"Sharpe's Havoc" - читать интересную книгу автора (Корнуэлл Бернард)

CHAPTER 8

The sound of the firing was coming from the west, channeled up the steep-sided river valley, and Sharpe could not tell whether the battle was being fought on the northern or southern bank of the Douro. Nor could he even tell whether it was a battle. Perhaps the French had established batteries to protect the city against an attack from the sea and those batteries might just be firing at inquisitive frigates. Or maybe the guns were merely practice firing. But one thing was certain, he would never know what the guns were doing unless he got closer.

He ran back to the village, followed by the shambling Ronnie who was bellowing his inarticulate achievement to the world. Sharpe found Vicente. „The ferry’s still here,” Sharpe said, „he showed me.” He pointed to Ronnie.

„But the guns?” Vicente was bemused.

„We’re going to find out what they’re doing,” Sharpe said, „but ask the villagers to raise the ferry. We might yet need it. But we’ll go toward the city.”

„All of us?” Vicente asked.

„All of us. But tell them I want that boat floating by mid-morning.”

Ronnie’s mother, a shrunken and bent woman swathed in black, retrieved her son from Sharpe’s side and berated him in a shrill voice. Sharpe gave her the last chunk of cheese from Harper’s pack, explained that Ronnie was a hero, then led his motley group westward along the river bank.

There was plenty of cover. Orchards, olive groves, cattle sheds and small vineyards were crowded on the narrow piece of level land beside the Douro’s northern bank. The cannons, hidden by the loom of the great hill on which the flat-roofed building stood, were sporadic. Their firing would swell to a battle intensity then fade away. For minutes at a time there would be no shots, or just a single gun would fire and the sound of it would echo off the southern hills, rebound from the northern and bounce its way down the valley.

„Perhaps,” Vicente suggested, pointing up to the great white building, „we should go to the seminary.”

„Frogs will be there,” Sharpe said. He was crouching beside a hedge and for some reason kept his voice very low. It seemed extraordinary that there were no French picquets, not one, but he was certain the French must have put men into the big building that dominated the river east of the city as effectively as a castle. „What did you say it was?”

„A seminary.” Vicente saw Sharpe was puzzled. „A place where priests are trained. I thought of becoming a priest once.”

„Good God,” Sharpe said, surprised, „you wanted to be a priest?”

„I thought of it,” Vicente said defensively. „Do you not like priests?”

„Not much.”

„Then I’m glad I became a lawyer,” Vicente said with a smile.

„You’re no lawyer, Jorge,” Sharpe said, „you’re a bloody soldier like the rest of us.” He offered that compliment and then turned as the last of his men came across the small meadow to crouch behind the hedge. If the French did have men in the seminary, he thought, then either they were fast asleep or, more likely, they had seen the blue and green uniforms and confused them with their own jackets. Did they think the Portuguese blue were French coats? The Portuguese blue was darker than the French infantry coats and the Rifle green was much darker than the dragoons’ coats, but at a distance the uniforms might be confused. Or was there no one in the building? Sharpe took out the small telescope and stared for a long time. The seminary was huge, a great white block, four stories high, and there had to be at least ninety windows in the south wall alone, but he could see no movement in any of them, nor was anyone on the flat roof which had a red tile coping and surely provided the best lookout post east of the city.

„Shall we go there?” Vicente prompted Sharpe.

„Maybe,” Sharpe responded cautiously. He was tempted because the building would offer a marvelous view of the city, but he still could not believe the French would leave the seminary empty. „We’ll go further along the bank first, though.”

He led with his riflemen. Their green jackets blended better with the leaves, offering them a small advantage if there was a French picquet ahead, but they saw no one. Nor did Sharpe see any activity on the southern bank, yet the guns were still firing and now, over the loom of the seminary hill, he could see a dirty white cloud of gun smoke being pumped into the river valley.

There were more buildings now, many of them small houses built close to the river, and their gardens were a maze offences, vines and olive trees that hid Sharpe’s men as they went on westward. Above Sharpe, to his right, the seminary was a great threat in the sky, its serried windows blank and black, and Sharpe could not rid himself of the fear that a horde of French soldiers were hidden behind that sun-glossed cliff of stone and glass, yet every time he looked he saw no movement.

