The French ran. They had fought bravely, going against stone walls with muskets, but now they panicked and all discipline vanished as they ran for the road going east toward Amarante. Other French forces, cavalry and artillery among them, were hurrying from the higher part of the city, escaping the flood of redcoats ferried across the Douro and fleeing the revenge of the townsfolk who hunted up the alleys and streets to find wounded Frenchmen whom they attacked with fish-filleting knives or battered with clubs.
There was screaming and howling in Oporto’s streets, but only a strange silence in the bullet-scarred seminary. Then General Hill cupped his hands. “Follow them!” he shouted. “Follow them! I want a pursuit!”
“Rifles! To me!” Sharpe called. He held his men back from the pursuit. They had already endured enough, he reckoned, and it was time to give them a rest. “Clean your guns,” he ordered them, and so they stayed as the redcoats and riflemen of the 1st Brigade formed ranks outside the seminary and then marched away eastward.
A score of dead men were left on the roof. There were long streaks of blood showing where they had been pulled away from the parapet. The smoke about the building slowly cleared until the air felt clean again. The slopes beneath the seminary were strewn with discarded French packs and French bodies, not all of them dead. A wounded man crawled away between the blood-spattered blossoms of ragweed. A dog sniffed at a corpse. Ravens came on black wings to taste the dead, and women and children hurried from the houses in the valley to begin the plunder. A wounded man tried to twitch away from a girl who could not have been more than eleven and she drew a butchering knife from her apron belt, a knife that had been sharpened so often that its blade was little more than a whisper of thin steel attached to a bone handle, and she sliced it across the Frenchman’s throat, then grimaced because his blood had splashed onto her lap. Her little sister was dragging six muskets by their slings. The small fires started by wadding smoked between the corpses where the plump Portuguese priest, the blunderbuss still in one hand, made the sign of the cross over the Frenchmen he had helped to kill.
While the living French, in panicked disarray, ran.
And the city of Oporto had been recaptured.
THE LETTER, addressed to Richard Sharpe, Esq, was waiting on the mantel of the parlor in the House Beautiful and it was a miracle it had survived because that afternoon a score of Royal Artillery gunners made the house into their billet and the first thing they did was to break up the parlor’s furniture to make a fire and the letter was an ideal piece of kindling, but then Captain Hogan arrived just before the fire was lit and managed to retrieve the paper. He had come looking for Sharpe and had asked the gunners if any messages had been left in the house, thinking Sharpe might have left one. “English folk live here, lads,” he told the gunners as he opened the unsealed letter, “so wipe your feet and clean up behind yourselves.” He read the brief message, and thought for a while. “I suppose none of you have seen a tall Rifle officer from the 95th? No? Well, if he shows up, tell him to go to the Palacio das Carrancas.”
“The what, sir?” a gunner asked.
“Big building down the hill,” Hogan explained. “Headquarters.” Hogan knew Sharpe was alive for Colonel Waters had told him of meeting Sharpe that morning, but though Hogan roamed the streets he had not found Sharpe and so a pair of orderlies were sent to search the city for the stray rifleman.
A new pontoon bridge was already being floated across the Douro. The city was free again and it celebrated with flags, wine and music. Hundreds of French prisoners were under guard in a warehouse and a long row of captured French guns was parked on the river’s quay where the British merchant ships that had been captured when the city fell now flew their own flags again. Marshal Soult and his army had marched away east toward the bridge at Amarante that the French had captured so recently and they were blissfully unaware that General Beresford, the new commander of the Portuguese army, had recaptured the bridge and was waiting for them.
“If they can’t cross at Amarante,” Wellesley demanded that evening, “then where will they go?” The question was asked in the blue reception room of the Palacio das Carrancas where Wellesley and his staff had eaten a meal that had evidently been cooked for Marshal Soult and which had been found still hot in the palace’s ovens. The meal had been lamb, which Sir Arthur liked, but so tricked out with onions, scraps of ham and mushrooms that its taste had been quite spoiled for him. “I thought the French appreciated cooking,” he had grumbled, then demanded that an orderly bring him a bottle of vinegar from the kitchens. He had doused the lamb, scraped away the offending mushrooms and onions, and decided the meal was much improved.
