Sharpe's Havoc (36 page)

“Then I leave his fate to you, my lord,” Wellesley said with obvious distaste, “and as it
doubtless means filthy work then I’d better lend you the services of Captain Hogan and
Lieutenant Sharpe. As for me? I’m going to bed.” He nodded curtly and left the room,
followed by his aides clutching sheaves of paper.

Lord Pumphrey took a decanter of vinho verde from the table and crossed to his armchair
where he sat with an exaggerated sigh. “Sir Arthur makes me go weak at the knees,” he said
and pretended to be unaware of the shocked reaction on both Sharpe and Hogan’s faces. “Did
you really save his life in India, Richard?”

Sharpe said nothing and Hogan answered for him. “That’s why he treats Sharpe so badly,” the
Irishman said. “Nosey can’t stand being beholden, and especially can’t stand being
beholden to a misbegotten rogue like Sharpe.”

Pumphrey shivered. “Do you know what we in the Foreign Office dislike doing most of all?
Going to foreign places. They are so uncomfortable. But here I am and I suppose we must
attend to our duties.”

Sharpe had crossed to one of the tall windows where he was staring out into the wet
darkness. “What are my duties?” he asked.

Lord Pumphrey poured himself a liberal glass of wine. “Not to put too fine a point on it,
Richard,” he said, “your duty is to find Mister Christopher and then … “ He did not finish
the sentence, but instead drew a finger across his throat, a gesture Sharpe saw mirrored in
the dark window.

“Who is Christopher, anyway?” Sharpe wanted to know.

“He was a thruster, Richard,” Pumphrey said, his voice acid with disapproval, “a rather
clever thruster in the Foreign Office.” A thruster was a man who would bully and whip his way
to the head of the field while riding to hounds and in doing so upset dozens of other
hunters. “Yet he was thought to have a very fine future,” Pumphrey continued, “if he could
just curb his compulsion to complicate affairs. He likes intrigue, does Christopher. The
Foreign Office, of necessity, deals in secret matters and he rather indulges in such
things. Still, despite that, he was reckoned to have the makings of an excellent diplomat,
and last year he was sent out here to determine the temper of the Portuguese. There were
rumors, happily ill-founded, that a large number of folk, especially in the north, were
more than a little sympathetic to the French, and Christopher was merely supposed to be
determining the extent of that sympathy.”

“Couldn’t the embassy do that?” Hogan demanded.

“Not without being noticed,” Pumphrey said, “and not without occasioning some offense
to a nation which is, after all, our most ancient ally. And I rather suspect that if you
despatch someone from the embassy to ask questions then you will merely fetch the answers
people think you want to hear. No, Christopher was supposed to be an English gentleman
traveling in north Portugal, but, as you observe, the opportunity went to his head.
Cradock was then halfwitted enough to give him brevet rank and so Christopher began hatching
his plots.” Lord Pumphrey gazed up at the ceiling which was painted with reveling deities and
dancing nymphs. “My own suspicion is that Mister Christopher has been laying bets on every
horse in the race. We know he was encouraging a mutiny, but I strongly suspect he betrayed
the mutineers. The encouragement was to reassure us that he worked for our interests and
the betrayal endeared him to the French. He is determined, is he not, to be on the winning
side? But the main intrigue, of course, was to enrich himself at the expense of the Savage
ladies.” Pumphrey paused, then offered a seraphic smile. “I’ve always rather admired
bigamists. One wife would be altogether too much for me, but for a man to take two!”

“Did I hear you say he wants to come back?” Sharpe asked.

“I surmise as much. James Christopher is not a man to burn his bridges unless he has no
alternative. Oh yes, I’m sure he’ll be designing some way to return to London if he finds
a lack of opportunity with the French.”

“Now I’m supposed to shoot the shit-faced bastard,” Sharpe said.

“Not precisely how we in the Foreign Office would express the matter,” Lord Pumphrey
said severely, “but you are, I see, seized of the essence. Go and shoot him, Richard, and God
bless your little rifle.”

“And what are you doing here?” Sharpe thought to ask.

“Other than being exquisitely uncomfortable?” Pumphrey asked. “I was sent to supervise
Christopher. He approached General Cradock with news of a proposed mutiny. Cradock, quite
properly, reported the affair to London and London became excited at the thought of
suborning Bonaparte’s army in Portugal and Spain, but felt that someone of wisdom and good
judgment was needed to propel the scheme and so, quite naturally, they asked me to
come.”

