Sharpe's Havoc (12 page)

“And your church is right,” Christopher said emolliently. He looked at Kate, standing
alone in the white-painted chancel, and he thought she looked like an angel with the yellow
flowers in her hair. “Tell me, Father,” he went on, “do you look after the poor in your
parish?”

“It is a Christian duty,” Father Josefa said.

Christopher took some golden English guineas from his pocket. They were not his, but from
the funds supplied by the Foreign Office to smooth his way, and now he folded the priest’s
hand around the coins. “Let me give you that as a contribution to your charitable work,” he
said, “and let me beg you to give us a blessing, that is all. A blessing in Latin, Father,
that will enjoin God’s protection on us in these troubled times. And later, when the
fighting is over, I shall do my best to persuade Kate to take instruction from you. As I will
too, of course.”

Father Josefa, son of a laborer, looked at the coins and thought he had never seen so
much money at one time and he thought of all the difficulties the gold could allay. “I
cannot say a mass for you,” he insisted.

“I do not want a mass,” Christopher said, “and I do not deserve a mass. I just want a
blessing in Latin.” He wanted Kate to believe she was married and, so far as Christopher was
concerned, the priest could gabble the words of the funeral rite if he wanted. “Just a
blessing from you, Father, is all I want. A blessing from you, from God, and from the saints.”
He took another few coins from his pocket and gave them to the priest, who decided a prayer
of blessing could not possibly hurt.

“And you will take instruction?” Father Josefa asked.

“I have felt God pulling me toward your church for some time,” Christopher said, “and I
believe I must heed His call. And then, Father, you may marry us properly.”

So Father Josefa kissed his scapular and then draped it about his shoulders and he went to
the altar where he knelt, made the sign of the cross and then stood and turned to smile at Kate
and the tall, handsome man at her side. The priest did not know Kate well, for the Savage
family had never been familiar with the villagers and certainly did not attend the
church, but the servants at the Quinta spoke approvingly of her and Father Josefa, though
he was celibate, could appreciate that this girl was a rare beauty and so his voice was full
of warmth as he enjoined God and the holy saints to look with kindness on these two souls. He
felt guilty that they would behave as married people even though they were not married, but
such things were common and in wartime a good priest knew when to close his eyes.

Kate listened to the Latin that she did not understand and she looked past the priest at
the altar where the gently shining silver cross was hung with a black diaphanous veil
because Easter had not yet come, and she felt her heart beating and felt her lover’s hand
strongly entwined in hers and she wanted to cry with happiness. Her future seemed golden,
stretching sunlit and warm and flower-strewn ahead of her. It was not quite the wedding she
had envisaged. She had thought to sail back to England, which she and her mother still
considered home, there to walk up the aisle of a country church filled with her rubicund
relatives and be showered with rose petals and wheat grains and afterward go in a chaise and
four to some beamed tavern for a dinner of beef, beer and good red wine, yet she could not have
been happier, or maybe she could have been happier if only her mother had been in the
church, but she consoled herself that they would be reconciled, she was sure of that, and
suddenly Christopher squeezed her hand so hard that it hurt. “Say I do, my dearest,” he
ordered her.

Kate blushed. “Oh, I do,” she said, “I truly do.”

Father Josefa smiled at her. The sun streamed through the church’s small high windows,
there were flowers in her hair and Father Josefa raised his hand to bless James and Katherine
with the sign of the cross and just then the church door creaked open to let in a wash of more
sunlight and the stench of a manure heap just outside.

Kate turned to see soldiers in the door. The men were outlined against the light so she
could not see them properly, but she could see the guns on their shoulders and she supposed
they were French and she gasped in fear, but Colonel Christopher seemed quite unworried as he
tilted her face to his and kissed her on the lips. “We are married, my darling,” he said
softly.

“James,” she said.

“My dear, dear Kate,” the Colonel responded with a smile, “my dear, dear wife.” Then he
turned as harsh steps sounded in the small nave. They were slow steps, heavy steps, the nailed
boots unfittingly loud on the ancient stones. An officer was walking toward the altar.
He had left his men at the church door and came alone, his long sword clinking inside its
metal scabbard as he walked closer. Then he stopped and stared into Kate’s pale face and Kate
shuddered because the officer was a scarred, shabby, green-coated soldier with a tanned
face harder than iron and a gaze that could only be described as impudent. “Are you Kate
Savage?” he asked, surprising her because he put the question in English and she had
assumed the newcomer was French.

