“Cease fire!” Sharpe shouted.
Not one man had followed Dulong, not one. He came alone and Sharpe recognized the Frenchman’s bravery and, to show it, he stepped forward and raised his sword in a formal salute.
Dulong saw the salute, checked and turned and saw he was alone. He looked back to Sharpe, raised his own saber, then sheathed it with a violent thrust that betrayed the disgust he felt at his men’s reluctance to die for the Emperor. He nodded at Sharpe, then walked away, and twenty minutes later the rest of the French were gone from the hill. Vicente’s men had been formed in two ranks on the tower’s open terrace, ready to fire a volley that had not been needed, and two of them had been killed by a howitzer shell, and another shell had slammed a piece of its casing into Gataker’s leg, gouging a bloody path down his right thigh, but leaving the bone unbroken. Sharpe had not even registered that the howitzer had been firing during the attack, but it had stopped now, the sun was fully risen and the valleys were flooded by light and Sergeant Harper, his rifle barrel fouled by powder deposits and hot from firing, had made the day’s first pot of tea.
Chapter 7
It was just before midday when a French soldier climbed the hill carrying a white flag of truce tied to the muzzle of his musket. Two officers accompanied him, one in French infantry blue and the other, Colonel Christopher, in his red British uniform jacket with its black facings and cuffs.
Sharpe and Vicente went to meet the two officers who had advanced a dozen paces ahead of the glum-looking man with the white flag and Vicente was forcibly struck by the resemblance between Sharpe and the French infantry officer, who was a tall, black-haired man with a scar on his right cheek and a bruise across the bridge of his nose. His ragged blue uniform bore the green-fringed epaulettes that showed he was a light infantryman and his flared shako was fronted with a white metal plate stamped with the French eagle and the number 31. The badge was surmounted by a plume of red and white feathers which looked new and fresh compared to the Frenchman’s stained and threadbare uniform.
“We’ll kill the Frog first,” Sharpe said to Vicente, “because he’s the dangerous bugger, and then we’ll fillet Christopher slowly.”
“Sharpe!” the lawyer in Vicente was shocked. “They’re under a flag of truce!”
They stopped a few paces from Colonel Christopher, who took a toothpick from his lips and chucked it away. “How are you, Sharpe?” he asked genially, then held up a hand to stay any answer. “Give me a moment, will you?” the Colonel said and one-handedly clicked open a tinderbox, struck a light and drew on a cigar. When it was burning satisfactorily he closed the tinderbox’s lid on the small flames and smiled. “Fellow with me is called Major Dulong. He don’t speak a word of English, but he wanted to have a look at you.”
Sharpe looked at Dulong, recognized him as the officer who had led so bravely up the hill, and then felt sorry that a good man had climbed back up the hill alongside a traitor. A traitor and a thief. “Where’s my telescope?” he demanded of Christopher.
“Back down the hill,” Christopher said carelessly. “You can have it later.” He drew on the cigar and looked at the French bodies among the rocks. “Brigadier Vuillard has been a mite over eager, wouldn’t you say? Cigar?”
“Please yourself.” The Colonel sucked deep. “You’ve done well, Sharpe, proud of you. The 31st Leger”-he jerked his head toward Dulong-”ain’t used to losing. You showed the damn Frogs how an Englishman fights, eh?”
“And how Irishmen fight,” Sharpe said, “and Scots, Welsh and Portuguese.”
“Decent of you to remember the uglier breeds,” Christopher said, “but it’s over now, Sharpe, all over. Time to pack up and go. Frogs are offering you honors of war and all that. March out with your guns shouldered, your colors flying and let bygones be bygones. They ain’t happy, Sharpe, but I persuaded them.”
Sharpe looked at Dulong again and he wondered if there was a look of warning in the Frenchman’s eyes. Dulong had said nothing, but just stood a pace behind Christopher and two paces to the side and Sharpe suspected the Major was distancing himself from Christopher’s errand. Sharpe looked back to Christopher. “You think I’m a damned fool, don’t you?” he retorted.
