Sharpe's Havoc (2 page)

“Long way to Lisbon,” Sharpe said.

“Maybe, sir, but there’s an awful lot of them, sir, and precious few of us.”

“But they say Wellesley’s coming here,” Sharpe said.

“As you keep telling us, sir,” Hagman said, “but is he really a miracle worker?”

“You fought at Copenhagen, Dan,” Sharpe said, “and down the coast here.” He meant the
battles at Rolica and Vimeiro. “You could see for yourself.”

“From the skirmish line, sir, all generals are the same,” Hagman said, “and who knows if
Sir Arthur’s really coming?” It was, after all, only a rumor that Sir Arthur Wellesley was
taking over from General Cradock and not everyone believed it. Many thought the British
would withdraw, ought to withdraw, that they should give up the game and let the French have
Portugal. “Turn your head to the right,” Hagman said. The scissors clicked busily, not even
pausing as a round shot buried itself in the church at the hill’s top. A mist of dust showed
beside the whitewashed bell tower down which a crack had suddenly appeared. The Portuguese
cavalry had been swallowed by the gun smoke and a trumpet called far away. There was a burst
of musketry, then silence. A building must have been burning beyond the crest for there was
a great smear of smoke drifting westward. “Why would someone call their home the House
Beautiful?” Hagman wondered.

“Didn’t know you could read, Dan,” Sharpe said.

“I can’t, sir, but Isaiah read it to me.”

“Tongue!” Sharpe called. “Why would someone call their home House Beautiful?”

Isaiah Tongue, long and thin and dark and educated, who had joined the army because he was
a drunk and thereby lost his respectable job, grinned. “Because he’s a good Protestant,
sir.”

“Because he’s a bloody what?”

“It’s from a book by John Bunyan,” Tongue explained, “called Pilgrim’s Progress.”

“I’ve heard of that,” Sharpe said.

“Some folk consider it essential reading,” Tongue said airily, “the story of a soul’s
journey from sin to salvation, sir.”

“Just the thing to keep you burning the candles at night,” Sharpe said.

“And the hero, Christian, calls at the House Beautiful, sir”-Tongue ignored Sharpe’s
sarcasm-“where he talks with four virgins.”

Hagman laughed. “Let’s get inside now, sir.”

“You’re too old for a virgin, Dan,” Sharpe said.

“Discretion,” Tongue said, “Piety, Prudence and Charity.”

“What about them?” Sharpe asked.

“Those were the names of the virgins, sir,” Tongue said.

“Bloody hell,” Sharpe said.

“Charity’s mine,” Hagman said. “Pull your collar down, sir, that’s the way.” He snipped at
the black hair. “He sounds like he was a tedious old man, Mister Savage, if it was him what
named the house.” Hagman stooped to maneuver the scissors over Sharpe’s high collar. “So why
did the Captain leave us here, sir?” he asked.

“He wants us to look after Colonel Christopher,” Sharpe said.

“To look after Colonel Christopher,” Hagman repeated, making his disapproval evident
by the slowness with which he said the words. Hagman was the oldest man in Sharpe’s troop of
riflemen, a poacher from Cheshire who was a deadly shot with his Baker rifle. “So Colonel
Christopher can’t look after himself now?”

“Captain Hogan left us here, Dan,” Sharpe said, “so he must think the Colonel needs us.”

“And the Captain’s a good man, sir,” Hagman said. “You can let the collar go. Almost
done.”

But why had Captain Hogan left Sharpe and his riflemen behind? Sharpe wondered about that
as Hagman tidied up his work. And had there been any significance in Hogan’s final
injunction to keep a close eye on the Colonel? Sharpe had only met the Colonel once. Hogan had
been mapping the upper reaches of the River Cavado and the Colonel and his servant had
ridden out of the hills and shared a bivouac with the riflemen. Sharpe had not liked
Christopher who had been supercilious and even scornful of Hogan’s work. “You map the
country, Hogan,” the Colonel had said, “but I map their minds. A very complicated thing, the
human mind, not simple like hills and rivers and bridges.” Beyond that statement he had not
explained his presence, but just ridden on next morning. He had revealed that he was based
in Oporto which, presumably, was how he had met Mrs. Savage and her daughter, and Sharpe
wondered why Colonel Christopher had not persuaded the widow to leave Oporto much
sooner.

