„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
