Sharpe's Havoc Part 39

"He was a thruster, Richard," Pumphrey said, his voice acid with disapproval, "a rather clever thruster in the Foreign Office." A thruster was a man who would bully and whip his way to the head of the field while riding to hounds and in doing so upset dozens of other hunters. "Yet he was thought to have a very fine future," Pumphrey continued, "if he could just curb his compulsion to complicate affairs. He likes intrigue, does Christopher. The Foreign Office, of necessity, deals in secret matters and he rather indulges in such things. Still, despite that, he was reckoned to have the makings of an excellent diplomat, and last year he was sent out here to determine the temper of the Portuguese. There were rumors, happily ill-founded, that a large number of folk, especially in the north, were more than a little sympathetic to the French, and Christopher was merely supposed to be determining the extent of that sympathy."

"Couldn't the emba.s.sy do that?" Hogan demanded.

"Not without being noticed," Pumphrey said, "and not without occasioning some offense to a nation which is, after all, our most ancient ally. And I rather suspect that if you despatch someone from the emba.s.sy to ask questions then you will merely fetch the answers people think you want to hear. No, Christopher was supposed to be an English gentleman traveling in north Portugal, but, as you observe, the opportunity went to his head. Cradock was then halfwitted enough to give him brevet rank and so Christopher began hatching his plots." Lord Pumphrey gazed up at the ceiling which was painted with reveling deities and dancing nymphs. "My own suspicion is that Mister Christopher has been laying bets on every horse in the race. We know he was encouraging a mutiny, but I strongly suspect he betrayed the mutineers. The encouragement was to rea.s.sure us that he worked for our interests and the betrayal endeared him to the French. He is determined, is he not, to be on the winning side? But the main intrigue, of course, was to enrich himself at the expense of the Savage ladies." Pumphrey paused, then offered a seraphic smile. "I've always rather admired bigamists. One wife would be altogether too much for me, but for a man to take two!"

"Did I hear you say he wants to come back?" Sharpe asked.

"I surmise as much. James Christopher is not a man to burn his bridges unless he has no alternative. Oh yes, I'm sure he'll be designing some way to return to London if he finds a lack of opportunity with the French."

"Now I'm supposed to shoot the s.h.i.t-faced b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Sharpe said.

"Not precisely how we in the Foreign Office would express the matter," Lord Pumphrey said severely, "but you are, I see, seized of the essence. Go and shoot him, Richard, and G.o.d bless your little rifle."

"And what are you doing here?" Sharpe thought to ask.

"Other than being exquisitely uncomfortable?" Pumphrey asked. "I was sent to supervise Christopher. He approached General Cradock with news of a proposed mutiny. Cradock, quite properly, reported the affair to London and London became excited at the thought of suborning Bonaparte's army in Portugal and Spain, but felt that someone of wisdom and good judgment was needed to propel the scheme and so, quite naturally, they asked me to come."

"And we can forget the scheme now," Hogan observed.

"Indeed we can," Pumphrey replied tartly. "Christopher brought a Captain Argenton to talk with General Cradock," he explained to Sharpe, "and when Cradock was replaced, Argenton made his own way across the lines to confer with Sir Arthur. He wanted promises that our forces wouldn't intervene in the event of a French mutiny, but Sir Arthur wouldn't hear of his plots and told him to tuck his tail between his legs and go back into the outer darkness whence he came. So, no plots, no mysterious messengers with cloaks and daggers, just plain old-fashioned soldiering. It seems, alas, that I am surplus to requirements and Mister Christopher, if your lady friend's note is to be believed, has gone with the French, which must mean, I think, that he believes they will still win this war."

Hogan had opened the window to smell the rain, but now turned to Sharpe. "We must go, Richard. We have things to plan."

"Yes, sir." Sharpe picked up his battered shako and tried to bend the visor back into shape, then thought of another question. "My lord?"

"Richard?" Lord Pumphrey responded gravely.

"You remember Astrid?" Sharpe asked awkwardly.

"Of course I remember the fair Astrid," Pumphrey answered smoothly, "Ole Skovgaard's comely daughter."

"I was wondering if you had news of her, my lord," Sharpe said. He was blushing.

Lord Pumphrey did have news of her, but none he cared to tell Sharpe, for the truth was that both Astrid and her father were in their graves, their throats cut on Pumphrey's orders. "I did hear," his lordship said gently, "that there was a contagion in Copenhagen. Malaria, perhaps? Or was it cholera? Alas, Richard." He spread his hands.

"She's dead?"

"I do fear so."

"Oh," Sharpe said inadequately. He stood stricken, blinking. He had thought once that he could leave the army and live with Astrid and so make a new life in the clean decencies of Denmark. "I'm sorry," he said.

