Sharpe 3-Book Collection 2: Sharpe’s Havoc, Sharpe’s Eagle, Sharpe’s Gold

Isaiah Tongue, long and thin and dark and educated, who had joined the army because he was a drunk and thereby lost his respectable job, grinned. ‘Because he’s a good Protestant, sir.’

‘Because he’s a bloody what?’

‘It’s from a book by John Bunyan,’ Tongue explained, ‘called Pilgrim’s Progress.’

‘I’ve heard of that,’ Sharpe said.

‘Some folk consider it essential reading,’ Tongue said airily, ‘the story of a soul’s journey from sin to salvation, sir.’

‘Just the thing to keep you burning the candles at night,’ Sharpe said.

‘And the hero, Christian, calls at the House Beautiful, sir’ – Tongue ignored Sharpe’s sarcasm – ‘where he talks with four virgins.’

Hagman laughed. ‘Let’s get inside now, sir.’

‘You’re too old for a virgin, Dan,’ Sharpe said.

‘Discretion,’ Tongue said, ‘Piety, Prudence and Charity.’

‘What about them?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Those were the names of the virgins, sir,’ Tongue said.

‘Bloody hell,’ Sharpe said.

‘Charity’s mine,’ Hagman said. ‘Pull your collar down, sir, that’s the way.’ He snipped at the black hair. ‘He sounds like he was a tedious old man, Mister Savage, if it was him what named the house.’ Hagman stooped to manoeuvre the scissors over Sharpe’s high collar. ‘So why did the Captain leave us here, sir?’ he asked.

‘He wants us to look after Colonel Christopher,’ Sharpe said.

‘To look after Colonel Christopher,’ Hagman repeated, making his disapproval evident by the slowness with which he said the words. Hagman was the oldest man in Sharpe’s troop of riflemen, a poacher from Cheshire who was a deadly shot with his Baker rifle. ‘So Colonel Christopher can’t look after himself now?’

‘Captain Hogan left us here, Dan,’ Sharpe said, ‘so he must think the Colonel needs us.’

‘And the Captain’s a good man, sir,’ Hagman said. ‘You can let the collar go. Almost done.’

But why had Captain Hogan left Sharpe and his riflemen behind? Sharpe wondered about that as Hagman tidied up his work. And had there been any significance in Hogan’s final injunction to keep a close eye on the Colonel? Sharpe had only met the Colonel once. Hogan had been mapping the upper reaches of the River Cavado and the Colonel and his servant had ridden out of the hills and shared a bivouac with the riflemen. Sharpe had not liked Christopher who had been supercilious and even scornful of Hogan’s work. ‘You map the country, Hogan,’ the Colonel had said, ‘but I map their minds. A very complicated thing, the human mind, not simple like hills and rivers and bridges.’ Beyond that statement he had not explained his presence, but just ridden on next morning. He had revealed that he was based in Oporto which, presumably, was how he had met Mrs Savage and her daughter, and Sharpe wondered why Colonel Christopher had not persuaded the widow to leave Oporto much sooner.

‘You’re done, sir,’ Hagman said, wrapping his scissors in a piece of calfskin, ‘and you’ll be feeling the cold wind now, sir, like a newly shorn sheep.’

‘You should get your own hair cut, Dan,’ Sharpe said.

‘Weakens a man, sir, weakens him something dreadful.’ Hagman frowned up the hill as two round shots bounced on the crest of the road, one of them taking off the leg of a Portuguese gunner. Sharpe’s men watched expressionless as the round shot bounded on, spraying blood like a Catherine wheel, to finally bang and stop against a garden wall across the road. Hagman chuckled. ‘Fancy calling a girl Discretion! It ain’t a natural name, sir. Ain’t kind to call a girl Discretion.’

‘It’s in a book, Dan,’ Sharpe said, ‘so it isn’t supposed to be natural.’ He climbed to the porch and shoved hard on the front door, but found it locked. So where the hell was Colonel Christopher? More Portuguese retreated down the slope and these men were so frightened that they did not pause when they saw the British troops, but just kept running. The Portuguese cannon was being attached to its limber and spent musket balls were tearing at the cedars and rattling against the tiles, shutters and stones of the House Beautiful. Sharpe hammered on the locked door, but there was no answer.

‘Sir?’ Sergeant Patrick Harper called a warning to him. ‘Sir?’ Harper jerked his head towards the side of the house and Sharpe backed away from the door to see Lieutenant Colonel Christopher riding from the stable yard. The Colonel, who was armed with a sabre and a brace of pistols, was cleaning his teeth with a wooden pick, something he did frequently, evidently because he was proud of his even white smile. He was accompanied by his Portuguese servant who, mounted on his master’s spare horse, was carrying an enormous valise that was so stuffed with lace, silk and satins that the bag could not be closed.

