Kate, despite her misery, was struck by the „we.” Did he mean the two of them? Or did he mean the French? „I want to go home,” she cried.
„Stop being tedious,” Christopher snapped, „and keep walking!” He pulled her on. Her new leather-soled boots slipped on the path. „The French are going to win this war,” Christopher insisted. He was no longer certain of that, but when he weighed the balances of power in Europe he managed to convince himself that it was true.
„I want to go back to Oporto!” Kate sobbed.
„We can’t!”
„Why not?” She tried to pull away from him and though she could not loosen his grip she did manage to bring him to a halt. „Why not?” she asked.
„We just can’t,” he said, „now come on!” He tugged her into motion again, unwilling to tell her that he could not go back to Oporto because that damned man Sharpe was alive. Good Christ in his heaven, but the bastard was only an over-age lieutenant and one, he had now learned, who was up from the ranks, but Sharpe knew too much that was damning to Christopher and so the Colonel would need to find a safe haven from where, by the discreet methods that he knew so well, he could send a letter to London. Then, in quiet, he could judge from the reply whether London believed his story that he had been forced to demonstrate an allegiance to the French in order to engineer a mutiny that would have freed Portugal, and that story sounded convincing to him, except that Portugal was being freed anyway. But all was not lost. It would be his word against Sharpe’s, and Christopher, whatever else he might be, was a gentleman and Sharpe was most decidedly not. There would be the delicate problem, of course, of what to do with Kate if he was called back to London, but he could probably deny that the marriage had ever taken place. He would put reports of it down to Kate’s vapors. Women were given to vapors, it was notorious. What had Shakespeare said? „Frailty, thy name is woman.” So he would truthfully claim that the gabbled service in Vila Real de Zedes’s small church was not a proper marriage and say that he had undergone it solely to save Kate’s blushes. It was a gamble, he knew, but he had played cards long enough to know that sometimes the most outrageous gambles paid the biggest winnings.
And if the gamble failed, and if he could not salvage his London career then it probably would not matter, for he clung to the belief that the French would surely win in the end and he would be back in Oporto where, for lack of any other knowledge, the lawyers must account him as Kate’s husband and he would be wealthy. Kate would come to terms with it. She would recover when she was restored, as she would be, to comfort and home. Thus far, it was true, she had been unhappy, her joy at the marriage turning to horror in the bedroom, but young mares often rebelled against the bridle yet after a whipping or two became docile and obedient. And Christopher wished that outcome for Kate because her beauty still thrilled him. He dragged her on to where Williamson, now Christopher’s servant, held his horse. „Get on its back,” he ordered Kate.
„I want to go home!” she said.
„Get up!” He almost hit her with the riding crop that was tucked under the saddle, but then she meekly let him help her onto the horse. „Hold on to the reins, Williamson,” Christopher ordered. He did not want Kate turning the horse and kicking it away westward. „Hold them tight, man.”
„Yes, sir,” Williamson said. He was still in his rifleman’s uniform, though he had exchanged his shako for a wide-brimmed leather hat. He had picked up a French musket, a pistol and a saber in the retreat from Oporto and the weapons made him look formidable, an appearance that was a comfort to Christopher. The Colonel had needed a servant after his own had fled, but he wanted a bodyguard even more and Williamson played the role superbly. He told Christopher tales of tavern brawls, of wild fights with knives and clubs, of bare-fisted boxing bouts, and Christopher lapped it up almost as eagerly as he listened to Williamson’s bitter complaints about Sharpe.
In return Christopher had promised Williamson a golden future. „Learn French,” he had advised the deserter, „and you can join their army. Show that you’re good and they’ll give you a commission. They ain’t particular in the French army.”
„And if I wants to stay with you, sir?” Williamson had asked.
„I was always a man to reward loyalty, Williamson,” Christopher had said, and so the two suited each other even if, for now, their fortunes were at a low ebb as, with thousands of other fugitives, they climbed into the rain, were buffeted by the wind and saw nothing ahead but the hunger, bleak slopes and wet rocks of the Serra de Santa Catalina.
Behind them, on the road from Oporto to Amarante, a sad trail of abandoned carriages and wagons stood in the downpour. The wounded French watched anxiously, praying that the pursuing British would appear before the peasants, but the peasants were closer than the redcoats, much closer, and soon their dark shapes were seen flitting in the rain and in their hands were bright knives.
And in the rain the wounded men’s muskets would not fire.
And so the screaming began.
Sharpe would have liked to take Hagman on his pursuit of Christopher, but the old poacher was not fully recovered from his chest wound, and so Sharpe was forced to leave him behind. He took twelve men, his fittest and cleverest, and all complained vehemently when they were rousted out into Oporto’s rain before dawn because their bellies were sour with wine, their heads sore and their tempers short. „But not as short as mine,” Sharpe warned them, „so don’t make such a damned fuss.”
Hogan came with them, as did Lieutenant Vicente and three of his men. Vicente had learned that three mail carriages were going to Braga at first light and told Hogan that the vehicles were notoriously fast and would be traveling on a good road. The drivers, carrying sacks of mail that had been waiting for the French to leave before they could be delivered to Braga, happily made room for the soldiers who collapsed on the mail sacks and fell asleep.
They passed through the remnants of the city’s northern defenses in the wet halflight of dawn. The road was good, but the mail coaches were slowed because partisans had felled trees across the highway and each barricade took a half-hour or more to clear. „If the French had known Amarante had fallen,” Hogan told Sharpe, „they’d have retreated on this road and we’d never have caught them! Mind you, we don’t know that their Braga garrison has left with the rest.”
It had, and the mail arrived along with a troop of British cavalry who were welcomed by cheering inhabitants whose joy could not be dampened by the rain. Hogan, in his engineer’s blue coat, was mistaken for a French prisoner and some horse dung was thrown at him before Vicente managed to persuade the crowd that Hogan was English.
„Irish,” Hogan protested, „please.”
„Same thing,” Vicente said absentmindedly.
„Good God in his heaven,” Harper said, disgusted, then laughed because the crowd insisted on carrying Hogan on their shoulders.
The main road from Braga went north across the frontier to Ponte-vedra, but to the east a dozen tracks climbed into the hills and one of them, Vicente promised, would take them all the way to Ponte Nova, but it was the same road that the French would be trying to reach and so he warned Sharpe that they might have to take to the trackless hills. „If we are lucky,” Vicente said, „we shall be at the bridge in two days.”
„And how long to the Saltador?” Hogan asked.
„Another half-day.”
„And how long will it take the French?”
„Three days,” Vicente said, „it must take them three days.” He made the sign of the cross. „I pray it takes them three days.”
They spent the night in Braga. A cobbler repaired their boots, insisting he would take no money, and he used his best leather to make new soles that were studded with nails to give some grip in the wet high ground. He must have worked all night for in the morning he shyly presented Sharpe with leather covers for the rifles and muskets. The weapons had been protected from the rain by corks shoved into their muzzles and by ragged clouts wrapped about the locks, but the leather sheaths were far better. The cobbler had greased the seams with sheep fat to make the covers waterproof and Sharpe, like his men, was absurdly pleased with the gift. They were given so much food that they ended up giving most of it to a priest who promised to distribute it among the poor, and then, in the rain-lashed dawn, they marched. Hogan rode because the mayor of Braga had presented him with a mule, a sure-footed beast with a vile temper and a wall eye, which Hogan saddled with a blanket and then rode
