Sharpe's Escape

CHAPTER 6

The British and Portuguese army stayed on the ridge all the next day while the French remained in the valley. At times the rattle of muskets or rifles started birds up from the heather as skirmishers contested the long slope, but mostly the day was quiet. The cannons did not fire. French troops, without weapons and dressed in shirtsleeves, climbed the slope to take away their wounded who had been left to suffer overnight. Some of the injured had crawled down to the stream while others had died in the darkness. A dead voltigeur just beneath the rocky knoll lay with his clenched hands jutting to the sky while a raven pecked his lips and eyes. The British and Portuguese picquets let the enemy undisturbed, only challenging the few voltigeurs who climbed too close to the crest. When the wounded had been taken away, the dead were carried to the graves being dug behind the entrenchments the French had thrown up beyond the stream, but the defensive bastions were a waste of effort, for Lord Wellington had no intention of giving up the high ground to take the fight into the valley.

Lieutenant Jack Bullen, a nineteen-year-old who had been serving in number nine company, was sent to the light company to replace Iliffe. Slingsby, Lawford decreed, was now to be addressed as Captain Slingsby. "He was brevetted as such in the 55th," Lawford told Forrest, "and it will distinguish him from Bullen."

"Indeed it will, sir."

Lawford bridled at the Major's tone. "It's merely a courtesy, Forrest. You surely approve of courtesy?"

"Indeed I do, sir, though I value Sharpe more."

"What on earth do you mean?"

"I mean, sir, that I'd rather Sharpe commanded the skirmishers. He's the best man for the job."

"And so he will, Forrest, so he will, just as soon as he learns to behave in a civilized manner. We fight for civilization, do we not?"

"I hope we do," Forrest agreed.

"And we do not gain that objective by behaving with crass discourtesy. That's what Sharpe's behavior is, Forrest, crass discourtesy! I want it eradicated."

Might as well wish to extinguish the sun, Major Forrest thought. The Major was a courteous man, judicious and sensible, but he doubted the fighting efficiency of the South Essex would be enhanced by a campaign to improve its manners.

There was a sullen atmosphere in the battalion. Lawford put it down to the casualties of the battle, who had either been buried on the ridge or carried away in carts to the careless mercies of the surgeons. This was a day, Lawford thought, when the battalion ought to be busy, yet there was nothing to do except wait on the long high summit in case the French renewed their attacks. He ordered all the muskets to be cleaned with boiling water, the flints to be inspected and replaced if they were too chipped, and every man's cartridge box to be replenished, but those useful tasks only took an hour and the men were no more cheerful at its end than they had been at the beginning. The Colonel made himself visible and tried to encourage the men, yet he was aware of reproachful glances and muttered comments, and Lawford was no fool and knew exactly what caused it. He kept hoping Sharpe would make the requisite apology, but the rifleman stayed stubbornly out of sight and finally Lawford sought out Leroy, the loyal American. "Talk to him," he pleaded.

"Won't listen to me, Colonel."

"He respects you, Leroy."

"It's kind of you to suggest as much," Leroy said, "but he's stubborn as a mule."

"Getting too big for his boots, that's the trouble," Lawford said irritably.

"Boots he took from a French colonel of chasseurs, if I remember," Leroy said, staring up at a buzzard that circled lazily above the ridge.

"The men are unhappy," Lawford said, deciding to avoid a discussion of Sharpe's boots.

"Sharpe's a strange man, Colonel," Leroy said, then paused to light one of the rough, dark brown cigars that were sold by Portuguese peddlers. "Most of the men don't like officers up from the ranks, but they're kind of fond of Sharpe. He scares them. They want to be like him."

"I can't see that scaring men is a virtue in an officer," Lawford said, annoyed.

"Probably the best one," Leroy said provocatively. "Of course he ain't an easy man in the mess," the American went on more placidly, "but he's one hell of a soldier. Saved Slingsby's life yesterday."

"That is nonsense." Lawford sounded testy. "Captain Slingsby might have taken the company a little too far, but he would have retrieved them, I'm sure."

"Wasn't talking about that," Leroy said. "Sharpe shot a fellow about to give Slingsby a Portuguese grave. Finest damned piece of shooting I've ever seen."

Lawford had congratulated Sharpe at the time, but he was in no mood to consider mitigating circumstances. "There was a good deal of firing, Leroy," he said airily, "and the shot could have come from anywhere."

"Maybe," the American said, sounding dubious, "but you have to admit Sharpe was damned useful yesterday."

Lawford wondered whether Leroy had overheard Sharpe's quiet advice to turn the battalion around and then wheel them onto the French flank. It had been good advice, and taking it had retrieved a distinctly unhealthy situation, but the Colonel had persuaded himself that he would have thought of turning and wheeling the battalion without Sharpe. He had also persuaded himself that his authority was being deliberately challenged by the rifleman, and that was quite intolerable. "All I want is an apology!" he protested.

"I'll talk to him, Colonel," Leroy promised, "but if Mister Sharpe says he won't apologize then you can wait till doomsday. Unless you get Lord Wellington to order him. That's the one man who scares Sharpe."

"I will not involve Wellington!" Lawford said in alarm. He had once been an aide to the General and knew how his lordship detested being niggled by minor concerns, and, besides, to make such a request would only betray Lawford's failure. And it was failure. He knew Sharpe was a far finer officer than Slingsby, but the Colonel had promised Jessica, his wife, that he would do all he could to press Cornelius's career and the promise had to be kept. "Talk to him," he encouraged Leroy. "Suggest a written apology, perhaps? He won't have to deliver it in person. I'll convey it myself and tear it up afterwards."

"I'll suggest it," Leroy said, then went down the reverse slope of the ridge where he found the battalion's temporary quartermaster sitting with a dozen of the battalion's wives. They were laughing, but fell silent as Leroy approached. "Sorry to disturb you, ladies." The Major took off his battered cocked hat as a courtesy to the women, then beckoned to Sharpe. "A word?"

He led Sharpe a few paces down the hill.

"Know what I'm here to say?" Leroy asked.

"I can guess."

"And?"

"No, sir."

"Reckoned as much," Leroy said. "Jesus Christ, who is that?" He was looking back at the women and Sharpe knew the Major had to be referring to an attractive, long-haired Portuguese girl who had joined the battalion the week before.

"Sergeant Enables found her," Sharpe explained.

"Christ! She can't be more than eleven," Leroy said, then stared at the other women for a moment. "Damn," he went on, "but that Sally Clayton is pretty."

"Pretty well married, too," Sharpe said.

Leroy grinned. "You ever read the story of Uriah the Hittite, Sharpe?"

"Hittite? A prizefighter?" Sharpe guessed.

"Not quite, Sharpe. Fellow in the Bible. Uriah the Hittite, Sharpe, had a wife and King David wanted her in his bed, so he sent Uriah to war and ordered the general to put the poor bastard in the front line so some other bastard would kill him. Worked, too."

"I'll remember that," Sharpe said.

"Can't remember the woman's name," Leroy said. "Weren't Sally. So what shall I tell the Colonel?"

"That he's just got himself the best damned quartermaster in the army."

Leroy chuckled and walked uphill. He paused and turned after a few paces. "Bathsheba," he called back to Sharpe.

"Bath what?"

"That was her name, Bathsheba."

"Sounds like another prizefighter."

"But Bathsheba hit below the belt, Sharpe," Leroy said, "well below the belt!" He raised his hat again to the battalion wives and walked on.

"He's thinking about it," he told the Colonel a few moments later.

"Let us hope he thinks clearly," Lawford said piously.

But if Sharpe was thinking about it, no apology came. Instead, as evening fell, the army was ordered to ready itself for a retreat. The French could be seen leaving, evidently going towards the road that looped about the ridge's northern end and so the gallopers pounded along the ridge with orders that the army was to march towards Lisbon before dawn. The South Essex, alone among the British battalions, received different orders. "It seems we're to retreat, gentlemen," Lawford said to the company commanders as his tent was taken down by orderlies. There was a murmur of surprise that Lawford stilled with a raised hand. "There's a route round the top of the ridge," he explained, "and if we stay the French will outflank us. They'll be up our backsides, so we're dancing backwards for a few days. Find somewhere else to bloody them, eh?" Some of the officers still looked surprised that, having won a victory, they were to yield ground, but Lawford ignored their puzzlement. "We have our own orders, gentlemen," he went on. "The battalion is to leave tonight and hurry to Coimbra. A long march, I fear, but necessary. We're to reach Coimbra with all dispatch and aid the commissary officers in the destruction of the army's supplies on the river quays. A Portuguese regiment is being sent as well. The two of us are the vanguard, so to speak, but our responsibility is heavy. The General wants those provisions brought to ruin by tomorrow night."

"We're expected to reach Coimbra tonight?" Leroy asked skeptically. The city was at least twenty miles away and, by any reckoning, that was a very ambitious march, especially at night.

"Wagons are being provided for baggage," Lawford said, "including the men's packs. Walking wounded will guard those packs, women and children go with the wagons. We march light, we march fast."

"Advance party?" Leroy wanted to know.

"I'm sure the quartermaster will know what to do," Lawford said.

"Dark night," Leroy said, "probably chaotic in Coimbra. Two battalions looking for quarters and the commissary people will mostly be drunk. Even Sharpe can't do that alone, sir. Best let me go with him."

Lawford looked indignant for he knew Leroy's suggestion was an expression of sympathy for Sharpe, but the American's objections had been cogent and so, reluctantly, Lawford nodded. "Do that, Major," he said curtly, "and as for the rest of us? I want to be the first battalion into Coimbra, gentlemen! We can't have the Portuguese beating us, so be ready to march in one hour."

"Light company to lead?" Slingsby asked. He was fairly bursting with pride and efficiency.

"Of course, Captain."

"We'll set a smart pace," Slingsby promised. "Do we have a guide?" Forrest asked.

"We can find one, I'm sure," Lawford said, "but it's not a difficult route. West to the main road, then turn south."

"I can find it," Slingsby said confidently.

"Our wounded?" Forrest asked.

"More wagons will be provided. Mister Knowles? You'll determine those arrangements? Splendid!" Lawford smiled to show that the battalion was one happy family. "Be ready to leave in one hour, gentlemen, one hour!"

Leroy found Sharpe, who had not been invited to the company commanders' meeting. "You and I are for Coimbra, Sharpe," the Major said. "You can ride my spare horse and my servant can walk."

"Coimbra?"

"Billeting. Battalion's following tonight."

"You don't need to come," Sharpe said. "I've done billeting before."

"You want to walk there on your own?" Leroy asked, then grinned. "I'm coming, Sharpe, because the battalion is marching twenty goddamn miles in the twilight and it's going to be a shambles. Twenty miles at night? They'll never do it, and two battalions on one narrow road? Hell, I don't need that. You and I can go ahead, mark the place up, find a tavern, and ten guineas says the battalion won't be there before the sun's up."

"Keep your money," Sharpe said.

"And when they do get there," Leroy went on happily, "they're going to be in one hell of a God-awful temper. That's why I'm appointing myself as your assistant, Sharpe."

They rode down the hill. The sun was low and the shadows long. It was almost the end of September and the days were drawing in. The first wagons loaded with wounded British and Portuguese soldiers were already on the road and Leroy and Sharpe had to edge past them. They went through half-deserted villages where Portuguese officers were persuading the remaining folk to leave. The arguments were shrill in the dusk. A black-dressed woman, her gray hair covered in a black scarf, beat at an officer's horse with a broom, evidently screaming at the rider to go away. "You can't blame them," Leroy said. "They hear we won the battle, now they want to know why the hell they have to leave home. Nasty business leaving home."

His tone was bitter and Sharpe glanced at him. "You've done it?"

"Hell, yes. We were thrown out by the damned rebels. Went to Canada with nothing but the shirts on our backs. The bastards promised restitution after the war, but we never saw a goddamned penny. I was only a kid, Sharpe. I thought it was all exciting, but what do kids know?"

"Then you went to England?"

"And we thrived, Sharpe, we thrived. My father made his money trading with the men he once fought." Leroy laughed, then rode in silence for a few yards, ducking under a low tree branch. "So tell me about these fortifications guarding Lisbon."

"I only know what Michael Hogan told me."

"So what did he tell you?"

"That they're the biggest defenses ever made in Europe," Sharpe said. He saw Leroy's skepticism. "Over a hundred and fifty forts," Sharpe went on, "connected by trenches. Hills reshaped to make them too steep to climb, valleys filled with obstacles, streams dammed to flood the approaches, the whole lot filled with cannon. Two lines, stretching from the Tagus to the ocean."

"So the idea is to get behind them and thumb our noses at the French?"

"And let the bastards starve," Sharpe said.

"And you, Sharpe, what will you do? Apologize?" Leroy laughed at Sharpe's expression. "The Colonel ain't going to give in."

"Nor am I," Sharpe said.

"So you'll stay quartermaster?"

"The Portuguese want British officers," Sharpe said, "and if I join them I get a promotion."

"Hell," Leroy said, thinking about it.

"Not that I want to leave the light company," Sharpe went on, thinking about Pat Harper and the other men he counted as friends. "But Lawford wants Slingsby, he doesn't want me."

"He wants you, Sharpe," Leroy said, "but he's made promises. Have you ever met the Colonel's wife?"

"No."

"Pretty," Leroy said, "pretty as a picture, but about as soft as an angry dragoon. I watched her ream out a servant once because the poor bastard hadn't filled a flower vase with enough water, and by the time she'd done there was nothing left of the man but slivers of skin and spots of blood. A formidable lady, our Jessica. She'd make a much better commanding officer than her husband." The Major drew on a cigar. "But I wouldn't be in too much of a hurry to join the Portuguese. I have a suspicion that Mister Slingsby will cook his own goose."

"Drink?"

"He was liquored to the gills on the night of the battle. Staggering, he was. Fine next morning."

They reached Coimbra long after dark and it was close to midnight before they discovered the office of the Town Major, the British officer responsible for liaison with the town authorities, and the Major himself was not there, but his servant, wearing a tasseled nightcap, opened the door and grumbled about officers keeping unseasonable hours. "What is it you want, sir?"

"Chalk," Sharpe said, "and you've got two battalions arriving before dawn."

"Oh, Jesus Christ," the servant said, "two battalions? Chalk?"

"At least four sticks. Where are the commissary officers?"

"Up the street, sir, six doors on the left, but if it's rations you're after help yourself from the town quay. Bloody tons there, sir."

"A lantern would be useful," Major Leroy put in.

"Lantern, sir. There is one somewhere."

"And we need to stable two horses."

"Round the back, sir. Be safe there."

Once the horses were stabled and Leroy was equipped with the lantern they worked their way up the street chalking on the doors. SE, Sharpe chalked, meaning South Essex, 4–6, which said six men of number four company would be billeted in the house. They used the small streets close to the bridge over the Mondego, and after a half-hour they encountered two Portuguese officers chalking up for their battalion. Neither of the battalions had arrived by the time the work was done, so Sharpe and Leroy found a tavern on the quay where lights still glowed and ordered themselves wine, brandy and food. They ate salt cod and, just as it was served, the sound of boots echoed in the street outside. Leroy leaned over, pulled open the tavern door and peered out. "Portuguese," he said laconically.

"So they beat us?" Sharpe said. "Colonel won't be pleased."

"The Colonel is going to be one very unhappy man about that," Leroy said and was about to close the door when he saw the legend chalked on the woodwork. SE, CO, ADJ, LCO, it said, and the American grinned. "Putting Lawford and the light company officers in here, Sharpe?"

"I thought the Colonel might want to be with his relative, sir. Friendly like."

"Or are you putting temptation in Mister Slingsby's path?"

Sharpe looked shocked. "Good lord," he said, "I hadn't thought of that."

"You lying bastard," Leroy said, closing the door. He laughed. "I don't think I'd want you as an enemy."

They slept in the taproom and, when Sharpe woke at dawn, the South Essex had still not reached the city. A sad procession of wagons, all with men wounded on Bussaco's slope, was crossing the bridge and Sharpe, going to the quayside, saw that the sills of the wagon beds were stained where blood had dripped from the vehicles. He had to wait to cross to the river bank because the convoy of wounded was followed by a smart traveling coach, drawn by four horses and heaped with trunks, accompanied by a wagon piled with more goods on which a half-dozen unhappy servants clung, and both vehicles were escorted by armed civilian horsemen. Once they were gone Sharpe crossed to the vast heaps of army provisions that had been brought to Coimbra. There were sacks of grain, barrels of salt meat, puncheons of rum, boxes of biscuit, all unloaded from the river boats that were tied to the wharves. Each boat had a number painted on its bow beneath the owner's name and town. The Portuguese authorities had ordered the boats to be numbered and labeled, then listed town by town, so they could be sure that all the craft would be destroyed before the French arrived. The name Ferreira was painted on a half-dozen of the larger vessels, and Sharpe assumed that meant the craft belonged to Ferragus. The boats were all under the guard of redcoats, one of whom, seeing Sharpe, slung his musket and walked along the quay. "Is it true we're retreating, sir?"

"We are."

"Bloody hell." The man gazed at the vast heaps of provisions. "What happens to this lot?"

"We have to get rid of it. And those boats."

"Bloody hell," the man said again, then watched as Sharpe marked dozens of boxes of biscuit and barrels of meat as rations for the South Essex.

The battalion arrived two hours later. They were, as Leroy had forecast, irritable, hungry and tired. Their march had been a nightmare, with wagons obstructing the road, clouds across the moon and at least two wrong turns that had wasted so much time that in the end Lavvford had ordered the men to get some sleep in a pasture until dawn gave them some light to find their way. Major Forrest, sliding wearily from his saddle, looked askance at Sharpe. "Don't tell me you and Leroy came straight here?"

"We did, sir. Had a night's sleep too."

"What a detestable man you are, Sharpe."

"Can't see how you could get lost," Sharpe said. "The road was pretty well straight. Who was leading?"

"You know who was leading, Sharpe," Forrest said, then turned to gaze at the great piles of food. "How do we destroy that lot?"

"Shoot the rum barrels," Sharpe suggested, "and sling the flour and grain into the river."

"Got it all worked out, haven't you?"

"That's what a good night's sleep does for a man, sir."

"Damn you, too."

The Colonel would clearly have liked to rest his battalion, but the brown-jacketed Portuguese troops were starting work and it was unthinkable that the South Essex should collapse while others labored, and so he ordered each company to start on the piles. "You can send men to make tea," he suggested to his officers, "but breakfast must be eaten as we work. Mister Sharpe, good morning."

"Good morning, sir."

"I hope you have had time to consider your predicament," Lawford said, and it took a deal of courage to say it for it stirred up an unhappy situation, and the Colonel would have been much happier if Sharpe had simply volunteered to apologize and so clear the air.

"I have, sir," Sharpe said with a surprising willingness.

"Good!" Lawford brightened. "And?"

"It's the meat that's the problem, sir."

Lawford stared incomprehensibly at Sharpe. "The meat?"

"We can shoot the rum barrels, sir," Sharpe said cheerfully, "throw the grain and flour into the river, but the meat? Can't burn it." He turned and stared at the huge barrels. "If you give me a few men, sir, I'll see if I can find some turpentine. Soak the stuff. Even the Frogs won't eat meat doused in turpentine. Or souse it in paint, perhaps?"

"A problem for you," Lawford said icily, "but I have battalion business to do. You have quarters for me?"

"The tavern on the corner, sir," Sharpe pointed, "all marked up."

"I shall see to the paperwork," Lawford said loftily, meaning he wanted to lie down for an hour, and he nodded curtly at Sharpe and, beckoning his servants, went to find his billet.

