Sharpe 3-Book Collection 2: Sharpe’s Havoc, Sharpe’s Eagle, Sharpe’s Gold by Bernard Cornwell Page A

once across the Tamega there is a bridge over the Douro at Pêso da Régua.”
    “And are the Frogs on the far side of the Tamega?”
    Vicente shook his head. “We were told General Silveira is there.”
    Being told that a Portuguese general was waiting across a river was not the same as knowing it, Sharpe thought. “And there’s a ferry over the Douro,” he asked, “not far from here?”
    Vicente nodded. “At Barca d’Avintas.”
    “How close is it?”
    Vicente thought for a heartbeat. “Maybe a half-hour’s walk? Less, probably.”
    “That close?” But if the ferry was close to Oporto then the French could already be there. “And how far is Amarante?”
    “We could be there tomorrow.”
    “Tomorrow,” Sharpe echoed, then collapsed the telescope. He stared south. Was that dust thrown up by the French? Were they on their way to Barca d’Avintas? He wanted to use the ferry because it was so much nearer, but also riskier. Would the French be expecting fugitives to use the ferry? Or perhaps the invaders did not even know it existed. There was only one way to find out. “How do we get to Barca d’Avintas?” he asked Vicente, gesturing back down the track that led through the cork oaks. “The same way we came?”
    “There is a quicker path,” Vicente said.
    “Then lead on.”
    Some of the men were sleeping, but Harper kicked them awake and they all followed Vicente off the road and down into a gentle valley where vines grew in neatly tended rows. From there they climbed another hill and walked through meadows dotted with the small haystacks left from the previous year. Flowers studded the grass and twined about the witch-hat haystacks, while blossoms filled the hedgerows. There was no path, though Vicente led the men confidently enough.
    “You know where you’re going?” Sharpe asked suspiciously after a while.
    “I know this landscape,” Vicente assured the rifleman, “I know it well.”
    “You grew up here, then?”
    Vicente shook his head. “I was raised in Coimbra. That’s far to the south, senhor , but I know this landscape because I belong”—he checked and corrected himself—“belonged to a society that walks here.”
    “A society that walks in the countryside?” Sharpe asked, amused.
    Vicente blushed. “We are philosophers, senhor , and poets.”
    Sharpe was too astonished to respond immediately, but finally managed a question. “You were what?”
    “Philosophers and poets, senhor .”
    “Jesus bloody Christ,” Sharpe said.
    “We believe, senhor ,” Vicente went on, “that there is inspiration inthe countryside. The country, you see, is natural, while towns are made by man and so harbor all men’s wickedness. If we wish to discover our natural goodness then it must be sought in the country.” He was having trouble finding the right English words to express what he meant. “There is, I think,” he tried again, “a natural goodness in the world and we seek it.”
    “So you come here for inspiration?”
    “We do, yes.” Vicente nodded eagerly.
    Giving inspiration to a lawyer, Sharpe thought sourly, was like feeding fine brandy to a rat. “And let me guess,” he said, barely hiding his derision, “that the members of your society of rhyming philosophers are all men. Not a woman among you, eh?”
    “How did you know?” Vicente asked in amazement.
    “I told you, I guessed.”
    Vicente nodded. “It is not, of course, that we do not like women. You must not think that we do not want their company, but they are reluctant to join our discussions. They would be most welcome, of course, but…” His voice tailed away.
    “Women are like that,” Sharpe said. Women, he had found, preferred the company of rogues to the joys of conversation with sober and earnest young men like Lieutenant Vicente who harbored romantic dreams about the world and whose thin black mustache had patently been grown in an attempt to make himself look older and more sophisticated and only succeeded