Читать книгу Sharpe 3-Book Collection 4: Sharpe’s Escape, Sharpe’s Fury, Sharpe’s Battle - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 17

‘This is splendid, Sharpe, quite splendid.’ Colonel Law-ford paced through his new quarters, opening doors and inspecting rooms. ‘The taste in furniture is a little florid, wouldn’t you say? A hint of vulgarity, perhaps? But very splendid, Sharpe. Thank you.’ He stooped to look in a gilt-framed mirror and smoothed down his hair. ‘Is there a cook on the premises?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And stabling, you say?’

‘Out the back, sir.’

‘I shall inspect it,’ Lawford said grandly. ‘Lead on.’ It was evident from his loftily genial manner that he had received no new complaint from Slingsby about Sharpe’s rudeness. ‘I must say, Sharpe, you make a very good quartermaster when you put your mind to it. Maybe we should confirm you in the post. Mister Kiley is not improving, the doctor tells me.’

‘I wouldn’t do that, sir,’ Sharpe said as he led Lawford down through the kitchens, ‘on account that I’m thinking of applying to the Portuguese service. You’d only have to find someone to replace me.’

‘You were thinking of what?’ Lawford asked, shocked by the news.

‘The Portuguese service, sir. They’re still asking for British officers, and so far as I can see they’re not very particular. They probably won’t notice my manners.’

‘Sharpe!’ Lawford spoke brusquely, then stopped abruptly because they had gone into the stable yard where Captain Vicente was trying to calm Sarah Fry, who was now wearing one of Beatriz Ferreira’s dresses, a concoction of black silk that Major Ferreira’s wife had worn when mourning the death of her mother. Sarah had taken the dress gratefully enough, but was repelled by its ugliness and was only placated when she was assured that it was the only garment left in the house. Lawford, oblivious to the dress and noticing simply that she was damned attractive, took off his hat and bowed to her.

Sarah ignored the Colonel, turning on Sharpe instead. ‘They took everything!’

‘Who?’ Sharpe asked. ‘What?’

‘My trunk! My clothes! My books!’ Her money had disappeared too, but she said nothing of that, instead she demanded, in fluent Portuguese from a stable boy whether her trunk really had been left on the cart. It had ‘Everything!’ she said to Sharpe.

‘Allow me to present Miss Fry, sir,’ Sharpe said. ‘This is Colonel Lawford, miss, our commanding officer.’

‘You’re English!’ Lawford said brightly.

‘They took everything!’ Sarah rounded on the stable boy and screamed at him, though it was hardly his fault.

‘Miss Fry, sir, was the governess here,’ Sharpe explained over the noise, ‘and somehow got left behind when the family left.’

‘The governess, eh?’ Lawford’s enthusiasm for Sarah Fry noticeably diminished as he understood her status. ‘You’d best ready yourself to leave the city, Miss Fry,’ he said. ‘The French will be here in a day or two!’

‘I have nothing!’ Sarah protested.

Harper, who had brought the Colonel and his entourage to the house, now led Lawford’s four horses into the yard. ‘You want me to rub Lightning down, sir?’ he asked the Colonel.

‘My fellows will do that. You’d best get back to Captain Slingsby.’

‘Yes, sir, at once, sir, of course, sir,’ Harper said, not moving.

‘Everything!’ Sarah wailed. The cook came into the yard and shouted at the English girl to be silent and Sarah, in fury, turned on her.

‘If you’ll permit it, sir,’ Sharpe said, raising his voice over the din, ‘Major Forrest told me to find some turpentine. He wants it to ruin the salt meat, sir, and Sergeant Harper will be a great help to me.’

‘A help?’ Lawford, distracted by Sarah’s grief and the cook’s protest, was not really paying attention.

‘He’s a better sense of smell than me, sir,’ Sharpe said.

‘He’s a better sense of…’ the Colonel began to ask, then frowned at Sarah who was shouting at the cook in Portuguese. ‘Do whatever you want, Sharpe,’ Lawford said, ‘whatever you want, and for God’s sake take Miss whatever-her-name-is away, will you?’

‘He promised to take the trunk off the wagon!’ Sarah appealed to Lawford. She was angry and, because he was a colonel, she seemed to expect him to do something.

‘I’m sure it can all be sorted out,’ Lawford said, ‘things usually can. Will you escort Miss, er, the lady away, Sharpe? Perhaps the battalion wives can assist her. You really do have to leave, my dear.’ The Colonel knew he would get no sleep while this woman protested about her missing possessions. Any other time he would have been happy enough to entertain her, for she was a pretty young thing, but he needed some rest. He ordered his servants to carry his valise upstairs, told Lieutenant Knowles to post a pair of sentries on the house and another pair in the stable yard, then turned away, immediately looking back. ‘And about that proposition of yours, Sharpe,’ he said. ‘Don’t do anything rash.’

‘About the turpentine, sir?’

‘You know exactly what I mean,’ Lawford said testily. ‘The Portuguese, Sharpe, the Portuguese. Oh, my God!’ This last was because Sarah had begun to cry.

Sharpe tried to soothe her, but she was devastated by the loss of her trunk and her small savings. ‘Miss Fry,’ Sharpe said, and she ignored him. ‘Sarah!’ He put his hands gently on her shoulders. ‘You’ll get everything back!’

She stared up at him, said nothing.

‘I’ll sort Ferragus out,’ Sharpe said, ‘if he’s still here.’

‘He is!’

‘Then calm down, lass, and leave it to me.’

‘My name is Miss Fry,’ Sarah said, offended at the ‘lass’.