Sharpe grinned and walked down the vast piles. Men were slitting grain sacks and levering the tops from the meat barrels. The Portuguese were working more enthusiastically, but they had reached the city late at night and so managed to sleep for a few hours. Other Portuguese soldiers had been sent into the narrow streets to tell the remaining inhabitants to flee, and Sharpe could hear women's voices raised in protest. It was still early. A small mist clung to the river, but the west wind had gone around to the south and it promised to be another hot day. The sharp crack of rifles sounded, startling birds into the air, and Sharpe saw that the Portuguese were shooting the rum barrels. Closer by, Patrick Harper was stoving in the barrels with an axe he had filched. "Why don't you shoot them, Pat?" Sharpe asked.

"Mister Slingsby, sir, he won't let us."

"He won't let you?"

Harper swung the axe at another barrel, releasing a flood of rum onto the cobbles. "He says we're to save our ammunition, sir."

"What for? There's plenty of cartridges."

"That's what he says, sir, no shooting."

"Work, Sergeant!" Slingsby marched smartly down the row of barrels. "You want to keep those stripes, Sergeant, then set an example! Good morning, Sharpe!"

Sharpe turned slowly and examined Slingsby from top to bottom. The man might have marched all night and slept in a field, yet he was perfectly turned out, every button shining, his leather gleaming, the red coat brushed and boots wiped clean. Slingsby, uncomfortable under Sharpe's sardonic gaze, snorted. "I said good morning, Sharpe."

"I hear you got lost," Sharpe said.

"Nonsense. A detour! Avoiding wagons." The small man stepped past Sharpe and glared at the light company. "Put your backs into it! There's a war to win!"

"For Christ's sake come back," Harper said softly.

Slingsby swiveled, eyes wide. "Did you say something, Sergeant?"

"He was talking to me," Sharpe said, and he stepped towards the smaller man, towering over him. He forced Slingsby back between two heaps of crates, taking him to where no one from the battalion could overhear. "He was talking to me, you piece of shit," Sharpe said, "and if you interrupt another of my conversations I'll tear your bloody guts out of your arsehole and wrap them round your bleeding throat. You want to go and tell that to the Colonel?"

Slingsby visibly quivered, but then he seemed to shake off Sharpe's words as though they had never been spoken. He found a narrow passage between the crates, slipped through it like a terrier pursuing a rat, and clapped his hands. "I want to see progress!" he yapped at the men.

Sharpe followed Slingsby, looking for trouble, but then he saw that the Portuguese troops were from the same battalion that had taken the rocky knoll, for Captain Vicente was commanding the men shooting at the rum barrels and that was diversion enough to save Sharpe from more foolishness with Slingsby. He veered away and Vicente saw him coming and smiled a welcome, but before the two could utter a greeting, Colonel Lawford came striding across the cobbled quay. "Sharpe! Mister Sharpe!"

Sharpe offered the Colonel a salute. "Sir!"

"I am not a man given to complaint," Lawford complained, "you know that, Sharpe. I am as hardened to discomfort as any man, but that tavern is hardly a fit billet. Not in a city like this! There are fleas in the beds!"

"You want somewhere better, sir?"

"I do, Sharpe, I do. And quickly."

Sharpe turned. "Sergeant Harper! I need you. Your permission to take Sergeant Harper, sir?" he asked Lawford who was too bemused to question Sharpe's need of company, but just nodded. "Give me half an hour, sir," Sharpe reassured the Colonel, "and you'll have the best billet in the city."

"Just something adequate," Lawford said pettishly. "I'm not asking for a palace, Sharpe, just something that's barely adequate."

Sharpe beckoned Harper and walked over to Vicente. "You grew up here, yes?"

"I told you so."

"So you know where a man called Ferragus lives?"

"Luis Ferreira?" Vicente's face mingled surprise and alarm. "I know where his brother lives, but Luis? He could live anywhere."

"Can you show me his brother's house?"

"Richard," Vicente warned, "Ferragus is not a man to…»

"I know what he is," Sharpe interrupted. "He did this to me." He pointed to his fading black eye. "How far is it?"

"Ten minutes' walk."

"Will you take me there?"

"Let me ask my Colonel," Vicente said, and hurried off towards Colonel Rogers-Jones who was sitting on horseback and holding an open umbrella to shade him from the early sun.

Sharpe saw Rogers-Jones nod to Vicente. "You'll have your billet in twenty minutes, sir," he told Lawford, then plucked Harper's elbow so that they followed Vicente off the quays. "That bastard Slingsby," Sharpe said as they went. "The bastard, bastard, bastard, bastard."

"I'm not supposed to hear this," Harper said.

"I'll skin the bastard alive," Sharpe said.

"Who?" Vicente asked, leading them up narrow alleys where they were forced to negotiate knots of unhappy folk who were at last readying themselves to leave the city. Men and women were bundling clothes, hoisting infants onto their backs and complaining bitterly to anyone they saw in uniform.

"A bastard called Slingsby," Sharpe said, "but we'll worry about him later. What do you know about Ferragus?"

"I know most folk are frightened of him," Vicente said, leading them across a small square where a church door stood open. A dozen black-shawled women were kneeling in the porch and they looked around in fear as a sudden rumble, jangle and clatter sounded from a nearby street. It was the noise of an artillery battery heading downhill towards the bridge. The army must have marched long before dawn and now the leading troops had reached Coimbra. "He is a criminal," Vicente went on, "but he wasn't raised in a poor family. His father was a colleague of my father, and even he admitted his son was a monster. The bad one of the litter. They tried to beat the evil from him. His father tried, the priests tried, but Luis is a child of Satan." Vicente made the sign of the cross. "And few dare oppose him. This is a university town!"

"Your father teaches here, yes?"

"He teaches law," Vicente said, "but he is not here now. He and my mother went north to Porto to stay with Kate. But people like my father don't know how to deal with a man like Ferragus."

"That's because your father's a lawyer," Sharpe said. "Bastards like Ferragus need someone like me."

"He gave you a black eye," Vicente said.

"I gave him worse," Sharpe said, remembering the pleasure of kicking Ferragus in the crotch. "And the Colonel wants a house, so we'll find the Ferreira house and give it to him."

"It is not wise, I think," Vicente said, "to mix private revenge with war."

"Of course it's not wise," Sharpe said, "but it's bloody enjoyable. Enjoying yourself, Sergeant?"

"Never been happier, sir," Harper said gloomily.

They had climbed to the upper town where they emerged into a small, sunlit square and on its far side was a pale stone house with a grand front door, a side entrance that evidently led into a stable yard and three high floors of shuttered windows. The house was old, its stonework carved with heraldic birds. "That is Pedro Ferreira's house," Vicente said and watched as Sharpe climbed the front steps. "Ferragus is thought to have murdered many people," Vicente said unhappily, making one last effort to dissuade Sharpe.

"So have I," Sharpe said, and hammered on the door, keeping up the din until the door was opened by an alarmed woman wearing an apron. She chided Sharpe in a burst of indignant Portuguese. A younger man was behind her, but he backed into the shadows when he saw Sharpe while the woman, who was gray-haired and hefty, tried to push the rifleman down the steps. Sharpe stayed where he was. "Ask her where Luis Ferreira lives," he told Vicente.

There was a brief conversation. "She says Senhor Luis is staying here for the moment," Vicente said, "but he is not here now."

"He's living here?" Sharpe asked, then grinned and took a piece of chalk from a pocket and scrawled SE CO on the polished blue door. "Tell her an important English officer will be using the house tonight and he wants a bed and a meal." Sharpe listened to the conversation between Vicente and the gray-haired woman. "And ask her if there's stabling." There was. "Sergeant Harper?"

"Sir?"

"Can you find your way back to the quay?"

"Down the hill, sir."

"Bring the Colonel here. Tell him he's got the best billet in town and that there's stabling for his horses." Sharpe pushed past the woman to get into the hallway and glared at the man who backed still farther away. The man had a pistol in his belt, but he showed no sign of wanting to use it as Sharpe pushed open a door and saw a dark room with a desk, a portrait over the mantel and shelves of books. Another door opened into a comfortable parlor with spindly chairs, gilt tables and a sofa upholstered in rose-colored silk. The servant was arguing with Vicente who was trying to calm her.

"She is Major Ferreira's cook," Vicente explained, "and she says her master and his brother will not be happy."

"That's why we're here."

"The Major's wife and children have gone," Vicente went on translating.

"Never did like killing men in front of their family," Sharpe said.

"Richard!" Vicente said, shocked.

Sharpe grinned at him and climbed the stairs, followed by Vicente and the cook. He found the big bedroom and threw open the shutters. "Perfect," he said, looking at the four-poster bed hung with tapestry curtains. "The Colonel can get a lot of work done in that. Well done, Jorge! Tell that woman Colonel Lawford likes his food plain and well cooked. He'll provide his own rations, all it needs is to be cooked, but there are to be no damned foreign spices mucking it up. Who's the man downstairs?"

"A servant," Vicente translated.

"Who else is in the house?"

"Stable boys," Vicente interpreted the cook's answer, "kitchen staff, and Miss Fry."

Sharpe thought he had misheard. "Miss who?"

The cook looked frightened now. She spoke fast, glancing up to the top floor. "She says," Vicente interpreted, "that the children's governess is locked upstairs. An Englishwoman."

"Bloody hell. Locked up? What's her name?"

"Fry."

Sharpe climbed up to the attics. The stairs here were uncarpeted and the walls drab. "Miss Fry!" he shouted. "Miss Fry!" He was rewarded by an incoherent cry and the sound of a fist beating on a door. He pushed the door to find it was indeed locked. "Stand back!" he called.

He kicked the door hard, thumping his heel close to the lock. The whole attic seemed to shake, but the door held. He kicked again and heard a splintering sound, drew back his leg and gave the door one last almighty blow and it flew open and there, hunched under the window, her arms wrapped about her knees, was a woman with hair the color of pale gold. She stared at Sharpe, who stared back, then he looked hastily away as he remembered his manners because the woman, who had struck him as undoubtedly beautiful, was as naked as a new-laid egg. "Your servant, ma'am," he said, staring at the wall.

"You're English?" she asked.

"I am, ma'am."

"Then fetch me some clothes!" she demanded.

And Sharpe obeyed.

Ferragus had sent his brother's wife, children and six servants away at dawn, but had ordered Miss Fry up to her room. Sarah had protested, insisting she must travel with the children and that her trunk was already on the baggage wagon, but Ferragus had ordered her to wait in her room. "You will go with the British," he told her.

Major Ferreira's wife had also protested. "The children need her!"

"She will go with her own kind," Ferragus snapped at his sister-in-law, "so get in the coach!"

"I will go with the British?" Sarah had asked.

"Os ingleses por mar," he had snarled, "and you can run away with them. Your time is done here. You have paper, a pen?"

"Of course."

"Then write yourself a character. I will sign it on my brother's behalf. But you can take refuge with your own people. So wait in your room."

"But my clothes, my books!" Sarah pointed to the baggage cart. Her small savings, all in coin, were also in the trunk.

"I'll have them taken off," Ferragus said. "Now go." Sarah had gone upstairs and written a letter of recommendation in which she described herself as being efficient, hard-working, and good at instilling discipline in her charges. She said nothing about the children being fond of her, for she was not sure that they were, nor did she believe it part of her job that they should be. She had paused once in writing the letter to lean from the window when she had heard the stable-yard gates being opened, and she saw the coach and baggage wagon, escorted by four mounted men armed with pistols, swords and malevolence, clatter into the street. She sat again, and added a sentence which truthfully said she was honest, sober and assiduous, and she had just been writing the last word when she had heard the heavy steps climbing the stairs to the servants' rooms. She had instantly known it was Ferragus and an instinct told her to lock her door, but before she could even get up from behind her small table Ferragus had thrust the door open and loomed in the entrance. "I am staying here," he had announced.

"If you think that's wise, senhor," she said in a tone which suggested she did not care what he did.

"And you will stay with me," he went on.

For a heartbeat Sarah thought she had misheard, then she shook her head dismissively. "Don't be ridiculous," she said. "I will travel with the British troops." She stopped abruptly, distracted by gunshots coming from the lower town. The sound came from the rifles puncturing the first of the rum barrels, but Sarah could not know that and she wondered if the noise presaged the arrival of the French. Everything was so confusing. First had come news of the battle, then an announcement that the French had been defeated, and now everyone was ordered to leave Coimbra because the enemy was coming.

"You will stay with me," Ferragus repeated flatly.

"I most certainly will not!"

"Shut your bloody mouth," Ferragus said, and saw the shock on her face.

"I think you had better leave," Sarah said. She still spoke firmly, but her fear was obvious now and it excited Ferragus who leaned on her table, making its spindly legs creak.

"Is that the letter?" he asked.

"Which you promised to sign," Sarah said.

Instead he had torn it into shreds. "Bugger you," he said, "damn you," and he added some other words he had learned in the Royal Navy, and the effect of each was as though he had slapped her around the head. It might well come to that, he thought. Indeed, it almost certainly would and that was the pleasure of teaching the arrogant English bitch a lesson. "Your duties now, woman," he had finished, "are to please me."

"You have lost your wits," Sarah said.

Ferragus smiled. "Do you know what I can do with you?" he had asked. "I can send you with Miguel to Lisbon and he can have you shipped to Morocco or to Algiers. I can sell you there. You know what a man will pay for white flesh in Africa?" He paused, enjoying the horror on her face. "You wouldn't be the first girl I've sold."

"You will go!" Sarah said, clinging to her last shreds of defiance. She was looking for a weapon, any weapon, but there was nothing within reach except the inkpot and she was on the point of snatching it up and hurling it into his eyes when Ferragus tipped the table on its side and she had backed to the window. She had an idea that a good woman should rather die than be dishonored and she wondered if she ought to throw herself from the window and fall to her death in the stable yard, but the notion was one thing and the reality an impossibility.

"Take your dress off," Ferragus said.

"You will go!" Sarah had managed to say, and no sooner had she spoken than Ferragus punched her in the belly. It was a hard, fast blow and it drove the breath from her, and Ferragus, as she bent over, simply tore the blue frock down her back. She had tried to clutch to its remnants, but he was so massively strong, and when she did hold fast to her undergarments he just slapped her around the head so that her skull rang and she fell against the wall and could only watch as he threw her torn clothes out into the yard. Then, blessedly, Miguel had shouted up the stairs saying that the Major, Ferragus's brother, had arrived.

Sarah opened her mouth to scream to her employer for help, but Ferragus had given her another punch in the belly, leaving her incapable of making a sound. Then he had thrown her bedclothes out of the window. "I shall be back, Miss Fry," he said, and he had forced her thin arms apart to stare at her. She was weeping with anger, but just then Major Ferreira had shouted up the stairs and Ferragus had let go of her, walked from the room and locked the door.

Sarah shivered with fear. She heard the brothers leave the house and she thought of trying to escape out of the window, but the wall outside offered no handholds, no ledges, just a long drop into the stable yard where Miguel smiled up at her and patted the pistol at his belt. So, naked and ashamed, she had sat on the rope webbing of the bed and had been almost overcome with despair.

Then there had been footsteps on the stairs and she had hunched under the window, clutching her arms about her knees, and heard an English voice. The door had been hammered open and a tall man with a scarred face, a black eye, a green coat and a long sword was staring at her. "Your servant, ma'am," he had said, and Sarah was safe.

Major Ferreira, having arranged to sell the food to the French, wanted to reassure himself that the quantities he had promised to the enemy truly existed. They did. There was food enough in Ferragus's big warehouse to feed Massena's army for weeks. Major Ferreira followed his brother down the dark alleys between the stacks of boxes and barrels, and again marveled that his brother had managed to amass so much. "They have agreed to pay for it," Ferreira said.

"Good," Ferragus said.

"The Marshal himself assured me."

"Good."

"And protection will be given when the French arrive."

"Good."

"The arrangement," Ferreira said, stepping over a cat, "is that we are to meet Colonel Barreto at the shrine of Saint Vincent south of Mealhada." That was less than an hour's ride north of Coimbra. "And he will bring dragoons straight to the warehouse."

"When?"

Ferreira thought for a few seconds. "Today," he said, "is Saturday. The British could leave tomorrow and the French arrive on Monday. Possibly not until Tuesday? But they could come Monday, so we should be at Mealhada by tomorrow night."

Ferragus nodded. His brother, he thought, had done well, and so long as the rendezvous with the French went smoothly then Ferragus's future was safe. The British would flee back home, the French would capture Lisbon, and Ferragus would have established himself as a man with whom the invaders could do business. "So tomorrow," he said, "you and I ride to Mealhada. What about today?"

"I must report to the army," Ferreira said, "but tomorrow I shall find an excuse."

"Then I will guard the house," Ferragus said, thinking of the pale pleasures waiting on the top floor.

Ferreira examined a pair of wagons parked at the side of the warehouse. They were piled with useful goods, linen and horseshoes, lamp oil and nails, all things the French would value. Then, going farther back in the huge building, he grimaced. "That smell," he said, remembering a man whose death he had witnessed in the warehouse, "the body?"

"Two bodies now," Ferragus said proudly, then turned because a wash of light flooded into the warehouse as the outer door was dragged open. A man called his name and he recognized Miguel's voice. "I'm here!" he shouted. "At the back!"

Miguel hurried to the back where he bobbed his head respectfully. "The Englishman," he said.

"What Englishman?"

"The one on the hilltop, senhor. The one you attacked at the monastery."

Ferragus's good mood evaporated like the mist from the river. "What of him?"

"He is at the Major's house."

"Jesus Christ!" Ferragus's hand instinctively went to his pistol.

"No!" Ferreira said, earning a malevolent look from his brother. The Major looked at Miguel. "Is he alone?"

"No, senhor."

"How many?"

"Three of them, senhor, and one is a Portuguese officer. They say others are coming because a colonel will use the house."

"Billeting," Ferreira explained. "There will be a dozen men in the house when you get back, and you can't start a war with the English. Not here, not now."

It was good advice, and Ferragus knew it, then he thought of Sarah. "Did they find the girl?"

"Yes, senhor."

"What girl?" Ferreira asked.

"It doesn't matter," Ferragus said curtly, and that was true. Sarah Fry was not important. She would have been an amusement, but finishing Captain Sharpe would be a good deal more amusing. He thought for a few seconds. "The English," he said to his brother, "why are they staying here? Why do they not march straight to their ships?"

"Because they will probably offer battle again north of Lisbon," Ferreira said.

"But why wait here?" Ferragus insisted. "Why do they billet men here? Will they fight for Coimbra?" It seemed an unlikely prospect, for the city's walls had mostly been pulled down. It was a place for learning and trading, not for fighting.

"They're staying here," Ferreira said, "just long enough to destroy the supplies on the quays."

An idea occurred to Ferragus then, a risky idea, but one that might yield the amusement he craved. "What if they knew these supplies were here?" He gestured at the stacks in the warehouse.

"They would destroy them, of course," Ferreira said.

Ferragus thought again, trying to put himself into the Englishman's place. How would Captain Sharpe react? What would he do? There was a risk, Ferragus thought, a real risk, but Sharpe had declared war on Ferragus, that much was obvious. Why else would the Englishman have gone to his brother's house? And Ferragus was not a man to back down from a challenge, so the risk must be taken. "You say there was a Portuguese officer with them?"

"Yes, senhor. I think I recognized him. Professor Vicente's son."

"That piece of shit," Ferragus snarled, then thought again and saw the way clear to finishing the feud. "This," he said to Miguel, "is what we will do."

And laid his trap.

"This is splendid, Sharpe, quite splendid." Colonel Lawford 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 been. "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. Lawford 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 smelled 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 labeled 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 colored 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 honor, men who respect learning."

