Читать книгу Sharpe 3-Book Collection 2 - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 13

The loss of the telescope hurt Sharpe. He told himself it was a bauble, a useful frill, but it still hurt. It marked an achievement, not just the rescue of Sir Arthur Wellesley, but the promotion to commissioned rank afterwards. Sometimes, when he scarcely dared believe that he was a King’s officer, he would look at the telescope and think how far he had travelled from the orphanage in Brewhouse Lane and at other times, though he was reluctant to admit it to himself, he enjoyed refusing to explain the plaque on the telescope’s barrel. Yet he knew other men knew. They looked at him, understood he had once fought like a demon under the Indian sun and were awed.

Now bloody Christopher had the glass.

‘You’ll get it back, sir,’ Harper tried to console him.

‘I bloody will, too. I hear that Williamson got into a fight in the village last night?’

‘Not much of a fight, sir. I pulled him off.’

‘Who was he milling?’

‘One of Lopes’s men, sir. As evil a bastard as Williamson.’

‘Should I punish him?’

‘God, no, sir. I looked after it.’

But Sharpe nevertheless declared the village out of bounds, which he knew would not be popular with his men. Harper spoke for them, pointing out that there were some pretty girls in Vila Real de Zedes. ‘There’s one wee slip of a thing there, sir,’ he said, ‘that would bring tears to your eyes. The lads only want to walk down there of an evening to say hello.’

‘And to leave some babies behind.’

‘That too,’ Harper agreed.

‘And the girls can’t walk up here?’ Sharpe asked. ‘I hear some do.’

‘Some do, sir, I’m told, that’s true.’

‘Including one wee slip of a thing that has red hair and can bring tears to your eyes?’

Harper watched a buzzard quartering the broom-clad slopes of the hill on which the fort was being made. ‘Some of us like to go to church in the village, sir,’ he said, studiously not talking about the red-headed girl whose name was Maria.

Sharpe smiled. ‘So how many Catholics have we got?’

‘There’s me, sir, and Donnelly and Carter and McNeill. Oh, and Slattery, of course. The rest of you are all going to hell.’

‘Slattery!’ Sharpe said. ‘Fergus isn’t a Christian.’

‘I never said he was, sir, but he goes to mass.’

Sharpe could not help laughing. ‘So I’ll let the Catholics go to mass,’ he said.

Harper grinned. ‘That means they’ll all be Catholic by Sunday.’

‘This is the army,’ Sharpe said, ‘so anyone wanting to convert has to get my permission. But you can take the other four to mass and you bring them back by midday, and if I find any of the other lads down there I’ll hold you responsible.’

‘Me?’

‘You’re a sergeant, aren’t you?’

‘But when the lads see Lieutenant Vicente’s men going to the village, sir, they won’t see why they’re not allowed.’

‘Vicente’s Portuguese. His men know the local rules. We don’t. And sooner or later there’s going to be a fight over girls that’ll bring tears to your eyes and we don’t need it, Pat.’ The problem was not so much the girls, though Sharpe knew they could be a problem if one of his riflemen became drunk, and that was the true problem. There were two taverns in the village and both served cheap wine out of barrels and half his men would become paralysed with drink given half a chance. And there was a temptation to relax the rules because the situation of the riflemen was so strange. They were out of touch with the army, not sure what was happening and without enough to do, and so Sharpe invented more work for them. The fort was now sprouting extra stone redoubts and Sharpe found tools in the Quinta’s barn and made his men clear the track through the woods and carry bundles of firewood up to the watchtower, and when that was done he led long patrols into the surrounding countryside. The patrols were not intended to seek out the enemy, but to tire the men so that they collapsed at sundown and slept till dawn, and each dawn Sharpe held a formal parade and put men on a charge if he found a button undone or a scrap of rust on a rifle lock. They moaned at him, but there was no trouble with the villagers.

The barrels in the village taverns were not the only danger. The cellar of the Quinta was full of port barrels and racks of bottled white wine, and Williamson managed to find the key that was supposedly hidden in a kitchen jar, then he and Sims and Gataker got helplessly drunk on Savages’ finest, a carouse that ended well past midnight with the three men hurling stones at the Quinta’s shutters.

The three had ostensibly been on picquet under the eye of Dodd, a reliable man, and Sharpe dealt with him first. ‘Why didn’t you report them?’

‘I didn’t know where they were, sir.’ Dodd kept his eyes on the wall above Sharpe’s head. He was lying, of course, but only because the men always protected each other. Sharpe had when he was in the ranks and he did not expect anything else of Matthew Dodd, just as Dodd did not expect anything except a punishment.

Sharpe looked at Harper. ‘Got work for him, Sergeant?’

‘The cook was complaining that all the kitchen copper needed a proper cleaning, sir.’

‘Make him sweat,’ Sharpe said, ‘and no wine ration for a week.’ The men were entitled to a pint of rum a day and in the absence of the raw spirit Sharpe was doling out red from a barrel he had commandeered from the Quinta’s cellar. He punished Sims and Gataker by making them wear full uniform and greatcoats and then march up and down the drive with rucksacks filled with stones. They did it under Harper’s enthusiastic eye and when they vomited with exhaustion and the effects of a hangover the Sergeant kicked them to their feet, made them clear the vomit off the driveway with their own hands, and then keep marching.

