Sharpe's Havoc Part 31

"Holy water?" Sims asked.

"The brandy he keeps in his second canteen. The one he thinks I don't know about."

Afterward, when the men who had come down from the hilltop were helping to bury the dead, Sharpe went back to the church where Harper found him. "Picquets are set, sir."

"Good."

"And Sims says I was to give him some brandy."

"I hope you did."

"I did, sir, I did. And Mister Vicente, sir, he's wanting to say a prayer or two."

"I hope G.o.d's listening."

"You want to be there?"

"No, Pat."

"Didn't think you would." The big Irishman picked his way through the ashes. Some of the wreckage still smoked where the altar had stood, but he pushed a hand into the blackened tangle and pulled out a twisted, black crucifix. It was only four inches high and he laid it on his left palm and made the sign of the cross. "Mister Vicente's not happy, sir."

"I know."

"He thinks we should have defended the village, but I told him, sir, I told him you don't catch the rabbit by killing the dog."

Sharpe stared into the smoke. "Maybe we should have stayed here."

"Now you're talking like an Irishman, sir," Harper said, "because there's nothing we don't know about lost causes. Sure and we'd all have died. And if you see that the trigger guard on Gataker's rifle is hanging loose then don't give him h.e.l.l about it. The screws are worn to b.u.g.g.e.ry."

Sharpe smiled at Harper's effort to divert him. "I know we did the right thing, Pat. I just wish Lieutenant Vicente could see it."

"He's a lawyer, sir, can't see a b.l.o.o.d.y thing straight. And he's young. He'd sell his cow for a drink of milk."

"We did the right thing," Sharpe insisted, "but what do we do now?"

Harper tried to straighten the crucifix. "When I was a wee child," he said, "I got lost. I was no more then seven, eight maybe. No bigger then Perkins, anyway. There were soldiers near the village, your lot in red, and to this day I don't know what the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds were doing there, but I ran away from them. They didn't chase me, but I ran all the same because that's what you did when the red b.a.s.t.a.r.ds showed themselves. I ran and I ran, I did, and I ran until I didn't know where the h.e.l.l I was."

"So what did you do?"

"I followed a stream," Harper said, "and came to these two wee houses and my aunty lived in one and she took me home."

Sharpe started to laugh and, though it was not really funny, could not stop.

"Maire," Harper said, "Aunty Maire, rest her soul." He put the crucifix into a pocket.

"I wish your Aunty Maire was here, Pat. But we're not lost."

"No?"

"We go south. Find a boat. Cross the river. Keep going south."

"And if the army's gone from Lisbon?"

"Walk to Gibraltar," Sharpe said, knowing it would never come to that. If there was peace then he would be found by someone in authority and sent to the nearest port, and if there was war then he would find someone to fight. Simple, really, he thought. "But we march at night, Pat."

"So we're still at war, you think?"

"Oh, we're at war, Pat," Sharpe said, looking at the wreckage and thinking of Christopher, "we're b.l.o.o.d.y well at war."

Vicente was staring at the new graves. He nodded when Sharpe said he proposed marching south during the night, but he did not speak until they were outside the cemetery gates. "I am going to Porto," he said.

"You believe there's been a peace treaty?"

"No," Vicente said, then shrugged. "Maybe? I don't know. But I do know Colonel Christopher and Brigadier Vuillard are probably there. I didn't fight them here, so I must pursue them there."

"So you'll go to Oporto," Sharpe said, "and die?"

"Maybe," Vicente said grandly, "but a man cannot hide from evil."

"No," Sharpe said, "but if you fight it, fight it clever."

"I'm learning how to fight," Vicente said, "but I already know how to kill."

That was a recipe for suicide, Sharpe thought, but he did not argue. "What I'm planning," he said instead, "is to go back the way we came. I can find the way easy enough. And once I'm at Barca d'Avintas I'll look for a boat. There has to be something that will float."

"I'm sure there is."

"So come with me that far," Sharpe suggested, "because it's close to Oporto."

Vicente agreed and his men fell in behind Sharpe's when they left the village, and Sharpe was glad of it for the night was pitch black again and despite his confidence that he could find the way he would have become hopelessly lost if Vicente had not been there. As it was they made painfully slow progress and eventually rested in the darkest heart of the night and made better time when the wolf light edged the eastern horizon.

Sharpe was in two minds about going back to Barca d'Avintas. There was a risk, for the village was perilously close to Oporto, but on the other hand he knew it was a place where the river was safe to cross, and he reckoned he should be able to find some wreckage from the huts and houses that his men could fashion into a raft. Vicente agreed, saying that much of the rest of the Douro valley was a rocky ravine and that Sharpe would face difficulty in either approaching the river or finding a crossing place. A larger risk was that the French would be guarding Barca d'Avintas, but Sharpe suspected they would be content with having destroyed all the boats in the village.

Dawn found them in some wooded hills. They stopped by a stream and made a breakfast of stale bread and smoked meat so tough that the men joked about re-soling their boots, then grumbled because Sharpe would not let them light a fire and so make tea. Sharpe carried a crust to the summit of a nearby hill and searched the landscape with the small telescope. He saw no enemy, indeed he saw no one at all. A deserted cottage lay further up the valley where the stream ran and there was a church bell tower a mile or so to the south, but there were no people. Vicente joined him. "You think there might be French here?"

"I always think that," Sharpe said.

"And do you think the British have gone home?" Vicente asked.

"No."

"Why not?"

Sharpe shrugged. "If we wanted to go home," he said, "we'd have gone after Sir John Moore's retreat."

Vicente stared south. "I know we could not have defended the village," he said.

"I wish we could have done."