Читать книгу Sharpe’s Escape: The Bussaco Campaign, 1810 - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 10

Robert Knowles and Richard Sharpe stood on the Bussaco ridge and stared at l’Armée de Portugal that, battalion by battalion, battery by battery and squadron by squadron, streamed from the eastern hills to fill the valley.

The British and Portuguese armies had occupied a great ridge that ran north and south and so blocked the road on which the French were advancing towards Lisbon. The ridge, Knowles guessed, was almost a thousand feet above the surrounding countryside, and its eastward flank, which faced the French, was precipitously steep. Two roads zigzagged their way up that slope, snaking between heather, gorse and rocks, the better road reaching the ridge’s crest towards its northern end just above a small village perched on a ledge of the ridge. Down in the valley, beyond a glinting stream, lay a scatter of other small villages and the French were making their way along farm tracks to occupy those lower settlements.

The British and Portuguese had a bird’s-eye view of the enemy who came from a wooded defile in the lower hills, then marched past a windmill before turning south to take up their positions. They, in turn, could look up the high, bare slope and see a handful of British and Portuguese officers watching them. The army itself, with most of its guns, was hidden from the French. The ridge was ten miles long, a natural rampart, and General Wellington had ordered that his men were to stay well back from its wide crest so that the arriving French would have no idea which part of the high ground was most heavily defended. ‘Quite a privilege,’ Knowles said reverently.

‘A privilege?’ Sharpe asked sourly.

‘To see such a thing,’ Knowles explained, gesturing at the enemy, and it was, in truth, a fine sight to see so many thousands of men at one time. The infantry marched in loose formations, their blue uniforms pale against the green of the valley, while the horsemen, released from the discipline of the march, galloped beside the stream to leave plumes of dust. And still they came from the defile, the might of France. A band was playing close to the windmill and, though the music was too far away to be heard, Sharpe fancied he could hear the thump of the bass drum like a distant heartbeat. ‘A whole army!’ Knowles enthused. ‘I should have brought my sketching pad. It would make a fine picture.’

‘What would make a fine picture,’ Sharpe said, ‘is to see the buggers march up this hill and get slaughtered.’

‘You think they won’t?’

‘I think they’d be mad to try,’ Sharpe said, then frowned at Knowles. ‘Do you like being Adjutant?’ he asked abruptly.

Knowles hesitated, sensing that the conversation was approaching dangerous ground, but he had been Sharpe’s Lieutenant before becoming Adjutant and he liked his old company commander. ‘Not excessively,’ he admitted.

‘It’s always been a captain’s job,’ Sharpe said, ‘so why is he giving it to you?’

‘The Colonel feels the experience will be advantageous to me,’ Knowles said stiffly.

‘Advantageous,’ Sharpe said bitterly. ‘It ain’t your advantage he wants, Robert. He wants that piece of gristle to take over my company. That’s what he wants. He wants bloody Slingsby to be Captain of the light company.’ Sharpe had no evidence for that, the Colonel had never said as much, but it was the only explanation that made sense to him. ‘So he had to get you out of the way,’ Sharpe finished, knowing he had said too much, but the rancour was biting at him and Knowles was a friend who would be discreet about Sharpe’s outburst.

Knowles frowned, then flapped at an insistent fly. ‘I truly believe,’ he said after thinking for a moment, ‘that the Colonel believes he’s doing you a favour.’

‘Me! A favour? By giving me Slingsby!’

‘Slingsby has experience, Richard,’ Knowles said, ‘much more than I do.’

‘But you’re a good officer and he’s a jack-pudding. Who the hell is he anyway?’

‘He’s the Colonel’s brother-in-law,’ Knowles explained.

‘I know that,’ Sharpe said impatiently, ‘but who is he?’

‘The man who married Mrs Lawford’s sister,’ Knowles said, refusing to be drawn.

‘That tells you everything you bloody need to know,’ Sharpe said grimly, ‘but he doesn’t seem the kind of fellow Lawford would want as a brother-in-law. Not enough tone.’

‘We don’t choose our relatives,’ Knowles said, ‘and I’m sure he’s a gentleman.’

‘Bloody hell,’ Sharpe grumbled.

‘And he must have been delighted to get out of the 55th,’ Knowles went on, ignoring Sharpe’s moroseness. ‘God, most of that regiment died of the yellow fever in the West Indies. He’s much safer here, even with those fellows threatening.’ Knowles nodded down at the French troops.

‘Then why the hell didn’t he purchase a captaincy?’

‘Six months short of requirements,’ Knowles said. A lieutenant was not allowed to purchase a captaincy until he had served three years in the lower rank, a newly introduced rule that had caused much grumbling among wealthy officers who wanted swifter preferment.

‘But why did he join up so late?’ Sharpe asked. If Slingsby was thirty then he could not have become a lieutenant before he was twenty-seven, by which age some men were majors. Most officers, like young Iliffe, joined long before they were twenty and it was odd to find a man coming to the army so late.

‘I believe …’ Knowles said, then reddened and checked his words. ‘New troops,’ he said instead, pointing down the slope to where a French regiment, its blue coats unnaturally bright, marched past the windmill. ‘I hear the Emperor has sent reinforcements to Spain,’ Knowles went on. ‘The French have nowhere else to fight these days. Austrians out of the war, Prussians doing nothing, which means Boney only has us to beat.’

Sharpe ignored Knowles’s summation of the Emperor’s strategy. ‘You believe what?’ he asked.

‘Nothing. I said too much.’

‘You didn’t say a bloody thing,’ Sharpe protested and waited, but Knowles still remained silent. ‘You want me to slit your skinny throat, Robert,’ Sharpe asked, ‘with a very blunt knife?’

Knowles smiled. ‘You mustn’t repeat this, Richard.’

‘You know me, Robert, I never tell anyone anything. Cross my heart and hope to die, so tell me before I cut your legs off.’

‘I believe Mrs Lawford’s sister was in trouble. She found herself with child, she wasn’t married and the man concerned was apparently a rogue.’

‘Wasn’t me,’ Sharpe said quickly.

‘Of course it wasn’t you,’ Knowles said. He could be pedantically obvious at times.

Sharpe grinned. ‘So Slingsby was recruited to make her respectable?’

‘Exactly. He’s not from the topmost drawer, of course, but his family is more than acceptable. His father’s a rector somewhere on the Essex coast, I believe, but they’re not wealthy, and so Lawford’s family rewarded Slingsby with a commission in the 55th, with a promise to exchange into the South Essex as soon as there was a vacancy. Which there was when poor Herrold died.’

‘Herrold?’

‘Number three company,’ Knowles said, ‘arrived on a Monday, caught fever on Tuesday and was dead by Friday.’

‘So the idea,’ Sharpe said, watching a French gun battery being dragged along the track by the stream below, ‘is that bloody Slingsby gets quick promotion so that he’s a worthy husband for the woman what couldn’t keep her knees together.’

‘I wouldn’t say that,’ Knowles said indignantly, then thought for a second. ‘Well, yes, I would say that. But the Colonel wants him to do well. After all, Slingsby did the family a favour and now they’re trying to do one back.’

‘By giving him my bloody job,’ Sharpe said.

‘Don’t be absurd, Richard.’

‘Why else is the bugger here? They move you out of the way, give the bastard a horse and hope to God the French kill me.’ He fell silent, not only because he had said too much, but because Patrick Harper was approaching.

The big Sergeant greeted Knowles cheerfully. ‘We miss you, sir, we do.’

‘I can say the same, Sergeant,’ Knowles responded with real pleasure. ‘You’re well?’

