Sharpe's Havoc

CHAPTER 9

More men came to the seminary. A score of Portuguese civilians arrived with hunting guns and bags of ammunition, escorted by a plump priest who was cheered by the redcoats when he arrived in the garden with a bell-mouthed blunderbuss like those carried by stage-coach drivers to repel highwaymen. The Buffs had relit the fires in the kitchens and now fetched great metal cauldrons of tea or hot water to the roof. The tea cleaned out the soldiers’ throats and the hot water swilled out their muskets and rifles. Ten boxes of spare ammunition were also carried up and Harper filled his shako with the cartridges, which were not as fine as those supplied for the rifles, but would do in a pinch. „And this is what you call a pinch, sir, eh?” he asked, distributing the cartridges along the parapet where the rifles and ramrods leaned. The French were thickening in the low ground to the north. If they had any sense, Sharpe thought, the enemy would bring mortars to that low ground, but so far none had appeared. Perhaps all the mortars were to the west of the city, guarding against the Royal Navy, and too far away to be fetched quickly.

Extra loopholes were battered through the garden’s northern wall. Two of the Northamptonshires had manhandled a great pair of rain butts to the wall and propped the door of the garden shed across the barrels’ tops to make a fire step from which they could shoot over the wall’s coping.

Harris brought Sharpe a mug of tea, then looked left and right before producing a leg of cold chicken from his cartridge box. „Thought you might like this as well, sir.”

„Where did you get it?”

„Found it, sir,” Harris said vaguely, „and I got one for you too, Sarge.” Harris gave a leg to Harper, then produced a breast for himself, brushed some loose powder from it and bit into it hungrily.

Sharpe discovered he was famished and the chicken tasted delicious. „Where did it come from?” he insisted.

„I think they were General Paget’s dinner, sir,” Harris confessed, „but he’s probably lost his appetite.”

„I should think he has,” Sharpe said, „and a pity to let good chicken waste, eh?” He turned as a drumbeat sounded and saw the French were forming their ranks again, but this time only on the northern side of the seminary. „To your places!” he called, chucking the chicken bone far out into the garden. A few of the French were now carrying ladders, presumably plundered from the houses that were being battered by the British guns. „When they come,” he called, „aim for the men with the ladders.” Even without the rifle fire he doubted the French could get close enough to place the ladders against the garden wall, but it did no harm to make certain. Most of his riflemen had used the lull in the fight to load their newly cleaned barrels with leather-wrapped balls and prime powder which meant their first shots ought to be lethally accurate. After that, as the French pressed closer and the noise rose and the smoke thickened, they would use cartridges, leave the leather patches in their butt traps and so sacrifice accuracy for speed. Sharpe now loaded his own rifle, using a patch, but no sooner had he returned the ramrod to its slots than General Hill was beside him.

„I’ve never fired a rifle,” Hill said.

„Very like a musket, sir,” Sharpe said, embarrassed at being singled out by a general.

„May I?” Hill reached for the weapon and Sharpe yielded it. „It’s rather beautiful,” Hill said wistfully, caressing the Baker’s flank, „not nearly as cumbersome as a musket.”

„It’s a lovely thing,” Sharpe said fervently.

Hill aimed the gun down the hill, seemed about to cock and fire, then suddenly handed it back to Sharpe. „I’d dearly like to try it,” he said, „but if I missed my aim then the whole army would know about it, eh? And I’d never live that down.” He spoke loudly and Sharpe understood he had been an unwitting participant in a little piece of theater. Hill had not really been interested in the rifle, but rather in taking the men’s minds away from the threat beneath them. In the process he had subtly flattered them by suggesting they could do something he could not, and he had left them grinning. Sharpe thought about what he had just seen. He admired it, but he also admired Sir Arthur Wellesley who would never have resorted to such a display. Sir Arthur would ignore the men and the men, in turn, would fight like demons to gain his grudging approval.

Sharpe had never wasted much time worrying why some men were born to be officers and others not. He had jumped the gap, but that did not make the system any less unfair. Yet to complain of the world’s unfairness was the same as grumbling that the sun was hot or that the wind sometimes changed its direction. Unfairness existed, it always had and it always would, and the miracle, to Sharpe’s eyes, was that some men like Hill and Wellesley, though they had become wealthy and privileged through unfair advantages, were nevertheless superb at what they did. Not all generals were good, many were downright bad, but Sharpe had usually been lucky and found himself commanded by men who knew their business. Sharpe did not care that Sir Arthur Wellesley was the son of an aristocrat and had purchased his way up the ladder of promotion and was as cold as a lawyer’s sense of charity. The long-nosed bugger knew how to win and that was what mattered.

And what mattered now was to beat these Frenchmen. The column, much larger than the first, was surging forward, driven by the drumsticks. The Frenchmen cheered, perhaps to give themselves confidence, and they must have been encouraged by the fact that the British guns on the river’s far side could not see them. But then, provoking a British cheer, a spherical case shot fired by a howitzer exploded just ahead of the column’s center. The British gunners were firing blind, arching their shots over the seminary, but they were firing well and their first shot killed the French cheering dead.

„Rifles only!” Sharpe called. „Fire when you’re ready. Don’t waste the patch! Hagman? Go for that big man with the saber.”

„I see him, sir,” Hagman said and shifted his rifle to aim at the officer who was striding ahead, setting an example, asking to be rifle meat.

