Sharpe's Havoc Part 19

"But Captain Hogan never smelt peace in the wind."

"And there ain't much pa.s.ses him by, sir."

"But we've got orders," Sharpe said, "directly from General Cradock."

Harper grimaced. "You're a great man for obeying orders, sir, so you are."

"And the General wants us to stay here. G.o.d knows why. There's something funny in the wind, Pat. Maybe it is peace. G.o.d knows what you and I will do then." He shrugged, then went to the house to fetch his telescope and it was not there. The hall table held nothing except a silver letter holder.

Christopher had stolen the gla.s.s. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d, Sharpe thought, the utter G.o.dd.a.m.n b.l.o.o.d.y misbegotten b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Because the telescope was gone.

"I never liked the name," Colonel Christopher said. "It isn't even a beautiful house!"

"My father chose it," Kate said, "it's from The Pilgrim's Progress." "A tedious read, my G.o.d, how tedious!" They were back in Oporto where Colonel Christopher had opened the neglected cellars of the House Beautiful to discover dusty bottles of aging port and more of vinho verde, a white wine that was almost golden in color. He drank some now as he strolled about the garden. The flowers were coming into bloom, the lawn was newly scythed and the only thing that spoiled the day was the smell of burned houses. It was almost a month since the fall of the city and smoke still drifted from some of the ruins in the lower town where the stench was much worse because of the bodies among the ashes. There were tales of drowned bodies turning up on every tide.

Colonel Christopher sat under a cypress tree and watched Kate. She was beautiful, he thought, so very beautiful, and that morning he had summoned a French tailor, Marshal Soult's personal tailor, and to Kate's embarra.s.sment he had made the man measure her for a French hussar uniform. "Why would I want to wear such a thing?" Kate had asked, and Christopher had not told her that he had seen a Frenchwoman dressed in just such a uniform, the breeches skintight and the short jacket cut high to reveal a perfect b.u.m, and Kate's legs were longer and better shaped, and Christopher, who was feeling rich because of the funds released to him by General Cradock, funds Christopher claimed were necessary to encourage Argenton's mutineers, had paid the tailor an outrageous fee to have the uniform st.i.tched quickly.

"Why wear that uniform?" he responded to her question. "Because you will find it easier to ride a horse wearing breeches, because the uniform becomes you, because it rea.s.sures our French friends that you are not an enemy, and best of all, my dear one, because it would please me." And that last reason, of course, had been the one that convinced her. "You really like the name House Beautiful?" he asked her.

"I'm used to it."

"Not attached to it? It's not a matter of faith with you?"

"Faith?" Kate, in a white linen dress, frowned. "I consider myself a Christian."

"A Protestant Christian," her husband amended her, "as am I. But does not the name of the house somewhat flaunt itself in a Romish society?"

"I doubt," Kate said with an unexpected tartness, "that anyone here has read Bunyan."

"Some will have," Christopher said, "and they will know they are being insulted." He smiled at her. "I am a diplomat, remember. It is my job to make the crooked straight and the rough places plain."

"Is that what you're doing here?" Kate asked, gesturing to indicate the city beneath them where the French ruled over plundered houses and embittered people.

"Oh, Kate," Christopher said sadly. "This is progress!"

"Progress?"

Christopher got to his feet and paced up and down the lawn, becoming animated as he explained to her that the world was changing fast about them. " 'There are more things in heaven and earth,' " he told her,

" 'than are dreamt of in your philosophy,' " and Kate, who had been told this more than once in her short marriage, suppressed her irritation and listened as her husband described how the ancient superst.i.tions were being discredited. "Kings have been dethroned, Kate, whole countries now manage without them. That would once have been considered unthinkable! It would have been a defiance of G.o.d's plan for the world, but we're seeing a new revelation. It is a new ordering of the world. What do simple folk see here? War! Just war, but war between who? France and Britain? France and Portugal? No! It is between the old way of doing things and the new way. Superst.i.tions are being challenged. I'm not defending Bonaparte. Good G.o.d, no! He's a braggart, an adventurer, but he's also an instrument. He's burning out what is bad in the old regimes and leaving a s.p.a.ce into which new ideas will come. Reason! That's what animates the new regimes, Kate, reason!"

"I thought it was liberty," Kate suggested.

