Sharpe's Havoc

Bernard Cornwell

Sharpe’s Havoc

Sharpe’s Havoc is for William T. Oughtred who knows why

CHAPTER 1

Miss Savage was missing. And the French were coming.

The approach of the French was the more urgent crisis. The splintering noise of sustained musket fire was sounding just outside the city and in the last ten minutes five or six ca

Richard Sharpe, Lieutenant in the second battalion of His Majesty’s 95th Rifles, unbuttoned his breeches and pissed on the narcissi in the House Beautiful’s front flower bed. The ground was soaked because there had been a storm the previous night. Lightning had flickered above the city, thunder had billowed across the sky and the heavens had opened so that the flower beds now steamed gently as the hot sun drew out the night’s moisture. A howitzer shell arched overhead, sounding like a ponderous barrel rolling swiftly over attic floorboards. It left a small gray trace of smoke from its burning fuse. Sharpe looked up at the smoke tendril, judging from its curve where the howitzer had to be emplaced. „They’re getting too bloody close,” he said to no one in particular.

„You’ll be drowning those poor bloody flowers, so you will,” Sergeant Harper said, then added a hasty „sir” when he saw Sharpe’s face.

The howitzer shell exploded somewhere above the tangle of alleys close to the river and a heartbeat later the French ca

Meanwhile Miss Savage was still missing.

Captain Hogan appeared on the front porch of the House Beautiful. He carefully closed the door behind him and then looked up to heaven and swore fluently and impressively. Sharpe buttoned his breeches and his two dozen riflemen inspected their weapons as though they had never seen such things before. Captain Hogan added a few more carefully chosen words, then spat as a French round shot trundled overhead. „What it is, Richard,” he said when the ca

„Bless you,” Sergeant Harper said.

Captain Hogan sneezed and Harper smiled.

„Her name,” Hogan said, ignoring Harper, „is Catherine or, rather, Kate. Kate Savage, nineteen years old and in need, my God, how she is in need, of a thrashing! A hiding! A damned good smacking, that’s what she needs, Richard. A copper-sheathed, goddamned bloody good walloping.”

„So where the hell is she?” Sharpe asked.

„Her mother thinks she might have gone to Vila Real de Zedes,” Captain Hogan said, „wherever in God’s holy hell that might be. But the family has an estate there. A place where they go to escape the summer heat.” He rolled his eyes in exasperation.

„So why would she go there, sir?” Sergeant Harper asked.

„Because she’s a fatherless nineteen-year-old girl,” Hogan said, „who insists on having her own way. Because she’s fallen out with her mother. Because she’s a bloody idiot who deserves a ruddy good hiding. Because, oh I don’t know why! Because she’s young and knows everything, that’s why.” Hogan was a stocky, middle-aged Irishman, a Royal Engineer, with a shrewd face, a soft brogue, graying hair and a charitable disposition. „Because she’s a bloody halfwit, that’s why,” he finished.

„This Vila Real de whatever,” Sharpe said, „is it far? Why don’t we just fetch her?”

„Which is precisely what I’ve told the mother you will do, Richard. You will go to Vila Real de Zedes, you will find the wretched girl and you will get her across the river. We’ll wait for you in Vila Nova and if the damned French capture Vila Nova then we’ll wait for you in Coimbra.” He paused as he penciled these instructions on a scrap of paper. „And if the Frogs take Coimbra we’ll wait for you in Lisbon, and if the bastards take Lisbon we’ll be pissing our breeches in London and you’ll be God knows where. Don’t fall in love with her,” he went on, handing Sharpe the piece of paper, „don’t get the silly girl pregnant, don’t give her the thrashing she bloody well deserves and don’t, for the love of Christ, lose her, and don’t lose Colonel Christopher either. Am I plain?”

„Colonel Christopher is coming with us?” Sharpe asked, appalled.

„Didn’t I just tell you that?” Hogan inquired i