„Look for the ladders,” Sharpe reminded the others, then walked to the parapet, put his left foot on the coping and the rifle to his shoulder. He aimed at a man with a ladder, sighting on the man’s head in the expectation that the bullet would fall to take him in the lower belly or groin. The wind was in Sharpe’s face so would not drift the shot. He fired and was immediately blinded by the smoke. Hagman fired next, then there was the crackle of the other rifles. The muskets kept silent. Sharpe went to his left to see past the smoke and saw that the saber-carrying officer had vanished, as had any other man struck by a bullet. They had been swallowed by the advancing column that stepped over and past the victims, then Sharpe saw a ladder reappear as it was snatched up by a man in the fourth or fifth rank. He felt in his cartridge box for another round and began to reload.

He did not look at the rifle as he reloaded. He just did what he had been trained to do, what he could do in his sleep, and just as he primed the rifle so the first musket balls were shot from the garden wall, then the muskets opened fire from the windows and roof, and the seminary was again wreathed in smoke and noise. The cannon shots rumbled above, so close that Sharpe almost ducked once, and the case shot banged above the slope. Bullets and musket balls ripped into the French files. Close to a thousand men were in the seminary now and they were protected by stone walls and given a wide open target. Sharpe fired another shot down the hill, then walked up and down behind his men, watching. Slattery needed a new flint and Sharpe gave him one, then Tarrant’s mainspring broke and Sharpe replaced the weapon with Williamson’s old rifle which Harper had been carrying ever since they left Vila Real de Zedes. The enemy’s drums sounded nearer and Sharpe reloaded his own rifle as the first French musket bullets rattled against the seminary’s stones. „They’re firing blind,” Sharpe told his men, „firing blind! Don’t waste your shots. Look for targets.” That was difficult because of the smoke hanging over the slope, but vagaries of wind sometimes stirred the fog to reveal blue uniforms and the French were close enough for Sharpe to see faces. He aimed at a man with an enormous mustache, fired and lost sight of the man as the smoke blossomed from his rifle’s muzzle.

The noise of the fight was awesome. Muskets crackling incessantly, the drumbeats thumping, the case shots banging overhead, and beneath all that violence was the sound of men crying in distress. A redcoat slumped down near Harper, blood puddling by his head until a sergeant dragged the man away from the parapet, leaving a smear of bright red on the roofs lead. Far off-it had to be on the river’s southern bank-a band was playing „The Drum Major” and Sharpe tapped his rifle’s butt in time to the tune. A French ramrod came whirling through the air to clatter against the seminary wall, evidently fired by a conscript who had panicked and pulled his trigger before he cleared his barrel. Sharpe remembered how, in Flanders, at his very first battle as a red-coated private, a man’s musket had misfired, but he had gone on reloading, pulling the trigger, reloading, and when they drilled out his musket after the battle they found sixteen useless charges crammed down the barrel. What was the man’s name? He had been from Norfolk, despite being in a Yorkshire regiment, and he had called everyone „bor.” Sharpe could not remember the name and it annoyed him. A musket ball whipped past his face, another hit the parapet and shattered a tile. Down in the garden Vicente’s men and the redcoats were not aiming their muskets, but just pushing the muzzles into the loopholes, pulling the triggers, and getting out of the way so the next man could use the embrasure. There were some green-jackets in the garden now and Sharpe guessed a company of the 60th, the Royal American Rifles, must be attached to Hill’s brigade and was now joining the fight. They would do better, he thought, to climb to the roof than try to fire their Bakers through the loopholes. The single tree on the northern slope was thrashing as though in a gale and there was scarcely one leaf left on its splintered branches. Smoke drifted through the winter-bare twigs that twitched continually from the bullet strikes.

Sharpe primed his rifle, put it to his shoulder, looked for a target, saw a knot of blue uniforms very close to the garden wall and put the bullet into them. The air hissed with bullets. God damn it, but why didn’t the bastards pull back? A brave group of Frenchmen tried to run down the seminary’s western face to reach the big gate, but the British guns at the convent saw them and the shells cracked black and red, smearing blood across the paved terrace and up the garden wall’s whitewashed stones. Sharpe saw his men grimacing as they tried to force the new bullets down the powder-fouled barrels. There was no time to clean the rifles, they just hammered the bullets down and pulled the trigger. Fire and fire again, and the French were doing the same, a mad duel of bullets, and above the smoke, across the northern valley, Sharpe saw a horde of new French infantry streaming out of the city.

Two men in shirtsleeves were carrying boxes of ammunition round the roof. „Who needs it?” they shouted, sounding like London street traders. „Fresh lead! Who needs it? Fresh lead! New powder!” One of General Hill’s aides was carrying canteens of water to the parapet while Hill himself, red-faced and anxious, stood close to the redcoats so he was seen to share their danger. He caught Sharpe’s gaze and offered a grimace as if to suggest that this was harder work than he had anticipated.

More troops came to the roof, men with fresh muskets and full cartridge boxes, and with them were the riflemen of the 60th whose officer must have realized he had been in the wrong place. He gave Sharpe a companionable nod, then ordered his men to the parapet. Flames jetted down, smoke thickened, and still the French tried to blast their way through stone walls with nothing but musket fire. Two Frenchmen succeeded in scaling the garden wall, but hesitated at the top and were seized and dragged across the coping to be battered to death by musket butts on the path beneath. Seven dead redcoats were laid out on another gravel path, their hands curling in death and the blood of their wounds slowly hardening and turning black, but most of the British dead were in the seminary’s corridors, dragged away from the big windows that made the best targets for the frustrated French.

