Sharpe's Havoc (16 page)

“What it is,” Williamson told his cronies, “is the bloody frow. We’re humping stone and he’s
tickling the Colonel’s wife.” And if Sharpe had heard that opinion he might even have agreed
with it too, even though he was not tickling Kate, but he was enjoying her company and had
persuaded himself that, orders or no orders, he ought to protect her against the
French.

But the French did not come and nor did Colonel Christopher. Manuel Lopes came instead.

He arrived on a black horse, galloping up the driveway and then curbing the stallion so
fast that it reared and twisted and Lopes, instead of being thrown off as ninety-nine out of
a hundred other riders would have been, stayed calm and in control. He soothed the horse and
grinned at Sharpe. “You are the Englishman,” he said in English, “and I hate the English, but
not so much as I hate the Spanish, and I hate the Spanish less than I hate the French.” He slid
down from the saddle and held out a hand. “I am Manuel Lopes.”

“Sharpe,” Sharpe said.

Lopes looked at the Quinta with the eye of a man sizing it up for plunder. He was an inch
less than Sharpe’s six feet, but seemed taller. He was a big man, not fat, just big, with’a
strong face and quick eyes and a swift smile. “If I was a Spaniard,” he said, “and I nightly
thank the good Lord that I am not, then I would call myself something dramatic. The
Slaughterman, perhaps, or the Pig Sticker or the Prince of Death”-he was talking of the
partisan leaders who made French life so miserable-”but I am a humble citizen of
Portugal so my nickname is the Schoolteacher.”

“The Schoolteacher,” Sharpe repeated.

“Because that is what I was,” Lopes responded energetically. “I owned a school in
Braganga where I taught ungrateful little bastards English, Latin, Greek, algebra,
rhetoric and horsemanship. I also taught them to love God, honor the King and fart in the
face of all Spaniards. Now, instead of wasting my breath on halfwits, I kill Frenchmen.” He
offered Sharpe an extravagant bow. “I am famous for it.”

“I’ve not heard of you,” Sharpe said.

Lopes just smiled at the challenge. “The French have heard of me, senhor,” he said, “and I
have heard about you. Who is this Englishman who lives safe north of the Douro? Why do the
French leave him in peace? Who is the Portuguese officer who lives in his shadow? Why are
they here? Why are they making a toy fort on the watchtower hill? Why are they not
fighting?”

“Good questions,” Sharpe said dryly, “all of them.”

Lopes looked at the Quinta again. “Everywhere else in Portugal, senhor, where the French
have left their dung, they have destroyed places like this. They have stolen the paintings,
broken the furniture and drunk the cellars dry. Yet the war does not come to this house?” He
turned to stare down the driveway where some twenty or thirty men had appeared. “My pupils,”
he explained, “they need rest.”

The “pupils” were his men, a ragged band with which Lopes had been ambushing the French
columns that carried ammunition to the gunners who fought against the Portuguese troops
still holding the bridge at Amarante. The Schoolteacher had lost a good few men in the fights
and admitted that his early successes had made him too confident until, just two days
before, French dragoons had caught his men in open ground. “I hate those green bastards,”
Lopes growled, “hate them and their big swords.” Nearly half his men had been killed and the
rest had been lucky to escape. “So I brought them here,” Lopes said, “to recover, and because
the Quinta do Zedes seems like a safe haven.”

Kate bridled when she heard Lopes wanted his men to stay at the house. “Tell him to take
them to the village,” she said to Sharpe, and Sharpe carried her suggestion to the
Schoolteacher.

Lopes laughed when he heard the message. “Her father was a pompous bastard too,” he
said.

“You knew him?”

“I knew of him. He made port but wouldn’t drink it because of his stupid beliefs, and he
wouldn’t take off his hat when the sacrament was carried past. What kind of a man is that? Even
a Spaniard takes off his hat for the blessed sacraments.” Lopes shrugged. “My men will be happy
in the village.” He drew on a filthy-smelling cigar. “We’ll only stay long enough to heal the
worst wounds. Then we go back to the fight.”

“Us too,” Sharpe said.

“You?” The Schoolteacher was amused. “Yet you don’t fight now?”

“Colonel Christopher ordered us to stay here.”

“Colonel Christopher?”

“This is his wife’s house,” Sharpe said.

“I did not know he was married,” Lopes responded.

“You know him?”