Then, suddenly, there was a single French soldier just ahead. Sharpe had turned a corner and there the man was. He was in the middle of a cobbled slipway that led from a boat builder’s shed to the river, and he was crouching to play with a puppy. Sharpe desperately beckoned for his men to stop. The enemy was an infantryman, and he was only seven or eight paces away, utterly oblivious, his back to Sharpe and his shako and musket on the cobblestones, letting the puppy playfully nip his right hand. And if there was one French soldier there had to be more. Had to be! Sharpe stared past the man to where a stand of poplars and thick bushes edged the slipway’s far side. Was there a patrol there? He could see no sign of one, nor any activity among the boatyard’s tumbledown sheds.

Then the Frenchman either heard the scuff of a boot or else sensed he was being watched for he stood and turned, then realized his musket was still on the ground and he stooped for it, then froze when Sharpe’s rifle pointed at his face. Sharpe shook his head, then jerked the rifle to indicate that the Frenchman should stand up straight. The man obeyed. He was a youngster, scarce older than Pendleton or Perkins, with a round, guileless face. He looked scared and took an involuntary step back as Sharpe came fast toward him, then he whimpered as Sharpe tugged him by the jacket back around the corner. Sharpe pushed him to the ground, took his bayonet from its scabbard and threw it into the river. „Tie him up,” he ordered Tongue.

„Slit his throat,” Tongue suggested, „it’s easier.”

„Tie him up,” Sharpe insisted, „gag him, and make a good job of it.” He beckoned Vicente forward. „He’s the only one I’ve seen.”

„There must be more,” Vicente declared.

„God knows where they are.”

Sharpe went back to the corner, peered around and saw nothing except the puppy which was now trying to drag the Frenchman’s musket across the cobbles by its sling. He gestured for Harper to join him. „I can’t see anyone,” Sharpe whispered.

„He can’t have been alone,” Harper said.

Yet still no one moved. „I want to get into those trees, Pat,” Sharpe hissed, nodding across the slipway.

„Run like shit, sir,” Harper said, and the two of them sprinted across the open space and threw themselves into the trees. No musket flared, no one shouted, but the puppy, thinking it was a game, followed them. „Go back to your mother!” Harper hissed at the dog which just barked at him.

„Jesus!” Sharpe said, not because of the noise the dog was making, but because he could see boats. The French were supposed to have destroyed or taken every vessel along the Douro, but in front of him, stranded by the falling tide on the muddy outer bank of a great bend in the river, were three huge wine barges. Three! He wondered if they had been holed and, while Harper kept the puppy quiet, he waded through the sticky mud and hauled himself aboard the nearest barge. He was hidden from anyone on the north bank by thick trees, which was perhaps why the French had somehow missed the three vessels and, better still, the barge Sharpe had boarded seemed quite undamaged. There was a good deal of water in its bilge, but when Sharpe tasted it he found it was fresh, so it was rainwater, not the salty tidewater that swept twice daily up the Douro. Sharpe splashed through the flooded bilge and found no gaping rents torn by axes, then he heaved himself up onto a side deck where six great sweeps were lashed together with fraying lengths of rope. There was even a small skiff stored upside down at the stern with a pair of ancient oars, cracked and bleached, lodged halfway beneath its hull.

„Sir!” Harper hissed from the bank. „Sir!” He was pointing across the river and Sharpe looked over the water and saw a red coat. A single horseman, evidently British, stared back at him. The man had a cocked hat so was an officer, but when Sharpe waved he did not return the gesture. Sharpe guessed the man was confused by his green coat.

„Get everyone here, now,” Sharpe ordered Harper, then looked back to the horseman. For a second or two he wondered if it was Colonel Christopher, but this man was heavier and his horse, like most British horses, had a docked tail while Christopher, aping the French, had left his horse’s tail uncut. The man, who was sitting his horse beneath a tree, turned and looked as if he was speaking to someone, though Sharpe could see no one else on the opposite bank, then the man looked back to Sharpe and gestured vigorously toward the three boats.

Sharpe hesitated. It was a safe bet that the man was senior to him and if he crossed the river he would find himself back in the iron discipline of the army and no longer free to act as he wished. If he sent any of his men it would be the same, but then he thought of Luis and he summoned the barber, helping him up over the barge’s heavy gunwale. „Can you manage a small boat?” he asked.

