Sharpe himself went to a large room that he suspected had been the office of the seminary’s master. It was shelved like a library, and it had been plundered like the rest of the building. Torn and broken-spined books lay thick on the floorboards, a large table had been thrown against one wall and a slashed oil painting of a saintly-looking cleric was half burned in the big hearth. The only undamaged object was a crucifix, black as soot, that hung high on the wall above the mantel.
Sharpe threw open the window that was immediately above the seminary’s main door and used the little telescope to search the city that lay so tantalizingly close across the valley. Then, disobeying his own instructions that everyone was to stay hidden, he leaned across the sill in an attempt to see what was happening on the river’s southern bank, but he could see nothing meaningful and then, while he was still craning his neck, a stranger’s voice boomed behind him. “You must be Lieutenant Sharpe. Name’s Waters, Lieutenant Colonel Waters, and well done, Sharpe, bloody well done.”
Sharpe pulled back and turned to see a red-coated officer stepping through the mess of books and papers. “I’m Sharpe, sir,” he acknowledged.
“Bloody Frogs are dozing,” Waters said. He was a stocky man, bow-legged from too much horse-riding, with a weather-beaten face. Sharpe guessed he was in his low forties, but looked older because his grizzled hair was gray. “They should have had a battalion and a half up here, shouldn’t they? That and a couple of gun batteries. Our enemies are dozing, Sharpe, bloody dozing.”
“You were the man I saw across the river?” Sharpe asked.
“The very same. Your Portuguese fellow came across. Smart man! So he rowed me back and now we’re floating those damned barges.” Waters grinned. “It’s heave-ho, my hearties, and if we can get the damn things afloat then we’ll have the Buffs over first, then the rest of the 1st Brigade. Should be interesting when Marshal Soult realizes we’ve sneaked in his back door, eh? Is there any liquor in the building?”
“All gone, sir.”
“Good man,” Waters said, mistakenly deducing that Sharpe himself must have removed the temptation before the arrival of the redcoats, then he stepped to the window, took a big telescope from a leather satchel hanging from his shoulder and stared at Oporto.
“So what’s happening, sir?” Sharpe asked.
“Happening? We’re running the Frogs out of Portugal! Hop hop, croak croak, and good bloody riddance to the spavined bastards. Look at it!” Waters gestured at the city. “They don’t have the first blind idea that we’re here! Your Portuguese fellow said you’d been cut off. Is that true?”
“Since the end of March.”
“Ye gods,” Waters said, “you must be out of touch!” The Colonel pulled back from the window and perched on the sill where he told Sharpe that Sir Arthur Wellesley had indeed arrived in Portugal. “He came less than three weeks ago,” Waters said, “and he’s put some snap into the troops, by God, he has! Cradock was a decent enough fellow, but he had no snap, none. So we’re on the march, Sharpe, left, right, left, right, and the devil take the hindmost. British army over there.” He pointed through the window, indicating the hidden ground beyond the high convent on the southern bank. “Bloody Frogs seem to think we’ll come by sea, so all their men are either in the city or guarding the river between the city and the sea.” Sharpe felt a twinge of guilt for not believing the woman in Barca d’Avintas who had told him exactly that. “Sir Arthur wants to get across,” Waters went on, “and your fellows have conveniently provided those three barges, and you say there’s a fourth?”
“Three miles upriver, sir.”
“You ain’t done a bad morning’s work, Sharpe,” Waters said with a friendly grin. “We only have to pray for one thing.”
“That the French don’t discover us here?”
“Exactly. So best remove my red coat from the window, eh?” Waters laughed and crossed the room. “Pray they go on sleeping with their sweet froggy dreams because once they do wake up then the day’s going to be damned hot, don’t you think? And those three barges can take how many men apiece? Thirty? And God alone knows how long each crossing will take. We could be shoving our damned heads into the tiger’s mouth, Sharpe.”
