Sharpe's Havoc (31 page)

“Three miles upriver, sir.”

“You ain’t done a bad morning’s work, Sharpe,” Waters said with a friendly grin. “We only
have to pray for one thing.”

“That the French don’t discover us here?”

“Exactly. So best remove my red coat from the window, eh?” Waters laughed and crossed the
room. “Pray they go on sleeping with their sweet froggy dreams because once they do wake up
then the day’s going to be damned hot, don’t you think? And those three barges can take how many
men apiece? Thirty? And God alone knows how long each crossing will take. We could be shoving
our damned heads into the tiger’s mouth, Sharpe.”

Sharpe forbore to comment that he had spent the last few weeks with his head inside the
tiger’s mouth. Instead he stared across the valley, trying to imagine how the French would
approach when they did attack. He guessed they would come straight from the city, across the
valley and up the slope that was virtually bare of any cover. The northern flank of the
seminary looked toward the road in the valley and that slope was just as bare, all except for
one solitary tree with pale leaves that grew right in the middle of the climb. Anyone
attacking the seminary would presumably try to get to the garden gate or the big front door
and that would mean crossing a wide paved terrace where carriages bringing visitors to the
seminary could turn around and where attacking infantry would be cut down by musket and
rifle fire from the seminary’s windows and its balus-traded roof. “A deathtrap!” Colonel
Waters was sharing the view and evidently thinking the same thoughts.

“I wouldn’t want to be attacking up that slope,” Sharpe agreed.

“And I’ve no doubt we’ll put some cannon on the other bank to make it all a bit less
healthy,” Waters said cheerfully.

Sharpe hoped that was true. He kept wondering why there were no British guns on the wide
terrace of the convent that overlooked the river, the terrace where the Portuguese had
placed their batteries in March. It seemed an obvious position, but Sir Arthur Wellesley
appeared to have chosen to put his artillery down among the port lodges which were out of
sight of the seminary.

“What’s the time?” Waters asked, then answered his own question by taking out a turnip
watch. “Nearly eleven!”

“Are you with the staff, sir?” Sharpe asked because Waters’s red coat, though decorated
with some tarnished gold braid, had no regimental facings.

“I’m one of Sir Arthur’s exploring officers,” Waters said cheerfully. “We ride ahead to
scout the land like those fellows in the Bible that Joshua sent ahead to spy out Jericho,
remember the tale? And a frow called Rahab gave them shelter? That’s the luck of the Jews,
ain’t it? The chosen people get greeted by a prostitute and I get welcomed by a rifleman,
but I suppose it’s better than a sloppy wet kiss from a bloody Frog dragoon, eh?”

Sharpe smiled. “Do you know Captain Hogan, sir?”

“The mapping fellow? Of course I know Hogan. A capital man, capital!” Waters suddenly
stopped and looked at Sharpe. “My God, of course! You’re his lost rifleman, ain’t you? Ah, I’ve
placed you now. He said you’d survive. Well done, Sharpe. Ah, here come the first of the
gallant Buffs.”

Vicente and his men had escorted thirty redcoats up the hill, but instead of using the
unlocked arched door they had trudged round to the front and now gaped up at Waters and Sharpe
who in turn looked down from the window. The newcomers wore the buff facings of the 3rd
Regiment of Foot, a Kentish regiment, and they were sweating after their climb under the
hot sun. A thin lieutenant led them and he assured Colonel Waters that two more bargeloads of
men were already disembarking, then he looked curiously at Sharpe. “What on earth are the
Rifles doing here?”

“First on the field,” Sharpe quoted the regiment’s favorite boast, “and last off it.”

“First? You must have flown across the bloody river.” The Lieutenant wiped his forehead.
“Any water here?”

“Barrel inside the main door,” Sharpe said, “courtesy of the 95th.”

More men arrived. The barges were toiling to and fro across the river, propelled by the
massive sweeps which were manned by local people who were eager to help, and every twenty
minutes another eighty or ninety men would toil up the hill. One group arrived with a
general, Sir Edward Paget, who took over command of the growing garrison from Waters.
Paget was a young man, still in his thirties, energetic and eager, who owed his high rank to
his aristocratic family’s wealth, but he had the reputation of being a general who was
popular with his soldiers. He climbed to the seminary roof where Sharpe’s men were now
positioned and, seeing Sharpe’s small telescope, asked to borrow it. “Lost me own,” he
explained, “it’s somewhere in the baggage in Lisbon.”