Vicente arranged for a mason from the village to brick up the wine cellar’s entrance, and while that was being done, and while Dodd scrubbed the coppers with sand and vinegar, Sharpe took Williamson up into the woods. He was tempted to flog the man, for he was very close to hating Williamson, but Sharpe had once been flogged himself and he was reluctant to inflict the same punishment. Instead he found an open space between some laurels and used his sword to scratch two lines in the mossy turf. The lines were a yard long and a yard apart. ‘You don’t like me, do you, Williamson?’

Williamson said nothing. He just stared at the lines with red eyes. He knew what they were.

‘What are my three rules, Williamson?’

Williamson looked up sullenly. He was a big man, heavy-faced with long side whiskers, a broken nose and smallpox scars. He came from Leicester where he had been convicted of stealing two candlesticks from St Nicholas’s Church and offered the chance to enlist rather than hang. ‘Don’t thieve,’ he said in a low voice, ‘don’t get drunk and fight proper.’

‘Are you a thief?’

‘No, sir.’

‘You bloody are, Williamson. That’s why you’re in the army. And you got drunk without permission. But can you fight?’

‘You know I can, sir.’

Sharpe unbuckled his sword belt and let it and the weapon drop, then took off his shako and green jacket and threw them down. ‘Tell me why you don’t like me,’ he demanded.

Williamson stared off into the laurels.

‘Come on!’ Sharpe said. ‘Say what you bloody like. You’re not going to be punished for answering a question.’

Williamson looked back at him. ‘We shouldn’t be here!’ he blurted out.

‘You’re right.’

Williamson blinked at that, but carried on. ‘Ever since Captain Murray died, sir, we’ve been out on our own! We should be back with the battalion. It’s where we belong. You were never our officer, sir. Never!’

‘I am now.’

‘It ain’t right.’

‘So you want to go home to England?’

‘The battalion’s there, so I do, aye.’

‘But there’s a war on, Williamson. A bloody war. And we’re stuck in it. We didn’t ask to be here, don’t even want to be here, but we are. And we’re staying.’ Williamson looked at Sharpe resentfully, but said nothing. ‘But you can go home, Williamson,’ Sharpe said and the heavy face looked up, interested. ‘There are three ways for you to go home. One, we get orders for England. Two, you get wounded so badly that they send you home. And three, you put your feet on the scratch and you fight me. Win or lose, Williamson, I promise to send you home as soon as I can by the first bloody ship we find. All you have to do is fight me.’ Sharpe walked to one of the lines and put his toes against it. This was how the pugilists fought, they toed the line and then punched it out with bare fists until one man dropped in bloody, battered exhaustion. ‘Fight me properly, mind,’ Sharpe said, ‘no dropping after the first hit. You’ll have to draw blood to prove you’re trying. Hit me on the nose, that’ll do it.’ He waited. Williamson licked his lips.

‘Come on!’ Sharpe snarled. ‘Fight me!’

‘You’re an officer,’ Williamson said.

‘Not now, I’m not. And no one’s watching. Just you and me, Williamson, and you don’t like me and I’m giving you a chance to thump me. And you do it properly and I’ll have you home by summer.’ He did not know how he would keep that promise, but nor did he think he would have to try, for Williamson, he knew, was remembering the epic fight between Harper and Sharpe, a fight that had left both men reeling, yet Sharpe had won it and the riflemen had watched it and they learned something about Sharpe that day.

And Williamson did not want to learn the lesson again. ‘I won’t fight an officer,’ he said with assumed dignity.

Sharpe turned his back, picked up his jacket. ‘Then find Sergeant Harper,’ he said, ‘and tell him you’re to do the same punishment as Sims and Gataker.’ He turned back. ‘On the double!’

Williamson ran. His shame at refusing the fight might make him more dangerous, but it would also diminish his influence over the other men who, even though they would never know what had happened in the woods, would sense that Williamson had been humiliated. Sharpe buckled his belt and walked slowly back. He worried about his men, worried that he would lose their loyalty, worried that he was proving a bad officer. He remembered Blas Vivar and wished he had the Spanish officer’s quiet ability to enforce obedience through sheer presence, but perhaps that effortless authority came with experience. At least none of his men had deserted. They were all present, except for Tarrant and the few who were back in Coimbra’s military hospital recovering from the fever.

It was a month now since Oporto had fallen. The fort on the hilltop was almost finished and, to Sharpe’s surprise, the men had enjoyed the hard labour. Daniel Hagman was walking again, albeit slowly, but he was mended enough to work and Sharpe placed a kitchen table in the sun where, one by one, Hagman stripped, cleaned and oiled every rifle. The fugitives who had fled from Oporto had now returned to the city or found refuge elsewhere, but the French were making new fugitives. Wherever they were ambushed by partisans they sacked the closest villages and, even without the provocation of ambush, they plundered farms mercilessly to feed themselves. More and more folk came to Vila Real de Zedes, drawn there by rumours that the French had agreed to spare the village. No one knew why the French should do such a thing, though some of the older women said it was because the whole valley was under the protection of Saint Joseph whose life-size statue was in the church, and the village’s priest, Father Josefa, encouraged the belief. He even had the statue taken from the church, hung with fading narcissi and crowned with a laurel wreath, and then carried about the village boundary to show the saint the precise extent of the lands needing his guardianship. Vila Real de Zedes, folk believed, was a sanctuary from the war and ordained as such by God.

