Sharpe’s advice. He should have kept walking toward the city as Sharpe had advised him, but he could not resist going north through the trees to discover the source of some sporadic musketry. Some skirmishers of the King’s German Legion saw him. They were Jager, hunters, equipped with rifles, and they saw the pistol in Jens’s hand and put three bullets in his chest.
Nothing was working well. But Copenhagen was surrounded, the Danish fleet was trapped and Sharpe had survived.
General Castenschiold had been ordered to harry the southern flank of the British forces blockading Copenhagen and he was not a man to ignore such orders. He dreamed of glory and dreaded defeat and his moods swung between optimism and a deep gloom.
The core of his force was a handful of regular soldiers, but most of his fourteen thousand men were from the militia. A few of those were well trained and decently armed, but far more were new recruits, some still wearing their wooden clogs and most carrying weapons that belonged in farmyards rather than on battlefields. They were country boys, or else from the small Danish towns of southern Zealand.
“They are enthusiastic,” an aide told the General.
That only made Castenschiold even more worried. Enthusiastic men would rush into battle with no knowledge of its realities, yet duty and patriotism demanded that he take his inadequate force north to attack the British troops encircling the capital and he tried to persuade himself that there was a real chance of surprise. Perhaps he could drive so deep into the British-held ground that he could reach the siege works about Copenhagen before the redcoats knew of his presence, and in his secret and slightly guilty dreams he imagined his men slaughtering the hapless enemy and throwing down their newly dug batteries, but in his heart he knew the outcome would not be so happy. But it had to be tried and he dared not allow his pessimism to show. “Are there any enemy south of Roskilde?” he asked an aide.
“A few,” was the airy answer.
“How many? Where?” Castenschiold demanded savagely and waited while the aide sifted through the dozens of messages sent by loyal people. Those reports said that enemy troops had appeared in Koge, but not many. “What is not many?” Castenschiold inquired.
“Fewer than five thousand, sir. The schoolmaster in Ejby says six thousand, but I’m sure he exaggerates.”
“Schoolmasters can usually count reliably,” Castenschiold said sourly. “And who leads these troops?”
“A man called”-the aide paused as he sought the right piece of paper-“Sir Arthur Wellesley.”
“Whoever he is,” Castenschiold said.
“He fought in India, sir,” the aide said, “at least the schoolmaster says he did. It seems some officers were billeted at the school, sir, and they said Sir Arthur gained a certain reputation in India.” The aide tossed down the schoolmaster’s carefully written letter. “I’m sure it isn’t hard to beat Indians, sir.”