‘Still breathing, sir, and that’s what counts.’ Harper turned to look down into the valley. ‘Look at those daft bastards. Just lining up to be murdered.’

‘They’ll take one look at this hill,’ Sharpe said, ‘and find another road.’

Yet there was no sign that the French would take that good advice for the blue-uniformed battalions still marched steadily from the east and French gun batteries, dust flying from their big wheels, continued to arrive at the lower villages. Some French officers rode to the top of a spur which jutted east from the ridge and gazed through their telescopes at the few British and Portuguese officers visible where the better road crossed the ridge top. That road, the further north of the two, zigzagged up the slope, climbing at first between gorse and heather, then cutting through vineyards beneath the small village perched on the slope. That was the road which led to Lisbon and to the completion of the Emperor’s orders, which were to hurl the British out of Portugal so that the whole coastline of continental Europe would belong to the French.

Lieutenant Slingsby, his red coat newly brushed and his badges polished, came to offer his opinion of the enemy, and Sharpe, unable to stand the man’s company, walked away southwards. He watched the French cutting down trees to make fires or shelters. Some small streams fell from the far hills to join and make a larger stream that flowed south towards the Mondego River which touched the ridge’s southern end, and the bigger stream’s banks were being trampled by horses, some from the gun teams, some cavalry mounts and some the officers’ horses, all being given a drink after their march.

The French were concentrating in two places. One tangle of battalions was around the village from which the better road climbed to the northern end of the ridge, while others were two miles to the south, gathering at another village from which a track, passable to packhorses or men on foot, twisted to the ridge’s crest. It was not a proper road, there were no ruts from carts, and in places the track almost vanished into the heather, but it did show the French that there was a route up the steep slope, and French batteries were now deploying either side of the village so that the guns could rake the track ahead of their advancing troops.

The sound of axes and falling trees came from behind Sharpe. One company from each battalion had been detailed to make a road just behind the ridge’s crest, a road that would let Lord Wellington shift his forces anywhere along the hill’s ten-mile length. Trees were being felled, bushes uprooted, rocks being rolled away and the soil smoothed so that British or Portuguese guns could be pulled swiftly to any danger point. It was a huge piece of work and Sharpe suspected it would all be wasted for the French would surely not be mad enough to climb the hill.

Except some were already climbing. A score of mounted officers, wanting a closer view of the British and Portuguese position, had ridden their horses along the summit of the spur which jutted out from the long ridge. The spur was less than half the height of the ridge, but it provided a platform on which troops could gather for an assault and the British and Portuguese gunners had plainly marked it as a target for, as the French horsemen neared the place where the spur joined the ridge, a cannon fired. The sound was flat and hard, startling a thousand birds up from the trees which grew thick on the ridge’s reverse slope. The gun’s smoke roiled in a grey-white cloud that was carried east on the small wind. The shell left a trace of powder smoke from its burning fuse as it arced down to explode a few paces beyond the French horsemen. One of the horses panicked and bolted back the way it had come, but the others seemed unworried as their riders took out telescopes and stared at the enemy above them.

Then two more guns fired, their sound echoing back from the eastern hills. One was evidently a howitzer for the smoke of its burning fuse went high in the sky before dropping towards the French. This time a horse was flung sideways to leave a smear of blood on the dry, pale heather. Sharpe was watching through his telescope and saw the unsaddled and evidently unwounded Frenchman get to his feet. He brushed himself down, drew a pistol and put his twitching horse out of its misery, then struggled to release the precious saddle. He trudged back eastwards, carrying saddle, saddle cloth and bridle.

More French, some mounted and some on foot, were coming to the spur. It seemed a madness to go where the guns were aiming, but dozens of French were wading through the stream and then climbing the low hill to stare up at the British and Portuguese. The gunfire continued. It was not the staccato fire of battle, but desultory shots as the gunners experimented with powder loads and fuse lengths. Too much powder and a shot would scream over the spur to explode somewhere above the stream, while if the fuse was cut too long the shell would land, bounce and come to rest with the fuse still smoking, giving the French time to skip out of the way before the shell exploded. Each detonation was a puff of dirty smoke, surprisingly small, but Sharpe could not see the deadly scraps of broken shell casing hiss away from each blast.

No more French horses or men were struck. They were well spread out and the shells obstinately fell in the gaps between the small groups of men who looked as carefree as folk out for a walk in a park. They stared up at the ridge, trying to determine where the defences lay thickest, though it was surely obvious that the places where the two roads reached the summit would be the places to defend. Another score of cavalrymen, some in green coats and some in sky blue, splashed through the stream and spurred up the lower hill. The sun glinted on brass helmets, polished scabbards, stirrups and curb chains. It was, Sharpe thought, as though the French were playing cat and mouse with the sporadic shell fire. He saw a shell burst close by a group of infantrymen, but when the smoke cleared they were all standing and it seemed to him, though they were very far away, that they were laughing. They were confident, he thought, sure they were the best troops in the world, and their survival of the gunfire was a taunt to the defenders on the ridge’s top.

The taunting was evidently too much, for a battalion of brown-jacketed Portuguese light troops appeared on the crest and, scattered in a double skirmish chain, advanced down the ridge’s slope towards the spur. They went steadily downhill in two loose lines, one fifty paces behind the other, both spread out, giving a demonstration of how skirmishers went to war. Most troops fought shoulder to shoulder, but skirmishers like Sharpe went ahead of the line and, in the killing ground between the armies, tried to pick off the enemy skirmishers and then kill the officers behind so that when the two armies clashed, dense line against massive column, the enemy was already leaderless. Skirmishers rarely closed ranks. They fought close to the enemy where a bunch of men would make an easy target for enemy gunners, and so the light troops fought in loose formation, in pairs, one man shooting and then reloading as his comrade protected him.

The French watched the Portuguese come. They showed no alarm, nor did they advance any skirmishers of their own. The shells went on arcing down the slope, their detonations echoing dully from the eastern hills. The vast mass of the French were making their bivouacs, ignoring the small drama on the ridge, but a dozen cavalrymen, seeing easy meat in the scattered Portuguese skirmishers, kicked their horses up the hill.

By rights the cavalrymen should have decimated the skirmishers. Men in a loose formation were no match for swift cavalry and the French, half of them dragoons and the other half hussars, had drawn their long swords or curved sabres and were anticipating some practice cuts on helpless men. The Portuguese were armed with muskets and rifles, but once the guns were fired there would be no time to reload before the surviving horsemen reached them, and an empty gun was no defence against a dragoon’s long blade. The cavalry were curving around to assault the flank of the line, a dozen horsemen approaching four Portuguese on foot, but the ridge was too steep for the horses, which began to labour. The advantage of the cavalry was speed, but the ridge stole their speed so that the horses were struggling and a rifle cracked, the smoke jetting above the grass, and a horse stumbled, twisted away and collapsed. Another two rifles fired and the French, realizing that the ridge was their enemy, turned away and galloped recklessly downhill. The unhorsed hussar followed on foot, abandoning his dying horse with its precious equipment to the Portuguese who cheered their small victory.

‘I’m not sure the cazadores had orders to do that,’ a voice said behind Sharpe, who turned to see that Major Hogan had come to the ridge. ‘Hello, Richard,’ Hogan said cheerfully, ‘you look unhappy.’ He held out his hand for Sharpe’s telescope.

‘Cazadores?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Hunters. It’s what the Portuguese call their skirmishers.’ Hogan was staring at the brown-coated skirmishers as he spoke. ‘It’s rather a good name, don’t you think? Hunters? Better than greenjackets.’