Sharpe forbore to comment that he had spent the last few weeks with his head inside the tiger’s mouth. Instead he stared across the valley, trying to imagine how the French would approach when they did attack. He guessed they would come straight from the city, across the valley and up the slope that was virtually bare of any cover. The northern flank of the seminary looked toward the road in the valley and that slope was just as bare, all except for one solitary tree with pale leaves that grew right in the middle of the climb. Anyone attacking the seminary would presumably try to get to the garden gate or the big front door and that would mean crossing a wide paved terrace where carriages bringing visitors to the seminary could turn around and where attacking infantry would be cut down by musket and rifle fire from the seminary’s windows and its balustraded roof. “A deathtrap!” Colonel Waters was sharing the view and evidently thinking the same thoughts.
“I wouldn’t want to be attacking up that slope,” Sharpe agreed.
“And I’ve no doubt we’ll put some cannon on the other bank to make it all a bit less healthy,” Waters said cheerfully.
Sharpe hoped that was true. He kept wondering why there were no British guns on the wide terrace of the convent that overlooked the river, the terrace where the Portuguese had placed their batteries in March. It seemed an obvious position, but Sir Arthur Wellesley appeared to have chosen to put his artillery down among the port lodges which were out of sight of the seminary.
“What’s the time?” Waters asked, then answered his own question by taking out a turnip watch. “Nearly eleven!”
“Are you with the staff, sir?” Sharpe asked because Waters’s red coat, though decorated with some tarnished gold braid, had no regimental facings.
“I’m one of Sir Arthur’s exploring officers,” Waters said cheerfully. “We ride ahead to scout the land like those fellows in the Bible that Joshua sent ahead to spy out Jericho, remember the tale? And a frow called Rahab gave them shelter? That’s the luck of the Jews, ain’t it? The chosen people get greeted by a prostitute and I get welcomed by a rifleman, but I suppose it’s better than a sloppy wet kiss from a bloody Frog dragoon, eh?”
Sharpe smiled. “Do you know Captain Hogan, sir?”
“The mapping fellow? Of course I know Hogan. A capital man, capital!” Waters suddenly stopped and looked at Sharpe. “My God, of course! You’re his lost rifleman, ain’t you? Ah, I’ve placed you now. He said you’d survive. Well done, Sharpe. Ah, here come the first of the gallant Buffs.”
Vicente and his men had escorted thirty redcoats up the hill, but instead of using the unlocked arched door they had trudged round to the front and now gaped up at Waters and Sharpe who in turn looked down from the window. The newcomers wore the buff facings of the 3rd Regiment of Foot, a Kentish regiment, and they were sweating after their climb under the hot sun. A thin lieutenant led them and he assured Colonel Waters that two more bargeloads of men were already disembarking, then he looked curiously at Sharpe. “What on earth are the Rifles doing here?”
“First on the field,” Sharpe quoted the regiment’s favorite boast, “and last off it.”
“First? You must have flown across the bloody river.” The Lieutenant wiped his forehead. “Any water here?”
“Barrel inside the main door,” Sharpe said, “courtesy of the 95th.”
More men arrived. The barges were toiling to and fro across the river, propelled by the massive sweeps which were manned by local people who were eager to help, and every twenty minutes another eighty or ninety men would toil up the hill. One group arrived with a general, Sir Edward Paget, who took over command of the growing garrison from Waters. Paget was a young man, still in his thirties, energetic and eager, who owed his high rank to his aristocratic family’s wealth, but he had the reput
ation of being a general who was popular with his soldiers. He climbed to the seminary roof where Sharpe’s men were now positioned and, seeing Sharpe’s small telescope, asked to borrow it. “Lost me own,” he explained, “it’s somewhere in the baggage in Lisbon.”
“You came with Sir Arthur, sir?” Sharpe asked.
“Three weeks ago,” Paget said, staring at the city.
“Sir Edward,” Waters told Sharpe, “is second in command to Sir Arthur.”
“Which doesn’t mean much,” Sir Edward said, “because he never tells me anything. What’s wrong with this bloody telescope?”
“You have to hold the outer lens in place, sir,” Sharpe said.
“Take mine,” Waters said, offering the better instrument.
Sir Edward scanned the city, then frowned. “So what are the bloody French doing?” he asked in a puzzled tone.
“Sleeping,” Waters answered.
