Sharpe's Enemy (6 page)

‘Willing, sir?’

‘You will be a volunteer, Sharpe. That’s an order.’ He grinned. ‘Tell me what you know of Pot-au-Feu. Marshal Pot-au-Feu.’

Sharpe shook his head. ‘Nothing.’

‘An army of deserters?’

That did ring faint bells. Sharpe remembered a night on the retreat from Burgos, a night when the wind flung rain at the roofless barn where four hundred wet, miserable and hungry soldiers had sheltered. There had been talk there of a haven for soldiers, an army of deserters who were defying the French and the English, but Sharpe had dismissed the stories. They were like other rumours that went through the army. He frowned. ‘Is that true?’

Nairn nodded. ‘Yes.’ He told the story that he had gleaned that morning from Hogan’s papers, from the priest of Adrados, and from a Partisan who had brought the priest to Frenada. It was a story so incredible that Sharpe, at times, stopped Nairn simply to ask for confirmation. Some of the wildest rumours, it seemed, turned out to be fact.

For a year now, perhaps a few months longer, there had been an organized band of deserters, calling themselves an army, living in the mountains of southern Galicia. Their leader was a Frenchman whose real name was unknown, an ex-Sergeant who now styled himself as Marshal Pot-au-Feu. Nairn grinned. ‘Stockpot, I suppose that translates. There’s a story that he was once a cook.’ Under Pot-au-Feu the “army” had prospered. They lived in territory that was unimportant to the French Marshals or to Wellington, they subsisted by terrorizing the countryside, taking what they wanted, and their numbers grew as deserters from every army in the Peninsula heard of their existence. French, British, Portuguese and Spanish, all were in Pot-au-Feu’s ranks.

‘How many, sir?’

Nairn shrugged. ‘We don’t know. Numbers vary between four hundred and two thousand. I’d guess six or seven hundred.’

Sharpe raised his eyebrows. That could be a formidable force. ‘Why have they come south, sir?’

‘That’s a question.’ Nairn blew his nose into the huge wrinkled handkerchief. ‘It seems that the Frogs are being pretty lively in Galicia. I don’t know, bloody rumour again, but there’s a whisper that they might try a winter attack on Braganza then on to Oporto. I don’t believe it for a second, but there’s a school of thought which maintains that Napoleon is in need of some victory, any victory, after the Russian catastrophe. If they capture the north of Portugal then they can trumpet that as some kind of achievement.’ Nairn shrugged. ‘I can’t think why, but we’re told to take the possibility seriously and certainly there’s a lot of Frog cavalry lumbering about in Galicia and our belief is that they drove our friend Pot-au-Feu towards us. And he promptly sends his British deserters to attack a village called Adrados where they murder a small Spanish garrison and go on to make themselves free with all the ladies. Now half of bloody Spain thinks that the Protestant English are reverting to the Wars of Religion. That, Sharpe, is the story in its rancid little nutshell.’

‘So we go up there and turn the bastards inside out?’

Nairn smiled. ‘Not yet, Sharpe, not yet. We have a problem.’ He got to his feet, crossed to the table, rummaged through the mess of papers and litter, and returned with a small, black leather-bound book. He tossed the book to Sharpe. ‘Did you see a tall, thin man when you arrived here? Silver hair? Elegant?’

Sharpe nodded. He had noticed the man because of the flawless uniform, the look of bored distinction, and the obvious wealth of the man’s spurs, sword and other ornaments. ‘I did.’

‘That’s him.’ Nairn pointed at the book.

Sharpe opened it. It was new, the covers stiff, and on the title page he read ‘Practical Instructions to the Young Officer in the Art of Warfare with Special Reference to the Engagements now Proceeding in Spain’. The author was named as Colonel Sir Augustus Farthingdale. The book cost five shillings, published by Richard Phillips, and was printed by Joyce Gold of Shoe Lane in London. The pages were mostly uncut, but Sharpe’s eye was caught by a sentence that ran over a page and so he took out his pen-knife and slit the next two pages apart. He finished the sentence and smiled. Nairn saw the smile. ‘Read it to me.’

‘ “The men, during the march, should keep their files, and no indecent language or noise be allowed”.’

‘God! I missed that one.’ Nairn grinned. ‘You will note that the book has an introduction by my friend the Chaplain General. He recommends frequent divine service to keep the men quiet and ordered.’