A whole new column was now climbing the slope, coming to swell the shattered ranks of the first, but though the beleaguered men in the seminary could not know it, these newcomers were the symptom of French defeat. Marshal Soult, desperate for fresh troops to attack the seminary, had stripped the city itself of infantry, and the people of Oporto, finding themselves unguarded for the first time since the end of March, swarmed down to the river and dragged their boats out of warehouses, shops and back-yards where the occupiers had kept them under guard. A swarm of those small craft now rowed across the river, past the shattered remnants of the pontoon bridge, to the quays of Vila Nova de Gaia where the Brigade of Guards was waiting. An officer peered anxiously across the Douro to reassure himself that the French were not waiting in ambush on the opposite quay, then shouted at his men to embark. The Guards were rowed back to the city and still more boats appeared and more redcoats crossed. Soult did not know it, but his city was filling with the enemy.

Nor did the men attacking the seminary know it, not till the redcoats appeared at the city’s eastern edge, and by then the second giant column had climbed into the death storm of bullets flicking from the seminary’s walls, roof and windows. The noise rivaled that of Trafalgar, where Sharpe had been dazed by the incessant boom of the great ships’ guns, but this noise was higher pitched as the muskets’ discharges blended into an eerie, hard-edged shriek. The higher slope of the seminary hill was sodden with blood and the surviving Frenchmen were using the bodies of their dead comrades as protection. A few drummers still tried to drive the broken columns on, but then came a shout of alarm from a French sergeant, and the shout spread, and suddenly the smoke was dissipating and the slope emptying as the French saw the Brigade of Guards advancing across the valley.

The French ran. They had fought bravely, going against stone walls with muskets, but now they panicked and all discipline vanished as they ran for the road going east toward Amarante. Other French forces, cavalry and artillery among them, were hurrying from the higher part of the city, escaping the flood of redcoats ferried across the Douro and fleeing the revenge of the townsfolk who hunted up the alleys and streets to find wounded Frenchmen whom they attacked with fish-filleting knives or battered with clubs.

There was screaming and howling in Oporto’s streets, but only a strange silence in the bullet-scarred seminary. Then General Hill cupped his hands. „Follow them!” he shouted. „Follow them! I want a pursuit!”

„Rifles! To me!” Sharpe called. He held his men back from the pursuit. They had already endured enough, he reckoned, and it was time to give them a rest. „Clean your guns,” he ordered them, and so they stayed as the redcoats and riflemen of the 1st Brigade formed ranks outside the seminary and then marched away eastward.

A score of dead men were left on the roof. There were long streaks of blood showing where they had been pulled away from the parapet. The smoke about the building slowly cleared until the air felt clean again. The slopes beneath the seminary were strewn with discarded French packs and French bodies, not all of them dead. A wounded man crawled away between the blood-spattered blossoms of ragweed. A dog sniffed at a corpse. Ravens came on black wings to taste the dead, and women and children hurried from the houses in the valley to begin the plunder. A wounded man tried to twitch away from a girl who could not have been more than eleven and she drew a butchering knife from her apron belt, a knife that had been sharpened so often that its blade was little more than a whisper of thin steel attached to a bone handle, and she sliced it across the Frenchman’s throat, then grimaced because his blood had splashed onto her lap. Her little sister was dragging six muskets by their slings. The small fires started by wadding smoked between the corpses where the plump Portuguese priest, the blunderbuss still in one hand, made the sign of the cross over the Frenchmen he had helped to kill.

While the living French, in panicked disarray, ran.

And the city of Oporto had been recaptured.

The letter, addressed to Richard Sharpe, Esq, was waiting on the mantel of the parlor in the House Beautiful and it was a miracle it had survived because that afternoon a score of Royal Artillery gunners made the house into their billet and the first thing they did was to break up the parlor’s furniture to make a fire and the letter was an ideal piece of kindling, but then Captain Hogan arrived just before the fire was lit and managed to retrieve the paper. He had come looking for Sharpe and had asked the gunners if any messages had been left in the house, thinking Sharpe might have left one. „English folk live here, lads,” he told the gunners as he opened the unsealed letter, „so wipe your feet and clean up behind yourselves.” He read the brief message, and thought for a while. „I suppose none of you have seen a tall Rifle officer from the 95th? No? Well, if he shows up, tell him to go to the Palacio das Carrancas.”

„The what, sir?” a gunner asked.

„Big building down the hill,” Hogan explained. „Headquarters.” Hogan knew Sharpe was alive for Colonel Waters had told him of meeting Sharpe that morning, but though Hogan roamed the streets he had not found Sharpe and so a pair of orderlies were sent to search the city for the stray rifleman.

A new pontoon bridge was already being floated across the Douro. The city was free again and it celebrated with flags, wine and music. Hundreds of French prisoners were under guard in a warehouse and a long row of captured French guns was parked on the river’s quay where the British merchant ships that had been captured when the city fell now flew their own flags again. Marshal Soult and his army had marched away east toward the bridge at Amarante that the French had captured so recently and they were blissfully unaware that General Beresford, the new commander of the Portuguese army, had recaptured the bridge and was waiting for them.

„If they can’t cross at Amarante,” Wellesley demanded that evening, „then where will they go?” The question was asked in the blue reception room of the Palacio das Carrancas where Wellesley and his staff had eaten a meal that had evidently been cooked for Marshal Soult and which had been found still hot in the palace’s ovens. The meal had been lamb, which Sir Arthur liked, but so tricked out with onions, scraps of ham and mushrooms that its taste had been quite spoiled for him. „I thought the French appreciated cooking,” he had grumbled, then demanded that an orderly bring him a bottle of vinegar from the kitchens. He had doused the lamb, scraped away the offending mushrooms and onions, and decided the meal was much improved.

