"It is just that they are my people." Vicente shrugged.

"I know," Sharpe said, and he tried to imagine the French army in the dales of Yorkshire or in the streets of London. He tried to imagine the cottages burning, the alehouses sacked and the women screaming, but he could not envisage that horror. It seemed oddly impossible. Harper could doubtless imagine his home being violated, could probably recall it, but Sharpe could not.

"Why do they do it?" Vicente asked with a genuine note of anguish.

Sharpe collapsed the telescope then scuffed the earth with the toe of his right boot. On the day after they had climbed to the watchtower he had dried the rain-soaked boots in front of the fire, but he had left them too close and the leather had cracked. "There are no rules in war," he said uncomfortably.

"There are rules," Vicente insisted.

Sharpe ignored the protest. "Most soldiers aren't saints. They're drunks, thieves, rogues. They've failed at everything, so they join the army or else they're forced to join by some b.a.s.t.a.r.d of a magistrate. Then they're given a weapon and told to kill. Back home they'd be hanged for it, but in the army they're praised for it, and if you don't hold them hard then they think any killing is permitted. Those lads,"-he nodded down the hill to the men grouped under the cork oaks-"know d.a.m.n well they'll be punished if they step out of line. But if I let them off the leash? They'd run this country ragged, then make a mess of Spain and they'd never stop till someone killed them." He paused, knowing he had been unfair to his men. "Mind you, I like them," he went on. "They're not the worst, not really, just unlucky, and they're d.a.m.n fine soldiers. I don't know." He frowned, embarra.s.sed. "But the Frogs? They don't have any choice. It's called conscription. Some poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d is working as a baker or a wheelwright one day and the next he's in uniform and being marched half a continent away. They resent it, and the French don't flog their soldiers so there's no way of holding them."

"Do you flog?"

"Not me." He thought about telling Vicente that he had been flogged once, long ago, on a hot parade ground in India, then decided it would sound like boasting. "I just take them behind a wall and beat them up," he said instead. "It's quicker."

Vicente smiled. "I could not do that."

"You could always give them a writ instead," Sharpe said. "I'd rather be beaten up than get tangled by a lawyer." Maybe, he thought, if he had beaten Williamson the man might have settled to authority. Maybe not. "So how far is the river?" he asked.

"Three hours? Not much longer."

"b.u.g.g.e.r all happening here, we might as well keep going."

"But the French?" Vicente suggested nervously.

"None here, none there." Sharpe nodded to the south. "No smoke, no birds coming out of trees like a cat was after them. And you can smell French dragoons a mile off. Their horses all have saddle sores, they stink like a cesspit."

So they marched. The dew was still on the gra.s.s. They went through a deserted village that looked undamaged and Sharpe suspected the villagers had seen them coming and hidden themselves. There were certainly people there, for some drying washing was draped over two laurel bushes, but though Sergeant Macedo bellowed that they were friends no one dared to appear. One of the pieces of washing was a fine man's shirt with bone b.u.t.tons and Sharpe saw Cresacre dawdling so that he would have a moment on his own when the others were ahead. "The penalty for theft," Sharpe called to his men, "is hanging. And there are good hanging trees here." Cresacre pretended he had not heard, but hurried on all the same.

They stopped when they reached the Douro. Barca d'Avintas was still some way to the west and Sharpe knew his men were tired and so they bivouacked in a wood high on a bluff above the river. No boats moved there. Far off to the south a single spire of smoke wavered in the sky, and to the west there was a shimmering haze that Sharpe suspected was the smoke of Oporto's cooking fires. Vicente said Barca d'Avintas was little more than an hour away, but Sharpe decided they would wait till next morning before marching again. Haifa dozen of the men were limping because their boots were rotting and Gataker, who had been wounded in the thigh, was feeling the pain. One of Vicente's men was walking barefoot and Sharpe was thinking of doing the same because of the condition of his boots. But there was a still better reason for delay. "If the French are there," he explained, "then I'd rather sneak up on them in the dawn. And if they're not we've got all day to make some sort of raft."

"What about us?" Vicente asked.

"You still want to go to Oporto?"

"That's where the regiment is from," Vicente said, "it's home. The men are anxious. Some have families there."

"See us to Barca d'Avintas," Sharpe suggested, "then go home. But go the last few miles slowly, go carefully. You'll be all right." He did not believe that, but he could not say what he did believe.

So they rested. Picquets watched from the wood's edge while the others slept and some time after midday, when the heat made everyone drowsy, Sharpe thought he heard thunder far away, but there were no rain clouds in sight and that meant the thunder had to be gunfire, but he could not be sure. Harper was sleeping and Sharpe wondered if he was just hearing the echo of the big Irishman's snores, but then he thought he heard the thunder again, though it was so faint that he could just have imagined it. He nudged Harper.

"What is it?"

"I'm trying to listen," Sharpe said.

"And I'm trying to sleep."

"Listen!" But there was silence except for the murmur of the river and the rustle of leaves in the east wind.

Sharpe thought about taking a patrol to reconnoiter Barca d'Avintas, but decided against it. He did not want to divide his already perilously small force, and whatever dangers lurked at the village could wait till morning. At nightfall he thought he heard the thunder again, but then the wind gusted and s.n.a.t.c.hed the sound away.

Dawn was silent, still, and the gently misted river looked as polished as steel. Luis, who had attached himself to Vicente's men, had proved to be a good cobbler and had sewn up some of the more decrepit boots. He had volunteered to shave Sharpe who had shaken his head. "I'll have a shave when we're across the river," he said.