“You came with Sir Arthur, sir?” Sharpe asked.

“Three weeks ago,” Paget said, staring at the city.

“Sir Edward,” Waters told Sharpe, “is second in command to Sir Arthur.”

“Which doesn’t mean much,” Sir Edward said, “because he never tells me anything. What’s
wrong with this bloody telescope?”

“You have to hold the outer lens in place, sir,” Sharpe said.

“Take mine,” Waters said, offering the better instrument.

Sir Edward scanned the city, then frowned. “So what are the bloody French doing?” he asked
in a puzzled tone.

“Sleeping,” Waters answered.

“Won’t like it when they wake up, will they?” Paget remarked. “Asleep in the keeper’s lodge
with poachers all over the coverts!” He gave the telescope back to Waters and nodded at
Sharpe. “Damn pleased to have some riflemen here, Lieutenant. I dare say you’ll get some
target practice before the day’s out.”

Another group of men came up the hill. Every window of the seminary’s brief western
facade now had a group of redcoats and a quarter of the windows on the long northern wall
were also manned. The garden wall had been loopholed and garrisoned by Vicente’s Portuguese
and by the Buffs’ grenadier company. The French, thinking themselves secure in Oporto, were
watching the river between the city and the sea while behind their backs, on the high
eastern hill, the redcoats were gathering.

Which meant the gods of war were tightening the screws.

And something had to break.

Officers were posted in the entrance hall of the Palacio das Carrancas to make sure all
visitors took their boots off. “His grace,” they explained, referring to Marshal Nicolas
Soult, Duke of Dalmatia, whose nickname was now King Nicolas, “is sleeping.”

The hallway was cavernous, arched, high, beautiful, and hard-heeled boots striding over
its tiled floor echoed up the staircase to where King Nicolas slept. Early that morning a
hussar had come in hurriedly, his spurs had caught in the rug at the foot of the stairs and he
had sprawled with a terrible clatter of saber and scabbard that had woken the Marshal, who
had then posted the officers to make certain the rest of his sleep was not disturbed. The
two officers were powerless to stop the British artillery firing from across the river,
but perhaps the Marshal was not so sensitive to gunfire as he was to loud heels.

The Marshal had invited a dozen guests to breakfast and all had arrived before nine in
the morning and were forced to wait in one of the great reception rooms on the palace’s
western side where tall glass doors opened onto a terrace decorated with flowers planted
in carved stone urns and with laurel bushes that an elderly gardener was trimming with
long shears. The guests, all but one of them men, and all but two of them French, continually
strolled onto the terrace which offered, from its southern balustrade, a view across the
river and thus a sight of the guns that fired over the Douro. In truth there was not much to see
because the British cannon were emplaced in Vila Nova de Gaia’s streets and so, even with
the help of telescopes, the guests merely saw gouts of dirty smoke and then heard the crash of
the round shots striking the buildings that faced Oporto’s quay. The only other sight worth
seeing was the remains of the pontoon bridge which the French had repaired at the beginning
of April, but had now blown up because of Sir Arthur Wellesley’s approach. Three scorched
pontoons still swung to their anchors, the rest, along with the roadway, had been blasted to
smithereens and carried by the tide to the nearby ocean.

Kate was the only woman invited to the Marshal’s breakfast and her husband had been
adamant that she wear her hussar uniform and his insistence was rewarded by the admiring
glances that the other guests gave to his wife’s long legs. Christopher himself was in
civilian clothes, while the other ten men, all officers, were in their uniforms and,
because a woman was present, they did their best to appear insouciant about the British
cannonade. “What they are doing,” a dragoon major resplendent in aiguillettes and gold
braid remarked, “is shooting at our sentries with six-pound shots. They’re swatting at flies
with a bludgeon.” He lit a cigar, breathed deep and gave Kate a long appreciative look. “With
a butt like that,” he said to his friend, “she should be French.”

“She should be on her back.”

“That too, of course.”