Now, with the remnants of the meal cleared away, the officers crowded about a hand-drawn map that Captain Hogan had spread on the table. Sir Arthur traced a finger across the map. „They’ll want to get back to Spain, of course,” he said, „but how?”

He had expected Colonel Waters, the most senior of the exploring officers, to answer the question, but Waters had not ridden the north country and so the Colonel nodded to Captain Hogan, the most junior officer in the room. Hogan had spent the weeks before Soult’s invasion mapping the Tras os Montes, the wild northern mountains where the roads twisted and the rivers ran fast and the bridges were few and narrow. Portuguese troops were even now marching to cut off those bridges and so deny the French the roads which would lead them back to their fortresses in Spain, and Hogan now tapped the vacant space on the map north of the road from Oporto to Amarante. „If Amarante’s taken, sir, and our fellows capture Braga tomorrow,” Hogan paused and glanced at Sir Arthur who gave an irritable nod, „then Soult is in a pickle, a real pickle. He’ll have to cross the Serra de Santa Catalina and there are no carriage roads in those hills.”

„What is there?” Wellesley asked, staring at the forbidding vacancy of the map.

„Goat tracks,” Hogan said, „wolves, footpaths, ravines and very angry peasants. Once he gets to here, sir”-he tapped the map to the north of the Serra de Santa Catalina-”he’s got a passable road that will take him home, but to reach that road he’ll have to abandon his wagons, his guns, his carriages, in fact everything that can’t be carried on a man or a mule’s back.”

Thunder growled above the city. The sound of rain began, then grew heavier, pelting down onto the terrace and rattling on the tall uncurtained windows. „Damn bloody weather,” Wellesley growled, knowing it would slow down his pursuit of the beaten French.

„It rains on the ungodly too, sir,” Hogan observed.

„Damn them as well.” Wellesley bridled. He was not sure how much he liked Hogan, whom he had inherited from Cradock. The damn man was Irish for a start which reminded Wellesley that he himself had been born in Ireland, a fact of which he was not particularly proud, and the man was plainly not high born and Sir Arthur liked his aides to come from good families, yet he recognized that prejudice as quite unreasonable and he was beginning to suspect that the quiet-spoken Hogan had a good deal of competence, while Colonel Waters, of whom Wellesley did approve, spoke very warmly of the Irishman.

„So,” Wellesley summed up the situation, „they’re on the road between here and Amarante, and they can’t come back without fighting us and they can’t go forward without meeting Beresford, so they must go north into the hills. And where do they go after that?”

„To this road here, sir,” Hogan answered, pointing a pencil at the map. „It goes from Braga to Chaves, sir, and if he manages to get past the Ponte Nova and reach Ruivaens, which is a village here”-he paused to make a pencil mark on the map-”then there’s a track that will take him north across the hills to Montalegre and that’s just a stone’s throw from the frontier.” Sir Arthur’s aides were huddled about the dining table, looking down at the candlelit map, though one man, a slight and pale figure dressed in elegant civilian clothes, did not bother to take any interest, but just stretched languidly in an armchair where he managed to convey the insulting impression that he was bored by this talk of maps, roads, hills and bridges.

„And this road, sir,” Hogan went on, tracing his pencil from the Ponte Nova to Montalegre, „is a real devil. It’s a twister, sir. You have to walk five miles to go a half-mile forward. And better still, sir, it crosses a couple of rivers, small ones, but in deep gorges with quick water, and that means high bridges, sir, and if the Portuguese can cut one of those bridges then Monsieur Soult is lost, sir. He’s trapped. He can only lead his men across the mountains and they’ll have the devil on their heels all the way.”

„God speed the Portuguese,” Wellesley grunted, grimacing at the sound of the rain which he kriew would slow his allies who were advancing inland in an attempt to sever the roads by which the French could reach Spain. They had already cut them off at Amarante, but now they would need to march further north while Wellesley’s army, fresh from its triumph at Oporto, would have to chase the French. The British were the beaters driving their game toward the Portuguese guns. Wellesley stared at the map. „You drew this, Hogan?”

„I did, sir.”

„And it’s reliable?”

„It is, sir.“

Sir Arthur grunted. If it were not for the weather, he thought, he would bag Soult and all his men, but the rain would make it a damned difficult pursuit. Which meant the sooner it began the better and so aides were sent with orders that would start the British army on its march at dawn. Then, the orders given, Sir Arthur yawned. He badly needed some sleep before the morning and he was about to turn in when the big doors were thrown open and a very wet, very ragged and very unshaven rifleman entered. He saw General Wellesley, looked surprised and instinctively came to attention.

„Good God,” Wellesley said sourly.

„I think you know Lieutenant… „Hogan began.

„Of course I know Lieutenant Sharpe,” Wellesley snapped, „but what I want to know is what the devil is he doing here? The 95th aren’t with us.”

Hogan removed the candlesticks from the corners of the map and let it roll up. „That’s my doing, Sir Arthur,” he said calmly. „I found Lieutenant Sharpe and his men wandering like lost sheep and took them into my care, and ever since he’s been escorting me on my journeys to the frontier. I couldn’t have coped with the French patrols on my own, Sir Arthur, and Mister Sharpe was a great comfort.”

Wellesley, while Hogan offered the explanation, just stared at Sharpe. „You were lost?” he demanded coldly.

