Author: Bernard Cornwell
Category: Historical
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Colonel Christopher slid from his horse. Luis, his servant, was riding the spare horse and carrying the great valise filled with Kate’s clothes that Christopher had removed from the House Beautiful once her mother was gone. Christopher threw Luis the reins, then ran to the house, leaped up the front steps and took Kate into his arms. He kissed her and ran his hand from the nape of her neck to the small of her back and felt a tremor go through her. “I could not get here last night, my love,” he told her, “duty called.”
“I knew it would be duty,” Kate said, her face shining as she looked up at him.
“Nothing else would keep me from you,” Christopher said, “nothing,” and he bowed to kiss her forehead, then took a pace back, still holding both her hands, to look into her face. She was, he thought, the most beautiful girl in creation and charmingly modest for she blushed and laughed with embarrassment when he stared at her. “Kate, Kate,” he said chidingly, “I shall spend all my years looking at you.”
Her hair was black and she wore it drawn back from her high forehead, but with a pair of deep curls hanging where the French hussars wore their cadenettes. She had a full mouth, a small nose, and eyes that were touchingly serious at one moment and sparkling with amusement the next. She was nineteen years old, leggy as a colt, full of life and trust and, at this moment, full of love for her handsome man, who was dressed in a plain black coat, white riding breeches and a cocked hat from which hung two golden tassels. “Did you see my mother?” she asked.
“I left her promising that I would search for you.”
Kate looked guilty. “I should have told her…”
“Your mother will want you to marry some man of property who is safe in England,” Christopher said, “not some adventurer like me.” The real reason Kate’s mother would disapprove was because she had hoped to marry Christopher herself, but then the Colonel had discovered the terms of Mr. Savage’s will and had turned his attention to the daughter. “It would do no good to ask her blessing,” he went on, “and if you had told her what we planned then she would most certainly have stopped us.”
“She might not,” Kate suggested in a small voice.
“But this way,” Christopher said, “your mother’s disapproval does not matter, and when she knows we are married then I am persuaded she will learn to like me.”
“Married?”
“Of course,” Christopher said. “You think I do not care for your honor?” He laughed at the shy look on her face. “There is a priest in the village,” he went on, “who I am sure can be persuaded to marry us.”
“I am not…” Kate said, then she brushed at her hair and tugged at her dress, and blushed deeper.
“You are ready,” Christopher anticipated her protest, “and you look enchantingly beautiful.”
Kate blushed more deeply and plucked at the neckline of her dress which she had chosen very carefully from among the summer frocks stored in the Quinta. It was an English dress of white linen, embroidered with bluebells entwined with acanthus leaves, and she knew it suited her. “My mother will forgive me?” she asked.
Christopher very much doubted it. “Of course she will,” he promised her. “I’ve known such situations before. Your dear mother wants only the best for you, but once she has come to know me she will surely recognize that I will care for you as no other.”
“I am sure she will,” Kate said warmly. She had never been quite certain why Colonel Christopher was so sure her mother would disapprove of him. He said it was because he was twenty-one years older than Kate, but he looked much less, and she was sure he loved her, and there were many men married to wives much younger, and Kate did not think her mother could possibly object on grounds of age, but Christopher also claimed to be a relatively poor man and that, he said, would most definitely offend her mother, and Kate thought that more than likely. But Christopher’s poverty did not offend her, indeed it only seemed to make their love more romantic, and now she would marry him.
He led her down the Quinta’s steps. “Is there a carriage here?”
“There’s an old gig in the stables.”
“Then we can walk to the village and Luis can fetch the gig for our return.”
“Now?”
“Yesterday,” Christopher said solemnly, “could not be too soon for me, my love.” He sent Luis to harness the gig, then laughed. “I almost came with inconvenient company!”
“Inconvenient?”
“Some damn fool engineer—forgive my soldier’s vocabulary—wanted to send a broken-down Rifle lieutenant to rescue you! Him and his raga-muffins. I had to order him away. Be gone, I said, and “stand not upon the order of your going.” Poor fellow.”