‘Then calm down, Miss Fry. We’ll get your things back.’

Harper rolled his eyes at the promise. ‘Turpentine, sir.’

Sharpe turned to Vicente. ‘Where will we find turpentine?’

‘The Lord alone knows,’ Vicente said. ‘A timber yard? Don’t they treat timber with it?’

‘So what are you doing now?’ Sharpe asked him.

‘My Colonel gave me permission to go to my parents’ house,’ Vicente said, ‘just to make sure it’s safe.’

‘Then we’ll come with you,’ Sharpe said.

‘There’s no turpentine there,’ Vicente said.

‘Bugger the turpentine,’ Sharpe said, then remembered a lady was present. ‘Sorry, miss. We’re just keeping you safe, Jorge,’ he added, then turned back to Sarah. ‘I’ll take you down to the battalion wives later,’ he promised her, ‘and they’ll look after you.’

‘The battalion wives?’ she asked.

‘The soldiers’ wives,’ Sharpe explained.

‘There are no officers’ wives?’ Sarah asked, jealous of her precarious position. A governess might be a servant, but she was a privileged one. ‘I expect to be treated with respect, Mister Sharpe.’

‘Miss Fry,’ Sharpe said, ‘you can walk down the hill now and you can find an officer’s wife. There are some. None in our battalion, but you can look, and you’re welcome to try. But we’re looking for turpentine and if you want protection you’d best stay with us.’ He put on his shako and turned away.

‘I’ll stay with you,’ Sarah said, remembering that Ferragus was loose somewhere in the city.

The four of them walked higher into the upper town, going into a district of big, elegant buildings that Vicente explained was the university. ‘It has been here a long time,’ he said reverently, ‘almost as long as Oxford.’

‘I met a man from Oxford once,’ Sharpe said, ‘and killed him.’ He laughed at the shocked expression on Sarah’s face. He was in a strange mood, wanting to work mischief and careless of the consequences. Law-ford could go to hell, he thought, and Slingsby with him, and Sharpe just wanted to be free of them. Damn the army, he thought. He had served it well and it had turned on him, so the army could go to hell as well.

Vicente’s house was one of a terrace, all of them shuttered. The door was locked, but Vicente retrieved a key from beneath a big stone hidden in a space under the stone steps. ‘First place a thief would look,’ Sharpe said.

Yet no thief had been inside. The house smelt musty, for it had been closed up for some weeks, but everything was tidy. The bookshelves in the big front room had been emptied and their contents taken down to the cellar where they were stored in wooden crates, each crate carefully labelled with its contents. Other boxes held vases, pictures and busts of the Greek philosophers. Vicente carefully locked the cellar, hid its key under a floorboard, ignored Sharpe’s advice that it was the first place a thief would look, and went upstairs where the beds lay bare, their blankets piled in cupboards. ‘The French will probably break in,’ he said, ‘but they’re welcome to the blankets.’ He went into his old room and came out with a faded black robe. ‘My student gown,’ he said happily. ‘We used to attach a coloured ribbon to show what discipline we studied and every year, at the end of lectures, we would burn the ribbons.’

‘Sounds like a barrel of fun,’ Sharpe said.

‘They were good times,’ Vicente said. ‘I liked being a student.’

‘You’re a soldier now, Jorge.’

‘Till the French are gone,’ he said, folding the gown away with the blankets.

He locked the house, hid the key and took Sharpe, Harper and Sarah through the university. The students and the teachers had all gone, fled to Lisbon or to the north of the country, but the university servants still guarded the buildings and one of them accompanied Sarah and the three soldiers, unlocking the doors and bowing them into the rooms. There was a library, a fantastic place of gilding, carving and leather-bound books that Sarah gazed at in rapture. She reluctantly left the old volumes to follow Vicente as he showed them the rooms where he had received his lectures, then climbed to the laboratories where clocks, balances and telescopes gleamed on shelves. ‘The French will love this lot,’ Sharpe said scornfully.

‘There are men of learning in the French army,’ Vicente said. ‘They don’t make war on scholarship.’ He stroked an orrery, a glorious device of curved brass strips and crystal spheres which imitated the movement of the planets. ‘Learning,’ he said earnestly, ‘is above war.’

‘It’s what?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Learning is sacred,’ Vicente insisted. ‘It goes above boundaries.’

‘Quite right,’ Sarah chimed in. She had been silent ever since they had left Ferreira’s house, but the university reassured her that there was a world of civilized restraint, far from threats of slavery in Africa. ‘A university,’ she said, ‘is a sanctuary.’

‘Sanctuary!’ Sharpe was amused. ‘You think the Crapauds will get in here, take one look and say it’s sacred?’

‘Mister Sharpe!’ Sarah said. ‘I cannot abide bad language.’

‘What’s wrong with “Crapaud”? It means toad.’

‘I know what it means,’ Sarah said, but blushed, for she had momentarily thought Sharpe had said something else.

‘I think the French are only interested in food and wine,’ Vicente said.

‘I can think of something else,’ Sharpe said, and received a stern look from Sarah.

‘There is no food here,’ Vicente insisted, ‘just higher things.’

‘And the Crapauds will get in here,’ Sharpe said, ‘and they’ll see beauty. They’ll see value. They’ll see something they can’t have. So what will they do, Pat?’

‘Mangle the bloody lot, sir,’ Harper said promptly. ‘Sorry, miss.’

‘The French will guard it,’ Vicente insisted. ‘They have men of honour, men who respect learning.’

