"You could do one thing before you go," Sharpe said, ignoring the implied criticism in Lopes"s last words. "Tell those refugees to get out of the village. Tell them to go home. Tell them Saint Joseph is overworked and he won"t protect them when the French come."
Lopes shook his head. "The French aren"t coming," he insisted.
"And when they do," Sharpe continued, just as insistently, "I can"t defend the village. I don"t have enough men."
Lopes looked disgusted. "You"ll just defend the Quinta," he suggested, "because it belongs to an English family."
"I don"t give a d.a.m.n about the Quinta," Sharpe said angrily. "I"ll be up on that hilltop trying to stay alive. For Christ"s sake, there"s less than sixty of us! And the French will send fifteen hundred."
"They won"t come," Lopes said. He reached up to pluck some shriveled white blossom from a tree. "I never did trust Savages" port," he said.
"Trust?"
"An elder tree," Lopes said, showing Sharpe the petals. "The bad port makers put elderberry juice in the wine to make it look richer." He tossed away the flowers and Sharpe had a sudden memory of that day in Oporto, the day the refugees drowned when the French had taken the city, and he remembered how Christopher had been about to write him the order to go back across the Douro and the cannonball had struck the tree to shower pinkish-red petals which the Colonel had thought were cherry blossoms. And Sharpe remembered the look on Christopher"s face at the mention of the name Judas.
"Jesus!" Sharpe said.
"What?" Lopes was taken aback by the force of the imprecation.
"He"s a b.l.o.o.d.y traitor," Sharpe said.
"Who?"
"The b.l.o.o.d.y Colonel," Sharpe said. It was only instinct that had so suddenly persuaded him that Christopher was betraying his country, an instinct grounded in the memory of the Colonel"s look of outrage when Sharpe said the blossoms came from a Judas tree. Ever since then Sharpe had been wavering between a half suspicion of Christopher"s treachery and a vague belief that perhaps the Colonel was engaged in some mysterious diplomatic work, but the recollection of that look on Christopher"s face and the realization that there had been fear as well as outrage in it convinced Sharpe. Christopher was not just a thief, but a traitor. "You"re right," he told an astonished Lopes, "it is time to fight. Harris!" He turned toward the gate.
"Sir?"
"Find Sergeant Harper for me. And Lieutenant Vicente."
Vicente came first and Sharpe could not explain why he was so certain that Christopher was a traitor, but Vicente was not inclined to debate the point. He hated Christopher because he had married Kate, and he was as bored as Sharpe at the undemanding life at the Quinta. "Get food," Sharpe urged him. "Go to the village, ask them to bake bread, buy as much salted and smoked meat as you can. I want every man to have five days" rations by nightfall."
Harper was more cautious. "I thought you had orders, sir."
"I do, Pat, from General Cradock."
"Jesus, sir, you don"t disobey a general"s orders."
"And who fetched those orders?" Sharpe asked. "Christopher did. So he lied to Cradock just as he"s lied to everyone else." He was not certain of that, he could not be certain, but nor could he see the sense in just dallying at the Quinta. He would go south and trust that Captain Hogan would protect him from General Cradock"s wrath. "We"ll march at dusk tonight," he told Harper. "I want you to check everyone"s equipment and ammunition."
Harper smelt the air. "We"re going to have rain, sir, bad rain."
"That"s why G.o.d made our skins waterproof," Sharpe said.
"I was thinking we might do better to wait till after midnight, sir. Give the rain a chance to blow over."
Sharpe shook his head. "I want to get out of here, Pat. I feel bad about this place suddenly. We"ll take everyone south. Toward the river."
"I thought the c.r.a.pauds had stripped out all the boats?"
"I don"t want to go east"-Sharpe jerked his head toward Amarante where rumor said a battle still raged-"and there"s nothing but c.r.a.pauds to the west." The north was all mountain, rock and starvation, but to the south lay the river and he knew British forces were somewhere beyond the Douro and Sharpe had been thinking that the French could not have destroyed every boat along its long, rocky banks. "We"ll find a boat," he promised Harper.
"It"ll be dark tonight, sir. Lucky even to find the way."
"For G.o.d"s sake," Sharpe said, irritated with Harper"s pessimism, "we"ve been patrolling this place for a b.l.o.o.d.y month! We can find our way south."
By evening they had two sacks of bread, some rock-hard smoked goat meat, two cheeses and a bag of beans that Sharpe distributed among the men, then he had an inspiration and went to the Quinta"s kitchen and stole two large tins of tea. He reckoned it was time Kate did something for her country and there were few finer gestures than donating good China tea to riflemen. He gave one tin to Harper and shoved the other into his pack. It had started to rain, the drops pounding on the stable roof and cascading off the tiles into the cobbled yard. Daniel Hagman watched the rain from the stable door. "I feel just fine, sir," he rea.s.sured Sharpe.