“And we can forget the scheme now,” Hogan observed.

“Indeed we can,” Pumphrey replied tartly. “Christopher brought a Captain Argenton to
talk with General Cradock,” he explained to Sharpe, “and when Cradock was replaced,
Argenton made his own way across the lines to confer with Sir Arthur. He wanted promises
that our forces wouldn’t intervene in the event of a French mutiny, but Sir Arthur wouldn’t
hear of his plots and told him to tuck his tail between his legs and go back into the outer
darkness whence he came. So, no plots, no mysterious messengers with cloaks and daggers,
just plain old-fashioned soldiering. It seems, alas, that I am surplus to requirements and
Mister Christopher, if your lady friend’s note is to be believed, has gone with the French,
which must mean, I think, that he believes they will still win this war.”

Hogan had opened the window to smell the rain, but now turned to Sharpe. “We must go,
Richard. We have things to plan.”

“Yes, sir.” Sharpe picked up his battered shako and tried to bend the visor back into
shape, then thought of another question. “My lord?”

“Richard?” Lord Pumphrey responded gravely.

“You remember Astrid?” Sharpe asked awkwardly.

“Of course I remember the fair Astrid,” Pumphrey answered smoothly, “Ole Skovgaard’s
comely daughter.”

“I was wondering if you had news of her, my lord,” Sharpe said. He was blushing.

Lord Pumphrey did have news of her, but none he cared to tell Sharpe, for the truth was that
both Astrid and her father were in their graves, their throats cut on Pumphrey’s orders. “I did
hear,” his lordship said gently, “that there was a contagion in Copenhagen. Malaria,
perhaps? Or was it cholera? Alas, Richard.” He spread his hands.

“She’s dead?”

“I do fear so.”

“Oh,” Sharpe said inadequately. He stood stricken, blinking. He had thought once that he
could leave the army and live with Astrid and so make a new life in the clean decencies of
Denmark. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“As am I,” Lord Pumphrey said easily, “so very sorry. But tell me, Richard, about Miss
Savage. Might one assume she is beautiful?”

“Yes,” Sharpe said, “she is.”

“I thought so,” Lord Pumphrey said resignedly.

“And she’ll be dead,” Hogan snarled at Sharpe, “if you and me don’t hurry.”

“Yes, sir,” Sharpe said, and hurried.

Hogan and Sharpe walked through the night rain, going uphill to a schoolhouse that Sharpe
had commandeered as quarters for his men. “You do know,” Hogan said with considerable
irritation, “that Lord Pumphrey is a molly?”

“Of course I know he’s a molly.”

“He can be hanged for that,” Hogan observed with indecent satisfaction.

“I still like him,” Sharpe said.

“He’s a serpent. All diplomats are. Worse than lawyers.”

“He ain’t stuck up,” Sharpe said.

“There is nothing,” Hogan said, “nothing in all the world that Lord Pumphrey wants more than
to be stuck up with you, Richard.” He laughed, his spirits restored. “And how the hell are we
to find that poor wee girl and her rotten husband, eh?”

“We?” Sharpe asked. “You’re coming too?”

“This is far too important to be left to some lowly English lieutenant,” Hogan said.
“This is an errand that needs the sagacity of the Irish.”

Once in the schoolhouse, Sharpe and Hogan settled in the kitchen where the French
occupiers of the city had left an undamaged table and, because Hogan had left his good map
at the General’s headquarters, he used a piece of charcoal to draw a cruder version on the
table’s scrubbed top. From the main schoolroom, where Sharpe’s men had spread their blankets,
came the sound of women’s laughter. His men, Sharpe reflected, had been in the city less than
a day yet they had already found a dozen girls. “Best way to learn the language, sir,” Harper
had assured him, “and we’re all very short on education, sir, as you doubtless know.”

“Right!” Hogan kicked the kitchen door shut. “Look at the map, Richard.” He showed how the
British had come up the coast of Portugal and dislodged the French from Oporto and how, at
the same time, the Portuguese army had attacked in the east. “They’ve retaken Amarante,”
Hogan said, “which is good because it means Soult can’t cross that bridge. He’s stuck, Richard,
stuck, so he’s got no choice. He’ll have to strike north through the hills to find a wee road up
here”-the charcoal scratched as he traced a wiggly line on the table-”and it’s a bastard of a
road, and if the Portuguese can keep going in this God-awful weather then they’re going to
cut the road here.” The charcoal made a cross. “It’s a bridge called Ponte Nova. Do you
remember it?”