Kate said nothing. Her husband was beside her and he would protect her from this horrid,
frightening and insolent man.

“Is that you, Sharpe?” Colonel Christopher demanded. “By God, it is!” He was oddly
nervous and his voice was too high-pitched and he had a struggle to bring it under control.
“What the devil are you doing here? I ordered you south of the river, damn you.”

“Got cut off, sir,” Sharpe said, not looking at Christopher, but still staring at Kate’s
face which was framed by the narcissi in her hair. “I got cut off by Frogs, sir, a lot of
Frogs, so I fought them off, sir, and came to look for Miss Savage.”

“Who no longer exists,” the Colonel said coldly, “but allow me to introduce you to my
wife, Sharpe, Mrs. James Christopher.”

And Kate, hearing her new name, thought her heart would burst with happiness.

Because she believed she was married.

The newly united Colonel and Mrs. Christopher rode back to the Quinta in the dusty gig,
leaving Luis and the soldiers to trail after them. Hagman, still alive, was now in a
handcart, though the jolting of the unsprung vehicle seemed to give him more pain than the
old stretcher.

Lieutenant Vicente was also looking ill; indeed he was so pale that Sharpe feared the
erstwhile lawyer had caught some disease in the last couple of days. “You should see the
doctor when he comes to have another look at Hagman,” Sharpe said. There was a doctor in the
village who had already examined Hagman, pronounced him a dying man, but promised he would
come to the Quinta that afternoon to look at the patient again. “You look as if you’ve got an
upset belly,” Sharpe said.

“It is not an illness,” Vicente said, “not something a doctor can cure.”

“Then what is it?”

“It is Miss Katherine,” Vicente said forlornly.

“Kate?” Sharpe stared at Vicente. “You know her?”

Vicente nodded. “Every young man in Porto knows Kate Savage. When she was sent to school
in England we pined for her and when she sailed back it was as if the sun had come out.”

“She’s pretty enough,” Sharpe allowed, then looked again at Vicente as the full force of
the lawyer’s words registered. “Oh, bloody hell,” he said.

“What?” Vicente asked, offended.

“I don’t need you to be in love,” Sharpe said.

“I am not in love,” Vicente said, still offended, but it was obvious that he was
besotted with Kate Christopher. In the last two or three years he had gazed at her from afar
and he had dreamed of her when he was writing his poetry and had been distracted by her
memory when he was studying his philosophy and he had woven fantasies about her as he
delved through the dusty law books. She was the Beatrice to his Dante, the unapproachable
English girl from the big house on the hill and now she was married to Colonel
Christopher.

And that, Sharpe thought, explained the silly bitch’s disappearance. She had eloped! But
what Sharpe still did not understand was why she would need to conceal such a love from her
mother who would surely approve of her choice? Christopher, so far as Sharpe could tell, was
well born, affluent, properly educated and a gentleman: all the things, indeed, that
Sharpe was not. Christopher was also very annoyed and, when Sharpe reached the Quinta, the
Colonel faced him from the front steps and again demanded an explanation for the
rifleman’s presence in Vila Real de Zedes.

“I told you,” Sharpe said, “we were cut off. We couldn’t cross the river.”

“Sir,” Christopher snapped, then waited for Sharpe to repeat the word, but Sharpe just
stared past the Colonel into the Quinta’s hallway where he could see Kate unpacking clothes
from the big leather valise.

“I gave you orders,” Christopher said.

“We couldn’t cross the river,” Sharpe said, “because there wasn’t a bridge. It broke. So we
went to the ferry, but the damned Frogs had burned it, so now we’re going to Amarante, but we
can’t use the main roads because the Frogs are swarming over them like lice, and I can’t go
fast because I’ve got a wounded man and is there a room here where we can put him tonight?”

Christopher said nothing for a moment. He was waiting for Sharpe to call him “sir,” but
the rifleman stubbornly stayed silent. Christopher sighed and glanced across the valley to
where a buzzard circled. “You expect to stay here tonight?” he asked distantly.