„Cut off, sir,” Sharpe said.

„During the retreat to Corunna?”

„Yes, sir,” Sharpe said. In fact his unit had been retreating toward Vigo, but the distinction was not important and Sharpe had long learned to keep replies to senior officers as brief as possible.

„So where the devil have you been these last few weeks?” Wellesley asked tartly. „Skulking?”

„Yes, sir,” Sharpe said, and the staff officers stiffened at the whiff of insolence that drifted through the room.

„I ordered the Lieutenant to find a young Englishwoman who was lost, sir,” Hogan hurried to explain. „In fact I ordered him to accompany Colonel Christopher.”

The mention of that name was like a whip crack. No one spoke though the young civilian who had been pretending to sleep in the armchair and who had opened his eyes wide with surprise when Sharpe’s name was first mentioned now paid very close attention. He was a painfully thin young man and pallid, as though he feared the sun, and there was something feline, almost feminine, in his delicate appearance. His clothes, so very elegant, would have been well suited to a London drawing room or a Paris salon, but here, amidst the unwashed uniforms and suntanned officers of Wellesley’s staff, he looked like a pampered lapdog among hounds. He was sitting up straight now and staring intently at Sharpe.

„Colonel Christopher.” Wellesley broke the silence. „So you’ve been with him?” he demanded of Sharpe.

„General Cradock ordered me to stay with him, sir,” Sharpe said, and took the General’s order from his pouch and laid it on the table.

Wellesley did not even glance at the paper. „What the devil was Cradock doing?” he snapped. „Christopher’s not even a properly commissioned officer, he’s a damned Foreign Office flunkey!” These last words were spat at the pale young man, who, rather than respond, made an airily dismissive gesture with the delicate fingers of his right hand. He caught Sharpe’s eye then and turned the gesture into a small wave of welcome and Sharpe realized, with a start of recognition, that it was Lord Pumphrey whom he had last met in Copenhagen. His lordship, Sharpe knew, was mysteriously prominent in the Foreign Office, but Pumphrey offered no explanation of his presence in Oporto as Wellesley snatched up General Cradock’s order, read it and then threw the paper down. „So what did Christopher order you to do?” he asked Sharpe.

„To stay at a place called Vila Real de Zedes, sir.”

„And do what there, pray?”

„Be killed, sir.”

„Be killed?” Sir Arthur asked in a dangerous tone. He knew Sharpe was being impudent and, though the rifleman had once saved his life, Sir Arthur was quite ready to slap him down.

„He brought a French force to the village, sir. They attacked us.”

„Not very effectively, it seems,” Wellesley said sarcastically.

„Not very, no, sir,” Sharpe agreed, „but there were twelve hundred of them, sir, and only sixty of us.” He said no more and there was silence in the big room as men worked out the odds. Twenty to one. Another peal of thunder racked the sky and a shard of lightning flickered to the west.

„Twelve hundred, Richard?” Hogan asked in a voice which suggested Sharpe might like to amend the figure downward.

„There were probably more, sir,” Sharpe said stoically. „The 31st Leger attacked us, but they were backed up by at least one regiment of dragoons and an howitzer. Only the one, though, sir, and we saw them off.” He stopped and no one spoke again, and Sharpe remembered he had not paid tribute to his ally and so turned back to Wellesley. „I had Lieutenant Vicente with me, sir, of the 18th Portuguese, and his thirty-odd lads helped us a lot, but I’m sorry to report he lost a couple of men and I lost a couple too. And one of my men deserted, sir. I’m sorry about that.”

There was another silence, a much longer one, in which the officers stared at Sharpe and Sharpe tried to count the candles on the big table, and then Lord Pumphrey broke the silence. „You tell us, Lieutenant, that Mister Christopher brought these troops to attack you?”

„Yes, sir.”

Pumphrey smiled. „Did he bring them? Or was he brought by them?”

„He brought them,” Sharpe said vigorously. „And then he had the bloody nerve to come up the hill and tell me the war was over and we ought to walk down and let the French take care of us.”

„Thank you, Lieutenant,” Pumphrey said with exaggerated civility.

There was another silence, then Colonel Waters cleared his throat. „You will recall, sir,” he said softly, „that it was Lieutenant Sharpe who provided us with our navy this morning.” In other words, he was saying to Sir Arthur Wellesley, show some damned gratitude.

But Sir Arthur was in no mood to show gratitude. He just stared at Sharpe, and then Hogan remembered the letter that he had rescued from the House Beautiful and he took it from his pocket. „It’s for you, Lieutenant,” he said, holding the paper toward Sharpe, „but it wasn’t sealed and so I took the liberty of reading it.”

Sharpe unfolded the paper. „He is going with the French,” Sharpe read, „and forcing me to accompany him and I do not want to.” It was signed Kate and had plainly been written in a tearing hurry.

„The ‘him,’ I assume,” Hogan asked, „is Christopher?”

„Yes, sir.”

„So the reason that Miss Savage absented herself in March,” Hogan went on, „was Colonel Christopher?”

„Yes, sir.”

„She is sweet on him?”

„She’s married to him,” Sharpe said and was puzzled because Lord Pumphrey looked startled.

„A few weeks earlier”-Hogan was talking to Wellesley now-”Colonel Christopher was courting Miss Savage’s mother.”

„Does any of this ridiculous talk of romance help us determine what Christopher is doing?” Sir Arthur asked with considerable asperity.

„It’s amusing, if nothing else,” Pumphrey said. He stood up, flicked a speck of dust from a cuff, and smiled at Sharpe. „Did you really say Christopher married this girl?”