"Men of honor!" 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 honor 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 traveling 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 I 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 skeptically. "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 around 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 I 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 I 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 swarming 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, disheveled, 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.

CHAPTER 8

The first idea was to break through the trapdoor and then work on whatever had been piled above. "Go through the edge of the I hatch," Vicente suggested, "then perhaps we can break through the box above? Take everything out of the box? Then wriggle through?"

Sharpe could think of nothing else that might free them, so he and Harper set to work. They tried raising the trapdoor first, crouching beneath it and heaving up, but the wood did not move a fraction of an inch, and so they started to carve away at the timbers. Vicente, with his wounded shoulder, could not help, so he and Sarah sat in the cellar as far from the two decaying bodies as they could and listened as Sharpe and Harper attacked the trapdoor. Harper used his sword bayonet and, because that was a shorter blade than Sharpe's sword, worked farther up the steps. Sharpe took off his jacket, stripped off his shirt and wrapped the linen round the blade so he could grip the edge without being cut. He told Harper what he was doing and suggested he might want to protect his own hands. "Pity, though," Sharpe said, "this is a new shirt."

"A present from a certain seamstress in Lisbon?" Harper asked.

"It was, yes."

Harper chuckled, then stabbed the blade upwards. Sharpe did the same with his sword and they worked in silence mostly, gouging in the dark, splintering and levering out scraps of tough, ancient wood. Once in a while a blade would encounter a nail and they would swear.

"It's a real language lesson," Sarah said after a while.

"I'm sorry, miss," Sharpe said.

"You sort of don't notice when you're in the army," Harper explained.

"Do all soldiers swear?"

"All of them," Sharpe said, "all of the time. Except for Daddy Hill."

"General Hill, miss," Harper explained, "who's noted for his very clean mouth."

"And Sergeant Read," Sharpe added, "he never swears. He's a Methodist, miss."

"I've heard him swear," Harper said, "when bloody Batten stole eight pages from his Bible to use as… " He stopped suddenly, deciding Sarah did not want to know what use Batten had made of the book of Deuteronomy, then gave a grunt as a great splinter cracked away. "Be through this in no bloody time," he said cheerfully.

The timbers of the trapdoor were at least three inches thick, and reinforced by two sturdy beams on their underside. For the moment Sharpe and Harper were ignoring the beam on their side, reckoning it was best to break through the trapdoor before worrying how to remove the bigger piece of timber. The wood was hard, but they learned to weaken its grain by repeated stabbing, then they scraped and gouged and prised the loosened timber away. The broken wood came in thimblefuls, in dust, scrap by scrap, and the cramped area under the steps gave them little space. They had to rest just to stretch their muscles from time to time, and at other times it seemed that no amount of stabbing and scraping would loosen another piece, for the two weapons were ill suited to the work. The steel was too slender, so could not be used for brutal leverage for fear the blades would snap. Sharpe used his knife for a time, the sawdust sifting down into his eyes, then he rammed the sword up again, his linen-wrapped hand near the tip to brace the steel. And even when they broke through, he thought, they would only have a small hole. God knows how they were to enlarge it, but all battles had to be fought one step at a time. No point in worrying about the future if there was to be no future, so he and Harper worked patiently away. Sweat poured down Sharpe's naked chest, flies crawled on him, the dust was thick in his mouth, and his ribs were hurting.

Time meant nothing in the dark. They could have worked an hour or ten hours, Sharpe did not know, though he sensed that night must have fallen outside in the world that now seemed so far away. He worked doggedly, trying not to think about the passing time, and slowly he chipped and gouged, rammed and scraped, until at last he thrust the sword hard up and the blow jarred down his arm because the tip had hit something more solid than wood. He did it again, then swore viciously. "Sorry, miss."

"What is it?" Vicente asked. He had been asleep and sounded alarmed.

Sharpe did not answer. Instead he used his knife, gnawing at the small hole he had made in the upper part of the broken timber and, when he had widened the hole sufficiently, he probed with the knife blade to scratch at whatever lay immediately above the trapdoor and then swore again. "The bastards have put paving slabs up there," he said. He had broken through, but only to meet immovable stone. "Bastards!"

"Mister Sharpe," Sarah said, though tiredly, as if she knew she was fighting a losing battle.

"They probably are bastards, miss," Harper said, then rammed his sword bayonet up into the splintered hole he had made and was rewarded with the same sound of steel against stone. He uttered his opinion, apologized to Sarah, then slumped down.

"They've done what?" Vicente asked.

"They've put stones on top," Sharpe said, "and other stuff on top of the stones. The bastards aren't as daft as they look." He edged down the steps and sat with his back against the wall. He felt used up, exhausted and it hurt just to breathe.

"We can't get through the trapdoor?" Vicente asked.

"Not a bloody chance," Sharpe said.

"So?" Vicente asked tentatively.

"So we bloody think," Sharpe said, but he could not think of anything else to do. Hell and damnation was all he could think. They were bloody well trapped.

"How do the rats get in?" Sarah asked after a while.

"Those little bastards can get through gaps as small as your little finger," Harper said. "You can't keep a good rat out, not if he wants to get in."

"So where do they get in?" she persisted.

"Round the edge of the trapdoor," Sharpe guessed, "where we can't get out."

They sat in gloomy silence. The flies settled back on the corpses. "If we fired our guns," Vicente said, "someone might hear?"

"Not down here, they won't," Sharpe said, preferring to keep all his firepower for the moment when Ferragus came for them. He leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes, trying to think. The ceiling? Bricks and stones. Hundreds of the buggers. He imagined himself breaking through, then he was suddenly in a field, bright with flowers, a bullet came past him, then another and he was struck on the leg and he woke suddenly, realizing that someone had tapped his right calf. "Was I asleep?" he asked.

"We all were," Harper said. "God knows what time it is."

"Jesus." Sharpe stretched himself, feeling the pain in his arms and legs that had come from working inside the cramped stairway. "Jesus," he said angrily. "We can't afford to sleep. Not with those bastards coming for us."

Harper did not answer. Sharpe could hear the Irishman moving, apparently stretching on the floor. He supposed the Irishman wanted to sleep again, and he did not approve, but he could not think of anything more useful Harper could do and so he said nothing.

"I can hear something," Harper spoke after a while. His voice came from the center of the cellar, from the floor.

"Where?" Sharpe asked.

"Put your ear on the stone, sir."

Sharpe stretched out and put his right ear against the floor. His hearing was not what it was. Too many years of muskets and rifles had dulled it, but he held his breath, listened hard, and heard the faintest hint of water running. "Water?"

"There's a stream down there," Harper said.

"Like the Fleet," Sharpe said.

"The what?" Vicente asked.

"It's a river in London," Sharpe said, "and for a long way it flows underground. No one knows it's there, but it is. They built the city on top of it."

"They've done the same here," Harper said.

Sharpe tapped the floor with the hilt of his sword, but was not rewarded with a hollow sound, yet he was fairly certain the noise of water was there, and Sarah, whose hearing had not been dulled by battle, was quite certain of it. "Right, Pat," Sharpe said, his spirits restored and the pain in his ribs even seeming less biting. "We'll lift a bloody stone."

That was easier said than done. They used their weapons again, scraping away at the edges of a big flagstone to work down between the slab and its neighbors, and Harper found a place where a chip the size of his little finger was missing from the stone's edge, and he delved down there, working the sword bayonet into the foundations. "It's rubble down there," he said.

"Let's just hope the bloody thing isn't mortared into place," Sharpe said.

"No," Harper said scornfully. "Why would you mortar a slab? You just lay the buggers on gravel and stamp them down. Move back, sir."

"What are you doing?"

"I'm going to lift the sod."

"Why don't we lever it up?"

"Because you'll break your sword, sir, and that'll put you in a really bad mood. Just give me space. And be ready to hold it when I've got the bastard up."

Sharpe moved, Harper straddled the stone, got two fingers underneath its edge and heaved. It did not move. He swore, braced himself again, and used all his vast strength and there was a grinding sound and Sharpe, touching the stone's edge with his fingers, felt it move a trifle upwards. Harper grunted, managed to get a third finger underneath and gave another giant pull and suddenly the stone was lifted and Sharpe rammed the muzzle of his rifle under the exposed edge to hold it up. "You can let go now."

"God save Ireland!" Harper said, straightening. The stone was resting on the rifle muzzle and they left it there while Harper caught his breath. "We can both do it now, sir," the Irishman said. "You on the other side? We'll just turn the bugger over. Sorry, miss."

"I'm getting used to it," Sarah said in a resigned voice.

Sharpe got his hands under the edge. "Ready?"

"Now, sir."

They heaved and the stone came up, and kept going to turn on its end so that it fell smack on the nearer corpse with a wet, squashing sound that released a gust of noxious vapor along with an unseen cloud of flies. Sarah gave a noise of disgust, Sharpe and Harper were laughing.

Now they could feel a square patch of rubble, a space of broken bricks, stones and sand, and they used their hands to scoop it out, sometimes loosening the packed rubble first with a blade. Vicente used his right hand to help and Sarah pushed the excavated material aside.

"There's no end to the bloody stuff," Harper said, and the more they pulled out, the more fell in from the sides. They went down two feet and then, at last, the rubble ended as Sharpe's battered and bleeding hands found a curved surface that felt like tiles stacked on edge. They went on scooping until they had bared two or three square feet of the arched surface.

Vicente used his right hand to probe what Sharpe thought were tiles. "Roman bricks," Vicente guessed. "The Romans made their bricks very thin, like tiles." He felt for a while longer, exploring the arched shape. "It's the top of a tunnel."

"A tunnel?" Sharpe asked.

"The stream," Sarah said. "The Romans must have channeled it."

"And we're going to break into it," Sharpe said. He could hear the trickle far more clearly now. So there was water there, and the water flowed to the river through a tunnel, and that thought filled him with a fierce hope.

He knelt at the edge of the hole, balancing on a slab that was unsteady because of the rubble that had fallen from beneath it, and began hammering down with the brass butt of a rifle.

"What you're doing," Vicente said, judging what was happening by the dull sound of the stock striking the bricks, "is hitting at the top of the arch. That will only wedge the bricks tighter."

"What I'm doing," Sharpe said, "is breaking the bugger." He thought Vicente was probably right, but he was too frustrated to work patiently on the old bricks. "And I hope I'm doing it with your rifle," he added. The butt hammered down again, then Harper joined in from the other side and the two rifles cracked and banged on the bricks and Sharpe could hear scraps dropping into the water, then Harper gave an almighty blow and a whole chunk of the ancient brickwork fell away and suddenly, if it was possible, the cellar was filled with an even worse smell, a stink from the foulest depths of hell.

"Oh, shit!" Harper said, recoiling.

"That's what it is," Vicente said in a faint voice. The smell was so bad that it was hard to breathe.

"A sewer?" Sharpe asked in disbelief.

"Jesus Christ!" Harper said, after trying to fill his lungs. Sarah sighed.

"It comes from the upper town," Vicente explained. "Most of the lower town just use pits in their cellars. It's a Roman sewer. They called it a cloaca."

"I call it our way out," Sharpe said and hammered the rifle down again, and the bricks fell more easily now and he could feel the hole widening. "It's time to see again," he said.

He retrieved the discarded half of Lawford's copy of The Times and found his own rifle, distinguishing it by the chip missing from the cheek rest on the left side of the butt where a French musket ball had snicked out a splinter. He needed his own rifle because he knew it was still unloaded, and now he primed it while Harper twisted the newspaper into a spill. The spill caught on the second try, and the newspaper flared up, then the flames turned a strange blue-green as Harper moved the burning paper close to the hole.

"Oh, no!" Sarah said, looking down.

The sound might be a trickle, but it came from a green-scummed liquid that glistened some seven or eight feet below. Rats, frightened by the sudden light, scuttled along the edge of the slime, scrabbling on the old bricks that were black and furred with growth. Sharpe, judging from the curve of the ancient sewer, reckoned the effluent was about a foot deep, then the flames scorched Harper's fingers and he let the torch drop. It burned blue for a second, then they were in the dark again. Thank God most of the richer folk were gone from Coimbra, Sharpe thought, or else the old Roman sewer would be brimming over its edge with filth.

"Are you really thinking of going down into that?" Vicente asked in a disbelieving voice.

"No choice, really," Sharpe said. "Stay here and die, or go down there." He took off his boots. "You might want to wear my boots, miss," he said to Sarah. "They should be tall enough to keep you out of the you-know-what, but you might want to take that frock off as well."

There were a few seconds' silence. "You want me to… " Sarah began, then her voice faded away.

"No, miss," Sharpe said patiently, "I don't want you to do anything you don't want to do, but if your dress gets in that muck then it'll stink to high heaven by the time we're through, and so far as I know you haven't got anything else to wear. Nor have I, and that's why I'm stripping."

"You can't ask Miss Fry to undress," Vicente said, shocked.

"I'm not asking her," Sharpe said, shuffling out of his French cavalry overalls. "It's up to her. But if you've got any sense, Jorge, you'll get undressed as well. Bundle everything inside your jacket or shirt and tie the sleeves around your neck. Bloody hell, man, no one can see! It's dark as Hades down there. Here, miss, my boots." He pushed them over the floor.

"You want me to go into a sewer, Mister Sharpe?" Sarah asked in a small voice.

"No, miss, I don't," Sharpe said. "I want you to be in green fields and happy, with enough money to last you the rest of your life. But to get you there I have to go through a sewer. If you like, you can wait here and Pat and I will go through and come back for you, but I can't promise that Ferragus won't come back first. So all in all, miss, it's your choice."

"Mister Sharpe?" Sarah sounded indignant, but was evidently not. "You're right. I apologize."

For a moment there was only the rustle of clothes, then all four rolled whatever they had stripped off into bundles. Sharpe was wearing his drawers, nothing else, and he wrapped his other clothes inside his overalls, then strapped the bundle tight with the shoulder straps. He laid the clothes beside the hole with his sword belt, which held his ammunition pouch, scabbard and haversack. "I'll go first," he said. "Miss? You follow me and keep your hand on my back so you know where I am. Jorge? You come next and Pat will be rearguard."

Sharpe sat on the edge of the hole, then Harper gripped his wrists and lowered him through the hole. Pieces of rubble and masonry splashed into the filth, then Sharpe's feet were in the liquid and Harper was grunting with the effort. "Just another two inches, Pat," Sharpe said, and then his wrists slid from Harper's grip and he fell those last inches and almost lost his balance because the bottom of the sewer was so treacherously slick. "Jesus," he said, filled with disgust and almost choking because of the noxious air. "Someone, hand down my sword belt, then my clothes."

He hung the buckled sword belt round his neck. His shako was tied to the cartridge box's buckle and the empty scabbard hung down his spine, then he knotted the overalls' legs over the belt. "Rifle?" he said, and someone pushed it down and he hung the weapon on his shoulder, then took his sword in his right hand. He reckoned the blade would be useful as a probe. For a moment he wondered which way to go, either uphill towards the university or down to the river, then decided the best hope of escape was the river. The sewer had to spew its muck out somewhere and that was the place he wanted. "You next, miss," he said, "and be careful. It's slippery as… " He paused, checking his language. "Don't be frightened," he went on as he heard her gasp as she negotiated the hole. "Sergeant Harper will lower you," Sharpe said, "but I'm going to hold on to you because I almost slipped when I got down here. Is that all right?"

"I don't mind," she said, almost breathless because the stench was so overpowering.

He put out his hands, found her bare waist and half supported her as she put her booted feet into the sewage. She lowered herself, but panic or horror still made her flail for balance and she gripped him hard and Sharpe put his arms round her narrow waist. "It's all right," he said, "you'll live."

Vicente handed down Sarah's bundle of clothes and, because she was shivering and frightened, Sharpe tied it around her neck while she clung to him. "You now, Jorge," Sharpe said.

Harper came last. Rats scrabbled past them, the sound of their claws fading up the unseen tunnel. Sharpe could just stand upright, but he stooped in hope of seeing even a glimmer of light farther down the sewer, but there was nothing. "You're going to hold on to me, miss," he said, deciding that the courtesy of calling her «miss» was really not needed now that they were both virtually naked and standing up to their calves in shit, but he suspected she would object if he called her anything else. "Jorge," he went on, "you hold on to Miss Fry's clothes. And we all go slowly."

Sharpe probed every step with the sword, then inched ahead before prodding the blade again, but after a while he became more confident and their pace increased to a shuffle. Sarah had her hands on Sharpe's waist, gripping him tight, and she felt almost light-headed. Something strange had happened to her in the last few minutes, almost as if by undressing and lowering herself into a sewer she had let go of her previous life, of her precarious but determined grip on respectability, and had let herself drop into a world of adventure and irresponsibility. She was, suddenly and unexpectedly, happy.

Nameless things hanging from the sewer roof brushed against Sharpe's face and he ducked from them, dreading to think what they were, and after a while he used his sword to clear the air in front of him. He tried to count the feet and yards, but gave up because their progress was so painfully slow. After a while the floor of the sewer rose, while the roof stayed at the same level and he had to crouch to keep going. More tendrils brushed against his hair. Other things dripped from the roof, then the bottom of the tunnel abruptly fell away and he was poking the sword into a stinking nothingness. "Hold still," he told his companions, then gingerly pushed the sword forward and found the bottom of the sewer again two feet away and at least a foot lower. There was some kind of sump here, or else the base of the tunnel had collapsed into a cavern. "Let go of me," he told Sarah. He prodded again, measured the distance and then, still bent into a crouch, took one long step and made the far side safely, but his foot slipped as he landed and he fell heavily against the sewer's side. He used the efficacious word. "Sorry, miss," he said, his voice echoing in the tunnel. He had managed to keep his clothes out of the muck, but the slip had scared him and his ribs were hurting again so that it was painful to draw breath. He straightened slowly and discovered he could stand up straight because the roof had risen again. He turned to face Sarah. "In front of you," he told her, "there's a hole in the floor. It's only a good pace wide. Find the edge of it with one of your feet."

"I've found it."

"You're going to take a long step," Sharpe told her, "two feet forward and one foot down, but take my hands first." He propped the sword against the wall, reached out and found her hands. "Are you ready?"

"Yes." She sounded nervous.

"Slide your hands forward," he told her, "hold on to my forearms, and hold hard." She did as he ordered and Sharpe gripped her arms close to her elbows. "I've got you now," he said, "and you're going to take one long step, but be careful. It's slippery as…»

"Shit?" Sarah asked, and laughed at herself for daring to say the word aloud, then she took a deep breath of the fetid air, launched herself forward, but her back foot slipped and she fell, crying aloud in fear, only to find herself being hauled to safety. Sharpe had half expected her to slip and now he pulled her hard into his body and she came easily, no weight on her at all, and she clung to him so that he felt her naked breasts against his skin. She was gasping.

"It's all right, miss," he said, "well done."

"Is she all right?" Vicente asked anxiously.

"She's never been better," Sharpe said. "There are some soldiers I wouldn't bring down here because they'd fall to pieces, but Miss Fry is doing well." She was holding on to him, shaking slightly, her hands cold on his bare skin. "You know what I like about you, miss?"

"What?"

"You haven't complained once. Well, about our swearing, of course, but you'll get over that, but you haven't once complained about what's happened. Not many women I could take down a sewer without getting an earful." He stepped back, trying to disentangle himself from her, but Sarah insisted on holding him. "You must give Jorge some room," he told her, and led her a pace down the sewer where she kept her arm around his waist. "If I didn't think it was a daft idea," Sharpe went on, "I'd guess you're enjoying yourself."

"I am," Sarah said, then giggled. She was still holding him and her face was against his chest so Sharpe, without really thinking about it, bent his head and kissed her forehead. For a second she went very still, then she put her other arm around him and lifted her face to press her cheek against his. Bloody hell, Sharpe thought. In a sewer?