‘Men of honour!’ Sharpe said scornfully. ‘I was in a place called Seringapatam once, Jorge. In India. There was a palace there, stuffed with gold! You should have seen it! Rubies and emeralds, golden tigers, diamonds, pearls, more riches than you can dream of! So the men of honour guarded it. The officers, Jorge. They put a reliable guard on it to stop us heathens getting in and stripping it bare. And you know what happened?’

‘It was saved, I hope,’ Vicente said.

‘The officers stripped it bare,’ Sharpe said. ‘Cleaned it up properly. Lord Wellington was one of them and he must have made a penny or two out of that lot. There wasn’t a tiger’s golden whisker left by the time they’d all done.’

‘This will be safe,’ Vicente insisted, but unhappily.

They left the university, going back downhill into the smaller streets of the lower town. Sharpe had the impression that the folk of quality, the university people and most of the richer inhabitants, had left the city, but there were thousands of ordinary men and women left. Some were packing and leaving, but most had fatalistically accepted that the French would come and they just hoped to survive the occupation. A clock struck eleven somewhere and Vicente looked worried. ‘I must get back.’

‘Something to eat first,’ Sharpe said, and pushed into a tavern. It was crowded, and the people inside were not happy to see soldiers, for they did not understand why their city was being abandoned to the French, but they reluctantly made space at a table. Vicente ordered wine, bread, cheese and olives, then again made an attempt to leave. ‘Don’t worry,’ Sharpe said, stopping him, ‘I’ll get Colonel Lawford to explain to your Colonel. Tell him you were on an important mission. You know how to deal with senior officers?’

‘Respectfully,’ Vicente said.

‘Confuse them,’ Sharpe said. ‘Except for the ones who can’t be confused like Wellington.’

‘But isn’t he leaving?’ Sarah asked. ‘Going back to England?’

‘Lord love you, no, miss,’ Sharpe said. ‘He’s got a surprise ready for the Frogs. A chain of forts, miss, clear across the land north of Lisbon. They’ll break their heads there and we’ll sit back and watch them. We’re not leaving.’

‘I thought you were going back to England,’ Sarah said. She had conceived an idea of travelling with the army, preferably with a family of quality, and making a new start. Quite how she would do that without money, clothes or a written character, she did not know, but nor was she willing to give in to the despair she had felt earlier in the morning.

‘We’re not going home till the war’s won,’ Sharpe said, ‘but what are we going to do with you? Send you home?’

Sarah shrugged. ‘I have no money, Mister Sharpe. No money, no clothes.’

‘You’ve got family?’

‘My parents are dead. I have an uncle, but I doubt he’ll be willing to help me.’

‘The more I see of families,’ Sharpe said, ‘the happier I am to be an orphan.’

‘Sharpe!’ Vicente said reprovingly.

‘You’ll be all right, miss,’ Harper intervened.

‘How?’ Sarah demanded.

‘Because you’re with Mister Sharpe now, miss. He’ll see you’re all right.’

‘So why did Ferragus lock you in?’ Sharpe asked.

Sarah blushed and looked down at the table. ‘He…’ she began, but did not know how to finish.

‘Was going to?’ Sharpe asked, knowing exactly what she was reluctant to say. ‘Or did?’

‘Was going to,’ she said in a low voice, then she recovered her poise and looked up at him. ‘He said he would sell me in Morocco. He said they give a lot of money for…’ Her voice trailed away.

‘That bastard has got a right bloody treat coming,’ Sharpe said. ‘Sorry, miss. Bad language. What we’ll do is find him, take his money and give it to you. Simple, eh!’ He grinned at her.

‘I said you’d be all right,’ Harper said, as though the deed were already done.

Vicente had taken no part in this conversation, for a big man had come into the tavern and sat next to the Portuguese officer. The two had been talking and Vicente, his face worried, now turned to Sharpe. ‘This man is called Francisco,’ he said, ‘and he tells me there is a warehouse full of food. It is locked away, hidden. The man who owns it is planning to sell it all to the French.’

Sharpe looked at Francisco. A rat, he thought, a street rat. ‘What does Francisco want?’ he asked.

‘Want?’ Vicente did not understand the question.

‘What does he want, Jorge? Why is he telling us?’

There was a brief conversation in Portuguese. ‘He says,’ Vicente translated, ‘that he does not want the French to get any food.’

‘He’s a patriot, is he?’ Sharpe asked sceptically. ‘So how does he know about this food?’

‘He helped deliver it. He is, what do you say? A man with a cart?’

‘A carter,’ Sharpe said. ‘So he’s a patriotic carter?’

There was another brief conversation before Vicente interpreted. ‘He says the man did not pay him.’

That made a lot more sense to Sharpe. Maybe Francisco was a patriot, but revenge was a much more believable motive. ‘But why us?’ he asked.

‘Why us?’ Vicente was again puzzled.

‘There’s at least a thousand soldiers down at the quay,’ Sharpe explained, ‘and more marching through the city. Why does he come to us?’

‘He recognized me,’ Vicente said. ‘He grew up here, like me.’

Sharpe sipped his wine, staring hard at Francisco who looked, he thought, shifty as hell, but everything made sense if he really had been rooked out of his money. ‘Who’s the man storing the food?’

Another conversation. ‘He says the man’s name is Manuel Lopez,’ Vicente said. ‘I’ve not heard of him.’

‘Pity it’s not bloody Ferragus,’ Sharpe said. ‘Sorry, miss. So how far is this warehouse?’

‘Two minutes away,’ Vicente said.

‘If there’s as much as he says,’ Sharpe said, ‘then we’ll have to get a battalion up there, but we’d best have a look at the stuff first.’ He nodded at Harper’s volley gun. ‘Is that toy loaded?’