„He did, sir.”

„Then he is a bad boy,” Lord Pumphrey said happily, „because he’s already married.” His lordship plainly enjoyed that revelation. „He married Pearce Courtnell’s daughter ten years ago in the happy belief that she was worth eight thousand a year, then discovered she was hardly worth sixpence. It is not, I hear, a contented marriage, and might I observe, Sir Arthur, that Lieutenant Sharpe’s news answers our questions about Colonel Christopher’s true allegiance?”

„It does?” Wellesley asked, puzzled.

„Christopher cannot hope to survive a bigamous marriage if he intends to make his future in Britain or in a free Portugal,” Lord Pumphrey observed, „but in France? Or in a Portugal ruled by France? (

The French won’t care how many wives he left in London.”

„But you said he wants to return.”

„I tendered a surmise that he would wish to do so,” Pumphrey corrected the General. „He has, after all, been playing both sides of the table and if he thinks we’re winning then he will doubtless want to return and equally doubtless he will then deny ever marrying Miss Savage.”

„She might have another opinion,” Wellesley observed dryly.

„If she’s alive to utter it, which I doubt,” Pumphrey said. „No, sir, he cannot be trusted and dare I say that my masters in London would be immensely grateful if you were to remove him from their employment?”

„That’s what you want?”

„It is not what I want,” Pumphrey contradicted Wellesley and, for a man of such delicate and frail appearance, he did it with considerable force. „It is what London would want.”

„You can be certain of that?” Wellesley asked, plainly disliking Pumphrey’s insinuations.

„He has knowledge that would embarrass us,” Pumphrey admitted, „including the Foreign Office codes.”

Wellesley gave his great horse neigh of a laugh. „He’s probably given those to the French already.”

„I doubt it, sir,” Pumphrey said, examining his fingernails with a slight frown, „a man usually holds his best cards till last. And in the end Christopher will want to bargain, either with us or with the French, and I must say that His Majesty’s government does not wish either eventuality.”

„Then I leave his fate to you, my lord,” Wellesley said with obvious distaste, „and as it doubtless means filthy work then I’d better lend you the services of Captain Hogan and Lieutenant Sharpe. As for me? I’m going to bed.” He nodded curtly and left the room, followed by his aides clutching sheaves of paper.

Lord Pumphrey took a decanter of vinho verde from the table and crossed to his armchair where he sat with an exaggerated sigh. „Sir Arthur makes me go weak at the knees,” he said and pretended to be unaware of the shocked reaction on both Sharpe and Hogan’s faces. „Did you really save his life in India, Richard?”

Sharpe said nothing and Hogan answered for him. „That’s why he treats Sharpe so badly,” the Irishman said. „Nosey can’t stand being beholden, and especially can’t stand being beholden to a misbegotten rogue like Sharpe.”

Pumphrey shivered. „Do you know what we in the Foreign Office dislike doing most of all? Going to foreign places. They are so uncomfortable. But here I am and I suppose we must attend to our duties.”

Sharpe had crossed to one of the tall windows where he was staring out into the wet darkness. „What are my duties?” he asked.

Lord Pumphrey poured himself a liberal glass of wine. „Not to put too fine a point on it, Richard,” he said, „your duty is to find Mister Christopher and then… „He did not finish the sentence, but instead drew a finger across his throat, a gesture Sharpe saw mirrored in the dark window.

„Who is Christopher, anyway?” Sharpe wanted to know.

„He was a thruster, Richard,” Pumphrey said, his voice acid with disapproval, „a rather clever thruster in the Foreign Office.” A thruster was a man who would bully and whip his way to the head of the field while riding to hounds and in doing so upset dozens of other hunters. „Yet he was thought to have a very fine future,” Pumphrey continued, „if he could just curb his compulsion to complicate affairs. He likes intrigue, does Christopher. The Foreign Office, of necessity, deals in secret matters and he rather indulges in such things. Still, despite that, he was reckoned to have the makings of an excellent diplomat, and last year he was sent out here to determine the temper of the Portuguese. There were rumors, happily ill-founded, that a large number of folk, especially in the north, were more than a little sympathetic to the French, and Christopher was merely supposed to be determining the extent of that sympathy.”

„Couldn’t the embassy do that?” Hogan demanded.

„Not without being noticed,” Pumphrey said, „and not without occasioning some offense to a nation which is, after all, our most ancient ally. And I rather suspect that if you despatch someone from the embassy to ask questions then you will merely fetch the answers people think you want to hear. No, Christopher was supposed to be an English gentleman traveling in north Portugal, but, as you observe, the opportunity went to his head. Cradock was then halfwitted enough to give him brevet rank and so Christopher began hatching his plots.” Lord Pumphrey gazed up at the ceiling which was painted with reveling deities and dancing nymphs. „My own suspicion is that Mister Christopher has been laying bets on every horse in the race. We know he was encouraging a mutiny, but I strongly suspect he betrayed the mutineers. The encouragement was to reassure us that he worked for our interests and the betrayal endeared him to the French. He is determined, is he not, to be on the winning side? But the main intrigue, of course, was to enrich himself at the expense of the Savage ladies.” Pumphrey paused, then offered a seraphic smile. „I’ve always rather admired bigamists. One wife would be altogether too much for me, but for a man to take two!”

„Did I hear you say he wants to come back?” Sharpe asked.

„I surmise as much. James Christopher is not a man to burn his bridges unless he has no alternative. Oh yes, I’m sure he’ll be designing some way to return to London if he finds a lack of opportunity with the French.”

