Читать книгу Sharpe 3-Book Collection 2 - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 11

Sharpe ran across the paddock where the dead horses lay with flies crawling in their nostrils and across their eyeballs. He tripped on a metal picketing pin and, as he stumbled forward, a carbine bullet fluttered past him, the sound suggesting it was almost spent, but even a spent bullet in the wrong place could kill a man. His riflemen were shooting from the field’s far side, the smoke of their Baker rifles thickening along the wall. Sharpe dropped beside Hagman. ‘What’s happening, Dan?’

‘Dragoons are back, sir,’ Hagman said laconically, ‘and there’s some infantry there too.’

‘You sure?’

‘Shot one blue bastard,’ Hagman said, ‘and two greens so far.’

Sharpe wiped sweat from his face, then crawled a few paces along the wall to a place where the powder smoke was not so thick. The dragoons had dismounted and were shooting from the edge of a wood some hundred paces away. Too long a range for their carbines, Sharpe thought, but then he saw some blue uniforms where the road ran through the trees and he reckoned the infantry was forming for an attack. There was an odd clicking noise coming from somewhere nearby and he could not place it, but it seemed to offer no threat so he ignored it. ‘Pendleton!’

‘Sir?’

‘Find Lieutenant Vicente. He’s in the village. Tell him to get his men out on the northern path now.’ Sharpe pointed to the track through the vineyards, the same track by which they had entered Barca d’Avintas and where the dead dragoons of the first fight still lay. ‘And, Pendleton, tell him to hurry. But be polite, though.’

Pendleton, a pickpocket and purse snatcher from Bristol, was the youngest of Sharpe’s men and now looked puzzled. ‘Polite, sir?’

‘Call him sir, damn you, and salute him, but hurry!’

Goddamn it, Sharpe thought, but there would be no escape across the Douro today, no slow shuttling back and forth with the small boat, and no marching back to Captain Hogan and the army. Instead they would have to get the hell out northwards and get out fast. ‘Sergeant!’ He looked left and right for Patrick Harper through the misty patches of rifle smoke along the wall. ‘Harper!’

‘I’m with you, sir.’ Harper came running from behind. ‘I was dealing with those two Frogs in the church.’

‘The moment the Portuguese are into the vineyard we get out of here. Are any of our men left in the village?’

‘Harris is there, sir, and Pendleton, of course.’

‘Send someone to make sure the two of them get out.’ Sharpe levelled his rifle across the wall and sent a bullet spinning towards the infantry who were forming up on the road among the trees. ‘And, Pat, what did you do with those two Frogs?’

‘They’d robbed the poor box,’ Harper said, ‘so I sent them to hell.’ He patted his sheathed sword bayonet.

Sharpe grinned. ‘And if you get the chance, Pat, do the same to that bastard French officer.’

‘Pleasure, sir,’ Harper said, then ran back across the paddock. Sharpe reloaded. The French, he thought, were being too cautious. They should have attacked already, but they must have believed there was a larger force in Barca d’Avintas than two stranded half companies, and the rifle fire must have been disconcerting to the dragoons who were not used to such accuracy. There were bodies lying on the grass at the edge of the wood, evidence that the dismounted French horsemen had been taught about the Baker rifle the hard way. The French did not use rifles, reckoning that the spiralling grooves and lands that spun the bullet in the barrel and so gave the weapon its accuracy also made it much too slow to reload, and so the French, like most British battalions, relied on the quicker-firing, but much less accurate musket. A man could stand fifty yards from a musket and stand a good chance of living, but standing a hundred paces in front of a Baker in the hands of a good man was a death warrant, and so the dragoons had pulled back into the trees.

There was infantry in the wood as well, but what were the bastards doing? Sharpe propped his loaded rifle against the wall and took out his telescope, the fine instrument made by Matthew Berge of London which had been a gift from Sir Arthur Wellesely after Sharpe had saved the General’s life at Assaye. He rested the telescope on the wall’s mossy coping and stared at the leading company of French infantry which was well back in the trees, but Sharpe could see they were formed in three ranks. He was looking for some sign that they were ready to advance, but the men were slouching, musket butts grounded, without even fixed bayonets. He whipped the glass right, suddenly fearing that perhaps the French would try to cut off his retreat by infiltrating the vineyard, but he saw nothing to worry him. He looked back at the trees and saw a flash of light, a distinct white circle, and realized there was an officer kneeling in the leafy shadows staring at the village through a telescope. The man was undoubtedly trying to work out how many enemy were in Barca d’Avintas and how to attack them. Sharpe put his own telescope away, picked up the rifle and levelled it on the wall. Careful now, he thought, careful. Kill that one officer and any French attack is slowed, because that officer is the man who makes the decisions, and Sharpe pulled back the flint, lowered his head so that his right eye was gazing down the sights, found the patch of dark shadow that was the Frenchman’s blue coat and then raised the rifle’s foresight, a blade of metal, so that the barrel hid the target and so allowed the bullet to drop. There was little wind, not enough to drift the bullet left or right. A splintering of noise sounded from the other rifles and a drop of sweat trickled past Sharpe’s left eye as he pulled the trigger and the rifle hammered back into his shoulder and the puff of bitter smoke from the pan made his right eye smart and the specks of burning powder stung his cheek as the cloud of barrel smoke billowed in front of the wall to hide the target. Sharpe twisted to see Lieutenant Vicente’s troops streaming into the vineyard accompanied by thirty or forty civilians. Harper was coming back across the paddock. The odd clicking noise was louder suddenly and Sharpe registered that it was the sound of French carbine bullets striking the other side of the stone wall. ‘We’re all clear of the village, sir,’ Harper said.

‘We can go,’ Sharpe said, and he marvelled that the enemy had been so slow, thus giving him time to extricate his force. He sent Harper with most of the greenjackets to join Vicente and they took a dozen French horses with them, each horse worth a small fortune in prize money if they could ever rejoin the army. Sharpe kept Hagman and six other men and they spread along the wall and fired as fast as their rifles would load, which meant they did not wrap the bullets in leather patches which gripped the rifling, but just tapped the balls down the barrels because Sharpe did not care about accuracy, he just wanted the French to see a thick rill of smoke and hear the shots and thus not know that their enemy was withdrawing.

He pulled the trigger and the flint broke into useless scraps so he slung the rifle and backed out of the smoke to see that Vicente and Harper were both well into the vineyard and so he shouted at his remaining men to hurry back across the paddock. Hagman paused to fire a last bullet, then he ran and Sharpe went with him, the last man to leave, and he could not believe it had been that easy to disengage, that the French had been so supine, and just then Hagman went down.

At first Sharpe thought Hagman had tripped on one of the metal pegs with which the dragoons had picketed their horses, then he saw blood on the grass and saw Hagman let go of his rifle and his right hand slowly clench and unclench. ‘Dan!’ Sharpe knelt and saw a tiny wound high up beside Hagman’s left shoulder blade, just an unlucky carbine bullet that had flicked through the smoke and found its target.

‘Go on, sir.’ Hagman’s voice was hoarse. ‘I’m done for.’

