„Slit his throat,” Tongue suggested, „it’s easier.”
„Tie him up,” Sharpe insisted, „gag him, and make a good job of it.” He beckoned Vicente forward. „He’s the only one I’ve seen.”
„There must be more,” Vicente declared.
„God knows where they are.”
Sharpe went back to the corner, peered around and saw nothing except the puppy which was now trying to drag the Frenchman’s musket across the cobbles by its sling. He gestured for Harper to join him. „I can’t see anyone,” Sharpe whispered.
„He can’t have been alone,” Harper said.
Yet still no one moved. „I want to get into those trees, Pat,” Sharpe hissed, nodding across the slipway.
„Run like shit, sir,” Harper said, and the two of them sprinted across the open space and threw themselves into the trees. No musket flared, no one shouted, but the puppy, thinking it was a game, followed them. „Go back to your mother!” Harper hissed at the dog which just barked at him.
„Jesus!” Sharpe said, not because of the noise the dog was making, but because he could see boats. The French were supposed to have destroyed or taken every vessel along the Douro, but in front of him, stranded by the falling tide on the muddy outer bank of a great bend in the river, were three huge wine barges. Three! He wondered if they had been holed and, while Harper kept the puppy quiet, he waded through the sticky mud and hauled himself aboard the nearest barge. He was hidden from anyone on the north bank by thick trees, which was perhaps why the French had somehow missed the three vessels and, better still, the barge Sharpe had boarded seemed quite undamaged. There was a good deal of water in its bilge, but when Sharpe tasted it he found it was fresh, so it was rainwater, not the salty tidewater that swept twice daily up the Douro. Sharpe splashed through the flooded bilge and found no gaping rents torn by axes, then he heaved himself up onto a side deck where six great sweeps were lashed together with fraying lengths of rope. There was even a small skiff stored upside down at the stern with a pair of ancient oars, cracked and bleached, lodged halfway beneath its hull.
„Sir!” Harper hissed from the bank. „Sir!” He was pointing across the river and Sharpe looked over the water and saw a red coat. A single horseman, evidently British, stared back at him. The man had a cocked hat so was an officer, but when Sharpe waved he did not return the gesture. Sharpe guessed the man was confused by his green coat.
„Get everyone here, now,” Sharpe ordered Harper, then looked back to the horseman. For a second or two he wondered if it was Colonel Christopher, but this man was heavier and his horse, like most British horses, had a docked tail while Christopher, aping the French, had left his horse’s tail uncut. The man, who was sitting his horse beneath a tree, turned and looked as if he was speaking to someone, though Sharpe could see no one else on the opposite bank, then the man looked back to Sharpe and gestured vigorously toward the three boats.
Sharpe hesitated. It was a safe bet that the man was senior to him and if he crossed the river he would find himself back in the iron discipline of the army and no longer free to act as he wished. If he sent any of his men it would be the same, but then he thought of Luis and he summoned the barber, helping him up over the barge’s heavy gunwale. „Can you manage a small boat?” he asked.
Luis looked momentarily alarmed, then nodded firmly. „I can, yes.”
„Then go over the river and find out what that British officer wants. Tell him I’m reconnoitering the seminary. And tell him there’s another boat at Barca d’Avintas.” Sharpe was making a swift guess that the British had advanced north and had been stopped by the Douro. He assumed the cannonade was from the guns firing at each other across the river, but without boats the British would be helpless. Where the hell was the bloody navy?