Sharpe’s Prey: The Expedition to Copenhagen, 1807

Hocking dropped the satchel on the table, then thrust a hand into his greatcoat pocket. Sharpe waited to hear the chink of coins, but there was no such sound and so, as Hocking brought his hand out of the pocket, Sharpe slashed down hard with the sabre. He slit the ball of Hocking’s thumb, then slashed the blade again and Hocking, who had been drawing a small pistol from his coat pocket, let the weapon go to clutch at his wounded fingers. The pistol fell to the floor.

‘Empty your damned pockets,’ Sharpe said.

Hocking hesitated, wondering whether to call for help, but there was an implacability about Sharpe that suggested he had best humour him. He flinched as he used his wounded right hand to pull coins from his pocket. The door rattled as someone tried the latch. ‘Wait!’ Sharpe called. He saw gold coins among the silver and copper. ‘Keep going, Jem,’ he said.

‘You’re a dead man,’ Hocking grumbled, but found more cash that he piled on the table. ‘That’s all,’ he said.

‘Back against the cages, you bastard,’ Sharpe said and prodded Hocking towards the badgers. Then, still holding the sabre in his right hand, Sharpe forced handfuls of the coins into the satchel. He could not look closely at the money, for he needed to watch Hocking, but he reckoned there was at least eighteen or nineteen pounds there.

The click saved Sharpe. It came from behind him and he recognized the sound of a pistol being cocked and he stepped to one side and risked a quick glance to see that there was a hole in the wooden wall. Lumpy’s peephole, no doubt, and one of the young men outside must have seen what was happening and Sharpe stepped to the bed just as a pistol flamed through the hole to mist the room with smoke. Emily screamed from beneath her blanket and Jem Hocking snatched a badger cage and hurled it at Sharpe.

The cage bounced heavily off Sharpe’s shoulder. Hocking was scrabbling for the pistol when Sharpe kicked him in the face, then slashed the sabre across his head. Hocking sprawled by the table. Sharpe snatched up the small pistol and fired it at the wall beside the peephole. The timber splintered, but no shout sounded on the far side. Then he knelt on Hocking’s belly and held the sabre against the big man’s throat. ‘You do know me,’ Sharpe said. ‘You bloody do know me.’

He had not intended to reveal his name. He had told himself he would rob Hocking, but now, smelling the gun smoke, he knew he had always wanted to kill the bastard. No, he had wanted more. He had wanted to see Hocking’s face when the man learned that one of his children had come back, but come back as a jack pudding. Sharpe smiled, and for the first time there was fear on Hocking’s face. ‘I really am an officer, Jem, and my name’s Sharpe. Dick Sharpe.’ He saw the disbelief on Hocking’s face. Disbelief, astonishment and fear. That was reward enough. Hocking stared, wide-eyed, recognizing Sharpe and, at the same time, unable to comprehend that one of his boys was now an officer. Then the incomprehension turned to terror for he understood that the boy wanted revenge. ‘You bastard,’ Sharpe said, ‘you goddamned piece of shit.’ The anger was livid now. ‘Remember whipping me?’ he asked. ‘Whipping me till the blood ran? I remember, Jem. That’s why I came back.’

‘Listen, lad.’

‘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.

‘And I keep hearing your name,’ Baird went on with an indecent relish. ‘Making scandal, eh?’

Sharpe winced at the accusation. ‘Was that what I was doing, sir?’

Baird was not a man to be delicate. ‘You were once a private soldier and she was the daughter of an earl. Yes, Sharpe, I’d say you were making scandal. So what happened?’

‘She died, sir.’ Sharpe felt the tears threatening, so looked down at the table. The silence stretched and he felt an obscure need to fill it. ‘Childbirth, sir. A fever.’

‘And the child with her?’

‘Yes, sir. A boy.’

‘Good Christ, man,’ Baird said bluffly, embarrassed by the tears that dropped onto the table. ‘You’re young. There’ll be others.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You!’ This peremptory demand was to one of the serving girls. ‘A bottle of port and two glasses. And I’ll take some cheese if you’ve anything edible.’

‘Lady Grace’s family,’ Sharpe said, suddenly needing to tell the story, ‘claimed the child wasn’t mine. Said it had been her husband’s, and so the lawyers baked me in a pie. Took everything, they did, because the child died after its mother. They said it was the heir to her husband, see?’ His tears were flowing now. ‘I don’t mind losing everything, sir, but I do mind losing her.’

‘Pull yourself together, man,’ Baird snapped. ‘Stop snivelling.’

‘I’m sorry, sir.’

‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,’ Baird said, ‘and you don’t piddle away your damned life because you don’t like His dispositions.’

Sharpe sniffed and looked up into Baird’s scarred face. ‘Piddling away my life?’

‘I’ve been keeping an eye on you, Sharpe,’ Baird said. ‘D’you know how many lives you saved by blowing that mine in Seringapatam? Scores! And my life among them. If it weren’t for you, Sharpe, I’d be dead.’ He emphasized this by stabbing Sharpe’s chest with a big forefinger. ‘Dead and buried, d’you doubt it?’