“Won’t like it when they wake up, will they?” Paget remarked. “Asleep in the keeper’s lodge with poachers all over the coverts!” He gave the telescope back to Waters and nodded at Sharpe. “Damn pleased to have some riflemen here, Lieutenant. I dare say you’ll get some target practice before the day’s out.”
Another group of men came up the hill. Every window of the seminary’s brief western facade now had a group of redcoats and a quarter of the windows on the long northern wall were also manned. The garden wall had been loopholed and garrisoned by Vicente’s Portuguese and by the Buffs’ grenadier company. The French, thinking themselves secure in Oporto, were watching the river between the city and the sea while behind their backs, on the high eastern hill, the redcoats were gathering.
Which meant the gods of war were tightening the screws.
And something had to break.
TWO OFFICERS were posted in the entrance hall of the Palacio das Carrancas to make sure all visitors took their boots off. “His grace,” they explained, referring to Marshal Nicolas Soult, Duke of Dalmatia, whose nickname was now King Nicolas, “is sleeping.”
The hallway was cavernous, arched, high, beautiful, and hard-heeled boots striding over its tiled floor echoed up the staircase to where King Nicolas slept. Early that morning a hussar had come in hurriedly, his spurs had caught in the rug at the foot of the stairs and he had sprawled with a terrible clatter of saber and scabbard that had woken the Marshal, who had then posted the officers to make certain the rest of his sleep was not disturbed. The two officers were powerless to stop the British artillery firing from across the river, but perhaps the Marshal was not so sensitive to gunfire as he was to loud heels.
The Marshal had invited a dozen guests to breakfast and all had arrived before nine in the morning and were forced to wait in one of the great reception rooms on the palace’s western side where tall glass doors opened onto a terrace decorated with flowers planted in carved stone urns and with laurel bushes that an elderly gardener was trimming with long shears. The guests, all but one of them men, and all but two of them French, continually strolled onto the terrace which offered, from its southern balustrade, a view across the river and thus a sight of the guns that fired over the Douro. In truth there was not much to see because the British cannon were emplaced in Vila Nova de Gaia’s streets and so, even with the help of telescopes, the guests merely saw gouts of dirty smoke and then heard the crash of the round shots striking the buildings that faced Oporto’s quay. The only other sight worth seeing was the remains of the pontoon bridge which the French had repaired at the beginning of April, but had now blown up because of Sir Arthur Wellesley’s approach. Three scorched pontoons still swung to their anchors, the rest, along with the roadway, had been blasted to smithereens and carried by the tide to the nearby ocean.
Kate was the only woman invited to the Marshal’s breakfast and her husband had been adamant that she wear her hussar uniform and his insistence was rewarded by the admiring glances that the other guests gave to his wife’s long legs. Christopher himself was in civilian clothes, while the other ten men, all officers, were in their uniforms and, because a woman was present, they did their best to appear insouciant about the British cannonade. “What they are doing,” a dragoon major resplendent in aiguillettes and gold braid remarked, “is shooting at our sentries with six-pound shots. They’re swatting at flies with a bludgeon.” He lit a cigar, breathed deep and gave Kate a long appreciative look. “With a butt like that,” he said to his friend, “she should be French.”
“She should be on her back.”
“That too, of course.”
Kate kept herself turned away from the French officers. She was ashamed of the hussar uniform which she thought immodest and, worse, appeared to suggest her sympathies were with the French. “You might make an effort,” Christopher told her.
“I am making an effort,” she answered bitterly, “an effort not to cheer every British shot.”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“I am?” Kate bridled.
“This is merely a demonstration,” Christopher explained, waving toward the powder smoke that drifted like patchy fog through the red-tiled roofs of Vila Nova. “Wellesley has marched his men up here and he can’t go any further. He’s stuck. There are no boats and the navy isn’t foolish enough to try and sail past the river forts. So Wellesley will hammer a few cannonballs into the city, then turn around and march back to Coimbra or Lisbon. In chess terms, my dear, this is a stalemate. Soult can’t march south because his reinforcements haven’t arrived and Wellesley can’t come further north because he doesn’t have the boats. And if the military can’t force a decision here then the diplomats will have to settle matters. Which is why I am here, as I keep trying to tell you.”
