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 Andrea 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.
“It’ll take them hours to get up that road,” Sharpe said, nodding toward the village that
was built where the valley finally narrowed into a defile from where the road, instead of
running on level land, twisted beside the river into the hills. For the moment the French
could spread themselves in fields and march with a broad front, but once past Salamonde they
were restricted to the narrow and deep-rutted road. Sharpe borrowed Hogan’s good telescope
and stared down at the French army. Some units, he could see, marched in good order, but most
were straggling loosely. There were no guns, wagons or carriages, so that if Marshal Soult
did manage to escape he would have to crawl back into Spain and explain to his master how he
had lost everything of value. “There must be twenty, thirty thousand down there,” he said
in wonderment as he handed back Hogan’s glass. “It’ll take them the best part of the day to
get through that village.
“But they’ve got the devil on their heels,” Hogan pointed out, “and that encourages a man
to swiftness.”
They pressed on. A weak sun at last lit the pale hills, though gray showers fell to north and
south. Behind them the French were a great dark mass pressing up against the valley’s narrow
end where, like grains of sand trickling through an hourglass, they streamed through
Salamonde. Smoke rose from the village as the passing troops plundered and burned.
The French road to safety began to climb now. It followed the defile made by the
white-watered Cavado which twisted out of the hills in great loops and sometimes leaped down
series of precipices in misted waterfalls. A squadron of dragoons led the French retreat,
riding ahead to smell out any partisans who might try to ambush the vast column. If the
dragoons saw Hogan and his men high on the northern hills they made no effort to reach them
for the riflemen and Portuguese soldiers were too far away and much too high, and then the
French had other things to worry about for, late in the afternoon, the dragoons arrived at
the Ponte Nova.
Sharpe was already above the Ponte Nova, gazing down at the bridge. It was here that the
French retreat might be stopped, for the tiny village that clung to the high ground just
beyond the bridge bristled with men and, on first seeing the Ponte Nova from high in the
hills, Hogan had been jubilant. “We’ve done it!” he said. “We’ve done it!” But then he trained
his telescope on the bridge and his good mood died. “They’re ordenanqa,” he said, “not a
proper uniform there.” He gazed for another minute. “There’s not a single bloody gun,” he
said bitterly, “and the bloody fools haven’t even destroyed the bridge.”
Sharpe borrowed Hogan’s glass to stare at the bridge. It possessed two hefty stone
abutments, one on each bank, and the river was spanned by two great beams over which a wooden
roadway had once been laid. The ordenanqa, presumably not wanting to rebuild the bridge
entirely once the French were defeated, had removed the plank roadway, but left the two
enormous beams in place. Then, at the edge of the village on the bridge’s eastern side, they
had dug trenches from which they could smother the half-dismantled bridge with musket fire.
“It might serve,” Sharpe grunted.
“And what would you do if you were the French?” Hogan asked.
Sharpe stared down into the defile, then looked back westward. He could see the dark snake
of the French army coming along the road, but further back there was no sign yet of any British
pursuit. “Wait till dark,” he said, “then attack across the beams.” The ordenanqa was
enthusiastic, but it was little more than a rabble, ill armed and with scarce any
training, and such troops might easily be panicked. Worse, there were not many ordenanqa at
the Ponte Nova. There would have been more than enough if the bridge had been fully broken,
but the twin beams were an invitation to the French. Sharpe trained the telescope on the
bridge again. “Those beams are wide enough to walk on,” he said. “They’ll attack in the night.
Hope to catch the defenders sleeping.”
“Let’s just hope the ordenanga stay awake,” Hogan said. He slid off the mule. “And what we
do,” he said, “is wait.”
“Wait?”
“If they are stopped here,” Hogan explained, “then this is as good a place as any to watch
out for Mister Christopher. And if they get across … ?” He shrugged.
“I should go down there,” Sharpe said, “and tell them to get rid of those beams.”
“And how will they accomplish it?” Hogan wanted to know. “With dragoons firing at them
from the other bank?” The dragoons had dismounted and spread along the western bank and
Hogan could see the white puffs of their carbine smoke. “It’s too late to help, Richard,” he
said, “too late. You stay here.”
They made a rough camp in the boulders. Night fell swiftly because the rain had come again
and the clouds shrouded the setting sun. Sharpe let his men light fires so they could brew tea.
The French would see the fires, but that did not matter for as the darkness shrouded the hills
a myriad flames showed in the high grounds. The partisans were gathering, they were coming
from all across northern Portugal to help destroy the French army.
An army that was cold, wet, hungry, bone-weary, and trapped.