‘You’re bloody not,’ Sharpe snarled and he turned Hagman over onto his back and saw no wound in front, which meant the carbine ball was somewhere inside, then Hagman choked and spat up frothy blood and Sharpe heard Harper yelling at him.

‘The bastards are coming, sir!’

Just one minute before, Sharpe thought, he had been congratulating himself on how easy it had been, and now it was all collapsing. He pulled Hagman’s rifle to him, slung it beside his own and picked up the old poacher who gave a gasp and a whimper and shook his head. ‘Leave me, sir.’

‘I’m not leaving you, Dan.’

‘Hurts, sir, it hurts,’ Hagman whimpered again. His face was deathly pale and there was a trickle of blood spilling from his mouth, and then Harper was at Sharpe’s side and took Hagman out of his arms. ‘Leave me here,’ Hagman said softly.

‘Take him, Pat!’ Sharpe said, and then some rifles fired from the vineyard and muskets banged behind him and the air was whistling with balls as Sharpe pushed Harper on. He followed, walking backwards, watching the blue French uniforms appear in the mist of smoke left by their own ragged volley.

‘Come on, sir!’ Harper shouted, letting Sharpe know he had Hagman in the scanty shelter of the vines.

‘Carry him north,’ Sharpe said when he reached the vineyard.

‘He’s hurting bad, sir.’

‘Carry him! Get him out of here.’

Sharpe watched the French. Three companies of infantry had attacked the pasture, but they made no effort to follow Sharpe north. They must have seen the column of Portuguese and British troops winding through the vineyards accompanied by the dozen captured horses and a crowd of frightened villagers, but they did not follow. It seemed they wanted Barca d’Avintas more than they wanted Sharpe’s men dead. Even when Sharpe established himself on a knoll a half-mile north of the village and stared at the French through his telescope, they did not come near to threaten him. They could easily have chased him away with dragoons, but instead they chopped up the skiff that Sharpe had rescued and then set the fragments alight. ‘They’re closing off the river,’ Sharpe said to Vicente.

‘Closing the river?’ Vicente did not understand.

‘Making sure they’ve got the only boats. They don’t want British or Portuguese troops crossing the river, attacking them in the rear. Which means it’s going to be bloody hard for us to go the other way.’ Sharpe turned as Harper came near, and saw that the big Irish Sergeant’s hands were bloody. ‘How is he?’

Harper shook his head. ‘He’s in a terrible bad way, sir,’ he said gloomily. ‘I think the bloody ball’s in his lung. Coughing red bubbles he is, when he can cough at all. Poor Dan.’

‘I’m not leaving him,’ Sharpe said obstinately. He knew he had left Tarrant behind, and there were men like Williamson who had been friends of Tarrant who would resent that Sharpe was not doing the same with Hagman, but Tarrant had been a drunk and a troublemaker while Dan Hagman was valuable. He was the oldest man among Sharpe’s riflemen and he had a wealth of common sense that made him a steadying influence. Besides, Sharpe liked the old poacher. ‘Make a stretcher, Pat,’ he said, ‘and carry him.’

They made a stretcher out of jackets that had their sleeves threaded onto two poles cut from an ash tree and while it was being fashioned Sharpe and Vicente watched the French and discussed how they were to escape them. ‘What we must do,’ the Portuguese Lieutenant said, ‘is go east. To Amarante.’ He smoothed a patch of bare earth and scratched a crude map with a splinter of wood. ‘This is the Douro,’ he said, ‘and here is Porto. We are here’ – he tapped the river very close to the city – ‘and the nearest bridge is at Amarante.’ He made a cross mark well to the east. ‘We could be there tomorrow or perhaps the day after.’

‘So can they,’ Sharpe said grimly, and he nodded towards the village.

A gun had just appeared from among the trees where the French had waited so long before attacking Sharpe’s men. The cannon was drawn by six horses, three of which were ridden by gunners in their dark-blue uniforms. The gun itself, a twelve-pounder, was attached to its limber which was a light two-wheeled cart that served as a ready magazine and as an axle for the heavy gun’s trail. Behind the gun was another team of four horses, these pulling a coffin-like caisson that carried a spare gun wheel on its stern. The caisson, which was being ridden by a half-dozen gunners, held the cannon’s ammunition. Even from half a mile away Sharpe could hear the clink of the chains and thump of the wheels. He watched in silence as an howitzer came into sight, then a second twelve-pounder, and after that a troop of hussars.

‘Do you think they’re coming here?’ Vicente asked with alarm.

‘No,’ Sharpe said. ‘They’re not interested in fugitives. They’re going to Amarante.’

‘This is not the good road to Amarante. In fact it goes nowhere. They’ll have to strike north to the main road.’

‘They don’t know that yet,’ Sharpe guessed, ‘they’re taking any road east that they can find.’ Infantry had now appeared from the trees, then another battery of artillery. Sharpe was watching a small army march eastwards and there was only one reason to send so many men and guns to the east and that was to capture the bridge at Amarante and so protect the French left flank. ‘Amarante,’ Sharpe said, ‘that’s where the bastards are going.’

‘Then we can’t,’ Vicente said.

‘We can go,’ Sharpe said, ‘we just can’t go on that road. You say there’s a main road?’

‘Up here,’ Vicente said, and scratched the earth to show another road to the north of them. ‘That is the high road,’ Vicente said. ‘The French are probably on that as well. Do you really have to go to Amarante?’

‘I’ve got to cross the river,’ Sharpe said, ‘and there’s a bridge there, and there’s a Portuguese army there, and just because the bloody Frogs are going there doesn’t mean that they’ll capture the bridge.’ And if they did, he thought, then he could go north from Amarante until he found a crossing place, then follow the Tamega’s far bank south until he reached a stretch of the Douro unguarded by the French. ‘So how do we reach Amarante if we don’t go by road? Can we go across country?’

Vicente nodded. ‘We go north to a village here’ – he pointed to an empty space on his map – ‘and then turn east. The village is on the edge of the hills, the beginning of the – what do you call it? The wilderness. We used to go there.’

‘We?’ Sharpe asked. ‘The poets and philosophers?’

‘We would walk there,’ Vicente said, ‘spend the night in the tavern and walk back. I doubt there will be Frenchmen there. It is not on the road to Amarante. Not on any road.’

‘So we go to the village at the edge of the wilderness,’ Sharpe said. ‘What’s it called?’

‘Vila Real de Zedes,’ Vicente said. ‘It is called that because the vineyards there once belonged to the King, but that was long ago. Now they are the property of –’

‘Vila Real de what?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Zedes,’ Vicente said, puzzled by Sharpe’s tone and even more puzzled by the smile on Sharpe’s face. ‘You know the place?’

‘I don’t know it,’ Sharpe said, ‘but there’s a girl I want to meet there.’

‘A girl!’ Vicente sounded disapproving.

‘A nineteen-year-old girl,’ Sharpe said, ‘and believe it or not, it’s a duty.’ He turned to see if the stretcher was finished and suddenly stiffened in anger. ‘What the hell is he doing here?’ he asked. He was staring at the French dragoon, Lieutenant Olivier, who was watching as Harper carefully rolled Hagman onto the stretcher.

‘He is to stand trial,’ Vicente said stubbornly, ‘so he is here under arrest and under my personal protection.’