“Why poor?”
“Dear me! Thirty-something years old, and still a lieutenant? No money, no prospects and a chip on his shoulder as big as the Rock of Gibraltar.” He put her hand under his elbow and walked her beneath the avenue of wisteria. “Oddly enough I know the Rifle lieutenant by reputation. Have you ever heard of Lady Grace Hale? The widow of Lord William Hale?”
“I’ve never heard of either of them,” Kate said.
“What a sheltered life you do lead in Oporto,” Christopher said lightly. “Lord William was a very sound man. I worked closely with him in the Foreign Office for a time, but then he went to India on government business and had the misfortune to return on a naval ship that got tangled up in Trafalgar. He must have been an uncommonly brave fellow, for he died in the battle, but then there was an almighty scandal because his widow set up house with a Rifle officer and this is the very same man. Ye gods, what can Lady Grace have been thinking of?”
“He’s not a gentleman?”
“Certainly not born one!” Christopher said. “God knows where the army fetch some of their officers these days, but they dredged this fellow up from beneath a rock. And the Lady Grace set up an establishment with him! Quite extraordinary. But some well-bred women like to go fishing in the dirty end of the lake, and I fear she must have been one of them.” He shook his head in disapproval. “It gets worse,” he went on, “because she became pregnant and then died giving birth.”
“Poor woman!” Kate said and marveled that her lover could tell this tale so calmly for it would surely remind him of his own first wife’s death. “And what happened to the baby?” she asked.
“I believe the child died too. But it was probably for the best. It ended the scandal, and what future could such an infant have faced? Whatever, the father of the child was this same wretched rifleman who was supposed to whisk you away across the river. I sent him packing, I can tell you!” Christopher laughed at the recollection. “He scowled at me, he looked grim and claimed he had his orders, but I wouldn’t stand his nonsense and told him to make himself scarce. I hardly wanted such a disreputable rogue glowering at my wedding!”
“Indeed not,” Kate agreed.
“Of course I didn’t tell him I knew his reputation. There was no call to embarrass the fellow.”
“Quite right,” Kate said and squeezed her lover’s arm. Luis appeared behind them, driving a small dusty gig that had been stored in the Quinta’s stables and to which he had harnessed his own horse. Christopher stopped halfway to the village and picked some of the small delicate wild narcissi that grew on the road’s verge and he insisted on threading the yellow blossoms into Kate’s black hair, and then he kissed her again and told her she was beautiful and Kate thought this had to be the happiest day of her life. The sun shone, a small wind stirred the flower-bright meadows and her man was beside her.
Father Josefa was waiting at the church, having been summoned by Christopher on his way to the Quinta, but before any ceremony could be performed the priest took the Englishman aside. “I have been worrying,” the priest said, “that what you propose is irregular.”
“Irregular, Father?”
“You are Protestants?” the priest asked and, when Christopher nodded, he sighed. “The church says that only those who take our sacraments can be married
.”
“And your church is right,” Christopher said emolliently. He looked at Kate, standing alone in the white-painted chancel, and he thought she looked like an angel with the yellow flowers in her hair. “Tell me, Father,” he went on, “do you look after the poor in your parish?”
“It is a Christian duty,” Father Josefa said.
Christopher took some golden English guineas from his pocket. They were not his, but from the funds supplied by the Foreign Office to smooth his way, and now he folded the priest’s hand around the coins.
“Let me give you that as a contribution to your charitable work,” he said, “and let me beg you to give us a blessing, that is all. A blessing in Latin, Father, that will enjoin God’s protection on us in these troubled times. And later, when the fighting is over, I shall do my best to persuade Kate to take instruction from you. As I will too, of course.”
Father Josefa, son of a laborer, looked at the coins and thought he had never seen so much money at one time and he thought of all the difficulties the gold could allay. “I cannot say a mass for you,” he insisted.