Sharpe closed the book. ‘So why is he a problem?’

‘Because Colonel Sir Augustus Farthingdale has taken himself a wife. A Portuguese wife. Some filly of a good family, it seems, but a Papist. God knows what the Chaplain General would say to that! Anyway, this spring flower of Sir Augustus’ autumn wants to go to Adrados to pray at some bloody shrine where miracles are two a penny and guess who meets her there. Pot-au-Feu. Lady Farthingdale is now a hostage. If any troops go within five miles of Adrados they’ll turn her over to the rapists and murderers who make up their ranks. On the other hand, Sir Augustus can have her back on payment of five hundred guineas.’

Sharpe whistled, Nairn grinned. ‘Aye, it’s a pretty price for a pair of legs to wrap round you in bed. Anyway, Sir Augustus swears the price is fair, that he will do anything, anything to bring his bride safe home. God, Sharpe, there’s nothing so disgusting as the sight of an old man in love with a woman forty years younger.’ Sharpe wondered if there was some jealousy in Nairn’s words.

‘Why would they want to ransom her, sir, if she’s their insurance against attack?’

‘You’re not a fool, are you. God knows the answer to that. They have deemed to send us a letter and the letter informs us that we may send the money on a certain date, at a certain time, and so on and so on. I want you to go.’

‘Alone?’

‘You can take one other man, that’s all.’

‘The money?’

‘Sir Augustus will provide it. He claims his lady wife is a pearl beyond price so he’s busy writing notes of hand to get her back.’

‘And if they won’t release her?’

Nairn smiled. He was huddled back in his dressing gown. ‘I don’t believe they will. They just want the money, that’s all. Sir Augustus made a half-hearted offer to deliver it, but I turned him down much to his relief. I suppose two hostages are better than one and a Knight of the Realm makes a useful bargaining piece. Anyway, I need a soldier to go up there.’

Sharpe raised the book. ‘He’s a soldier.’

‘He’s a bloody author, Sharpe, all words and wind. No, you go, man. Take a look at their defences. Even if you don’t bring the filly back you’ll know how to go and get her.’

Sharpe smiled. ‘A rescue?’

Nairn nodded. ‘A rescue. Sir Augustus Farthingdale, Major, is our government’s military representative to the Portuguese government which means, between you and me, damn all except that he gets to eat a lot of dinners and meet pretty young ladies. How he stays so thin, God only knows. He is, however, popular in Lisbon. The government likes him. His wife, moreover, is supposed to be from some high-up family and we’re not going to get letters of thanks if we casually allow her to be raped by a gang of scum in the mountains. We have got to get her out. Once that’s done our hands are free and we can cook Pot-au-Feu in a very hot cauldron. You’re happy to go?’

Sharpe looked through the window. A score of smoke trails rose vertically from the chimneys of Frenada, smoke fading into a flawless cold sky. Of course he would go. Nairn had not let Sir Augustus go because the Colonel might become a hostage himself, but Nairn had not expressed any such fear about Sharpe. He smiled at the Major General. ‘I assume I’m expendable, sir.’

‘You’re a soldier, aren’t you? Of course you’re expendable!’

Sharpe was still smiling. He was a soldier, and a lady needed rescuing, and was that not what soldiers throughout history had done? The smile became wider. ‘Of course I’ll go, sir. With pleasure.’

In the churches of Spain they were praying for revenge on the perpetrators of Adrados’s misery. The prayers were being answered.

La Entrada de Dios.

The Gateway of God.

It looked it, too, from two hundred feet below on a bright winter morning as Sharpe and Harper walked their patient horses up the track which wound between rocks whose shadows still harboured the night’s frost. Adrados lay just beyond the saddle of the pass, but the pass was the Gateway of God.

To left and right were rocky peaks, a nightmare landscape, savage and sharp. In front of them was the smooth grass of the road through the Sierra. Guarding that road was the Gateway.

To the right of the pass was the castle. The Castillo de la Virgen. El Cid himself had known that castle, had stood on its ramparts before riding out against the curved scimitars of Islam. Legend said that three Muslim Kings had died in the dungeons beneath the Castle of the Virgin, died refusing to profess Christianity, and their ghosts were said to wander wraith-like in the Gateway of God. The castle had stood years beyond number, built before the Wars of God were won, but when the Muslims had been thrown back across the sea, the castle had begun to decay. The Spanish had moved from the high places of refuge, back down the passes into the softer plains. Yet the castle still stood, a refuge for foxes and ravens, its keep and gatehouse still holding the southern edge of the Gateway of God.