Luis looked momentarily alarmed, then nodded firmly. „I can, yes.”

„Then go over the river and find out what that British officer wants. Tell him I’m reconnoitering the seminary. And tell him there’s another boat at Barca d’Avintas.” Sharpe was making a swift guess that the British had advanced north and had been stopped by the Douro. He assumed the cannonade was from the guns firing at each other across the river, but without boats the British would be helpless. Where the hell was the bloody navy?

Harper, Macedo and Luis manhandled the skiff over the gunwale and down the glutinous mud into the river. The tide was rising, but it still had some way to go before it reached the barges. Luis took the oars, settled himself on the thwart and, with admirable skill, pulled away from the bank. He looked over his shoulder to judge his direction, then sculled vigorously. Sharpe saw another horseman appear behind the first, the second man also in red coat and black cocked hat, and he felt the bindings of the army reaching out to snare him so he jumped off the barge and waded through the mud to the bank. „You stay here,” he ordered Vicente, „I’ll look up the hill.”

For a moment Vicente seemed ready to argue, then he accepted the arrangement and Sharpe beckoned his riflemen to follow him. As they disappeared into the trees Sharpe looked back to see Luis was almost at the other bank, then Sharpe pushed through a stand of laurel and saw the road in front of him. This was the road by which he had escaped from Oporto and, to his left, he could see the houses where Vicente had saved his bacon. He could see no French. He stared again at the seminary, but nothing moved there. To hell with it, he thought, just go.

He led his men in skirmish order up the hill, which offered little cover. A few straggly trees broke the pasture and a dilapidated shed stood halfway up, but otherwise it was a deathtrap if there were any Frenchmen in the big building. Sharpe knew he should have exercised more caution, but no one fired from the windows, no one challenged him, and he quickened his pace so that he felt the pain in his leg muscles because the slope was so steep.

Then, suddenly, he had arrived safe at the base of the seminary. The ground floor had small barred windows and seven arched doors. Sharpe tried a door and found it locked and so solid that when he kicked it he only succeeded in hurting himself. He crouched and waited for the laggards among his men to catch up. He could see westward across a valley that lay between the seminary and the city and he could see where the French guns, at the top of Oporto’s hill, were shooting across the river, but their target was hidden by a hill on the southern bank. A huge convent stood on the obscuring hill, the same convent, Sharpe remembered, where the Portuguese guns had duelled with the French on the day the city fell.

„All here,” Harper told him.

Sharpe followed the seminary wall which was made of massive blocks of stone. He went westward, toward the city. He would have preferred to go the other way, but he sensed the building’s main entrance would face Oporto. Every door he passed was locked. Why the hell were there no French here? He could see none, not even at the city’s edge a half-mile away, and then the wall turned to his right and he saw a flight of steps climbing to an ornamental door. No sentries guarded the entrance, though he could at last see Frenchmen now. There was a convoy of wagons on a road that ran in the valley which lay to the north of the seminary. The wagons, which were drawn by oxen, were being escorted by dragoons and Sharpe used Christopher’s small telescope to see that the vehicles were filled with wounded men. So was Soult sending his invalids back to France? Or just emptying his hospitals before fighting another battle? And he was surely not now thinking of marching on to Lisbon for the British had come north to the Douro and that made Sharpe think that Sir Arthur Wellesley must have arrived in Portugal to galvanize the British forces.

The seminary entrance was framed by an ornate facade rising to a stone cross that had been chipped by musket fire. The main door, approached by stairs, was wooden, studded with nails and, when Sharpe twisted the great wrought-iron handle, surprised him by being unlocked.

He pushed the door wide open with the muzzle of his rifle to see an empty tiled hallway with walls painted a sickly green. The portrait of a half-starved saint hung askew on one wall, the saint’s body riddled with bullet punctures. A crude painting of a woman and a French soldier had been daubed next to the saint and proved that the French had been in the seminary, though there were none evident now. Sharpe went inside, his boots echoing from the walls. „Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Harper said, making the sign of the cross. „I’ve never seen such a huge building!” He gazed in awe down the shadowed corridor. „How many bloody priests does a country need?”

„Depends how many sinners there are,” Sharpe said, „and now we search the place.”

