Sharpe 3-Book Collection 2: Sharpe’s Havoc, Sharpe’s Eagle, Sharpe’s Gold (34 page)

“And if it hasn’t been blown?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Hogan said, and laughed. “Ah, Jesus, I do hate this rain. Have you ever tried taking snuff in the rain, Richard? It’s like sniffing up cat vomit.”

They walked eastward through a wide valley edged by high, pale hills that were crowned with gray boulders. The road lay to the south of the River Cavado which ran clear and deep through rich pastureland that had been plundered by the French so that no cattle or sheep grazed the spring grass. The villages had once been prosperous, but were now almost deserted and the few folk who remained were wary. Hogan, like Vicente and his men, wore blue and that was also the color of the enemy’s coats, while the riflemen’s green jackets could be mistaken for the uniforms of dismounted French dragoons. Most people, if they expected anything, thought the British wore red and so Sergeant Macedo, anticipating the confusion, had found a Portuguese flag in Braga that he carried on a pole hacked from an ash tree. The flag showed a wreathed crest of Portugal surmounted by a great golden crown and it reassured those folk who recognized the emblem. Not all did, but once the villagers had spoken with Vicente they could not do enough for the soldiers. “For God’s sake,” Sharpe told Vicente, “tell them to hide their wine.”

“They’re friendly, sure enough,” Harper said as they left another small settlement where the dungarees were bigger than the cottages. “Not like the Spanish. They could be cold. Not all of them, but some were bastards.”

“The Spanish don’t like the English,” Hogan told him.

“They don’t like the English?” Harper asked, surprised. “So they’re not bastards after all then, just wary, eh? But are you saying, sir, that the Portuguese do like the English?”

“The Portuguese,” Hogan said, “hate the Spanish and when you have a bigger neighbor whom you detest then you look for a big friend to help you.”

“So who’s Ireland’s big friend, sir?”

“God, Sergeant,” Hogan said, “God.”

“Dear Lord above,” Harper said piously, staring into the rainy sky, “for Christ’s sake, wake up.”

“Why don’t you fight for the bloody French,” Harris snarled.

“Enough!” Sharpe snapped.

They marched in silence for a while, then Vicente could not contain his curiosity. “If the Irish hate the English,” he asked, “why do they fight for them?” Harper chuckled at the question, Hogan raised his eyes to the gray heavens and Sharpe just scowled.

The road, now that they were far from Braga, was less well maintained. Grass grew down its center between ruts made by ox carts. The French had not scavenged this far and there were a few flocks of bedraggled sheep and some small herds of cattle, but as soon as a herdsman or shepherd saw the soldiers he hustled his beasts away. Vicente was still puzzled and, having failed to elicit an answer from his companions, tried again. “I really do not understand,” he said in a very earnest voice, “why the Irish would fight for the English King.” Harris drew a breath as if to reply, but one savage look from Sharpe made him change his mind. Harper began to whistle “Over the Hills and Far Away,” then could not help laughing at the strained silence that was at last broken by Hogan.

“It’s hunger,” the engineer explained to Vicente, “hunger and poverty
and desperation, and because there’s precious little work for a good man at home, and because we’ve always been a people that enjoy a good fight.”

Vicente was intrigued by the answer. “And that is true for you, Captain?” he asked.

“Not for me,” Hogan allowed. “My family’s always had some money. Not much, but we never had to scratch in thin soil to raise our daily bread. No, I joined the army because I like being an engineer. I like practical things and this was the best way to do what I liked. But someone like Sergeant Harper?” He glanced at Harper. “I dare say he’s here because he’d be starving otherwise.”

“True,” Harper said.

“And you hate the English?” Vicente asked Harper.

“Careful,” Sharpe growled.

“I hate the bloody ground the bastards walk on, sir,” Harper said cheerfully, then saw Vicente cast a bewildered glance at Sharpe. “I didn’t say I hated them all,” Harper added.

“Life is complicated,” Hogan said vaguely. “I mean there’s a Portuguese Legion in the French army, I hear?”

Vicente looked embarrassed. “They believe in French ideas, sir.”

“Ah! Ideas,” Hogan said, “they’re much more dangerous than big or little neighbors. I don’t believe in fighting for ideas”—he shook his head ruefully—“and nor does Sergeant Harper.”

“I don’t?” Harper asked.

“No, you bloody don’t,” Sharpe snarled.