Colonel Christopher curbed his horse, took the toothpick from his mouth, and stared in astonishment at Sharpe. ‘What on earth are you doing here, Lieutenant?’

‘Ordered to stay with you, sir,’ Sharpe answered. He glanced again at the valise. Had Christopher been looting the House Beautiful?

The Colonel saw where Sharpe was looking and snarled at his servant, ‘Close it, damn you, close it.’ Christopher, even though his servant spoke good English, used his own fluent Portuguese, then looked back to Sharpe. ‘Captain Hogan ordered you to stay with me. Is that what you’re trying to convey?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And how the devil are you supposed to do that, eh? I have a horse, Sharpe, and you do not. You and your men intend to run, perhaps?’

‘Captain Hogan gave me an order, sir,’ Sharpe answered woodenly. He had learned as a sergeant how to deal with difficult senior officers. Say little, say it tonelessly, then say it all again if necessary.

‘An order to do what?’ Christopher enquired patiently.

‘Stay with you, sir. Help you find Miss Savage.’

Colonel Christopher sighed. He was a black-haired man in his forties, but still youthfully handsome with just a distinguished touch of grey at his temples. He wore black boots, plain black riding breeches, a black cocked hat and a red coat with black facings. Those black facings had prompted Sharpe, on his previous meeting with the Colonel, to ask whether Christopher served in the Dirty Half Hundred, the 50th regiment, but the Colonel had treated the question as an impertinence. ‘All you need to know, Lieutenant, is that I serve on General Cradock’s staff. You have heard of the General?’ Cradock was the General in command of the British forces in southern Portugal and if Soult kept marching then Cradock must face him. Sharpe had stayed silent after Christopher’s response, but Hogan had later suggested that the Colonel was probably a ‘political’ soldier, meaning he was no soldier at all, but rather a man who found life more convenient if he was in uniform. ‘I’ve no doubt he was a soldier once,’ Hogan had said, ‘but now? I think Cradock got him from Whitehall.’

‘Whitehall? The Horse Guards?’

‘Dear me, no,’ Hogan had said. The Horse Guards were the headquarters of the army and it was plain Hogan believed Christopher came from somewhere altogether more sinister. ‘The world is a convoluted place, Richard,’ he had explained, ‘and the Foreign Office believes that we soldiers are clumsy fellows, so they like to have their own people on the ground to patch up our mistakes. And, of course, to find things out.’ Which was what Lieutenant Colonel Christopher appeared to be doing: finding things out. ‘He says he’s mapping their minds,’ Hogan had mused, ‘and what I think he means by that is discovering whether Portugal is worth defending. Whether they’ll fight. And when he knows, he’ll tell the Foreign Office before he tells General Cradock.’

‘Of course it’s worth defending,’ Sharpe had protested.

‘Is it? If you look carefully, Richard, you might notice that Portugal is in a state of collapse.’ There was a lamentable truth in Hogan’s grim words. The Portuguese royal family had fled to Brazil, leaving the country leaderless, and after their departure there had been riots in Lisbon, and many of Portugal’s aristocrats were now more concerned with protecting themselves from the mob than defending their country against the French. Scores of the army’s officers had already defected, joining the Portuguese Legion that fought for the enemy, and what officers remained were largely untrained, their men were a rabble and armed with ancient weapons if they possessed weapons at all. In some places, like Oporto itself, all civil rule had collapsed and the streets were governed by the whims of the ordenança who, lacking proper weapons, patrolled the streets with pikes, spears, axes and mattocks. Before the French had come the ordenança had massacred half Oporto’s gentry and forced the other half to flee or barricade their houses though they had left the English residents alone.

So Portugal was in a state of collapse, but Sharpe had also seen how the common people hated the French, and how the soldiers had slowed as they passed the gate of the House Beautiful. Oporto might be falling to the enemy, but there was plenty of fight left in Portugal, though it was hard to believe that as yet more soldiers followed the retreating six-pounder gun down to the river. Lieutenant Colonel Christopher glanced at the fugitives, then looked back at Sharpe. ‘What on earth was Captain Hogan thinking of?’ he asked, evidently expecting no answer. ‘What possible use could you be to me? Your presence can only slow me down. I suppose Hogan was being chivalrous,’ Christopher went on, ‘but the man plainly has no more common sense than a pickled onion. You can go back to him, Sharpe, and tell him that I don’t need assistance in rescuing one damned silly little girl.’ The Colonel had to raise his voice because the sound of cannons and musketry was suddenly loud.

‘He gave me an order, sir,’ Sharpe said stubbornly.

‘And I’m giving you another,’ Christopher said in the indulgent tone he might have used to address a very small child. The pommel of his saddle was broad and flat to make a small writing surface and now he laid a notebook on that makeshift desk and took out a pencil, and just then another of the red-blossomed trees on the crest was struck by a cannonball so that the air was filled with drifting petals. ‘The French are at war with the cherries,’ Christopher said lightly.

