Now, with the remnants of the meal cleared away, the officers crowded about a hand-drawn
map that Captain Hogan had spread on the table. Sir Arthur traced a finger across the map.
“They’ll want to get back to Spain, of course,” he said, “but how?”
He had expected Colonel Waters, the most senior of the exploring officers, to answer
the question, but Waters had not ridden the north country and so the Colonel nodded to
Captain Hogan, the most junior officer in the room. Hogan had spent the weeks before Soult’s
invasion mapping the Tras os Montes, the wild northern mountains where the roads twisted
and the rivers ran fast and the bridges were few and narrow. Portuguese troops were even now
marching to cut off those bridges and so deny the French the roads which would lead them back
to their fortresses in Spain, and Hogan now tapped the vacant space on the map north of the
road from Oporto to Amarante. “If Amarante’s taken, sir, and our fellows capture Braga
tomorrow,” Hogan paused and glanced at Sir Arthur who gave an irritable nod, “then Soult is
in a pickle, a real pickle. He’ll have to cross the Serra de Santa Catalina and there are
no carriage roads in those hills.”
“What is there?” Wellesley asked, staring at the forbidding vacancy of the map.
“Goat tracks,” Hogan said, “wolves, footpaths, ravines and very angry peasants. Once he
gets to here, sir”-he tapped the map to the north of the Serra de Santa Catalina-”he’s got a
passable road that will take him home, but to reach that road he’ll have to abandon his
wagons, his guns, his carriages, in fact everything that can’t be carried on a man or a
mule’s back.”
Thunder growled above the city. The sound of rain began, then grew heavier, pelting down
onto the terrace and rattling on the tall uncurtained windows. “Damn bloody weather,”
Wellesley growled, knowing it would slow down his pursuit of the beaten French.
“It rains on the ungodly too, sir,” Hogan observed.
“Damn them as well.” Wellesley bridled. He was not sure how much he liked Hogan, whom he had
inherited from Cradock. The damn man was Irish for a start which reminded Wellesley that he
himself had been born in Ireland, a fact of which he was not particularly proud, and the man
was plainly not high born and Sir Arthur liked his aides to come from good families, yet he
recognized that prejudice as quite unreasonable and he was beginning to suspect that the
quiet-spoken Hogan had a good deal of competence, while Colonel Waters, of whom Wellesley
did approve, spoke very warmly of the Irishman.
“So,” Wellesley summed up the situation, “they’re on the road between here and Amarante,
and they can’t come back without fighting us and they can’t go forward without meeting
Beresford, so they must go north into the hills. And where do they go after that?”
“To this road here, sir,” Hogan answered, pointing a pencil at the map. “It goes from
Braga to Chaves, sir, and if he manages to get past the Ponte Nova and reach Ruivaens, which
is a village here”-he paused to make a pencil mark on the map-”then there’s a track that will
take him north across the hills to Montalegre and that’s just a stone’s throw from the
frontier.” Sir Arthur’s aides were huddled about the dining table, looking down at the
candlelit map, though one man, a slight and pale figure dressed in elegant civilian clothes,
did not bother to take any interest, but just stretched languidly in an armchair where he
managed to convey the insulting impression that he was bored by this talk of maps, roads,
hills and bridges.
“And this road, sir,” Hogan went on, tracing his pencil from the Ponte Nova to
Montalegre, “is a real devil. It’s a twister, sir. You have to walk five miles to go a
half-mile forward. And better still, sir, it crosses a couple of rivers, small ones, but in
deep gorges with quick water, and that means high bridges, sir, and if the Portuguese can cut
one of those bridges then Monsieur Soult is lost, sir. He’s trapped. He can only lead his men
across the mountains and they’ll have the devil on their heels all the way.”
“God speed the Portuguese,” Wellesley grunted, grimacing at the sound of the rain which
he kriew would slow his allies who were advancing inland in an attempt to sever the roads
by which the French could reach Spain. They had already cut them off at Amarante, but now they
would need to march further north while Wellesley’s army, fresh from its triumph at Oporto,
would have to chase the French. The British were the beaters driving their game toward the
Portuguese guns. Wellesley stared at the map. “You drew this, Hogan?”
“I did, sir.”
“And it’s reliable?”