‘It is, sir. Not primed, though.’

‘Prime her, Pat. If Mister Lopez don’t like us then that should calm him down.’ He gave Vicente some coins for the wine and food, and the Portuguese officer paid while Francisco watched Harper prime the volley gun. Francisco seemed nervous of the weapon, which was hardly surprising for it was fearsome-looking.

‘I need more bullets for this,’ Harper said.

‘How many have you got?’

‘After this load?’ Harper patted the breech, then carefully lowered the flint to make the gun safe. ‘Twenty-three.’

‘I’ll filch some from Lawford,’ Sharpe said. ‘His bloody great horse pistol takes half-inch balls and he never fires the bloody thing. Sorry, miss. He doesn’t like firing it, it’s too powerful. God knows why he keeps it. Perhaps to frighten his wife.’ He looked for Vicente. ‘You’re ready? Let’s find this damn food, then you can report it to your Colonel. That should put you in his good books.’

Francisco was anxious as he led them out of the tavern and down a stepped alleyway. Before arriving at the tavern he had been enquiring about the city for anyone who had seen two men dressed in green uniforms who were with Professor Vicente’s clever son, and it had not taken long to discover they were in the Three Crows. Ferragus would be pleased. ‘Here, senhor,’ Francisco told Vicente and pointed across the street at a great double doorway in a blank stone wall.

‘Why don’t I just tell my Colonel?’ Vicente suggested.

‘Because if you come back here,’ Sharpe said, ‘and find that this bastard has been lying to us, sorry, miss, you’ll look like an idiot. No, we’ll look inside, you go to your Colonel and we’ll take Miss Fry down to battalion.’

The door was padlocked. ‘Shoot it?’ Vicente suggested.

‘You only mangle the works if you do that,’ Sharpe said, ‘and make it harder.’ He felt through his haversack until he found what he wanted. It was a picklock. He had carried one since he was a child, and he unfolded the hooked levers, selected the one he wanted and stooped to the lock.

Vicente looked aghast. ‘You know how to do that?’

‘I was a thief once,’ Sharpe said. ‘Earned my living that way.’ He saw the shock on Sarah’s face. ‘I wasn’t always an officer and a gentleman,’ he told her.

‘But you are now?’ she asked anxiously.

‘He’s an officer, miss,’ Harper said, ‘he’s certainly an officer.’ He unslung the volley gun and cocked it. He glanced up and down the street, but there was no one taking any interest in them. A shopkeeper was stacking clothes on a handcart, a woman was shouting at two children, and a small group of people were struggling with bags, boxes, dogs, goats and cows downhill towards the river.

The lock clicked and Sharpe tugged it out of the staple. Then before opening the door, he took the rifle from his shoulder and cocked it. ‘Grab hold of Francisco,’ he told Harper, ‘because if there’s nothing inside here I’m going to shoot the big bastard. Sorry, miss.’

Francisco tried to pull away, but Harper held him fast as Sharpe dragged one of the huge gates open. He walked through into the darkness, watching for movement, seeing none, and as his eyes became accustomed to the shadows he saw the boxes, barrels and sacks piled up towards the beams and rafters of the high roof. ‘Jesus Christ!’ he said in amazement. ‘Sorry, miss.’

‘Blasphemy,’ Sarah said, staring up at the huge stacks, ‘is worse than mere swearing.’

‘I’ll try to remember that, miss,’ Sharpe said, ‘I really will. Good Christ Almighty! Just look at this!’

‘Is it food?’ Vicente asked.

‘Smells like it,’ Sharpe said. He uncocked his rifle, slung it and drew his sword, which he jabbed into a sack. Grain trickled out. ‘Jesus wept, sorry, miss.’ He sheathed the sword and stared round the vast room. ‘Tons of food!’

‘Does it matter?’ Sarah asked.

‘Oh, it matters,’ Sharpe said. ‘An army can’t fight if it doesn’t have food. The trick of this campaign, miss, is to let the Frogs march south, stop them in front of Lisbon, and watch them get hungry. This damn lot could keep them alive for weeks!’

Harper had let go of Francisco who backed away and suddenly darted out into the street and Harper, amazed at the piles of food, did not notice. Sharpe, Vicente and Sarah were walking down the central aisle, gazing up in astonishment. The stores were stacked in neat squares, each pile about twenty feet by twenty feet, and divided by alleys. Sharpe counted a dozen stacks. Some of the barrels were stamped with the British government’s broad arrow, meaning they had been stolen. Harper was following the other three, then remembered Francisco and turned to see men coming from the house across the street. There were half a dozen of them and they were filling the warehouse’s wide entrance and he saw, too, that they carried pistols in their hands. ‘Trouble!’ he shouted.

Sharpe turned, saw the shadows in the entrance, knew instinctively that Francisco had betrayed them and knew too that he was in trouble. ‘Back here, Pat!’ he shouted and at the same time he shoved Sarah hard, pushing her into one of the alleys between the sacks. The warehouse’s open door was being tugged shut, darkening the huge room, and Sharpe was unslinging his rifle as the first shots came from the closing door. A ball thumped into a sack by his head, another ricocheted from an iron barrel hoop to smack into the back wall, and a third hit Vicente who spun back, dropping his rifle. Sharpe kicked the gun towards Sarah and dragged Vicente into the narrow space, then went back into the central aisle and aimed towards the door. He saw nothing, dodged back into cover. Some small light came through a handful of dirty skylights in the high roof, but not much. There was movement at the alley’s far end and he turned, rifle going into his shoulder, but it was Harper who had sensibly avoided the central aisle by running around the flank of the high stacks.