May arrived with rain and wind. The last of the blossom was blown from the trees to make damp rills of pink and white petals in the grass. Still the French did not come and Manuel Lopes reckoned they were simply too busy to bother with Vila Real de Zedes. ‘They’ve got troubles,’ he said happily. ‘Silveira’s giving them a bellyache at Amarante and the road to Vigo has been closed by partisans. They’re cut off! No way home! They’re not going to worry us here.’ Lopes frequently went to the nearby towns where he posed as a pedlar selling religious trinkets and he brought back news of the French troops. ‘They patrol the roads,’ he said, ‘they get drunk at night and they wish they were back home.’

‘And they look for food,’ Sharpe said.

‘They do that too,’ Lopes agreed.

‘And one day,’ Sharpe said, ‘when they’re hungry, they’ll come here.’

‘Colonel Christopher won’t let them,’ Lopes said. He was walking with Sharpe along the Quinta’s drive, watched by Harris and Cooper who stood guard at the gate, the closest Sharpe allowed his Protestant riflemen to the village. Rain was threatening. Grey sheets of it fell across the northern hills and Sharpe had twice heard rumbles of thunder which might have been the sound of the guns at Amarante, but seemed too loud. ‘I shall leave soon,’ Lopes announced.

‘Back to Bragança?’

‘Amarante. My men are recovered. It is time to fight again.’

‘You could do one thing before you go,’ Sharpe said, ignoring the implied criticism in Lopes’s last words. ‘Tell those refugees to get out of the village. Tell them to go home. Tell them Saint Joseph is overworked and he won’t protect them when the French come.’

Lopes shook his head. ‘The French aren’t coming,’ he insisted.

‘And when they do,’ Sharpe continued, just as insistently, ‘I can’t defend the village. I don’t have enough men.’

Lopes looked disgusted. ‘You’ll just defend the Quinta,’ he suggested, ‘because it belongs to an English family.’

‘I don’t give a damn about the Quinta,’ Sharpe said angrily. ‘I’ll be up on that hilltop trying to stay alive. For Christ’s sake, there’s less than sixty of us! And the French will send fifteen hundred.’

‘They won’t come,’ Lopes said. He reached up to pluck some shrivelled white blossom from a tree. ‘I never did trust Savages’ port,’ he said.

‘Trust?’

‘An elder tree,’ Lopes said, showing Sharpe the petals. ‘The bad port makers put elderberry juice in the wine to make it look richer.’ He tossed away the flowers and Sharpe had a sudden memory of that day in Oporto, the day the refugees drowned when the French had taken the city, and he remembered how Christopher had been about to write him the order to go back across the Douro and the cannonball had struck the tree to shower pinkish-red petals which the Colonel had thought were cherry blossom. And Sharpe remembered the look on Christopher’s face at the mention of the name Judas.

‘Jesus!’ Sharpe said.

‘What?’ Lopes was taken aback by the force of the imprecation.

‘He’s a bloody traitor,’ Sharpe said.

‘Who?’

‘The bloody Colonel,’ Sharpe said. It was only instinct that had so suddenly persuaded him that Christopher was betraying his country, an instinct grounded in the memory of the Colonel’s look of outrage when Sharpe said the blossom came from a Judas tree. Ever since then Sharpe had been havering between a half suspicion of Christopher’s treachery and a vague belief that perhaps the Colonel was engaged in some mysterious diplomatic work, but the recollection of that look on Christopher’s face and the realization that there had been fear as well as outrage in it convinced Sharpe. Christopher was not just a thief, but a traitor. ‘You’re right,’ he told an astonished Lopes, ‘it is time to fight. Harris!’ He turned towards the gate.

‘Sir?’

‘Find Sergeant Harper for me. And Lieutenant Vicente.’

Vicente came first and Sharpe could not explain why he was so certain that Christopher was a traitor, but Vicente was not inclined to debate the point. He hated Christopher because he had married Kate, and he was as bored as Sharpe at the undemanding life at the Quinta. ‘Get food,’ Sharpe urged him. ‘Go to the village, ask them to bake bread, buy as much salted and smoked meat as you can. I want every man to have five days’ rations by nightfall.’

Harper was more cautious. ‘I thought you had orders, sir.’

‘I do, Pat, from General Cradock.’

‘Jesus, sir, you don’t disobey a general’s orders.’

‘And who fetched those orders?’ Sharpe asked. ‘Christopher did. So he lied to Cradock just as he’s lied to everyone else.’ He was not certain of that, he could not be certain, but nor could he see the sense in just dallying at the Quinta. He would go south and trust that Captain Hogan would protect him from General Cradock’s wrath. ‘We’ll march at dusk tonight,’ he told Harper. ‘I want you to check everyone’s equipment and ammunition.’

Harper smelt the air. ‘We’re going to have rain, sir, bad rain.’

‘That’s why God made our skins waterproof,’ Sharpe said.

‘I was thinking we might do better to wait till after midnight, sir. Give the rain a chance to blow over.’

Sharpe shook his head. ‘I want to get out of here, Pat. I feel bad about this place suddenly. We’ll take everyone south. Towards the river.’

‘I thought the Crapauds had stripped out all the boats?’

‘I don’t want to go east’ – Sharpe jerked his head towards Amarante where rumour said a battle still raged – ‘and there’s nothing but Crapauds to the west.’ The north was all mountain, rock and starvation, but to the south lay the river and he knew British forces were somewhere beyond the Douro and Sharpe had been thinking that the French could not have destroyed every boat along its long, rocky banks. ‘We’ll find a boat,’ he promised Harper.