He left six men in the entrance hall to serve as a picquet, then went downstairs to unbolt one of the arched doors facing the river. That door would be his bolt hole if the French came to the seminary and, once that retreat was secure, he searched the dormitories, bathrooms, kitchens, refectory and lecture rooms of the vast building. Broken furniture littered every room and in the library a thousand books lay strewn and torn across the hardwood floor, but there were no people. The chapel had been violated, the altar chopped for firewood and the choir used as a lavatory. „Bastards,” Harper said softly. Gataker, his trigger guard dangling by one last screw, gaped at an amateur painting of two women curiously joined to three French dragoons that had been daubed on the whitewashed wall where once a great triptych of the holy birth had surmounted the altar. „Good that,” he said in a tone as respectful as he might have used at the Royal Academy’s summer exhibition.

„I like my women a bit plumper,” Slattery said.

„Come on!” Sharpe snarled. His most urgent task now was to find the seminary’s store of wine-he was certain there would be one-but when at last he discovered the cellar he saw, with relief, that the French had already been there and nothing remained but broken bottles and empty barrels. „Real bastards!” Harper said feelingly, but Sharpe would have destroyed the bottles and barrels himself to prevent his men from drinking themselves insensible. And that thought made him realize that he had already unconsciously decided that he would stay in this big building as long as he could. The French doubtless wanted to hold Oporto, but whoever held the seminary dominated the city’s eastern flank.

The long facade with its myriad windows facing the river was deceptive, for the building was very narrow; scarce a dozen windows looked straight toward Oporto, though at the rear of the seminary, furthest from the city, a long wing jutted north. In the angle of the two wings was a garden where a score of apple trees had been cut down for firewood. The two sides of the garden not cradled by the building were protected by a high stone wall pierced by a pair of fine iron gates that opened toward Oporto. In a shed, hidden beneath a pile of netting that had once been used to keep birds from the fruit bushes, Sharpe found an old pickaxe that he gave to Cooper. „Start making loopholes,” he said, pointing to the long wall. „Patrick! Find some more tools. Detail six men to help Coops, and the rest of the men are to go to the roof, but they’re not to show themselves. Understand? They’re to stay hidden.”

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 stepoine 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 oointed 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 balus-traded 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 reputation 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.

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 Sao 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!”

„Another day, sir,” Christopher said, „and we would have captured the hill. Kate, her eyes red, looked down at her empty plate. Nous, her husband had said, „we.”

„Another day?” Soult responded scornfully. „He should have taken it in a short minute the very first day he arrived!” Soult had recalled Vuillard and his men from Vila Real de Zedes the instant he heard that the British and Portuguese were advancing from Coimbra, but he had been annoyed that so many men had failed to dislodge so small a force. Not that it mattered; what mattered now was that Wellesley had to be taught a lesson.

Soult did not think that should prove too difficult. He knew Wellesley had a small army and was weak in artillery. He knew that because Captain Argenton had been arrested five days before and was now spilling all he knew and all he had observed on his second visit to the British. Argenton had even met with Wellesley himself and the Frenchman had seen the preparations being made for the allied advance, and the warning given to Soult by Argenton had enabled the French regiments south of the river to skip backward out of the way of a force sent to hook about their rear. So now Wellesley was stuck on the wrong side of the Douro without any boats to make a crossing except for any craft brought by the British navy and that, it seemed, was no danger at all. Two frigates dithering offshore! That was hardly going to make the Duke of Dalmatia quake in his boots.

Argenton, who had been promised his life in exchange for information, had been captured thanks to Christopher’s revelation, and that put Soult in the Englishman’s debt. Christopher had also revealed the names of the other men in the plot, Donadieu of the 47th, the brothers Lafitte of the 18th Dragoons, as well as three or four other experienced officers, and Soult had decided to take no action against them. The arrest of Argenton would be a warning to them, and they were all popular officers and it did not seem sensible to stir up resentment in the army by a succession of firing squads. He would let the officers know that he knew who they were, then hint that their lives depended on their future conduct. Better to have such men in his pocket than in their graves.

Kate was crying. She made no noise, the tears just rolled down her cheeks and she brushed them away in an attempt to hide her feelings, but Soult had noticed. „What is the matter?” he asked gently.

„She fears, sir,” Christopher said.

„She fears?” Soult asked.

Christopher gestured toward the window which still rattled from the pummelling of the cannons. „Women and battle, sir, don’t mix.”