“You’re done, sir,” Hagman said, wrapping his scissors in a piece of calfskin, “and you’ll
be feeling the cold wind now, sir, like a newly shorn sheep.”

“You should get your own hair cut, Dan,” Sharpe said.

“Weakens a man, sir, weakens him something dreadful.” Hagman frowned up the hill as two
round shots bounced on the crest of the road, one of them taking off the leg of a Portuguese
gunner. Sharpe’s men watched expressionless as the round shot bounded on, spraying blood
like a Catherine wheel, to finally bang and stop against a garden wall across the road.
Hagman chuckled. “Fancy calling a girl Discretion! It ain’t a natural name, sir. Ain’t
kind to call a girl Discretion.”

It’s in a book, Dan,” Sharpe said, “so it isn’t supposed to be natural.” He climbed to the
porch and shoved hard on the front door, but found it locked. So where the hell was Colonel
Christopher? More Portuguese retreated down the slope and these men were so frightened that
they did not pause when they saw the British troops, but just kept running. The Portuguese
cannon was being attached to its limber and spent musket balls were tearing at the cedars
and rattling against the tiles, shutters and stones of the House Beautiful. Sharpe hammered
on the locked door, but there was no answer.

“Sir?” Sergeant Patrick Harper called a warning to him. “Sir?” Harper jerked his head
toward the side of the house and Sharpe backed away from the door to see Lieutenant Colonel
Christopher riding from the stable yard. The Colonel, who was armed with a saber and a brace
of pistols, was cleaning his teeth with a wooden pick, something he did frequently,
evidently because he was proud of his even white smile. He was accompanied by his
Portuguese servant who, mounted on his master’s spare horse, was carrying an enormous
valise that was so stuffed with lace, silk and satins that the bag could not be closed.

Colonel Christopher curbed his horse, took the toothpick from his mouth, and stared in
astonishment at Sharpe. “What on earth are you doing here, Lieutenant?”

“Ordered to stay with you, sir,” Sharpe answered. He glanced again at the valise. Had
Christopher been looting the House Beautiful?

The Colonel saw where Sharpe was looking and snarled at his servant, “Close it, damn you,
close it.” Christopher, even though his servant spoke good English, used his own fluent
Portuguese, then looked back to Sharpe. “Captain Hogan ordered you to stay with me. Is that
what you’re trying to convey?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And how the devil are you supposed to do that, eh? I have a horse, Sharpe, and you do not.
You and your men intend to run, perhaps?”

“Captain Hogan gave me an order, sir,” Sharpe answered woodenly. He had learned as a
sergeant how to deal with difficult senior officers. Say little, say it tonelessly, then
say it all again if necessary.

“An order to do what?” Christopher inquired patiently.

“Stay with you, sir. Help you find Miss Savage.”

Colonel Christopher sighed. He was a black-haired man in his forties, but still youthfully
handsome with just a distinguished touch of gray at his temples. He wore black boots, plain
black riding breeches, a black cocked hat and a red coat with black facings. Those black
facings had prompted Sharpe, on his previous meeting with the Colonel, to ask whether
Christopher served in the Dirty Half Hundred, the 50th regiment, but the Colonel had treated
the question as an impertinence. “All you need to know, Lieutenant, is that I serve on
General Cradock’s staff. You have heard of the General?” Cradock was the General in
command of the British forces in southern Portugal and if Soult kept marching then Cradock
must face him. Sharpe had stayed silent after Christopher’s response, but Hogan had later
suggested that the Colonel was probably a “political” soldier, meaning he was no soldier
at all, but rather a man who found life more convenient if he was in uniform. “I’ve no doubt
he was a soldier once,” Hogan had said, “but now? I think Cradock got him from Whitehall.”

“Whitehall? The Horse Guards?”

“Dear me, no,” Hogan had said. The Horse Guards were the headquarters of the army and it was
plain Hogan believed Christopher came from somewhere altogether more sinister. “The world
is a convoluted place, Richard,” he had explained, “and the Foreign Office believes that
we soldiers are clumsy fellows, so they like to have their own people on the ground to patch
up our mistakes. And, of course, to find things out.” Which was what Lieutenant Colonel
Christopher appeared to be doing: finding things out. “He says he’s mapping their minds,”
Hogan had mused, “and what I think he means by that is discovering whether Portugal is worth
defending. Whether they’ll fight. And when he knows, he’ll tell the Foreign Office before he
tells General Cradock.”