‘It’ll be dark tonight, sir. Lucky even to find the way.’

‘For God’s sake,’ Sharpe said, irritated with Harper’s pessimism, ‘we’ve been patrolling this place for a bloody month! We can find our way south.’

By evening they had two sacks of bread, some rock-hard smoked goat meat, two cheeses and a bag of beans that Sharpe distributed among the men, then he had an inspiration and went to the Quinta’s kitchen and stole two large tins of tea. He reckoned it was time Kate did something for her country and there were few finer gestures than donating good China tea to riflemen. He gave one tin to Harper and shoved the other into his pack. It had started to rain, the drops pounding on the stable roof and cascading off the tiles into the cobbled yard. Daniel Hagman watched the rain from the stable door. ‘I feel just fine, sir,’ he reassured Sharpe.

‘We can make a stretcher, Dan, if you feel poorly.’

‘Lord, no, sir! I’m right as rain, right as rain.’

No one wanted to leave in this downpour, but Sharpe was determined to use every hour of darkness to make his way towards the Douro. There was a chance, he thought, of reaching the river by midday tomorrow and he would let the men rest while he scouted the river bank for a means to cross. ‘Packs on!’ he ordered. ‘Ready yourselves.’ He watched Williamson for any sign of reluctance, but the man got a move on with the rest. Vicente had distributed wine corks and the men pushed them into the muzzles of their rifles or muskets. The weapons were not loaded because in this rain the priming would turn to grey slush. There was more grumbling when Sharpe ordered them out of the stables, but they hunched their shoulders and followed him out of the courtyard and up into the wood where the oaks and silver birches thrashed under the assault of wind and rain. Sharpe was soaked to the skin before they had gone a quarter-mile, but he consoled himself that no one else was likely to be out in this vile weather. The evening light was fading fast and early, stolen by the black, thick-bellied clouds that scraped against the jagged outcrop of the ruined watchtower. Sharpe was following a path that would lead around the western side of the watchtower’s hill and he glanced up at the old masonry as they emerged from the trees and thought ruefully of all that work.

He called a halt to let the rear of the line catch up. Daniel Hagman was evidently holding up well. Harper, two smoked legs of goat hanging from his belt, climbed up to join Sharpe, who was watching the arriving men from a vantage point a few feet higher than the path. ‘Bloody rain,’ Harper said.

‘It’ll stop eventually.’

‘Is that so?’ Harper asked innocently.

It was then Sharpe saw the gleam of light in the vineyards. It was not lightning, it was too dull, too small and too close to the ground, but he knew he had not imagined it and he cursed Christopher for stealing his telescope. He gazed at the spot where the light had shown so briefly, but saw nothing.

‘What is it?’ Vicente had climbed to join him.

‘Thought I saw a flash of light,’ Sharpe said.

‘Just rain,’ Harper said dismissively.

‘Perhaps it was a piece of broken glass,’ Vicente suggested. ‘I once found some Roman glass in a field near Entre-os-Rios. There were two broken vases and some coins of Septimus Severus.’

Sharpe was not listening. He was watching the vineyards.

‘I gave the coins to the seminary in Porto,’ Vicente went on, raising his voice to make himself heard over the seething rain, ‘because the Fathers keep a small museum there.’

‘The sun doesn’t reflect off glass when it’s raining,’ Sharpe said, but something had reflected out there, more like a smear of light, a damp gleam, and he searched the hedgerow between the vines and suddenly saw it again. He swore.

‘What is it?’ Vicente asked.

‘Dragoons,’ Sharpe said, ‘dozens of the bastards. Dismounted and watching us.’ The gleam had been the dull light reflecting from one of the brass helmets. There must have been a tear in the helmet’s protective cloth cover and the man, running along the hedge, had served as a beacon, but now that Sharpe had seen the first green uniform among the green vines, he could see dozens more. ‘The bastards were going to ambush us,’ he said, and he felt a reluctant admiration for an enemy who could use such vile weather, then he worked out that the dragoons must have approached Vila Real de Zedes during the day and somehow he had missed them, but they would not have missed the significance of the work he was doing on the hilltop and they must know that the hog-backed ridge was his refuge. ‘Sergeant!’ he snapped at Harper. ‘Up the hill now! Now!’ And pray they were not too late.

Colonel Christopher might have rewritten the rules, yet the chess pieces could still only move in their accustomed ways, but his knowledge of the moves allowed him to look ahead and, he fancied, he did that with more perspicacity than most men.

There were two possible outcomes to the French invasion of Portugal. Either the French would win or, far less likely, the Portuguese with their British allies would somehow evict Soult’s forces.

If the French won then Christopher would be the owner of Savages’ lodge, the trusted ally of the country’s new masters, and rich beyond belief.

If the Portuguese and their British allies won then he would use Argenton’s pathetic conspiracy to explain why he had remained in enemy territory, and use the collapse of the proposed mutiny as an excuse for the failure of his schemes. And then he would need to move a couple of pawns to remain the owner of Savages which would be enough to make him a rich man, if not rich beyond belief.

