Colonel Christopher curbed his horse, took the toothpick from his mouth, and stared in astonishment at Sharpe. „What on earth are you doing here, Lieutenant?”

„Ordered to stay with you, sir,” Sharpe answered. He glanced again at the valise. Had Christopher been looting the House Beautiful?

The Colonel saw where Sharpe was looking and snarled at his servant, „Close it, damn you, close it.” Christopher, even though his servant spoke good English, used his own fluent Portuguese, then looked back to Sharpe. „Captain Hogan ordered you to stay with me. Is that what you’re trying to convey?”

„Yes, sir.”

„And how the devil are you supposed to do that, eh? I have a horse, Sharpe, and you do not. You and your men intend to run, perhaps?”

„Captain Hogan gave me an order, sir,” Sharpe answered woodenly. He had learned as a sergeant how to deal with difficult senior officers. Say little, say it tonelessly, then say it all again if necessary.

„An order to do what?” Christopher inquired patiently.

„Stay with you, sir. Help you find Miss Savage.”

Colonel Christopher sighed. He was a black-haired man in his forties, but still youthfully handsome with just a distinguished touch of gray at his temples. He wore black boots, plain black riding breeches, a black cocked hat and a red coat with black facings. Those black facings had prompted Sharpe, on his previous meeting with the Colonel, to ask whether Christopher served in the Dirty Half Hundred, the 50th regiment, but the Colonel had treated the question as an impertinence. „All you need to know, Lieutenant, is that I serve on General Cradock’s staff. You have heard of the General?” Cradock was the General in command of the British forces in southern Portugal and if Soult kept marching then Cradock must face him. Sharpe had stayed silent after Christopher’s response, but Hogan had later suggested that the Colonel was probably a „political” soldier, meaning he was no soldier at all, but rather a man who found life more convenient if he was in uniform. „I’ve no doubt he was a soldier once,” Hogan had said, „but now? I think Cradock got him from Whitehall.”