‘There’s six of them, sir,’ Harper said, ‘maybe more.’

‘Can’t stay here,’ Sharpe said. ‘Mister Vicente’s hit.’

‘Christ,’ Harper said.

‘Sorry, miss,’ Sharpe said on Harper’s behalf and glanced at Vicente who was conscious, but hurt. He had fallen when the ball struck him, but that had been shock as much as anything else, and he was on his feet now, leaning against some boxes.

‘It’s bleeding,’ he said.

‘Where?’

‘Left shoulder.’

‘Are you spitting blood?’

‘No.’

‘You’ll live,’ Sharpe said and gave Vicente’s rifle to Harper. ‘Give me the volley gun, Pat,’ he said, ‘and take Mister Vicente and Miss Fry to the back. See if there’s a way out. Wait a second, though.’ Sharpe listened. He could hear small sounds, but they could have been rats or cats. ‘Use the side wall,’ he whispered to Harper, and he went there first and peered round the edge. A shadow in a shadow. Sharpe moved out into the open and the shadow sparked fire and a bullet scored along the wall beside him and he raised the rifle and saw the shadow vanish. ‘Now, Pat.’

Harper shepherded Vicente and Sarah to the back of the warehouse. Pray God there was a door there, Sharpe thought, and he slung the rifle on his left shoulder, put the volley gun on his right, and climbed the nearest stack. He scrambled up, jamming his boots into the spaces between the grain sacks, not caring about the noise he made. He almost lost his footing once, but anger drove him up and he rolled onto the top of the great pile where he took the volley gun from his shoulder. He cocked it, hoping that no one beneath would hear the click. A big cat hissed at him, its back arched and tail up, but then decided not to contest the lumpy plateau on top of the sacks and stalked away.

Sharpe edged across the sacks. He crawled on his belly, listening to a faint muttering of voices and he knew there were men in the alley beyond the sacks and knew they were planning how best to finish what they had started. He knew they would be fearful of the rifles, but they would also be confident.

But evidently not too confident. They wanted to avoid a fight if they could, for Ferragus suddenly shouted, ‘Captain Sharpe!’

No answer. Claws scratched at the far side of the warehouse and wheels clattered on the street cobbles outside.

‘Captain Sharpe!’

Still no answer.

‘Come out!’ Ferragus called. ‘Apologize to me and you can go. That is all I want. An apology!’

Like hell, Sharpe thought. Ferragus wanted this food preserved until the French arrived, and the moment Sharpe or his companions appeared in the open they would be shot down. So it was time to spring an ambush on the ambushers.

He crept forward to the stack’s edge and, very slowly, peered over. There was a knot of men down there. Half a dozen, perhaps, and none was looking up. None had thought to check the high ground, but they should have known they were up against soldiers and soldiers always sought the high ground.

Sharpe brought the volley gun forward. The seven half-inch balls had been rammed down on wadding and powder, but there was always a chance, a good chance, that some would roll out of the barrels the moment he pointed the gun downwards. There was no time to ram more wadding on top of the balls, so the trick of this was to shoot fast, very fast, and that meant he could not aim. He edged back, stood up, then froze as another voice spoke. ‘Captain Sharpe!’ The speaker was not one of the men beneath Sharpe. His voice seemed to come from closer to the great doors. ‘Captain Sharpe. This is Major Ferreira.’

So that bastard was here. Sharpe cradled the volley gun, ready to move forward and fire, but then Ferreira spoke again. ‘You have my word as an officer! No harm will come to you! My brother wants an apology, nothing more!’ Ferreira paused, then spoke in Portuguese, presumably because he knew Jorge Vicente was with Sharpe, and Sharpe reckoned Vicente’s neat, legal and trusting mind might just believe Ferreira and so he gave his own answer. In one fast movement he stepped to the edge, turned the gun’s muzzles down into the alley and pulled the trigger.

Three of the balls were loose and had started to roll, and that reduced the gun’s huge power, but the blast of the shots still echoed from the stone walls like thunder and the recoil of the bunched barrels almost threw the gun up and out of Sharpe’s hands as the smoke billowed in the passage beneath him. There were screams in the passage too, and a hoarse shout of pain and the sound of feet scrambling as men ran from the sudden horror that had belched from above. A pistol fired, shattering a skylight, but Sharpe was already running towards the back of the warehouse. He jumped the next alley, landing on a pile of barrels that wobbled dangerously, but his momentum carried him on, scattering cats, then another jump and he was at the far end. ‘Found anything, Pat?’

‘Bloody great trapdoor, nothing else.’

‘Catch!’ Sharpe threw Harper the volley gun, then scrambled down, fumbling for footholds on the edges of boxes and jumping the last six feet. He looked left and right, but saw no sign of Ferragus or his men. ‘Where the hell are they?’

‘You hit some of them?’ Harper asked in a hopeful voice.

‘Two, maybe. Where’s the trapdoor?’

‘Here.’

‘Jesus, it stinks!’

‘Something nasty down there, sir. Lots of flies.’

Sharpe crouched, thinking. To escape out the front of the warehouse meant going into the alleys between the piles of food, and Ferragus would have men covering all those passages. Sharpe could probably make it, but at what cost? At least one more wound. And he had a woman with him. He could not expose her to more fire. He lifted the trapdoor, letting out a gust of foul-smelling air. Something dead was down in the blackness. A rat? He peered down, saw steps going into darkness, but the shadows suggested there was a cellar down there, and once he was at the base of the steps he could fire up the stone stairway. Ferragus and his men would have to brave that fire to approach, and they would be reluctant to do that. And perhaps there was a way out of the cellar?