“So what do you believe in?” Vicente wanted to know.

“The trinity, sir,” Harper said sententiously.

“The trinity?” Vicente was surprised.

“The Baker rifle,” Sharpe said, “the sword bayonet, and me.”

“Those too,” Harper acknowledged, and laughed.

“What it is,” Hogan tried to help Vicente, “is that it’s like being in a house where there’s an unhappy marriage and you ask a question about fidelity. You cause embarrassment. No one wants to talk about it.”

“Harris!” Sharpe warned, seeing the red-headed rifleman open his mouth.

“I was only going to say, sir,” Harris said, “that there’s a dozen horsemen on that hill over there.”

Sharpe turned just in time to see the horsemen vanish across the crest. The rain was too thick and the light too poor to see if they were in uniform, but Hogan suggested the French might well have sent cavalry patrols far ahead of their retreat. “They’ll be wanting to know whether we’ve taken Braga,” he explained, “because if we hadn’t then they’d turn this way and try to escape up to Pontevedra.”

Sharpe gazed at the far hill. “If there’s bloody cavalry about,” he said, “then I don’t want to be caught on the road.” It was the one place in a nightmare landscape where horsemen would have an advantage.

So to avoid enemy horsemen they struck north into the wilderness. It meant crossing the Cavado which they managed at a deep ford which led only to the high summer pastures. Sharpe continually looked behind, but saw no sign of the horsemen. The path climbed into a wild land. The hills were steep, the valleys deep and the high ground bare of anything except gorse, ferns, thin grass and vast rounded boulders, some balanced on others so precariously that they looked as if a child’s touch would send them bounding down the precipitous slopes. The grass was fit only for a few tangle-haired sheep and scores of feral goats on which the mountain wolves and wild lynx fed. The only village they passed was a poor place with high rock walls about its small vegetable gardens. Goats were hobbled on pastures the size of inn yards and a few bony cattle stared at the soldiers as they passed. They climbed still higher, listening to the goat bells among the rocks and passing a small shrine heaped with faded gorse blossom. Vicente crossed himself as he passed the shrine.

They turned eastward again, following a stony ridge where the great rounded boulders would make it impossible for any cavalry to form and charge, and Sharpe kept watching southwards and saw nothing. Yet there had been horsemen, and there would be more, for he was making a
rendezvous with a desperate army that had been bounced from imminent success to abject defeat in one swift day.

It was hard traveling in the hills. They rested every hour, then trudged on. All were soaked, tired and chilled. The rain was relentless and the wind had now gone into the east so that it came straight into their faces. The rifle slings rubbed their wet shoulders raw, but at least the rain lifted that afternoon, even if the wind stayed brisk and cold. At dusk, feeling as weary as he ever had on the terrible retreat to Vigo, Sharpe led them down from the ridge to a small deserted hamlet of low stone cottages roofed with turf. “Just like home,” Harper said happily. The driest places to sleep were two long, coffin-shaped granaries that protected their contents from rats by being raised on mushroom-shaped stone pillars, and most of the men crammed themselves into the narrow spaces while Sharpe, Hogan and Vicente shared the least damaged cottage where Sharpe conjured a fire from damp kindling, and brewed tea.

“The most essential skill of a soldier,” Hogan said when Sharpe brought him the tea.

“What’s that?” Vicente asked, ever eager to learn his new trade.

“Making fire from wet wood,” Hogan said.

“Aren’t you supposed to have a servant?” Sharpe asked.

“I am, but so are you, Richard.”

“I’m not one for servants,” Sharpe said.

“Nor am I,” Hogan said, “but you’ve done a grand job with that tea, Richard, and if His Majesty ever decides he doesn’t want a London rogue to be one of his officers then I’ll give you a job as a servant.”

Picquets were set, more tea brewed and moist tobacco coaxed alight in clay pipes. Hogan and Vicente began an impassioned argument about a man called Hume of whom Sharpe had never heard and who turned out to be a dead Scottish philosopher, but, as it seemed the dead Scotsman had proposed that nothing was certain, Sharpe wondered why anyone bothered to read him, let alone argue about him, yet the notion diverted Hogan and Vicente. Sharpe, bored with the talk, left them to their debate and went to inspect the picquets.