‘Bloody hell!’ Sharpe exploded.

‘It is a matter of principle,’ Vicente insisted.

‘Principle!’ Sharpe shouted. ‘It’s a matter of bloody stupidity, lawyer’s bloody stupidity! We’re in the middle of a bloody war, not in a bloody assizes town in England.’ He saw Vicente’s incomprehension. ‘Oh, never mind,’ he growled. ‘How long will it take us to reach Vila Real de Zedes?’

‘We should be there tomorrow morning,’ Vicente said coldly, then looked at Hagman, ‘so long as he doesn’t slow us down too much.’

‘We’ll be there tomorrow morning,’ Sharpe said, and then he would rescue Miss Savage and find out just why she had run away. And after that, God help him, he would slaughter the bloody dragoon officer, lawyer or no lawyer.

The Savage country house, which was called the Quinta do Zedes, was not in Vila Real de Zedes itself, but high on a hill spur to the south of the village. It was a beautiful place, its whitewashed walls edged with masonry to trace out the elegant lines of a small manor house which looked across the once royal vineyards. The shutters were painted blue, and the high windows of the ground floor were decorated with stained glass which showed the coats of arms of the family which had once owned the Quinta do Zedes. Mister Savage had bought the Quinta along with the vineyards, and, because the house was high, possessed a thick tiled roof and was surrounded by trees hung with wisteria, it proved blessedly cool in summer and so the Savage family would move there each June and stay till October when they took themselves back to the House Beautiful high on Oporto’s slope. Then Mister Savage had died of a seizure and the house had stayed empty ever since except for the half-dozen servants who lived at the back and tended the small vegetable garden and walked down the long curving drive to the village church for mass. There was a chapel in the Quinta do Zedes and in the old days, when the owners of the coats of arms had lived in the long cool rooms, the servants had been allowed to attend mass in the family chapel, but Mister Savage had been a staunch Protestant and he had ordered the altar to be taken away, the statues removed and the chapel whitewashed for use as a food store.

The servants had been surprised when Miss Kate came to the house, but they curtsied or bowed and then set about making the great rooms comfortable. The dust sheets were pulled from pieces of furniture, the bats were knocked off the beams and the pale-blue shutters were thrown open to let in the spring sun. Fires were lit to take away the lingering winter chill, though on that first evening Kate did not stay indoors beside the fires, but instead sat on a balcony built on top of the Quinta’s porch and stared down the drive which was edged with wisteria hanging from the cedar trees. The evening shadows stretched, but no one came.

Kate almost cried herself to sleep that night, but next morning her spirits were restored and, over the shocked protests of the servants, she swept out the entrance hall which was a glorious space of chequered black and white marble, with a white marble staircase curving up to the bedrooms. Then she insisted on dusting the fireplace in the great parlour which was decorated with painted tiles showing the battle of Aljubarrota where Joao I had humiliated the Castilians. She ordered a second bedroom to be aired, its bed made and the fire lit, then she went back to the balcony above the porch and watched the driveway until, just after the morning bell had rung in Vila Real de Zedes, she saw two horsemen appear beneath the cedars and her soul soared for joy. The leading horseman was so tall, so straight-backed, so darkly handsome, and at the same time there was a touching tragedy about him because his wife had died giving birth to their first baby, and the baby had died as well, and the thought of that fine man enduring such sadness almost brought tears to Kate’s eyes, but then the man stood in his stirrups and waved to her and Kate felt her happiness flood back as she ran down the stairs to greet her lover on the house steps.

Colonel Christopher slid from his horse. Luis, his servant, was riding the spare horse and carrying the great valise filled with Kate’s clothes that Christopher had removed from the House Beautiful once her mother was gone. Christopher threw Luis the reins, then ran to the house, leaped up the front steps and took Kate into his arms. He kissed her and ran his hand from the nape of her neck to the small of her back and felt a tremor go through her. ‘I could not get here last night, my love,’ he told her, ‘duty called.’

‘I knew it would be duty,’ Kate said, her face shining as she looked up at him.

‘Nothing else would keep me from you,’ Christopher said, ‘nothing,’ and he bowed to kiss her forehead, then took a pace back, still holding both her hands, to look into her face. She was, he thought, the most beautiful girl in creation and charmingly modest for she blushed and laughed with embarrassment when he stared at her. ‘Kate, Kate,’ he said chidingly, ‘I shall spend all my years looking at you.’

Her hair was black and she wore it drawn back from her high forehead, but with a pair of deep curls hanging where the French hussars wore their cadenettes. She had a full mouth, a small nose, and eyes that were touchingly serious at one moment and sparkling with amusement the next. She was nineteen years old, leggy as a colt, full of life and trust and, at this moment, full of love for her handsome man, who was dressed in a plain black coat, white riding breeches and a cocked hat from which hung two golden tassels. ‘Did you see my mother?’ she asked.

‘I left her promising that I would search for you.’

Kate looked guilty. ‘I should have told her …’

‘Your mother will want you to marry some man of property who is safe in England,’ Christopher said, ‘not some adventurer like me.’ The real reason Kate’s mother would disapprove was because she had hoped to marry Christopher herself, but then the Colonel had discovered the terms of Mr Savage’s will and had turned his attention to the daughter. ‘It would do no good to ask her blessing,’ he went on, ‘and if you had told her what we planned then she would most certainly have stopped us.’

‘She might not,’ Kate suggested in a small voice.

‘But this way,’ Christopher said, ‘your mother’s disapproval does not matter, and when she knows we are married then I am persuaded she will learn to like me.’

‘Married?’

‘Of course,’ Christopher said. ‘You think I do not care for your honour?’ He laughed at the shy look on her face. ‘There is a priest in the village,’ he went on, ‘who I am sure can be persuaded to marry us.’

‘I am not …’ Kate said, then she brushed at her hair and tugged at her dress, and blushed deeper.

‘You are ready,’ Christopher anticipated her protest, ‘and you look enchantingly beautiful.’

Kate blushed more deeply and plucked at the neckline of her dress which she had chosen very carefully from among the summer frocks stored in the Quinta. It was an English dress of white linen, embroidered with bluebells entwined with acanthus leaves, and she knew it suited her. ‘My mother will forgive me?’ she asked.

Christopher very much doubted it. ‘Of course she will,’ he promised her. ‘I’ve known such situations before. Your dear mother wants only the best for you, but once she has come to know me she will surely recognize that I will care for you as no other.’

‘I am sure she will,’ Kate said warmly. She had never been quite certain why Colonel Christopher was so sure her mother would disapprove of him. He said it was because he was twenty-one years older than Kate, but he looked much less, and she was sure he loved her, and there were many men married to wives much younger, and Kate did not think her mother could possibly object on grounds of age, but Christopher also claimed to be a relatively poor man and that, he said, would most definitely offend her mother, and Kate thought that more than likely. But Christopher’s poverty did not offend her, indeed it only seemed to make their love more romantic, and now she would marry him.

He led her down the Quinta’s steps. ‘Is there a carriage here?’

‘There’s an old gig in the stables.’

‘Then we can walk to the village and Luis can fetch the gig for our return.

‘Now?’

