Sharpe's Havoc (4 page)

Sharpe paused where the wharf ended to make sure all his men were there and he looked back at
the bridge to see that so many folk had been forced off its end that the bodies were now jammed
in the gap and the water was piling up behind them and foaming white across their heads. He
saw a blue-coated Portuguese soldier step on those heads to reach the barge on which the
drawbridge had been mounted. Others followed him, skipping over the drowning and the dead.
Sharpe was far enough away that he could no longer hear the screams.

“What happened?” Dodd, usually the quietest of Sharpe’s men, asked.

“God was looking the other way,” Sharpe said and looked at Harper. “All here?”

“All present, sir,” Harper said. The big Ulsterman looked as if he had been weeping.
“Those poor wee children,” he said resentfully.

“There was nothing we could do,” Sharpe said curtly, and that was true, though the truth of
it did not make him feel any better. “Williamson and Tarrant are on a charge,” he told
Harper.

“Again?”

“Again,” Sharpe said, and wondered at the idiocy of the two men who would rather have
snatched a drink than escape from the city, even if that drink had meant imprisonment in
France. “Now come on!” He followed the civilian fugitives who, arriving at the place where
the river’s wharf was blocked by the ancient city wall, had turned up an alleyway. The old
wall had been built when men fought in armor and shot at each other with crossbows, and the
lichen-covered stones would not have stood two minutes against a modern cannon and as if to
mark that redundancy the city had knocked great holes in the old ramparts. Sharpe led his men
through one such gap, crossed the remnants of a ditch and then hurried into the wider streets
of the new town beyond the walls.

“Crapauds!” Hagman warned Sharpe. “Sir! Up the hill!” Sharpe looked to his left and saw a
troop of French cavalry riding to cut off the fugitives. They were dragoons, fifty or more
of them in their green coats and all carrying straight swords and short carbines. They wore
brass helmets that, in wartime, were covered by cloth so the polished metal would not
reflect the sunlight. “Keep running!” Sharpe shouted. The dragoons had not spotted the
riflemen or, if they had, were not seeking a confrontation, but instead spurred on to where
the road skirted a great hill that was topped with a huge white flat-roofed building. A school,
perhaps, or a hospital. The main road ran north of the hill, but another went to the south,
between the hill and the river, and the dragoons were on the bigger road so Sharpe kept to
his right, hoping to escape by the smaller track on the Douro’s bank, but the dragoons at
last saw him and drove their horses across the shoulder of the hill to block the lesser road
where it bordered the river. Sharpe looked back and saw French infantry following the
cavalry. Damn them. Then he saw that still more French troops were pursuing him from the
broken city wall. He could probably outrun the infantry, but the dragoons were already
ahead of him and the first of them were dismounting and making a barricade across the road.
The folk fleeing the city were being headed off and some were climbing to the big white
building while others, in despair, were going back to their houses. The cannon were
fighting their own battle above the river, the French guns trying to match the bombardment
from the big Portuguese battery which had started dozens of fires in the fallen city as the
round shot smashed ovens, hearths and forges. The dark smoke of the burning buildings mingled
with the gray-white smoke of the guns and beneath that smoke, in the valley of drowning
children, Richard Sharpe was trapped.

Liutenant Colonel James Christopher was neither a lieutenant nor a colonel, though he had
once served as a captain in the Lincolnshire Fencibles and still held that commission. He
had been christened James Augustus Meredith Christopher and throughout his schooldays had
been known as Jam. His father had been a doctor in the small town of Saxilby, a profession
and a place that James Christopher liked to ignore, preferring to remember that his mother
was second cousin to the Earl of Rochford, and it was Rochford’s influence that had taken
Christopher from Cambridge University to the Foreign Office where his command of
languages, his natural suavity and his quick intelligence had ensured a swift rise. He had
been given early responsibilities, introduced to great men and entrusted with
confidences. He was reckoned to be a good prospect, a sound young man whose judgment was
usually reliable, which meant, as often as not, that he merely agreed with his
superiors, but the reputation had led to his present appointment which was a position as
lonely as it was secret. James Christopher’s task was to advise the government whether it
would be prudent to keep British troops in Portugal.

