“If you stay here,” Christopher told Kate, “you’ll be raped.”
“I’ve been raped,” she wept, “night after night!”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Kate!” Christopher, dressed in civilian clothes, was standing by the carriage’s open door with rain dripping from the point of his cocked hat. “I’m not leaving you here.” He reached in, took her by the wrist and, despite her screams and struggles, hauled her from the carriage. “Walk, damn you!” he snarled, and dragged her across the verge and up the slope. She had only been out of the carriage a few seconds and already her blue hussar uniform, which Christopher had insisted she wore, was soaked through. “This isn’t the end,” Christopher told her, his grip painful on her thin wrist. “The reinforcements never arrived, that’s all! But we’ll be back.”
Kate, despite her misery, was struck by the “we.” Did he mean the two of them? Or did he mean the French? “I want to go home,” she cried.
“Stop being tedious,” Christopher snapped, “and keep walking!” He pulled her on. Her new leather-soled boots slipped on the path. “The French are going to win this war,” Christopher insisted. He was no longer certain of that, but when he weighed the balances of power in Europe he managed to convince himself that it was true.
“I want to go back to Oporto!” Kate sobbed.
“We can’t!”
“Why not?” She tried to pull away from him and though she could not loosen his grip she did manage to bring him to a halt. “Why not?” she asked.
“We just can’t,” he said, “now come on!” He tugged her into motion again, unwilling to tell her that he could not go back to Oporto because that damned man Sharpe was alive. Good Christ in his heaven, but the bastard was only an over-age lieutenant and one, he had now learned, who was up from the ranks, but Sharpe knew too much that was damning to Christopher and so the Colonel would need to find a safe haven from where, by the discreet methods that he knew so well, he could send a letter to London. Then, in quiet, he could judge from the reply whether London believed his story that he had been forced to demonstrate an allegiance to the French in order to engineer a mutiny that would have freed Portugal, and that story sounded convincing to him, except that Portugal was being freed anyway. But all was not lost. It would be his word against Sharpe’s, and Christopher, whatever else he might be, was a gentleman and Sharpe was most decidedly not. There would be the delicate problem, of course, of what to do with Kate if he was called back to London, but he could probably deny that the marriage had ever taken place. He would put reports of it down to Kate’s vapors. Women were given to vapors, it was notorious. What had Shakespeare said? “Frailty, thy name is woman.” So he would truthfully claim that the gabbled service in Vila Real de Zedes’s small church was not a proper marriage and say that he had undergone it solely to save Kate’s blushes. It was a gamble, he knew, but he had played cards long enough to know that sometimes the most outrageous gambles paid the biggest winnings.
And if the gamble failed, and if he could not salvage his London career then it probably would not matter, for he clung to the belief that the French would surely win in the end and he would be back in Oporto where, for lack of any other knowledge, the lawyers must account him as Kate’s husband and he would be wealthy. Kate would come to terms with it. She would recover when she was restored, as she would be, to comfort and home. Thus far, it was true, she had been unhappy, her joy at the marriage turning to horror in the bedroom, but young mares often rebelled against the bridle yet after a whipping or two became docile and obedient. And Christopher wished that outcome for Kate because her beauty still thrilled him. He dragged her on to where Williamson, now Christopher’s servant, held his horse. “Get on its back,” he ordered Kate.
“I want to go home!” she said.
“Get up!” He almost hit her with the riding crop that was tucked under the saddle, but then she meekly let him help her onto the horse. “Hold on to the reins, Williamson,” Christopher ordered. He did not want Kate turning the horse and kicking it away westward. “Hold them tight, man.”
“Yes, sir,” Williamson said. He was still in his rifleman’s uniform, though he had exchanged his shako for a wide-brimmed leather hat. He had picked up a French musket, a pistol and a saber in the retreat from Oporto and the weapons made him look formidable, an appearance that was a comfort to Christopher. The Colonel had needed a servant after his own had fled, but he wanted a bodyguard even more and Williamson played the role superbly. He told Christopher tales of tavern brawls, of wild fights with knives and clubs, of bare-fisted boxing bouts, and Christopher lapped it up almost as eagerly as he listened to Williamson’s bitter complaints about Sharpe.