‘Yesterday,’ Christopher said solemnly, ‘could not be too soon for me, my love.’ He sent Luis to harness the gig, then laughed. ‘I almost came with inconvenient company!’

‘Inconvenient?’

‘Some damn fool engineer – forgive my soldier’s vocabulary – wanted to send a broken-down Rifle lieutenant to rescue you! Him and his ragamuffins. I had to order him away. Be gone, I said, and “stand not upon the order of your going”. Poor fellow.’

‘Why poor?’

‘Dear me! Thirty-something years old, and still a lieutenant? No money, no prospects and a chip on his shoulder as big as the Rock of Gibraltar.’ He put her hand under his elbow and walked her beneath the avenue of wisteria. ‘Oddly enough I know the Rifle Lieutenant by reputation. Have you ever heard of Lady Grace Hale? The widow of Lord William Hale?’

‘I’ve never heard of either of them,’ Kate said.

‘What a sheltered life you do lead in Oporto,’ Christopher said lightly. ‘Lord William was a very sound man. I worked closely with him in the Foreign Office for a time, but then he went to India on government business and had the misfortune to return on a naval ship that got tangled up in Trafalgar. He must have been an uncommonly brave fellow, for he died in the battle, but then there was an almighty scandal because his widow set up house with a Rifle officer and this is the very same man. Ye gods, what can Lady Grace have been thinking of?’

‘He’s not a gentleman?’

‘Certainly not born one!’ Christopher said. ‘God knows where the army fetch some of their officers these days, but they dredged this fellow up from beneath a rock. And the Lady Grace set up an establishment with him! Quite extraordinary. But some well-bred women like to go fishing in the dirty end of the lake, and I fear she must have been one of them.’ He shook his head in disapproval. ‘It gets worse,’ he went on, ‘because she became pregnant and then died giving birth.’

‘Poor woman!’ Kate said and marvelled that her lover could tell this tale so calmly for it would surely remind him of his own first wife’s death. ‘And what happened to the baby?’ she asked.

‘I believe the child died too. But it was probably for the best. It ended the scandal, and what future could such an infant have faced? Whatever, the father of the child was this same wretched rifleman who was supposed to whisk you away across the river. I sent him packing, I can tell you!’ Christopher laughed at the recollection. ‘He scowled at me, he looked grim and claimed he had his orders, but I wouldn’t stand his nonsense and told him to make himself scarce. I hardly wanted such a disreputable rogue glowering at my wedding!’

‘Indeed not,’ Kate agreed.

‘Of course I didn’t tell him I knew his reputation. There was no call to embarrass the fellow.’

‘Quite right,’ Kate said and squeezed her lover’s arm. Luis appeared behind them, driving a small dusty gig that had been stored in the Quinta’s stables and to which he had harnessed his own horse. Christopher stopped halfway to the village and picked some of the small delicate wild narcissi that grew on the road’s verge and he insisted on threading the yellow blossoms into Kate’s black hair, and then he kissed her again and told her she was beautiful and Kate thought this had to be the happiest day of her life. The sun shone, a small wind stirred the flower-bright meadows and her man was beside her.

Father Josefa was waiting at the church, having been summoned by Christopher on his way to the Quinta, but before any ceremony could be performed the priest took the Englishman aside. ‘I have been worrying,’ the priest said, ‘that what you propose is irregular.’

‘Irregular, Father?’

‘You are Protestants?’ the priest asked and, when Christopher nodded, he sighed. ‘The church says that only those who take our sacraments can be married.’

‘And your church is right,’ Christopher said emolliently. He looked at Kate, standing alone in the white-painted chancel, and he thought she looked like an angel with the yellow flowers in her hair. ‘Tell me, Father,’ he went on, ‘do you look after the poor in your parish?’

‘It is a Christian duty,’ Father Josefa said.

Christopher took some golden English guineas from his pocket. They were not his, but from the funds supplied by the Foreign Office to smooth his way, and now he folded the priest’s hand around the coins. ‘Let me give you that as a contribution to your charitable work,’ he said, ‘and let me beg you to give us a blessing, that is all. A blessing in Latin, Father, that will enjoin God’s protection on us in these troubled times. And later, when the fighting is over, I shall do my best to persuade Kate to take instruction from you. As I will too, of course.’

Father Josefa, son of a labourer, looked at the coins and thought he had never seen so much money at one time and he thought of all the difficulties the gold could allay. ‘I cannot say a mass for you,’ he insisted.

‘I do not want a mass,’ Christopher said, ‘and I do not deserve a mass. I just want a blessing in Latin.’ He wanted Kate to believe she was married and, so far as Christopher was concerned, the priest could gabble the words of the funeral rite if he wanted. ‘Just a blessing from you, Father, is all I want. A blessing from you, from God, and from the saints.’ He took another few coins from his pocket and gave them to the priest, who decided a prayer of blessing could not possibly hurt.

‘And you will take instruction?’ Father Josefa asked.

‘I have felt God pulling me towards your church for some time,’ Christopher said, ‘and I believe I must heed His call. And then, Father, you may marry us properly.’

So Father Josefa kissed his scapular and then draped it about his shoulders and he went to the altar where he knelt, made the sign of the cross and then stood and turned to smile at Kate and the tall, handsome man at her side. The priest did not know Kate well, for the Savage family had never been familiar with the villagers and certainly did not attend the church, but the servants at the Quinta spoke approvingly of her and Father Josefa, though he was celibate, could appreciate that this girl was a rare beauty and so his voice was full of warmth as he enjoined God and the holy saints to look with kindness on these two souls. He felt guilty that they would behave as married people even though they were not married, but such things were common and in wartime a good priest knew when to close his eyes.

Kate listened to the Latin that she did not understand and she looked past the priest at the altar where the gently shining silver cross was hung with a black diaphanous veil because Easter had not yet come, and she felt her heart beating and felt her lover’s hand strongly entwined in hers and she wanted to cry with happiness. Her future seemed golden, stretching sunlit and warm and flower-strewn ahead of her. It was not quite the wedding she had envisaged. She had thought to sail back to England, which she and her mother still considered home, there to walk up the aisle of a country church filled with her rubicund relatives and be showered with rose petals and wheat grains and afterwards go in a chaise and four to some beamed tavern for a dinner of beef, beer and good red wine, yet she could not have been happier, or maybe she could have been happier if only her mother had been in the church, but she consoled herself that they would be reconciled, she was sure of that, and suddenly Christopher squeezed her hand so hard that it hurt. ‘Say I do, my dearest,’ he ordered her.

Kate blushed. ‘Oh, I do,’ she said, ‘I truly do.’

Father Josefa smiled at her. The sun streamed through the church’s small high windows, there were flowers in her hair and Father Josefa raised his hand to bless James and Katherine with the sign of the cross and just then the church door creaked open to let in a wash of more sunlight and the stench of a manure heap just outside.

Kate turned to see soldiers in the door. The men were outlined against the light so she could not see them properly, but she could see the guns on their shoulders and she supposed they were French and she gasped in fear, but Colonel Christopher seemed quite unworried as he tilted her face to his and kissed her on the lips. ‘We are married, my darling,’ he said softly.

‘James,’ she said.

