Inferno (48 page)

Days had turned into weeks. Rumours flew and Renzi realised that the situation was worsening. This was a siege and everyone knew what happened when a city fell.

He kept his fears from the ladies. It was conceivable that the Danish command could eventually see reason and come to an arrangement but all the time they dragged it out the tensions and frustrations would build until the British, with time not on their side, would be forced to resort to drastic measures.

Two days later reports came of a dreadful clash-at-arms near the Citadel when many university students had apparently gone gladly to their deaths at the hands of the English. In the same desperate engagement General Peymann, governor and gallant leader of resistance, had been wounded at the head of his troops and carried back.

The mood had changed.

Frue Rosen returned with tales of hunger and want: families scavenging and dogs killed for meat, bands of roaming vigilantes and militia turned out against looters. She came
back with less and less, bread and fresh vegetables near unobtainable, meat at ruinous prices, milk an impossible luxury.

Surely the people had suffered enough in upholding the honour of the Danish nation and could now reluctantly capitulate. A depressing mood of hopelessness hung over the city but it was shot through with defiance. Several times a day columns of volunteers passed with a jaunty, stubborn air, armed only with poles tied with sickles or hay-forks.

Then the water failed. The steady gush from street-corner pumps and stand-pipes slackened and turned to a sad trickle, which despairing citizens queued to catch in any utensil to hand.

That siege-breaking move by the beleaguerers should have brought a final conclusion but it did not. A proclamation of defiance was issued by the Citadel that left no room for weakness.

Renzi knew then that the end game would be brutal, bloody and sudden. The Danes had resisted heroically to unreasonable lengths. The British could not abandon the contest so would be forced into the last sanction: a terrible storming by force of the city against the ramparts and fortifications, a savage slaughter that would end with soldiery flooding in to sack Copenhagen with vengeful barbarity.

Something of his mood communicated itself to the others. Cecilia clung to him with an unspoken devotion while Hetty retreated into herself. Frue Rosen wore a haunted, stricken look.

A
dams and Maynard stood together. It was a strange, eerie sensation. The ever-present rumble of gunfire had petered out and a heavy stillness hung over the city that allowed the chirp of birds and occasional farmyard lowing to be heard for the first time in days.

Adams hailed a passing fellow officer and crossed over to him. ‘When did the summons go in to the Danskers?' He returned to Maynard with his answer. ‘Says they're to have all the time they want to think about it, save we get a reply this day.'

The 52nd had the simple task of holding the line of guns should the Danish make a desperate sally, and had little to do but watch proceedings.

Along the emplacements howitzers and mortars stood ready, their crews lazing at their posts, deadly projectiles stacked neatly in their protected earthwork magazines. A line of supply was in place for each, all the dread paraphernalia of siege warfare complete, primed and waiting.

‘You have to admire the rascals,' Adams murmured.
‘Leaving it to the last moment possible before conceding.'

‘So we'll be cheated of our bombardment,' Maynard said lightly, hoping his feelings didn't show.

‘One entertainment I'd be happy to miss, m' friend,' Adams said, in a low voice.

The morning passed but with the noon rations came news.

A reply had been received but it was not what was expected. General Peymann had acknowledged the peril Copenhagen stood in but wished to refer any final decision to the King of Denmark. The response from British Headquarters had been immediate: a rejection of the delay and a repeat of the original ultimatum.

‘Damme, but they're sailing close to the wind,' Adams muttered.

The sensation of unreality heightened, time dragged into the afternoon and then the evening.

‘How will we know if …?'

‘You'll know it.'

Everyone agreed the Danes had to give way and they were not helping their situation by holding out for some alternative outcome. They were risking the whole thing turning bad and damage being done to their fair capital.

Night drew in. A moonless Stygian dark. Lights were going on in Copenhagen but the walls and ramparts in the foreground were in utter blackness.

The gunners were still stood to, as they had been all day, but now it was night with no aiming points. They would shortly be obliged to secure their weapons for the morning, when—

At seven thirty precisely a signal rocket hissed low across the sky, its red trail vivid in the blackness of the heavens. At its height it exploded with a thud in a pretty twinkling light.

‘Let's be 'avin' you, lads!' came a bellow from the gun emplacement, and in a general stirring men closed up at their guns.

Battle lanterns were brought up and, with portfires and linstocks glowing, it dawned on Maynard what was going on. Incredibly, the bombardment of Copenhagen was really about to happen.

Two mortars opened up nearly simultaneously, the livid flash and hoarse bellow catching him off-balance. Others quickly joined in, gun-flash leaping up and down the line in a continuous roar.