In return Christopher had promised Williamson a golden future. “Learn French,” he had advised the deserter, “and you can join their army. Show that you’re good and they’ll give you a commission. They ain’t particular in the French army.”
“And if I wants to stay with you, sir?” Williamson had asked.
“I was always a man to reward loyalty, Williamson,” Christopher had said, and so the two suited each other even if, for now, their fortunes were at a low ebb as, with thousands of other fugitives, they climbed into the rain, were buffeted by the wind and saw nothing ahead but the hunger, bleak slopes and wet rocks of the Serra de Santa Catalina.
Behind them, on the road from Oporto to Amarante, a sad trail of abandoned carriages and wagons stood in the downpour. The wounded French watched anxiously, praying that the pursuing British would appear before the peasants, but the peasants were closer than the redcoats, much closer, and soon their dark shapes were seen flitting in the rain and in their hands were bright knives.
And in the rain the wounded men’s muskets would not fire.
And so the screaming began.
Sharpe would have liked to take Hagman on his pursuit of Christopher, but the old poacher was not fully recovered from his chest wound, and so Sharpe was forced to leave him behind. He took twelve men, his fittest and cleverest, and all complained vehemently when they were rousted out into Oporto’s rain before dawn because their bellies were sour with wine, their heads sore and their tempers short. “But not as short as mine,” Sharpe warned them, “so don’t make such a damned fuss.”
Hogan came with them, as did Lieutenant Vicente and three of his men. Vicente had learned that three mail carriages were going to Braga at first light and told Hogan that the vehicles were notoriously fast and would be traveling on a good road. The drivers, carrying sacks of mail that had been waiting for the French to leave before they could be delivered to Braga, happily made room for the soldiers who collapsed on the mail sacks and fell asleep.
They passed through the remnants of the city’s northern defenses in the wet halflight of dawn. The road was good, but the mail coaches were slowed because partisans had felled trees across the highway and each barricade took a half-hour or more to clear. “If the French had known Amarante had fallen,” Hogan told Sharpe, “they’d have retreated on this road and we’d never have caught them! Mind you, we don’t know that their Braga garrison has left with the rest.”
It had, and the mail arrived along with a troop of British cavalry who were welcomed by cheering inhabitants whose joy could not be dampened by the rain. Hogan, in his engineer’s blue coat, was mistaken for a French prisoner and some horse dung was thrown at him before Vicente managed to persuade the crowd that Hogan was English.
“Irish,” Hogan protested, “please.”
“Same thing,” Vicente said absentmindedly.
“Good God in his heaven,” Harper said, disgusted, then laughed because the crowd insisted on carrying Hogan on their shoulders.
The main road from Braga went north across the frontier to Ponte-vedra, but to the east a dozen tracks climbed into the hills and one of them, Vicente promised, would take them all the way to Ponte Nova, but it was the same road that the French would be trying to reach and so he warned Sharpe that they might have to take to the
trackless hills. “If we are lucky,” Vicente said, “we shall be at the bridge in two days.”
“And how long to the Saltador?” Hogan asked.
“Another half-day.”
“And how long will it take the French?”
“Three days,” Vicente said, “it must take them three days.” He made the sign of the cross. “I pray it takes them three days.”
They spent the night in Braga. A cobbler repaired their boots, insisting he would take no money, and he used his best leather to make new soles that were studded with nails to give some grip in the wet high ground. He must have worked all night for in the morning he shyly presented Sharpe with leather covers for the rifles and muskets. The weapons had been protected from the rain by corks shoved into their muzzles and by ragged clouts wrapped about the locks, but the leather sheaths were far better. The cobbler had greased the seams with sheep fat to make the covers waterproof and Sharpe, like his men, was absurdly pleased with the gift. They were given so much food that they ended up giving most of it to a priest who promised to distribute it among the poor, and then, in the rain-lashed dawn, they marched. Hogan rode because the mayor of Braga had presented him with a mule, a sure-footed beast with a vile temper and a wall eye, which Hogan saddled with a blanket and then rode with his feet almost touching the ground. He suggested using the mule to carry their weapons, but of all the party he was the oldest and the least spry, and so Sharpe insisted he ride. “I’ve no idea what we’ll find,” Hogan told Sharpe as they climbed into the rock-strewn hills. “If the bridge at Ponte Nova has been blown, as it should have been by now, then the French will scatter. They’ll just be running for their lives and we’ll be hard put to find Mister Christopher in all that chaos. Still, we must try.”