There were footsteps on the warehouse’s far side, then more sounds from the top of the stacks. Ferragus had learned quickly and sent men to take the high ground and Sharpe knew he was trapped properly now and the cellar was the only option left. ‘Down,’ he ordered, ‘all of you. Down.’

He went last, clumsily closing the trapdoor behind him, letting the heavy timber down slowly so that Ferragus might not realize his enemies had gone to earth. It was pitch black at the foot of the steps, and so foul-smelling that Sarah gagged. Flies buzzed in the dark. ‘Load the volley gun, Pat,’ Sharpe said, ‘and give me the rifles.’

Sharpe crouched on the steps, one rifle in his hands, two beside him. Anyone opening the trapdoor now would be silhouetted against the warehouse’s dim light and would fetch a bullet for their pains. ‘If I fire,’ he whispered to Harper, ‘you have to reload the rifle before the volley gun.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Harper could have reloaded a rifle blindfolded in Stygian darkness.

‘Jorge?’ Sharpe asked, and the answer was a hiss, betraying Vicente’s pain. ‘Feel your way round the walls,’ Sharpe said, ‘see if there’s a way out.’

‘Major Ferreira was up there,’ Vicente said, sounding reproachful.

‘He’s as bad as his brother,’ Sharpe said. ‘He was planning to sell the Frogs some bloody flour, Jorge, only I stopped it, so then he set me up for a beating at Bussaco.’ He had no proof of that, of course, but it seemed obvious. Ferreira had persuaded Hogan to invite Sharpe to supper at the monastery, and must have let his brother know that the rifleman would be alone on the dark path afterwards. ‘Just feel round the walls, Jorge. See if there’s a door.’

‘There are rats,’ Vicente said.

Sharpe took his folding knife from his pocket, took out the blade, and whispered Sarah’s name. ‘Take this,’ he said, and felt for her hand. He put the knife’s handle into her fingers. ‘Be careful,’ he warned her, ‘it’s a knife. I want you to cut a strip off the bottom of your dress and see if you can bandage Jorge’s shoulder.’

He thought she might protest at mangling her only dress, but she said nothing and a moment later Sharpe heard the ripping sound as she slashed and tore at the silk. Sharpe crept a small way up the stairs and listened. There was silence for a while, then the sudden bang of a pistol and another bang, virtually instantaneous, as the ball hammered into the trapdoor. The ball stuck there, not piercing the heavy timber. Ferragus was announcing that he had found Sharpe, but plainly the big man was unwilling to lift the hatch and rush the cellar, for there was another long silence. ‘They want us to think they’ve gone,’ Sharpe said.

‘There’s no way out,’ Vicente announced.

‘There’s always a way out,’ Sharpe said. ‘Rats get in, don’t they?’

‘But there are two dead men here,’ Vicente sounded disgusted. The smell was overpowering.

‘They can’t hurt us,’ Sharpe said in a whisper, ‘not if they’re dead. Take your jacket and shirt off, Jorge, and let Miss Fry bandage you.’

Sharpe waited. Waited. Vicente was hissing in pain and Sarah made soothing noises. Sharpe went closer to the hatch. Ferragus was not gone, he knew, and he wondered what the man would do next. Open the hatch and pour a pistol volley down? Take the casualties? Sharpe doubted it. Ferragus was hoping the fugitives would be deceived into thinking the warehouse was empty and would make their own way up the steps, but Sharpe would not fall for that. He waited, listening to the scrape of Harper’s ramrod shoving down the seven bullets.

‘Loaded, sir,’ Harper said.

‘Let’s hope the bastards come, then,’ Sharpe said, and Sarah gave a sharp intake of breath that he ignored, then there was a sudden, weighty thump that sounded as loud as a cannon firing and Sharpe flinched back, expecting an explosion, but the thump was followed by silence. Something heavy had been placed on the hatch. Then there was another thump, and another, followed by a heavy scraping sound and then a whole succession of bangs and scrapes. ‘They’re weighting down the hatch,’ Sharpe said.

‘Why?’ Sarah asked.

‘They’re trapping us here, miss, and they’ll come back for us when they’re good and ready.’ Ferragus, Sharpe reckoned, did not want to attract more attention to his warehouse by starting another firefight while there were still British and Portuguese troops in the city. He would wait till the army was gone and then, in the time before the French arrived, he would bring more men, more guns and unseal the cellar. ‘So we’ve got time,’ Sharpe said.

‘Time to do what?’ Vicente asked.

‘Get out, of course. All of you, fingers in your ears.’ He waited a few seconds, then fired the rifle up the stairs. The bullet buried itself in the trapdoor. Sharpe’s ears were ringing as he found a new cartridge, bit off the bullet, spat it out, and then primed the rifle. ‘Give me your hand, Pat,’ he said, then put the rest of the cartridge, just the paper and powder, into Harper’s palm.

‘What are you doing?’ Vicente asked.

‘Being God,’ Sharpe said, ‘and making light.’ He felt inside his jacket and found the copy of The Times that Lawford had given to him and he tore the newspaper in half, put half back inside his jacket and screwed the other half into a tight spill that he laid on the floor.

‘Ready, sir.’ Harper, who had guessed what Sharpe wanted, had twisted the cartridge paper into a tube in which he left most of the powder.

‘Find the lock,’ Sharpe told him, and waited as Harper explored the rifle Sharpe was holding.

‘Got it, sir,’ Harper said, then held the spill close by the shut frizzen.