The decision, of course, would not rest with James Christopher. He might be a coming man
in the Foreign Office, but the decision to stay or withdraw would be taken by the Prime
Minister, though what mattered was the quality of advice being given to the Prime
Minister. The soldiers, of course, would want to stay because war brought promotion, and
the Foreign Secretary wanted the troops to remain because he detested the French, but
other men in Whitehall took a more sanguine view and had sent James Christopher to take
Portugal’s temperature. The Whigs, enemies of the administration, feared another
debacle like that which had led to Corunna. Better, they said, to recognize reality and
come to an understanding with the French now, and the Whigs had enough influence in the
Foreign Office to have James Christopher posted to Portugal. The army, which had not been
told what his true business was, nevertheless agreed to brevet him as a lieutenant colonel
and appoint him as an aide to General Cradock, and Christopher used the army’s couriers to
send military intelligence to the General and political dispatches to the embassy in
Lisbon whence, though they were addressed to the Ambassador, the messages were sent
unopened to London. The Prime Minister needed sound advice and James Christopher was
supposed to supply the facts that would frame the advice, though of late he had been busy
making new facts. He had seen beyond the war’s messy realities to the golden future. James
Christopher, in short, had seen the light.

None of which occupied his thoughts as he rode out of Oporto less than a cannon’s range
ahead of the French troops. A couple of musket shots were sent in his direction, but
Christopher and his servant were superbly mounted on fine Irish horses and they quickly
outran the halfhearted pursuit. They took to the hills, galloping along the terrace of a
vineyard and then climbing into a forest of pine and oak where they stopped to rest the
horses.

Christopher gazed back westward. The sun had dried the roads after the night’s heavy rain
and a smear of dust on the horizon showed where the French army’s baggage train was advancing
toward the newly captured city of Oporto. The city itself, hidden now by hills, was marked
by a great plume of dirty smoke spewing up from burning houses and from the busy batteries
of cannons that, though muted by distance, sounded like an unceasing thunder. No French
troops had bothered to pursue Christopher this far. A dozen laborers were deepening a
ditch in the valley and ignored the fugitives on the nearby road as if to suggest that the
war was the city’s business, not theirs. There were no British riflemen among the fugitives,
Christopher noted, but he would have been surprised to see Sharpe and his men this far from
the city. Doubtless by now they were dead or captured. What had Hogan been thinking of in
asking Sharpe to accompany him? Was it because the shrewd Irishman suspected something?
But how could Hogan know? Christopher worried at the problem for a few moments, then
dismissed it. Hogan could know nothing; he was just trying to be helpful. “The French did
well today,” Christopher remarked to his Portuguese servant, a young man with receding
hair and a thin, earnest face.

“The devil will get them in the end, senhor,” the servant answered.

“Sometimes mere men have to do the devil’s business,” Christopher said. He drew a small
telescope from his pocket and trained it on the far hills. “In the next few days,” he said,
still gazing through the glass, “you will see some things that will surprise you.”

“If you say so, senhor,” the servant answered.

“But ‘there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your
philosophy.’”

“If you say so, senhor,” the servant repeated, wondering why the English officer
called him Horatio when his name was Luis, but he thought it was probably better not to ask.
Luis had been a barber in Lisbon where he had sometimes cut the hair of men from the British
embassy and it had been those men who had recommended him as a reliable servant to
Christopher who paid him good wages in real gold, English gold, and if the English were mad
and got names wrong they still made the best coinage in the world, which meant that Colonel
Christopher could call Luis whatever he wanted so long as he went on paying him thick
guineas embossed with the figure of Saint George slaying the dragon.