“And if it hasn’t been blown?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Hogan said, and laughed. “Ah, Jesus, I do hate this rain. Have you ever tried taking snuff in the rain, Richard? It’s like sniffing up cat vomit.”
They walked eastward through a wide valley edged by high, pale hills that were crowned with gray boulders. The road lay to the south of the River Cavado which ran clear and deep through rich pastureland that had been plundered by the French so that no cattle or sheep grazed the spring grass. The villages had once been prosperous, but were now almost deserted and the few folk who remained were wary. Hogan, like Vicente and his men, wore blue and that was also the color of the enemy’s coats, while the riflemen’s green jackets could be mistaken for the uniforms of dismounted French dragoons. Most people, if they expected anything, thought the British wore red and so Sergeant Macedo, anticipating the confusion, had found a Portuguese flag in Braga that he carried on a pole hacked from an ash tree. The flag showed a wreathed crest of Portugal surmounted by a great golden crown and it reassured those folk who recognized the emblem. Not all did, but once the villagers had spoken with Vicente they could not do enough for the soldiers. “For God’s sake,” Sharpe told Vicente, “tell them to hide their wine.”
“They’re friendly, sure enough,” Harper said as they left another small settlement where the dungheaps were bigger than the cottages. “Not like the Spanish. They could be cold. Not all of them, but some were bastards.”
“The Spanish don’t like the English,” Hogan told him.
“They don’t like the English?” Harper asked, surprised. “So they’re not bastards after all then, just wary, eh? But are you saying, sir, that the Portuguese do like the English?”
“The Portuguese,” Hogan said, “hate the Spanish and when you have a bigger neighbor whom you detest then you look for a big friend to help you.”
“So who’s Ireland’s big friend, sir?”
“God, Sergeant,” Hogan said, “God.”
“Dear Lord above,” Harper said piously, staring into the rainy sky, “for Christ’s sake, wake up.”
“Why don’t you fight for the bloody French,” Harris snarled.
“Enough!” Sharpe snapped.
They marched in silence for a while, then Vicente could not contain his curiosity. “If the Irish hate the English,” he asked, “why do they fight for them?” Harper chuckled at the question, Hogan raised his eyes to the gray heavens and Sharpe just scowled.
The road, now that they were far from Braga, was less well maintained. Grass grew down its center between ruts made by ox carts. The French had not scavenged this far and there were a few flocks of bedraggled sheep and some small herds of cattle, but as soon as a herdsman or shepherd saw the soldiers he hustled his beasts away. Vicente was still puzzled and, having failed to elicit an answer from his companions, tried again. “I really do not understand,” he said in a very earnest voice, “why the Irish would fight for the English King.” Harris drew a breath as if to reply, but one savage look from Sharpe made him change his mind. Harper began to whistle “Over the Hills and Far Away,” then could not help laughing at the strained silence that was at last broken by Hogan.
“It’s hunger,” the engineer explained to Vicente, “hunger and poverty and desperation, and because there’s precious little work for a good man at home, and because we’ve always been a people that enjoy a good fight.”
Vicente was intrigued by the answer. “And that is true for you, Captain?” he asked.
“Not for me,” Hogan allowed. “My family’s always had some money. Not much, but we never had to scratch in thin soil to raise our daily bread. No, I joined the army because I like being an engineer. I like practical things and this was the best way to do what I liked. But someone like Sergeant Harper?” He glanced at Harper. “I dare say he’s here because he’d be starving otherwise.”
