Sharpe smiled. "So how many Catholics have we got?"

"There's me, sir, and Donnelly and Carter and McNeill. Oh, and Slattery, of course. The rest of you are all going to h.e.l.l."

"Slattery!" Sharpe said. "Fergus isn't a Christian."

"I never said he was, sir, but he goes to ma.s.s."

Sharpe could not help laughing. "So I'll let the Catholics go to ma.s.s," he said.

Harper grinned. "That means they'll all be Catholic by Sunday."

"This is the army," Sharpe said, "so anyone wanting to convert has to get my permission. But you can take the other four to ma.s.s and you bring them back by midday, and if I find any of the other lads down there I'll hold you responsible."

"Me?"

"You're a sergeant, aren't you?"

"But when the lads see Lieutenant Vicente's men going to the village, sir, they won't see why they're not allowed."

"Vicente's Portuguese. His men know the local rules. We don't. And sooner or later there's going to be a fight over girls that'll bring tears to your eyes and we don't need it, Pat." The problem was not so much the girls, though Sharpe knew they could be a problem if one of his riflemen became drunk, and that was the true problem. There were two taverns in the village and both served cheap wine out of barrels and half his men would become paralyzed with drink given half a chance. And there was a temptation to relax the rules because the situation of the riflemen was so strange. They were out of touch with the army, not sure what was happening and without enough to do, and so Sharpe invented more work for them. The fort was now sprouting extra stone redoubts and Sharpe found tools in the Quinta's barn and made his men clear the track through the woods and carry bundles of firewood up to the watchtower, and when that was done he led long patrols into the surrounding countryside. The patrols were not intended to seek out the enemy, but to tire the men so that they collapsed at sundown and slept till dawn, and each dawn Sharpe held a formal parade and put men on a charge if he found a b.u.t.ton undone or a sc.r.a.p of rust on a rifle lock. They moaned at him, but there was no trouble with the villagers.

The barrels in the village taverns were not the only danger. The cellar of the Quinta was full of port barrels and racks of bottled white wine, and Williamson managed to find the key that was supposedly hidden in a kitchen jar, then he and Sims and Gataker got helplessly drunk on Savages' finest, a carouse that ended well past midnight with the three men hurling stones at the Quinta's shutters.

The three had ostensibly been on picquet under the eye of Dodd, a reliable man, and Sharpe dealt with him first. "Why didn't you report them?"

"I didn't know where they were, sir." Dodd kept his eyes on the wall above Sharpe's head. He was lying, of course, but only because the men always protected each other. Sharpe had when he was in the ranks and he did not expect anything else of Matthew Dodd, just as Dodd did not expect anything except a punishment.

Sharpe looked at Harper. "Got work for him, Sergeant?"

"The cook was complaining that all the kitchen copper needed a proper cleaning, sir."

"Make him sweat," Sharpe said, "and no wine ration for a week." The men were ent.i.tled to a pint of rum a day and in the absence of the raw spirit Sharpe was doling out red from a barrel he had commandeered from the Quinta's cellar. He punished Sims and Gataker by making them wear full uniform and greatcoats and then march up and down the drive with rucksacks filled with stones. They did it under Harper's enthusiastic eye and when they vomited with exhaustion and the effects of a hangover the Sergeant kicked them to their feet, made them clear the vomit off the driveway with their own hands, and then keep marching.

Vicente arranged for a mason from the village to brick up the wine cellar's entrance, and while that was being done, and while Dodd scrubbed the coppers with sand and vinegar, Sharpe took Williamson up into the woods. He was tempted to flog the man, for he was very close to hating Williamson, but Sharpe had once been flogged himself and he was reluctant to inflict the same punishment. Instead he found an open s.p.a.ce between some laurels and used his sword to scratch two lines in the mossy turf. The lines were a yard long and a yard apart. "You don't like me, do you, Williamson?"

Williamson said nothing. He just stared at the lines with red eyes. He knew what they were.

"What are my three rules, Williamson?"

Williamson looked up sullenly. He was a big man, heavy-faced with long side whiskers, a broken nose and smallpox scars. He came from Leicester where he had been convicted of stealing two candlesticks from St. Nicholas's Church and offered the chance to enlist rather than hang. "Don't thieve," he said in a low voice, "don't get drunk and fight proper."

"Are you a thief?"

"No, sir."

"You b.l.o.o.d.y are, Williamson. That's why you're in the army. And you got drunk without permission. But can you fight?"

"You know I can, sir."

Sharpe unbuckled his sword belt and let it and the weapon drop, then took off his shako and green jacket and threw them down. "Tell me why you don't like me," he demanded.

Williamson stared off into the laurels.

"Come on!" Sharpe said. "Say what you b.l.o.o.d.y like. You're not going to be punished for answering a question."

Williamson looked back at him. "We shouldn't be here!" he blurted out.

"You're right."