“I do not want a mass,” Christopher said, “and I do not deserve a mass. I just want a blessing in Latin.” He wanted Kate to believe she was married and, so far as Christopher was concerned, the priest could gabble the words of the funeral rite if he wanted. “Just a blessing from you, Father, is all I want. A blessing from you, from God, and from the saints.” He took another few coins from his pocket and gave them to the priest, who decided a prayer of blessing could not possibly hurt.
“And you will take instruction?” Father Josefa asked.
“I have felt God pulling me toward your church for some time,” Christopher said, “and I believe I must heed His call. And then, Father, you may marry us properly.”
So Father Josefa kissed his scapular and then draped it about his shoulders and he went to the altar where he knelt, made the sign of the cross and then stood and turned to smile at Kate and the tall, handsome man at her side. The priest did not know Kate well, for the Savage family had never been familiar with the villagers and certainly did not attend the church, but the servants at the Quinta spoke approvingly of her and Father Josefa, though he was celibate, could appreciate that this girl was a rare beauty and so his voice was full of warmth as he enjoined God and the holy saints to look with kindness on these two souls. He felt guilty that they would behave as married people even though they were not married, but such things were common and in wartime a good priest knew when to close his eyes.
Kate listened to the Latin that she did not understand and she looked past the priest at the altar where the gently shining silver cross was hung with a black diaphanous veil because Easter had not yet come, and she felt her heart beating and felt her lover’s hand strongly entwined in hers and she wanted to cry with happiness. Her future seemed golden, stretching sunlit and warm and flower-strewn ahead of her. It was not quite the wedding she had envisaged. She had thought to sail back to England, which she and her mother still considered home, there to walk up the aisle of a country church filled with her rubicund relatives and be showered with rose petals and wheat grains and afterward go in a chaise and four to some beamed tavern for a dinner of beef, beer and good red wine, yet she could not have been happier, or maybe she could have been happier if only her mother had been in the church, but she consoled herself that they would be reconciled, she was sure of that, and suddenly Christopher squeezed her hand so hard that it hurt. “Say I do, my dearest,” he ordered her.
Kate blushed. “Oh, I do,” she said, “I truly do.”
Father Josefa smiled at her. The sun streamed through the church’s small high windows, there were flowers in her hair and Father Josefa raised his hand to bless James and Katherine with the sign of the cross and just then the church door creaked open to let in a wash of more sunlight and the stench of a manure heap just outside.
Kate turned to see soldiers in the door. The men were outlined against the light so she could not see them properly, but she could see the guns on their shoulders and she supposed they were French and she gasped in fear, but Colonel Christopher seemed quite unworried as he tilted her face to his and kissed her on the lips. “We are married, my darling,” he said softly.
“James,” she said.
“My dear, dear Kate,” the Colonel responded with a smile, “my dear, dear wife.” Then he turned as harsh steps sounded in the small nave. They were slow steps, heavy steps, the nailed boots unfittingly loud on the ancient stones. An officer was walking toward the altar. He had left his men at the church door and came alone, his long sword clinking inside its metal scabbard as he walked closer. Then he stopped and stared into Kate’s pale face and Kate shuddered because the officer was a scarred, shabby, green-coated soldier with a tanned face harder than iron and a gaze that could only be described as impudent. “Are you Kate Savage?” he asked, surprising her because he put the question in English and she had assumed the newcomer was French.
Kate said nothing. Her husband was beside her and he would protect her from this horrid, frightening and insolent man.
“Is that you, Sharpe?” Colonel Christopher demanded. “By God, it is!” He was oddly nervous and his voice was too high-pitched and he had a struggle to bring it under control. “What the devil are you doing here? I ordered you south of the river, damn you.”
“Got cut off, sir,” Sharpe said, not looking at Christopher, but still staring at Kate’s face which was framed by the narcissi in her hair. “I got cut off by Frogs, sir, a lot of Frogs, so I fought them off, sir, and came to look for Miss Savage.”