It started to rain again, then peals of thunder shook the sky and lightning whipped into the high rocks. Sharpe crouched with Harris and Perkins in a cave-like shrine where some faded flowers lay in front of a sad-looking statue of the Virgin Mary. “Jesus bloody wept,” Harper announced himself as he splashed through the downpour, “and we could be tucked up with those ladies in Oporto.” He crammed himself in beside the three men. “I didn’t know you were here, sir,” he said. “I brought the boys some picquet juice.” He had a wooden canteen of hot tea. “Jesus,” he went on, “you can’t see a bloody thing out there.”

“Weather like home, Sergeant?” Perkins asked.

“What would you know, lad? In Donegal, now, the sun never stops shining, the women all say yes and both the gamekeepers have wooden legs.” He gave Perkins the canteen and peered into the wet dark. “How are we going to find your fellow in this, sir?”

“God knows if we do.”

“Does it matter now?”

“I want my telescope back.”

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Harper said, “you’re going to wander into the middle of the French army and ask for it?”

“Something like that,” Sharpe said. All day he had been besieged by a sense of the futility of the effort, but that was no reason not to make the effort. And it seemed right to him that Christopher should be punished. Sharpe believed that a man’s loyalties were at his roots, that they were immovable, but Christopher evidently believed they were negotiable. That was because Christopher was clever and sophisticated. And, if Sharpe had his way, he would soon be dead.

The dawn was cold and wet. They climbed back up to the boulder-strewn heights, leaving behind the valley which was filled with mist. The rain was soft now, but still in their faces. Sharpe led and saw nobody, and still saw nobody even when a musket banged and a cloud of smoke blossomed beside a rock and he dived for cover as the bullet smacked on a boulder and whined into the sky. Everyone else sheltered, except for Hogan who was stranded on his ugly mule, but Hogan had the presence
of mind to shout.
“Inglês,”
he called,
“inglês!”
He was half on and half off the mule, fearing another bullet, but hoping his claim to be English would prevent it.

A figure in ragged goatskins appeared from behind the rock. The man had a vast beard, no teeth and a wide grin. Vicente called to him and the two had a rapid conversation at the end of which Vicente turned to Hogan. “He calls himself Javali and says he is sorry, but he did not know we were friends. He asks you to forgive him.”

“Javali?” Hogan asked.

“It means wild boar.” Vicente sighed. “Every man in this countryside gives himself a nickname and looks for a Frenchman to kill.”

“There’s just one of him?” Sharpe asked.

“Just the one.”

“Then he’s either bloody stupid or bloody brave,” Sharpe said, then succumbed to an embrace from Javali and a gust of foul-smelling breath. The man’s musket looked ancient. The wooden stock, which was bound to the barrel by old-fashioned iron hoops, was split and the hoops themselves were rusted and loose, but Javali had a canvas bag filled with loose powder and an assortment of differently sized musket balls and he insisted on accompanying them when he learned there might be Frenchmen to kill. He had a wicked-looking curved knife stuck into his belt and a small axe hanging by a fraying piece of string.

Sharpe walked on. Javali talked incessantly and Vicente translated some of his story. His real name was Andrêa and he was a goatherd from Bouro. He had been an orphan since he was six, and he thought he was now twenty-five years old though he looked much older, and he worked for a dozen families by protecting their animals from lynx and wolves, and he had lived with a woman, he said proudly, but the dragoons had come and they had raped her when he was not there, and his woman had possessed a temper, he said, worse than a goat’s, and she must have drawn a knife on her rapists for they had killed her. Javali did not seem very upset by his woman’s death, but he was still determined to avenge her. He patted the knife and then tapped his groin to show what he had in mind.

Javali at least knew the quickest ways through the high ground. They were traveling well to the north of the road they had left when Harris spotted the horsemen, and that road led through the wide valley that now narrowed as it went eastward. The Cavado twisted beside the road, sometimes vanishing in stands of trees, while streams, fed by the rain, tumbled from the hills to swell the river.

Vicente’s estimate of two days was ruined by the weather and they spent the next night high in the hills, half protected from the rain by the great boulders, and in the morning they walked on and Sharpe saw how the river valley had nearly narrowed to nothing. By mid-morning they were overlooking Salamonde and then, looking back up the valley where the last of the morning mist was vanishing, they saw something else.

They saw an army. It came in a swarm along the road and in the fields either side of the road, a great spread of men and horses in no particular order, a horde that was trying to escape from Portugal and from the British army that was now pursuing them from Braga. “We’ll have to hurry,” Hogan said.