“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 be 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 honor 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 efface 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 around 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 labeled 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 morn-ing.”
“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 wh
y, then she pointed toward 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 heavensent 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 toward 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 toward 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. Gray veils of showers swept out of the west, brought from the Atlantic by a chill wind that blew the wisteria blossoms from the thrashing trees, banged the Quinta’s shutters and sent chill drafts 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 sum
moned to Colonel Christopher soon after sunrise and found the Colonel seated in the parlor 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.”