“He came to see me in Braganga. I still owned the school then and I had a reputation as a
man of influence. So the Colonel comes calling. He wanted to know if sentiment in
Braganca was in favor of fighting the French and I told him that sentiment in Braganga
was in favor of drowning the French in their own piss, but if that was not possible then we
would fight them instead. So we do.” Lopes paused. “I also heard that the Colonel had money
for anyone willing to fight against them, but we never saw any.” He turned and looked at the
house. “And his wife owns the Quinta? And the French don’t touch the place?”

“Colonel Christopher,” Sharpe said, “talks to the French, and right now he’s south of the
Douro where he’s taken a Frenchman to speak with the British General.”

Lopes stared at Sharpe for a few heartbeats. “Why would a French officer be talking to the
British?” he asked and waited for Sharpe to answer, then did so himself when the rifleman
was silent. “For one reason only,” Lopes suggested, “to make peace. Britain is going to run
away, leave us to suffer.”

“I don’t know,” Sharpe said.

“We’ll beat them with you or without you,” Lopes said angrily and stalked down the drive,
shouting at his men to bring his horse, pick up their baggage and follow him to the
village.

The meeting with Lopes only made Sharpe feel more guilty. Other men were fighting while he
did nothing and that night, after supper, he asked to speak with Kate. It was late and Kate
had sent the servants back to the kitchen and Sharpe waited for her to call one back to act as
her chaperone, but instead she led him into the long parlor. It was dark, for no candles
were lit, so Kate went to one of the windows and pulled back its curtains to reveal a pale,
moonlit night. The wisteria seemed to glow in the silver light. The boots of a sentry
crunched on the driveway. “I know what you’re going to say,” Kate said, “that it’s time for you
to go.”

“Yes,” Sharpe said, “and I think you should come with us.”

“I must wait for James,” Kate said. She went to a sideboard and, by the light of the moon,
poured a glass of port. “For you,” she said.

“How long did the Colonel say he would be?” Sharpe asked.

“A week, maybe ten days.”

“It’s been more than two weeks,” Sharpe said, “very nearly three.”

“He ordered you to wait here,” Kate said.

“Not through eternity,” Sharpe replied. He went to the sideboard and took the port which
was Savages’ finest.

“You can’t leave me here,” Kate said.

“I don’t intend to,” Sharpe said. The moon made a shadow of her cheek and glinted from her
eyes and he felt a pang of jealousy for Colonel Christopher. “I think you should come.”

“No,” Kate said with a note of petulance, then turned a pleading face to Sharpe. “You can’t
leave me here alone!”

“I’m a soldier,” Sharpe said, “and I’ve waited long enough. There’s supposed to be a war in
this country, and I’m just sitting here like a lump.”

Kate had tears in her eyes. “What’s happened to him?”

“Maybe he got new orders in Lisbon,” Sharpe suggested.

“Then why doesn’t he write?”

“Because we’re in enemy country now, ma’am,” Sharpe said brutally, “and maybe he can’t
get a message to us.” That was very unlikely, Sharpe thought, because Christopher seemed to
have plenty of friends among the French. Perhaps the Colonel had been arrested in Lisbon. Or
killed by partisans. “He’s probably waiting for you to come south,” he said instead of
voicing those thoughts.

“He would send a message,” Kate protested. “I’m sure he’s on his way.”

“Are you?” Sharpe asked.

She sat on a gilt chair, staring out of the window. “He must come back,” she said softly
and Sharpe could tell from her tone that she had virtually given up hope.

“If you think he’s coming back,” he said, “then you must wait for him. But I’m taking my men
south.” He would leave the next night, he decided. March in the dark, go south, find the river
and search its bank for a boat, any boat. Even a tree trunk would do, anything that could float
them across the Douro.

“Do you know why I married him?” Kate suddenly asked.

Sharpe was so astounded by the question that he did not answer. He just gazed at her.

“I married him,” Kate said, “because life in Oporto is so dull. My mother and I live in
the big house on the hill and the lawyers tell us what happens in the vineyards and the lodge,
and the other ladies come to tea, and we go to the English church on Sundays and that is all
that ever happens.”

Sharpe still said nothing. He was embarrassed.

“You think he married me for the money, don’t you?” Kate demanded.

“Don’t you?” Sharpe responded.