„Only between the sheets,” Soult said genially. „Tell her,” he went on, „that she has nothing to fear. The British cannot cross the river, and if they try they will be repulsed. In a few weeks we shall be reinforced.” He paused so that the translation could be made and hoped he was right in saying that reinforcements would come soon or else he did not know how he was to continue his invasion of Portugal. „Then we shall march south to taste the joys of Lisbon. Tell her we shall have peace by August. Ah! The cook!”

A plump Frenchman with extravagant mustaches had come into the room. He wore a blood-streaked apron with a wicked-looking carving knife thrust into its belt. „You sent for me” he sounded grudging-”sir.”

„Ah!” Soult pushed back his chair and rubbed his hands. „We must plan supper, Sergeant Deron, supper! I intend to sit sixteen, so what do you suggest?”

„I have eels.”

„Eels!” Soult responded happily. „Stuffed with buttered whiting and mushrooms? Excellent.”

„I shall fillet them,” Sergeant Deron said doggedly, „fry them with parsley and serve the fillets with a red wine sauce. Then for an entree I have lamb. Very good lamb.”

„Good! I do like lamb,” Soult said. „You can make a caper sauce?”

„A caper sauce!” Deron looked disgusted. „The vinegar will drown the lamb,” he said indignantly, „and it is good lamb, tender and fat.”

„A very delicate caper sauce, perhaps?” Soult suggested.

The guns rose to a sudden fury, shaking the windows and rattling the crystal peardrops of the two chandeliers above the long table, but both the Marshal and the cook ignored the sound. „What I will do,” Deron said in a voice which suggested that there could be no discussion, „is bake the lamb with some goose fat.”

„Good, good,” Soult said.

„And garnish it with onions, ham and a few cepes.”

A harassed-looking officer, sweating and red-faced from the day’s heat, came into the room. „Sir!”

„A moment,” Soult said, frowning, then looked back to Deron. „Onions, ham and some cepes?” he repeated. „And perhaps we might add some lardons, Sergeant? Lardons go so well with lamb.”

„I shall garnish it with a little chopped ham,” Deron said stoically, „some small onions and a few cepes.”

Soult surrendered. „I know it will taste superb, quite superb. And Deron, thank you for this breakfast. Thank you.”

„It would have been better eaten when it was cooked,” Deron said, then sniffed and went from the room.

Soult beamed at the cook’s retreating back, then scowled at the newcomer who had interrupted him. „You’re Captain Brossard, are you not? You wish some breakfast?” The Marshal indicated with a butter knife that Brossard should take the seat at the end of the table. „How’s General Foy?”

Brossard was an aide to Foy and he had no time for breakfast nor indeed to offer a report on General Foy’s health. He had brought news and, for a second, he was too full of it to speak properly, but then he controlled himself and pointed eastward. „The British, sir, they’re in the seminary.”

Soult stared at him for a heartbeat, not quite believing what he heard. „They are what?” he asked.

„British, sir, in the seminary.”

„But Quesnel assured me there were no boats!” Soult protested. Quesnel was the city’s French governor.

„None on their bank, sir.” All the boats in the city had been pulled from the water and piled on the quays where they were available for the French to use, but would be of no use to anyone coming from the south. „But they’re nevertheless crossing,” Brossard said. „They’re already on the hill.”

Soult felt his heart miss a beat. The seminary was on a hill that dominated the road to Amarante, and that road was his lifeline back to the depots in Spain and also the connection between the garrison in Oporto and General Loison’s men on the Tamega. If the British cut that road then they could pick off the French army piece by piece and Soult’s reputation would be destroyed along with his men. The Marshal stood, knocking over his chair in his anger. „Tell General Foy to push them back into the river!” he roared. „Now! Go! Push them into the river!”

The men hurried from the room, leaving Kate and Christopher alone, and Kate saw the look of utter panic on her husband’s face and felt a fierce joy because of it. The windows rattled, the chandeliers shivered and the British were coming.

„Well, well, well! We have Rifles among our congregation! We are blessed indeed. I didn’t know any of the 95th were attached to the 1st Brigade.” The speaker was a burly, rubicund man with a balding head and an affable face. If it were not for his uniform he would have looked like a friendly farmer and Sharpe could imagine him in an English market town, leaning on a hurdle, prodding plump sheep and waiting for a livestock auction to begin. „You are most welcome,” he told Sharpe.