“True,” Harper said.
“And you hate the English?” Vicente asked Harper.
“Careful,” Sharpe growled.
“I hate the bloody ground the bastards walk on, sir,” Harper said cheerfully, then saw Vicente cast a bewildered glance at Sharpe. “I didn’t say I hated them all,” Harper added.
“Life is complicated,” Hogan said vaguely. “I mean there’s a Portuguese Legion in the French army, I hear?”
Vicente looked embarrassed. “They believe in French ideas, sir.”
“Ah! Ideas,” Hogan said, “they’re much more dangerous than big or little neighbors. I don’t believe in fighting for ideas”-he shook his head ruefully-”and nor does Sergeant Harper.”
“I don’t?” Harper asked.
“No, you bloody don’t,” Sharpe snarled.
“So what do you believe in?” Vicente wanted to know.
“The trinity, sir,” Harper said sententiously.
“The trinity?” Vicente was surprised.
“The Baker rifle,” Sharpe said, “the sword bayonet, and me.”
“Those too,” Harper acknowledged, and laughed.
“What it is,” Hogan tried to help Vicente, “is that it’s like being in a house where there’s an unhappy marriage and you ask a question about fidelity. You cause embarrassment. No one wants to talk about it.”
“Harris!” Sharpe warned, seeing the red-headed rifleman open his mouth.
“I was only going to say, sir,” Harris said, “that there’s a dozen horsemen on that hill over there.”
Sharpe turned just in time to see the horsemen vanish across the crest. The rain was too thick and the light too poor to see if they were in uniform, but Hogan suggested the French might well have sent cavalry patrols far ahead of their retreat. “They’ll be wanting to know whether we’ve taken Braga,” he explained, “because if we hadn’t then they’d turn this way and try to escape up to Pontevedra.”
Sharpe gazed at the far hill. “If there’s bloody cavalry about,” he said, “then I don’t want to be caught on the road.” It was the one place in a nightmare landscape where horsemen would have an advantage.
So to avoid enemy horsemen they struck north into the wilderness. It meant crossing the Cavado which they managed at a deep ford which led only to the high summer pastures. Sharp
e continually looked behind, but saw no sign of the horsemen. The path climbed into a wild land. The hills were steep, the valleys deep and the high ground bare of anything except gorse, ferns, thin grass and vast rounded boulders, some balanced on others so precariously that they looked as if a child’s touch would send them bounding down the precipitous slopes. The grass was fit only for a few tangle-haired sheep and scores of feral goats on which the mountain wolves and wild lynx fed. The only village they passed was a poor place with high rock walls about its small vegetable gardens. Goats were hobbled on pastures the size of inn yards and a few bony cattle stared at the soldiers as they passed. They climbed still higher, listening to the goat bells among the rocks and passing a small shrine heaped with faded gorse blossom. Vicente crossed himself as he passed the shrine.
They turned eastward again, following a stony ridge where the great rounded boulders would make it impossible for any cavalry to form and charge, and Sharpe kept watching southwards and saw nothing. Yet there had been horsemen, and there would be more, for he was making a rendezvous with a desperate army that had been bounced from imminent success to abject defeat in one swift day.
It was hard traveling in the hills. They rested every hour, then trudged on. All were soaked, tired and chilled. The rain was relentless and the wind had now gone into the east so that it came straight into their faces. The rifle slings rubbed their wet shoulders raw, but at least the rain lifted that afternoon, even if the wind stayed brisk and cold. At dusk, feeling as weary as he ever had on the terrible retreat to Vigo, Sharpe led them down from the ridge to a small deserted hamlet of low stone cottages roofed with turf. “Just like home,” Harper said happily. The driest places to sleep were two long, coffin-shaped granaries that protected their contents from rats by being raised on mushroom-shaped stone pillars, and most of the men crammed themselves into the narrow spaces while Sharpe, Hogan and Vicente shared the least damaged cottage where Sharpe conjured a fire from damp kindling, and brewed tea.