“It is, sir.“
Sir Arthur grunted. If it were not for the weather, he thought, he would bag Soult and all
his men, but the rain would make it a damned difficult pursuit. Which meant the sooner it
began the better and so aides were sent with orders that would start the British army on its
march at dawn. Then, the orders given, Sir Arthur yawned. He badly needed some sleep before
the morning and he was about to turn in when the big doors were thrown open and a very wet, very
ragged and very unshaven rifleman entered. He saw General Wellesley, looked surprised and
instinctively came to attention.
“Good God,” Wellesley said sourly.
“I think you know Lieutenant … “ Hogan began.
“Of course I know Lieutenant Sharpe,” Wellesley snapped, “but what I want to know is what
the devil is he doing here? The 95th aren’t with us.”
Hogan removed the candlesticks from the corners of the map and let it roll up. “That’s my
doing, Sir Arthur,” he said calmly. “I found Lieutenant Sharpe and his men wandering like
lost sheep and took them into my care, and ever since he’s been escorting me on my journeys
to the frontier. I couldn’t have coped with the French patrols on my own, Sir Arthur, and
Mister Sharpe was a great comfort.”
Wellesley, while Hogan offered the explanation, just stared at Sharpe. “You were lost?”
he demanded coldly.
“Cut off, sir,” Sharpe said.
“During the retreat to Corunna?”
“Yes, sir,” Sharpe said. In fact his unit had been retreating toward Vigo, but the
distinction was not important and Sharpe had long learned to keep replies to senior
officers as brief as possible.
“So where the devil have you been these last few weeks?” Wellesley asked tartly.
“Skulking?”
“Yes, sir,” Sharpe said, and the staff officers stiffened at the whiff of insolence that
drifted through the room.
“I ordered the Lieutenant to find a young Englishwoman who was lost, sir,” Hogan hurried
to explain. “In fact I ordered him to accompany Colonel Christopher.”
The mention of that name was like a whip crack. No one spoke though the young civilian who
had been pretending to sleep in the armchair and who had opened his eyes wide with surprise
when Sharpe’s name was first mentioned now paid very close attention. He was a painfully thin
young man and pallid, as though he feared the sun, and there was something feline, almost
feminine, in his delicate appearance. His clothes, so very elegant, would have been well
suited to a London drawing room or a Paris salon, but here, amidst the unwashed uniforms
and suntanned officers of Wellesley’s staff, he looked like a pampered lapdog among hounds.
He was sitting up straight now and staring intently at Sharpe.
“Colonel Christopher.” Wellesley broke the silence. “So you’ve been with him?” he
demanded of Sharpe.
“General Cradock ordered me to stay with him, sir,” Sharpe said, and took the General’s
order from his pouch and laid it on the table.
Wellesley did not even glance at the paper. “What the devil was Cradock doing?” he
snapped. “Christopher’s not even a properly commissioned officer, he’s a damned Foreign
Office flunkey!” These last words were spat at the pale young man, who, rather than respond,
made an airily dismissive gesture with the delicate fingers of his right hand. He caught
Sharpe’s eye then and turned the gesture into a small wave of welcome and Sharpe realized,
with a start of recognition, that it was Lord Pumphrey whom he had last met in Copenhagen. His
lordship, Sharpe knew, was mysteriously prominent in the Foreign Office, but Pumphrey
offered no explanation of his presence in Oporto as Wellesley snatched up General
Cradock’s order, read it and then threw the paper down. “So what did Christopher order you to
do?” he asked Sharpe.
“To stay at a place called Vila Real de Zedes, sir.”
“And do what there, pray?”
“Be killed, sir.”
“Be killed?” Sir Arthur asked in a dangerous tone. He knew Sharpe was being impudent and,
though the rifleman had once saved his life, Sir Arthur was quite ready to slap him down.
“He brought a French force to the village, sir. They attacked us.”
“Not very effectively, it seems,” Wellesley said sarcastically.
“Not very, no, sir,” Sharpe agreed, “but there were twelve hundred of them, sir, and only
sixty of us.” He said no more and there was silence in the big room as men worked out the odds.
Twenty to one. Another peal of thunder racked the sky and a shard of lightning flickered to
the west.
“Twelve hundred, Richard?” Hogan asked in a voice which suggested Sharpe might like to
amend the figure downward.