„That’s Daddy Hill,” Harris told Pendleton.

„Now, now, young man,” General Hill boomed, „you shouldn’t use an officer’s nickname within his earshot. Liable to get you punished!”

„Sorry, sir.” Harris had not meant to speak so loudly.

„But you’re a rifleman so you’re forgiven. And a very scruffy rifleman too, I must say! What is the army coming to when we don’t dress for battle, eh?” He beamed at Harris, then fished in his pocket and brought out a handful of almonds. „Something to occupy your tongue, young man.”

„Thank you, sir.”

There were now two generals on the seminary roof. General Hill, commander of the 1st Brigade, whose forces were crossing the river and whose kindly nature had earned him the nickname of „Daddy,” had joined Sir Edward Paget just in time to see three French battalions come from the city’s eastern suburbs and form into two columns that would assault the seminary hill. The three battalions were in the valley, being pushed and harried into their ranks by sergeants and corporals. One column would come straight up at the seminary’s facade while the other was forming near the Amarante road to assault the northern flank. But the French were also aware that British reinforcements were constantly arriving at the seminary and so they had sent a battery of guns to the river bank with orders to sink the three barges. The columns waited for the gunners to open fire, probably hoping that once the barges were sunk the gunners would turn their weapons onto the seminary.

And Sharpe, who had been wondering why Sir Arthur Wellesley had not put guns at the convent across the river, saw that he had worried about nothing, for no sooner did the French batteries appear than a dozen British guns, which had been parked out of sight at the back of the convent terrace, were wheeled forward. „That’s the medicine for Frenchmen!” General Hill exclaimed when the great row of guns appeared.

The first to fire was a five-and-a-half-inch howitzer, the British equivalent of the cannon that had bombarded Sharpe on the watchtower hill. It was loaded with a spherical case shot, a weapon that only Britain deployed, which had been invented by Lieutenant Colonel Shrapnel and the manner of its working was kept a closely guarded secret. The shell, which was packed with musket balls about a central charge of powder, was designed to shower those balls and the scraps of its casing down onto enemy troops, yet to work properly it had to explode well short of its target so that the shot’s forward momentum carried the lethal missiles on to the enemy, and that precision demanded that the gunners cut their fuses with exquisite skill. The howitzer’s gunner had that skill. The howitzer boomed and rocked back on its trail, the shell arced over the river, leaving the telltale wisp of fuse smoke in its wake, then exploded twenty yards short and twenty feet above the leading French gun just as it was being unlimbered. The explosion tore the air red and white, the bullets and shattered casing screamed down and every horse in the French team was eviscerated, and every man in the French gun crew, all fourteen of them, was either killed or wounded, while the gun itself was thrown off its carriage.

„Oh dear,” Hill said, forgetting the bloodthirsty welcome with which he had greeted the sight of the British batteries. „Those poor fellows,” he said, „dear me.”

The cheers of the British soldiers in the seminary were drowned by the huge bellow of the other British guns opening fire. From their eyrie on the southern bank they dominated the French position and their spherical case, common shells and round shot swept the French guns with dreadful effect. The French gunners abandoned their pieces, left their horses squealing and dying, and fled, and then the British guns racked their elevating screws or loosened the howitzer quoins and started to pour shot and shell into the massed ranks of the nearest French column. They raked it from the flank, pouring round shot through close-packed files, exploding case shot over their heads and killing with a terrible ease.

The French officers took one panicked look at their broken artillery and ordered the infantry up the slope. Drummers at the heart of the two columns began their incessant rhythm and the front rank stepped off as another round shot whipped through the files to plough a red furrow in the blue uniforms. Men screamed and died, yet still the drums beat and the men chanted their war cry, „Vive I’Empereur!”

Sharpe had seen columns before and was puzzled by them. The British army fought against other infantry arrayed in two ranks and every man could use his musket, and if cavalry threatened they marched and wheeled into a square of four ranks, and still every man could use his musket, but the soldiers at the heart of the two French columns could never fire without hitting the men in front.

These columns both had around forty men in a rank and twenty in each file. The French used such a formation, a great battering block of men, because it was simpler to persuade conscripts to advance in such an array and because, against badly trained troops, the very sight of such a great mass of men was daunting. But against redcoats? It was suicide.