‘I’ll stay a greenjacket,’ Sharpe said.

Hogan watched the cazadores for a few moments. Their riflemen had begun firing at the French on the spur, and that enemy prudently backed away. The Portuguese stayed where they were, not going down to the spur where the horsemen could attack them, content to have made their demonstration. Two guns fired, the shells falling into the empty space between the cazadores and the remaining French. ‘The Peer will be very unhappy,’ Hogan said. ‘He detests gunners firing at hopeless targets. It just reveals where his batteries are placed and it does no damn harm to the enemy.’ He turned the telescope to the valley and spent a long time looking at the enemy encampments beyond the stream. ‘We reckon Monsieur Masséna has sixty thousand men,’ he said, ‘and maybe a hundred guns.’

‘And us, sir?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Fifty thousand and sixty,’ Hogan said, giving Sharpe back the telescope, ‘and half of ours are Portuguese.’

There was something in his tone that caught Sharpe’s attention. ‘Is that bad?’ he asked.

‘We’ll see, won’t we?’ Hogan said, then stamped his foot on the turf. ‘But we do have this.’ He meant the ridge.

‘Those lads seem eager enough.’ Sharpe nodded at the cazadores who were now retreating up the hill.

‘Eagerness in new troops is quickly wiped away by gunfire,’ Hogan said.

‘I doubt we’ll find out,’ Sharpe said. ‘The Crapauds won’t attack up here. They’re not mad.’

‘I certainly wouldn’t want to attack up this slope,’ Hogan agreed. ‘My suspicion is that they’ll spend the day staring at us, then go away.’

‘Back to Spain?’

‘Good Lord, no. If they did but know it there’s a fine road that loops round the top of this ridge,’ he pointed north, ‘and they don’t need to fight us here at all. They’ll find that road eventually. Pity, really. This would be a grand place to give them a bloody nose. But they may come. They reckon the Portuguese aren’t up to scratch, so perhaps they’ll think it’s worth an attempt.’

‘Are the Portuguese up to scratch?’ Sharpe asked. The gunfire had ended, leaving scorched grass and small patches of smoke on the spur. The French, denied their game of dare, were drifting back towards their lines.

‘We’ll find out about the Portuguese if the French decide to have at us,’ Hogan said grimly, then smiled. ‘Can you come for supper tonight?’

‘Tonight?’ Sharpe was surprised by the question.

‘I spoke with Colonel Lawford,’ Hogan said, ‘and he’s happy to spare you, so long as the French aren’t being a nuisance. Six o’clock, Richard, at the monastery. You know where that is?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Go north,’ Hogan pointed up the ridge, ‘until you see a great stone wall. Find a gap in it, go downhill through the trees until you discover a path and follow that till you see rooftops. There’ll be three of us sitting down.’

‘Three?’ Sharpe asked suspiciously.

‘You,’ Hogan said, ‘me and Major Ferreira.’

‘Ferreira!’ Sharpe exclaimed. ‘Why’s that slimy piece of traitorous shit having supper with us?’

Hogan sighed. ‘Has it occurred to you, Richard, that the two tons of flour might have been a bribe? Something to exchange for information?’

‘Was it?’

‘Ferreira says so. Do I believe him? I’m not sure. But whatever, Richard, I think he regrets what happened and wants to make his peace with us. It was his idea to have supper, and I must say I think it decent of him.’ Hogan saw Sharpe’s reluctance. ‘Truly, Richard. We don’t want resentments to fester between allies, do we?’

‘We don’t, sir?’

‘Six o’clock, Richard,’ Hogan said firmly, ‘and try to convey the impression that you’re enjoying yourself.’ The Irishman smiled, then walked back to the ridge’s crest where officers were pacing off the ground to determine where each battalion would be positioned. Sharpe wished he had found a good excuse to miss the supper. It was not Hogan’s company he wanted to avoid, but the Portuguese Major, and he felt increasingly bitter as he sat in the unseasonal warmth, watching the wind stir the heather beneath which an army, sixty thousand strong, had come to contest the ridge of Bussaco.

Sharpe spent the afternoon bringing the company books up to date, helped by Clayton, the company clerk, who had the annoying habit of saying the words aloud as he wrote them. ‘Isaiah Tongue, deceased,’ he said to himself, then blew on the ink. ‘Does he have a widow, sir?’

‘Don’t think so.’

‘He’s owed four shillings and sixpence halfpenny is why I ask.’

‘Put it in the company fund.’

‘If we ever gets any wages,’ Clayton said gloomily. The company fund was where stray money went, not that there ever was much stray money, but wages owed to the dead were put there and, once in a while, it was spent on brandy, or to pay the company wives for the laundry. Some of those wives had come to the ridge’s crest where, joined by scores of civilians, they were gazing down at the French. The civilians had all been ordered to go south, to find the safety of the countryside around Lisbon that was protected by the Lines of Torres Vedras, but plainly many had disobeyed for there were scores of Portuguese folk gawping at the invaders. Some of the spectators had brought bread, cheese and wine and now sat in groups eating and talking and pointing at the French, and a dozen monks, all with bare feet, were among them.

‘Why don’t they wear shoes?’ Clayton asked.

‘God knows.’

Clayton frowned disapprovingly at a monk who had joined one of the small groups eating on the ridge. ‘Déjeuner à la fourchette,’ he said, sniffing with disapproval.

‘Day-jay what?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Dinner with a fork,’ Clayton explained. He had been a footman in a great house before he joined the South Essex, and had a great knowledge of the gentry’s strange ways. ‘It’s what people of quality do, sir, when they don’t want to spend a lot of money. Give ’em food and a fork and let ’em wander round the grounds sniffing the bloody flowers. All titter and giggle in the garden.’ He frowned at the monks. ‘Shoeless bloody papist monks,’ he said. The gowned men were not monks at all, but friars of the Discalced Carmelite order, two of whom were gravely inspecting a nine-pounder cannon. ‘And you should see inside their bloody monastery, sir,’ Clayton went on. ‘The altar in one of the chapels is smothered with wooden tits.’

Sharpe gaped at Clayton. ‘It’s smothered with what?’

‘Wooden tits, sir, all painted to look real. Got nipples and everything! I took the ration returns down there, sir, and one of the guards showed me. I couldn’t believe my eyes! Mind you, them monks ain’t allowed the real things, are they, so perhaps they make do as best they can. Punishment book now, sir?’

‘See if you can scuff up some tea instead,’ Sharpe suggested.

He drank the tea on the crest. The French were plainly not planning to attack this day for their troops were scattered about the bivouacs near the villages. Their numbers had grown so that the low ground was now dark with men, while nearer the ridge shirtsleeved gunners were piling shot beside the newly placed batteries. The position of those batteries suggested where the French would attack, if indeed they did, and Sharpe saw that the South Essex would be just to the left of any assault aimed up the rough southern track that had been barricaded near its top with felled trees, presumably to deter the French from dragging their artillery up towards the crest. More French guns were crowded close to the road at the northern end of the ridge, which suggested there would be two assaults, and Sharpe supposed they would be like every other French attack he had ever endured: great columns of men advancing to the beat of massed drums, hoping to batter their way through the Anglo-Portuguese line like giant rams. The vast columns were supposed to overawe inexperienced troops and Sharpe looked to his left where the officers of a Portuguese battalion were watching the enemy. Would they stand? The Portuguese army had been reorganized in the last few months, but they were enduring the third invasion of their country in three years, and so far no one could pretend that the Portuguese army had covered itself in glory.