She stared at him in silence and he half expected her to be angry, but instead she shook
her head and sighed. “I dare not believe that,” she said, “though I do believe marriage is a
gamble and we don’t know how it will turn out, but we still just hope. We marry in hope,
Mister Sharpe, and sometimes we’re lucky. Don’t you think that’s true?”

“I’ve never married,” Sharpe evaded the answer.

“Have you wanted to?” Kate asked.

“Yes,” Sharpe said, thinking of Grace.

“What happened?”

“She was a widow,” Sharpe said, “and the lawyers were making hay with her husband’s will,
and we thought that if she married me it would only complicate things. Her lawyers said so. I
hate lawyers.” He stopped talking, hurt as he always was by the memory. He drank the port to
cover his feelings, then walked to the window and stared down the moonlit drive to where the
smoke of the village fires smeared the stars above the northern hills. “In the end she died,”
he finished abruptly.

“I’m sorry,” Kate said in a small voice.

“And I hope it turns out well for you,” Sharpe said.

“Do you?”

“Of course,” he said, then he turned to her and he was so close that she had to tilt her head
back to see him. “What I really hope,” he said, “is this,” and he bent and kissed her very
tenderly on the lips, and for a half-second she stiffened and then she let him kiss her and
when he straightened she lowered her head and he knew she was crying. “I hope you’re lucky,”
he said to her.

Kate did not look up. “I must lock the house,” she said, and Sharpe knew he was
dismissed.

He gave his men the next day to get ready. There were boots to be repaired and packs and
haversacks to be filled with food for the march. Sharpe made sure every rifle was clean, that
the flints were new and that the cartridge boxes were filled. Harper shot two of the captured
dragoon horses and butchered them down into cuts of meat that could be carried, then he put
Hagman on another of the horses to make certain he would be able to ride it without too
much pain and Sharpe told Kate she must ride another and she protested, saying she could not
travel without a chaperone and Sharpe told her she could make up her own mind. “Stay or
leave, ma’am, but we’re going tonight.”

“You can’t leave me!” Kate said, angry, as if Sharpe had not kissed her and she had not
allowed the kiss.

“I’m a soldier, ma’am,” Sharpe said, “and I’m going.”

And then he did not go because that evening, at dusk, Colonel Christopher returned.

The Colonel was mounted on his black horse and dressed all in black. Dodd and Pendleton were
the picquets on the Quinta’s driveway and when they saluted him Christopher just touched the
ivory heel of his riding crop to one of the tasseled peaks of his bicorne hat. Luis, the
servant, followed and the dust from their horses’ hooves drifted across the rills of fallen
wisteria blossoms that lined either side of the driveway. “It looks like lavender, don’t
it?” Christopher remarked to Sharpe. “They should try growing lavender here,” he went on as
he slid from the horse. “It would do well, don’t you think?” He did not wait for an answer, but
instead ran up the Quinta’s steps and held his hands wide for Kate. “My sweetest one!”

Sharpe, left on the terrace, found himself staring at Luis. The servant raised an eyebrow
as if in exasperation, then led the horses round to the back of the house. Sharpe stared
across the darkening fields. Now that the sun was gone there was a bite in the air, a tendril
of winter lingering into spring. “Sharpe!” the Colonel’s voice called from inside the house.
“Sharpe!”

“Sir?” Sharpe pushed through the half-open door.

Christopher stood in front of the hall fire, the tails of his coat lifted to the heat. “Kate
tells me you behaved yourself. Thank you for that.” He saw the thunder on Sharpe’s face. “It
is a jest, man, a jest. Have you no sense of humor? Kate, dearest, a glass of decent port
would be more than welcome. I’m parched, fair parched. So, Sharpe, no French activity?

“They came close,” Sharpe said curtly, “but not close enough.”

“Not close enough? You’re fortunate in that, I should think. Kate tells me you are
leaving.”

“Tonight, sir.”

“No, you’re not.” Christopher took the glass of port from Kate and downed it in one. “That is
delicious,” he said, staring at the empty glass, “one of ours?”

“Our best,” Kate said.

“Not too sweet. That’s the trick of a fine port, wouldn’t you agree, Sharpe? And I must say
I’ve been surprised by the white port. More than drinkable! I always thought the stuff was
execrable, a woman’s tipple at best, but Savages’ white is really very good. We must make
more of it in the piping days of peace, don’t you think, dearest?”