So he could not lose, so long as the pawns did what they were supposed to do, and one of those pawns was Major Henri Dulong, the second in command of the 31st Léger, one of the crack French light infantry units in Portugal. The 31st knew it was good, but none of its soldiers was the equal of Dulong, who was famous throughout the army. He was tough, daring and ruthless, and on this early May evening of wind and rain and low cloud, Major Dulong’s job was to lead his voltigeurs up the southern path that led to the watch-tower on the hill above the Quinta. Take that height, Brigadier Vuillard explained, and the scrappy forces in Vila Real de Zedes had nowhere to go. So while the dragoons made a noose about the village and the Quinta, Dulong would capture the hill.

It had been Brigadier Vuillard’s idea to attack at dusk. Most soldiers would expect an assault at dawn, but it was Vuillard’s notion that men’s guard was lower late in the day. ‘They’re looking forward to a skin of wine, a wench and a hot meal,’ he had told Christopher, then he had fixed the time for the assault at a quarter to eight in the evening. The sun would actually set a few moments before, but the twilight would stretch until half past eight, though the clouds had proved so thick that Vuillard doubted there would be any twilight to speak of. Not that it mattered. Dulong had been lent a good Breguet watch and he had promised that his men would be on the watchtower’s peak at a quarter to eight just as the dragoons converged on the village and the Quinta. The remaining companies of the 31st Léger would first climb up to the wood and then sweep down onto the Quinta from the south. ‘I doubt Dulong will see any action,’ Vuillard told Christopher, ‘and he’ll be unhappy about that. He’s a bloodthirsty rascal.’

‘You’ve given him the most dangerous task, surely?’

‘But only if the enemy are on the hilltop,’ the Brigadier explained. ‘I hope to catch them off guard, Colonel.’

And it seemed to Christopher as though Vuillard’s hopes were justified for, at a quarter to eight, the dragoons charged into Vila Real de Zedes and met almost no opposition. A clap of thunder was the accompaniment to the attack and a stab of lightning split the sky and reflected silver white from the dragoons’ long swords. A handful of men resisted, some muskets were fired from a tavern beside the church and Vuillard later discovered, through questioning the survivors, that a band of partisans had been recuperating in the village. A handful of them escaped, but eight others were killed and a score more, including their leader, who called himself the Schoolteacher, were captured. Two of Vuillard’s dragoons were wounded.

A hundred more dragoons rode to the Quinta. They were commanded by a captain who would rendezvous with the infantry coming down through the woods and the Captain had promised to make certain the property was not looted. ‘You don’t want to go with them?’ Vuillard asked.

‘No.’ Christopher was watching the village girls being pushed towards the largest tavern.

‘I don’t blame you,’ Vuillard said, noticing the girls, ‘the sport will be here.’

And Vuillard’s sport began. The villagers hated the French and the French hated the villagers and the dragoons had discovered partisans in the houses and they all knew how to treat such vermin. Manuel Lopes and his captured partisans were taken to the church where they were forced to break up the altars, rails and images, then ordered to heap all the shattered timber in the centre of the nave. Father Josefa came to protest at the vandalism and the dragoons stripped him naked, tore his cassock into strips and used the strips to lash the priest to the big crucifix that hung above the main altar. ‘The priests are the worst,’ Vuillard explained to Christopher, ‘they encourage their people to fight us. I swear we’ll have to kill every last priest in Portugal before we’re through.’

Other captives were being brought to the church. Any villager whose house contained a firearm or who had defied the dragoons was taken there. A man who had tried to protect his thirteen-year-old daughter was dragged to the church and, once inside, a dragoon sergeant broke the mens’ arms and legs with a great sledgehammer taken from the blacksmith’s forge. ‘It’s a lot easier than tying them up,’ Vuillard explained. Christopher flinched as the big hammer snapped the bones. Some men whimpered, a few screamed, but most stayed obstinately silent. Father Josefa said the prayer for the dying until a dragoon quietened him by breaking his jaw with a sword.

It was dark by now. The rain still beat on the church roof, but not so violently. Lightning lit the windows from the outside as Vuillard crossed to the remnants of a side altar and picked up a candle that had been burning on the floor. He took it to the pile of splintered furniture that had been laced with powder from the dragoons’ carbine ammunition. He placed the candle deep in the pile and backed away. For a moment the flame flickered small and insignificant, then there was a hiss and a bright fire streaked up the pile’s centre. The wounded men cried aloud as smoke began to curl towards the beams and as Vuillard and the dragoons retreated towards the door. ‘They flap like fish.’ The Brigadier spoke of the men who tried to drag themselves towards the fire in the vain hope of extinguishing it. Vuillard laughed. ‘The rain will slow things,’ he told Christopher, ‘but not by much.’ The fire was crackling now, spewing thick smoke. ‘It’s when the roof catches fire that they die,’ Vuillard said, ‘and it takes quite a time. Best not to stay though.’

The dragoons left, locking the church behind them. A dozen men stayed out in the rain to make certain that the fire did not go out or, more unlikely, that no one escaped from the flames, while Vuillard led Christopher and a half-dozen other officers to the village’s largest tavern which was cheerfully lit by scores of candles and lamps. ‘The infantry will report to us here,’ Vuillard explained, ‘so we must find something to pass the time, eh?’

‘Indeed.’ Christopher plucked off his cocked hat as he stooped through the tavern door.

‘We’ll have a meal,’ Brigadier Vuillard said, ‘and what passes in this country for wine.’ He stopped in the main room where the village’s girls had been lined against a wall. ‘What do you think?’ he asked Christopher.

‘Tempting,’ Christopher said.