“You’re here,” Kate said, “because your sympathies are with the French.”
“That is an exceptionally offensive remark,” Christopher said haughtily. “I am here because sane men must do whatever they can to prevent this war continuing, and to do that we must talk with the enemy and I cannot talk with them if I am on the wrong side of the river.”
Kate did not answer. She no longer believed her husband’s complicated explanations of why he was friendly with the French or his high talk of the new ideas controlling Europe’s destiny. She clung instead to the simpler idea of being a patriot and all she wanted now was to cross the river and join the men on the far side, but there were no boats, no bridge left and no way to escape. She began to weep and Christopher, disgusted at her display of misery, turned away. He worked at his teeth with an ivory pick and marveled that a woman so beautiful could be so prey to vapors.
Kate cuffed at her tears, then walked to where the gardener was slowly clipping the laurels. “How do I get across the river?” she asked in Portuguese.
The man did not look at her, just clipped away. “You can’t.”
“I must!”
“They shoot you if you try.” He looked at her, taking in the tight-fitting hussar uniform, then turned away. “They shoot you anyway.”
A clock in the palace’s hallway struck eleven as Marshal Soult descended the great staircase. He wore a silk robe over his breeches and shirt. “Is breakfast ready?” he demanded.
“In the blue reception room, sir,” an aide answered, “and your guests are here.”
“Good, good!” He waited as the doors were thrown open for him, then greeted the visitors with a broad smile. “Take your seats, do. Ah, I see we are being informal.” This last remark was because the breakfast was laid in silver chafing dishes on a long sideboard, and the Marshal went along the row lifting lids. “Ham! Splendid. Braised kidneys, excellent! Beef! Some tongue, good, good. And liver. That does look tasty. Good morning, Colonel!” This greeting was to Christopher who replied by giving the Marshal a bow. “How good of you to come,” Soult went on, “and did you bring your pretty wife? Ah, I see her. Good, good. You shall sit there, Colonel.” He pointed to a chair next to the one he would occupy. Soult liked the Englishman who had betrayed the plotters who would have
mutinied if Soult had declared himself king. The Marshal still harbored that ambition, but he acknowledged that he would need to beat back the British and Portuguese army that had dared to advance from Coimbra before he assumed the crown and scepter.
Soult had been surprised by Sir Arthur Wellesley’s advance, but not alarmed. The river was guarded and the Marshal had been assured there were no boats on the opposite bank and so, as far as King Nicolas was concerned, the British could sit on the Douro’s southern bank and twiddle their thumbs forever.
The tall windows rattled in sympathy with the pounding guns and the sound made the Marshal turn from the chafing dishes. “Our gunners are a bit lively this morning, are they not?”
“They’re mostly British guns, sir,” an aide answered.
“Doing what?”
“Firing at our sentries on the quay,” the aide said. “They’re swatting at flies with six-pound balls.”
Soult laughed. “So much for the vaunted Wellesley, eh?” He smiled at Kate and gestured that she should take the place of honor at his right. “So good to have a pretty woman for company at breakfast.”
“Better to have one before breakfast,” an infantry colonel remarked and Kate, who spoke more French than any of the men knew, blushed.
Soult heaped his plate with liver and bacon, then took his seat. “They’re swatting sentries,” he said, “so what are we doing?”
“Counter-battery fire, sir,” the aide answered. “You don’t have any kidneys, sir? Can I bring you some?”
“Oh do, Cailloux. I like kidneys. Any news from the Castelo?” The Castelo de São was on the Douro’s north bank where the river met the sea and was heavily garrisoned to fight off a British seaborne assault.
“They report two frigates just out of range, sir, but no other craft in sight.”
“He dithers, doesn’t he?” Soult said with satisfaction. “This Wellesley, he’s a ditherer. Help yourself to the coffee, Colonel,” he told Christopher, “and if you would be so kind, a cup for me as well. Thank you.” Soult took a bread roll and some butter. “I talked with Vuillard last night,” the Marshal said, “and he’s making excuses. Hundreds of excuses!”