Christopher ignored the comment. “I don’t think you’ve time to reach Lisbon. Cradock will be gone in a day or two and his army with him. They’re going home, Sharpe. Back to England, so probably the best thing for you to do is wait in Oporto. The French have agreed to repatriate all British citizens and a ship will probably be sailing from there within a week or two and you and your fellows can be aboard.”
“Will you be aboard?” Sharpe asked.
“I very well might, Sharpe, thank you for asking. And if you’ll forgive me for sounding immodest I rather fancy I shall sail home to a hero’s welcome. The man who brought peace to Portugal! There has to be a knighthood in that, don’t you think? Not that I care, of course, but I’m sure Kate will enjoy being Lady Christopher.”
“If you weren’t under a flag of truce,” Sharpe said, “I’d disembowel you here and now. I know what you’ve been doing. Dinner parties with French generals? Bringing them here so they could snap us up? You’re a bloody traitor, Christopher, nothing but a bloody traitor.” The vehemence of his tone brought a small smile to Major Dulong’s grim face.
“Oh dear.” Christopher looked pained. “Oh dear me, dear me.” He stared at a nearby French corpse for a few seconds, then shook his head. “I’ll overlook your impertinence, Sharpe. I suppose that damned servant of mine found his way to you? He did? Thought as much. Luis has an unrivaled talent for misunderstanding circumstances.” He drew on his cigar, then blew a plume of smoke that was whirled away on the wind. “I was sent here, Sharpe, by His Majesty’s government with instructions to discover whether Portugal was worth fighting for, whether it was worth an effusion of British blood and I concluded, and I’ve no doubt you will disagree with me, that it was not. So I obeyed the second part of my remit, which was to secure terms from the French. Not terms of surrender, Sharpe, but of settlement. We shall withdraw our forces and they will withdraw theirs, though for form’s sake they will be allowed to march a token division through the streets of Lisbon. Then they’re going: bonsoir, adieu and au revoir. By the end of July there will not be one foreign soldier remaining on Portugal’s soil. That is my achievement, Sharpe, and it was necessary to dine with French generals, French marshals and French officials to secure it.” He paused, as if expecting some reaction, but Sharpe just looked skeptical and Christopher sighed. “That is the truth, Sharpe, however hard you may find it to believe, but remember ‘there are more things in ... ‘ “
“I know,” Sharpe interrupted. “More things in heaven and earth than I bloody know about, but what the hell were you doing here?” His voice was angry now. “And you’ve been wearing a French uniform. Luis told me.”
“Can’t usually wear this red coat behind French lines, Sharpe,” Christopher said, “and civilian clothes don’t exactly command respect these days, so yes, I do sometimes wear a French uniform. It’s a ruse de guerre, Sharpe, a ruse de guerre.”
“A ruse of bloody nothing,” Sharpe snarled. “Those bastards have been trying to kill my men, and you brought them here!”
“Oh, Sharpe,” Christopher said sadly. “We needed somewhere quiet to sign the memorandum of agreement, some place where the mob could not express its crude opinions and so I offered the Quinta. I confess I did not consider your predicament as thoroughly as I should and that is my fault. I am sorry.” He even offered Sharpe the hint of a bow. “The French came here, they deemed your presence a trap and, against my advice, attempted to attack you. I apologize again, Sharpe, most profusely, but it’s over now. You are free to leave, you do not offer a surrender, you do not yield your weapons, you march out with your head held high and you will go with my sincerest congratulations and, naturally, I shall make quite certain that your Colonel learns of your achievement here.” He waited for Sharpe’s answer and,
when none came, smiled. “And, of course,” he went on, “I shall be honored to return your telescope. I clean forgot to bring it with me just now.”
“You forgot nothing, you bastard,” Sharpe growled.
“Sharpe,” Christopher said reprovingly, “try not to be brutish. Try to understand that diplomacy employs subtlety, intelligence and, yes, deceit. And try to understand that I have negotiated your freedom. You may leave the hill in triumph.”
Shame stared into Christopher’s face which seemed so guileless, so pleased to be the bearer of this news. “And what happens if we stay?” he asked.