There was a splashing sound and someone bashed into Sharpe and Sarah, then clutched at both of them. "You safe, Jorge?" Sharpe asked.

"I'm safe. I'm sorry, miss," Vicente said, deciding his hand had inadvertently groped something inappropriate.

Harper came last and Sharpe turned around and led on, conscious of Sarah's hands on his waist. He shuddered as he passed another sewer that came from the right-hand side. A dribble of something flopped from its outfall and splashed up his thigh. He sensed that their sewer was running more steeply downhill now. The filth was shallower here, for much of the sewage was stopped up behind the place where the floor had buckled upwards, but what there was ran faster and he tried not to think what might be bumping against his ankles. He was going in tiny steps, fearful of the slippery stones beneath him, though for much of the time his toes were squelching in jelly-like muck. He began using the sword as a support as much as a probe, and now he was sure that the fall was steepening. Where did it come out? The river? The sewer began to tilt downwards and Sharpe stopped, suspecting they could go no farther without falling and sliding into whatever horror lay below. He could hear the turgid stream splashing far beneath, but into what? A pool of muck? Another sewer? And how long was the drop?

"What is it?" Sarah asked, worried that Sharpe had stopped.

"Trouble," he said, then listened again and detected a new sound, a background noise, unstopping and faint, and realized it had to be the river. The sewer fell away, then ran to its outfall in the Mondego, but how far it fell, or how steeply, he could not tell. He felt with his right foot for a loose stone or fragment of brick and, when he found something, edged it up the curve of the sewer's side until it was out of the liquid. He tossed it ahead of him, heard it rattle against the sides of the sewer as it dropped, then came a splash.

"The sewer turns down," he explained, "and it falls into some kind of pool."

"Not some kind of pool," Harper said helpfully, "a pool of piss and shit."

"Thank you, Sergeant," Sharpe said.

"We have to go back," Vicente suggested.

"To the cellar?" Sarah asked, alarmed.

"God, no," Sharpe said. He wondered about lowering himself down, dangling on the rifle slings, but then remembered the terror of thinking himself trapped in the Copenhagen chimney. Anything was better than going through that again. "Pat? Turn around, go back slowly and tap the walls. We'll follow you."

They turned in the dark. Sarah insisted on going behind Sharpe, keeping her hands on his waist. Harper used the hilt of his sword bayonet, the dull clang echoing forlorn in the fetid blackness. Sharpe was hoping against hope that they would find some place where the sewer ran by a cellar, somewhere that was not blanketed by feet of earth and gravel, and if they could not find it then they would have to go back past the warehouse cellar and find some place that the sewer opened to the surface. It would be a long night, he thought, if it was still night time, and then, not ten paces up the sewer, the sound changed. Harper tapped again, and was again rewarded with a hollow noise. "Is that what you're looking for?" he asked.

"We'll break the bloody wall down," Sharpe said. "Jorge? You'll have to hold Sergeant Harper's clothes. Miss Fry? You hold mine. And keep the ammunition out of the sludge."

They tapped the wall some more, finding that the hollow spot was about ten feet long on the upper curve of the sewer. "If there's anybody up there," Harper said, "we're going to give them one hell of a surprise."

"What if it falls in on us?" Sarah asked.

"Then we get crushed," Sharpe said, "so if you believe in a God, miss, pray now."

"You don't?"

"I believe in the Baker rifle," Sharpe said, "and in the 1796 Pattern heavy cavalry sword, so long as you grind down the back blade so that the point don't slide off a Frog's ribs. If you don't grind down the back blade, miss, then you might as well just beat the bastards to death with it."

"I'll remember that," Sarah said.

"Are you ready, Pat?"

"Ready," Harper said, hefting his rifle.

"Then let's give this bastard a walloping." They did.

The last British and Portuguese troops left Coimbra at dawn on Monday morning. As far as they knew every scrap of food in the city had been destroyed or burned or tossed into the river, and all the bakers' ovens had been demolished. The place was supposed to be empty, but more than half of the city's forty thousand inhabitants had refused to leave, because they reckoned flight was futile and that if the French did not overtake them here then they would catch them in Lisbon. Some, like Ferragus, stayed to protect their possessions, others were too old or too sick or too despairing to attempt escape. Let the French come, those who stayed thought, for they would endure and the world would go on.

The South Essex were the last battalion across the bridge. Lawford rode at the back and glanced behind for a sign of Sharpe or Harper, but the rising sun showed the river's quay was empty. "It isn't like Sharpe," he complained.

"It's very like Sharpe," Major Leroy observed. "He has an independent streak, Colonel. The man's a rebel. He's truculent. Very admirable traits in a skirmisher, don't you think?"

Lawford suspected he was being mocked, but was honest enough to realize that he was being mocked by the truth. "He wouldn't just have deserted?"

"Not Sharpe," Leroy said. "He's got caught up in a mess. He'll be back."

"He mentioned something to me about joining the Portuguese service," Lawford said worriedly. "You don't think he will, do you?"

"I wouldn't blame him," Leroy said. "A man needs recognition for his service, Colonel, don't you think?"

Lawford was saved from answering because Captain Slingsby, mounted on Portia, clattered back across the bridge, wheeled the horse and fell in beside Lawford and Leroy. "That Irish Sergeant is still missing," he said reproachfully.

"We were just discussing it," Lawford said.

"I shall mark him in the books as a deserter," Slingsby announced. "A deserter," he repeated vehemently.

"You'll do nothing of the sort!" Lawford snapped with an asperity that even he found surprising. Yet, even as he spoke, he realized that he had begun to find Slingsby annoying. The man was like a yapping dog, always at your heels, always demanding attention, and Lawford had begun to suspect that the new commander of his light company was a touch too fond of drink. "Sergeant Harper," he explained in a calmer tone, "is on detached service with an officer of this battalion, a respected officer, Mister Slingsby, and you will not question the propriety of that service."

"Of course not, sir," Slingsby said, taken aback at the Colonel's tone. "I just like to have everything Bristol fashion. You know me, sir. Everything in its place and a place for everything."

"Everything is in its place," the Colonel said, except that it was not. Sharpe and Harper were missing, and Lawford secretly feared it was his fault. He turned again, but there was no sign of the missing men, and then the battalion was off the bridge and marching into the shadows of the small streets about the convent.

Coimbra was strangely silent then, as if the city held its breath. Some folk went to the ancient city gates that pierced the medieval wall and stared nervously down the roads, hoping against hope that the French would not come.

Ferragus did not worry about the French, not yet. He had his own sweet revenge to take first and he led seven men to the warehouse where, before he uncovered the trapdoor, he lit two braziers of coal. It took time for the coal to catch fire from its kindling, and he used the minutes to make barricades from barrels of salt beef so that if the three men came charging up the steps they would be trapped between the barriers behind which his men would be sheltered. Once the coal was billowing foul smoke he ordered his men to uncover the hatch. He listened for any sounds from beneath, but heard nothing. "They're asleep," Francisco, the biggest of Ferragus's men, said.

"They'll be asleep for ever soon," Ferragus said. Three men held muskets, four took away the barrels and boxes, and when they were all removed Ferragus ordered two of the four to get their muskets, and for the other two men to drag away the paving slabs that had covered the trapdoor. He chuckled when he saw the holes in the wood. "They tried, eh? Must have taken them hours! Careful now!" There was only one slab remaining and he expected the trapdoor to be pushed violently upwards at any second. "Fire down as soon as they push it up," he told his men, then watched as the last paving slab was hauled away. Nothing happened.

He waited, watching the closed trapdoor and still nothing happened. "They think we're going to go down," Ferragus said. Instead he crept onto the trapdoor, seized its metal handle, nodded to his men to make sure they were ready, then heaved.

The trapdoor lifted a few inches and Francisco pushed his musket barrel beneath and lifted it some more. He was crouching, half expecting a shot to come blasting out of the darkness, but there was only silence. Ferragus stepped to the trapdoor and hauled it all the way back so that it crashed against the warehouse's rear wall. "Now," he said, and two men pushed the braziers over so that the burning coals cascaded down the steps to fill the cellar with a thick and choking smoke. "They won't last long now," Ferragus said, and drew a pistol. Kill the men first, he thought, and save the woman for later.

He waited to hear coughing, but no sound came from the darkness. Smoke drifted in the stairwell. Ferragus crept forward, listening, then fired the pistol down the steps before ducking back. The bullet ricocheted off stone, then there was silence again except for the ringing in his ears. "Use your musket, Francisco," he ordered, and Francisco stepped to the edge, fired down and skipped back. Still nothing.

"Maybe they died?" Francisco suggested.

"That stench would kill an ox," another man said, and indeed the smell coming from the cellar was thick and foul.

Ferragus was tempted to go down, but he had learned not to underestimate Captain Sharpe. In all likelihood, he thought, Sharpe was waiting, hidden to the left or right of the stairwell, just waiting for curiosity to bring one of his enemies down the steps. "More flames," Ferragus ordered, and two of the men broke up some old crates and the fragments were set alight and tossed down into the cellar to thicken the smoke. More wood was hurled down until the floor at the foot of the steps seemed to be a mass of flame, yet still no one moved down there. No one even coughed.

"They have to be dead," Francisco said. No one could survive that turmoil of smoke.

Ferragus took a musket from one of the men and, very slowly, trying to make no noise, he crept down the steps. The flames were hot on his face, the smoke was fierce, but at last he could see into the cellar and he stared, not believing what he saw, for in the very center, edged with glowing coals and smoldering wood, was a hole just like a grave. He stared, not comprehending for a moment, and then, suddenly and rarely, he felt afraid.

The bastards were gone.

Ferragus stayed on the bottom step. Francisco, curious, went past him, waited a moment for the worst of the smoke to subside, then kicked aside the flames to peer down the hole. He made the sign of the cross.

"What's down there?" Ferragus asked.

"Sewer. Maybe they drowned?"

"No," Ferragus said, then shuddered because a hammering sound was coming from the fetid hole. The noise seemed to come from far away, but it was a hard-edged noise, threatening, and Ferragus remembered a sermon he had once endured from a Dominican friar who had warned the people of Coimbra about the hell that waited for them if they did not mend their ways. The friar had described the fires, the instruments of torture, the thirst, the agony, the eternity of hopeless weeping, and in the echoing noise Ferragus thought he heard the implements of hell clanging and he instinctively turned and fled up the stairs. The sermon had been so powerful that for two days afterwards Ferragus had tried to reform himself. He had not even visited any of the brothels he owned in the town, and now, faced with that noise and the sight of the fire-edged hole, the terror of the sinner came back to him. He was overcome with a fear that Sharpe was now the hunter and he the quarry. "Up here!" he ordered Francisco.

"That noise… " Francisco was reluctant to leave the cellar.

"It's him," Ferragus said. "You want to go down and find him?"

Francisco glanced down the hole, then fled back up the steps where he closed the trapdoor and Ferragus ordered the boxes piled back on top as if that could stop Sharpe erupting from the stinking underworld.

Then another hammering sounded, this one on the warehouse doors and Ferragus whipped around and raised his gun. The new hammering came again and Ferragus suppressed his fear and walked towards the sound. "Who's there?" he shouted.

"Senhor? Senhor? It's me, Miguel!"

Ferragus dragged open one of the warehouse doors and at least one thing was right with the world, for Miguel and Major Ferreira had returned. Ferreira, sensibly, had abandoned his uniform and was wearing a black suit, and with him was a French officer and a squadron of hard-looking cavalrymen armed with swords and short muskets, and Ferragus was aware of noises in the streets again: a scream somewhere, the clatter of hooves and the sound of boots. He was in the daylight, hell had been shut up and the French had arrived.

And he was safe.

The rifle butts hammered the sewer wall and Sharpe was instantly rewarded by the grating sound of bricks shifting. "Richard!" Vicente called warningly and Sharpe looked around and saw tiny glimmers of light sparking in the far recesses of the sewer. The glints flared, flashed and faded, reflecting their eerie light from things that glistened on the sides of the brick tunnel.

"Ferragus," Sharpe said, "chucking fire into the cellar. Is your rifle loaded, Jorge?"

"Of course."

"Just watch that way. But I doubt the buggers will come."

"Why wouldn't they?"

"Because they don't want to fight us down here," Sharpe said. "Because they don't want to wade through shit. Because they're frightened. He smashed the rifle into the old brickwork, hitting again and again in a kind of frenzy, and Harper worked beside him, timing his blows to strike at the same time as Sharpe's, and suddenly the ancient masonry collapsed. Some of the bricks cascaded down to Sharpe's feet, splashing his legs with sewage, but most fell into whatever space was beyond the wall. The good news was that they fell with a dry clatter, not with a splash that would announce they had only managed to break into one of the many cesspits dug beneath the houses of the lower town. "Can you get through, Pat?" Sharpe asked.

Harper did not answer, but just clambered through the black space. Sharpe turned again to watch the tiny sparks of falling fire that he reckoned were no more than a hundred paces away. The journey through the sewer had seemed much longer. A larger scrap fell, flared blue-green and splashed into oblivion, but not before its sheen of light had flickered off the walls to show that the tunnel was empty.

"It's another damned cellar," Harper said, his voice echoing in the dark.

"Take these," Sharpe said, and pushed his rifle and sword through the gap. Harper took the weapons, then Sharpe climbed up, scratching his belly on the rough edge of the shattered brickwork, then wriggling over onto a stone floor. The air was suddenly fresh. The stench was still there, of course, but less concentrated and he breathed deep before helping Harper lift the bundles of clothes through the hole. "Miss Fry? Give me your hands," Sharpe said, and he lifted her through the gap, stepped back and she fell against him so that her hair was against his face. "Are you all right?"

"I'm all right," she said. She smiled. "You're right, Mister Sharpe, and for some reason I am enjoying myself."

Harper was helping Vicente through the hole. Sharpe lifted Sarah gently. "You must get dressed, miss."

"I was thinking my life must change," she said, "but I wasn't expecting this." She was still holding him and he could feel she was shivering. Not with cold. He ran a hand down her back, tracing her spine. "There's light," she said in a kind of amazement, and Sharpe turned to see that there was indeed the faintest strip of gray at the far side of the wide room. He took Sarah's hand and groped his way past piles of what felt like pelts.

He realized that the room stank of leather, though that smell was a relief after the thickness of the stench inside the sewer. The gray strip was high, close to the ceiling, and Sharpe had to clamber up a pile of leather skins to discover that one pelt had been nailed across a small high window. He ripped it down to see that the window was only a foot high and crossed with thick iron bars, but it opened onto the pavement of a street which, after the last few hours, looked like a glimpse of heaven. The glass was filthy, but it still seemed as though the cellar was flooded with light.

"Sharpe!" Vicente said chidingly, and Sharpe twisted to see that the small light was revealing Sarah's near nakedness. She looked dazzled by the light, then ducked behind a stack of pelts.

"Time to get dressed, Jorge," Sharpe said. He fetched Sarah's bundle and took it to her. "I need my boots," he said, turning his back.

She sat down to take the boots off. "Here," she said, and Sharpe turned to see she was still almost naked as she held the boots up. There was a challenge in her eyes, almost as if she was astonished at her own daring.

Sharpe crouched. "You're going to be all right," he said. "Anyone as tough as you will survive this."

"From you, Mister Sharpe, is that a compliment?"

"Yes," he said, "and so's this," and he leaned forward to kiss her. She returned the kiss and smiled as he rocked back. "Sarah," he said.

"I think we've been introduced properly now," she allowed.

"Good," Sharpe said, then left her to dress.

"So what do we do now?" Harper asked when they were all clothed again.

"We get the hell out of here," Sharpe said. He twisted as he heard boots in the street, then saw feet going past the small window. "The army's still here," he said, "so we get out and make sure Ferragus loses all that food in the warehouse." He buckled on the sword belt and shouldered the rifle. "And then we arrest him," he went on, "stand him against a wall and shoot the bastard, though no doubt you'd like him to have a trial first, Jorge."

"You can just shoot him," Vicente said.

"Well said," Sharpe commented and crossed the room to where some wooden steps climbed to a door. It was locked, evidently bolted on the far side, but the hinges were inside the cellar and their screws were sunk into rotted wood. He rammed his sword under one of the hinges, levered it cautiously in case the hinge was stronger than it looked, then gave it a good heave that splintered the screws out of the jamb. A troop of cavalry clattered past outside. "They must be leaving," Sharpe said, moving the sword to the lower hinge, "so let's hope the French aren't too close."

The second hinge tore out of the frame and Sharpe pulled on it to force the door inwards. It tilted on the bolt, but opened far enough for him to see down a passageway that had a heavy door at its far end and, just as Sharpe was about to step through the half-blocked opening, someone began thumping that far door. He could see it shaking, could see the dust jarring off its timbers, and he held up a hand to caution his companions to silence as he backed away. "What day is it?" he asked.

Vicente thought for a second. "Monday?" he guessed. "October the first?"

"Jesus," Sharpe said, wondering whether the horses in the street had been French and not British. "Sarah? Get up close to the window and tell me if you can see a horse."

She scrambled up, pressed her face against the grimy glass, and nodded. "Two horses," she said.

"Do they have docked tails?"

"Docked?"

"Are their tails cut off?" The door at the passageway's end was shaking with the blows and he knew it must give way at any second.

Sarah looked through the glass again. "No."

"Then it's the French," Sharpe said. "See if you can block the window, love. Push a piece of leather against it. Then hide! Go back to Pat."

The cellar went dark again as Sarah propped a stiff piece of leather over the small window, then she went back to join Harper and Vicente in the far corner where they were concealed by one of the massive heaps of hides. Sharpe stayed, watching the far door shake, then it splintered inwards and he saw the blue uniform and white crossbelt and he backed away down the steps. "Frogs," he said grimly, and crossed the cellar and crouched with the others.

There was a cheer as the French broke into the house. Footsteps were loud on the floorboards above, then someone kicked at the half-broken cellar door and Sharpe could hear voices. French voices and not happy voices. The men evidently paused at the cellar door and one made a sound of disgust, presumably at the stench of sewage. "Merde," one of the voices said.

"Cest un puisard." Another spoke.

"He says it's a cesspit," Sarah whispered in Sharpe's ear, then there was a splashing sound as one of the soldiers urinated down the steps. There was a burst of laughter, then the Frenchmen went away. Sharpe, crouching close beside Sarah in the cellar's darkest corner, heard the distant sounds of boots and hooves, voices and screaming. A shot sounded, then another. It was not the sound of battle, for that was many shots melding together to make an unending crackle, but single shots as men blew off padlocks or just fired for the hell of it.

"The French are here?" Harper asked in disbelief.

"The whole damn army," Sharpe said. He loaded his rifle, shoved the ramrod back in its hoops, then waited. He heard boots clattering down the stairs in the house above, more boots in the passageway and then there was silence and he decided the French had gone to find a wealthier place to plunder. "We're going up," he said, "to the attic." Perhaps it was because he had been underground too long, or perhaps it was just an instinct to get high, but he knew they could not stay here. Eventually some Frenchmen would search the whole cellar and so he led them through the stacked hides and up the steps. The outer door was open, showing sunlight in the streets, but there was no one in sight and so he ran down the passage, saw stairs to his right and took them two at a time.

The house was empty. The French had searched it and found nothing except some heavy tables, stools and beds, so they had gone to look for richer pickings. At the top of the second flight of stairs was a broken door, its padlock split away, and above it was a narrow staircase that climbed to a set of attic rooms that seemed to extend across three or four houses. The largest room, long, low and narrow, had a dozen low wooden beds. "Student quarters," Vicente said.