‘My dear, dear Kate,’ the Colonel responded with a smile, ‘my dear, dear wife.’ Then he turned as harsh steps sounded in the small nave. They were slow steps, heavy steps, the nailed boots unfittingly loud on the ancient stones. An officer was walking towards the altar. He had left his men at the church door and came alone, his long sword clinking inside its metal scabbard as he walked closer. Then he stopped and stared into Kate’s pale face and Kate shuddered because the officer was a scarred, shabby, green-coated soldier with a tanned face harder than iron and a gaze that could only be described as impudent. ‘Are you Kate Savage?’ he asked, surprising her because he put the question in English and she had assumed the newcomer was French.

Kate said nothing. Her husband was beside her and he would protect her from this horrid, frightening and insolent man.

‘Is that you, Sharpe?’ Colonel Christopher demanded. ‘By God, it is!’ He was oddly nervous and his voice was too high-pitched and he had a struggle to bring it under control. ‘What the devil are you doing here? I ordered you south of the river, damn you.’

‘Got cut off, sir,’ Sharpe said, not looking at Christopher, but still staring at Kate’s face which was framed by the narcissi in her hair. ‘I got cut off by Frogs, sir, a lot of Frogs, so I fought them off, sir, and came to look for Miss Savage.’

‘Who no longer exists,’ the Colonel said coldly, ‘but allow me to introduce you to my wife, Sharpe, Mrs James Christopher.’

And Kate, hearing her new name, thought her heart would burst with happiness.

Because she believed she was married.

The newly united Colonel and Mrs Christopher rode back to the Quinta in the dusty gig, leaving Luis and the soldiers to trail after them. Hagman, still alive, was now in a handcart, though the jolting of the un-sprung vehicle seemed to give him more pain than the old stretcher. Lieutenant Vicente was also looking ill; indeed he was so pale that Sharpe feared the erstwhile lawyer had caught some disease in the last couple of days. ‘You should see the doctor when he comes to have another look at Hagman,’ Sharpe said. There was a doctor in the village who had already examined Hagman, pronounced him a dying man, but promised he would come to the Quinta that afternoon to look at the patient again. ‘You look as if you’ve got an upset belly,’ Sharpe said.

‘It is not an illness,’ Vicente said, ‘not something a doctor can cure.’

‘Then what is it?’

‘It is Miss Katherine,’ Vicente said forlornly.

‘Kate?’ Sharpe stared at Vicente. ‘You know her?’

Vicente nodded. ‘Every young man in Porto knows Kate Savage. When she was sent to school in England we pined for her and when she sailed back it was as if the sun had come out.’

‘She’s pretty enough,’ Sharpe allowed, then looked again at Vicente as the full force of the lawyer’s words registered. ‘Oh, bloody hell,’ he said.

‘What?’ Vicente asked, offended.

‘I don’t need you to be in love,’ Sharpe said.

‘I am not in love,’ Vicente said, still offended, but it was obvious that he was besotted with Kate Christopher. In the last two or three years he had gazed at her from afar and he had dreamed of her when he was writing his poetry and had been distracted by her memory when he was studying his philosophy and he had woven fantasies about her as he delved through the dusty law books. She was the Beatrice to his Dante, the unapproachable English girl from the big house on the hill and now she was married to Colonel Christopher.

And that, Sharpe thought, explained the silly bitch’s disappearance. She had eloped! But what Sharpe still did not understand was why she would need to conceal such a love from her mother who would surely approve of her choice? Christopher, so far as Sharpe could tell, was well born, affluent, properly educated and a gentleman: all the things, indeed, that Sharpe was not. Christopher was also very annoyed and, when Sharpe reached the Quinta, the Colonel faced him from the front steps and again demanded an explanation for the rifleman’s presence in Vila Real de Zedes.

‘I told you,’ Sharpe said, ‘we were cut off. We couldn’t cross the river.’

‘Sir,’ Christopher snapped, then waited for Sharpe to repeat the word, but Sharpe just stared past the Colonel into the Quinta’s hallway where he could see Kate unpacking clothes from the big leather valise.

‘I gave you orders,’ Christopher said.

‘We couldn’t cross the river,’ Sharpe said, ‘because there wasn’t a bridge. It broke. So we went to the ferry, but the damned Frogs had burned it, so now we’re going to Amarante, but we can’t use the main roads because the Frogs are swarming over them like lice, and I can’t go fast because I’ve got a wounded man and is there a room here where we can put him tonight?’

Christopher said nothing for a moment. He was waiting for Sharpe to call him ‘sir’, but the rifleman stubbornly stayed silent. Christopher sighed and glanced across the valley to where a buzzard circled. ‘You expect to stay here tonight?’ he asked distantly.

‘We’ve marched since three this morning,’ Sharpe said. He was not sure they had left at three o’clock because he had no watch, but it sounded about right. ‘We’ll rest now,’ he said, ‘then march again before tomorrow’s dawn.’

‘The French,’ Christopher said, ‘will be at Amarante.’

‘No doubt they will,’ Sharpe said, ‘but what else am I to do?’

Christopher flinched at Sharpe’s surly tone, then shuddered as Hagman moaned. ‘There’s a stable block behind the house,’ he said coldly, ‘put your wounded man there. And who the devil is that?’ He had noticed Vicente’s prisoner, Lieutenant Olivier.

Sharpe turned to see where the Colonel was looking. ‘A Frog,’ he answered, ‘whose throat I’m going to cut.’

Christopher stared in horror at Sharpe. ‘A Frog whose …’ he began to repeat, but just then Kate came from the house to stand beside him. He put an arm about her shoulder and, with an irritable look at Sharpe, raised his voice to call to Lieutenant Olivier. ‘Monsieur! Venez ici, s’il vous plaît.’

‘He’s a prisoner,’ Sharpe said.

‘He’s an officer?’ Christopher asked as Olivier threaded his way through Sharpe’s sullen men.

‘He’s a lieutenant,’ Sharpe said, ‘of the 18th Dragoons.’

Christopher gave Sharpe a rather startled look. ‘It is customary,’ he said coldly, ‘to allow officers to give their parole. Where is the Lieutenant’s sword?’

‘I wasn’t keeping him prisoner,’ Sharpe said, ‘Lieutenant Vicente was. The Lieutenant’s a lawyer, you see, and he seems to have the strange idea that the man should stand trial, but I was just planning on hanging him.’

Kate gave a small cry of horror. ‘Perhaps you should go inside, my dear,’ Christopher suggested, but she did not move and he did not insist. ‘Why were you going to hang him?’ he asked Sharpe instead.

‘Because he’s a rapist,’ Sharpe said flatly and the word prompted Kate to give another small cry, and this time Christopher bodily pushed her into the tiled hallway.

‘You will mind your language,’ Christopher said icily, ‘when my wife is present.’

‘There was a lady present when this bastard raped her,’ Sharpe said. ‘We caught him with his breeches round his ankles and his equipment hanging out. What was I supposed to do with him? Give him a brandy and offer him a game of whist?’

‘He is an officer and a gentleman,’ Christopher said, more concerned that Olivier was from the 18th Dragoons which meant he served with Captain Argenton. ‘Where is his sword?’