“I have not the foggiest idea,” Christopher said, “but of course I shall try to find out if that is, indeed, your wish. But my guess, Sharpe, is that the French will construe such stubbornness as a hostile gesture. There are, sadly, folk in this country who will oppose our settlement. They are misguided people who would prefer to fight rather than accept a negotiated peace, and if you stay here then that encourages their foolishness. My own suspicion is that if you insist upon staying, and thus break the terms of our agreement, the French will bring mortars from Oporto and do their best to persuade you to leave.” He drew on the cigar, then flinched as a raven pecked at the eyes of a nearby corpse. “Major Dulong would like to collect these men.” He gestured with the cigar toward the bodies left by Sharpe’s riflemen.
“He’s got one hour,” Sharpe said, “and he can bring ten men, none of them armed. And tell him some of my men will be on the hill, and they won’t be armed either.”
Christopher frowned. “Why would your men need to be on the open hillside?” he asked.
“Because we’ve got to bury our dead,” Sharpe said, “and it’s all rock up there.”
Christopher drew on the cigar. “I think it would be much better, Sharpe,” he said gently, “if you brought your men down now.”
Sharpe shook his head. “I’ll think about it,” he said.
“You’ll think about it?” Christopher repeated, looking irritated now. “And how long, might I ask, will it take you to think about it?”
“As long as it takes,” Sharpe said, “and I can be a very slow thinker.”
“You have one hour, Lieutenant,” Christopher said, “precisely one hour.” He spoke in French to Dulong who nodded at Sharpe, who nodded back, then Christopher threw away the half-smoked cigar, turned on his heel and went.
“He’s lying,” Sharpe said.
Vicente was less certain. “You can be sure of that?”
“I’ll tell you why I’m sure,” Sharpe said, “the bugger didn’t give me an order. This is the army. You don’t suggest, you order. Do this, do that, but he didn’t. He’s given me orders before, but not today.”
Vicente translated for the benefit of Sergeant Macedo who, with Harper, had been invited to listen to Sharpe’s report. Both sergeants, like Vicente, looked troubled, but they said nothing. “Why,” Vicente asked, “would he not give you an order?”
“Because he wants me to walk off this hilltop of my own accord, because what’s going to happen down there isn’t pretty. Because he was lying.”
“You can’t be sure of that,” Vicente said sternly, sounding more like the lawyer he had been rather than the soldier he now was.
“We can’t be sure of bloody anything,” Sharpe grumbled.
Vicente looked into the east. “The guns have stopped at Amarante. Maybe there is peace?”
“And why would there be peace?” Sharpe asked. “Why did the French come here in the first place?”
“To stop us trading with Britain,” Vicente said.
“So why withdraw now? The trading will start again. They haven’t finished the job and it isn’t like the French to give up so quick.”
Vicente thought for a few seconds. “Perhaps they know they will lose too many men? The further they go into Portugal the more enemies they make and the longer the supply roads they have to protect. Perhaps they are being sensible.”
“They’re bloody Frogs,” Sharpe said, “they don’t know the meaning of the word. And there’s something else. Christopher didn’t show me any bits of paper, did he? No agreement signed and sealed.”
Vicente considered that argument, then nodded to acknowledge its force. “If you like,” he said, “I will go down and ask to see the paper.”
“There isn’t a piece of paper,” Sharpe said, “and none of us are going off this hilltop.”
Vicente paused. “Is that an order, senhor?”
“That is an order,” Sharpe said. “We’re staying.”
“Then we stay,” Vicente said. He clapped Macedo on the shoulder and the two went back to their men so Vicente could tell them what had happened.
Harper sat beside Sharpe. “Are you sure now?”
“Of course I’m not bloody sure, Pat,” Sharpe said testily, “but I think he’s lying. He never even asked me how many casualties we had up here! If he was on our side he’d ask that, wouldn’t he?”
Harper shrugged as if he could not answer that question. “So what happens if we leave?”
“They make us prisoners. March us off to bloody France.”
“Or send us home?”