‘Indeed.’ Vuillard still did not entirely trust Christopher. The Englishman was too aloof, but now, Vuillard thought, he would put him to the test. ‘Take your choice,’ he said, pointing to the girls. The men guarding the girls grinned. The girls were crying softly.

Christopher took a pace towards the captives. If the Englishman was squeamish, Vuillard thought, then that would betray scruples or, worse, a sympathy for the Portuguese. There were even some in the French army who expressed such sympathies, officers who argued that by maltreating the Portuguese the army only made their own problems worse, but Vuillard, like most Frenchmen, believed that the Portuguese needed to be punished with such severity that none would ever dare lift a finger against the French again. Rape, theft and wanton destruction were, to Vuillard, defensive tactics and now he wanted to see Christopher join him in an act of war. He wanted to see the aloof Englishman behave like the French in their moment of triumph. ‘Be quick,’ Vuillard said, ‘I promised my men they could have the ones we don’t want.’

‘I’ll take the small girl,’ Christopher said wolfishly, ‘the redhead.’

She screamed, but there was much screaming that night in Vila Real de Zedes.

As there was on the hill to the south.

Sharpe ran. He shouted at his men to get to the top of the hill as fast as they could and then he scrambled up the slope and he had gone a hundred yards before he calmed down and realized that he was doing this all wrong. ‘Rifles!’ he shouted. ‘Packs off!’

He let his men unburden themselves until they carried only their weapons, haversacks and cartridge boxes. Lieutenant Vicente’s men did the same. Six Portuguese and the same number of riflemen would stay to guard the discarded packs and bags and greatcoats and cuts of smoked meat, while the rest followed Sharpe and Vicente up the slope. They went much faster now. ‘Did you see the bastards up there?’ Harper panted.

‘No,’ Sharpe said, but he knew the French would want to take the fort because it was the highest ground for miles, and that meant they had probably sent a company or more to loop about the south and sneak up the hill. So it was a race. Sharpe had no proof that the French were in the race, but he did not underestimate them. They would be coming and all he could pray was that they were not there already.

The rain fell harder. No gun would fire in this weather. This was going to be a fight of wet steel, fists and rifle butts. Sharpe’s boots slipped on sodden turf and skidded on rock. He was getting short of breath, but at least he had climbed the flanking slope and was now on the path that led up the northern spine of the hill, and his men had widened and strengthened the path, cutting steps in the steepest places and pegging the risers with wedges of birch. It had been invented work to keep them busy, but it was all worth it now because it quickened the pace. Sharpe was still leading with a dozen riflemen close behind. He decided he would not close ranks before they reached the top. This was a scramble where the devil really would take the hindmost so the important thing was to reach the summit, and he looked up into the whirl of rain and cloud and he saw nothing up there but wet rock and the sudden reflected sheen of a lightning bolt slithering down a sheer stone face. He thought of the village and knew it was doomed. He wished he could do something about that, but he did not have enough men to defend the village and he had tried to warn them.

The rain was driving into his face, blinding him. He slithered as he ran. There was a stitch in his side, his legs were like fire and the breath rasped in his throat. The rifle was slung on his shoulder, bouncing there, the stock thumping into his left thigh as he tried to draw the sword, but then he had to let go of the hilt to steady himself against a rock as his boots slid wildly out from under him. Harper was twenty paces back, panting. Vicente was gaining on Sharpe who dragged his sword free of its scabbard, pushed himself away from the boulder and forced himself on again. Lightning flickered to the east, outlining black hills and a sky slanting with water. The thunder crackled across the heavens, filling them with angry noise, and Sharpe felt as though he were climbing into the heart of the storm, climbing to join the gods of war. The gale tore at him. His shako was long gone. The wind shrieked, moaned, was drowned by thunder and burdened by rain and Sharpe thought he would never reach the top and suddenly he was beside the first wall, the place where the path zigzagged between two of the small redoubts his men had built, and a dagger of lightning stabbed down into the void that opened wet and dark to his right. For a wild second he thought the hilltop was empty and then he saw the flash of a blade reflecting the storm’s white fire and knew the French were already there.

Dulong’s voltigeurs had arrived just seconds before and had taken the watchtower, but they had not had time to occupy the northernmost redoubts where Sharpe’s men now appeared. ‘Throw them out!’ Dulong roared at his men.

‘Kill the bastards!’ Sharpe shouted and his blade scraped along a bayonet, jarred against the muzzle of the musket and he threw himself forward, driving the man back, and hammered his forehead against the man’s nose and the first riflemen were past him and the blades were ringing in the near dark. Sharpe banged the hilt of his sword into the face of the man he had put down, plucked the musket from him and threw it out into the void, then pushed on to where a group of Frenchmen were readying to defend the summit. They aimed their muskets and Sharpe hoped to God he was right and that no flintlock would ever fire in this wet fury. Two men struggled to his left and Sharpe slid the sword into a blue jacket, twisting it in the ribs, and the Frenchman threw himself sideways to escape the blade and Sharpe saw it was Harper hammering at the man with a rifle butt.

‘God save Ireland.’ Harper, wild-eyed, stared up at the French guarding the watchtower.

‘We’re going to charge those bastards!’ Sharpe shouted at the riflemen coming up behind.

‘God save Ireland.’

‘Tirez!’ a French officer shouted and a dozen flints fell on steel and the sparks flashed and died in the rain.