Lieutenant Vicente was introduced. He carried Olivier’s sword and Christopher insisted it was returned to the Frenchman. Vicente tried to explain that Olivier was accused of a crime and must be tried for it, but Colonel Christopher, speaking his impeccable Portuguese, dismissed the idea. ‘The conventions of war, Lieutenant,’ he said, ‘do not allow for the trial of military officers as though they were civilians. You should know that if, as Sharpe claims, you are a lawyer. To allow the civil trial of prisoners of war would open up the possibilities of reciprocity. Try this man and execute him and the French will do the same to every Portuguese officer they take captive. You understand that, surely?’

Vicente saw the force of the argument, but would not give in. ‘He is a rapist,’ he insisted.

‘He is a prisoner of war,’ Christopher contradicted him, ‘and you will give him over to my custody.’

Vicente still tried to resist. Christopher, after all, was in civilian clothes. ‘He is a prisoner of my army,’ Vicente said stubbornly.

‘And I,’ Christopher said disdainfully, ‘am a lieutenant colonel in His Britannic Majesty’s army, and that, I think, means that I outrank you, Lieutenant, and you will obey my orders or else you will face the military consequences.’

Vicente, outranked and overwhelmed, stepped back and Christopher, with a small bow, presented Olivier with his sword. ‘Perhaps you will do me the honour of waiting inside?’ he suggested to the Frenchman and, when a much relieved Olivier had gone into the Quinta, Christopher strode to the edge of the front steps and stared over Sharpe’s head to where a white cloud of dust was being generated on a track coming from the distant main road. A large body of horsemen was approaching the village and Christopher reckoned it had to be Captain Argenton and his escort. A look of alarm crossed his face and his gaze flickered to Sharpe, then back to the approaching cavalry. He dared not let the two meet. ‘Sharpe,’ he said, ‘you are under orders again.’

‘If you say so, sir.’ Sharpe sounded reluctant.

‘Then you will stay here and guard my wife,’ Christopher said. ‘Are those your horses?’ He pointed to the dozen cavalry horses captured at Barca d’Avintas, most of which were still saddled. ‘I’ll take two of them.’ He ran into the entrance hall and beckoned to Olivier. ‘Monsieur! You will accompany me and we go at once. Dearest one?’ He took Kate’s hand. ‘You will stay here till I return. I shall not be long. An hour at the most.’ He bent to give her knuckles a kiss, then hurried outside and hauled himself into the nearest saddle, watched Olivier mount, then both men spurred down the track. ‘You will stay here, Sharpe!’ Christopher shouted as he left. ‘Right here! That is an order!’

Vicente watched Christopher and the dragoon Lieutenant ride away. ‘Why has he taken the Frenchman?’

‘God knows,’ Sharpe said, and while Dodd and three other riflemen took Hagman to the stable block he climbed to the top step and took out his superb telescope which he rested on a finely carved stone urn that decorated the small terrace. He trained the glass on the approaching horsemen and saw they were French dragoons. A hundred of them? Maybe more. Sharpe could see the green coats and the pink facings and the straight swords and the brown cloth covers on their polished helmets, then he saw the horsemen curbing their mounts as Christopher and Olivier emerged from Vila Real de Zedes. Sharpe gave the telescope to Harper. ‘Why would that greasy bugger be talking to the Crapauds?’

‘God knows, sir,’ Harper said.

‘So watch ’em, Pat, watch ’em,’ Sharpe said, ‘and if they come any closer, let me know.’ He walked into the Quinta, giving the huge front door a perfunctory knock. Lieutenant Vicente was already in the entrance hall, staring with doglike devotion at Kate Savage who was now evidently Kate Christopher. Sharpe took off his shako and ran a hand through his newly cut hair. ‘Your husband has gone to talk to the French,’ he said, and saw the frown of disapproval on Kate’s face and wondered if that was because Christopher was talking to the French or because she was being addressed by Sharpe. ‘Why?’ he asked.

‘You must ask him, Lieutenant,’ she said.

‘My name’s Sharpe.’

‘I know your name,’ Kate said coldly.

‘Richard to my friends.’

‘It is good to know you possess some friends, Mister Sharpe,’ Kate said. She looked at him boldly and Sharpe thought what a beauty she was. She had the sort of face that painters immortalized in oils and it was no wonder that Vicente’s band of earnest poets and philosophers had worshipped her from afar.

‘So why is Colonel Christopher talking to the Frogs, ma’am?’

Kate blinked in surprise, not because her husband was talking with the enemy, but because, for the first time, she had been called ma’am. ‘I told you, Lieutenant,’ she said with some asperity, ‘you must ask him.’

Sharpe walked round the hall. He admired the curving marble stairway, gazed up at a fine tapestry that showed huntresses pursuing a stag, then looked at two busts in opposing niches. The busts had evidently been imported by the late Mister Savage, for one portrayed John Milton and the other was labelled John Bunyan. ‘I was sent to fetch you,’ he said to Kate, still staring at Bunyan.

‘To fetch me, Mister Sharpe?’

‘A Captain Hogan ordered me to find you,’ he told her, ‘and take you back to your mother. She was worried about you.’

Kate blushed, ‘My mother has no cause to worry. I have a husband now.’

‘Now?’ Sharpe said. ‘You were married this morning? That’s what we saw in the church?’

‘Is it any of your business?’ Kate demanded fiercely. Vicente looked crestfallen because he believed Sharpe was bullying the woman he so silently adored.

‘If you’re married, ma’am, then it’s none of my business,’ Sharpe said, ‘because I can’t take a married woman away from her husband, can I?’

‘No, you cannot,’ Kate said, ‘and we were indeed married this morning.’

‘My congratulations, ma’am,’ Sharpe said, then stopped to admire an old grandfather clock. Its face was decorated with smiling moons and bore the legend ‘Thomas Tompion, London’. He opened the polished case and pulled down the weights so that the mechanism began ticking. ‘I expect your mother will be delighted, ma’am.’

‘It is none of your business, Lieutenant,’ Kate said, bridling.

‘Pity she couldn’t be here, eh? Your mother was in tears when I left her.’ He turned on her. ‘Is he really a colonel?’

The question took Kate by surprise, especially after the disconcerting news that her mother had been crying. She blushed, then tried to look dignified and offended. ‘Of course he’s a colonel,’ she said indignantly, ‘and you are impudent, Mister Sharpe.’

Sharpe laughed. His face was grim in repose, made so by the scar on his cheek, but when he smiled or laughed the grimness went, and Kate, to her astonishment, felt her heart skip a beat. She had been remembering the story Christopher had told her, of how the Lady Grace had destroyed her reputation by living with this man. What had Christopher said? Fishing in the dirty end of the lake, but suddenly Kate envied Lady Grace and then remembered she had been married less than an hour and was very properly ashamed of herself. But all the same, she thought, this rogue was horribly attractive when he smiled and he was smiling at her now. ‘You’re right,’ Sharpe said, ‘I am impudent. Always have been and probably always will be and I apologize for it, ma’am.’ He looked around the hall again. ‘This is your mother’s house?’

‘It is my house,’ Kate said, ‘since my father died. And now, I suppose, it is my husband’s property.’