Now, with the remnants of the meal cleared away, the officers crowded about a hand-drawn map that Captain Hogan had spread on the table. Sir Arthur traced a finger across the map. “They’ll want to get back to Spain, of course,” he said, “but how?”
He had expected Colonel Waters, the most senior of the exploring officers, to answer the question, but Waters had not ridden the north country and so the Colonel nodded to Captain Hogan, the most junior officer in the room. Hogan had spent the weeks before Soult’s invasion mapping the Trás os Montes, the wild northern mountains where the roads twisted and the rivers ran fast and the bridges were few and narrow. Portuguese troops were even now marching to cut off those bridges and so deny the French the roads which would lead them back to their fortresses in Spain, and Hogan now tapped the vacant space on the map north of the road from Oporto to Amarante. “If Amarante’s taken, sir, and our fellows capture Braga tomorrow,” Hogan paused and glanced at Sir Arthur who gave an irritable nod, “then Soult is in a pickle, a real pickle. He’ll have to cross the Serra de Santa Catalina and there are no carriage roads in those hills.”
“What is there?” Wellesley asked, staring at the forbidding vacancy of the map.
“Goat tracks,” Hogan said, “wolves, footpaths, ravines and very angry peasants. Once he gets to here, sir”—he tapped the map to the north of the Serra de Santa Catalina—“he’s got a passable road that will take him home, but to reach that road he’ll have to abandon his wagons, his guns, his carriages, in fact everything that can’t be carried on a man or a mule’s back.”
Thunder growled above the city. The sound of rain began, then grew heavier, pelting down onto the terrace and rattling on the tall uncurtained windows. “Damn bloody weather,” Wellesley growled, knowing it would slow down his pursuit of the beaten French.
“It rains on the ungodly too, sir,” Hogan observed.
“Damn them as well.” Wellesley bridled. He was not sure how much he liked Hogan, whom he had inherited from Cradock. The damn man was Irish for a start which reminded Wellesley that he himself had been born in Ireland, a fact of which he was not particularly proud, and the man was plainly not high born and Sir Arthur liked his aides to come from good families, yet he recognized that prejudice as quite unreasonable and he was beginning to suspect that the quiet-spoken Hogan had a good deal of competence, while Colonel Waters, of whom Wellesley did approve, spoke very warmly of the Irishman.
“So,” Wellesley summed up the situation, “they’re on the road between here and Amarante, and they can’t come back without fighting us and they can’t go forward without meeting Beresford, so they must go north into the hills. And where do they go after that?”
“To this road here, sir,” Hogan answered, pointing a pencil at the map. “It goes from Braga to Chaves, sir, and if he manages to get past the Ponte Nova and reach Ruivaens, which is a village here”—he paused to make a pencil mark on the map—“then there’s a track that will take him north across the hills to Montalegre and that’s just a stone’s throw from the frontier.” Sir Arthur’s aides were huddled about the dining table, looking down at the candlelit map, though one man, a slight and pale figure dressed in elegant civilian clothes, did not bother to take any interest, but just stretched languidly in an armchair where he managed to convey the insulting impression that
he was bored by this talk of maps, roads, hills and bridges.
“And this road, sir,” Hogan went on, tracing his pencil from the Ponte Nova to Montalegre, “is a real devil. It’s a twister, sir. You have to walk five miles to go a half-mile forward. And better still, sir, it crosses a couple of rivers, small ones, but in deep gorges with quick water, and that means high bridges, sir, and if the Portuguese can cut one of those bridges then Monsieur Soult is lost, sir. He’s trapped. He can only lead his men across the mountains and they’ll have the devil on their heels all the way.”
“God speed the Portuguese,” Wellesley grunted, grimacing at the sound of the rain which he knew would slow his allies who were advancing inland in an attempt to sever the roads by which the French could reach Spain. They had already cut them off at Amarante, but now they would need to march further north while Wellesley’s army, fresh from its triumph at Oporto, would have to chase the French. The British were the beaters driving their game toward the Portuguese guns. Wellesley stared at the map. “You drew this, Hogan?”