“There were probably more, sir,” Sharpe said stoically. “The 31st Leger attacked us, but
they were backed up by at least one regiment of dragoons and an howitzer. Only the one,
though, sir, and we saw them off.” He stopped and no one spoke again, and Sharpe remembered he
had not paid tribute to his ally and so turned back to Wellesley. “I had Lieutenant Vicente
with me, sir, of the 18th Portuguese, and his thirty-odd lads helped us a lot, but I’m sorry
to report he lost a couple of men and I lost a couple too. And one of my men deserted, sir.
I’m sorry about that.”
There was another silence, a much longer one, in which the officers stared at Sharpe and
Sharpe tried to count the candles on the big table, and then Lord Pumphrey broke the silence.
“You tell us, Lieutenant, that Mister Christopher brought these troops to attack you?”
“Yes, sir.”
Pumphrey smiled. “Did he bring them? Or was he brought by them?”
“He brought them,” Sharpe said vigorously. “And then he had the bloody nerve to come up the
hill and tell me the war was over and we ought to walk down and let the French take care of
us.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Pumphrey said with exaggerated civility.
There was another silence, then Colonel Waters cleared his throat. “You will recall,
sir,” he said softly, “that it was Lieutenant Sharpe who provided us with our navy this
morning.” In other words, he was saying to Sir Arthur Wellesley, show some damned
gratitude.
But Sir Arthur was in no mood to show gratitude. He just stared at Sharpe, and then Hogan
remembered the letter that he had rescued from the House Beautiful and he took it from his
pocket. “It’s for you, Lieutenant,” he said, holding the paper toward Sharpe, “but it wasn’t
sealed and so I took the liberty of reading it.”
Sharpe unfolded the paper. “He is going with the French,” Sharpe read, “and forcing me to
accompany him and I do not want to.” It was signed Kate and had plainly been written in a
tearing hurry.
“The ‘him,’ I assume,” Hogan asked, “is Christopher?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So the reason that Miss Savage absented herself in March,” Hogan went on, “was Colonel
Christopher?”
“Yes, sir.”
“She is sweet on him?”
“She’s married to him,” Sharpe said and was puzzled because Lord Pumphrey looked
startled.
“A few weeks earlier”-Hogan was talking to Wellesley now-”Colonel Christopher was
courting Miss Savage’s mother.”
“Does any of this ridiculous talk of romance help us determine what Christopher is
doing?” Sir Arthur asked with considerable asperity.
“It’s amusing, if nothing else,” Pumphrey said. He stood up, flicked a speck of dust from a
cuff, and smiled at Sharpe. “Did you really say Christopher married this girl?”
“He did, sir.”
“Then he is a bad boy,” Lord Pumphrey said happily, “because he’s already married.” His
lordship plainly enjoyed that revelation. “He married Pearce Courtnell’s daughter ten
years ago in the happy belief that she was worth eight thousand a year, then discovered she
was hardly worth sixpence. It is not, I hear, a contented marriage, and might I observe,
Sir Arthur, that Lieutenant Sharpe’s news answers our questions about Colonel Christopher’s
true allegiance?”
“It does?” Wellesley asked, puzzled.
“Christopher cannot hope to survive a bigamous marriage if he intends to make his
future in Britain or in a free Portugal,” Lord Pumphrey observed, “but in France? Or in a
Portugal ruled by France? (
The French won’t care how many wives he left in London.”
“But you said he wants to return.”
“I tendered a surmise that he would wish to do so,” Pumphrey corrected the General. “He
has, after all, been playing both sides of the table and if he thinks we’re winning then he
will doubtless want to return and equally doubtless he will then deny ever marrying Miss
Savage.”
“She might have another opinion,” Wellesley observed dryly.
“If she’s alive to utter it, which I doubt,” Pumphrey said. “No, sir, he cannot be trusted
and dare I say that my masters in London would be immensely grateful if you were to remove
him from their employment?”
“That’s what you want?”
“It is not what I want,” Pumphrey contradicted Wellesley and, for a man of such delicate
and frail appearance, he did it with considerable force. “It is what London would
want.”
“You can be certain of that?” Wellesley asked, plainly disliking Pumphrey’s
insinuations.
“He has knowledge that would embarrass us,” Pumphrey admitted, “including the Foreign
Office codes.”
Wellesley gave his great horse neigh of a laugh. “He’s probably given those to the French
already.”
“I doubt it, sir,” Pumphrey said, examining his fingernails with a slight frown, “a man
usually holds his best cards till last. And in the end Christopher will want to bargain,
either with us or with the French, and I must say that His Majesty’s government does not wish
either eventuality.”