‘Glad you came with me today, Pat?’

‘Happiest day of my life, sir.’

‘Let’s see where we are,’ Sharpe said, and he pulled the trigger, the frizzen flew open as the flint struck it to drive the sparks downwards, there was a flare as the powder in the pan caught fire and Harper had the cartridge paper in just the right place, for a spark went into the tube and it fizzed up, suddenly bright, and Sharpe snatched up the newspaper spill and lit one end. Harper was licking his burned fingers as Sharpe let the tightly rolled paper flare up. He had about one minute now before the newspaper burned out, but there was little to see except the two bodies at the back of the cellar, and they were a foul sight, for the rats had been at the men, chewing their faces to the skulls and excavating their swollen bellies that were now crawling with maggots and thick with flies. Sarah twisted into a corner and vomited while Sharpe examined the rest of the cellar, which was about twenty feet square and stone-floored. The ceiling was of stone and brick, supported by arches made with narrow bricks.

‘Roman work,’ Vicente said, looking at one of the arches.

Sharpe looked up the stairwell, but its sides were of solid stone. The newspaper guttered and he dropped it on the lowest step and looked around one more time as the flames flickered low.

‘We’re trapped,’ Vicente said gloomily. He had torn open his shirt and his left shoulder was now clumsily bandaged, but Sharpe could see blood on his skin and on the torn edges of the shirt. Then the flames went out and the cellar returned to darkness. ‘There’s no way out,’ Vicente said.

‘There’s always a way out,’ Sharpe insisted. ‘I was trapped in a room in Copenhagen once, but I got out.’

‘How?’ Vicente asked.

‘Chimney,’ Sharpe said, and shuddered at the memory of that black, tight, lung-squeezing space up which he had fought, before turning in a soot-filled chamber to wriggle like an eel down another flue.

‘Pity the Romans didn’t build a chimney here,’ Harper said.

‘We’ll just have to wait and fight our way out,’ Vicente suggested.

‘Can’t,’ Sharpe said brutally. ‘When Ferragus comes back, Jorge, he won’t be taking chances. He’ll open that trapdoor and have a score of men with muskets just waiting to kill us.’

‘So what do we do?’ Sarah, recovered slightly, asked in a small voice.

‘We destroy that food up there,’ Sharpe said, nodding in the dark towards the supplies in the warehouse above. ‘That’s what Wellington wants, isn’t it? That’s our duty. We can’t spend all our time swanning around universities, miss, we have work to do.’

But first, and he did not know how, he had to escape.

Ferragus, his brother and three of the men from the warehouse retired to a tavern. Two men could not come. One had been hit in the skull by one of the seven-barrel gun’s bullets and, though he lived, he was unable to speak, control his movements or make sense and so Ferragus ordered him taken to Saint Clara’s in hope that some of the nuns were still there. A second man, struck in the arm by the same volley, had gone to his home to let his woman splint his broken arm and bandage his wound. The wounding of the two men had angered Ferragus who stared morosely into his wine.

‘I warned you,’ Ferreira said, ‘they’re soldiers.’

‘Dead soldiers,’ Ferragus said. That was his only consolation. The four were trapped, and they would have to stay in the cellar until Ferragus fetched them out and he toyed with the idea of leaving them there. How long would it take them to die? Would they go mad in the stifling dark? Shoot each other? Become cannibals? Perhaps, weeks from now, he would open the trapdoor and one survivor would crawl blinking into the light and he would kick the bastard to death. No, he would rather kick all three men to death and teach Sarah Fry a different lesson. ‘We’ll get them out tonight,’ he said.

‘The British will be in the city tonight,’ Ferreira pointed out, ‘and there are troops billeted in the street behind the warehouse. They hear shots? They may not go as easily as those this afternoon.’ A Portuguese patrol had heard the shots in the warehouse and come to investigate, but Ferreira, who had not joined the fight, but had been standing by the door, had heard the boots on the cobbles and slipped outside to fend off the patrol, explaining that he had men inside killing goats.

‘No one will hear shots from that cellar,’ Ferragus said scornfully.

‘You want to risk that?’ Ferreira asked. ‘With that big gun? It sounds like a cannon!’

‘Tomorrow morning, then,’ Ferragus snarled.

‘Tomorrow morning the British will still be here,’ the Major pointed out patiently, ‘and in the afternoon you and I must ride north to meet the French.’

‘You ride north to meet the French,’ Ferragus said, ‘and Miguel can go with you.’ He looked at the smaller man who shrugged acceptance.

‘They are expecting to meet you,’ Ferreira pointed out.

‘So Miguel will say he’s me!’ Ferragus snapped. ‘Will the damned French know the difference? And I stay here,’ he insisted, ‘and play my games the moment the British are gone. When will the French arrive?’

‘If they come tomorrow,’ Ferreira guessed, ‘in the morning, perhaps? Say an hour or two after dawn?’

‘That gives me time,’ Ferragus said. He only wanted enough time to hear the three men begging for mercy that would not come to them. ‘I’ll meet you at the warehouse,’ he told Ferreira. ‘Bring the Frenchmen to guard it, and I’ll be inside, waiting.’ Ferragus knew he was allowing himself to be distracted. His priority was to keep the food safe and sell it to the French, and the trapped foursome did not matter, but they mattered now. They had defied him, beaten him for the moment, so now, more than ever, it was an affair of pride, and a man could not back down from an affront to his pride. To do so was to be less than a man.

Yet, Ferragus knew, there was no real problem left. Sharpe and his companions were doomed. He had piled more than half a ton of boxes and barrels on the trapdoor, there was no other way out of the cellar and it was just a matter of time. So Ferragus had won, and that was a consolation. He had won.