“Of course it’s worth defending,” Sharpe had protested.

“Is it? If you look carefully, Richard, you might notice that Portugal is m a state of
collapse.” There was a lamentable truth in Hogan’s grim words. The Portuguese royal family
had fled to Brazil, leaving the country leaderless, and after their departure there had
been riots in Lisbon, and many of Portugal’s aristocrats were now more concerned with
protecting themselves from the mob than defending their country against the French. Scores
of the army’s officers had already defected, joining the Portuguese Legion that fought
for the enemy, and what officers remained were largely untrained, their men were a rabble
and armed with ancient weapons if they possessed weapons at all. In some places, like Oporto
itself, all civil rule had collapsed and the streets were governed by the whims of the
ordenanqa who, lacking proper weapons, patrolled the streets with pikes, spears, axes and
mattocks. Before the French had come the ordenanqa had massacred half of Oporto’s gentry
and forced the other half to flee or barricade their houses though they had left the English
residents alone.

So Portugal was in a state of collapse, but Sharpe had also seen how the common people
hated the French, and how the soldiers had slowed as they passed the gate of the House
Beautiful. Oporto might be falling to the enemy, but there was plenty of fight left in
Portugal, though it was hard to believe that as yet more soldiers followed the retreating
six-pounder gun down to the river. Lieutenant Colonel Christopher glanced at the fugitives,
then looked back at Sharpe. “What on earth was Captain Hogan thinking of?” he asked,
evidently expecting no answer. “What possible use could you be to me? Your presence can
only slow me down. I suppose Hogan was being chivalrous,” Christopher went on, “but the man
plainly has no more common sense than a pickled onion. You can go back to him, Sharpe, and
tell him that I don’t need assistance in rescuing one damned silly little girl.” The
Colonel had to raise his voice because the sound of cannons and musketry was suddenly
loud.

“He gave me an order, sir,” Sharpe said stubbornly.

“And I’m giving you another,” Christopher said in the indulgent tone he might have used
to address a very small child. The pommel of his saddle was broad and flat to make a small
writing surface and now he laid a notebook on that makeshift desk and took out a pencil, and
just then another of the red-blossomed trees on the crest was struck by a cannonball so that
the air was filled with drifting petals. “The French are at war with the cherries,”
Christopher said lightly.

“With Judas,” Sharpe said.

Christopher gave him a look of astonishment and outrage. “What did you say?”

“It’s a Judas tree,” Sharpe said.

Christopher still looked outraged, then Sergeant Harper chimed in. “It’s not a cherry,
sir. It’s a Judas tree. The same kind that Iscariot used to hang himself on, sir, after he
betrayed our Lord.”

Christopher still gazed at Sharpe, then seemed to realize that no slur had been intended.
“So it’s not a cherry tree, eh?” he said, then licked the point of his pencil. “You are hereby
ordered”-he spoke as he wrote-”to return south of the river forthwith-note that, Sharpe,
forthwith-and report for duty to Captain Hogan of the Royal Engineers. Signed, Lieutenant
Colonel James Christopher, on the forenoon of Wednesday, March the 29th in the year of our
Lord, 1809.” He signed the order with a flourish, tore the page from the book, folded it in
half and handed it to Sharpe. “I always thought thirty pieces of silver was a remarkably
cheap price for the most famous betrayal in history. He probably hanged himself out of
shame. Now go,” he said grandly, “and ‘stand not upon the order of your going.’ “ He saw
Sharpe’s puzzlement, “Macbeth, Lieutenant,” he explained as he spurred his horse toward the
gate, “a play by Shakespeare. And I really would urge haste upon you, Lieutenant,”
Christopher called back, “for the enemy will be here any moment.”

In that, at least, he was right. A great spume of dust and smoke was boiling out from the
central redoubts of the city’s northern defenses. That was where the Portuguese had been
putting up the strongest resistance, but the French artillery had managed to throw down the
parapets and now their infantry assaulted the bastions, and the majority of the city’s
defenders were fleeing. Sharpe watched Christopher and his servant gallop through the
fugitives and turn into a street that led eastward. Christopher was not retreating south,
but going to the rescue of the missing Savage girl, though it would be a close-run thing if
he were to escape the city before the French entered it. “All right, lads,” Sharpe called,
“time to bloody scarper. Sergeant! At the double! Down to the bridge!”