Sharpe shook his head. He had seen so many bridges and mountain roads with Hogan that he
could no longer remember which was which.

“The Ponte Nova,” Hogan said, “means the new bridge and naturally it’s as old as the hills
and one tub of powder will send it crashing down into the gorge and then, Richard, Monsieur
Soult is properly buggered. But he’s only buggered if the Portuguese can get there.” He
looked gloomy, for the weather was not propitious for a swift march into the mountains. “And
if they can’t stop Soult at the Ponte Nova then there’s a half-chance they’ll catch him at the
Saltador. You remember that, of course?”

“I do remember that, sir,” Sharpe said.

The Saltador was a bridge high in the mountains, a stone span that leaped across a deep and
narrow gorge, and the spectacular arch had been nicknamed the Leaper, the Saltador. Sharpe
remembered Hogan mapping it, remembered a small village of low stone houses, but chiefly
remembered the river tumbling in a seething torrent beneath the soaring bridge.

“If they get to the Saltador and cross it,“ Hogan said, “then we can kiss them goodbye and
wish them luck. They’ll have escaped.” He flinched as a crash of thunder reminded him of the
weather. “Ah, well,” he sighed, “we can only do our best.”

“And just what are we doing?” Sharpe wanted to know.

“Now that, Richard, is a very good question,” Hogan said. He helped himself to a pinch of
snuff, paused, then sneezed violently. “God help me, but the doctors say it clears the
bronchial tubes, whatever the hell they are. Now, as I see it, one of two things can happen.”
He tapped the charcoal streak marking the Ponte Nova. “If the French are stopped at that
bridge then most will surrender, they’ll have no choice. Some will take to the hills, of
course, but they’ll find armed peasants all over the place looking for throats and other parts
to cut. So we’ll either find Mister Christopher with the army when it surrenders or more
likely he’ll run away and claim to be an escaped English prisoner. In which case we go into
the mountains, find him and put him up against a wall.”

“Truly?”

“That worries you?”

“I’d rather hang him.”

“Ah, well, we can discuss the method when the time comes. Now the second thing that might
happen, Richard, is that the French are not stopped at the Ponte Nova, in which case we need to
reach the Saltador.”

“Why?”

“Think what it was like, Richard,” Hogan said. “A deep ravine, steep slopes everywhere, the
kind of place where a few riflemen could be very vicious. And if the French are crossing the
bridge then we’ll see him and your Baker rifles will have to do the necessary.”

“We can get close enough?” Sharpe asked, trying to remember the terrain about the leaping
bridge.

“There are cliffs, high bluffs. I’m sure you can get within two hundred paces.”

“That’ll do,” Sharpe said grimly.

“So one way or another we have to finish him,” Hogan said, leaning back. “He’s a traitor,
Richard. He’s probably not as dangerous as he thinks he is, but if he gets to Paris then no
doubt the monsewers will suck his brain dry and so learn a few things we’d rather they didn’t
know. And if he got back to London he’s slippery enough to convince those fools that he was
always working for their interests. So all things considered, Richard, I’d say he was
better off dead.”

“And Kate?”

“We’re not going to shoot her,” Hogan said reprovingly.

“Back in March, sir,” Sharpe said, “you ordered me to rescue her. Does that order still
stand?”

Hogan stared at the ceiling which was smoke-blackened and pierced with lethal-looking
hooks. “In the short time I’ve known you, Richard,” he said, “I’ve noticed you possess a
lamentable tendency to put on shining armor and look for ladies to rescue. King Arthur, God
rest his soul, would have loved you. He’d have had you fighting every evil knight in the
forest. Is rescuing Kate Savage important? Not really. The main thing is to punish
Mister Christopher and I fear that Miss Kate will have to take her chances.”

Sharpe looked down at the charcoal map. “How do we get to the Ponte Nova?”

“We walk, Richard, we walk. We cross the mountains and those tracks aren’t fit for horses.
You’d spend half the time leading them, worrying about their feed, looking after their
hooves and wishing you didn’t have them. Mules now, I’d saddle some mules and take them, but
where will we find mules tonight? It’s either mules or shanks’s pony, but either way we can
only take a few men, your best and your fittest, and we have to leave before dawn.”