‘With Judas,’ Sharpe said.

Christopher gave him a look of astonishment and outrage. ‘What did you say?’

‘It’s a Judas tree,’ Sharpe said.

Christopher still looked outraged, then Sergeant Harper chimed in. ‘It’s not a cherry, sir. It’s a Judas tree. The same kind that Iscariot used to hang himself on, sir, after he betrayed our Lord.’

Christopher still gazed at Sharpe, then seemed to realize that no slur had been intended. ‘So it’s not a cherry tree, eh?’ he said, then licked the point of his pencil. ‘You are hereby ordered’ – he spoke as he wrote – ‘to return south of the river forthwith – note that, Sharpe, forthwith – and report for duty to Captain Hogan of the Royal Engineers. Signed, Lieutenant Colonel James Christopher, on the forenoon of Wednesday, March the 29th in the year of our Lord, 1809.’ He signed the order with a flourish, tore the page from the book, folded it in half and handed it to Sharpe. ‘I always thought thirty pieces of silver was a remarkably cheap price for the most famous betrayal in history. He probably hanged himself out of shame. Now go,’ he said grandly, ‘and “stand not upon the order of your going”.’ He saw Sharpe’s puzzlement, ‘Macbeth, Lieutenant,’ he explained as he spurred his horse towards the gate, ‘a play by Shakespeare. And I really would urge haste upon you, Lieutenant,’ Christopher called back, ‘for the enemy will be here any moment.’

In that, at least, he was right. A great spume of dust and smoke was boiling out from the central redoubts of the city’s northern defences. That was where the Portuguese had been putting up the strongest resistance, but the French artillery had managed to throw down the parapets and now their infantry assaulted the bastions, and the majority of the city’s defenders were fleeing. Sharpe watched Christopher and his servant gallop through the fugitives and turn into a street that led eastwards. Christopher was not retreating south, but going to the rescue of the missing Savage girl, though it would be a close-run thing if he were to escape the city before the French entered it. ‘All right, lads,’ Sharpe called, ‘time to bloody scarper. Sergeant! At the double! Down to the bridge!’

‘About bloody time,’ Williamson grumbled. Sharpe pretended not to have heard. He tended to ignore a lot of Williamson’s comments, thinking the man might improve but knowing that the longer he did nothing the more violent would be the solution. He just hoped Williamson knew the same thing.

‘Two files!’ Harper shouted. ‘Stay together!’

A cannonball rumbled above them as they ran out of the front garden and turned down the steep road that led to the Douro. The road was crowded with refugees, both civilian and military, all fleeing for the safety of the river’s southern bank, though Sharpe guessed the French would also be crossing the river within a day or two so the safety was probably illusory. The Portuguese army was falling back towards Coimbra or even all the way to Lisbon where Cradock had sixteen thousand British troops that some politicians in London wanted brought home. What use, they asked, was such a small British force against the mighty armies of France? Marshal Soult was conquering Portugal and two more French armies were just across the eastern frontier in Spain. Fight or flee? No one knew what the British would do, but the rumour that Sir Arthur Wellesley was being sent back to take over from Cradock suggested to Sharpe that the British meant to fight and Sharpe prayed the rumour was true. He had fought across India under Sir Arthur’s command, had been with him in Copenhagen and then at Rolica and Vimeiro and Sharpe reckoned there was no finer General in Europe.

Sharpe was halfway down the hill now. His pack, haversack, rifle, cartridge box and sword scabbard bounced and banged as he ran. Few officers carried a longarm, but Sharpe had once served in the ranks and he felt uncomfortable without the rifle on his shoulder. Harper lost his balance, flailing wildly because the new nails on his boot soles kept slipping on patches of stone. The river was visible between the buildings. The Douro, sliding towards the nearby sea, was as wide as the Thames at London, but, unlike London, the river here ran between great hills. The city of Oporto was on the steep northern hill while Vila Nova de Gaia was on the southern, and it was in Vila Nova that most of the British had their houses. Only the very oldest families, like the Savages, lived on the northern bank and all the port was made on the southern side in the lodges owned by Croft, Savages, Taylor Fladgate, Burmester, Smith Woodhouse and Gould, nearly all of which were British owned and their exports contributed hugely to Portugal’s exchequer, but now the French were coming and, on the heights of Vila Nova, overlooking the river, the Portuguese army had lined a dozen cannon on a convent’s terrace. The gunners saw the French appear on the opposite hill and the cannon slammed back, their trails gouging up the terrace’s flagstones. The round shots banged overhead, their sound as loud and hollow as thunder. Powder smoke drifted slowly inland, obscuring the white-painted convent as the cannonballs smashed into the higher houses. Harper lost his footing again, this time falling. ‘Bloody boots,’ he said, picking up his rifle. The other riflemen had been slowed by the press of fugitives.