Christopher was looking for any sign of a French pursuit, but his telescope was small, old
and had a scratched lens and he could see very little better with it than without it. He was
meaning to buy another, but he never had the opportunity. He collapsed the glass, put it
in his saddle pouch and took out a fresh toothpick that he thrust between his teeth.
“Onwards,” he said brusquely, and he led the servant through the wood, across the hill’s crest
and down to a large farmhouse. It was plain that Christopher knew the route well for he did not
hesitate on the way, nor was he apprehensive as he curbed his horse beside the farm gate.
“Stables are in there,” he told Luis, pointing to an archway, “kitchen is beyond the blue
door and the folks here are expecting us. We’ll spend the night here.”

“Not at Vila Real de Zedes, senhor?” Luis asked. “I heard you say we would look for Miss
Savage?”

“Your English is getting too good if it lets you eavesdrop,” Christopher said sourly.
“Tomorrow, Luis; we shall look for Miss Savage tomorrow.” Christopher slid out of the
saddle and threw the reins to Luis. “Cool the horses, unsaddle them, find me something to
eat and bring it to my room. One of the servants will let you know where I am.”

Luis walked the two horses to cool them down, then stabled, watered and fed them.
Afterward he went to the kitchen where a cook and two maids showed no surprise at his
arrival. Luis had become accustomed to being taken to some remote village or house where
his master was known, but he had never been to this farmhouse before. He would have felt
happier if Christopher had retreated across the river, but the farm was well hidden in the
hills and it was possible the French would never come here. The servants told Luis that the
house and lands belonged to a Lisbon merchant who had instructed them to do all they could
to accommodate Colonel Christopher’s wishes. “He’s been here often then?” Luis asked.

The cook giggled. “He used to come with his woman.”

That explained why Luis had not been brought here before and he wondered who the woman
was. “He wants food now,” Luis said. “What woman?”

“The pretty widow,” the cook said, then sighed. “But we have not seen her in a month. A
pity. He should have married her.” She had a chickpea soup on the stove and she ladled some
into a bowl, cut some cold mutton and put it on a tray with the soup, red wine and a small loaf
of newly baked bread. “Tell the Colonel the meal will be ready for his guest this
afternoon.”

His guest?” Luis asked, bemused.

“One guest for dinner, he told us. Now hurry! Don’t let that soup get cold. You go up the
stairs and turn right.”

Luis carried the tray upstairs. It was a fine house, well built and handsome, with some
ancient paintings on the walls. He found the door to his master’s bedroom ajar and
Christopher must have heard the footsteps for he called out that Luis should come in without
knocking. “Put the food by the window,” he ordered.

Christopher had changed his clothes and now, instead of wearing the black breeches, black
boots and red tailcoat of an English officer, he was in sky-blue breeches that had black
leather reinforcements wherever they might touch a saddle. The breeches were skin tight,
made so by the laces that ran up both flanks from the ankles to the waist. The Colonel’s new
jacket was of the same sky blue as the breeches, but decorated with lavish silver piping
that climbed to curl around the stiff, high red collar. Over his left shoulder was a pelisse, a
fake jacket trimmed with fur, while on a side table was a cavalry saber and a tall black hat
that bore a short silver cockade held in place by an enamelled badge.

And the enamelled badge displayed the tricolor of France.

“I said you would be surprised,” Christopher remarked to Luis who was, indeed, gaping at
his master.

Luis found his voice. “You are … “ he faltered.

“I am an English officer, Luis, as you very well know, but the uniform is that of a French
hussar. Ah! Chickpea soup, I do so like chickpea soup. Peasant food, but good.” He crossed to
the table and, grimacing because his breeches were so tightly laced, lowered himself
into the chair. “We shall be sitting a guest to dinner this afternoon.”

“So I was told,” Luis said coldly.

“You will serve, Luis, and you will not be deterred by the fact that my guest is a French
officer.”

“French?” Luis sounded disgusted.

“French,” Christopher confirmed, “and he will be coming here with an escort. Probably a
large escort, and it would not do, would it, if that escort were to return to their army and
say that their officer met with an Englishman? Which is why I wear this.” He gestured at the
French uniform, then smiled at Luis. “War is like chess,” Christopher went on, “there are two
sides and if the one wins then the other must lose.”