Sharpe did not, but he said nothing. Baird had led the assault on the Tippoo Sultan’s stronghold and the General had led from the front. The Scotsman would indeed be dead, Sharpe thought, if Sharpe, a private then, had not blown the mine that had been intended to trap and annihilate the storming party. Dust and stones, Sharpe remembered, and flame billowing down a sunlit street and the air filling with smoke and the noise rolling about him like a thousand trundling barrels, and then in the silence afterwards that was not silent at all, the moaning and screaming and the pale flames crackling.

‘Wellesley made you up, didn’t he?’ Baird asked.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Not like Wellesley to do a man a favour,’ the General observed sourly. ‘Tight-fisted, he is.’ Baird had never liked Sir Arthur Wellesley. ‘So why did he do it? For Seringapatam?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Yes, sir, no, sir, what are you, Sharpe? A bloody schoolboy? Why did the man promote you?’

Sharpe shrugged. ‘I was useful to him, sir. At Assaye.’

‘Useful?’

‘He was in trouble,’ Sharpe said. The General had been unhorsed, was surrounded and doomed, but Sergeant Sharpe had been there and it was the Indians who died instead.

‘In trouble?’ Baird sneered at Sharpe’s modesty. ‘It must have been desperate trouble if it persuaded Wellesley to do you a favour. Though how much of a favour was it?’ The question was a shrewd one and Sharpe did not try to answer it, but it seemed Baird knew the answer anyway. ‘Wallace wrote to me after you joined his regiment,’ the General went on, ‘and told me that you were a good soldier, but a bad officer.’

Sharpe bridled. ‘I tried my best, sir.’ Wallace had been the commanding officer of the 74th, a Scottish regiment, and Sharpe had joined it after he had been commissioned by Sir Arthur Wellesley. It had been Wallace who had recommended Sharpe to the 95th, but Sharpe was no happier in the new regiment. Still a failure, he thought.

‘Not easy, coming up from the ranks,’ Baird admitted. ‘But if Wallace says you’re a good soldier, then that’s a compliment. And I need a good soldier. I’ve been ordered to find a man who can look after himself in a difficult situation. Someone who ain’t afraid of a fight. I remembered you, but wasn’t sure where to find you. I should have known to look in the Frog Prick. Eat your steak, man. I can’t abide good meat getting cold.’

Sharpe finished the beef as the General’s port and cheese were put on the table. He let Baird pour him a glass before he spoke again. ‘I was thinking of leaving the army, sir,’ he admitted.

Baird looked at him in disgust. ‘To do what?’

‘I’ll find work,’ Sharpe said. Maybe he would go to Ebenezer Fairley, the merchant who had shown him friendship on the voyage home from India, or perhaps he would thieve. That was how he had started in life. ‘I’ll get by,’ he said belligerently.

Sir David Baird cut the cheese which crumbled under his knife. ‘There are three kinds of soldier, Sharpe,’ he said. ‘There are the damned useless ones, and God knows there’s an endless supply of those. Then there are the good solid lads who get the job done, but would piss in their breeches if you didn’t show them how their buttons worked. And then there’s you and me. Soldiers’ soldiers, that’s who we are.’

Sharpe looked sceptical. ‘A soldier’s soldier?’ he asked.

‘We’re the men who clean up after the parade, Sharpe. The carriages and kings go by, the bands play, the cavalry prances past like bloody fairies, and what’s left is a mess of dung and litter. We clean it up. The politicians get the world into tangles, then ask their armies to make things right. We do their dirty work, Sharpe, and we’re good at it. Very good. You might not be the best officer in King George’s army, but you’re a bloody fine soldier. And you like the life, don’t tell me you don’t.’

‘Being a quartermaster?’ Sharpe sneered.

‘Aye, that too. Someone has to do it, and as often as not they give it to a man up from the ranks.’ He glared at Sharpe and then, unexpectedly, grinned. ‘So you’ve fallen out with Colonel Beckwith too, have you?’

‘I reckon so, sir, yes.’

‘How?’

Sharpe considered the question and decided it could not be answered truthfully. He could not say he did not fit into the mess, it was too vague, too self-pitying, so he answered with a half-truth. ‘They’ve marched off, sir, and left me to clean up the barracks. I’ve fought more battles than any of them, seen more enemies and killed more men than all of them put together, but that don’t count. They don’t want me, sir, so I’m getting out.’

‘Don’t be such a bloody fool,’ Baird growled. ‘In a year or two, Sharpe, there’s going to be enough war for every man jack in this army. So far all we’ve been doing is pissing around the edge of the French, but sooner or later we’re going to have to tackle the bastards head on. We’ll need all the officers we can get then, and you’ll have your chance. You might be a quartermaster now, but ten years from now you’ll be leading a battalion, so just be patient.’

‘I’m not sure Colonel Beckwith will want me back, sir. I’m not supposed to be in London. I’m supposed to be at Shorncliffe.’

‘Beckwith will do what I tell him,’ Baird growled, ‘and I’ll tell him to kiss your bum if you do this job for me.’

Sharpe liked Baird. Most soldiers liked Baird. He might be a general, but he was as tough as any man in the ranks. He could outswear the sergeants, outmarch the Rifles and outfight any man in green or scarlet. He was a fighter, not a bureaucrat. He had risen high enough in the army, but there were rumours that he had enemies higher still, men who disliked his bluntness. ‘What kind of job, sir?’ Sharpe asked.