Major Dulong still smarted from his defeat at Vila Real de Zedes. The bruise on his face
had faded, but the memory of the repulse hurt. He sometimes thought of the rifleman who had
beaten him and wished the man was in the 31st Leger. He also wished that the 31st Leger could
be armed with rifles, but that was like wishing for the moon because the Emperor would not
hear of rifles. Too fiddly, too slow, a woman’s weapon, he said. Vive le fusil. Now, at the
old bridge called Ponte Nova, where the French retreat was blocked, Dulong had been summoned
to Marshal Soult because the Marshal had been told that this was the best and bravest soldier
in all his army. Dulong looked it, the Marshal thought, with his ragged uniform and scarred
face. Dulong had taken the bright feather plume from his shako, wrapped it in oilcloth and
tied it to his saber scabbard. He had hoped to wear that plume when his regiment marched into
Lisbon, but it seemed that was not to be. Not this spring, anyway.
Soult walked with Dulong up a small knoll from where they could see the bridge with its two
beams, and see and hear the jeering ordenanga beyond. “There are not many of them,” Soult
remarked, “three hundred?”
“More,” Dulong grunted.
“So how do you get rid of them?”
Dulong gazed at the bridge through a telescope. The beams were both about a meter wide,
more than enough, though the rain would doubtless make them slippery. He raised the glass to
see that the Portuguese had dug trenches from which they could fire directly along the beams.
But the night would be dark, he thought, and the moon clouded. “I would take a hundred
volunteers,” he said, “fifty for each beam, and go at midnight.” The rain was getting worse
and the dusk was cold. The Portuguese muskets, Dulong knew, would be soaked and the men
behind them chilled to the bone. “A hundred men,” he promised the Marshal, “and the bridge is
yours.”
Soult nodded. “If you succeed, Major,” he said, “then send me word. But if you fail? I do
not want to hear.” He turned and walked away.
Dulong went back to the 31st Leger and he called for volunteers and was not surprised
when the whole regiment stepped forward, so he chose a dozen good sergeants and let them pick
the rest and he warned them that the fight would be messy, cold and wet. “We will use the
bayonet,” he said, “because the muskets won’t fire in this weather and, besides, once you
have fired one shot you will not have time to reload.” He thought about reminding them that
they owed him a display of bravery after their reluctance to advance into the rifle fire
on the watchtower hill at Vila Real de Zedes, then decided they all knew that anyway and
so held his tongue.
The French lit no fires. They grumbled, but Marshal Soult insisted. Across the river the
ordenanga believed they were safe and so they made a fire in one of the cottages high above
the bridge where their commanders could keep warm. The cottage had one small window and just
enough flame light escaped through the unshuttered glass to reflect off the wet cross beams
that spanned the river. The feeble reflections shimmered in the rain, but they served as a
guide for Dulong’s volunteers.
They went at midnight. Two columns, fifty men in each, and Dulong told them they must run
across the bridge and he led the right-hand column, his saber drawn, and the only sounds were
the river hissing beneath, the wind shrieking in the rocks, the pounding of their feet and a
brief scream as one man slipped and fell into the Cavado. Then Dulong was climbing the slope
and found the first trench empty and he guessed the ordenanga had taken shelter in the
small hovels that lay just beyond the second trench and the fools had not even left a sentry
by the bridge. Even a dog would have served to warn them of a French attack, but men and dogs
alike were sheltering from the weather. “Sergeant!” the Major hissed. “The houses! Clean
them out!”
The Portuguese were still asleep when the Frenchmen came. They arrived with bayonets and
no mercy. The first two houses fell swiftly, their occupants killed scarcely before they
were awake, but their screams alerted the rest of the ordenanqa who ran into the darkness
to be met by the best-trained infantry in the French army. The bayonets did their work and the
cries of the victims completed the victory because the survivors, confused and
terrified by the terrible sounds in the dark night, fled. By a quarter past midnight
Dulong was warming himself by the fire that had lit his way to victory.
Marshal Soult took the medal of the Legion d’Honneur from his own coat and pinned it to the
turnback of Major Dulong’s frayed jacket. Then, with tears in his eyes, the Marshal kissed
the Major on both cheeks. Because the miracle had happened and the first bridge belonged to
the French.
Kate wrapped herself in a damp saddle blanket then stood beside her tired horse and
watched dully as French infantry cut down pine trees, slashed off their branches, then
carried the trimmed trunks to the bridge. More timber was fetched from the small cottages and
the ridge beams were just long enough to span the bridge’s roadway, but it all took time, for
the rough timbers had to be lashed together if the soldiers, horses and mules were to cross
in safety. The soldiers who were not working huddled together against the rain and wind. It
felt like winter suddenly. Musket shots sounded far away and Kate knew it was the country
people come to shoot at the hated invaders.
A cantiniere, one of the tough women who sold the soldiers coffee, tea, needles, thread
and dozens of other small comforts, took pity on Kate and brought her a tin mug of lukewarm
coffee laced with brandy. “If they take much longer”-she nodded at the soldiers rebuilding
the bridge’s roadway-”we’ll all be on our backs with an English dragoon on top. So at least
we’ll get something out of this campaign!” She laughed and went back to her two mules which
were laden with her wares. Kate sipped the coffee. She had never been so cold, wet or
miserable. And she knew she only had herself to blame.