There was a parade and inspection of kit in the late afternoon, and when it was done Sharpe walked north along the ridge until he saw the high stone wall enclosing a great wood. The Portuguese and British soldiers, wanting passage through the wall, had knocked gaps in it and Sharpe negotiated one such breach and went into the trees, eventually finding a path which led downhill. There were odd-looking brick sheds beside the path, equally spaced, each about the size of a gardener’s potting shed, and Sharpe stopped at the first to peer through the door which was made of iron bars. Inside were clay statues, life-size, showing a group of women clustered about a half-naked man and then Sharpe saw the crown of thorns and realized the central figure must be Jesus and that the brick sheds had to be part of the monastery. All of the small buildings had the eerie statues, and at several of the shrines shawled women were kneeling in prayer. A very pretty girl was beside another, listening shyly to an impassioned Portuguese officer who paused, embarrassed, as Sharpe walked by. The officer began his harangue again as soon as Sharpe had gone down a flight of stone steps that led to the monastery. An ancient and gnarled olive tree grew by the entrance and a dozen saddled horses were tethered to its branches, while two redcoats stood guard by the doorway. They ignored Sharpe as he ducked through the low archway into a dark passageway lined with doors that were covered with thick layers of cork. One of the doors was open and Sharpe looked inside to see a shirtsleeved surgeon in a monk’s small cell. The surgeon was sharpening a scalpel. ‘I’m open for trade,’ he said cheerfully.

‘Not today, sir. Do you know where I’ll find Major Hogan?’

‘End of the passage, door on the right.’

The supper was awkward. They ate in one of the small cells that was lined with cork to keep out the cold of the coming winter, and their meal was a stew of goat and beans, with coarse bread, cheese and a plentiful supply of wine. Hogan did his best to keep the conversation moving, but Sharpe had little to say to Major Ferreira who never referred to the events on the hilltop where Sharpe had burned the telegraph tower. Instead he talked of his time in Brazil where he had commanded a fort in one of the Portuguese settlements. ‘The women are beautiful!’ Ferreira exclaimed. ‘The most beautiful women in all the world!’

‘Including the slaves?’ Sharpe asked, causing Hogan, who knew Sharpe was trying to turn the subject to the Major’s brother, to roll his eyes.

‘The slaves are the prettiest!’ Ferreira said. ‘And so obliging.’

‘Not much choice,’ Sharpe observed sourly. ‘Your brother didn’t give them any, did he?’

Hogan tried to intervene, but Major Ferreira stilled his protest. ‘My brother, Mister Sharpe?’

‘He was a slaver, yes?’

‘My brother has been many things,’ Ferreira said. ‘As a child he was beaten because the monks who taught us wanted him to be pious. He is not pious. My father beat him because he would not read his books, but the beating did not make him a reader. He was happiest with the servants’ children, he ran wild with them until my mother could take his wildness no longer and so he was sent to the nuns of Santo Espírito. They tried to beat the spirit from him, but he ran away. He was thirteen then, and he came back sixteen years later. He came back rich and quite determined, Mister Sharpe, that no one would ever beat him again.’

‘I did,’ Sharpe said.

‘Richard!’ Hogan remonstrated.

Ferreira ignored Hogan, staring at Sharpe across the candles. ‘He has not forgotten,’ he said quietly.

‘But it’s all cleared up,’ Hogan said. ‘An accident! Apologies have been made. Try some of this cheese, Major.’ He pushed a chipped plate of cheese across the table. ‘Major Ferreira and I, Richard, have been questioning deserters all afternoon.’

‘French?’

‘Lord, no. Portuguese.’ Hogan explained that, following the fall of Almeida, scores of that fortress’s Portuguese garrison had volunteered into the Portuguese Legion, a French unit. ‘It seems they did it,’ Hogan explained, ‘because it gave them a chance to get near our lines and desert. Over thirty came in this evening. And they’re all saying that the French will attack in the morning.’

‘You believe them?’

‘I believe they are telling the truth as they know it,’ Hogan said, ‘and their orders were to make ready for an attack. What they don’t know, of course, is whether Masséna will change his mind.’

‘Monsieur Masséna,’ Ferreira remarked acidly, ‘is too busy with his mistress to think sensibly about battle.’

‘His mistress?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Mademoiselle Henriette Leberton,’ Hogan said, amused, ‘who is eighteen years old, Richard, while Monsieur Masséna is what? Fifty-one? No, fifty-two. Nothing distracts an old man so effectively as young flesh which makes Mademoiselle Leberton one of our more valued allies. His Majesty’s government should pay her an allowance. A guinea a night, perhaps?’

When the supper was eaten Ferreira insisted on showing Hogan and Sharpe the shrine where, as Clayton had said, wooden breasts lay on an altar. A score of small candles flickered around the weird objects and dozens of other candles had burned down to wax puddles. ‘Women bring the breasts,’ Ferreira explained, ‘to be cured of diseases. Women’s diseases.’ He yawned, then pulled a watch from his waistcoat pocket. ‘I must get back to the ridge top,’ he said. ‘An early night, I think. Perhaps the enemy will come at dawn.’

‘Let’s hope so,’ Hogan said.

Ferreira made the sign of the cross, bowed to the altar and left. Sharpe listened as the sound of the Major’s spurred boots faded down the passage. ‘What the hell was that all about?’ he asked Hogan.

‘What was what about, Richard?’

‘That supper!’

‘He was being friendly. Showing you there are no hard feelings.’

‘But there are! He said his brother hadn’t forgotten.’

‘Not forgotten, but persuaded to let the matter rest. And so should you.’

‘I wouldn’t trust that bugger as far as I can spit,’ Sharpe said, then had to step back because the door had been pushed wide open and a noisily cheerful group of British officers stepped into the small room. One man alone was not in uniform, wearing instead a blue top coat and a white silk stock. It was Lord Wellington, who glanced at Sharpe, but appeared not to notice him.

Instead the General nodded to Hogan. ‘Come to worship, Major?’ he asked.

‘I was showing Mister Sharpe the sights, my lord.’

‘I doubt Mister Sharpe needs to see replications,’ Wellington said. ‘He probably sees more of the real article than most of us, eh?’ He spoke genially enough, but with an edge of scorn, then looked directly at Sharpe. ‘I hear you did your duty three days ago, Mister Sharpe,’ he said.

Sharpe was confused, first by the sudden change of tone and then by the statement, which seemed strange after Hogan’s earlier reproof. ‘I hope so, my lord,’ he answered carefully.

‘Can’t leave food for the French,’ the General said, turning back to the modelled breasts, ‘and I would have thought I had made that stratagem entirely clear.’ The last few words were said harshly and left the other officers silent. Then Wellington smiled and gestured at the votive breasts. ‘Can’t quite imagine these things in Saint Paul’s,’ he went on, ‘can you, Hogan?’

‘They might improve the place, my lord.’

‘Indeed they might. I shall advert the matter to the Dean.’ He gave his horse neigh of a laugh, then abruptly looked at Hogan again. ‘Any news from Trant?’

‘None, my lord.’

‘Let us hope that is good news.’ The General nodded at Hogan, ignored Sharpe again and led his guests back to wherever they were having supper.

‘Trant?’ Sharpe asked.

‘There’s a road round the top of the ridge,’ Hogan said, ‘and we have a cavalry vedette there and, I trust, some Portuguese militia under Colonel Trant. They are under orders to alert us if they see any sign of the enemy, but no word has come, so we must hope Masséna is ignorant of the route. If he thinks his only road to Lisbon is up this hill, then up this hill he must come. I must say, unlikely as it seems, that he probably will attack.’