Most of the retreating British and Portuguese army had used a road to the east of Coimbra and so crossed the Mondego at a ford, but enough had been ordered to use the main road to send a steady stream of troops, guns, caissons and wagons across the Santa Clara bridge which led from Coimbra to its small suburb on the Mondego’s southern bank where the new Convent of Saint Clara stood. The soldiers were joined by an apparently unending stream of civilians, handcarts, goats, dogs, cows, sheep and misery that shuffled over the bridge into the narrow streets around the convent and then went south towards Lisbon. Progress was painfully slow. A child was almost run over by a cannon and the driver only avoided her by slewing the gun into a wall where the offside wheel broke, and that took nearly an hour to repair. A handcart collapsed on the bridge, spilling books and clothes, and a woman screamed when Portuguese troops threw the broken cart and its contents into the river which was already thick with flotsam as the troops on the quays shoved shattered barrels and slashed sacks into the water. Boxes of biscuits were jettisoned and the biscuits, baked hard as rock, floated in their thousands downstream. Other troops had gathered timber and coal and were making a huge fire onto which they tossed salt meat. Still other troops, all Portuguese, had been ordered to break all the bakers’ ovens in town, while a company of the South Essex took sledgehammers and pickaxes to the tethered boats.

Lieutenant Colonel Lawford returned to the quays in the early afternoon. He had slept well and enjoyed a surprisingly good meal of chicken, salad and white wine while his red coat was being brushed and pressed. Then, mounted on Lightning, he rode down to the quayside where he discovered his battalion hot, sweating, dishevelled, dirty and tired. ‘The problem,’ Major Forrest told him, ‘is the salt meat. God knows, it won’t burn.’

‘Didn’t Sharpe say something about turpentine?’

‘Haven’t seen him,’ Forrest said.

‘I was hoping he was here,’ Lawford said, looking around the smoke-wreathed quay that stank of spilled rum and scorched meat. ‘He rescued rather a pretty girl. An English girl, of all things. I was a little abrupt with her, I fear, and thought I should pay my respects.’

‘He isn’t here,’ Forrest said bluntly.

‘He’ll turn up,’ Lawford said, ‘he always does.’

Captain Slingsby marched across the quay, stamped to a halt and offered Lawford a cracking salute. ‘Man gone missing, Colonel.’

Lawford touched the heel of his riding crop to the forward tip of his cocked hat in acknowledgement of the salute. ‘How are things going, Cornelius? All well, I hope?’

‘Boats destroyed, sir, every last one.’

‘Splendid.’

‘But Sergeant Harper’s missing, sir. Absent without permission.’

‘I gave him permission, Cornelius.’

Slingsby bristled. ‘I wasn’t asked, sir.’

‘An oversight, I’m sure,’ Lawford said, ‘and I’m equally sure Sergeant Harper will be back soon. He’s with Mister Sharpe.’

‘That’s another thing,’ Slingsby said darkly.

‘Yes?’ Lawford ventured cautiously.

‘Mister Sharpe had more words with me this morning.’

‘You and Sharpe must patch things up,’ Lawford said hastily.

‘And he has no right, sir, no right whatsoever, to take Sergeant Harper away from his proper duties. It only encourages him.’

‘Encourages him?’ Lawford was slightly confused.

‘To impertinence, sir. He is very Irish.’

Lawford stared at Slingsby, wondering if he detected the smell of rum on his brother-in-law’s breath. ‘I suppose he would be Irish,’ the Colonel finally said, ‘coming, as he does, from Ireland. Just like Lightning!’ He leaned forward and fondled the horse’s ears. ‘Not everything Irish is to be disparaged, Cornelius.’

‘Sergeant Harper, sir, does not show sufficient respect for His Majesty’s commission,’ Slingsby said.

‘Sergeant Harper,’ Forrest put in, ‘helped capture the Eagle at Talavera, Captain. Before you joined us.’

‘I don’t doubt he can fight, sir,’ Slingsby said. ‘It’s in their blood, isn’t it? Like pugdogs, they are. Ignorant and brutal, sir. I had enough of them in the 55th to know.’ He looked back to Lawford. ‘But I have to worry about the internal economy of the light company. It has to be straightened and smartened, sir. Doesn’t do to have men being impertinent.’

‘What is it you want?’ Lawford asked with a touch of asperity.

‘Sergeant Harper returned to me, sir, where he belongs, and made to knuckle down to some proper soldiering.’

‘It will be your duty to see that he does when he returns,’ Lawford said grandly.

‘Very good, sir,’ Slingsby said, threw another salute, about-turned and marched back towards his company.

‘He’s very enthusiastic,’ Lawford said.

‘I had never noticed,’ Forrest said, ‘any lack of enthusiasm or, indeed, absence of efficiency in our light company.’

‘Oh, they’re fine fellows!’ Lawford said. ‘Fine fellows indeed, but the best hounds sometimes hunt better with a change of master. New ways, Forrest, dig out old habits. Don’t you agree? Perhaps you’ll take supper with me tonight?’

‘That would be kind, sir.’

‘And it’s an early start in the morning. Farewell to Coimbra, eh? And may the French have mercy on it.’

Twenty miles to the north the first French troops reached the main road. They had brushed aside the Portuguese militia who had blocked the track looping north around Bussaco’s ridge, and now their cavalry patrols galloped into undefended and deserted farmland. The army turned south. Coimbra was next, then Lisbon, and with that would come victory.

Because the Eagles were marching south.