„Now I’m supposed to shoot the shit-faced bastard,” Sharpe said.

„Not precisely how we in the Foreign Office would express the matter,” Lord Pumphrey said severely, „but you are, I see, seized of the essence. Go and shoot him, Richard, and God bless your little rifle.”

„And what are you doing here?” Sharpe thought to ask.

„Other than being exquisitely uncomfortable?” Pumphrey asked. „I was sent to supervise Christopher. He approached General Cradock with news of a proposed mutiny. Cradock, quite properly, reported the affair to London and London became excited at the thought of suborning Bonaparte’s army in Portugal and Spain, but felt that someone of wisdom and good judgment was needed to propel the scheme and so, quite naturally, they asked me to come.”

„And we can forget the scheme now,” Hogan observed.

„Indeed we can,” Pumphrey replied tartly. „Christopher brought a Captain Argenton to talk with General Cradock,” he explained to Sharpe, „and when Cradock was replaced, Argenton made his own way across the lines to confer with Sir Arthur. He wanted promises that our forces wouldn’t intervene in the event of a French mutiny, but Sir Arthur wouldn’t hear of his plots and told him to tuck his tail between his legs and go back into the outer darkness whence he came. So, no plots, no mysterious messengers with cloaks and daggers, just plain old-fashioned soldiering. It seems, alas, that I am surplus to requirements and Mister Christopher, if your lady friend’s note is to be believed, has gone with the French, which must mean, I think, that he believes they will still win this war.”

Hogan had opened the window to smell the rain, but now turned to Sharpe. „We must go, Richard. We have things to plan.”

„Yes, sir.” Sharpe picked up his battered shako and tried to bend the visor back into shape, then thought of another question. „My lord?”

„Richard?” Lord Pumphrey responded gravely.

„You remember Astrid?” Sharpe asked awkwardly.

„Of course I remember the fair Astrid,” Pumphrey answered smoothly, „Ole Skovgaard’s comely daughter.”

„I was wondering if you had news of her, my lord,” Sharpe said. He was blushing.

Lord Pumphrey did have news of her, but none he cared to tell Sharpe, for the truth was that both Astrid and her father were in their graves, their throats cut on Pumphrey’s orders. „I did hear,” his lordship said gently, „that there was a contagion in Copenhagen. Malaria, perhaps? Or was it cholera? Alas, Richard.” He spread his hands.

„She’s dead?”

„I do fear so.”

„Oh,” Sharpe said inadequately. He stood stricken, blinking. He had thought once that he could leave the army and live with Astrid and so make a new life in the clean decencies of Denmark. „I’m sorry,” he said.

„As am I,” Lord Pumphrey said easily, „so very sorry. But tell me, Richard, about Miss Savage. Might one assume she is beautiful?”

„Yes,” Sharpe said, „she is.”

„I thought so,” Lord Pumphrey said resignedly.

„And she’ll be dead,” Hogan snarled at Sharpe, „if you and me don’t hurry.”

„Yes, sir,” Sharpe said, and hurried.

Hogan and Sharpe walked through the night rain, going uphill to a schoolhouse that Sharpe had commandeered as quarters for his men. „You do know,” Hogan said with considerable irritation, „that Lord Pumphrey is a molly?”

„Of course I know he’s a molly.”

„He can be hanged for that,” Hogan observed with indecent satisfaction.

„I still like him,” Sharpe said.

„He’s a serpent. All diplomats are. Worse than lawyers.”

„He ain’t stuck up,” Sharpe said.

„There is nothing,” Hogan said, „nothing in all the world that Lord Pumphrey wants more than to be stuck up with you, Richard.” He laughed, his spirits restored. „And how the hell are we to find that poor wee girl and her rotten husband, eh?”

„We?” Sharpe asked. „You’re coming too?”

„This is far too important to be left to some lowly English lieutenant,” Hogan said. „This is an errand that needs the sagacity of the Irish.”

Once in the schoolhouse, Sharpe and Hogan settled in the kitchen where the French occupiers of the city had left an undamaged table and, because Hogan had left his good map at the General’s headquarters, he used a piece of charcoal to draw a cruder version on the table’s scrubbed top. From the main schoolroom, where Sharpe’s men had spread their blankets, came the sound of women’s laughter. His men, Sharpe reflected, had been in the city less than a day yet they had already found a dozen girls. „Best way to learn the language, sir,” Harper had assured him, „and we’re all very short on education, sir, as you doubtless know.”

„Right!” Hogan kicked the kitchen door shut. „Look at the map, Richard.” He showed how the British had come up the coast of Portugal and dislodged the French from Oporto and how, at the same time, the Portuguese army had attacked in the east. „They’ve retaken Amarante,” Hogan said, „which is good because it means Soult can’t cross that bridge. He’s stuck, Richard, stuck, so he’s got no choice. He’ll have to strike north through the hills to find a wee road up here”-the charcoal scratched as he traced a wiggly line on the table-”and it’s a bastard of a road, and if the Portuguese can keep going in this God-awful weather then they’re going to cut the road here.” The charcoal made a cross. „It’s a bridge called Ponte Nova. Do you remember it?”

Sharpe shook his head. He had seen so many bridges and mountain roads with Hogan that he could no longer remember which was which.

„The Ponte Nova,” Hogan said, „means the new bridge and naturally it’s as old as the hills and one tub of powder will send it crashing down into the gorge and then, Richard, Monsieur Soult is properly buggered. But he’s only buggered if the Portuguese can get there.” He looked gloomy, for the weather was not propitious for a swift march into the mountains. „And if they can’t stop Soult at the Ponte Nova then there’s a half-chance they’ll catch him at the Saltador. You remember that, of course?”