‘Now kill them!’ Sharpe roared. ‘Just bloody kill them!’ Because the French were on his hilltop, on his land, and he felt a rage fit to match the anger of the storm-filled sky. He ran uphill and the French muskets reached down with their long bayonets and Sharpe remembered fighting on the steep breach at Gawilghur and he did now what he had done then, reached under the bayonet and grabbed a man’s ankle and tugged. The Frenchman screamed as he was pulled down the hill to where three sword bayonets chopped at him, and then Vicente’s Portuguese, realizing they could not shoot the French, began hurling rocks at them and the big stones drew blood, made men flinch, and Sharpe bellowed at his riflemen to close with the enemy. He back-swung the sword, driving a bayonet aside, pulled another musket with his left hand so that the man was tugged down onto Harper’s sword bayonet. Harris was flailing with an axe they had used to clear the path through the birch, laurel and oak wood, and the French shrank from the terrible weapon and still the rocks were hurled and Sharpe’s riflemen, snarling and panting, were clawing their way upwards. A man kicked Sharpe in the face, Cooper caught the boot and raked his sword bayonet up the man’s leg. Harper was using his rifle as a club, beating men down with his huge strength. A rifleman fell backwards, blood pulsing from his throat to be instantly diluted by the rain. A Portuguese soldier took his place, stabbing up with his bayonet and screaming insults. Sharpe rammed his sword two-handed up into the press of bodies, stabbed, twisted, pulled and stabbed again. Another Portuguese was beside him, thrusting his bayonet up into a French groin, while Sergeant Macedo, lips drawn back in a snarl, was fighting with a knife. The blade flickered in the rain, turned red, was washed clean, turned red again. The French were going back, retreating to the patch of bare stone terrace in front of the watchtower ruins and an officer was shouting angrily at them, and then the officer came forward, sabre out, and Sharpe met him, the blades clashed and Sharpe just head-butted again and, in the flash of lightning, saw the astonishment on the officer’s face, but the Frenchman evidently came from the same school as Sharpe for he tried to kick Sharpe’s groin as he rammed his fingers at Sharpe’s eyes. Sharpe twisted aside, came back to hit the man on the jaw with the hilt of his sword, then the officer just seemed to vanish as two of his men dragged him backwards.

A tall French sergeant came at Sharpe, musket flailing, and Sharpe stepped back, the man tripped, and Vicente reached out with his straight-bladed sword and its tip ripped the Sergeant’s windpipe so he roared like a punctured bellows and collapsed in a spray of pink rain. Vicente stepped back, appalled, but his men went streaming past to spread down into the southern redoubts where they enthusiastically bayoneted the French out of their holes. Sergeant Macedo had left his knife trapped in a Frenchman’s chest and instead was using a French musket as a club and a voltigeur tried to pull the weapon out of his grasp and looked stunned when the Sergeant just let him have it, then kicked him in the belly so that the Frenchman fell back over the edge of the bluff. He screamed as he fell. The scream seemed to last a long time, then there was a wet thump on the rocks far below, the musket clattered, and the sound was swamped as thunder rolled over the sky. The clouds were split by lightning and Sharpe, his sword blade dripping with rain-diluted blood, shouted at his men to check every redoubt. ‘And search the tower!’

Another bolt of lightning revealed a large group of Frenchmen halfway up the southern path. Sharpe reckoned that a small group of fitter men had come on ahead and it was those men that he had encountered. The largest group, who could easily have held the summit against Sharpe and Vicente’s desperate counterattack, had been too late, and Vicente was now putting men into the lower redoubts. A rifleman lay dead by the watchtower. ‘It’s Sean Donnelly,’ Harper said.

‘Pity,’ Sharpe said, ‘a good man.’

‘He was an evil little bastard from Derry,’ Harper said, ‘who owed me four shillings.’

‘He could shoot straight.’

‘When he wasn’t drunk,’ Harper allowed.

Pendleton, the youngest of the riflemen, brought Sharpe his shako. ‘Found it on the slope, sir.’

‘What were you doing on the slope when you should have been fighting?’ Harper demanded.

Pendleton looked worried. ‘I just found it, sir.’

‘Did you kill anyone?’ Harper wanted to know.

‘No, Sergeant.’

‘Not earned your bloody shilling today then, have you? Right! Pendleton! Williamson! Dodd! Sims!’ Harper organized a group to go back down the hill and bring up the discarded packs and food. Sharpe had another two men strip the dead and wounded of their weapons and ammunition.

Vicente had garrisoned the southern side of the fort and the sight of his men was enough to deter the French from trying a second assault. The Portuguese Lieutenant now came back to join Sharpe beside the watchtower where the wind shrieked on the broken stone. The rain was slackening, but the stronger wind gusts still drove drops hard against the ruined walls. ‘What do we do about the village?’ Vicente wanted to know.

‘There’s nothing we can do.’

‘There are women down there! Children!’

‘I know.’

‘We can’t just leave them.’

‘What do you want us to do?’ Sharpe asked. ‘Go down there? Rescue them? And while we’re there, what happens up here? Those bastards take the hill.’ He pointed at the French voltigeurs who were still halfway up the hill, uncertain whether to keep climbing or to give up the attempt. ‘And when you get down there,’ Sharpe went on, ‘what are you going to find? Dragoons. Hundreds of bloody dragoons. And when the last of your men are dead you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing you tried to save the village.’ He saw the stubbornness on Vicente’s face. ‘There’s nothing you can do.’

