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Christopher’s task was to advise the government whether it

would be prudent to keep British troops in Portugal.
    The decision, of course, would not rest with James Christopher. He might be a coming man

in the Foreign Office, but the decision to stay or withdraw would be taken by the Prime

Minister, though what mattered was the quality of advice being given to the Prime

Minister. The soldiers, of course, would want to stay because war brought promotion, and

the Foreign Secretary wanted the troops to remain because he detested the French, but

other men in Whitehall took a more sanguine view and had sent James Christopher to take

Portugal’s temperature. The Whigs, enemies of the administration, feared another

debacle like that which had led to Corunna. Better, they said, to recognize reality and

come to an understanding with the French now, and the Whigs had enough influence in the

Foreign Office to have James Christopher posted to Portugal. The army, which had not been

told what his true business was, nevertheless agreed to brevet him as a lieutenant colonel

and appoint him as an aide to General Cradock, and Christopher used the army’s couriers to

send military intelligence to the General and political dispatches to the embassy in

Lisbon whence, though they were addressed to the Ambassador, the messages were sent

unopened to London. The Prime Minister needed sound advice and James Christopher was

supposed to supply the facts that would frame the advice, though of late he had been busy

making new facts. He had seen beyond the war’s messy realities to the golden future. James

Christopher, in short, had seen the light.
    None of which occupied his thoughts as he rode out of Oporto less than a cannon’s range

ahead of the French troops. A couple of musket shots were sent in his direction, but

Christopher and his servant were superbly mounted on fine Irish horses and they quickly

outran the halfhearted pursuit. They took to the hills, galloping along the terrace of a

vineyard and then climbing into a forest of pine and oak where they stopped to rest the

horses.
    Christopher gazed back westward. The sun had dried the roads after the night’s heavy rain

and a smear of dust on the horizon showed where the French army’s baggage train was advancing

toward the newly captured city of Oporto. The city itself, hidden now by hills, was marked

by a great plume of dirty smoke spewing up from burning houses and from the busy batteries

of cannons that, though muted by distance, sounded like an unceasing thunder. No French

troops had bothered to pursue Christopher this far. A dozen laborers were deepening a

ditch in the valley and ignored the fugitives on the nearby road as if to suggest that the

war was the city’s business, not theirs. There were no British riflemen among the fugitives,

Christopher noted, but he would have been surprised to see Sharpe and his men this far from

the city. Doubtless by now they were dead or captured. What had Hogan been thinking of in

asking Sharpe to accompany him? Was it because the shrewd Irishman suspected something?

But how could Hogan know? Christopher worried at the problem for a few moments, then

dismissed it. Hogan could know nothing; he was just trying to be helpful. “The French did

well today,” Christopher remarked to his Portuguese servant, a young man with receding

hair and a thin, earnest face.
    “The devil will get them in the end, senhor,” the servant answered.
    “Sometimes mere men have to do the devil’s business,” Christopher said. He drew a small

telescope from his pocket and trained it on the far hills. “In the next few days,” he said,

still gazing through the glass, “you will see some things that will surprise you.”
    “If you say so, senhor,” the servant answered.
    “But ‘there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your

philosophy.’”
    “If you