Bernard Cornwell - Sharpe’s Havoc - The Northern Portugal Campaign, Spring 1809

‘He must go on trial,’ Vicente said.

Sharpe stopped and stared at the Lieutenant. ‘He must what?’ he asked, astonished. ‘Go on trial?’

‘Of course.’

‘In my country,’ Sharpe said, ‘they hang a man for rape.’

‘Not without a trial,’ Vicente protested and Sharpe guessed that the Portuguese soldiers had wanted to kill the prisoner straight away and that Vicente had stopped them out of some high-minded idea that a trial was necessary.

‘Bloody hell,’ Sharpe said, ‘you’re a soldier now, not a lawyer. You don’t give them a trial. You chop their hearts out.’

Most of Barca d’Avintas’s inhabitants had fled the dragoons, but some had stayed and most of them were now crowded about a house guarded by a half-dozen of Vicente’s men. A dead dragoon, stripped of shirt, coat, boots and breeches, lay face down in front of the church. He must have been leaning against the church wall when he was shot for he had left a smear of blood down the limewashed stones. Now a dog sniffed at his toes. The soldiers and villagers parted to let Sharpe and Vicente into the house where the young dragoon officer, fair-haired, thin and sullen-faced, was being guarded by Sergeant Macedo and another Portuguese soldier. The Lieutenant had managed to pull on his breeches, but had not had time to button them and he was now holding them up by the waist. As soon as he saw Sharpe he began gabbling in French. ‘You speak French?’ Sharpe asked Vicente.

‘Of course,’ Vicente said.

But Vicente, Sharpe reflected, wanted to give this fair-haired Frenchman a trial and Sharpe suspected that if Vicente interrogated the man he would not learn the real truth, merely hear the excuses, so Sharpe went to the house door. ‘Harper!’ He waited till the Sergeant appeared. ‘Get me Tongue or Harris,’ he ordered.

‘I will talk to the man,’ Vicente protested.

‘I need you to talk to someone else,’ Sharpe said and he went to the back room where a girl – she could not have been a day over fourteen – was weeping. Her face was red, eyes swollen and her breath came in fitful jerks interspersed with grizzling moans and cries of despair. She was wrapped in a blanket and had a bruise on her left cheek. An older woman, dressed all in black, was trying to comfort the girl who began to cry even louder the moment she saw Sharpe, making him back out of the room in embarrassment. ‘Find out from her what happened,’ he told Vicente, then turned as Harris came through the door. Harris and Tongue were Sharpe’s two educated men. Tongue had been doomed to the army by drink, while the red-haired, ever cheerful Harris claimed to be a volunteer who wanted adventure. He was getting plenty now, Sharpe reflected. ‘This piece of shit,’ Sharpe told Harris, jerking his head at the fair-haired Frenchman, ‘was caught with his knickers round his ankles and a young girl under him. Find out what his excuse is before we kill the bastard.’

He went back to the street and took a long drink from his canteen. The water was warm and brackish. Harper was waiting by a horse trough in the centre of the street and Sharpe joined him. ‘All well?’

‘There’s two more Frogs in there.’ Harper flicked a thumb towards the church behind him. ‘Live ones, I mean.’ The church door was guarded by four of Vicente’s men.

‘What are they doing in there?’ Sharpe asked. ‘Praying?’

The tall Ulsterman shrugged. ‘Looking for sanctuary, I’d guess.’

‘We can’t take the bastards with us,’ Sharpe said, ‘so why don’t we just shoot them?’

‘Because Mister Vicente says we mustn’t,’ Harper said. ‘He’s very particular about prisoners is Mister Vicente. He’s a lawyer, isn’t he?’

‘He seems halfway decent for a lawyer,’ Sharpe admitted grudgingly.

‘The best lawyers are six feet under the daisies, so they are,’ Harper said, ‘and this one won’t let me go and shoot those two bastards. He says they’re just drunks, which is true. They are. Skewed to the skies, they are.’

‘We can’t cope with prisoners,’ Sharpe said. He wiped the sweat from his forehead, then pulled his shako back on. The visor was coming away from the crown, but there was nothing he could do about that here. ‘Get Tongue,’ he suggested, ‘and see if he can find out what these two were up to. If they’re just drunk on communion wine then march them out west, strip them of anything valuable and boot them back where they came from. But if they raped anyone …’

‘I know what to do, sir,’ Harper said grimly.

‘Then do it,’ Sharpe said. He nodded to Harper, then walked on past the church to where the stream joined the river. The small stone bridge carried the road eastwards through a vineyard, past a walled cemetery and then twisted through pastureland beside the Douro. It was all open land and if more French came and he had to retreat from the village then he dared not use that road and he hoped to God he had time to ferry his men over the Douro and that thought made him go back up the street to look for oars. Or maybe he could find a rope? If the rope were long enough he could rig a line across the river and haul the boat back and forth and that would surely be quicker than rowing.

He was wondering if there were bell ropes in the small church that might stretch that far when Harris came out of the house and said that the prisoner’s name was Lieutenant Olivier and he was in the 18th Dragoons and that the Lieutenant, despite being caught with his breeches round his ankles, had denied raping the girl. ‘He said French officers don’t behave like that,’ Harris said, ‘but Lieutenant Vicente says the girl swears he did.’

‘So did he or didn’t he?’ Sharpe asked irritably.

‘Of course he did, sir. He admitted as much after I thumped him,’ Harris said happily, ‘but he still insists she wanted him to. He says she wanted comforting after a sergeant raped her.’

‘Wanted comforting!’ Sharpe said scathingly. ‘He was just second in line, wasn’t he?’

‘Fifth in line,’ Harris said tonelessly, ‘or so the girl says.’

‘Jesus,’ Sharpe swore. ‘Why don’t I just give the bugger a smacking, then we’ll string him up.’ He walked back to the house where the civilians were screaming at the Frenchman, who gazed at them with a disdain that would have been admirable on a battlefield. Vicente was protecting the dragoon and now appealed to Sharpe for help to escort Lieutenant Olivier to safety. ‘He must stand trial,’ Vicente insisted.

‘He just had a trial,’ Sharpe said, ‘and I found him guilty. So now I’ll thump him and then I’ll hang him.’

Vicente looked nervous, but he did not back down. ‘We cannot lower ourselves to their level of barbarity,’ he claimed.

‘I didn’t rape her,’ Sharpe said, ‘so don’t place me with them.’

‘We fight for a better world,’ Vicente declared.

For a second Sharpe just stared at the young Portuguese officer, scarce believing what he had heard. ‘What happens if we leave him here, eh?’

‘We can’t!’ Vicente said, knowing that the villagers would take a far worse revenge than anything Sharpe was proposing.

‘And I can’t take prisoners!’ Sharpe insisted.

‘We can’t kill him’ – Vicente was blushing with indignation as he confronted Sharpe and he would not back down – ‘and we can’t leave him here. It would be murder.’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ Sharpe said in exasperation. Lieutenant Olivier did not speak English, but he seemed to understand that his fate was in the balance and he watched Sharpe and Vicente like a hawk. ‘And who’s going to be the judge and jury?’ Sharpe demanded, but Vicente got no opportunity to answer for just then a rifle fired from the western edge of the village and then another sounded and then there was a whole rattle of shots.