"I pray you don't grow a beard," Vicente said, and then they marched, following a track that meandered along the high ground. The track was rough, overgrown and deeply rutted and the going was slow, but they saw no enemy, and then the land flattened, the track turned into a lane that ran beside vineyards and Barca d'Avintas, its white walls lit bright by the rising sun, was ahead.

There were no French there. Two score of folk had moved back into the plundered houses and they looked alarmed at the uniformed ruffians who came across the small bridge over the stream, but Vicente calmed them. There were no boats, the people said, the French had taken or burned them all. They rarely saw the French, they added. Sometimes a patrol of dragoons would clatter through the village, stare across the river, steal some food and then go away. They had little other news. One woman who sold olive oil, eggs and smoked fish in Oporto's market said that the French were all guarding the river bank between the city and the sea, but Sharpe did not put much weight on her words. Her husband, a bent giant with gnarled hands, guardedly allowed that it might be possible to make a raft from some of the village's broken furniture.

Sharpe put picquets on the village's western margin where Hagman had been wounded. He climbed a tree there and was amazed that he could see some of Oporto's outlying buildings on the hilly horizon. The big, flat-roofed white building that he remembered pa.s.sing when he first met Vicente was the most obvious and he was appalled that they were so close. He was no more than three miles from the big white building and surely the French would have their own picquets on that hill. And surely they would have a telescope up there to watch the city approaches. But he was committed to crossing the river here and so he clambered down and was just brushing off his jacket when a wild-haired young man in ragged clothes mooed at him. Sharpe stared back, astonished. The man mooed again, then grinned inanely before giving a cackle of laughter. He had dirty red hair, bright blue eyes and a slack, dribbling mouth and Sharpe realized he was an idiot and probably harmless. Sharpe remembered Ronnie, a village idiot in Yorkshire, whose parents would shackle him to the stump of an elm on the village green where Ronnie would bellow at the grazing cows, talk to himself and growl at the girls. This man was much the same, but he was also importunate, plucking at Sharpe's elbow as he tried to drag the Englishman toward the river.

"Made yourself a friend, sir?" Tongue asked, amused.

"He's being a b.l.o.o.d.y nuisance, sir," Perkins said.

"He don't mean harm," Tongue said, "just wants you to go for a swim, sir."

Sharpe pulled away from the idiot. "What's your name?" he asked, then realized there was probably little point in speaking English to a Portuguese lunatic, but the idiot was so pleased at being spoken to that he gibbered wildly, grinned and bounced up and down on his toes. Then he plucked at Sharpe's elbow again.

"I'll call you Ronnie," Sharpe said, "and what do you want?"

His men were laughing now, but Sharpe had intended to go to the river bank anyway to see what kind of challenge his raft would face and so he let Ronnie pull him along. The idiot made conversation all the way, but none of it made any sense. He took Sharpe right to the river bank and, when Sharpe tried to detach his surprisingly strong grip, Ronnie shook his head and tugged Sharpe on through some poplars, down through thick bushes and then at last he relinquished his grip on Sharpe's arm and clapped his hands.

"You're not such an idiot after all, are you?" Sharpe said. "In fact you're a b.l.o.o.d.y genius, Ronnie."

There was a boat. Sharpe had seen the ferry burned and sunk on his first visit to Barca d'Avintas, but now realized there must have been two craft and this was the second. It was a flat, wide and c.u.mbersome vessel, the kind of boat that could carry a small flock of sheep or even a carriage and its horses, and it had been weighted with stones and sunk in this wide ditch-like creek that jutted under the trees to make a small backwater. Sharpe wondered why the villagers had not shown it to him before and guessed that they feared all soldiers and so they had hidden their most valuable boat until peaceful times returned. The French had destroyed every other boat and had never guessed that this second ferry still existed. "You're a b.l.o.o.d.y genius," Sharpe told Ronnie again, and he gave him the last of his bread, which was the only gift he had.

But he also had a boat.

And then he had something else for the thunder he had heard so distantly the previous day sounded again. Only this time it was close and it was unmistakable and it was not thunder at all and Christopher had lied and there was no peace in Portugal.

It was cannon fire.

Chapter 8.

The sound of the firing was coming from the west, channeled up the steep-sided river valley, and Sharpe could not tell whether the battle was being fought on the northern or southern bank of the Douro. Nor could he even tell whether it was a battle. Perhaps the French had established batteries to protect the city against an attack from the sea and those batteries might just be firing at inquisitive frigates. Or maybe the guns were merely practice firing. But one thing was certain, he would never know what the guns were doing unless he got closer.

He ran back to the village, followed by the shambling Ronnie who was bellowing his inarticulate achievement to the world. Sharpe found Vicente. "The ferry's still here," Sharpe said, "he showed me." He pointed to Ronnie.

"But the guns?" Vicente was bemused.

"We're going to find out what they're doing," Sharpe said, "but ask the villagers to raise the ferry. We might yet need it. But we'll go toward the city."

"All of us?" Vicente asked.

"All of us. But tell them I want that boat floating by mid-morning."

Ronnie's mother, a shrunken and bent woman swathed in black, retrieved her son from Sharpe's side and berated him in a shrill voice. Sharpe gave her the last chunk of cheese from Harper's pack, explained that Ronnie was a hero, then led his motley group westward along the river bank.