„Vive I’Empereur!” the French shouted in rhythm with the drums, though their shout was half-hearted because both formations were climbing steep slopes and the men were breathless.

„God save our good King George,” General Hill sang in a surprisingly fine tenor voice, „long live our noble George, don’t shoot too high.” He sang the last four words and the men on the roof grinned. Hagman hauled back the flint of his rifle and sighted on a French officer who was laboring up the slope with a sword in his hand. Sharpe’s riflemen were on the northern wing of the seminary, facing the column that was not being flayed by the British guns on the convent terrace. A new battery had just deployed low on the river’s southern bank and it was adding its fire to the two batteries on the convent hill, but none of the British guns could see the northern column, which would have to be thrown back by rifle and musket fire alone. Vicente’s Portuguese were manning the loopholes on the northern garden wall and by now there were so many men in the seminary that every loophole had three or four men so that each could fire, then step back to reload while another took his place. Sharpe saw that some of the redcoats had green facings and cuffs. The Berkshires, he thought, which meant the whole of the Buffs were in the building and new battalions were now arriving.

„Aim at the officers!” Sharpe called to his riflemen. „Muskets, don’t fire! This order is for rifles only.” He made the distinction because a musket, fired at this range, was a wasted shot, but his riflemen would be lethal. He waited a second, took a breath. „Fire!”

Hagman’s officer jerked back, both arms in the air, sword cartwheeling back over the column. Another officer was down on his knees clutching his belly, and a third was holding his shoulder. The front of the column stepped over the corpse and the blue-coated line seemed to shudder as more bullets slammed into them, and then the long leading French ranks, panicked by the whistle of rifled bullets about their ears, fired up at the seminary. The volley was ear-splitting, the smoke smothered the slope like sea fog and the musket balls rattled on the seminary walls and shattered its glass windows. The volley at least served to hide the French for a few yards, but then they reappeared through the smoke and more rifles fired and another officer went down. The column divided to pass the solitary tree, then the long ranks reunited when they were past it.

The men in the garden began firing, then the redcoats crammed into the seminary windows and arrayed with Sharpe’s men on the roof pulled their triggers. Muskets crashed, smoke thickened, the balls plucked at men in the column’s front ranks and put them down and the men advancing behind lost their cohesion as they tried not to step on their dead or wounded colleagues.

„Fire low!” a sergeant of the Buffs called to his men. „Don’t waste His Majesty’s lead!”

Colonel Waters was carrying spare canteens about the roof for men who were parched by biting the cartridges. The saltpeter in the gunpowder dried the mouth fast and men gulped the water between shots.

The column attacking the seminary’s western face was already shredded. Those Frenchmen were being assailed by rifle and musket fire, but the cannonade from the southern bank of the river was far worse. Gunners had rarely been offered such an easy target, the chance to rake the flank of an enemy’s infantry column, and they worked like demons. Spherical case cracked in the air, shooting fiery strands of smoke in crazy trajectories, round shots bounced and hammered through the ranks and shells exploded in the column’s heart. Three drummers were hit by case shot, then a round shot whipped the head off another drummer boy, and when the instruments went silent the infantrymen lost heart and began to edge backward. Musket volleys spat from the seminary’s three upper floors and the big building now looked as though it was on fire because powder smoke was writhing thick from every window. The loopholes fet-ted flame, the balls struck wavering ranks, and then the French in the western column began to retreat faster and the backward movement turned to panic and they broke.

Some of the French, instead of retreating to the cover of the houses on the valley’s far side, houses that were even now being struck by round shot so that their rafters and masonry were being splintered and the first fires were burning in the wreckage, ran to join the northern attack which was shielded by the seminary from the cannon fire. That northern column kept coming. It was taking dreadful punishment, but it was soaking up the bullets and musket balls, and the sergeants and officers continually pushed men into the front ranks to replace the dead and the wounded. And so the column came ponderously uphill, but no one in the French ranks had really thought what they would do when they reached the hilltop where there was no door facing them. They would have to skirt the building and try to break through the big gates leading to the garden and when the men in the front ranks saw no place to go they simply stopped advancing and began shooting instead. A ball plucked at Sharpe’s sleeve. A newly arrived lieutenant of the Northamptonshire regiment fell back with a sigh, a bullet in his forehead. He lay on his back, dead before he fell, looking strangely peaceful. The redcoats had placed their cartridges and propped their ramrods on the red-tiled parapet to make loading quicker, but there were now so many on the roof that they jostled each other as they fired down into the dim mass of Frenchmen who were wreathed in their own smoke. One Frenchman ran bravely forward to fire through a loophole, but he was hit before he could reach the wall. Sharpe had fired one shot, then he just watched his men. Pendleton and Perkins, the youngest, were grinning as they fired. Cooper and Tongue were reloading for Hagman, knowing he was a better shot, and the old poacher was calmly picking off one man after the other.