There were screams from nearby houses, the sound of shots, then voices down below and Sharpe reckoned more troops had come to the house. "The window," he said, and pushed the closest one open and climbed through to find himself in a gutter that ran just behind a low stone parapet. The others followed Sharpe who found a refuge at the northern gable end that was not overlooked by any of the attic windows. He peered over the parapet into a narrow, shadowed alley. A French cavalryman, a woman across his pommel, rode beneath Sharpe. The woman screamed and the man slapped her rump, then hauled up her black dress and slapped it again. "They're having fun and games," Sharpe said sourly.

He could hear the French in the attic rooms, but none came out onto the roof and Sharpe sat back on the tiles and stared uphill. The great university buildings dominated the skyline, and beneath them were thousands of roofs and church towers. The streets were flooding with the invaders, but none were up high, though here and there Sharpe could see frightened people who, like him, had taken refuge on the tiles. He was trying to find Ferragus's warehouse. He knew it was not far away, knew it had a high, pitched roof, and finally reckoned he had spotted it a hundred or more paces up the hill.

He looked across the alley. The houses on the far side had the same kind of parapet protecting their roof and he reckoned he could jump the gap easily enough, but Vicente, with his wounded shoulder, might be clumsy, and Sarah's long, torn frock would hamper her. "You're going to stay here, Jorge," he told Vicente, "and look after Miss Fry. Pat and I are going exploring."

"We are?"

"Got anything better to do, Pat?"

"We can come with you," Vicente said.

"Better if you stay here, Jorge," Sharpe said, then took out his pocket knife and unfolded the blade. "Have you ever looked after wounds?" he asked Sarah.

She shook her head.

"Time to learn," Sharpe said. "Take the bandage off Jorge's shoulder and find the bullet. Take it out. Take out any scraps of his shirt or jacket. If he tells you to stop because it's hurting, dig harder. Be ruthless. Dig out the bullet and anything else, then clean up the wound. Use this." He gave her his canteen that still had a little water in it. "Then make a new bandage," he went on, before laying Vicente's loaded rifle beside her, "and if a Frog comes out here, shoot him. Pat and I will hear and we'll come back." Sharpe doubted that he or Harper could recognize a rifle's bark amidst all the other shots, but he reckoned Sarah might need the reassurance. "Think you can do all that?" She hesitated, then nodded. "I can."

"It's going to hurt like hell, Jorge," Sharpe warned, "but God knows if we can find you a doctor in this town today, so let Miss Fry do her best."

He straightened up and turned to Harper. "Can you jump that alley, Pat?"

"God save Ireland." Harper looked at the gap between the houses. "It's a terrible long way, sir."

"So make sure you don't fall," Sharpe said, then stood on the parapet where it made a right angle to the alleyway. He gave himself a few paces to build up speed, then ran and made a desperate leap across the void. He made it easily, clearing the far parapet and crashing into the roof tiles so that agony flared in his ribs. He scrambled aside and watched as Harper, bigger and less lithe, followed him. The Sergeant landed right across the parapet, winding himself as its edge drove into his belly, but Sharpe grabbed his jacket and hauled him over.

"I said it was a long way," Harper said.

"You eat too much."

"Jesus, in this army?" Harper said, then dusted himself off and followed Sharpe along the next gutter. They passed skylights and windows, but no one was inside to see them. In places the parapet had crumbled away and Sharpe scrambled up to the roof ridge because it gave them safer footing. They negotiated a dozen chimneys, then slid down to another alley and another jump. "This one's narrower," Sharpe said to encourage Harper.

"Where are we going, sir?"

"The warehouse," Sharpe said, pointing to its great stone gable.

Harper eyed the gap. "It would be easier to go through the sewer," he grumbled.

"If you want to, Pat. Meet me there."

"I've come this far," Harper said, and winced as Sharpe made the leap. He followed, arriving safely, and the two clambered up the next roof and along its ridge until they arrived at the street which divided the block of houses from the building Sharpe reckoned was the warehouse.

Sharpe slid down the tile slope to the gutter by the parapet, then peered over. He pulled back instantly. "Dragoons," he said.

"How many?"

"Dozen? Twenty?" He was sure it was the warehouse. He had seen the big double doors, one of them ajar, and from the roof ridge he had just seen the skylights on the warehouse which was slightly higher up the hill. The street was too wide to be jumped, so there was no way of reaching those skylights from this roof, but then Sharpe peered again and saw that the dragoons were not plundering. Every other Frenchman in the city seemed to have been let off the leash, but these dragoons were sitting on their horses, their swords drawn, and he realized they must have been posted to guard the warehouse. They were turning French infantrymen away, using the flat of their swords if any became too insistent. "They've got the bloody food, Pat."

"And they're welcome to it."

"No, they're bloody not," Sharpe said savagely.

"So how in Christ are we supposed to take it away from them?"

"I'm not sure," Sharpe said. He knew the food had to be taken away if the French were to be beaten, yet for a moment he was tempted to let the whole thing slide. To hell with it. The army had treated him badly, so why the hell should he care? Yet he did care, and he would be damned before Ferragus helped the French win the war. The noise in the city was getting louder, the noise of screaming, of disorder, of chaos let loose, and the frequent musket shots were startling hundreds of pigeons into the air. He peered a third time at the dragoons and saw how they had formed two lines to block the ends of the small street to keep the French infantry away from the warehouse. Scores of men were protesting to the dragoons and Sharpe guessed that the horsemen's presence had started a rumor that there was food in the street, and the infantry, who had become ever more hungry as they marched through a stripped land, were probably desperate with hunger. "I'm not sure," Sharpe said again, "but I've got an idea."

"An idea for what, sir?"

"To keep those bastards hungry," Sharpe said, which was what Wellington wanted, so Sharpe would give it to his lordship. He would keep the bastards hungry.

CHAPTER 9

The chief commissary came to inspect the food. He was a small man named Laurent Poquelin, short, stocky and bald as an egg, but with long mustaches that he twisted nervously whenever he was worried, and he had been much worried in the last few weeks, for l'Armee de Portugal had found itself in a land emptied of food and he was responsible for feeding sixty-five thousand men, seventeen thousand cavalry horses and another three thousand assorted horses and mules. It could not be done in a wasted land, in a place where every orchard had been stripped of fruit, where the larders had been emptied, the storehouses despoiled, the wells poisoned, the livestock driven away, the mills disassembled and the ovens broken. The Emperor himself could not do it! All the forces of heaven could not do it, yet Poquelin was expected to work the miracle, and his mustache tips were ragged with nerves. He had been ordered to carry three weeks of supplies with the army, and those supplies had existed in the depots of Spain, but there were not nearly enough draught animals to carry such an amount, and even though Massena had reluctantly cut each division's artillery from twelve guns to eight, and released those horses to haul wagons instead of cannon, Poquelin had still only managed to supply the army for a week. Then the hunger had set in. Dragoons and hussars had been sent miles away from the army's line of march to search for food, and each such foray had worn out more horses, and the cavalry moaned at him because there were no replacement horseshoes, and some cavalrymen died each time because the Portuguese peasantry ambushed them in the hills. It did not seem to matter how many such peasants were hanged or shot, because more came to harass the foraging parties, which meant more horsemen had to be sent to protect the foragers, and more horseshoes were needed, and there were no more horseshoes and Poquelin got the blame. And the foragers rarely did find food, and if they did they usually ate most of it themselves, and Poquelin got the blame for that too. He had begun to wish he had followed his mother's tearful advice and become a priest, anything would be better than serving in an army that was sucking on a dry teat and accusing him of inefficiency.

Yet now the miracle had happened. At a stroke, Poquelin's troubles were over.

There was food. Such food! Ferragus, a surly Portuguese merchant who made Poquelin shiver with fear, had provided a warehouse that was as crammed with supplies as any depot in France. There was barley, wheat, rice, biscuits, rum, cheese, maize, dried fish, lemons, beans, salt meat, enough to feed the army for a month! There were other valuables too. There were barrels of lamp oil, coils of twine, boxes of horseshoes, bags of nails, casks of gunpowder, a sack of horn buttons, stacks of candles and bolts of cloth, none of them as essential as food, but all profitable because, though Poquelin would issue the food, the other things he could sell for his own enrichment.

He explored the warehouse, followed by a trio of fourriers, quartermaster-corporals, who noted the list of supplies that Ferragus was selling. It was impossible to list all of it, for the food was in stacks that would take a score of men hours to dismantle, but Poquelin, a thorough man, did order the fourriers to remove grain sacks from the top of one pile to make certain that the center of the heap was not composed of bags of sand. He did the same with some barrels of salt beef and both times was assured that all was well, and as the estimates of the food rose, so Poquelin's spirits soared. There were even two wagons inside the warehouse and, for an army short of all wheeled transport, those two vehicles were almost as valuable as food.

Then he began to worry at the frayed ends of his mustaches. He had food, and thus the army's problems seemed solved, but, as ever, there was a cockroach in the soup. How could these new supplies be moved? It would be no use issuing several days' rations to the troops, for they would gorge themselves on the whole lot in the first hour, then complain of hunger by nightfall, and Poquelin had far too few horses and mules to carry this vast amount. Still, he had to try. "Have the city searched for carts," he ordered one of the fourriers, "any cart. Handcarts, wheelbarrows, anything! We need men to haul the carts. Round up civilians to push the carts."

"I'm to do all that?" the fourrier asked in amazement, his voice muffled because he was eating a piece of cheese.

"I shall talk to the Marshal," Poquelin said grandly, then scowled. "Are you eating?"

"Got a sore tooth, sir," the man mumbled. "All swollen up, sir. Doctor says he wants to pull it. Permission to go and have tooth pulled, sir."

"Refused," Poquelin said. He was tempted to draw his sword and beat the man for insolence, but he had never drawn the weapon and was afraid that if he tried then he would discover that the blade had rusted to the scabbard's throat. He contented himself with striking the man with his hand. "We must set an example," he snapped. "If the army is hungry, we are hungry. We don't eat the army's food. You are a fool. What are you?"

"A fool, sir," the fourrier dutifully replied, but at least he was no longer quite such a hungry fool.

"Take a dozen men and search for carts. Anything with wheels," Poquelin ordered, confident that Marshal Massena would approve of his idea to use Portuguese civilians as draught animals. The army was expected to march south in a day or two, and the rumor was that the British and Portuguese would make a last stand in the hills north of Lisbon, so Poquelin only needed to make a new depot some forty or fifty miles to the south. He had some transport, of course, enough to carry perhaps a quarter of the food, and those existing mules and wagons could come back for more, which meant the warehouse needed to be protected while its precious contents were laboriously moved closer to Lisbon. Poquelin hurried back to the warehouse door and looked for the dragoon Colonel who was guarding the street. "Dumesnil!"

Colonel Dumesnil, like all French soldiers, despised the commissary. He turned his horse with insolent slowness, rode to Poquelin so that he towered above him, then let his drawn sword drop so that it vaguely threatened the small man. "You want me?"

"You have checked that there are no other doors to the warehouse?"

"Of course I haven't," Dumesnil said sarcastically.

"No one must get in, you understand? No one! The army is saved, Colonel, saved!"

"Alleluia," Dumesnil said dryly.

"I shall inform Marshal Massena that you are responsible for the safety of these supplies," Poquelin said pompously.

Dumesnil leaned from the saddle. "Marshal Massena himself gave me my orders, little man," he said, "and I obey my orders. I don't need more from you."

"You need more men," Poquelin said, worried because the two squads of dragoons, barring the street on either side of the warehouse doors, were already holding back crowds of hungry soldiers. "Why are those men here?" he demanded petulantly.

"Because rumor says there's food in there," Dumesnil flicked his sword towards the warehouse, "and because they're hungry. But for Christ's sake stop fretting! I have enough men. You do your job, Poquelin, and stop telling me how to do mine."

Poquelin, content that he had done his duty by stressing to Dumesnil how important the food was, went to find Colonel Barreto who was waiting with Major Ferreira and the alarming Ferragus beside the warehouse doors. "It is all good," Poquelin told Barreto. "There is even more than you told us!"

Barreto translated for Ferragus who, in turn, asked a question. "The gentleman," Barreto said to Poquelin, his sarcasm obvious, "wishes to know when he will be paid."

"Now," Poquelin said, though it was not in his power to issue payment. Yet he wanted to convey the good news to Massena, and the Marshal would surely pay when he heard that the army had more than enough food to see it to Lisbon. That was all that was needed. Just to reach Lisbon, for even the British could not empty that great city of all its supplies. A treasure trove waited in Lisbon and now the Emperor's Army of Portugal had been given the means to reach it.

The dragoons moved aside to let Poquelin and his companions through. Then the horsemen closed up again. Scores of hungry infantrymen had heard about the food and they were shouting that it should be distributed now, but Colonel Dumesnil was quite ready to kill them if they attempted to help themselves. He sat, hard-faced, unmoving, his long sword drawn, a soldier with orders, which meant the food was in secure hands and the Army of Portugal was safe.

Sharpe and Harper made the return run to the roof where Vicente and Sarah waited. Vicente was bent over in apparent pain, while Sarah, her black silk dress gleaming with spots of fresh blood, looked pale. "What happened?" Sharpe asked.

In reply she showed Sharpe the bloodstained knife blade. "I did get the bullet out," she said in a small voice.

"Well done."

"And lots of cloth scraps," she added more confidently.

"Even better," Sharpe said.

Vicente leaned back against the tiles. He was barechested and a new bandage, torn from his shirt, was crudely wrapped about his shoulder. Blood had oozed through the cloth.

"Hurts, eh?" Sharpe asked.

"It hurts," Vicente said dryly.

"It was difficult," Sarah said, "but he didn't make a noise."

"That's because he's a soldier," Sharpe said. "Can you move your arm?" he asked Vicente.

"I think so."

"Try," Sharpe said. Vicente looked appalled, then understood the sense in the order and, flinching with pain, managed to raise his left arm, which suggested the shoulder joint was not mangled. "You're going to be right as rain, Jorge," Sharpe said, "so long as we keep that wound clean." He glanced at Harper. "Maggots?"

"Not now, sir," Harper said, "only if the wound goes bad."

"Maggots?" Vicente asked faintly. "Did you say maggots?"

"Nothing better, sir," Harper said enthusiastically. "Best thing for a dirty wound. Put the little buggers in, they clean it up, leave the good flesh, and you're good as new." He patted his haversack. "I always carry a half-dozen. Much better than going to a surgeon because all those bastards ever want to do is cut you up."

"I hate surgeons," Sharpe said.

"He hates lawyers," Vicente said to Sarah, "and now he hates surgeons. Is there anyone he likes?"

"Women," Sharpe said, "I do like women." He was looking over the city, listening to screams and shots, and he knew from the noise that French discipline had crumbled. Coimbra was in chaos, given over to lust, hate and fire. Three plumes of smoke were already boiling from the narrow streets to obscure the clear morning sky and he suspected more would soon join them. "They're firing houses," he said, "and we've got work to do." He bent down and scooped up some pigeon dung that he pushed into the barrels of Harper's volley gun. He used the stickiest he could find, carefully placing a small amount into each muzzle. "Ram it down, Pat," he said. The dung would act as wadding to hold the balls in place when the barrels were tipped downwards, and what he planned would mean pointing the gun straight down. "Do many of the houses here have student quarters?" he asked Vicente.

"A lot, yes."

"Like this one?" He gestured at the roof beside them. "With rooms stretching through the attic?"

"It's very common," Vicente said, "they are called republican, some are whole houses, others are just parts of houses. Each one has its own government. Every member has a vote, and when I was here they…

"It's all right, Jorge, tell me later," Sharpe said. "I just hope the houses opposite the warehouse are a republica." He should have looked when he was there, but he had not thought of it. "And what we need now," he went on, "are uniforms."

"Uniforms?" Vicente asked.

"Frog uniforms, Jorge. Then we can join the carnival. How are you feeling?"

"Weak."

"You can rest here for a few minutes," Sharpe said, "while Pat and I get some new clothes."

Sharpe and Harper edged back down the gutter and climbed through the open window into the deserted attic. "My ribs bloody hurt," Sharpe complained as he straightened up.

"Did you wrap them?" Harper asked. "Never get better unless you wrap them up."

"Didn't want to see the angel of death," Sharpe grumbled. The angel of death was the battalion doctor, a Scotsman whose ministrations were known as the last rites.

"I'll wrap the buggers for you," Harper said, "when we've a minute." He went to the doorway and listened to voices below. Sharpe followed him down the stairs, which they took slowly, careful not to make too much noise. A girl began screaming on the next floor. She stopped suddenly as if she had been hit, then started again. Harper reached the landing and moved towards the door where the screaming came from.

"No blood," Sharpe whispered to him. A uniform jacket sheeted with new blood would make them too distinctive. Men's voices came from the lower floor, but they were taking no interest in the girl above. "Make it fast," Sharpe said, edging past the Irishman, "and brutal as you like."

Sharpe pushed the door open and kept moving, seeing three men in the room. Two were holding the girl on the floor while the third, a big man who had stripped off his jacket and lowered his breeches to his ankles, was just getting down on his knees when Sharpe's rifle butt took him in the base of his skull. It was a vicious blow, hard enough to throw the man forward onto the girl's naked belly. Sharpe reckoned the man had to be out of the fight, drew the rifle back and hit the left-hand man on the jaw and he heard the bone crack and saw the whole jaw twist awry. He sensed the third man going down to Harper's blow and finished off the man with the broken jaw by another slam of the brass-sheathed butt to the side of his skull. By the feel of the blow he had fractured the man's skull, then he was gripped around the legs by the first man who had somehow survived the initial assault. The man, hampered by his lowered breeches, clawed at Sharpe's groin, unbalancing him, then the heavy butt of the volley gun slammed into the back of his skull and he slid down, groaning. Harper gave him a last tap as a keepsake.

The girl, stripped naked, stared up in horror and was about to scream again as Harper snatched up her clothes, but then he put his finger to his lips. She held her breath, gazing up at him, and Harper smiled at her, then gave her the clothes. "Get dressed, sweetheart," he said.

"Ingles?" she asked, pulling the torn dress over her head.

Harper looked horrified. "I'm Irish, darling," he said.

"For God's sake, lover boy," Sharpe said, "get the hell up the stairs and fetch the other two down."

"Yes, sir," Harper said and went to the door. The girl, seeing him go, gave a small cry of alarm. The Irishman looked back at her, winked at her, and the girl snatched up the rest of her clothes and followed him, leaving Sharpe with the three men. The big man, who had taken such a beating, showed signs of recovery, lifting his head and scrabbling on the floor with a calloused hand, so Sharpe drew the man's own bayonet and slid it up between his ribs. There was very little blood. The man gave a heave, opened his eyes once to look at Sharpe, then there was a rattling noise in his throat and his head dropped. He lay still.

The other two men, both very young, were unconscious. Sharpe reckoned the one whose jaw he had broken and dislocated would probably die from the blow on the skull. He was white-faced and blood was trickling from his ear, and he gave no sign of consciousness as Sharpe stripped off his clothes. The second, whom Harper had hit, groaned as he was stripped, and Sharpe thumped him into silence. Then he peeled off his own jacket and pulled on a blue one. It fitted him well enough. It buttoned to one side of the broad white facing that blazoned the front and which ended at his waist, though a pair of tails hung down behind. The tails had white turnbacks decorated with pairs of red flaming grenades, which meant the jacket's true owner was from a grenadier company. The high stiff collar was red and the shoulders had brief red epaulettes. He pulled on the soldier's white crossbelt that was fastened at the left shoulder by the epaulette's strap, and from which hung the bayonet. He decided against taking the man's white trousers. He already wore the overalls of a French cavalry officer, and though the mix of coat and overalls was unusual, few soldiers were uniformed properly after they had been on campaign for a few weeks. He strapped his own sword belt beneath the coat tails and knew that was a risk, for no ordinary soldier would carry a sword, but he assumed men would think he had plundered the weapon. He hung his rifle on his shoulder, knowing that to any casual glance the weapon resembled a musket. He emptied the man's oxhide pack and put in his own jacket and shako, then pulled on the soldier's shako, a confection of red and black blazoned on the front with a brass plate showing an eagle above the number 19, making Sharpe a new recruit to the 19th Infantry of the Line. The cartridge box, which hung beneath the bayonet at the end of the crossbelt, had a brass badge of a grenade mounted on its lid.