Williamson blinked at that, but carried on. "Ever since Captain Murray died, sir, we've been out on our own! We should be back with the battalion. It's where we belong. You were never our officer, sir. Never!"

"I am now."

"It ain't right."

"So you want to go home to England?"

"The battalion's there, so I do, aye."

"But there's a war on, Williamson. A b.l.o.o.d.y war. And we're stuck in it. We didn't ask to be here, don't even want to be here, but we are. And we're staying." Williamson looked at Sharpe resentfully, but said nothing. "But you can go home, Williamson," Sharpe said and the heavy face looked up, interested. "There are three ways for you to go home. One, we get orders for England. Two, you get wounded so badly that they send you home. And three, you put your feet on the scratch and you fight me. Win or lose, Williamson, I promise to send you home as soon as I can by the first b.l.o.o.d.y ship we find. All you have to do is fight me." Sharpe walked to one of the lines and put his toes against it. This was how the pugilists fought, they toed the line and then punched it out with bare fists until one man dropped in b.l.o.o.d.y, battered exhaustion. "Fight me properly, mind," Sharpe said, "no dropping after the first hit. You'll have to draw blood to prove you're trying. Hit me on the nose, that'll do it." He waited. Williamson licked his lips.

"Come on!" Sharpe snarled. "Fight me!"

"You're an officer," Williamson said.

"Not now, I'm not. And no one's watching. Just you and me, Williamson, and you don't like me and I'm giving you a chance to thump me. And you do it properly and I'll have you home by summer." He did not know how he would keep that promise, but nor did he think he would have to try, for Williamson, he knew, was remembering the epic fight between Harper and Sharpe, a fight that had left both men reeling, yet Sharpe had won it and the riflemen had watched it and they learned something about Sharpe that day.

And Williamson did not want to learn the lesson again. "I won't fight an officer," he said with a.s.sumed dignity.

Sharpe turned his back, picked up his jacket. "Then find Sergeant Harper," he said, "and tell him you're to do the same punishment as Sims and Gataker." He turned back. "On the double!"

Williamson ran. His shame at refusing the fight might make him more dangerous, but it would also diminish his influence over the other men who, even though they would never know what had happened in the woods, would sense that Williamson had been humiliated. Sharpe buckled his belt and walked slowly back. He worried about his men, worried that he would lose their loyalty, worried that he was proving a bad officer. He remembered Bias Vivar and wished he had the Spanish officer's quiet ability to enforce obedience through sheer presence, but perhaps that effortless authority came with experience. At least none of his men had deserted. They were all present, except for Tarrant and the few who were back in Coimbra's military hospital recovering from the fever.

It was a month now since Oporto had fallen. The fort on the hilltop was almost finished and, to Sharpe's surprise, the men had enjoyed the hard labor. Daniel Hagman was walking again, albeit slowly, but he was mended enough to work and Sharpe placed a kitchen table in the sun where, one by one, Hagman stripped, cleaned and oiled every rifle. The fugitives who had fled from Oporto had now returned to the city or found refuge elsewhere, but the French were making new fugitives. Wherever they were ambushed by partisans they sacked the closest villages and, even without the provocation of ambush, they plundered farms mercilessly to feed themselves. More and more folk came to Vila Real de Zedes, drawn there by rumors that the French had agreed to spare the village. No one knew why the French should do such a thing, though some of the older women said it was because the whole valley was under the protection of Saint Joseph whose life-size statue was in the church, and the village's priest, Father Josefa, encouraged the belief. He even had the statue taken from the church, hung with fading narcissi and crowned with a laurel wreath, and then carried about the village boundary to show the saint the precise extent of the lands needing his guardianship. Vila Real de Zedes, folk believed, was a sanctuary from the war and ordained as such by G.o.d.

May arrived with rain and wind. The last of the blossoms were blown from the trees to make damp rills of pink and white petals in the gra.s.s. Still the French did not come and Manuel Lopes reckoned they were simply too busy to bother with Vila Real de Zedes. "They've got troubles," he said happily. "Silveira's giving them a bellyache at Amarante and the road to Vigo has been closed by partisans. They're cut off! No way home! They're not going to worry us here." Lopes frequently went to the nearby towns where he posed as a peddler selling religious trinkets and he brought back news of the French troops. "They patrol the roads," he said, "they get drunk at night and they wish they were back home."

"And they look for food," Sharpe said.

"They do that too," Lopes agreed.

"And one day," Sharpe said, "when they're hungry, they'll come here."

"Colonel Christopher won't let them," Lopes said. He was walking with Sharpe along the Quinta's drive, watched by Harris and Cooper who stood guard at the gate, the closest Sharpe allowed his Protestant riflemen to the village. Rain was threatening. Gray sheets of it fell across the northern hills and Sharpe had twice heard rumbles of thunder which might have been the sound of the guns at Amarante, but seemed too loud. "I shall leave soon," Lopes announced.

"Back to Braganca?"

"Amarante. My men are recovered. It is time to fight again."