‘We have to try,’ Vicente insisted.

‘You want to take some men on patrol? Then do it, but the rest of us stay up here. This place is our one chance of staying alive.’

Vicente shivered. ‘You will not keep going south?’

‘We get off this hill,’ Sharpe said, ‘and we’re going to have dragoons giving us haircuts with their bloody swords. We’re trapped, Lieutenant, we’re trapped.’

‘You will let me take a patrol down to the village?’

‘Three men,’ Sharpe said. He was reluctant to let even three men go with Vicente, but he could see that the Portuguese Lieutenant was desperate to know what was happening to his countrymen. ‘Stay in cover, Lieutenant,’ Sharpe advised. ‘Stay in the trees. Go very carefully!’

Vicente was back three hours later. There were simply too many dragoons and blue-jacketed infantry around Vila Real de Zedes and he had got nowhere near the village. ‘But I heard screams,’ he said.

‘Aye,’ Sharpe said, ‘you would have done.’

Beneath him, beyond the Quinta, the remnants of the village church burned out in the dark damp night. It was the only light he could see. There were no stars, no candles, no lamps, just the sullen red glow of the burning church.

And tomorrow, Sharpe knew, the French would come for him again.

In the morning the French officers had breakfast on the terrace of the tavern beneath a vine trellis. The village had proved to be full of food and there was newly baked bread, ham, eggs and coffee for breakfast. The rain had gone to leave a damp feel in the wind, but there were shadows in the fields and the promise of warm sunlight in the air. The smoke of the burned-out church drifted northwards, taking with it the stench of roasted flesh.

Maria, the red-headed girl, served Colonel Christopher his coffee. The Colonel was picking his teeth with a sliver of ivory, but he took it from his mouth to thank her. ‘Obrigado, Maria,’ he said in a pleasant tone. Maria shuddered, but nodded a hasty acknowledgement as she backed away.

‘She’s replaced your servant?’ Brigadier Vuillard asked.

‘The wretched fellow’s missing,’ Christopher said. ‘Run away. Gone.’

‘A fair exchange,’ Vuillard said, watching Maria. ‘That one’s much prettier.’

‘She was pretty,’ Christopher allowed. Maria’s face was badly bruised now and the bruises had swollen to spoil her beauty. ‘And she’ll be pretty again,’ he went on.

‘You hit her hard,’ Vuillard said with a hint of reproach.

Christopher sipped his coffee. ‘The English have a saying, Brigadier. A spaniel, a woman and a walnut tree, the more they’re beaten the better they be.’

‘A walnut tree?’

‘They say if the trunk is well thrashed it increases the yield of nuts; I have no idea if it’s true, but I do know that a woman has to be broken like a dog or a horse.’

‘Broken,’ Vuillard repeated the word. He was rather in awe of Christopher’s sang-froid.

‘The stupid girl resisted me,’ Christopher explained, ‘she put up a fight, so I taught her who is master. Every woman needs to be taught that.’

‘Even a wife?’

‘Especially a wife,’ Christopher said, ‘though the process might be slower. You don’t break a good mare quickly, but take your time. But this one’ – he jerked his head towards Maria – ‘this one needed a damned fast whipping. I don’t mind if she resents me, but one doesn’t want a wife to be soured by resentment.’

Maria was not the only one with a bruised face. Major Dulong had a black mark across the bridge of his nose and a scowl just as dark. He had reached the watchtower before the British and Portuguese troops, but with a smaller group of men and then he had been surprised by the ferocity with which the enemy had attacked him. ‘Let me go back, mon Général,’ he pleaded with Vuillard.

‘Of course, Dulong, of course.’ Vuillard did not blame the voltigeur officer for the night’s only failure. It seemed that the British and Portuguese troops, whom everyone had expected to find in the Quinta’s stables, had decided to go south and thus had been halfway to the watchtower when the attack began. But Major Dulong was not accustomed to failure and the repulse on the hilltop had hurt his pride. ‘Of course you can go back,’ the Brigadier reassured him, ‘but not straightaway. I think we shall let les belle filles have their wicked way with them first, yes?’

‘Les belle filles?’ Christopher asked, wondering why on earth Vuillard would send girls up to the watchtower.

‘The Emperor’s name for his cannon,’ Vuillard explained. ‘Les belle filles. There’s a battery at Valengo and they must have a brace of howitzers. I’m sure the gunners will be pleased to lend us their toys, aren’t you? A day of target practice and those idiots on the hill will be as broken as your redhead.’ The Brigadier watched as the girls brought out the food. ‘I shall look at their target after we’ve eaten. Perhaps you will do me the honour of lending me your telescope?’

‘Of course,’ Christopher pushed the glass across the table. ‘But take care of it, my dear Vuillard. It’s rather precious to me.’

Vuillard examined the brass plate and knew just enough English to decipher its meaning. ‘Who is this AW?’

‘Sir Arthur Wellesley, of course.’

‘And why would he be grateful to you?’

‘You couldn’t possibly expect a gentleman to answer a question like that, my dear Vuillard. It would be boasting. Suffice it to say that I did not merely black his boots.’ Christopher smiled modestly, then helped himself to eggs and bread.

Two hundred dragoons rode the short journey back to Valengo. They escorted an officer who carried a request for a pair of howitzers, and the officer and the dragoons returned that same morning.

With one howitzer only. But that, Vuillard was certain, would be enough. The riflemen were doomed.