Harper came back and looked startled for a second at the sight of Sharpe in enemy blue, then he grinned. "Suits you, sir." Vicente and the two girls followed. Sharpe saw that the Portuguese girl was young, perhaps fifteen, with bright eyes and long dark hair. She saw the trace of blood on the shirt of the man who had been about to rape her, then spat on him and, before anyone could stop her, she snatched up a bayonet and stabbed the neck of one of the other two, making blood spurt high up the wall. Vicente opened his mouth to protest, then fell silent. Eighteen months before, when Sharpe had first met him, Vicente's legal mind had balked at such summary punishment of rapists. Now he said nothing as the girl spat on the man she had killed, then went to the second, who was lying on his back and breathing with a hoarse sound from his broken jaw. She stood over him, poising the bayonet above his twisted mouth.

"I never did like rapists," Sharpe said mildly.

"Scum," Harper agreed, "pure bloody scum."

Sarah watched, not wanting to watch, but unable to take her eyes off the bayonet that the girl held two-handed. The girl paused, reveling in the moment, then stabbed down. "Get yourselves dressed," Sharpe told Vicente and Harper. The dying man gurgled behind him and his heels briefly drummed against the floor. "Ask her name," Sharpe told Sarah.

"She's called Joana Jacinto," Sarah said after a short conversation. "She lives here. Her father worked on the river, but she doesn't know where he is now. And she says to thank you."

"Pretty name, Joana," Harper said, dressed now as a French sergeant, "and she's a useful sort of girl, eh? Knows how to use a bayonet."

Sharpe helped Vicente put on the blue jacket, letting it hang from the left shoulder rather than force Vicente's arm into the sleeve. "She says," Sarah had held another conversation with Joana "that she wants to stay with us."

"Of course she must," Harper said before Sharpe could offer an opinion. Joana's dark brown dress had been torn at the breasts when the soldiers stripped her, and the remnants had been splashed with blood when she killed the second soldier, and so she buttoned one of the dead men's shirts over it, then picked up a musket. Sarah, not wanting to appear less belligerent, shouldered another.

It was not much of a force. Two riflemen, two women and a wounded Portuguese cazador. But Sharpe reckoned it should be enough to break a French dream.

So he slung his rifle, hitched the sword belt higher, and led them downstairs.

Most of the French infantry in Coimbra were from the 8th Corps, a newly raised unit of young men fresh from the depots of France, and they were half trained, ill disciplined, resentful of an Emperor who had marched them to a war they mostly did not understand and, above all, hungry. Hundreds broke ranks to explore the university, but, finding little that they wanted, they took out their frustration by smashing, mangling and shattering whatever could be broken. Coimbra was renowned for its work on optics, but microscopes were of small use to soldiers and so they hammered the beautiful instruments with muskets, then wrenched apart the fine sextants. A handful of telescopes were saved, for such things were valued, but the larger instruments, too long to carry, were destroyed, while an unparalleled set of finely ground lenses, cushioned by velvet in a cabinet of wide, shallow drawers, was systematically broken. One room was filled with chronometers, all being tested, and they were reduced to bent springs, cogwheels and shattered cases. A fine assembly of fossils was pounded to shards and a collection of minerals, a lifetime's work carefully catalogued into quartzes and spars and ores, was scattered from a window. Fine porcelain was shattered, pictures torn from their frames and if most of the library was spared that was only because there were too many volumes to be destroyed. Some men nevertheless tried, pulling rare books from the shelves and tearing them apart, but they soon got bored and contented themselves with smashing some fine Roman vases that stood on gilded pediments. There was no sense in it, except the anger that the soldiers felt. They hated the Portuguese and so they took their revenge on what their enemy valued.

Coimbra's Old Cathedral had been built by two Frenchmen in the twelfth century and now other Frenchmen whooped with delight because so many women had taken shelter close to its altars. A handful of men tried to protect their wives and daughters, but the muskets fired, the men died and the screaming began. Other soldiers shot at the gilded high altar, aiming at the carved saints guarding the sad-faced Virgin. A six-year-old child tried to pull a soldier off his mother and had his throat cut, and when a woman would not stop screaming a sergeant cut her throat as well. In the New Cathedral, up the hill, voltigeurs took it in turns to piss into the baptismal font and, when it was full, they christened the girls they had captured in the building, giving them all the same name, Putain, which meant whore. A sergeant then auctioned the weeping girls, whose hair dripped with urine.

In the church of Santa Cruz, which was older than the Old Cathedral, the troops found the tombs of Portugal's first two kings. The beautifully sculpted sepulchers were wrenched apart, the coffins shattered and the bones of Alfonso the Conqueror, who had liberated Lisbon from the Muslims in the twelfth century, were hauled from their winding cloth and thrown across the floor. His son, Sancho I, had been buried in a white linen shift edged with cloth of gold, and an artilleryman ripped the shroud away and draped it about his shoulders before dancing on the remnants of the corpse. There was a gold cross studded with jewels in Sancho's tomb and three soldiers fought over it. One died, and the other two hacked the cross apart and shared it. There were more women in Santa Cruz and they suffered as the other women were suffering, while their men were taken into the Cloisters of Silence and shot.

Mostly the soldiers wanted food. They broke into houses, kicked open cellars and searched for anything they could eat. There was plenty, for the city had never been properly stripped of foodstuffs, but there were too many soldiers, and anger grew when some men ate and others stayed hungry, and the anger turned into fury when it was fuelled by the lavish supplies of wine discovered in the taverns. A rumor spread that there was a great stock of food in a warehouse in the lower town, and hundreds of men converged on it, only to find the hoard guarded by dragoons. Some stayed, hoping the dragoons would go away, while others went to find women or plunder.

A few men tried to prevent the destruction. An officer attempted to pull two artillerymen off a woman and was kicked to the ground, then stabbed with a sword. A pious sergeant, offended at what went on in the Old Cathedral, was shot. Most officers, knowing it was hopeless to try and stop the orgy of destruction, barricaded themselves in houses and waited for the madness to subside, while others simply joined in.

Marshal Massena, escorted by hussars and accompanied by his aides and by his mistress, who was fetchingly dressed in a sky-blue hussar's uniform, found a billet in the Archbishop's palace. Two infantry colonels came to the palace and complained of the troops' behavior, but they got small sympathy from the Marshal. "They deserve a little respite," he said. "It's been a hard march, a hard march. And they're like horses. They go better if you ease the curb rein from time to time. So let them play, gentlemen, let them play." He made certain Henriette was comfortable in the Archbishop's bedroom. She disliked the crucifixes hanging on the walls so Massena jettisoned them through the window, then asked what she would like to eat. "Grapes and wine," she said, and Massena ordered one of his servants to ransack the palace kitchens and find both. "And if there are none, sir?" the servant asked. "Of course there are grapes and wine!" Massena snapped. "Good Christ Almighty, can nothing be done without questions in this army? Find the damned grapes, find the damned wine, and take them to mademoiselle!" He went back to the palace's dining room where maps had been spread on the Archbishop's table. They were poor maps, inspired more by imagination than by topography, but one of Massena's aides thought better ones might exist in the university, and he was right, though by the time he found them they had been reduced to ashes.

The army's Generals assembled in the dining room where Massena planned the next stage of the campaign. He had been rebuffed at Bussaco, but that defeat had not prevented him turning the enemy's left flank and thus chasing the British and Portuguese out of central Portugal. Massena's army was now on the Mondego and the enemy was retreating towards Lisbon, but that still left the Marshal with other enemies. Hunger assailed his troops, as did the Portuguese irregulars who closed behind his forces like wolves following a flock of sheep. General Junot suggested it was time for a pause. "The British are taking to their ships," he said, "so let them go. Then send a corps to retake the roads back to Almeida."

Almeida was the Portuguese frontier fortress where the invasion had begun, and it lay over a hundred miles eastwards at the end of the monstrously difficult roads across which the French army had struggled. "To what end?" Massena asked.

"So supplies can get through," Junot declared, "supplies and reinforcements."

"What reinforcements?" The question was sarcastic.

"Drouet's corps?" Junot suggested.

"They won't move," Massena said sourly, "they won't be permitted to move." The Emperor had ordered that Massena was to be given 130,000 men for the invasion, but less than half that number had assembled on the frontier and when Massena had pleaded for more men, the Emperor had sent a message that his present forces were adequate, that the enemy was risible and the task of invading Portugal easy. Yet the Emperor was not here. The Emperor did not command an army of half-starved men whose shoes were falling apart, an army whose supply lines were non-existent because the damned Portuguese peasants controlled the roads winding through the hills to Almeida. Marshal Massena did not want to return to those hills. Get to Lisbon, he thought, get to Lisbon. "The roads from here to Lisbon," he asked, "are better than those we've traveled?"

"A hundred times better," one of his Portuguese aides answered.

The Marshal went to a window and stared at the smoke rising from buildings burning in the city. "Are we sure the British are making for the sea?"

"Where else can they go?" a general retorted.

"Lisbon?"

"Can't be defended," the Portuguese aide observed.

"To the north?" Massena turned back to the table and stabbed a finger onto the hatch marks of a map. "These hills?" He was pointing to the terrain north of Lisbon where hills stretched for over thirty-two kilometers between the Atlantic and the wide river Tagus.

"They're low hills," the aide said, "and there are three roads through them and a dozen usable tracks besides."

"But this Wellington might offer battle there."

"He risks losing his army if he does," Marshal Ney intervened.

Massena remembered the sound of the volleys from the ridge at Bussaco and imagined his men struggling into such fire again, then despised himself for indulging in fear. "We can maneuver him out of the hills," he suggested, and it was a sensible idea, for the enemy's army was surely not large enough to guard a front twenty miles wide. Threaten it in one place, Massena thought, and launch the Eagles through the hills ten miles away. "There are forts in the hills, yes?" he asked.

"We've heard rumors that he's making forts to guard the roads," the Portuguese aide answered.

"So we march through the hills," Massena said. That way the new forts could be left to rot while Wellington's army was surrounded, humiliated, and defeated. The Marshal stared at the map and imagined the colors of the defeated army being paraded through Paris and thrown at the feet of the Emperor. "We can turn his flank again," he said, "but not if we give him time to escape. He has to be hurried."

"So we march south?" Ney asked.

"In two days," Massena decided. He knew he needed that much time for his army to recover from its capture of Coimbra. "Let them stay off the leash today," he said, "and tomorrow we'll whip them back to the Eagles and make sure they're ready for departure on Wednesday."

"And what will the men eat?" Junot asked.

"Whatever they damn well can," Massena snapped. "And there has to be food here, doesn't there? The English can't have scraped a whole city bare."

"There is food." A new voice spoke and the Generals, resplendent in blue, red and gold, turned from their maps to see Chief Commissary Poquelin looking unusually pleased with himself.

"How much food?" Massena asked caustically.

"Enough to see us to Lisbon, sir," Poquelin said, "more than enough." For days now he had tried to avoid the Generals for fear of the scorn they heaped on him, but Poquelin's hour had come. This was his triumph. The commissary had done its work. "I need transport," he said, "and a good battalion to help move the supplies, but we have all we need. More! If you remember, sir, you promised to buy these supplies? The man has kept faith. He's waiting outside."

Massena half remembered making the promise, but now that the food was in his possession he was tempted to break the promise. The army's treasury was not large and it was not the French way to buy supplies that could be stolen. Live off the land, the Emperor always said.

Colonel Barreto, who had come to the palace with Poquelin, saw the indecision on Massena's face. "If we renege on this promise, sir," he said respectfully, "then no one in Portugal will believe us. And in a week or two we shall be governing here. We shall need cooperation."

"Cooperation." Marshal Ney spat the word. "A guillotine in Lisbon will make them cooperate quickly enough."

Massena shook his head. Barreto was right, and it was foolish to make new enemies at the very brink of victory. "Pay him," he said, nodding to an aide who kept the key to the money chest. "And in two days," he went on to Poquelin, "you start moving the supplies south. I want a depot at Leiria."

"Leiria?" Poquelin asked.

"Here, man, here!" Massena stabbed a map with his forefinger, and Poquelin nervously edged through the Generals to look for the town which, he discovered, lay some forty miles south of Coimbra on the Lisbon road.

"I need wagons," Poquelin said.

"You will have every wagon and mule we possess," Massena promised grandly.

"There aren't enough horses," Junot said sourly.

"There are never enough horses!" Massena snapped. "So use men. Use these damned peasants." He waved at the window, indicating the town. "Harness them, whip them, make them work!"

"And the wounded?" Junot asked in alarm. Wagons would be needed to carry the wounded southwards if they were to stay with the army and thus be protected from the Portuguese irregulars.

"They can stay here," Massena decided.

"And who guards them?"

"I shall find men," Massena said, impatient with such quibbles. What mattered was that he had food, the enemy was retreating, and Lisbon was only a hundred miles to the south. The campaign was half complete, but from now on his army would be marching on good roads, so this was no time for caution, it was time to attack.

And in two weeks, he thought, he would have Lisbon and the war would be won.

Sharpe had no sooner gone into the street than a man tried to snatch Sarah away from his side. She hardly looked beguiling for her crumpled black dress was torn at the hem, her hair had come loose and her face was dirty, yet the man seized her arm, then protested wildly as Sharpe pinned him against the wall with his rifle butt. Sarah spat at the man and added a couple of words which she hoped were rude enough to shock him. "You speak French?" Sharpe asked Sarah, careless that the French soldier could overhear him.

"French, Portuguese and Spanish," she said.

Sharpe thumped the man in the groin for a remembrance, then led his companions past the bodies of two men, both Portuguese, who lay on the cobbles. One had been eviscerated and his blood trickled ten feet down the gutter from his corpse which was being sniffed by a three-legged dog. A window broke above them, showering them with glittering shards. A woman screamed, and the bells in one of the churches began a terrible cacophony. None of the French soldiers took any notice of them other than to ask if they had finished with the two girls, and only Sarah and Vicente understood those questions. The street became more crowded as they went uphill and got closer to where, rumor said, there was food enough for a multitude. Sharpe and Harper used their size to bully past soldiers, then, reaching the houses that stood opposite Ferragus's warehouse, Sharpe went into the first door and climbed the stairs. A woman, blood on her face and clutching a baby, shrank from them on the landing, then Sharpe was up the last flight of stairs and discovered, to his relief, that the attic here was like the first, a long room that overlaid the separate houses beneath. There had been a score of students living up here, now their beds were overturned, all except one on which a French soldier slept. He woke as their footsteps sounded loud on the boards and, seeing the two women, rolled off the bed. Sharpe was opening a window onto the roof and turned as the man held out his hands to Sarah who smiled at him and then, with surprising force, rammed the muzzle of her French musket into his belly. The man let out his breath in a gasp, bent over, and Joana hit him with the stock of her musket, swinging it in a haymaker's blow to crack the butt onto his forehead, and the man, without a sound, collapsed backwards. Sarah grinned, discovering abilities she had not suspected.

"Stay here with the women," Sharpe told Vicente, "and be ready to run like hell." He was going to attack the dragoons from above, and he reckoned the cavalrymen would come after their assailants by using the stairs closest to the warehouse, ignorant that the attic gave access to four separate stairwells in the four houses. Sharpe planned to go back the way he had come, and by the time the dragoons reached the attic he would be long gone. "Come on, Pat."

They clambered out onto the roof, the same roof that they had reconnoitered earlier, and, by following the gutter behind the parapet, they reached the gable end from which, leaning over, Sharpe could again see the horsemen three floors below him. He took the volley gun from Harper. "There's an officer down there, Pat," he said. "He's on the left, mounted on a gray horse. When I give the word, shoot him."

Harper put some pigeon dung into his rifle's barrel and rammed it down to hold the bullet in place, then he edged forward and peered down into the street. There were dragoons at either end of the short roadway, using their horses' weight and the threat of their long swords to hold the hungry infantry at bay. The officer was just behind the left-hand group, easily distinguished because of the fur-lined pelisse that hung from his left shoulder and because his green saddle cloth had no pouch attached. None of the dragoons looked upwards, why should they? Their job was to guard the street, not watch the rooftops, and Harper aimed the rifle downwards and pulled back the cock.

Sharpe stood beside him with the volley gun. "Ready?"

"I'm ready."

"You fire first," Sharpe said. Harper had to be sure of his aim, but there was no need for Sharpe to aim the volley gun, for it had no accuracy. It was just a slaughtering machine, its seven bullets spreading like canister from the clustered barrels.

Harper lined the sights on the officer's brass helmet which had a brown plume trailing from its crest. The gray horse stirred and the Frenchman calmed it, then looked behind him and just then Harper fired. The bullet cracked open the helmet so that a jet of blood sprayed briefly upwards, then more blood flooded from beneath the helmet's rim as the officer toppled slowly sideways, and just then Sharpe fired into the other dragoons, the noise of the volley gun sounding like a cannon shot as it echoed from the warehouse's facade. Smoke filled the air. A horse screamed. "Run!" Sharpe said.

They went back the way they had come, through the window and down the far stairs, with Vicente and the women following. Sharpe could hear uproar at the other end of the house. Men were shouting in alarm, horses' hooves were loud on cobbles, and then he was at the front door and, with the two guns slung on his shoulder, he pushed into the crowd. Sarah held on to his belt. The infantrymen were surging forward, but over their heads Sharpe could see dismounted dragoons shoving into the far house. As far as Sharpe could see only one man had stayed in his saddle, and that man was holding a dozen reins, but the horses were being pushed aside by the rush of infantry who suddenly understood that the warehouse was unguarded.

The dragoons had done exactly what Sharpe had wanted, what he thought they would do. Their officer was dead, others of them were wounded and, lacking leadership, their only thought was to take revenge on the men who had attacked them, and so they swarmed into the house and left the warehouse unguarded except for a handful of dragoons who were powerless to stem the surge of men who charged at the doors. A dragoon sergeant tried to stop them by swinging the flat of his sword at leading men, but he was hauled from the saddle, his horse was shoved aside, and the great doors were dragged open. A huge cheer sounded. The remaining dragoons let the men run past, intent only on saving themselves and their horses.

"It's going to be chaos in there," Sharpe said to Harper. "I'm going in alone."

"To do what?"

"What I have to do," Sharpe said. "You and Captain Vicente look after the girls." He pushed them into a doorway. "I'll join you here." Sharpe would have preferred to take Harper with him, for the Irishman's size and strength would be huge assets in the crowded warehouse, but the biggest danger would be that the five of them would be separated in the dark, confused interior, and it was better that Sharpe worked alone. "Wait for me," Sharpe said, then gave Harper his pack and his rifle and, armed only with his sword and the unloaded volley gun, he bullied and shoved his way up the street, past the dead officer's frightened horse and so, at last, into the warehouse. The entrance was crammed, and, once inside, he found men hauling down boxes, sacks and barrels, making it hard to get through, but Sharpe used the butt of the volley gun, savagely clearing the way. An artilleryman tried to stop him, throwing a wild punch, and Sharpe drove the man's teeth in with the brass-bound stock, then he scrambled across a sprawling mound of sacks pulled down from one of the great heaps, and found himself in a relatively uncrowded area.