‘And maybe at dawn,’ Sharpe said, ‘so I must get some sleep.’ He grinned at Hogan. ‘So I was right about bloody Ferragus and you were wrong?’

Hogan returned the grin. ‘It is very ungentlemanly to gloat, Richard.’

‘How did Wellington know?’

‘I suppose Major Ferreira complained to him. He said he didn’t, but …’ Hogan shrugged.

‘You can’t trust that Portuguese bugger,’ Sharpe said. ‘Get one of your nasties to slit his throat.’

‘You’re the only nasty I know,’ Hogan said, ‘and it’s past your bedtime. So good night, Richard.’

It was not late yet, probably no more than nine o’clock, but the sky was black dark and the temperature had fallen sharply. A wind had come from the west to bring cold air from the distant sea and a mist was forming among the trees as Sharpe climbed back to the path where the strange statues were housed in their brick huts. The path was deserted now. The bulk of the army was up on the ridge and any troops bivouacking behind the line were encamped around the monastery where their fires offered some small light that filtered through the wood to throw Sharpe’s monstrous shadow flickering across tree trunks, but that small light faded as Sharpe climbed higher. There were no fires on the ridge top because Wellington had ordered that none were to be lit so that their glow could not betray to the French where the allied army was concentrated, though Sharpe suspected the enemy must have guessed. The lack of campfires made the upper hill bleakly dark. The mist thickened. Far off, beyond the wall that encircled the monastery and its forest, Sharpe could hear singing coming from the British and Portuguese encampments, but the loudest noise was his own footsteps on the pine needles that carpeted the path. The first of the shrines came into sight, lit from inside by votive candles that cast a small hazy glow through the chill mist. A black-gowned monk knelt in prayer by the last shrine and, as Sharpe passed, he thought of offering the man a greeting, then decided against interrupting the monk’s devotions, but just then the cowled man lashed out, catching Sharpe behind his left knee, and two more men came from behind the shrine, one with a cudgel that smacked into Sharpe’s belly. He went down hard, his metal scabbard clanging against the ground. He twisted away, trying to draw the sword, but the two men who had come from behind the shrine seized his arms and dragged him into the building where there was a small space in front of the statues. They kicked some candles aside to make more room. One drew Sharpe’s sword and tossed it onto the path outside, while the cowled monk pushed back his hood.

It was Ferragus, vast and tall, filling the shrine with his menace. ‘You cost me a lot of money,’ he said in his strongly accented English. Sharpe was still on the ground. He tried to stand up, but one of Ferragus’s two companions kicked him in the shoulder and forced him back. ‘A lot of money,’ Ferragus said heavily. ‘You wish to pay me now?’ Sharpe said nothing. He needed a weapon. He had a folding knife in one pocket, but he knew he would never have time to pull it out, let alone extract the blade. ‘How much money do you have?’ Ferragus asked. Sharpe still said nothing. ‘Or would you rather fight me?’ Ferragus went on. ‘Bare knuckles, Captain, toe to toe.’

Sharpe made a curt suggestion of what Ferragus could do and the big man smiled and spoke to his men in Portuguese. They attacked with their boots, kicking Sharpe, who drew up his knees to shield his belly. He guessed they were ordered to disable him and thus leave him to Ferragus’s mercies, but the shrine was small, the space left by the statues cramped and the two men got in each other’s way. Their kicks still hurt. Sharpe tried to lunge up at them, but a boot caught him on the side of the face and he fell back heavily, rocking the kneeling image of Mary Magdalene, and that gave him his weapon. He hammered the statue with his right elbow, smacking its knee so hard that the clay shattered and Sharpe snatched up one shard that was nearly a foot long and ended in a wicked point. He stabbed the makeshift dagger at the nearest man, aiming at his groin, but the man twisted aside so that the clay sliced into his inner thigh. The man grunted. Sharpe was up from the floor now, using his head as a battering ram that he thumped into the wounded man’s belly. A fist caught him on the side of the nose, a boot slammed into his ribs, but he lunged the clay dagger at Ferragus, slicing it along the big man’s jawbone, then a mighty blow on the side of his head threw him back and he fell against Christ’s clay lap. Ferragus ordered his men to get out of the shrine, to give him room, and he punched Sharpe again, delivering a ringing blow on the temple, and Sharpe let go of his makeshift knife, put his arm round the Son of God’s neck and jerked it hard so that the whole head came clean off. Ferragus threw a straight left jab and Sharpe dodged it, then came off the ground to ram the broken head with its crown of thorns up into Ferragus’s face. The hollow clay skull cracked apart as it hit, its jagged edges gouging deep cuts in the big man’s cheeks, and Sharpe twisted to his left as Ferragus recoiled. Sharpe scrambled through the door, trying to reach his sword, but the two men were outside and they fell on him. Sharpe heaved, managed to half turn over, and then got a kick in the belly that drove all the wind out of him.

Ferragus had kicked him, and now he ordered his two men to pull Sharpe up. ‘You can’t fight,’ he told Sharpe, ‘you’re feeble,’ and he began punching, using short, hard blows that looked to have little force in them, but they felt to Sharpe as if he was being kicked by a horse. The blows started at his belly, worked up his chest, then one slammed into his cheek and blood started inside Sharpe’s mouth. He tried to free himself from the two men’s grip, but they held him too tight and he was dazed, confused, half conscious. A fist caught him in the throat and now he could hardly breathe, gagging for air, and Ferragus laughed. ‘My brother said I shouldn’t kill you, but why not? Who’ll miss you?’ He spat into Sharpe’s face. ‘Let him go,’ he said to the two men in Portuguese, then changed to English. ‘Let’s see if this Englishman can fight.’

The two men stepped away from Sharpe who spat blood, blinked, and staggered two paces backwards. His sword was out of reach, and even if he could have fetched it he doubted he would have the strength to use it. Ferragus smiled at his weakness, stepped towards him and Sharpe staggered again, this time half falling sideways, and he put his hand down to steady himself and there was a stone there, a big stone, the size of a ration biscuit, and he picked it up just as Ferragus threw a right fist intended to knock Sharpe down for ever. Sharpe, still half aware, reacted instinctively, blocking the fist with the stone, and Ferragus’s knuckles cracked on the rock and the big man flinched and stepped back, astonished by the sudden pain. Sharpe tried to step towards him and use the stone again, but a left jab banged into his chest and threw him back down onto the path.

‘Now you’re a dead man,’ Ferragus said. He was massaging his broken knuckles, and was in such pain from them that he wanted to kick Sharpe to death. He began by aiming a massive boot at Sharpe’s groin but the blow landed short, on the thigh, because Sharpe had managed to twist feebly to one side, and Ferragus kicked his leg away, drew his boot back again and suddenly there was a light on the path behind him and a voice calling.

‘What’s going on!’ the voice shouted. ‘Hold still! Whoever you are, hold still!’ The boots of two or three men sounded on the path. The approaching men must have heard the fight, but they could surely see nothing in the thickening mist and Ferragus did not wait for them. He shouted at his two men and they ran past Sharpe, down through the trees, and Sharpe curled up on the ground, trying to squeeze the pain from his ribs and belly. There were thick gobs of blood in his mouth and his nose was bleeding. The light came nearer, a lantern held by a redcoat. ‘Sir?’ one of the three men asked. He was a sergeant and had the dark-blue facings of the provosts, the army’s policemen.

‘I’m all right,’ Sharpe grunted.

‘What happened?’

‘Thieves,’ Sharpe said. ‘God knows who they were. Just thieves. Jesus. Help me up.’