„I do remember that, sir,” Sharpe said.

The Saltador was a bridge high in the mountains, a stone span that leaped across a deep and narrow gorge, and the spectacular arch had been nicknamed the Leaper, the Saltador. Sharpe remembered Hogan mapping it, remembered a small village of low stone houses, but chiefly remembered the river tumbling in a seething torrent beneath the soaring bridge.

„If they get to the Saltador and cross it,“ Hogan said, „then we can kiss them goodbye and wish them luck. They’ll have escaped.” He flinched as a crash of thunder reminded him of the weather. „Ah, well,” he sighed, „we can only do our best.”

„And just what are we doing?” Sharpe wanted to know.

„Now that, Richard, is a very good question,” Hogan said. He helped himself to a pinch of snuff, paused, then sneezed violently. „God help me, but the doctors say it clears the bronchial tubes, whatever the hell they are. Now, as I see it, one of two things can happen.” He tapped the charcoal streak marking the Ponte Nova. „If the French are stopped at that bridge then most will surrender, they’ll have no choice. Some will take to the hills, of course, but they’ll find armed peasants all over the place looking for throats and other parts to cut. So we’ll either find Mister Christopher with the army when it surrenders or more likely he’ll run away and claim to be an escaped English prisoner. In which case we go into the mountains, find him and put him up against a wall.”

„Truly?”

„That worries you?”

„I’d rather hang him.”

„Ah, well, we can discuss the method when the time comes. Now the second thing that might happen, Richard, is that the French are not stopped at the Ponte Nova, in which case we need to reach the Saltador.”

„Why?”

„Think what it was like, Richard,” Hogan said. „A deep ravine, steep slopes everywhere, the kind of place where a few riflemen could be very vicious. And if the French are crossing the bridge then we’ll see him and your Baker rifles will have to do the necessary.”

„We can get close enough?” Sharpe asked, trying to remember the terrain about the leaping bridge.

„There are cliffs, high bluffs. I’m sure you can get within two hundred paces.”

„That’ll do,” Sharpe said grimly.

„So one way or another we have to finish him,” Hogan said, leaning back. „He’s a traitor, Richard. He’s probably not as dangerous as he thinks he is, but if he gets to Paris then no doubt the monsewers will suck his brain dry and so learn a few things we’d rather they didn’t know. And if he got back to London he’s slippery enough to convince those fools that he was always working for their interests. So all things considered, Richard, I’d say he was better off dead.”

„And Kate?”

„We’re not going to shoot her,” Hogan said reprovingly.

„Back in March, sir,” Sharpe said, „you ordered me to rescue her. Does that order still stand?”

Hogan stared at the ceiling which was smoke-blackened and pierced with lethal-looking hooks. „In the short time I’ve known you, Richard,” he said, „I’ve noticed you possess a lamentable tendency to put on shining armor and look for ladies to rescue. King Arthur, God rest his soul, would have loved you. He’d have had you fighting every evil knight in the forest. Is rescuing Kate Savage important? Not really. The main thing is to punish Mister Christopher and I fear that Miss Kate will have to take her chances.”

Sharpe looked down at the charcoal map. „How do we get to the Ponte Nova?”

„We walk, Richard, we walk. We cross the mountains and those tracks aren’t fit for horses. You’d spend half the time leading them, worrying about their feed, looking after their hooves and wishing you didn’t have them. Mules now, I’d saddle some mules and take them, but where will we find mules tonight? It’s either mules or shanks’s pony, but either way we can only take a few men, your best and your fittest, and we have to leave before dawn.”

„What do I do with the rest of my men?”

Hogan thought about it. „Major Potter could use them,” he suggested, „to help guard the prisoners here?”

„I don’t want to lose them back to Shorncliffe,” Sharpe said. He feared that the second battalion would be making inquiries about their lost riflemen. They might not care that Lieutenant Sharpe was missing, but the absence of several prime marksmen would definitely be regretted.

„My dear Richard,” Hogan said, „if you think Sir Arthur’s going to lose even a few good riflemen then you don’t know him half as well as you think. He’ll move hell and high water to keep you here. And you and I have to move like hell to get to Ponte Nova before anyone else.”

Sharpe grimaced. „The French have a day’s start on us.”

„No, they don’t. Like fools they went toward Amarante which means they didn’t know that the Portuguese had recaptured it. By now they’ll have discovered their predicament, but I doubt they’ll start north till dawn. If we hurry, we beat them.” He frowned, looking down at the map. „There’s only one real problem I can see, other than finding Mister Christopher when we get there.”

„A problem?”

„I can find my way to Ponte Nova from Braga,” Hogan said, „but what if the French are already on the Braga road? We’ll have to take to the hills and it’s wild country, Richard, an easy place to get lost. We need a guide and we need to find him fast.”

Sharpe grinned. „If you don’t mind traveling with a Portuguese officer who thinks he’s a philosopher and a poet then I think I know just the man.”

„I’m Irish,” Hogan said, „there’s nothing we love more than philosophy and poetry.”

„He’s a lawyer too.”

„If he gets us to Ponte Nova,” Hogan said, „then God will doubtless forgive him for that.”

The women’s laughter was loud, but it was time to end the party. It was time for a dozen of Sharpe’s best men to mend their boots and fill their cartridge boxes.

It was time for revenge.