In perfect parabolas red lines traced across the sky, the smouldering fuses of mortar shells, to descend somewhere in the interior of the quiet city with their lethal detonations. Other lines criss-crossed them: howitzers firing carcass shells to set buildings ablaze and still more with explosives to bring ruin and devastation.

Grouped together, stands of war rockets burst into action – an immense bright flare and roar, then a release to vanish instantly into the heavens in a vast arc up and away, trailing flame, then descending like a vengeful bolt from the gods. Another, and another, still more, stunning the senses.

Maynard stood rigid as the pungent stink of burned powder wafted by him. He tried to control his thoughts. What must this be doing to a city full of people?

A
ll day the guns had remained silent in a fretful peace that lay ominously over the city. Frue Rosen came back to tell them excitedly that an important message had been sent to British Headquarters. Renzi's heart lifted. Were the Danes going to bow at last to the inevitable?

The quiet lasted into the evening, and as the night drew in, he allowed himself a flicker of hope that reason had at last asserted itself.

As soon as it was fully dark he and Cecilia accompanied Hetty to the roof garden where they could take the open air without fear of discovery. All of Copenhagen was spread out before them.

Moonless, with cloud obscuring the stars, it was suitably sepulchral for any apocalypse that threatened, Renzi reflected.

Cecilia held his arm tightly, in thrall to the same baleful mood. Only the
snip-snip
of Hetty's scissors and the whisper of night zephyrs disturbed them on their rooftop eyrie.

‘Nicholas – fireworks!' Cecilia pointed to a rocket that had soared up and across, to explode with a dull thud in full view
of where they stood. ‘Does this mean celebrations are starting?'

Renzi felt a lurch of premonition. It had been a signal rocket and it had come from the outer darkness of the British lines. In the next minutes the dogs of war would be unleashed – there was going to be—

As one, the guns opened up. Livid flashes played all along the lines, the menacing rumble and thunder of massed artillery unmistakable in its angry spite. From beyond the ramparts scores of guns joined in, until the entire periphery was alive with gun-flash.

It was a bombardment, but on a scale he'd never conceived. The air was filled with criss-crossing dull red lines tracing through the sky. He knew what it meant for he'd been present at Granville those years ago when mortars had been used against invasion barges. But that had been only two from bomb vessels. Here there were uncountable numbers hurling in an avalanche of death and destruction.

The first shells fell with a leaping flash and visceral crump among the streets and buildings below them, some in a flaring of unquenchable fire – carcasses, filled with a mixture that could not be extinguished. Here and there he could see the steady blaze of a house or shop afire – and sharp against the flames figures were in disciplined activity, firemen in heroic battle with the flames while all the time death came out of the sky.

But a new phenomenon thrust itself on his senses: a whining hiss that became rapidly louder – a missile with flame in its wake that streaked over and nosed down to vanish into a house. Seconds later from deep inside, the red glow of a fire grew while people spilled out of the door in panic, falling to the ground in their desperate flight from the nightmare.

From the bastions and ramparts Danish guns opened up, hitting back at the merciless barrage without the slightest chance of countering it, only adding to the insane sound and fury.

Nearby came a louder crash, followed by the smash of falling glass and screams. A mortar round had visited a house close by – and Renzi realised they themselves were exposed and vulnerable.

‘Down – get off the roof!' he shouted, and pushed the dazed women to the stairway.

They hurried to the ground floor and huddled together in the drawing room. Renzi drew open the curtains a few inches. The darkness outside was shot through with flashes and the diabolical flickering red of fire.

Occasionally they felt the tremor of an explosion through the floor, and once there was the hideous flash and detonation of a shell outside a house opposite. Its entire front slowly collapsed in an appalling roar and up-welling of dust. Whitened victims emerged, staggering and falling.

A riderless horse raced by in stark panic, a child's terror-stricken cries carrying clear above the madness. A dog barked witlessly, on and on.

The nightmare had only just begun.

P
eymann was propped up in a Bath chair, the wound in his thigh bound tightly but clearly causing him pain. Several of his staff stood about him.

The bombardment was now only a faint background grumbling of guns but a dozen or more fires were still alight in the old city.

An aide arrived but did not meet Peymann's eyes as he laid the paper in front of him. ‘Your report of damage, Generalmajor.'

‘Nørregade, Gammeltorv – the Helligaands. This is a dreadful price, Knud,' he whispered, more to himself than the others.

‘Sir, the people are frantic, knowing not where to go to escape the terror,' Bielefeldt ventured. ‘How can I tell them—'

‘They must endure – as must we all,' Peymann said, lifting his head and glaring at him with blood-shot eyes. ‘His Royal Highness has not seen fit to vary his instructions. I'm bound to obey him in this, to hold and protect Copenhagen with my honour and life.'