Two of them lifted him while the Sergeant retrieved his sword and shako. ‘How many were there?’ the Sergeant asked.

‘Three. Bastards ran away.’

‘You want to see a surgeon, sir?’ The Sergeant flinched as he saw Sharpe’s face in the lantern light. ‘I think you should.’

‘Christ, no.’ He sheathed the sword, put his shako on his bruised skull and leaned against the shrine. ‘I’ll be all right,’ he said.

‘We can take you to the monastery, sir.’

‘No. I’ll make my way up to the ridge.’ He thanked the three men, wished them a peaceful night, waited until he had recovered some strength, and then limped back uphill, through the wall and down the ridge to find his company.

Colonel Lawford had pitched a tent close to the new road that had been hacked along the ridge top. The tent flaps were open, revealing a candlelit table on which silver and crystal gleamed, and the Colonel heard a sentry challenge Sharpe, heard Sharpe’s muffled response and shouted through the open flaps, ‘Sharpe! Is that you?’

Sharpe thought briefly about pretending not to have heard, but he was plainly within earshot so he turned towards the tent. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Come and have some brandy.’ Lawford was entertaining Majors Forrest and Leroy, and with them was Lieutenant Slingsby. All had on greatcoats for, after the last few days of brutal heat, the night was suddenly winter cold.

Forrest made space on a bench made out of wooden ammunition crates, then stared up at Sharpe. ‘What happened to you?’

‘Took a tumble, sir,’ Sharpe said. His voice was thick, and he leaned to one side and spat out a glutinous gobbet of blood. ‘Took a tumble.’

‘A tumble?’ Lawford was gazing at Sharpe with an expression of horror. ‘Your nose is bleeding.’

‘Mostly stopped, sir,’ Sharpe said, sniffing blood. He remembered the handkerchief that had been used as a white flag at the telegraph station and fished it out. It seemed a pity to stain the fine linen with blood, but he put it over his nose, flinching at the pain. Then he noticed his right hand was cut, presumably by the makeshift clay dagger.

‘A tumble?’ Major Leroy echoed the Colonel’s question.

‘Treacherous path down there, sir.’

‘You’ve got a black eye too,’ Lawford said.

‘If you’re not up to scratch,’ Slingsby said, ‘then I’ll happily command the company tomorrow, Sharpe.’ Slingsby was high-coloured and sweating, as if he had drunk too much. He looked to Colonel Lawford and, because he was nervous, gave a snort of laughter. ‘Be honoured to command, sir,’ he added quickly.

Sharpe gave the Lieutenant a look that would have killed. ‘I was hurt worse than this,’ he said icily, ‘when Sergeant Harper and I took that damned Eagle on your badge.’

Slingsby stiffened, appalled at Sharpe’s tone, and the other officers looked embarrassed.

‘Have some brandy, Sharpe,’ Lawford said emolliently, pouring it from a decanter and pushing the glass across the trestle table. ‘How was Major Hogan?’

Sharpe was hurting. His ribs were like strips of fire and it took him a moment to comprehend the question and find an answer. ‘He’s confident, sir.’

‘I should hope so,’ Lawford said. ‘Aren’t we all? Did you see the Peer?’

‘The Peer?’ Slingsby asked. He stumbled slightly on the word, then tossed down the rest of his brandy and helped himself to more.

‘Lord Wellington,’ Lawford explained. ‘So did you see him, Sharpe?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I hope you remembered me to him?’

‘Of course, sir.’ Sharpe told the required lie and forced himself to add another. ‘And he asked me to present his regards.’

‘Very civil of him,’ Lawford said, plainly pleased. ‘And does he think the French will come up and dance tomorrow?’

‘He didn’t say, sir.’

‘Perhaps this fog will deter them,’ Major Leroy said, peering out of the tent where the haze was perceptibly thickening.

‘Or it will encourage them,’ Forrest said. ‘Our gunners can’t aim into fog.’

Leroy was watching Sharpe. ‘Do you need a doctor?’

‘No, sir,’ Sharpe lied. His ribs hurt, his skull was throbbing and one of his upper teeth was loose. His belly was a mass of pain, his thigh hurt and he was angry. ‘Major Hogan,’ he forced himself to change the subject, ‘thinks the French will attack.’

‘Then we’d best keep a keen eye in the morning,’ Lawford said, hinting that the evening was over. The officers took the hint, standing and thanking the Colonel, who held out a hand to Sharpe. ‘Stay a moment, if you will, Sharpe.’

Slingsby, who looked the worse for drink, drained his glass, banged it down and clicked his heels. ‘Thank you, William,’ he said to Lawford, presuming on their relationship to use the Colonel’s Christian name.

‘Good night, Cornelius,’ Lawford said, and waited until the three officers had gone from the tent and were lost in the mist. ‘He drank rather a lot. Still, I suppose on the eve of a man’s first battle a little fortification isn’t out of order. Sit, Sharpe, sit. Drink some brandy.’ He took a glass himself. ‘Was it really a tumble? You look as if you’ve been in the wars.’

‘Dark in the trees, sir,’ Sharpe said woodenly, ‘and I missed my footing on some steps.’

‘You must take more care, Sharpe,’ Lawford said, leaning forward to light a cigar from one of the candles. ‘It’s gone damned cold, hasn’t it?’ He waited for a response, but Sharpe said nothing and the Colonel sighed. ‘I wanted to talk to you,’ he went on between puffs, ‘about your new fellows. Young Iliffe shaping up well, is he?’

‘He’s an ensign, sir. If he survives a year he might have a chance of growing up.’

‘We were all ensigns once,’ Lawford said, ‘and mighty oaks from tiny acorns grow, eh?’

‘He’s still a bloody small acorn,’ Sharpe said.

‘But his father’s a friend of mine, Sharpe. He farms a few acres near Benfleet and he wanted me to look after his son.’

‘I’ll look after him,’ Sharpe said.

‘I’m sure you will,’ Lawford said, ‘and what about Cornelius?’

‘Cornelius?’ Sharpe asked, wanting time to think. He swilled his bloody mouth out with brandy, spat it onto the ground, then drank some and fancied it took away some of the hurt.

‘How’s Cornelius doing?’ Lawford asked pleasantly. ‘Being useful, is he?’

‘He has to learn our ways,’ Sharpe said warily.

‘Of course he must, of course. But I particularly wanted him to be with you.’

‘Why, sir?’

‘Why?’ The Colonel seemed taken aback by the direct question, but then waved the cigar as if to say the answer was obvious. ‘I think he’s a capital fellow, and I’ll be honest with you, Sharpe, I’m not sure young Knowles possesses the right verve for skirmishing.’

‘He’s a good officer,’ Sharpe said indignantly, and then wished he had not spoken so forcibly for the pain in his ribs seemed to stab right to his heart.

‘Oh, none finer!’ Lawford agreed hastily. ‘And an admirable character, but you skirmishers aren’t dull fellows, are you? You’re the whippers-in! I need my light company to be audacious! Aggressive! Astute!’ Each quality was accompanied by a thump that rattled the glass and silverware on the table, but the Colonel paused after the third, evidently realizing that astuteness lacked the force of audacity and aggression. He thought for a few seconds, trying to find a more impressive word, then carried on without thinking of it. ‘I believe Cornelius has those qualities and I look to you, Sharpe, to bring him on.’ Lawford paused again, as if expecting Sharpe to respond, but when the rifleman said nothing the Colonel looked acutely embarrassed. ‘The nub of the matter is, Sharpe, that Cornelius seems to think you don’t like him.’

‘Most people think that, sir,’ Sharpe said woodenly.