From here he could work his way to the edge of the warehouse where he remembered seeing the supplies piled on the two carts parked beside the great timber wall that divided this warehouse from the next. Few men were back here, for the French were interested in food, not candles and buttons and nails and horseshoes.

One man was already at one of the wagons, sorting through the goods on its bed, and Sharpe saw he already had a full sack, presumably stuffed with food, and so he clouted the man on the back of the neck with the volley gun, kicked him when he was down, stamped on his face when he tried to move, then looked inside the sack. Biscuits, salt beef and cheese. He would take that, for all of them were hungry, and so he put the sack aside, then drew his sword and used the blade to break open two barrels of lamp oil. It was whale oil, and it gave off a rank stench as it spilled from the broken staves and dripped down to the wagon bed. There were some bolts of cloth at the far end of the wagon and he climbed up to discover what they were made of and discovered, as he had hoped, that they were linen. He shook two of the bolts out, letting the cloth lie loosely across the wagon's load.

He jumped down, sheathed the sword, then broke open a cartridge to make a paper spill filled with gunpowder. He primed the unloaded volley gun, then glanced around the warehouse where men were dragging at supplies like fiends. A stack of rum barrels collapsed, crushing a man, who screamed as his legs were broken by a full barrel that split apart to flood rum across the floor. A Frenchman beat at another barrel with an axe, then dipped a tin cup into the rum. A dozen others went to join him, and no one took any notice of Sharpe as he cocked the unloaded volley gun.

He pulled the trigger, the priming flared and the spill caught. It fizzed angrily; he let the flame grow until the spill was burning well, then he tossed it down into the oil on the wagon bed. For a second the paper burned on its own, then a sheet of flame spread across the wagon and Sharpe snatched up the sack of food and ran.

For a few steps he was unimpeded. The men around the rum barrels ignored him as he edged past, but then the linen caught the fire and there was a sudden flare of light. A man shouted a warning, smoke began to spread, and the panic began. A dozen dragoons were fighting their way into the warehouse, ordered to the hopeless task of ejecting the men stealing the precious food, and now a wave of terrified soldiers struck the dragoons, two of whom fell, and there was screaming and snarling, the sound of a shot, and then the smoke thickened with appalling rapidity as the wagon caught fire. The cartridges in the pouch of the man whose food Sharpe had stolen began to explode and a burning scrap of paper fell into the rum and sudden blue flames rippled across the floor.

Sharpe ripped men away from his path, stamped on them, kicked them, then drew his sword because he reckoned it was the only thing that would clear the way. He stabbed men with the blade and they twisted aside, protesting, then shrank from the anger on his face, and behind him a small barrel of gunpowder exploded and the fire sprayed across the warehouse as Sharpe fought his way through the crush, except there was no way through. Scores of terrified men were blocking the gaps between the heaps, so Sharpe sheathed his sword, threw his sack of food up to the top of a stack of boxes and clambered up the side. He ran across the top. Cats fled from him. Smoke billowed in the rafters. He jumped to a half-collapsed heap of flour sacks, crossed them towards the doorway, then slid down the far side. He put his head down and ran, trampling fallen men, using his strength to escape the smoke, and burst out of the doors into the street where, gripping the sack of food to keep it safe, he worked his way back down to the house where he had left Harper.

"God save Ireland." Harper was standing in the doorway, watching the chaos. Smoke was tumbling out of the great doors and more was spewing up from the broken skylight. Soldiers, scorched and coughing, were staggering out of the door. Screams sounded inside the warehouse, and then there was another explosion as the rum barrels cracked apart. There was a glow like a giant furnace in the doors now, and the sound of the fire was like the roaring of a huge river going through a ravine. "You did that?" Harper asked.

"I did that," Sharpe said. He felt tired suddenly, tired and ravenously hungry, and he went into the house where Vicente and the girls were waiting in a small room decorated with a picture of a saint holding a shepherd's crook. He looked at Vicente. "Take us somewhere safe, Jorge."

"Where's safe on a day like this?" Vicente asked.

"Somewhere a long way from this street," Sharpe said, and the five of them went out of the back door and, looking back, Sharpe saw that the warehouse next to Ferragus's had caught the fire and its roof was now burning. More dragoons were evidently coming because Sharpe could hear the hooves loud in the narrow streets, but it was too late.

They went down one alley, up another, crossed a street and went through a courtyard where a dozen French soldiers were lying dead drunk. Vicente led them. "We'll go uphill," he said, not because he thought the upper town was any safer than the lower town, but because it had been his home.

No one accosted them. They were just another band of exhausted soldiers stumbling through the city. Behind them was fire, smoke and anger. "What do we say if they challenge us?" Sarah asked Sharpe.

"Tell them we're Dutch."

"Dutch?"

"They have Dutch soldiers," Sharpe said.

The upper town was quieter. It was mostly cavalrymen quartered here and some of them told the interloping infantrymen to go away, but Vicente led them down an alley, through a courtyard, down some steps and into the garden of a big house. At the side of the garden was a cottage. "The house belongs to a professor of theology," Vicente explained, "and his servants live here." The cottage was tiny, but so far no French had found it. Sharpe, on his way uphill, had seen how some houses had a uniform coat hung in the doorway to denote that soldiers had taken up residence and that the place was not to be plundered, and so he took off his blue jacket and hung it from a nail above the cottage door. Maybe it would keep the enemy away, maybe not. They ate, all of them ravenous, tearing at the salt beef and hard biscuit, and Sharpe wished he could lie down and sleep for the rest of the day, but he knew the others must be feeling the same. "Get some sleep," he told them.

"What about you?" Vicente asked.

"Someone has to stand guard," Sharpe said.

The cottage had one small bedroom, little more than a cupboard, and Vicente was given that because he was an officer, while Harper went into the kitchen where he made a bed from curtains, blankets and a greatcoat. Joana followed him and the kitchen door was firmly shut behind her. Sarah collapsed in an old, broken armchair from which tufts of horsehair protruded. "I'll stay awake with you," she told Sharpe, and a moment later she was fast asleep.

Sharpe loaded his rifle. He dared not sit for he knew he would never stay awake and so he stood in the doorway, the loaded rifle beside him, and he listened to the distant screams and he saw the great plume of smoke smearing the cloudless sky and he knew he had done his duty. Now all he had to do was get back to the army.

CHAPTER 10

Ferragus and his brother went back to the Major's house, which had been spared the plundering suffered by the rest of the city. A troop of dragoons from the same squadron that had ridden to protect the warehouse had been posted outside the house, and they were now relieved by a dozen men sent by Colonel Barreto who, when his day's work was complete, planned to billet himself in the house. Miguel and five others of Ferragus's men were at the house, safe there from French attention, and it was Miguel who interrupted the brothers' celebrations by reporting that the warehouse was burning.

Ferragus had just opened a third bottle of wine. He listened to Miguel, carried the bottle to the window and peered down the hill. He saw the smoke churning up, but shrugged. "It could be any one of a dozen buildings," he said dismissively.

"It's the warehouse," Miguel insisted. "I went to the roof. I could see."

"So?" Ferragus toasted the room with his bottle. "We've sold it now! The loss is to the French, not to us."

Major Ferreira went to the window and gazed at the smoke. Then he made the sign of the cross. "The French will not see it that way," he said quietly, and took the bottle from his brother.

"They've paid us!" Ferragus said, trying to get the bottle back.

Ferreira placed the wine out of his brother's reach. "The French will believe we sold them the food, then destroyed it," he said. The Major glanced towards the street leading downhill as if he expected it to be filled with Frenchmen. "They will want their money back."

"Jesus," Ferragus said. His brother was right. He glanced at the money: four saddlebags filled with French gold. "Jesus," he said again as the implications of the burning building sank into his wine-hazed head.

"Time to go." The Major took firm command of the situation.

"Go?" Ferragus was still fuddled.

"They'll be after us!" the Major insisted. "At best they'll just want the money back, at worst they'll shoot us. Good God, Luis! First we lost the flour at the shrine, now this? You think they'll believe we didn't do it? We go! Now!"

"Stable yard," Ferragus ordered Miguel.

"We can't ride out!" Ferreira protested. The French were confiscating every horse they discovered, and Ferreira's contacts with Colonel Barreto and the French would avail him nothing if he was seen on horseback. "We have to hide," he insisted. "We hide in the city until it's safe to leave."

Ferragus, his brother, and the six men carried what was most valuable from the house. They had the gold newly paid by the French, some money that Major Ferreira had kept hidden in his study and a bag of silver plate, and they took it all up an alley behind the stables, through a second alley and into one of the many abandoned houses that had already been searched by the French. They dared not go farther, for the streets were filled with the invaders, and so they took refuge in the house cellar and prayed that they would not be discovered.

"How long do we stay here?" Ferragus asked sourly.

"Till the French leave," Ferreira said.

"And then?"

Ferreira did not answer at once. He was thinking. Thinking that the British would not just march away to their boats. They would try to stop the French again, probably near the new forts he had seen being constructed on the road north of Lisbon. That meant the French would have to fight or else maneuver their way around the British and Portuguese armies, and that would provide time. Time for him to reach Lisbon. Time to reach the money secreted in his wife's luggage. Time to find his wife and children. Portugal was about to collapse and the brothers would need money. Much money. They could go to the Azores or even to Brazil, then wait the storm out in comfort and return home when it had passed. And if the French were defeated? Then they would still need money, and the only obstacle was Captain Sharpe who knew of Ferreira's treachery. The wretched man had escaped from the cellar, but was he still alive? It seemed more probable that the French would have killed him, for Ferreira could not imagine the French taking prisoners in their orgy of killing and destruction, but the thought that the rifleman lived was worrying. "If Sharpe is alive," he wondered aloud, "what will he do?"

Ferragus spat to show his opinion of Sharpe.

"He will go back to his army," Ferreira answered his own question.

"And say you are a traitor?"

"Then it will be his word against mine," Ferreira said, "and if I am there, then his word will not carry much weight."

Ferragus stared up at the cellar roof. "We could say the food was poisoned," he suggested, "say it was a trap for the French?"

Ferreira nodded, acknowledging the usefulness of the suggestion. "What is important," he said, "is for us to reach Lisbon. Beatriz and the children are there. My money is there." He thought about going north and hiding, but the longer he was absent from the army, the greater would be the suspicions about that absence. Better to go back, bluff it out and reclaim his possessions. Then, with money, he could survive whatever happened. Besides, he missed his family. "But how do we reach Lisbon?"

"Go east," one of the men suggested. "Go east to the Tagus and float down."

Ferreira stared at the man, thinking, though in truth there was nothing really to think about. He could not go directly south for the French would be there, but if he and his brother struck east across the mountains, traveling through the high lands where the French would not dare go for fear of the partisans, they would eventually reach the Tagus and the money they carried would be more than sufficient to buy a boat. Then, in two days, they could be in Lisbon. "I have friends in the mountains," Ferreira said.

"Friends?" Ferragus had not followed his brother's thinking.

"Men who have taken weapons from me." Ferreira, as part of his duties, had distributed British muskets among the hill folk to encourage them to become partisans. "They will give us horses," he went on confidently, "and they will know whether the French are in Abrantes. If they're not, we find our boat there. And the men in the hills can do something else for us. If Sharpe is alive…»

"He's dead by now," Ferragus insisted.

"If he's alive," Major Ferreira went on patiently, "then he will have to take the same route to reach his army. So they can kill him for us." He made the sign of the cross, for it was all so suddenly clear. "Five of us will go to the Tagus," he said, "and then go south. When we reach our army we shall say we destroyed the provisions in the warehouse and if the French arrive we shall sail to the Azores."

"Only five of us?" Miguel asked. There were eight men in the cellar.

"Three of you will stay here," Ferreira suggested and looked to his brother for approval, which Ferragus gave with a nod. "Three men must stay here," Ferreira said, "to guard my house and make any repairs necessary before we return. And when we do return those three men will be well rewarded."

The Major's suspicion that his house would need repairs was justified for, just a hundred and fifty yards away, dragoons were searching for him. The French believed they had been cheated by Major Ferreira and his brother and now took their revenge. They beat down the front door, but found no one except the cook who was drunk in the kitchen and when she swung a frying pan at the head of a dragoon she was shot. The dragoons tossed her body into the yard, then systematically destroyed everything they could break. Furniture, pictures, porcelain, pots, everything. The banisters were torn from the stairs, windows were smashed, and the shutters ripped from their hinges. They found nothing except the horses in the stables and those they took away to become French cavalry remounts.

Dusk came, and the sun flared crimson above the far Atlantic and then sank. The fires in the city burned on to light the smoky sky. The first fury of the French had subsided, but there were still screams in the dark and tears in the night, for the Eagles had taken a city.

Sharpe leaned on the door frame, shadowed by a small timber porch up which a plant twined and fell. The small garden was neatly planted in rows, but what grew there Sharpe did not know, though he did recognize some runner beans that he picked and stored in a pocket ready for the hungry days ahead. He leaned on the door frame again, listening to the shots in the lower city and to Harper's snores coming from the kitchen. He dozed, unaware of it until a cat rubbed against his ankles and startled him awake. Shots still sounded in the city, and still the smoke churned overhead.

He petted the cat, stamped his boots, tried to stay awake, but again fell asleep on his feet and woke to see a French officer sitting in the entrance to the garden with a sketch pad. The man was drawing Sharpe and, when he saw his subject had woken, he held up a hand as if to say Sharpe should not be alarmed. He drew on, his pencil making quick, confident strokes. He spoke to Sharpe, his voice relaxed and friendly, and Sharpe grunted back and the officer did not seem to mind that his subject made no sense. It was dusk when the officer finished and he stood and brought the picture to Sharpe and asked his opinion. The Frenchman was smiling, pleased with his work, and Sharpe gazed at the drawing of a villainous-looking man, scarred and frightening, leaning in shirtsleeves against the doorway with a rifle propped at his side and a sword hanging from his waist. Had the fool not seen they were British weapons? The officer, who was young, fair-haired and good-looking, prompted Sharpe for a response, and Sharpe shrugged, wondering if he would have to draw the sword and fillet the man.

Then Sarah appeared and said something in fluent French and the officer snatched off his forage cap, bowed and showed the picture to Sarah who must have expressed delight, for the man tore it from his big book and gave it to her with another bow. They spoke for a few more minutes, or rather the officer spoke and Sarah seemed to agree with everything he said, adding very few words of her own and then, at last, the officer kissed her hand, nodded amicably to Sharpe, and disappeared up the steps through the far archway. "What was that all about?" Sharpe asked.

"I told him we were Dutch. He seemed to think you were a cavalryman."

"He saw the sword, overalls and boots," Sharpe explained. "He wasn't suspicious?"

"He said you were the very picture of a modern soldier," Sarah said, looking at the drawing.

"That's me," Sharpe said, "a work of art."

"He actually said that you were the image of a people's fury released on an old and corrupt world."

"Bloody hell," Sharpe said.

"And he said it was a shame what was being done in the city, but that it was unavoidable."

"What's wrong with discipline?"

"Unavoidable," Sarah ignored Sharpe's question, "because Coimbra represents the old world of superstition and privilege."

"So he was another Crapaud full of… " Sharpe started.

"Shit?" Sarah interrupted him.

Sharpe looked at her. "You're a strange one, love."

"Good," she said.

"Did you sleep?" Sharpe asked her.

"I slept. Now you must."

"Someone has to stand guard," Sharpe said, though he had not done a particularly good job. He had been fast asleep when the French officer came and it had only been pure luck that it had been a man with a sketch book instead of some bastard looking for plunder. "What you could do," he suggested, "is see if the fire in the kitchen can be revived and make us some tea."

"Tea?"

"There are some leaves in my haversack," Sharpe said. "You have to scoop them out, and they get a bit mixed up with loose gunpowder, but most of us like that taste."

"Sergeant Harper's in the kitchen," Sarah said diffidently.

"Worried what you might see?" Sharpe asked with a smile. "He won't mind. There's not a lot of privacy in the army. It's an education, the army."

"So I'm discovering," Sarah said, and she went to the kitchen, but came back to report that the stove was cold.

She had moved as quietly as she could, but she had still woken Harper who rolled out of his makeshift bed and came bleary-eyed into the small parlor. "What time is it?"

"Nightfall," Sharpe said.

"All quiet?"

"Except for your snoring. And we had a visit from a Frog who chatted with Sarah about the state of the world."

"It's in a terrible state, so it is," Harper said, "a shame, really." He shook his head, then hefted the volley gun. "You should get some sleep, sir. Let me watch for a while." He turned and smiled as Joana came from the kitchen. She had taken off her torn dress and seemed to be wearing nothing except the Frenchman's shirt, which reached halfway down her thighs. She put her arms round Harper's waist, rested her dark head against his shoulder and smiled at Sharpe. "We'll both keep watch," Harper said.

"Is that what you call it?" Sharpe asked. He picked up his rifle. "Wake me when you're tired," he said. He reckoned he needed proper sleep more than he needed tea, but Harper, he knew, could probably drink a gallon. "You want to make some tea first? We were going to light the stove."

"I'll brew it on the hearth, sir." Harper nodded at the small fireplace where there was a three-legged saucepan designed to stand in the embers. "There's water in the garden," he added, nodding at a rain butt, "so the kitchen's all yours, sir. And sleep well, sir."

Sharpe ducked through the low door which he closed to find himself in almost pitch blackness. He groped to find the back door beyond which was a small enclosed yard eerily lit by moonlight filtered by the drifting smoke. There was a pump in the yard's corner and he worked the handle to splash water into a stone trough. He used a handful of straw to scrub the filth off his boots, then tugged them off and washed his hands. He unstrapped the sword belt and carried belt, boots and sword back into the kitchen. He closed the door, then knelt to find the bed in the darkness.

"Careful," Sarah said from somewhere in the tangle of blankets and greatcoat.

"What are you… " Sharpe began, then thought it was a stupid question and so did not finish it.

"I don't think I was really wanted out there," Sarah explained. "Not that Sergeant Harper was unwelcoming, he wasn't, but I had the distinct impression that the two of them could cope without me."

"That's probably true," Sharpe said.

"And I won't keep you awake," she promised.

But she did.

It was morning when Sharpe woke. The cat had somehow got into the kitchen and was sitting on the small shelf beside the stove where it was washing itself and occasionally looking at Sharpe with yellow eyes. Sarah's left arm was across Sharpe's chest and he marveled at how smooth and pale her skin was. She was asleep still, a strand of golden hair shivering at her open lips with every breath. Sharpe eased himself from beneath her embrace and, naked, edged open the kitchen door just far enough to see into the parlor.

Harper was in the armchair, Joana asleep across his lap. The Irishman turned at the creak of the hinges. "All quiet, sir," he whispered.

"You should have woken me."

"Why? Nothing's stirring."

"Captain Vicente?"

"He crept out, sir. Went to see what was happening. Promised he wouldn't go far."

"I'll make some tea," Sharpe said, and he closed the door.

There was a basket of kindling beside the stove and a box of small logs. He worked as quietly as possible, but heard Sarah stir and turned to see her looking up at him from the jumble of bedclothes. "You're right," she said, "the army is an education."

Sharpe leaned against the stove. She sat up, clutching Harper's greatcoat to her breasts, and he stared at her, she stared back and neither spoke until she suddenly scratched at her thigh. "When you were in India," she asked unexpectedly, "did you meet people who believed that after death they came back as another person?"

"Not that I know about," Sharpe said.

"I'm told they believe that," Sarah said solemnly.

"They believe all sorts of rubbish. Couldn't keep up with it."

"When I come back," Sarah said, tilting her head to rest against the wall, "I think I'll come back as a man."

"Bit of a waste," Sharpe said.

