LITMIR.BIZ

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horses that Sharpe had captured at Barca d’Avintas. ‘You can’t be bothered with horses, Sharpe,’ he said, ‘so I’ll take them off your hands. Tell me, what do your fellows do during the day?’

      ‘There isn’t much to do,’ Sharpe said. ‘We’re training Vicente’s men.’

      ‘Need it, do they?’

      ‘They could be quicker with their muskets, sir.’

      Christopher had brought a cup of coffee out of the house and now blew on it to cool the liquid. ‘If there’s peace,’ he said, ‘then they can go back to being cobblers or whatever it is they do when they ain’t shambling about the place in ill-fitting uniforms.’ He sipped his coffee. ‘Speaking of which, Sharpe, it’s time you got yourself a new one.’

      ‘I’ll talk to my tailor,’ Sharpe said and then, before Christopher could react to his insolence, asked a serious question. ‘You think there will be peace, sir?’

      ‘Quite a few of the Frogs think Bonaparte’s bitten off more than he can chew,’ Christopher said airily, ‘and Spain, certainly, is probably indigestible.’

      ‘Portugal isn’t?’

      ‘Portugal’s a mess,’ Christopher said dismissively, ‘but France can’t hold Portugal if she can’t hold Spain.’ He turned to watch Luis leading the gig from the stable. ‘I think there’s the real prospect of radical change in the air,’ he said. ‘And you, Sharpe, won’t jeopardize it. Lie low here for a week or so and I’ll send word when you can take your fellows south. With a little luck you’ll be home by June.’

      ‘You mean back with the army?’

      ‘I mean home in England, of course,’ Christopher said, ‘proper ale, Sharpe, thatched roofs, cricket on the Artillery Ground, church bells, fat sheep, plump parsons, pliant women, good beef, England. Something to look forward to, eh, Sharpe?’

      ‘Yes, sir,’ Sharpe said and wondered why he mistrusted Christopher most when the Colonel was trying to be pleasant.

      ‘There’s no point in you trying to leave anyway,’ Christopher said, ‘the French have burned every boat on the Douro, so keep your lads out of trouble and I’ll see you in a week or two’ – Christopher threw away the rest of his coffee and held his hand out to Sharpe – ‘and if not me, I shall send a message. I left your telescope on the hall table, by the way. You’ve got a key to the house, haven’t you? Keep your fellows out of it, there’s a good chap. Good day to you, Sharpe.’

      ‘And to you, sir,’ Sharpe said, and after he had shaken the Colonel’s hand he wiped his own on his French breeches. Luis locked the house, Kate smiled shyly at Sharpe and the Colonel took the gig’s reins. Luis collected the dragoons’ horses then followed the gig down the drive towards Vila Real de Zedes.

      Harper strolled over to Sharpe. ‘We’re to stay here while they make peace?’ The Irishman had evidently been eavesdropping.

      ‘That’s what the man said.’

      ‘And is that what you think?’

      Sharpe stared into the east, towards Spain. The sky there was white, not with cloud, but heat, and there was a thumping in that eastern distance, an irregular heartbeat, so far off as to be barely heard. It was cannon fire, proof that the French and the Portuguese were still fighting over the bridge at Amarante. ‘It doesn’t smell like peace to me, Pat.’

      ‘The folk here hate the French, sir. So do the Dons.’

      ‘Which doesn’t mean the politicians won’t make peace,’ Sharpe said.

      ‘Those slimy bastards will do anything that makes them rich,’ Harper agreed.

      ‘But Captain Hogan never smelt peace in the wind.’

      ‘And there ain’t much passes him by, sir.’

      ‘But we’ve got orders,’ Sharpe said, ‘directly from General Cradock.’

      Harper grimaced. ‘You’re a great man for obeying orders, sir, so you are.’

      ‘And the General wants us to stay here. God knows why. There’s something funny in the wind, Pat. Maybe it is peace. God knows what you and I will do then.’ He shrugged, then went to the house to fetch his telescope and it was not there. The hall table held nothing except a silver letter holder.

      Christopher had stolen the glass. The bastard, Sharpe thought, the utter goddamn bloody misbegotten bastard. Because the telescope was gone.

      ‘I never liked the name,’ Colonel Christopher said. ‘It isn’t even a beautiful house!’

      ‘My father chose it,’ Kate said, ‘it’s from The Pilgrim’s Progress.’

      ‘A tedious read, my God, how tedious!’ They were back in Oporto where Colonel Christopher had opened the neglected cellars of the House Beautiful to discover dusty bottles of ageing port and more of vinho verde, a white wine that was almost golden in colour. He drank some now as he strolled about the garden. The flowers were coming into bloom, the lawn was newly scythed and the only thing that spoiled the day was the smell of burned houses. It was almost a month since the fall of the city and smoke still drifted from some of the ruins in the lower town where the stench was much worse because of the bodies among the ashes. There were tales of drowned bodies turning up on every tide.

      Colonel Christopher sat under a cypress tree and watched Kate. She was beautiful, he thought, so very beautiful, and that morning he had summoned a French tailor, Marshal Soult’s personal tailor, and to Kate’s embarrassment he had made the man measure her for a French hussar uniform. ‘Why would I want to wear such a thing?’ Kate had asked, and Christopher had not told her that he had seen a Frenchwoman dressed in just such a uniform, the breeches skintight and the short jacket cut high to reveal a perfect bum, and Kate’s legs were longer and better shaped, and Christopher, who was feeling rich because of the funds released to him by General Cradock, funds Christopher claimed were necessary to encourage Argenton’s mutineers, had paid the tailor an outrageous fee to have the uniform stitched quickly.

      ‘Why wear that uniform?’ he responded to her question. ‘Because you will find it easier to ride a horse wearing breeches, because the uniform becomes you, because it reassures our French friends that you are not an enemy, and best of all, my dear one, because it would please me.’ And that last reason, of course, had been the one that convinced her. ‘You really like the name House Beautiful?’ he asked her.

      ‘I’m used to it.’

      ‘Not attached to it? It’s not a matter of faith with you?’

      ‘Faith?’ Kate, in a white linen dress, frowned. ‘I consider myself a Christian.’

      ‘A Protestant Christian,’ her husband amended her, ‘as am I. But does not the name of the house somewhat flaunt itself in a Romish society?’

      ‘I doubt,’ Kate said with an unexpected tartness, ‘that anyone here has read Bunyan.’

      ‘Some will have,’ Christopher said, ‘and they will know they are being insulted.’ He smiled at her. ‘I am a diplomat, remember. It is my job to make the crooked straight and the rough places plain.’

      ‘Is that what you’re doing here?’ Kate asked, gesturing to indicate the city beneath them where the French ruled over plundered houses and embittered people.

      ‘Oh, Kate,’ Christopher said sadly. ‘This is progress!’

      ‘Progress?’

      Christopher got to his feet and paced up and down the lawn, becoming animated as he explained to her that the world was changing fast about them. ‘“There are more things in heaven and earth,”’ he told her, ‘“than are dreamt of in your philosophy,”’ and Kate, who had been told this more than once in her short marriage, suppressed her irritation and listened as her husband described how the ancient superstitions were being discredited.

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