‘Do they?’ Lawford looked surprised. ‘I suppose they might. Not everyone knows you as well as I do.’ He paused to draw on his cigar. ‘Do you ever miss India, Sharpe?’

‘India,’ Sharpe responded cautiously. He and Lawford had served there together when Lawford had been a lieutenant and Sharpe a private. ‘I liked it well enough.’

‘There are regiments in India that could use an experienced officer,’ Lawford said casually and Sharpe felt a stab of betrayal because the words suggested the Colonel did want to be rid of him. He said nothing, and Lawford seemed unaware of having given any offence. ‘So I can reassure Cornelius that all is well?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Sharpe said, then stood. ‘I must go and inspect the picquets, sir.’

‘Of course you must,’ Lawford said, not hiding his frustration with the conversation. ‘We should talk more often, Sharpe.’

Sharpe took his battered shako and walked out into the fog-shrouded night. He picked his way through the thick darkness, going across the ridge’s wide crest and then some short way down the eastern slope until he could just see the mist-blurred string of enemy fires in the valley’s deep darkness. Let them come, he thought, let them come. If he could not murder Ferragus then he would take out his anger on the French. He heard footsteps behind him, but did not turn round. ‘Evening, Pat,’ he said.

‘What happened to you?’ Harper must have seen Sharpe inside the Colonel’s tent and had followed him down the slope.

‘That bloody Ferragus and two of his coves.’

‘Tried to kill you?’

Sharpe shook his head. ‘Bloody nearly succeeded. Would have done, except three provosts came along.’

‘Provosts! Never thought they’d be useful. And how is Mister Ferragus?’

‘I hurt him, but not enough. He beat me, Pat. Beat me bloody.’

Harper thought about that. ‘And what did you tell the Colonel?’

‘That I had a tumble.’

‘So that’s what I’ll tell the lads when they notice you’re better-looking than usual. And tomorrow I’ll keep an eye open for Mister Ferragus. You think he’ll be back for more?’

‘No, he’s buggered off.’

‘We’ll find him, sir, we’ll find him.’

‘But not tomorrow, Pat. We’re going to be busy tomorrow. Major Hogan reckons the Frogs are coming up this hill.’

Which was a comforting thought to end the day, and the two sat, listening to the singing from the dark encampments behind. A dog began barking somewhere in the British lines and immediately dozens of others echoed the sound, prompting angry shouts as the beasts were told to be quiet, and slowly peace descended again, all but for one dog that would not stop. On and on it went, barking frantically, until there was the sudden harsh crack of a musket or pistol.

‘That’s the way to do it,’ Harper said.

Sharpe said nothing. He just gazed down the hill to where the French fires were a dull, hazed glow in the mist. ‘But what will we do about Mister Ferragus?’ Harper asked. ‘He can’t be allowed to get away with assaulting a rifleman.’

‘If we lose tomorrow,’ Sharpe said, ‘we’ll have to retreat through Coimbra. That’s where he lives.’

‘So we’ll find him there,’ Harper said grimly, ‘and give him what he deserves. But what if we win tomorrow?’

‘God only knows,’ Sharpe said, and nodded down the hill to the misted firelight. There were thousands of fires. ‘Follow those bastards back to Spain, I suppose,’ he went on, ‘and fight them there.’ And go on fighting them, he thought, month after month, year after year, until the very crack of doom. But it would begin tomorrow, with sixty thousand Frenchmen who wanted to take a hill. Tomorrow.

Marshal Ney, second in command of l’Armée de Portugal, reckoned the whole of the enemy army was on the ridge. There were no fires in the high darkness to betray their presence, but Ney could smell them. A soldier’s instinct. The bastards were laying a trap, hoping the French would stroll up the hill to be slaughtered, and Ney reckoned they should be obliged. Send the Eagles up the hill and beat the bastards into mincemeat, but Ney was not the man to make that decision and so he summoned an aide, Captain D’Esmenard, and told him to find Marshal Masséna. ‘Tell his highness,’ Ney said, ‘that the enemy’s waiting to be killed. Tell him to get back here fast. Tell him there’s a battle to be fought.’

Captain D’Esmenard had a journey of more than twenty miles and he had to be escorted by two hundred dragoons who clattered into the small town of Tondela long after nightfall. A tricolour flew above the porch of the house where Masséna lodged. Six sentries stood outside, their muskets tipped by bayonets that reflected the firelight of the brazier that offered a small warmth in the sudden cold.

D’Esmenard climbed the stairs and hammered on the Marshal’s door. There was silence.

D’Esmenard knocked again. This time there was a woman’s giggle followed by the distinct sound of a hand slapping flesh, then the woman laughed. ‘Who is it?’ the Marshal called.

‘A message from Marshal Ney, your highness.’ Marshal André Masséna was Duke of Rivoli and Prince of Essling.

‘From Ney?’

‘The enemy has definitely stopped, sir. They’re on the ridge.’

The girl squealed.

‘The enemy has what?’

‘Stopped, sir,’ D’Esmenard shouted through the door. ‘The Marshal believes you should come back.’ Masséna had been in the valley beneath the ridge for a few moments in the afternoon, given his opinion that the enemy would not stand and fight, and ridden back to Tondela. The girl said something and there was the sound of another slap followed by more giggling.

‘Marshal Ney believes they are offering battle, sir,’ D’Esmenard said.

‘Who are you?’ the Marshal asked.

‘Captain D’Esmenard, sir.’

‘One of Ney’s boys, eh?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Have you eaten, D’Esmenard?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Go downstairs, Captain, tell my cook to give you supper. I shall join you.’

‘Yes, sir.’ D’Esmenard paused. He heard a grunt, a sigh, then the sound of bedsprings rhythmically squeaking.

‘Are you still there, Captain?’ the Prince of Essling shouted.

D’Esmenard crept downstairs, timing his steps on the creaking stair treads to the regular bounce of the bedsprings. He ate cold chicken. And waited.

Pedro and Luis Ferreira had always been close. Luis, the oldest, the rebel, the huge, uncontrollable boy, had been the brighter of the two, and if he had not been exiled from his family, if he had not been sent to the nuns who beat and mocked him, if he had not run away from Coimbra to see the world, he might have secured an education and become a scholar, though in truth that would have been an unlikely fate for Luis. He was too big, too belligerent, too careless of his own and other men’s feelings, and so he had become Ferragus. He had sailed the world, killed men in Africa, Europe and America, had seen the sharks eat the dying slaves thrown overboard off the Brazilian coast, and then he had come home to his younger brother and the two of them, so different and yet so close, had embraced. They were brothers. Ferragus had come home rich enough to set himself up in business, rich enough to own a score of properties about the city, but Pedro insisted that he have a room in his house to use when he wished. ‘My house is your house,’ he had promised Ferragus, and though Major Ferreira’s wife might wish otherwise she dared not protest.

Ferragus rarely used the room in his brother’s house, but on the day when the two armies faced each other at Bussaco, after his brother had promised to lure Captain Sharpe to a beating among the trees, Ferragus had promised Pedro that he would return to Coimbra and there guard the Ferreira household until the pattern of the French campaign was clear. Folk were supposed to be fleeing the city, going to Lisbon, but if the French were stopped then no such flight would be necessary, and whether they were stopped or not, there was unrest in the streets because people were unhappy with the orders to abandon their homes. Ferreira’s house, grand and rich, bought with the legacy of his father’s wealth, would be a likely place for thieves to plunder, though none would dare touch it if Ferragus and his men were there and so, after his failure to kill the impudent rifleman, the big man rode to keep his promise.