"Liberty! Man has no liberty except the liberty to obey rules, but who makes the rules? With luck, Kate, it will be reasonable men making reasonable rules. Clever men. Subtle men. In the end, Kate, it is a coterie of sophisticated men who will make the rules, but they will make them according to the tenets of reason and there are some of us in Britain, a few of us in Britain, who understand that we will have to come to terms with that idea. We also have to help shape it. If we fight it then the world will become new without us and we shall be defeated by reason. So we must work with it."

"With Bonaparte?" Kate asked, distaste in her voice.

"With all the countries of Europe!" Christopher said enthusiastically. "With Portugal and Spain, with Prussia and Austria, with Holland and, yes, with France. We have more in common than divides us, yet we fight! What sense does that make? There can be no progress without peace, Kate, none! You do want peace, my love?"

"Devoutly," Kate said.

"Then trust me," Christopher said, "trust that I know what I'm doing."

And she did trust him because she was young and her husband was so much older and she knew he was privy to opinions that were far more sophisticated than her instincts. Yet the following night that trust was put to the test when four French officers and their mistresses came to the House Beautiful for supper, the group led by Brigadier General Henri Vuillard, a tall elegantly handsome man who was charming to Kate, kissing her hand and complimenting her on the house and the garden. Vuillard's servant brought a crate of wine as a gift, though it was hardly tactful, for the wine was Savages' best, appropriated from one of the British ships that had been trapped on Oporto's quays by contrary winds when the French took the city.

After supper the three junior officers entertained the ladies in the parlor while Christopher and Vuillard paced the garden, their cigars trailing smoke beneath the black cypress trees. "Soult is worried," Vuillard confessed.

"By Cradock?"

"Cradock's an old woman," Vuillard said scathingly. "Isn't it true he wanted to withdraw last year? But what about Wellesley?"

"Tougher," Christopher admitted, "but it's by no means certain he'll come here. He has enemies in London."

"Political enemies, I presume?" Vuillard asked.

"Indeed."

"The most dangerous enemies of a soldier," Vuillard said. He was of an age with Christopher, and a favorite of Marshal Soult. "No, Soult's worried," he went on, "because we're frittering troops away to protect our supply lines. You kill two peasants armed with matchlock guns in this d.a.m.n country and twenty more spring up from the rocks, and the twenty don't have matchlocks any longer, instead they have good British muskets supplied by your d.a.m.n country."

"Take Lisbon," Christopher said, "and capture every other port, and the supply of arms will dry up."

"We'll do it," Vuillard promised, "in time. But we could do with another fifteen thousand men."

Christopher stopped at the garden's edge and stared across the Douro for a few seconds. The city lay beneath him, the smoke from a thousand kitchens smirching the night air. "Is Soult going to declare himself king?"

"You know what his nickname is now?" Vuillard asked, amused. "King Nicolas! No, he won't make the declaration, not if he's got any sense and he's probably got just enough. The local people won't stand for it, the army won't support it and the Emperor will poach his b.a.l.l.s for it."

Christopher smiled. "But he's tempted?"

"Oh, he's tempted, but Soult usually stops before he goes too far. Usually." Vuillard sounded cautious for Soult, only the day before, had sent a letter to all the generals in his army, suggesting that they encourage the Portuguese to declare their support for him to become king. It was, Vuillard thought, madness, but Soult was obsessed with the idea of being a royal. "I told him he'll provoke a mutiny if he does."

"That he will," Christopher said, "and you need to know that Argenton was in Coimbra. He met Cradock."

"Argenton's a fool," Vuillard snarled.

"He's a useful fool," Christopher observed. "Let him keep talking to the British and they'll do nothing. Why should they exert themselves if your army is going to destroy itself by mutiny?"

"But will it?" Vuillard asked. "Just how many officers does Argenton speak for?"

"Enough," Christopher said, "and I have their names."

Vuillard chuckled. "I could have you arrested, Englishman, and given to a pair of dragoon sergeants who'll prize those names out of you in two minutes."

"You'll get the names," Christopher said, "in time. But for the moment, Brigadier, I give you this instead." He handed Vuillard an envelope.

"What is it?" It was too dark in the garden to read anything.

"Cradock's order of battle," Christopher said. "Some of his troops are in Coimbra, but most are in Lisbon. In brief he has sixteen thousand British bayonets and seven thousand Portuguese. The details are all there, and you will note they are particularly deficient in artillery."