Sharpes Havoc   ::   Корнуэлл Бернард

„I wasthinking it might have wounded a Moor.”

„They were still hunting with bows and arrows in my grandfather’s time,” she said.

„Your family was here then?”

„Savages started in Portugal in 1711,” she said proudly. She had been gazing southwest, in the direction of Oporto, and Sharpe knew she was watching the road in hope of seeing a horseman come, but the passing days brought no sign of her husband, nor even a letter. The French did not come either, though Sharpe knew they must have seen his men toiling on the summit as they piled rocks to make ramparts across the two paths and struggled up those tracks with barrels of water that were put into the great cleared pit on the peak. The men grumbled about being made to work like mules, but Sharpe knew they were happier tired than idle. Some, encouraged by Williamson, complained that they wasted their time, that they should have abandoned this godforsaken hill with its broken tower and found a way south to the army, and Sharpe reckoned they were probably right, but he had his orders and so he stayed.

„What it is,” Williamson told his cronies, „is the bloody frow. We’re humping stone and he’s tickling the Colonel’s wife.” And if Sharpe had heard that opinion he might even have agreed with it too, even though he was not tickling Kate, but he was enjoying her company and had persuaded himself that, orders or no orders, he ought to protect her against the French.

But the French did not come and nor did Colonel Christopher. Manuel Lopes came instead.

He arrived on a black horse, galloping up the driveway and then curbing the stallion so fast that it reared and twisted and Lopes, instead of being thrown off as ninety-nine out of a hundred other riders would have been, stayed calm and in control. He soothed the horse and grinned at Sharpe. „You are the Englishman,” he said in English, „and I hate the English, but not so much as I hate the Spanish, and I hate the Spanish less than I hate the French.” He slid down from the saddle and held out a hand. „I am Manuel Lopes.”

„Sharpe,” Sharpe said.

Lopes looked at the Quinta with the eye of a man sizing it up for plunder. He was an inch less than Sharpe’s six feet, but seemed taller. He was a big man, not fat, just big, with’a strong face and quick eyes and a swift smile. „If I was a Spaniard,” he said, „and I nightly thank the good Lord that I am not, then I would call myself something dramatic.