And on the northern side, two hundred yards from the castle, was the Convent. It was a huge building, low and square, and its windowless walls seemed to spring from the granite of the Sierra’s rocks. Here was the place where the Virgin had stood, here was where they had built a shrine about her Footfall and a castle to protect it, and the Convent had no windows because the nuns who had once lived in its rich cloisters were supposed not to look upon the world, only at the mystery of the smooth patch of granite in their gold painted chapel.

The nuns had gone, taken in leather-curtained carts to the mother house at Leon, and the soldiers whose surcoats had decorated the walls of the castle had gone too. The road still led through the hills, a road that wound up from the deep- ravined rivers of the Portuguese border, but there were newer and better roads to the south. The Gateway of God guarded only Adrados now, a valley of sheep, thorns, and Pot-au-Feu’s desperate band of deserters.

‘They’ll have seen us by now, sir.’

‘Yes.’

Sharpe pulled out the watch that Sir Augustus Farthingdale had lent him. They were early so he stopped the three horses. The third horse carried the gold and, it was hoped, would provide a mount for Lady Farthingdale if Pot-au-Feu kept his word and released her on payment of the ransom. Harper climbed off his horse, stretched his huge muscles, and stared at the buildings on the skyline. ‘They’d be bastards to attack, sir.’

‘True.’

An attack on the Gateway from the west would be an uphill assault, steeply uphill, with no chance of approaching the pass unseen. Sharpe turned. It had taken him and Harper three hours to climb from the river, and for much of that time they would have been visible to a man with a glass on the castle ramparts. The rocks to left and right of the pass were jumbled and steep, impassable to artillery, barely climbable by infantry. Whoever held the Gateway of God barred the one road through the Sierra, and it was fortunate for the British that the French had never needed these hills and so no battle had ever been fought up this impossible slope. The hills had no value because the roads to the south by-passed the Sierra, making a defence of Spain impossible in these hills, but to Pot-au-Feu the old buildings were a perfect refuge.

High above them were birds, circling slowly, and Sharpe saw Patrick Harper staring lovingly at them. Harper loved birds. They were his private retreat from the army.

‘What are they?’

‘Red kite, sir. They’ll be up from the valley looking for carrion.’

Sharpe grunted. He feared that they might provide lunch for the birds. The closer they rode to the high valley the more he believed it was a trap. He did not believe that Farthingdale’s bride would be released. He believed the money would be taken and he wondered whether he or Harper would leave alive. He had told the Sergeant that he need not come, but the big Irishman had jeered at such pusillanimity. If Sharpe was going, he would go.

‘Come on. Let’s go on.’

Sharpe had not liked Sir Augustus Farthingdale. The Colonel had been condescending to the Rifleman, amused when he discovered that Sharpe did not possess a watch and could not, therefore, time his arrival at the Convent to the exact moment stipulated by Pot-au-Feu’s letter. Ten minutes past eleven, exactly. Yet beneath the Colonel’s bored voice Sharpe had detected a panic about his wife. The Colonel was in love. At sixty he had found his bride, and now she was being snatched from him, and though the Colonel tried to hide every emotion beneath a mask of elegant politeness, he could not hide the passion which his bride engendered. Sharpe had not liked him, but Sharpe had felt sorry for him, and he would try to restore the lost bride.

The red kites slid their spread wings and forked tails over the castle ramparts and Sharpe could now see men on the walls. They were on the ramparts of the keep, on the turret of a great gatetower that faced into the pass, and behind the castellations of the wall around the courtyard. Their muskets were tiny lines against the pale blue of the December sky.

The road was zig-zagging now as the pass narrowed. It crossed the saddle of the pass close to the Castle wall, too close, and Sharpe pulled his horse off the road and set it at the steep grass bank of the pass’s last few yards. The Convent was to their left now and Sharpe could see how it had been built on the very edge of the pass so that its eastern wall, facing the village, was just a single storey high while the western wall, looking towards Portugal, was two floors high. In the southern wall, facing across the pass, a big hole had been crudely smashed into the lower floor. The hole was covered by a blanket. Sharpe nodded at it. ‘You’d think they’d put a gun in there.’