‘I’ve got a wounded man and your husband said he should be put in the stables. I don’t like putting wounded men into stables when there are better rooms.’

Kate blushed, though Sharpe was not sure why, then she pointed towards a door at the back of the hall. ‘The servants have quarters by the kitchens,’ she said, ‘and I’m sure there is a comfortable room there.’ She stepped aside and gestured again at the door. ‘Why don’t you look?’

‘I will, ma’am,’ Sharpe said, but instead of exploring the back parts of the house, he just stared at her.

‘What is it?’ Kate asked, unsettled by his dark gaze.

‘I was merely going to offer you felicitations, ma’am, for your marriage,’ Sharpe said.

‘Thank you, Lieutenant,’ Kate said.

‘Marry in haste,’ Sharpe said and paused, and he saw the anger flare in her eyes and he smiled at her again, ‘is something folks often do in wartime,’ he finished. ‘I’ll go round the outside of the house, ma’am.’

He left her to Vicente’s admiration and joined Harper on the terrace. ‘Is the bastard still talking?’ he asked.

‘The Colonel’s still talking to the Crapauds, sir,’ Harper said, gazing through the telescope, ‘and they’re not coming any closer. The Colonel’s full of surprises, isn’t he?’

‘Stuffed as full of them,’ Sharpe said, ‘as a plum pudding.’

‘So what do we do, sir?’

‘We move Dan into a servant’s room by the kitchen. Let the doctor see him. If the doctor thinks he can travel then we’ll go to Amarante.’

‘Do we take the girl?’

‘Not if she’s married, Pat. We can’t do a bloody thing with her if she’s married. She belongs to him now, lock, stock and barrel.’ Sharpe scratched under his collar where a louse had bitten. ‘Pretty girl.’

‘Is she now? I hadn’t noticed.’

‘You lying Irish bastard,’ Sharpe said.

Harper grinned. ‘Aye, well, she’s smooth on the eye, sir, smooth as they come, but she’s also a married woman.’

‘Off bounds, eh?’

‘A colonel’s wife? I wouldn’t dream of it,’ Harper said, ‘not if I were you.’

‘I’m not dreaming, Patrick,’ Sharpe said, ‘just wondering how to get the hell out of here. How do we go back home.’

‘Back to the army?’ Harper asked. ‘Or back to England?’

‘God knows. Which would you want?’

They should have been in England. They all belonged to the second battalion of the 95th Rifles and that battalion was in the Shorncliffe barracks, but Sharpe and his men had been separated from the rest of the greenjackets during the scrambling retreat to Vigo and somehow they had never managed to rejoin. Captain Hogan had seen to that. Hogan needed men to protect him while he mapped the wild frontier country between Spain and Portugal and a squad of prime riflemen were heaven-sent and he had cleverly managed to confuse the paperwork, reroute letters, scratch pay from the military chest and so keep Sharpe and his men close to the war.

‘England holds nothing for me,’ Harper said, ‘I’m happier here.’

‘And the men?’

‘Most like it here,’ the Irishman said, ‘but a few want to go home. Cresacre, Sims, the usual grumblers. John Williamson is the worst. He keeps telling the others that you’re only here because you want promotion and that you’ll sacrifice us all to get it.’

‘He says that?’

‘And worse.’

‘Sounds a good idea,’ Sharpe said lightly.

‘But I don’t think anyone believes him, other than the usual bastards. Most of us know we’re here by accident.’ Harper stared at the distant French dragoons, then shook his head. ‘I’ll have to give Williamson a thumping sooner or later.’

‘You or me,’ Sharpe agreed.

Harper put the telescope to his eye again. ‘The bastard’s coming back,’ he said, ‘and he’s left that other bastard with them.’ He handed Sharpe the telescope.

‘Olivier?’

‘He’s bloody given him back!’ Harper was indignant.

Through the telescope Sharpe could see Christopher riding back towards Vila Real de Zedes accompanied by a single man, a civilian judging by his clothes, and certainly not Lieutenant Olivier, who was evidently riding northwards with the dragoons. ‘Those Crapauds must have seen us,’ Sharpe said.

‘Clear as daylight,’ Harper agreed.

‘And Lieutenant Olivier will have told them we’re here,’ Sharpe said, ‘so why the devil are they leaving us alone?’

‘Because your man’s made an agreement with the bastards,’ Harper said, nodding towards the distant Christopher.

Sharpe wondered why an English officer would be making agreements with the enemy. ‘We should give him a smacking,’ he said.

‘Not if he’s a colonel.’

‘Then we should give the bastard two smackings,’ Sharpe said savagely, ‘then we’d find the bloody truth quickly enough.’

The two men fell silent as Christopher cantered up the drive to the house. The man accompanying him was young, red-haired and in plain civilian clothes, yet the horse he rode had a French mark on its rump and the saddle was military issue. Christopher looked at the telescope in Sharpe’s hand. ‘You must be curious, Sharpe,’ he said with unusual geniality.

‘I’m curious,’ Sharpe said, ‘why our prisoner was given back.’

‘Because I decided to give him back, of course,’ Christopher said, sliding down from the horse, ‘and he’s promised not to fight us until the French return a British prisoner of equal rank. All quite normal, Sharpe, and no occasion for indignation. This is Monsieur Argenton who will be going with me to visit General Cradock in Lisbon.’ The Frenchman, hearing his name spoken, gave Sharpe a nervous nod.

‘We’ll come with you,’ Sharpe said, ignoring the Frenchman.

Christopher shook his head. ‘I think not, Sharpe. Monsieur Argenton will arrange for the two of us to use the pontoon bridge at Oporto if it’s been repaired, and if not he’ll arrange passage on a ferry, and I hardly think our French friends will allow a half company of riflemen to cross the river under their noses, do you?’

‘If you talk to them, maybe,’ Sharpe said. ‘You seem friendly enough with them.’

Christopher threw his reins to Luis, then gestured that Argenton should dismount and follow him into the house. ‘“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,”’ Christopher said, going past Sharpe, then he turned. ‘I have different plans for you.’

‘You have plans for me?’ Sharpe asked truculently.

‘I believe a lieutenant colonel outranks a lieutenant in His Britannic Majesty’s army, Sharpe,’ Christopher said sarcastically. ‘It always was so, which means, does it not, that you are under my command? So you will come to the house in half an hour and I shall give you your new orders. Come, monsieur.’ He beckoned to Argenton, glanced coldly at Sharpe, and went up the steps.

It rained next morning. It was colder too. Grey veils of showers swept out of the west, brought from the Atlantic by a chill wind that blew the wisteria blossom from the thrashing trees, banged the Quinta’s shutters and sent chill draughts chasing through its rooms. Sharpe, Vicente and their men had slept in the stable block, guarded by picquets who shivered in the night and peered through the damp blackness. Sharpe, doing the rounds in the darkest heart of the night, saw one window of the Quinta glowing with the glimmer of shuddering candlelight behind the wind-shaken shutters and he thought he heard a cry like an animal in distress from that upper floor, and for a fleeting second he was sure it was Kate’s voice, then he told himself it was his imagination or that it was just the wind shrieking in the chimneys. He went to see Hagman at dawn and found the old poacher was sweating, but alive. He was asleep and once or twice spoke a name aloud. ‘Amy,’ he said, ‘Amy.’ The doctor had visited the previous afternoon, he had sniffed the wound, shrugged, said Hagman would die, washed the injury, bandaged it and refused to take any fee. ‘Keep the bandages wet,’ he had told Vicente who was translating for Sharpe, ‘and dig a grave.’ The Portuguese Lieutenant did not translate the last four words.