“I did, sir.”
“And it’s reliable?”
“It is, sir.”
Sir Arthur grunted. If it were not for the weather, he thought, he would bag Soult and all his men, but the rain would make it a damned difficult pursuit. Which meant the sooner it began the better and so aides were sent with orders that would start the British army on its march at dawn. Then, the orders given, Sir Arthur yawned. He badly needed some sleep before the morning and he was about to turn in when the big doors were thrown open and a very wet, very ragged and very unshaven rifleman entered. He saw General Wellesley, looked surprised and instinctively came to attention.
“Good God,” Wellesley said sourly.
“I think you know Lieutenant…” Hogan began.
“Of course I know Lieutenant Sharpe,” Wellesley snapped, “but what I want to know is what the devil is he doing here? The 95th aren’t with us.”
Hogan removed the candlesticks from the corners of the map and let it roll up. “That’s my doing, Sir Arthur,” he said calmly. “I found Lieutenant Sharpe and his men wandering like lost sheep and took them into my care, and ever since he’s been escorting me on my journeys to the frontier. I couldn’t have coped with the French patrols on my own, Sir Arthur, and Mister Sharpe was a great comfort.”
Wellesley, while Hogan offered the explanation, just stared at Sharpe. “You were lost?” he demanded coldly.
“Cut off, sir,” Sharpe said.
“During the retreat to Corunna?”
“Yes, sir,” Sharpe said. In fact his unit had been retreating toward Vigo, but the distinction was not important and Sharpe had long learned to keep replies to senior officers as brief as possible.
“So where the devil have you been these last few weeks?” Wellesley asked tartly. “Skulking?”
“Yes, sir,” Sharpe said, and the staff officers stiffened at the whiff of insolence that drifted through the room.
“I ordered the Lieutenant to find a young Englishwoman who was lost, sir,” Hogan hurried to explain. “In fact I ordered him to accompany Colonel Christopher.”
The mention of that name was like a whip crack. No one spoke though the young civilian who had been pretending to sleep in the armchair and who had opened his eyes wide with surprise when Sharpe’s name was first mentioned now paid very close attention. He was a painfully thin young man and pallid, as though he feared the sun, and there was something feline, almost feminine, in his delicate appearance. His clothes, so very elegant, would have been well suited to a London drawing room or a Paris salon, but here, amidst the unwashed uniforms and suntanned officers of Wellesley’s staff, he looked like a pampered lapdog among hounds. He was sitting up straight now and staring intently at Sharpe.
“Colonel Christopher.” Wellesley broke the silence. “So you’ve been with him?” he demanded of Sharpe.
“General Cradock ordered me to stay with him, sir,” Sharpe said, and took the General’s order from his pouch and laid it on the table.
Wellesley did not even glance at the paper. “What the devil was Cradock doing?” he snapped. “Christopher’s not even a properly commissioned officer, he’s a damned Foreign Office flunkey!” These last words were spat at the pale young man, who, rather than respond, made an airily dismissive gesture with the delicate fingers of his right hand. He caught Sharpe’s eye then and turned the gesture into a small wave of welcome and Sharpe realized, with a start of recognition, that it was Lord Pumphrey whom he had last met in Copenhagen. His lordship, Sharpe knew, was mysteriously prominent in the Foreign Office, but Pumphrey offered no explanation of his presence in Oporto as Wellesley snatched up General Cradock’s order, read it and then threw the paper down. “So what did Christopher order you to do?” he asked Sharpe.
“To stay at a place called Vila Real de Zedes, sir.”
“And do what there, pray?”
“Be killed, sir.”
“Be killed?” Sir Arthur asked in a dangerous tone. He knew Sharpe was being impudent and, though the rifleman had once saved his life, Sir Arthur was quite ready to slap him down.
“He brought a French force to the village, sir. They attacked us.”
“Not very effectively, it seems,” Wellesley said sarcastically.
