Sharpe 3-Book Collection 2: Sharpe’s Havoc, Sharpe’s Eagle, Sharpe’s Gold (26 page)

So they marched. The dew was still on the grass. They went through a deserted village that looked undamaged and Sharpe suspected the villagers had seen them coming and hidden themselves. There were certainly people there, for some drying washing was draped over two laurel bushes, but though Sergeant Macedo bellowed that they were friends no one dared to appear. One of the pieces of washing was a fine man’s shirt with bone buttons and Sharpe saw Cresacre dawdling so that he would
have a moment on his own when the others were ahead. “The penalty for theft,” Sharpe called to his men, “is hanging. And there are good hanging trees here.” Cresacre pretended he had not heard, but hurried on all the same.

They stopped when they reached the Douro. Barca d’Avintas was still some way to the west and Sharpe knew his men were tired and so they bivouacked in a wood high on a bluff above the river. No boats moved there. Far off to the south a single spire of smoke wavered in the sky, and to the west there was a shimmering haze that Sharpe suspected was the smoke of Oporto’s cooking fires. Vicente said Barca d’Avintas was little more than an hour away, but Sharpe decided they would wait till next morning before marching again. Half a dozen of the men were limping because their boots were rotting and Gataker, who had been wounded in the thigh, was feeling the pain. One of Vicente’s men was walking barefoot and Sharpe was thinking of doing the same because of the condition of his boots. But there was a still better reason for delay. “If the French are there,” he explained, “then I’d rather sneak up on them in the dawn. And if they’re not we’ve got all day to make some sort of raft.”

“What about us?” Vicente asked.

“You still want to go to Oporto?”

“That’s where the regiment is from,” Vicente said, “it’s home. The men are anxious. Some have families there.”

“See us to Barca d’Avintas,” Sharpe suggested, “then go home. But go the last few miles slowly, go carefully. You’ll be all right.” He did not believe that, but he could not say what he did believe.

So they rested. Picquets watched from the wood’s edge while the others slept and some time after midday, when the heat made everyone drowsy, Sharpe thought he heard thunder far away, but there were no rain clouds in sight and that meant the thunder had to be gunfire, but he could not be sure. Harper was sleeping and Sharpe wondered if he was just hearing the echo of the big Irishman’s snores, but then he thought he heard the thunder again, though it was so faint that he could just have imagined it. He nudged Harper.

“What is it?”

“I’m trying to listen,” Sharpe said.

“And I’m trying to sleep.”

“Listen!” But there was silence except for the murmur of the river and the rustle of leaves in the east wind.

Sharpe thought about taking a patrol to reconnoiter Barca d’Avintas, but decided against it. He did not want to divide his already perilously small force, and whatever dangers lurked at the village could wait till morning. At nightfall he thought he heard the thunder again, but then the wind gusted and snatched the sound away.

Dawn was silent, still, and the gently misted river looked as polished as steel. Luis, who had attached himself to Vicente’s men, had proved to be a good cobbler and had sewn up some of the more decrepit boots. He had volunteered to shave Sharpe who had shaken his head. “I’ll have a shave when we’re across the river,” he said.

“I pray you don’t grow a beard,” Vicente said, and then they marched, following a track that meandered along the high ground. The track was rough, overgrown and deeply rutted and the going was slow, but they saw no enemy, and then the land flattened, the track turned into a lane that ran beside vineyards and Barca d’Avintas, its white walls lit bright by the rising sun, was ahead.

There were no French there. Two score of folk had moved back into the plundered houses and they looked alarmed at the uniformed ruffians who came across the small bridge over the stream, but Vicente calmed them. There were no boats, the people said, the French had taken or burned them all. They rarely saw the French, they added. Sometimes a patrol of dragoons would clatter through the village, stare across the river, steal some food and then go away. They had little other news. One woman who sold olive oil, eggs and smoked fish in Oporto’s market said that the French were all guarding the river bank between the city and the sea, but Sharpe did not put much weight on her words. Her husband, a bent giant with gnarled hands, guardedly allowed that it might be possible to make a raft from some of the village’s broken furniture.

Sharpe put picquets on the village’s western margin where Hagman
had been wounded. He climbed a tree there and was amazed that he could see some of Oporto’s outlying buildings on the hilly horizon. The big, flat-roofed white building that he remembered passing when he first met Vicente was the most obvious and he was appalled that they were so close. He was no more than three miles from the big white building and surely the French would have their own picquets on that hill. And surely they would have a telescope up there to watch the city approaches. But he was committed to crossing the river here and so he clambered down and was just brushing off his jacket when a wild-haired young man in ragged clothes mooed at him. Sharpe stared back, astonished. The man mooed again, then grinned inanely before giving a cackle of laughter. He had dirty red hair, bright blue eyes and a slack, dribbling mouth and Sharpe realized he was an idiot and probably harmless. Sharpe remembered Ronnie, a village idiot in Yorkshire, whose parents would shackle him to the stump of an elm on the village green where Ronnie would bellow at the grazing cows, talk to himself and growl at the girls. This man was much the same, but he was also importunate, plucking at Sharpe’s elbow as he tried to drag the Englishman toward the river.

“Made yourself a friend, sir?” Tongue asked, amused.

“He’s being a bloody nuisance, sir,” Perkins said.

“He don’t mean harm,” Tongue said, “just wants you to go for a swim, sir.”

Sharpe pulled away from the idiot. “What’s your name?” he asked, then realized there was probably little point in speaking English to a Portuguese lunatic, but the idiot was so pleased at being spoken to that he gibbered wildly, grinned and bounced up and down on his toes. Then he plucked at Sharpe’s elbow again.

“I’ll call you Ronnie,” Sharpe said, “and what do you want?”

His men were laughing now, but Sharpe had intended to go to the river bank anyway to see what kind of challenge his raft would face and so he let Ronnie pull him along. The idiot made conversation all the way, but none of it made any sense. He took Sharpe right to the river bank and, when Sharpe tried to detach his surprisingly strong grip, Ronnie shook
his head and tugged Sharpe on through some poplars, down through thick bushes and then at last he relinquished his grip on Sharpe’s arm and clapped his hands.

“You’re not such an idiot after all, are you?” Sharpe said. “In fact you’re a bloody genius, Ronnie.”

There was a boat. Sharpe had seen the ferry burned and sunk on his first visit to Barca d’Avintas, but now realized there must have been two craft and this was the second. It was a flat, wide and cumbersome vessel, the kind of boat that could carry a small flock of sheep or even a carriage and its horses, and it had been weighted with stones and sunk in this wide ditch-like creek that jutted under the trees to make a small backwater. Sharpe wondered why the villagers had not shown it to him before and guessed that they feared all soldiers and so they had hidden their most valuable boat until peaceful times returned. The French had destroyed every other boat and had never guessed that this second ferry still existed. “You’re a bloody genius,” Sharpe told Ronnie again, and he gave him the last of his bread, which was the only gift he had.

But he also had a boat.

And then he had something else for the thunder he had heard so distantly the previous day sounded again. Only this time it was close and it was unmistakable and it was not thunder at all and Christopher had lied and there was no peace in Portugal.

It was cannon fire.

T
HE 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 of fences, 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?”