Sharpe was summoned to Colonel Christopher soon after sunrise and found the Colonel seated in the parlour and swathed in hot towels as Luis shaved him. ‘He used to be a barber,’ the Colonel said. ‘Weren’t you a barber, Luis?’

‘A good one,’ Luis said.

‘You look as if you could do with a barber, Sharpe,’ Christopher said. ‘Cut your own hair, do you?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Looks like it. Looks like the rats got to it.’ The razor made a slight scratching noise as it glided down his chin. Luis wiped the blade with a flannel, scraped again. ‘My wife,’ Christopher said, ‘will have to stay here. I ain’t happy.’

‘No, sir?’

‘But she ain’t safe anywhere else, is she? She can’t go to Oporto, it’s full of Frenchmen who are raping anything that isn’t dead and probably things that are dead if they’re still fresh, and they won’t get the place under decent control for another day or two, so she must stay here, and I’ll feel a great deal more comfortable, Sharpe, if she’s protected. So you will guard my wife, let your wounded fellow recover, have a rest, contemplate God’s ineffable ways and in a week or so I’ll be back and you can go.’

Sharpe looked out of the window where a gardener was scything the lawn, probably the first cut of the year. The scythe slid through the pale blossoms blown from the wisteria. ‘Mrs Christopher could accompany you south, sir,’ he suggested.

‘No, she bloody well can’t,’ Christopher snapped. ‘I told her it’s too dangerous. Captain Argenton and I have to get through the lines, Sharpe, and we won’t make things easier for ourselves by taking a woman with us.’ The true reason, of course, was that he did not want Kate to meet her mother and tell her of the marriage in Vila Real de Zedes’s small church. ‘So Kate will stay here,’ Christopher went on, ‘and you will treat her with respect.’ Sharpe said nothing, just looked at the Colonel, who had the grace to shift uncomfortably. ‘Of course you will,’ Christopher said. ‘I’ll have a word with the village priest on our way out and make sure his people deliver food for you. Bread, beans and a bullock should do your fellows for a week, eh? And for God’s sake don’t make yourselves obvious; I don’t want the French sacking this house. There’s some damn fine pipes of port in the cellars and I don’t want your rogues helping themselves.’

‘They won’t, sir,’ Sharpe said. Last night, when Christopher had first told him that he and his men must stay at the Quinta, the Colonel had produced a letter from General Cradock. The letter had been carried around for so long that it was fragile, especially along the creases, and its ink was faded, but it clearly stated, in English and Portuguese, that Lieutenant-Colonel James Christopher was employed on work of great importance and enjoined every British and Portuguese officer to attend to the Colonel’s orders and offer him whatever help he might require. The letter, which Sharpe had no reason to believe was counterfeit, made it clear that Christopher was in a position to give Sharpe orders and so he now sounded more respectful than he had the previous evening. ‘They won’t touch the port, sir,’ he said.

‘Good. Good. That’s all, Sharpe, you’re dismissed.’

‘You’re going south, sir?’ Sharpe asked instead of leaving.

‘I told you, we’re going to see General Cradock.’

‘Then perhaps you’d take a letter to Captain Hogan for me, sir?’

‘Write it quick, Sharpe, write it quick. I have to be off.’

Sharpe wrote it quick. He disliked writing for he had never learned his letters properly, not school proper, and he knew his expressions were as clumsy as his penmanship, but he wrote to tell Hogan that he was stranded north of the river, that he was ordered to stay at the Quinta do Zedes and that, just as soon as he was released from those orders, he would return to duty. He guessed that Christopher would read the letter and so he had made no mention of the Colonel nor offered any criticism of his orders. He gave the letter to Christopher who, dressed in civilian clothes and accompanied by the Frenchman who was also out of uniform, left in mid-morning. Luis rode with them.

Kate had also written a letter, this one to her mother. She had been pale and tearful in the morning, which Sharpe put down to her imminent parting from her new husband, but in truth Kate was upset that Christopher would not let her accompany him, an idea the Colonel had brusquely refused to consider. ‘Where we are going,’ he had insisted, ‘is exceedingly dangerous. Going through the lines, my dear one, is perilous in the extreme and I cannot expose you to such risk.’ He had seen Kate’s unhappiness and taken both her hands in his. ‘Do you believe that I wish to part from you so soon? Do you not understand that only matters of duty, of the very highest duty, would tear me from your side? You must trust me, Kate. I think trust is very important in marriage, don’t you?’

And Kate, trying not to cry, had agreed that it was.

‘You will be safe,’ Christopher had told her. ‘Sharpe’s men will guard you. I know he looks uncouth, but he’s an English officer and that means he’s almost a gentleman. And you’ve got plenty of servants to chaperone you.’ He frowned. ‘Does having Sharpe here worry you?’

‘No,’ Kate said, ‘I’ll just stay out of his way.’

‘I’ve no doubt he’ll be glad of that. Lady Grace might have tamed him a little, but he’s plainly uncomfortable around civilized folk. I’m sure you’ll be quite safe till I return. I can leave you a pistol if you’re worried?’

‘No,’ Kate said, for she knew there was a pistol in her father’s old gun room and, anyway, she did not think she would need it to deter Sharpe. ‘How long will you be away?’ she asked.

‘A week? At most ten days. One cannot be precise about such things, but be assured, my dearest, that I shall hurry back to you with the utmost dispatch.’

She gave him the letter for her mother. The letter, written by candlelight just before dawn, told Mrs Savage that her daughter loved her, that she was sorry she had deceived her, but nevertheless she was married to a wonderful man, a man Mrs Savage would surely come to love as though he were her own son, and Kate promised she would be back at her mother’s side just as soon as she possibly could. In the meantime she commended herself, her husband and her mother to God’s tender care.

Colonel James Christopher read his wife’s letter as he rode towards Oporto. Then he read Sharpe’s letter.

‘Something important?’ Captain Argenton asked him.

‘Trivialities, my dear Captain, mere trivialities,’ Christopher said and read Sharpe’s letter a second time. ‘Good God,’ he said, ‘but they allow utter illiterates to carry the King’s commission these days,’ and with those words he tore both letters into tiny shreds that he let fly upon the cold, rain-laden wind so that, for a moment, the white scraps looked like snow behind his horse. ‘I assume,’ he asked Argenton, ‘that we shall need a permit to cross the river?’

‘I shall get one from headquarters,’ Argenton said.

‘Good,’ Christopher said, ‘good,’ because in his saddlebag, unknown to Captain Argenton, was a third letter, one that Christopher had written himself in polished, perfect French, and it was addressed, care of Marshal Soult’s headquarters, to Brigadier Henri Vuillard, the man who was most feared by Argenton and his fellow plotters. Christopher smiled, remembered the joys of the night and anticipated the greater joys to come. He was a happy man.