“Who no longer exists,” the Colonel said coldly, “but allow me to introduce you to my wife, Sharpe, Mrs. James Christopher.”
And Kate, hearing her new name, thought her heart would burst with happiness.
Because she believed she was married.
THE NEWLY united Colonel and Mrs. Christopher rode back to the Quinta in the dusty gig, leaving Luis and the soldiers to trail after them. Hagman, still alive, was now in a handcart, though the jolting of the unsprung vehicle seemed to give him more pain than the old stretcher. Lieutenant Vicente was also looking ill; indeed he was so pale that Sharpe feared the erstwhile lawyer had caught some disease in the last couple of days. “You should see the doctor when he comes to have another look at Hagman,” Sharpe said. There was a doctor in the village who had already examined Hagman, pronounced him a dying man, but promised he would come to the Quinta that afternoon to look at the patient again. “You look as if you’ve got an upset belly,” Sharpe said.
“It is not an illness,” Vicente said, “not something a doctor can cure.”
“Then what is it?”
“It is Miss Katherine,” Vicente said forlornly.
“Kate?” Sharpe stared at Vicente. “You know her?”
Vicente nodded. “Every young man in Porto knows Kate Savage. When she was sent to school in England we pined for her and when she sailed back it was as if the sun had come out.”
“She’s pretty enough,” Sharpe allowed, then looked again at Vicente as the full force of the lawyer’s words registered. “Oh, bloody hell,” he said.
“What?” Vicente asked, offended.
“I don’t need you to be in love,” Sharpe said.
“I am not in love,” Vicente said, still offended, but it was obvious that he was besotted with Kate Christopher. In the last two or three years he had gazed at her from afar and he had dreamed of her when he was writing his poetry and had been distracted by her memory when he was studying his philosophy and he had woven fantasies about her as he delved through the dusty law books. She was the Beatrice to his Dante, the unapproachable English girl from the big house on the hill and now she was married to Colonel Christopher.
And that, Sharpe thought, explained the silly bitch’s disappearance. She had eloped! But what Sharpe still did not understand was why she would need to conceal such a love from her mother who would surely approve of her choic
e? Christopher, so far as Sharpe could tell, was well born, affluent, properly educated and a gentleman: all the things, indeed, that Sharpe was not. Christopher was also very annoyed and, when Sharpe reached the Quinta, the Colonel faced him from the front steps and again demanded an explanation for the rifleman’s presence in Vila Real de Zedes.
“I told you,” Sharpe said, “we were cut off. We couldn’t cross the river.”
“Sir,” Christopher snapped, then waited for Sharpe to repeat the word, but Sharpe just stared past the Colonel into the Quinta’s hallway where he could see Kate unpacking clothes from the big leather valise.
“I gave you orders,” Christopher said.
“We couldn’t cross the river,” Sharpe said, “because there wasn’t a bridge. It broke. So we went to the ferry, but the damned Frogs had burned it, so now we’re going to Amarante, but we can’t use the main roads because the Frogs are swarming over them like lice, and I can’t go fast because I’ve got a wounded man and is there a room here where we can put him tonight?”
Christopher said nothing for a moment. He was waiting for Sharpe to call him “sir,” but the rifleman stubbornly stayed silent. Christopher sighed and glanced across the valley to where a buzzard circled. “You expect to stay here tonight?” he asked distantly.
“We’ve marched since three this morning,” Sharpe said. He was not sure they had left at three o’clock because he had no watch, but it sounded about right. “We’ll rest now,” he said, “then march again before tomorrow’s dawn.”
“The French,” Christopher said, “will be at Amarante.”
“No doubt they will,” Sharpe said, “but what else am I to do?”
Christopher flinched at Sharpe’s surly tone, then shuddered as Hagman moaned. “There’s a stable block behind the house,” he said coldly, “put your wounded man there. And who the devil is that?” He had noticed Vicente’s prisoner, Lieutenant Olivier.