LITMIR.BIZ

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Harper asked. ‘Or back to England?’

      ‘God knows. Which would you want?’

      They should have been in England. They all belonged to the second battalion of the 95th Rifles and that battalion was in the Shorncliffe barracks, but Sharpe and his men had been separated from the rest of the greenjackets during the scrambling retreat to Vigo and somehow they had never managed to rejoin. Captain Hogan had seen to that. Hogan needed men to protect him while he mapped the wild frontier country between Spain and Portugal and a squad of prime riflemen were heaven-sent and he had cleverly managed to confuse the paperwork, reroute letters, scratch pay from the military chest and so keep Sharpe and his men close to the war.

      ‘England holds nothing for me,’ Harper said, ‘I’m happier here.’

      ‘And the men?’

      ‘Most like it here,’ the Irishman said, ‘but a few want to go home. Cresacre, Sims, the usual grumblers. John Williamson is the worst. He keeps telling the others that you’re only here because you want promotion and that you’ll sacrifice us all to get it.’

      ‘He says that?’

      ‘And worse.’

      ‘Sounds a good idea,’ Sharpe said lightly.

      ‘But I don’t think anyone believes him, other than the usual bastards. Most of us know we’re here by accident.’ Harper stared at the distant French dragoons, then shook his head. ‘I’ll have to give Williamson a thumping sooner or later.’

      ‘You or me,’ Sharpe agreed.

      Harper put the telescope to his eye again. ‘The bastard’s coming back,’ he said, ‘and he’s left that other bastard with them.’ He handed Sharpe the telescope.

      ‘Olivier?’

      ‘He’s bloody given him back!’ Harper was indignant.

      Through the telescope Sharpe could see Christopher riding back towards Vila Real de Zedes accompanied by a single man, a civilian judging by his clothes, and certainly not Lieutenant Olivier, who was evidently riding northwards with the dragoons. ‘Those Crapauds must have seen us,’ Sharpe said.

      ‘Clear as daylight,’ Harper agreed.

      ‘And Lieutenant Olivier will have told them we’re here,’ Sharpe said, ‘so why the devil are they leaving us alone?’

      ‘Because your man’s made an agreement with the bastards,’ Harper said, nodding towards the distant Christopher.

      Sharpe wondered why an English officer would be making agreements with the enemy. ‘We should give him a smacking,’ he said.

      ‘Not if he’s a colonel.’

      ‘Then we should give the bastard two smackings,’ Sharpe said savagely, ‘then we’d find the bloody truth quickly enough.’

      The two men fell silent as Christopher cantered up the drive to the house. The man accompanying him was young, red-haired and in plain civilian clothes, yet the horse he rode had a French mark on its rump and the saddle was military issue. Christopher looked at the telescope in Sharpe’s hand. ‘You must be curious, Sharpe,’ he said with unusual geniality.

      ‘I’m curious,’ Sharpe said, ‘why our prisoner was given back.’

      ‘Because I decided to give him back, of course,’ Christopher said, sliding down from the horse, ‘and he’s promised not to fight us until the French return a British prisoner of equal rank. All quite normal, Sharpe, and no occasion for indignation. This is Monsieur Argenton who will be going with me to visit General Cradock in Lisbon.’ The Frenchman, hearing his name spoken, gave Sharpe a nervous nod.

      ‘We’ll come with you,’ Sharpe said, ignoring the Frenchman.

      Christopher shook his head. ‘I think not, Sharpe. Monsieur Argenton will arrange for the two of us to use the pontoon bridge at Oporto if it’s been repaired, and if not he’ll arrange passage on a ferry, and I hardly think our French friends will allow a half company of riflemen to cross the river under their noses, do you?’

      ‘If you talk to them, maybe,’ Sharpe said. ‘You seem friendly enough with them.’

      Christopher threw his reins to Luis, then gestured that Argenton should dismount and follow him into the house. ‘“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,”’ Christopher said, going past Sharpe, then he turned. ‘I have different plans for you.’

      ‘You have plans for me?’ Sharpe asked truculently.

      ‘I believe a lieutenant colonel outranks a lieutenant in His Britannic Majesty’s army, Sharpe,’ Christopher said sarcastically. ‘It always was so, which means, does it not, that you are under my command? So you will come to the house in half an hour and I shall give you your new orders. Come, monsieur.’ He beckoned to Argenton, glanced coldly at Sharpe, and went up the steps.

      It rained next morning. It was colder too. Grey veils of showers swept out of the west, brought from the Atlantic by a chill wind that blew the wisteria blossom from the thrashing trees, banged the Quinta’s shutters and sent chill draughts chasing through its rooms. Sharpe, Vicente and their men had slept in the stable block, guarded by picquets who shivered in the night and peered through the damp blackness. Sharpe, doing the rounds in the darkest heart of the night, saw one window of the Quinta glowing with the glimmer of shuddering candlelight behind the wind-shaken shutters and he thought he heard a cry like an animal in distress from that upper floor, and for a fleeting second he was sure it was Kate’s voice, then he told himself it was his imagination or that it was just the wind shrieking in the chimneys. He went to see Hagman at dawn and found the old poacher was sweating, but alive. He was asleep and once or twice spoke a name aloud. ‘Amy,’ he said, ‘Amy.’ The doctor had visited the previous afternoon, he had sniffed the wound, shrugged, said Hagman would die, washed the injury, bandaged it and refused to take any fee. ‘Keep the bandages wet,’ he had told Vicente who was translating for Sharpe, ‘and dig a grave.’ The Portuguese Lieutenant did not translate the last four words.

      Sharpe was summoned to Colonel Christopher soon after sunrise and found the Colonel seated in the parlour and swathed in hot towels as Luis shaved him. ‘He used to be a barber,’ the Colonel said. ‘Weren’t you a barber, Luis?’

      ‘A good one,’ Luis said.

      ‘You look as if you could do with a barber, Sharpe,’ Christopher said. ‘Cut your own hair, do you?’

      ‘No, sir.’

      ‘Looks like it. Looks like the rats got to it.’ The razor made a slight scratching noise as it glided down his chin. Luis wiped the blade with a flannel, scraped again. ‘My wife,’ Christopher said, ‘will have to stay here. I ain’t happy.’

      ‘No, sir?’

      ‘But she ain’t safe anywhere else, is she? She can’t go to Oporto, it’s full of Frenchmen who are raping anything that isn’t dead and probably things that are dead if they’re still fresh, and they won’t get the place under decent control for another day or two, so she must stay here, and I’ll feel a great deal more comfortable, Sharpe, if she’s protected. So you will guard my wife, let your wounded fellow recover, have a rest, contemplate God’s ineffable ways and in a week or so I’ll be back and you can go.’

      Sharpe looked out of the window where a gardener was scything the lawn, probably the first cut of the year. The scythe slid through the pale blossoms blown from the wisteria. ‘Mrs Christopher could accompany you south, sir,’ he suggested.

      ‘No, she bloody well can’t,’ Christopher snapped. ‘I told her it’s too dangerous. Captain Argenton and I have to get through the lines, Sharpe, and we won’t make things easier for ourselves by taking a woman with us.’ The true reason, of course, was that he did not want Kate to meet her mother and tell her of the marriage in Vila Real de Zedes’s small church. ‘So Kate will

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