"We can make a stretcher, Dan, if you feel poorly."
"Lord, no, sir! I"m right as rain, right as rain."
No one wanted to leave in this downpour, but Sharpe was determined to use every hour of darkness to make his way toward the Douro. There was a chance, he thought, of reaching the river by midday tomorrow and he would let the men rest while he scouted the river bank for a means to cross. "Packs on!" he ordered. "Ready yourselves." He watched Williamson for any sign of reluctance, but the man got a move on with the rest. Vicente had distributed wine corks and the men pushed them into the muzzles of their rifles or muskets. The weapons were not loaded because in this rain the priming would turn to gray slush. There was more grumbling when Sharpe ordered them out of the stables, but they hunched their shoulders and followed him out of the courtyard and up into the wood where the oaks and silver birches thrashed under the a.s.sault of wind and rain. Sharpe was soaked to the skin before they had gone a quarter-mile, but he consoled himself that no one else was likely to be out in this vile weather. The evening light was fading fast and early, stolen by the black, thick-bellied clouds that sc.r.a.ped against the jagged outcrop of the ruined watchtower. Sharpe was following a path that would lead around the western side of the watchtower"s hill and he glanced up at the old masonry as they emerged from the trees and thought ruefully of all that work.
He called a halt to let the rear of the line catch up. Daniel Hagman was evidently holding up well. Harper, two smoked legs of goat hanging from his belt, climbed up to join Sharpe, who was watching the arriving men from a vantage point a few feet higher than the path. "b.l.o.o.d.y rain," Harper said.
"It"ll stop eventually."
"Is that so?" Harper asked innocently.
It was then Sharpe saw the gleam of light in the vineyards. It was not lightning, it was too dull, too small and too close to the ground, but he knew he had not imagined it and he cursed Christopher for stealing his telescope. He gazed at the spot where the light had shown so briefly, but saw nothing.
"What is it?" Vicente had climbed to join him.
"Thought I saw a flash of light," Sharpe said.
"Just rain," Harper said dismissively.
"Perhaps it was a piece of broken gla.s.s," Vicente suggested. "I once found some Roman gla.s.s in a field near Entre-os-Rios. There were two broken vases and some coins of Septimus Severus."
Sharpe was not listening. He was watching the vineyards.
"I gave the coins to the seminary in Porto," Vicente went on, raising his voice to make himself heard over the seething rain, "because the Fathers keep a small museum there."
"The sun doesn"t reflect off gla.s.s when it"s raining," Sharpe said, but something had reflected out there, more like a smear of light, a damp gleam, and he searched the hedgerow between the vines and suddenly saw it again. He swore.
"What is it?" Vicente asked.
"Dragoons," Sharpe said, "dozens of the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. Dismounted and watching us." The gleam had been the dull light reflecting from one of the bra.s.s helmets. There must have been a tear in the helmet"s protective cloth cover and the man, running along the hedge, had served as a beacon, but now that Sharpe had seen the first green uniform among the green vines, he could see dozens more. "The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds were going to ambush us," he said, and he felt a reluctant admiration for an enemy who could use such vile weather, then he worked out that the dragoons must have approached Vila Real de Zedes during the day and somehow he had missed them, but they would not have missed the significance of the work he was doing on the hilltop and they must know that the hog-backed ridge was his refuge. "Sergeant!" he snapped at Harper. "Up the hill now! Now!" And pray they were not too late.
Colonel Christopher might have rewritten the rules, yet the chess pieces could still only move in their accustomed ways, but his knowledge of the moves allowed him to look ahead and, he fancied, he did that with more perspicacity than most men.
There were two possible outcomes to the French invasion of Portugal. Either the French would win or, far less likely, the Portuguese with their British allies would somehow evict Soult"s forces.
If the French won then Christopher would be the owner of Savages" lodge, the trusted ally of the country"s new masters, and rich beyond belief.
If the Portuguese and their British allies won then he would use Argenton"s pathetic conspiracy to explain why he had remained in enemy territory, and use the collapse of the proposed mutiny as an excuse for the failure of his schemes. And then he would need to move a couple of p.a.w.ns to remain the owner of Savages which would be enough to make him a rich man, if not rich beyond belief.
So he could not lose, so long as the p.a.w.ns did what they were supposed to do, and one of those p.a.w.ns was Major Henri Dulong, the second in command of the 31st Leger, one of the crack French light infantry units in Portugal. The 31st knew it was good, but none of its soldiers was the equal of Dulong, who was famous throughout the army. He was tough, daring and ruthless, and on this early May evening of wind and rain and low cloud, Major Dulong"s job was to lead his voltigeurs up the southern path that led to the watchtower on the hill above the Quinta. Take that height, Brigadier Vuillard explained, and the sc.r.a.ppy forces in Vila Real de Zedes had nowhere to go. So while the dragoons made a noose about the village and the Quinta, Dulong would capture the hill.