„Back to Braganca?”
„Amarante. My men are recovered. It is time to fight again.”
„You could do one thing before you go,” Sharpe said, ignoring the implied criticism in Lopes’s last words. „Tell those refugees to get out of the village. Tell them to go home. Tell them Saint Joseph is overworked and he won’t protect them when the French come.”
Lopes shook his head. „The French aren’t coming,” he insisted.
„And when they do,” Sharpe continued, just as insistently, „I can’t defend the village. I don’t have enough men.”
Lopes looked disgusted. „You’ll just defend the Quinta,” he suggested, „because it belongs to an English family.”
„I don’t give a damn about the Quinta,” Sharpe said angrily. „I’ll be up on that hilltop trying to stay alive. For Christ’s sake, there’s less than sixty of us! And the French will send fifteen hundred.”
„They won’t come,” Lopes said. He reached up to pluck some shriveled white blossom from a tree. „I never did trust Savages’ port,” he said.
„Trust?”
„An elder tree,” Lopes said, showing Sharpe the petals. „The bad port makers put elderberry juice in the wine to make it look richer.” He tossed away the flowers and Sharpe had a sudden memory of that day in Oporto, the day the refugees drowned when the French had taken the city, and he remembered how Christopher had been about to write him the order to go back across the Douro and the cannonball had struck the tree to shower pinkish-red petals which the Colonel had thought were cherry blossoms. And Sharpe remembered the look on Christopher’s face at the mention of the name Judas.
„Jesus!” Sharpe said.
„What?” Lopes was taken aback by the force of the imprecation.
„He’s a bloody traitor,” Sharpe said.
„Who?”
„The bloody Colonel,” Sharpe said. It was only instinct that had so suddenly persuaded him that Christopher was betraying his country, an instinct grounded in the memory of the Colonel’s look of outrage when Sharpe said the blossoms came from a Judas tree. Ever since then Sharpe had been wavering between a half suspicion of Christopher’s treachery and a vague belief that perhaps the Colonel was engaged in some mysterious diplomatic work, but the recollection of that look on Christopher’s face and the realization that there had been fear as well as outrage in it convinced Sharpe. Christopher was not just a thief, but a traitor. „You’re right,” he told an astonished Lopes, „it is time to fight. Harris!” He turned toward the gate.
„Sir?”
„Find Sergeant Harper for me. And Lieutenant Vicente.”
Vicente came first and Sharpe could not explain why he was so certain that Christopher was a traitor, but Vicente was not inclined to debate the point. He hated Christopher because he had married Kate, and he was as bored as Sharpe at the undemanding life at the Quinta. „Get food,” Sharpe urged him. „Go to the village, ask them to bake bread, buy as much salted and smoked meat as you can. I want every man to have five days’ rations by nightfall.”
Harper was more cautious. „I thought you had orders, sir.”
„I do, Pat, from General Cradock.”
„Jesus, sir, you don’t disobey a general’s orders.”
„And who fetched those orders?” Sharpe asked. „Christopher did. So he lied to Cradock just as he’s lied to everyone else.” He was not certain of that, he could not be certain, but nor could he see the sense in just dallying at the Quinta. He would go south and trust that Captain Hogan would protect him from General Cradock’s wrath. „We’ll march at dusk tonight,” he told Harper. „I want you to check everyone’s equipment and ammunition.”
Harper smelt the air. „We’re going to have rain, sir, bad rain.”
„That’s why God made our skins waterproof,” Sharpe said.
„I was thinking we might do better to wait till after midnight, sir. Give the rain a chance to blow over.”
Sharpe shook his head. „I want to get out of here, Pat. I feel bad about this place suddenly. We’ll take everyone south. Toward the river.”
„I thought the Crapauds had stripped out all the boats?”
„I don’t want to go east”-Sharpe jerked his head toward Amarante where rumor said a battle still raged-”and there’s nothing but Crapauds to the west.” The north was all mountain, rock and starvation, but to the south lay the river and he knew British forces were somewhere beyond the Douro and Sharpe had been thinking that the French could not have destroyed every boat along its long, rocky banks. „We’ll find a boat,” he promised Harper.