Kate kept herself turned away from the French officers. She was ashamed of the hussar
uniform which she thought immodest and, worse, appeared to suggest her sympathies were
with the French. “You might make an effort,” Christopher told her.

“I am making an effort,” she answered bitterly, “an effort not to cheer every British
shot.”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“I am?” Kate bridled.

“This is merely a demonstration,” Christopher explained, waving toward the powder
smoke that drifted like patchy fog through the red-tiled roofs of Vila Nova. “Wellesley has
marched his men up here and he can’t go any further. He’s stuck. There are no boats and the navy
isn’t foolish enough to try and sail past the river forts. So Wellesley will hammer a few
cannonballs into the city, then turn around and march back to Coimbra or Lisbon. In chess
terms, my dear, this is a stalemate. Soult can’t march south because his reinforcements
haven’t arrived and Wellesley can’t come further north because he doesn’t have the boats. And
if the military can’t force a decision here then the diplomats will have to settle matters.
Which is why I am here, as I keep trying to tell you.”

“You’re here,” Kate said, “because your sympathies are with the French.”

“That is an exceptionally offensive remark,” Christopher said haughtily. “I am here
because sane men must do whatever they can to prevent this war continuing, and to do that
we must talk with the enemy and I cannot talk with them if I am on the wrong side of the
river.”

Kate did not answer. She no longer believed her husband’s complicated explanations of
why he was friendly with the French or his high talk of the new ideas controlling Europe’s
destiny. She clung instead to the simpler idea of being a patriot and all she wanted now
was to cross the river and join the men on the far side, but there were no boats, no bridge left
and no way to escape. She began to weep and Christopher, disgusted at her display of
misery, turned away. He worked at his teeth with an ivory pick and marveled that a woman so
beautiful could be so prey to vapors.

Kate cuffed at her tears, then walked to where the gardener was slowly clipping the
laurels. “How do I get across the river?” she asked in Portuguese.

The man did not look at her, just clipped away. “You can’t.”

“I must!”

“They shoot you if you try.” He looked at her, taking in the tight-fitting hussar uniform,
then turned away. “They shoot you anyway.”

A clock in the palace’s hallway struck eleven as Marshal Soult descended the great
staircase. He wore a silk robe over his breeches and shirt. “Is breakfast ready?” he
demanded.

“In the blue reception room, sir,” an aide answered, “and your guests are here.”

“Good, good!” He waited as the doors were thrown open for him, then greeted the visitors
with a broad smile. “Take your seats, do. Ah, I see we are being informal.” This last remark
was because the breakfast was laid in silver chafing dishes on a long sideboard, and the
Marshal went along the row lifting lids. “Ham! Splendid. Braised kidneys, excellent! Beef!
Some tongue, good, good. And liver. That does look tasty. Good morning, Colonel!” This
greeting was to Christopher who replied by giving the Marshal a bow. “How good of you to
come,” Soult went on, “and did you bring your pretty wife? Ah, I see her. Good, good. You shall
sit there, Colonel.” He pointed to a chair next to the one he would occupy. Soult liked the
Englishman who had betrayed the plotters who would have mutinied if Soult had declared
himself king. The Marshal still harbored that ambition, but he acknowledged that he would
need to beat back the British and Portuguese army that had dared to advance from Coimbra
before he assumed the crown and scepter.

Soult had been surprised by Sir Arthur Wellesley’s advance, but not alarmed. The river was
guarded and the Marshal had been assured there were no boats on the opposite bank and so, as
far as King Nicolas was concerned, the British could sit on the Douro’s southern bank and
twiddle their thumbs forever.

The tall windows rattled in sympathy with the pounding guns and the sound made the
Marshal turn from the chafing dishes. “Our gunners are a bit lively this morning, are they
not?”

“They’re mostly British guns, sir,” an aide answered.

“Doing what?”

“Firing at our sentries on the quay,” the aide said. “They’re swatting at flies with
six-pound balls.”

Soult laughed. “So much for the vaunted Wellesley, eh?” He smiled at Kate and gestured that
she should take the place of honor at his right. “So good to have a pretty woman for company
at breakfast.”

“Better to have one before breakfast,” an infantry colonel remarked and Kate, who spoke
more French than any of the men knew, blushed.