A cannonball screamed overhead and Sharpe twisted round to see that the French had placed a battery on the hill to the west, at the city’s edge. There was a small chapel there with a bell tower and Sharpe saw the bell tower vanish in smoke, then crumble into ruin as the British batteries at the convent hammered the newly arrived French guns. A Berkshire man turned to watch and a bullet whipped through his mouth, mangling his teeth and tongue and he swore incoherently, spitting a stream of blood.

„Don’t watch the city!” Sharpe bellowed. „Keep shooting! Keep shooting!”

Hundreds of Frenchmen were firing muskets uphill and the vast majority of the shots were simply wasted against stone walls, but some found targets. Dodd had a flesh wound in his left arm, but he kept firing. A redcoat was hit in the throat and choked to death. The solitary tree on the northern slope was twitching as it was struck by bullets and shreds of leaf were flying away with the French musket smoke. A sergeant of the Buffs fell back with a bullet in his ribs, and then Sir Edward Paget sent men from the western side of the roof, who had already seen their column defeated, to add their fire to the northern side. The muskets flared and coughed and spat down, the smoke thickened, and Sir Edward grinned at Daddy Hill. „Brave bastards!” Sir Edward had to shout over the noise of muskets and rifles.

„They won’t stand, Ned,” Hill called back. „They won’t stand.”

Hill was right. The first Frenchmen were already backing down the hill because of the futility of shooting at stone walls. Sir Edward, exultant at this easy victory, went to the parapet to look at the retreating enemy and he stood there, gold braid catching the smoke-dimmed sun, watching the enemy column disintegrate and run away, but a few stubborn Frenchmen still fired and suddenly Sir Edward gasped, clapped a hand to his elbow and Sharpe saw that the sleeve of the General’s elegant red coat was torn and that a jagged piece of white bone was showing through the ripped wool and bloody mangled flesh.

„Jesus!” Paget swore. He was in terrible pain. The ball had shattered his elbow and seared up through his biceps. He was half bent over with the agony and very pale.

„Take him down to the doctors,” Hill ordered. „You’ll be all right, Ned.”

Paget forced himself to stand straight. An aide had taken off a neckcloth and was trying to bind his General’s wound, but Paget shook him off. „The command is yours,” he said to Hill through clenched teeth.

„So it is,” Hill acknowledged.

„Keep firing!” Sharpe shouted at his men. It did not matter that the rifle barrels were almost too hot to touch, what mattered was to drive the remaining French back down the hill or, better still, to kill them. Another rush of feet announced that more reinforcements had arrived at the seminary for the French had yet to find any way of stopping the traffic across the river. The British artillery, kings of this battlefield, were hammering any French gunner who dared show his face. Every few moments a brave French crew would run to the abandoned guns on the quay in hope of putting a round shot into one of the barges, but every time they were struck by spherical case and even by canister, for the new British battery, down at the water’s edge, was close enough to use the deadly ammunition across the river. The musket balls flared from the cannons’ mouths like duck shot, killing six or seven men at a time, and after a while the French gunners abandoned their efforts and just hid in the houses at the back of the quay.

And then, quite suddenly, there were no Frenchmen firing on the northern slope. The grass was horrid with dead men and wounded men and with fallen muskets and with little flickering fires where the musket wadding had set light to the grass, but the survivors had fled to the Amarante road in the valley. The single tree looked as though it had been attacked by locusts. A drum trundled down the hill, making a rattling noise. Sharpe saw a French flag through the smoke, but could not see whether the staff was topped by an eagle. „Stop firing!” Hill called.

„Clean your barrels!” Sharpe shouted. „Check your flints!” For the French would be back. Of that he was certain. They would be back.