The journey from the ridge of Bussaco to the city of Coimbra was less than twenty miles, but the mist and the darkness slowed Ferragus and his men, so it was just before dawn that they rode past the imposing university buildings and down the hill to his brother’s house. There was a squeal from the hinges of the gates to the stable yard where Ferragus dismounted, abandoned his horse and pushed into the kitchen to thrust his injured hand into a vat of cool water. Sweet Jesus, he thought, but the damned rifleman had to die. Had to die. Ferragus brooded on the unfairness of life as he used a cloth to wipe the wounds on his jawbone and cheeks. He winced at the pain, though it was not as bad as the throbbing in his groin that persisted from their confrontation at the shrine. Next time, Ferragus promised himself, next time he would face Mister Sharpe with nothing but fists and he would kill the Englishman as he had killed so many other men, by pulverizing him into a bloody, whimpering mess. Sharpe had to die, Ferragus had sworn it, and if he did not keep the oath then his men would think he was weakening.

He was being weakened anyway. The war had seen to that. Many of his victims had fled Coimbra and its surrounding farmlands, gone to take shelter in Lisbon. That temporary setback would pass, and, anyway, Ferragus hardly needed to go on extorting money. He was rich, but he liked to keep cash flowing for he did not trust the banks. He liked land, and the vast profits of his slaving years had been invested in vineyards, farms, houses and shops. He owned every brothel in Coimbra and scarcely a student at the university did not live in a house owned by Ferragus. He was rich, rich beyond his childhood dreams, but he could never be rich enough. He loved money. He yearned for it, loved it, caressed it, dreamed of it.

He rinsed his jaw again and saw how the water dripped pink from the cloth. Capitâo Sharpe. He said the name aloud, feeling the pain in his mouth. He looked at his hand that was hurting. He reckoned he had cracked some knuckle bones, but he could still move his fingers so the damage could not be that bad. He dipped the knuckles in the water, then turned suddenly as the kitchen door opened and his brother’s governess, Miss Fry, dressed in a nightdress and a heavy woollen gown, came into the kitchen. She was carrying a candle and gave a small start of surprise when she saw her employer’s brother. ‘I am sorry, senhor,’ she said, and made to leave.

‘Come in,’ Ferragus growled.

Sarah would rather have gone back to her room, but she had heard the horses clattering in the stable yard and, hoping it might be Major Ferreira with news of the French advance, she had come to the kitchen. ‘You’re hurt,’ she said.

‘I fell from my horse,’ Ferragus said. ‘Why are you up?’

‘To make tea,’ Sarah said. ‘I make it every morning. And I wondered, senhor,’ she took a kettle off the shelf, ‘whether you have news of the French.’

‘The French are pigs,’ Ferragus said, ‘which is all you need to know, so make your tea and make some for me too.’

Sarah put down the candle, opened the stove and fed kindling onto the embers. When the kindling was blazing she put more wood onto the fire. By the time the fire was properly burning there were other servants busy around the house, opening shutters and sweeping the corridors, but none came into the kitchen where Sarah hesitated before filling the kettle. The water in the big vat was bloodstained. ‘I’ll draw some from the well,’ she said.

Ferragus watched her through the open door. Miss Sarah Fry was a symbol of his brother’s aspirations. To Major Ferreira and his wife an English governess was as prized a possession as fine porcelain or crystal chandeliers or gilt furniture. Sarah proclaimed their good taste, but Ferragus regarded her as a priggish waste of his brother’s money. A typical, snobbish Englishwoman, he reckoned, and what would she turn Tomas and Maria into? Little stuck-up copies of herself? Tomas did not need manners or to know English; he needed to know how to defend himself. And Maria? Her mother could teach her manners, and so long as she was pretty, what else mattered? That was Ferragus’s view, anyway, but he had also noticed, ever since Miss Fry had come to his brother’s house, that she was pretty, more than just pretty, beautiful. Fair-skinned, fair-haired, blue-eyed, tall, elegant. ‘How old are you?’ he asked as she came back to the kitchen.

‘Is it any business of yours, senhor?’ Sarah asked briskly.

Ferragus smiled. ‘My brother sent me here to protect you all. I like to know what I’m protecting.’

‘I’m twenty-two, senhor.’ Sarah set the kettle on the stove, then stood the big brown English teapot close by so that the china would warm. She took down the tin caddy, then had nothing to do because the pot was still cold and the kettle would take long minutes to boil on the newly awakened fire so, abhorring idleness, she began polishing some spoons.

‘Are Tomas and Maria learning properly?’ Ferragus addressed her back.

‘When they apply themselves,’ Sarah said briskly.

‘Tomas tells me you hit him.’

‘Of course I hit him,’ Sarah said, ‘I am his governess.’

‘But you don’t hit Maria?’

‘Maria does not use bad language,’ Sarah said, ‘and I detest bad language.’

‘Tomas will be a man,’ Ferragus said, ‘so he will need bad language.’

‘Then he may learn it from you, senhor,’ Sarah retorted, looking Ferragus in the eye, ‘but I shall teach him not to use it in front of ladies. If he learns that alone then I shall have been useful.’

Ferragus gave a grunt that might have been amusement. He was challenged by her gaze, which showed no fear of him. He was accustomed to his brother’s other servants shrinking when he passed; they dropped their eyes and tried to become invisible, but this English girl was brazen. But also beautiful, and he marvelled at the line of her neck which was shadowed by unruly fair hair. Such white skin, he thought, so delicate. ‘You teach them French. Why?’ he asked.

‘Because the Major’s wife expects it,’ Sarah said, ‘because it is the language of diplomacy. Because possession of French is a requisite of gentility.’

Ferragus made a growling noise in his throat that was evidently a verdict on gentility, then shrugged. ‘The language will at least be useful if the French come here,’ he said.

‘If the French come here,’ Sarah said, ‘then we should be long gone. Is that not what the government has ordered?’

Ferragus flinched as he moved his right hand. ‘But perhaps they won’t come now. Not if they lose the battle.’

‘The battle?’

‘Your Lord Wellington is at Bussaco. He hopes the French will attack him.’

‘I pray they do,’ Sarah said confidently, ‘because then he will beat them.’

‘Perhaps,’ Ferragus said, ‘or perhaps your Lord Wellington will do what Sir John Moore did at La Coruña. Fight, win and run away.’

Sarah sniffed to show her opinion of that statement.

‘Os ingleses,’ Ferragus said savagely, ‘por mar.’

The English, he had said, are for the sea. It was a general belief in Portugal. The British were opportunists, looking for victory, but running from any possible defeat. They had come, they had fought, but they would not stay to the end. Os ingleses por mar.

Sarah half feared Ferragus was right, but would not admit it. ‘You say your brother sent you to protect us?’ she asked instead.

‘He did. He can’t be here. He has to stay with the army.’

‘Then I shall rely on you, senhor, to make certain I am long gone to safety if, as you say, the English take to the sea. I cannot stay here if the French come.’

‘You cannot stay here?’

‘Indeed not. I am English.’

‘I shall protect you, Miss Fry,’ Ferragus said.

‘I am glad to hear it,’ she said briskly and turned back to the kettle.

Bitch, Ferragus thought, stuck-up English bitch. ‘Forget my tea,’ he said and stalked from the kitchen.

And then, from far off, half heard, there was a noise like thunder. It rose and fell, faded to nothing, came again, and at its loudest the windows shook softly in their frames. Sarah stared into the yard and saw the cold grey mist and she knew it was not thunder she heard from so far away.

It was the French.

Because it was dawn and, at Bussaco, the guns were at work.