“We’ve marched since three this morning,” Sharpe said. He was not sure they had left at three
o’clock because he had no watch, but it sounded about right. “We’ll rest now,” he said, “then
march again before tomorrow’s dawn.”

“The French,” Christopher said, “will be at Amarante.”

“No doubt they will,” Sharpe said, “but what else am I to do?”

Christopher flinched at Sharpe’s surly tone, then shuddered as Hagman moaned. “There’s a
stable block behind the house,” he said coldly, “put your wounded man there. And who the
devil is that?” He had noticed Vicente’s prisoner, Lieutenant Olivier.

Sharpe turned to see where the Colonel was looking. “A Frog,” he answered, “whose throat I’m
going to cut.”

Christopher stared in horror at Sharpe. “A Frog whose … “ he began to repeat, but just
then Kate came from the house to stand beside him.

He put an arm about her shoulder and, with an irritable look at Sharpe, raised his voice
to call to Lieutenant Olivier. “Monsieur! Venez id, s’il vous plait.”

“He’s a prisoner,” Sharpe said.

“He’s an officer?” Christopher asked as Olivier threaded his way through Sharpe’s sullen
men.

“He’s a lieutenant,” Sharpe said, “of the 18th Dragoons.”

Christopher gave Sharpe a rather startled look. “It is customary,” he said coldly, “to
allow officers to give their parole. Where is the lieutenant’s sword?”

“I wasn’t keeping him prisoner,” Sharpe said, “Lieutenant Vicente was. The Lieutenant’s
a lawyer, you see, and he seems to have the strange idea that the man should stand trial, but I
was just planning on hanging him.”

Kate gave a small cry of horror. “Perhaps you should go inside, my dear,” Christopher
suggested, but she did not move and he did not insist. “Why were you going to hang him?” he
asked Sharpe instead.

“Because he’s a rapist,” Sharpe said flatly and the word prompted Kate to give another
small cry, and this time Christopher bodily pushed her into the tiled hallway.

“You will mind your language,” Christopher said icily, “when my wife is present.”

“There was a lady present when this bastard raped her,” Sharpe said. “We caught him with his
breeches round his ankles and his equipment hanging out. What was I supposed to do with him?
Give him a brandy and offer him a game of whist?”

“He is an officer and a gentleman,” Christopher said, more concerned that Olivier was
from the 18th Dragoons which meant he served with Captain Argenton. “Where is his sword?”

Lieutenant Vicente was introduced. He carried Olivier’s sword and Christopher
insisted it be returned to the Frenchman. Vicente tried to explain that Olivier was
accused of a crime and must be tried for it, but Colonel Christopher, speaking his
impeccable Portuguese, dismissed the idea. “The conventions of war, Lieutenant,” he said,
“do not allow for the trial of military officers as though they were civilians. You should
know that if, as Sharpe claims, you are a lawyer. To allow the civil trial of prisoners of
war would open up the possibilities of reciprocity. Try this man and execute him and the
French will do the same to every Portuguese officer they take captive. You understand
that, surely?”

Vicente saw the force of the argument, but would not give in. “He is a rapist,” he
insisted.

“He is a prisoner of war,” Christopher contradicted him, “and you will give him over to
my custody.”

Vicente still tried to resist. Christopher, after all, was in civilian clothes. “He is a
prisoner of my army,” Vicente said stubbornly.

“And I,” Christopher said disdainfully, “am a lieutenant colonel in His Britannic
Majesty’s army, and that, I think, means that I outrank you, Lieutenant, and you will obey my
orders or else you will face the military consequences.”

Vicente, outranked and overwhelmed, stepped back and Christopher, with a small bow,
presented Olivier with his sword. “Perhaps you will do me the honor of waiting inside?” he
suggested to the Frenchman and, when a much relieved Olivier had gone into the Quinta,
Christopher strode to the edge of the front steps and stared over Sharpe’s head to where a white
cloud of dust was being generated on a track coming from the distant main road. A large
body of horsemen was approaching the village and Christopher reckoned it had to be Captain
Argenton and his escort. A look of alarm crossed his face and his gaze flickered to Sharpe,
then back to the approaching cavalry. He dared not let the two meet. “Sharpe,” he said, “you
are under orders again.”