"As am I," Lord Pumphrey said easily, "so very sorry. But tell me, Richard, about Miss Savage. Might one a.s.sume she is beautiful?"

"Yes," Sharpe said, "she is."

"I thought so," Lord Pumphrey said resignedly.

"And she'll be dead," Hogan snarled at Sharpe, "if you and me don't hurry."

"Yes, sir," Sharpe said, and hurried.

Hogan and Sharpe walked through the night rain, going uphill to a schoolhouse that Sharpe had commandeered as quarters for his men. "You do know," Hogan said with considerable irritation, "that Lord Pumphrey is a molly?"

"Of course I know he's a molly."

"He can be hanged for that," Hogan observed with indecent satisfaction.

"I still like him," Sharpe said.

"He's a serpent. All diplomats are. Worse than lawyers."

"He ain't stuck up," Sharpe said.

"There is nothing," Hogan said, "nothing in all the world that Lord Pumphrey wants more than to be stuck up with you, Richard." He laughed, his spirits restored. "And how the h.e.l.l are we to find that poor wee girl and her rotten husband, eh?"

"We?" Sharpe asked. "You're coming too?"

"This is far too important to be left to some lowly English lieutenant," Hogan said. "This is an errand that needs the sagacity of the Irish."

Once in the schoolhouse, Sharpe and Hogan settled in the kitchen where the French occupiers of the city had left an undamaged table and, because Hogan had left his good map at the General's headquarters, he used a piece of charcoal to draw a cruder version on the table's scrubbed top. From the main schoolroom, where Sharpe's men had spread their blankets, came the sound of women's laughter. His men, Sharpe reflected, had been in the city less than a day yet they had already found a dozen girls. "Best way to learn the language, sir," Harper had a.s.sured him, "and we're all very short on education, sir, as you doubtless know."

"Right!" Hogan kicked the kitchen door shut. "Look at the map, Richard." He showed how the British had come up the coast of Portugal and dislodged the French from Oporto and how, at the same time, the Portuguese army had attacked in the east. "They've retaken Amarante," Hogan said, "which is good because it means Soult can't cross that bridge. He's stuck, Richard, stuck, so he's got no choice. He'll have to strike north through the hills to find a wee road up here"-the charcoal scratched as he traced a wiggly line on the table-"and it's a b.a.s.t.a.r.d of a road, and if the Portuguese can keep going in this G.o.d-awful weather then they're going to cut the road here." The charcoal made a cross. "It's a bridge called Ponte Nova. Do you remember it?"

Sharpe shook his head. He had seen so many bridges and mountain roads with Hogan that he could no longer remember which was which.

"The Ponte Nova," Hogan said, "means the new bridge and naturally it's as old as the hills and one tub of powder will send it crashing down into the gorge and then, Richard, Monsieur Soult is properly b.u.g.g.e.red. But he's only b.u.g.g.e.red if the Portuguese can get there." He looked gloomy, for the weather was not propitious for a swift march into the mountains. "And if they can't stop Soult at the Ponte Nova then there's a half-chance they'll catch him at the Saltador. You remember that, of course?"

"I do remember that, sir," Sharpe said.

The Saltador was a bridge high in the mountains, a stone span that leaped across a deep and narrow gorge, and the spectacular arch had been nicknamed the Leaper, the Saltador. Sharpe remembered Hogan mapping it, remembered a small village of low stone houses, but chiefly remembered the river tumbling in a seething torrent beneath the soaring bridge.

"If they get to the Saltador and cross it," Hogan said, "then we can kiss them goodbye and wish them luck. They'll have escaped." He flinched as a crash of thunder reminded him of the weather. "Ah, well," he sighed, "we can only do our best."

"And just what are we doing?" Sharpe wanted to know.

"Now that, Richard, is a very good question," Hogan said. He helped himself to a pinch of snuff, paused, then sneezed violently. "G.o.d help me, but the doctors say it clears the bronchial tubes, whatever the h.e.l.l they are. Now, as I see it, one of two things can happen." He tapped the charcoal streak marking the Ponte Nova. "If the French are stopped at that bridge then most will surrender, they'll have no choice. Some will take to the hills, of course, but they'll find armed peasants all over the place looking for throats and other parts to cut. So we'll either find Mister Christopher with the army when it surrenders or more likely he'll run away and claim to be an escaped English prisoner. In which case we go into the mountains, find him and put him up against a wall."

"Truly?"

"That worries you?"

"I'd rather hang him."

"Ah, well, we can discuss the method when the time comes. Now the second thing that might happen, Richard, is that the French are not stopped at the Ponte Nova, in which case we need to reach the Saltador."

"Why?"

"Think what it was like, Richard," Hogan said. "A deep ravine, steep slopes everywhere, the kind of place where a few riflemen could be very vicious. And if the French are crossing the bridge then we'll see him and your Baker rifles will have to do the necessary."