“If the war is over, Pat, they’ll send us home, but if the war is over then someone else will tell us. A Portuguese official, someone. Not him, not Christopher. And if the fighting’s over, why give us just an hour? We’d have the rest of our lives to get off this hill, not one hour.” Sharpe stared down the slope where the last of the French bodies was being removed by a squad of infantrymen who had climbed the path with a flag of truce and no weapons. Dulong had led them and he had thought to bring two spades so that Sharpe’s men could bury their corpses: the two Portuguese killed by the howitzer in the dawn attack and Rifleman Donnelly who had been lying on the hilltop under a pile of stones ever since Sharpe had beaten Dulong’s men off the summit.
Vicente had sent Sergeant Macedo and three men to dig his two graves and Sharpe had given the second spade to Williamson. “Digging the grave will be the end of your punishment,” he had said. Ever since the confrontation in the wood Sharpe had been giving Williamson extra duties, keeping the man busy and trying to wear his spirit down, but Sharpe reckoned Williamson had been punished enough. “And leave your rifle here,” Sharpe added. Williamson had snatched the spade, dropped his rifle with unnecessary force and, accompanied by Dodd and Harris, gone downhill to where there was enough soil above the rock to make an adequate grave. Harper and Slattery had carried the dead man down from the hilltop and rolled him into the hole and then Harper had said a prayer and Slattery had bowed his head and now Williamson, stripped to his shirtsleeves, was shoveling the soil back into the grave while Dodd and Harris watched the French carry their last casualties away.
Harper also watched the French. “What happens if they bring a mortar?” he asked.
“We’re buggered,” Sharpe said, “but a lot can happen before a mortar gets here.”
“What?”
“I don’t know,” Sharpe said irritably. He really did not know, any more than he knew what to do. Christopher had been very persuasive and it was only a streak of stubbornness in Sharpe that made him so certain the Colonel was lying. That and the look in Major Dulong’s eyes. “Maybe I’m wrong, Pat, maybe I’m wrong. Trouble is I like it here.”
Harper smiled. “You like it here?”
“I like being away from the army. Captain Hogan’s all right, but the rest? I can’t stand the rest.”
“Jack puddings,” Harper said flatly, meaning officers.
“I’m better on my own,” Sharpe said, “and out here I’m on my own. So we’re staying.”
“Aye,” Harper said, “and I think you’re right.”
“You do?” Sharpe sounded surprised.
“I do,” Harper said, “mind you, my mother never reckoned I was any good at thinking.”
Sharpe laughed. “Go and clean your rifle, Pat.”
Cooper had boiled a can of water and some of the ri
flemen used it to swill out their weapons’ barrels. Every shot left a little layer of caked powder that would eventually build up and make the rifle unusable, but hot water dissolved the residue. Some riflemen preferred to piss down the barrel. Hagman used the boiling water, then scraped at his barrel with his ramrod. “You want me to clean yours, sir?” he asked Sharpe.
“It’ll wait, Dan,” Sharpe said, then saw Sergeant Macedo and his men come back and he wondered where his own gravediggers were and so he went to the northernmost redoubt from where he could see Harris and Dodd stamping the earth down over Donnelly’s body while Williamson leaned on the spade. “Aren’t you finished?” Sharpe shouted at them. “Hurry!”
“Coming, sir!” Harris called, and he and Dodd picked up their jackets and started up the hill. Williamson hefted the spade, looked as if he was about to follow and then, quite suddenly, turned and ran down the hill.
“Jesus!” Harper appeared beside Sharpe and raised his rifle.
Sharpe pushed it down. He was not trying to save Williamson’s life, but there was a truce on the hill and even a single rifle shot could be construed as breaking the truce and the howitzer could answer the shot while Dodd and Harris were still on the open slope.
“The bastard!” Hagman watched Williamson run recklessly down the hill as though he was trying to outrun the expected bullet. Sharpe felt a terrible sense of failure. He had not liked Williamson, but even so it was the officer who had failed when a man ran. The officer would not get punished, of course, and the man, if he were ever caught, would be shot, but Sharpe knew that this was his failure. It was a reproof to his command.