“Not very, no, sir,” Sharpe agreed, “but there were twelve hundred of them, sir, and only sixty of us.” He said no more and there was silence in the big room as men worked out the odds. Twenty to one. Another peal of thunder racked the sky and a shard of lightning flickered to the west.
“Twelve hundred, Richard?” Hogan asked in a voice which suggested Sharpe might like to amend the figure downward.
“There were probably more, sir,” Sharpe said stoically. “The 31st Léger attacked us, but they were backed up by at least one regiment of dragoons and an howitzer. Only the one, though, sir, and we saw them off.” He stopped and no one spoke again, and Sharpe remembered he had not paid tribute to his ally and so turned back to Wellesley. “I had Lieutenant Vicente with me, sir, of the 18th Portuguese, and his thirty-odd lads helped us a lot, but I’m sorry to report he lost a couple of men and I lost a couple too. And one of my men deserted, sir. I’m sorry about that.”
There was another silence, a much longer one, in which the officers stared at Sharpe and Sharpe tried to count the candles on the big table, and then Lord Pumphrey broke the silence. “You tell us, Lieutenant, that Mister Christopher brought these troops to attack you?”
“Yes, sir.”
Pumphrey smiled. “Did he bring them? Or was he brought by them?”
“He brought them,” Sharpe said vigorously. “And then he had the bloody nerve to come up the hill and tell me the war was over and we ought to walk down and let the French take care of us.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Pumphrey said with exaggerated civility.
There was another silence, then Colonel Waters cleared his throat. “You will recall, sir,” he said softly, “that it was Lieutenant Sharpe who provided us with our navy this morning.” In other words, he was saying to Sir Arthur Wellesley, show some damned gratitude.
But Sir Arthur was in no mood to show gratitude. He just stared at Sharpe, and then Hogan remembered the letter that he had rescued from the House Beautiful and he took it from his pocket. “It’s for you, Lieutenant,” he said, holding the paper toward Sharpe, “but it wasn’t sealed and so I took the liberty of reading it.”
Sharpe unfolded the paper. “He is going with the French,” Sharpe read, “and forcing me to accompany him and I do not want to.” It was signed Kate and had plainly been written in a tearing hurry.
“The ‘him,’ I assume,” Hogan asked, “is Christopher?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So the reason that Miss Savage absented herself in March,” Hogan went on, “was Colonel Christopher?”
“Yes, sir.”
“She is sweet on him?”
“She’s married to him,” Sharpe said and
was puzzled because Lord Pumphrey looked startled.
“A few weeks earlier”—Hogan was talking to Wellesley now—“Colonel Christopher was courting Miss Savage’s mother.”
“Does any of this ridiculous talk of romance help us determine what Christopher is doing?” Sir Arthur asked with considerable asperity.
“It’s amusing, if nothing else,” Pumphrey said. He stood up, flicked a speck of dust from a cuff, and smiled at Sharpe. “Did you really say Christopher married this girl?”
“He did, sir.”
“Then he is a bad boy,” Lord Pumphrey said happily, “because he’s already married.” His lordship plainly enjoyed that revelation. “He married Pearce Courtnell’s daughter ten years ago in the happy belief that she was worth eight thousand a year, then discovered she was hardly worth sixpence. It is not, I hear, a contented marriage, and might I observe, Sir Arthur, that Lieutenant Sharpe’s news answers our questions about Colonel Christopher’s true allegiance?”
“It does?” Wellesley asked, puzzled.
“Christopher cannot hope to survive a bigamous marriage if he intends to make his future in Britain or in a free Portugal,” Lord Pumphrey observed, “but in France? Or in a Portugal ruled by France? The French won’t care how many wives he left in London.”
“But you said he wants to return.”
“I tendered a surmise that he would wish to do so,” Pumphrey corrected the General. “He has, after all, been playing both sides of the table and if he thinks we’re winning then he will doubtless want to return and equally doubtless he will then deny ever marrying Miss Savage.”
“She might have another opinion,” Wellesley observed dryly.