"Because you're free," she said, gazing up at the dried herbs hanging from the beams.

"I'm not free," Sharpe said. "I've got the army all over me. Like fleas." He watched her scratch again.

"What we did last night," Sarah said, and blushed very slightly and it was plain she had to force herself to speak of what had happened so naturally in the darkness, "doesn't leave you changed. You're the same person. I'm not."

Sharpe heard Vicente's voice in the parlor and, a heartbeat later, there was a knock on the kitchen door. "In a minute, Jorge," Sharpe called out. He looked into Sarah's eyes. "Should I feel guilty?"

"No, no," Sarah said quickly. "It's just that everything's changed. For a woman," she looked up at the herbs again, "it's not a small thing. For a man, I think, it is."

"I won't let you be alone," Sharpe said.

"I wasn't worried about that," Sarah said, though she was. "It's just that everything's new now. I'm not who I was yesterday. And that means tomorrow is different as well." She half smiled at him. "Do you understand?"

"You'll probably have to talk to me some more," Sharpe said, "when I'm awake. But for the moment, love, I have to let Jorge have his say, and I need some bloody tea." He leaned over and kissed her, then scooped up his clothes.

Sarah lifted her torn dress from the tangled bedding. She was about to pull it over her head, then shuddered. "It stinks," she said in distaste.

"Wear this," Sharpe said, tossing her his shirt, then he pulled on the overalls, shrugged the straps over his bare shoulders and tugged on the boots. "We'll have a make and mend day," he said. "Wash everything. I doubt the bloody French will leave today and we seem safe enough here." He waited until she had buttoned the shirt, then opened the door. "Sorry, Jorge, just making a fire."

"The French aren't leaving," Vicente reported from the door. He was in shirtsleeves and had made a sling for his left arm. "I couldn't go far, but I could see downhill and they're not making any preparations."

"They're catching their breath," Sharpe said, "and they'll probably march tomorrow." He twisted to look at Sarah. "See if Patrick's fire is going, will you? Tell him I need a flame for this one."

Sarah slipped past Vicente who stood aside to let her pass, then he looked from Sarah to Joana, both girls bare-legged and dressed in grubby shirts. He came into the kitchen and frowned at Sharpe. "It looks like a brothel in there," he said reprovingly.

"Greenjackets always were lucky, Jorge. And they're both volunteers."

"Does that justify it?"

Sharpe pushed more kindling into the stove. "Doesn't have to be justified, Jorge. It's life."

"Which is why we have religion," Vicente said, "to raise us above life."

"I was always lucky," Sharpe said, "in escaping law and religion."

Vicente looked miserable with that reply, but then saw the pencil portrait of Sharpe that Sarah had propped on a shelf and his face brightened. "That's good! It's just like you!"

"It's a picture, Jorge, of a people's anger let loose on a corrupt world."

"It is?"

"That's what the fellow who drew it said, something like that."

"Miss Fry didn't do it?"

"It was a Frog officer, Jorge. Did it last night while you were sleeping. Step aside, fire coming." He and Vicente made way for Sarah who was carrying a burning scrap of wood that she pushed into the stove, then watched to make sure the fire caught. "What we're going to do," Sharpe said as Sarah blew on the small flames, "is boil up some water, wash our clothes and pick off the fleas."

"Fleas?" Sarah sounded alarmed.

"Why do you think you're scratching, darling? You've probably got worse than fleas, but we've got all day to clean up. We'll wait for the Crapauds to go, which will be tomorrow at the earliest."

"They won't go today?" Sarah asked.

"That drunken lot? Their officers will never get them in march order today. Tomorrow if they're lucky. And tonight we'll have a look at the streets, but I doubt we can get out tonight. They're bound to have patrols. Best to wait till they've gone, then cross the bridge and head south."

Sarah thought for a second, then frowned as she scratched at her waist. "You just follow the French?" she asked. "How do you get past them?"

"The safest way," Vicente said, "would be to head for the Tagus. We must cross some high hills to reach the river, but once there we might find a boat. Something to take us downstream to Lisbon."

"But before that," Sharpe said, "there's another job to do. Look for Ferragus."

Vicente frowned. "Why?"

"Because he owes us, Jorge," Sharpe said, "or at least he owes Sarah. He stole her money, the bastard, so we have to get it back."

Vicente was plainly unhappy at the idea of prolonging the feud with Ferragus, but he did not voice any objections. "And what if a patrol comes here today?" he asked instead. "They'll be searching the town for their own troops, won't they?"

"You speak Frog?"

"Not well, but I speak some."

"So tell them you're an Italian, a Dutchman, anything you like, and promise we'll rejoin our unit. Which we will, if we can get out of here."

They made tea, shared a breakfast of biscuit, salt beef and cheese, then Sharpe and Vicente stood guard while Harper helped the two women do the laundry. They boiled the clothes to get the stench of the sewer out of the cloth and, when everything was dry, which took most of the day, Sharpe used a heated poker to kill the lice in the seams. Harper had torn down some curtains from the bedroom, washed them, torn them into long strips, and now insisted on bandaging Sharpe's ribs that were still bruised and painful. Sarah saw the scars on his back.

"What happened?" she asked.

"I was flogged," Sharpe explained.

"For what?"

"Something I didn't do," Sharpe said.

"It must have hurt."

"Life hurts," Sharpe said. "Wrap it tight, Pat."

His ribs were still painful, but he could take a deep breath without wincing, which surely meant things were mending. They were mending in the city too, for Coimbra was quieter today, though the plume of smoke, thinner now, still drifted up from the warehouse. Sharpe suspected the French would have rescued some supplies from the blaze, but not nearly enough to release them from the hunger that Lord Wellington had deployed to defeat their invasion. At midday Sharpe crept to the end of the tortuous alley and saw, as he had suspected, patrols of French soldiers rooting men out of houses, and he and Harper then filled the alley with garden rubbish to suggest that it was not worth exploring, and the ruse must have worked, for no patrol bothered to explore the narrow passage. At nightfall there were the sounds of hooves and iron-rimmed wheels on the nearby streets and when it was fully dark Sharpe negotiated the obstacles in the alley and saw that two batteries of artillery were parked in the street. A half-dozen sentries guarded the vehicles and one, more alert than the others, saw Sharpe's shadow in the alley's entrance and shouted a challenge. Sharpe crouched. The man called again and, receiving no answer, shot into the blackness. The ball ricocheted above Sharpe's head as he crept backwards. "Un chien," another sentry called. The first man peered down the alley, saw nothing and agreed it must have been a dog in the night.

Sharpe stood guard for the second half of the night. Sarah stayed with him, staring into the moonlit garden. She spoke of growing up and of losing her parents. "I became a nuisance to my uncle," she said sadly.

"So he got shot of you?"

"As fast as he could." She was sitting in the armchair and reached out to run a finger down the zigzag leather reinforcements on the leg of Sharpe's overalls. "Will the British really stay in Lisbon?"

"It'll take more than this pack of Frenchmen to get them out," Sharpe said scornfully. "Of course we're staying."

"If I had a hundred pounds," she said wistfully, "I'd find a small house in Lisbon and teach English. I like children."

"I don't."

"Of course you do." She slapped him lightly.

"You wouldn't go back to England?" Sharpe asked her. "What can I do there? No one wants to learn Portuguese, but plenty of Portuguese want their children to know English. Besides, in England I'm just another young woman with no prospects, no fortune and no future. Here I benefit from the intrigue of being different."

"You intrigue me," Sharpe said, and got slapped again. "You could stay with me," he added.

"And be a soldier's woman?" She laughed.

"Nothing wrong with that," Sharpe said defensively.

"No, there's not," Sarah agreed. She was silent for a while. "Until two days ago," she went on suddenly, "I thought my life depended on other people. On employers. Now I think it depends on me. You taught me that. But I need money."

"Money's easy," Sharpe said dismissively.

"That is not the conventional wisdom," Sarah said dryly.

"Steal the stuff," Sharpe said.

"You were really a thief?"

"Still am. Once a thief, always a thief, only now I steal from the enemy. And some day I'll have enough to stop doing it and then I'll stop others thieving from me."

"You have a simple view of life."

"You're born, you survive, you die," Sharpe said. "What's hard about that?"

"It's an animal's life," Sarah said, "and we are more than animals."

"That's what they tell me," Sharpe said, "but when war comes they're grateful for men like me. At least they were."

"Were?"

He hesitated, then shrugged. "My Colonel wants rid of me. He's got a brother-in-law he wants to have my job, a man called Slingsby. He's got manners."

"A good thing to have."

"Not when fifty thousand Frogs are coming at you. Manners don't get you far then. What you need is sheer bloody-mindedness."

"And you have that?"

"Buckets of it, darling," Sharpe said.

Sarah smiled. "So what happens to you now?"

"I don't know. I go back, and if I don't like what's there then I'll find another regiment. Join the Portuguese, perhaps."

"But you'll stay a soldier?"

Sharpe nodded. He could imagine no other life. There were times when he thought he would like to own a few acres and farm them, but he knew nothing of farming and recognized the wish as a dream. He would stay a soldier, and he supposed, when he thought about it at all, that he would reach a soldier's end, either sweating in a fever ward or dead on a battlefield.

Sarah must have guessed what he was thinking. "I think you'll survive," she said.

"I think you will too."

Somewhere in the dark a dog howled and the cat arched its back in the doorway and spat at the sound. After a while Sarah fell asleep and Sharpe crouched beside the cat and watched the light slowly creep across the sky. Vicente woke early and joined him.

"How's the shoulder?" Sharpe asked him.

"It hurts less."

"It's healing then," Sharpe said.

Vicente sat in silence. "If the French do leave today," he said after a while, "wouldn't it be sensible to go ourselves?"

"Forget Ferragus, you mean?"

Vicente nodded. "Our duty is to rejoin the army."

"It is," Sharpe agreed, "but we rejoin the army, Jorge, and they'll give us black marks for being absent. Your Colonel won't be pleased. So we have to take them something."

"Ferragus?"

Sharpe shook his head. "Ferreira. He's the one they need to know about. But to find him we look for his brother."

Vicente nodded acceptance. "So when we go back we haven't just been absent, but doing something useful?"

"And instead of stamping all over us," Sharpe said, "they'll be thanking us."

"So when the French go, we look for Ferreira? Then march him south under arrest?"

"Simple, eh?" Sharpe said with a smile.

"I'm not as good as you at this."

"At what?"

"At being away from the regiment. At being on my own."

"You miss Kate, eh?"

"I miss Kate too."

"You should miss her," Sharpe said, "and you're good at this, Jorge. You're as good a damn soldier as any in the army, and if you give the army Ferreira then they'll think you're a hero. Then in two years you'll be a colonel and I'll still be a captain, and you'll wish we'd never had this conversation. Time to make some tea, Jorge."

The French left. It took most of the day for the guns, wagons, horses and men to cross the Santa Clara bridge, twist through the narrow streets beyond, and so out onto the main road that would lead them south towards Lisbon. All day patrols went through the streets, blowing bugles and shouting for men to rejoin their units, and it was late afternoon before the last bugle sounded and the noise of boots, hooves and wheels faded from Coimbra. The French were not wholly gone. Over three thousand of their wounded were left in the big Saint Clara convent south of the river and such men needed protection. The French had raped, murdered and plundered their way through the city and wounded soldiers made for easy vengeance, and so the injured were guarded by one hundred and fifty French marines reinforced by three hundred convalescents who were not fit enough to march with the army, but could still use their muskets. The small garrison was commanded by a major who was given the grandiose title of Governor of Coimbra, but the tiny number of men under his command gave him no control of the city. He posted most of his force at the convent, for that was where the vulnerable men lay, and put picquets on the main roads out of the city, but everything in between was unguarded.

And so the surviving inhabitants emerged into a ravaged city. Their churches, schools and streets were filled with bodies and litter. There were hundreds of dead and the wailing of the mourners echoed up and down the alleys. Folk sought revenge, and the convent's whitewashed walls were pitted with musket balls as men and women fired blindly at the building where the French cowered. Some foolhardy folk even tried to attack the convent and were cut down by volleys from windows and doors. After a while the madness ended. The dead lay in the streets outside the convent, and the French were barricaded inside. The small picquets on the outlying streets, none larger than thirty men, fortified themselves in houses and waited for Marshal Massena to trounce the enemy and send reinforcements back to Coimbra.

Sharpe and his companions left their house soon after dawn. They wore their own uniforms again, but twice in the first five minutes they were cursed by angry women and Sharpe realized that the people of the city did not recognize the green and brown jackets and so, before someone tried a shot from an alleyway, they stripped off their coats, tied their shakoes to their belts and walked in shirtsleeves. They passed a priest who knelt in the street to offer the last rites to three dead men. A crying child clung to one of the dead hands, but the priest eased her grip from the stiff fingers and, with a reproachful glance at the gun on Sharpe's shoulder, hurried the girl away.

Sharpe stopped before the corner that opened onto the small plaza in front of Ferragus's house. He did not know whether the man was in Coimbra or not, but he would take no chances and peered cautiously around the wall. He could see the front door was off its hinges, every piece of window glass was missing and the shutters had been torn away or broken. "He's not there," he said.

"How can you tell?" Vicente asked.

"Because he'd have at least blocked the door," Sharpe said.

"Maybe they killed him," Harper suggested.

"Let's find out." Sharpe took the rifle from his shoulder, cocked it, told the others to wait, then ran across the patch of sunlight, took the house steps three at a time and then was inside the hallway where he crouched at the foot of the stairs, listening.

Silence. He beckoned the others over. The two girls came through the door first and Sarah's eyes widened in shock as she saw the destruction. Harper gazed up the stairwell. "They kicked the living shit out of this place," he said. "Sorry, miss."

"It's all right, Sergeant," Sarah said, "I don't seem to mind any longer."

"It's like sewers, miss," Harper said. "Stay in them long enough and you get used to them. Jesus, they did a proper job here!" Everything that could be broken had been smashed. Pieces of crystal from a chandelier crunched under Sharpe's boots as he explored the hallway and looked into the parlor and study. The kitchen was a mess of broken pots and bent pans. Even the stove had been pulled from the wall and taken apart. In the schoolroom the small chairs, low table and Sarah's desk had been hammered into splinters. They climbed the stairs, looking in every room, finding nothing except destruction and deliberate fouling. There was no sign of Ferragus or his brother.

"Bastards have gone," Sharpe said after opening the cupboards in the big bedroom and finding nothing except a pack of playing cards.

"But Major Ferreira was on the side of the French, wasn't he?" Harper asked, puzzled that the French would have destroyed the house of an ally.

"He doesn't know what side he's on," Sharpe said. "He just wants to be on the winning side."

"But he sold them the food, didn't he?" Harper asked.

"We think he did," Sharpe said.

"And then you burned it," Vicente put in, "and what will the French conclude? That the brothers cheated them."

"So the odds are," Sharpe said, "that the French shot the pair of them. That would be a good day's work for a bloody Frog." He slung his rifle and climbed the last stairs to the attic. He expected to find nothing there, but at least the high windows offered a vantage point from which he could look down at the lower town and see what kind of presence the French were maintaining. He knew they were still in the city for he could hear distant sporadic shots that seemed to come from close to the river, but when he stared through a broken window he could see no enemy, nor even any musket smoke. Sarah had followed him upstairs while the others stayed on the floor below. She leaned on the window sill and gazed south across the river to the far hills.

"So what do we do now?" she asked.

"Join the army."

"Just like that?"

"We have to walk a long way," Sharpe said, "and you're going to need better boots, better clothes. We'll look for them."

"How far will we have to walk?"

"Four days? Five? Maybe a week? I don't know."

"And where will you find me clothes?"

"By the road, my love, by the road."

"The road?"

"When the French left," he explained, "they were carrying all their plunder, but a mile or two of marching changes your mind. You start throwing things away. There'll be hundreds of things on the road south."

She looked down at her dress, torn, dirty and wrinkled. "I look horrid."

"You look wonderful," Sharpe said, then turned because two smart taps had sounded from the floor below and he held his finger to his lips and, moving as softly as he could, edged back to the stairwell. Harper was at the bottom of the flight and the Irishman held up three fingers, then pointed down the next stairs. So three people were in the house. Harper looked back down the stairs, then held up four fingers and rocked his hand from side to side, telling Sharpe there could be more than three. Plunderers, probably. The French had gone through Coimbra once, but there would be pickings left and enough folk ready to come up from the lower town to enrich themselves from the upper.

Sharpe had edged down the top stairs, stepping at the side of the treads, going very slowly. Vicente was behind Harper, his rifle pointing down into the hall while Joana was in the bedroom door, her musket at her shoulder. Sharpe reached Harper's side. He could hear voices now. Someone was angry. Sharpe cocked the rifle, flinching at the small noise the mechanism made, but no one below heard. He pointed to himself, then down the stairs and Harper nodded.

Sharpe took these stairs even more slowly. They were strewn with pieces of balustrade and littered with crystal drops and he had to find a clear space for his foot with every step and transfer his weight gently. He had got halfway down the flight when he heard the footsteps coming from the passage at the bottom of the stairs and he crouched, brought the rifle up, and just then a man came into view, saw Sharpe and gaped at him in astonishment. Sharpe did not fire. If Ferragus had come back then he did not want to alert him, and instead he gestured at the man to drop onto the floor, but instead the man twisted away, shouting a warning. Harper fired, the bullet blasting over Sharpe's shoulder to catch the man in the back and send him sprawling onto the hallway floor. Sharpe was moving now, taking the stairs four at a time. The wounded man was scrambling down the passage. Sharpe kicked him in the back, jumped over him and a second man showed in the dark entrance to the kitchen and Sharpe fired, the flame of the rifle flashing bright in the dim passageway before the smoke filled the space. Harper was downstairs now, the volley gun in his hand. Sharpe leaped down the few steps to the kitchen, found a body at the foot of the steps, ran to the back door and threw himself backwards as a man fired at him from the yard. Harper ran to the back door, did not pause, but just raised his empty rifle and the threat was enough to send whoever was there running. Sharpe was reloading. Joana came into the kitchen and he took her musket, gave her the half-loaded rifle and ran back up the passage, jumped over the dead man and over the wounded man and pushed into the parlor because its window overlooked the yard. The sash, the broken glass glinting at its edges, was raised and Sharpe ran to it and saw no one beneath him. "Yard's empty," he called to Harper.

Harper appeared from the kitchen door, crossed the yard and closed the gate. "Plunderers?" he asked Sharpe.

"Probably." Sharpe was wishing he had not opened fire. The menace of the rifles would have been enough to frighten off plunderers, but he supposed he had been nervous and so had killed a man who almost certainly did not deserve it. "Bugger," he said in self-reproof, then went to collect his rifle from Joana, but Sarah was crouching beside the wounded man in the passageway. "It's Miguel," she said. "Who?"

"Miguel. One of Ferragus's men."

"You're sure?"

"Of course I'm sure."

"Talk to him," Sharpe said to Vicente. "Find out where those damn brothers are." Sharpe stepped over the wounded man and fetched his rifle. He finished reloading it, then went back to the passage where Vicente was questioning Miguel.

"He won't speak," Vicente said, "except to ask for a doctor."

"Where's he shot?"

"The side," Vicente said, pointing to Miguel's waist where the clothes were darkened by blood.

"Ask him where Ferragus is."

"He won't tell me."

Sharpe put his boot on the blood-soaked patch of clothing and Miguel gave a gasp of pain. "Ask him again," Sharpe said.

"Sharpe, you can't… " Vicente began.

"Ask him again!" Sharpe snarled and he stared into Miguel's eyes and then smiled at the wounded man, and there was a wealth of meaning in the smile. Miguel began talking. Sharpe left his boot on the wound, listening to Vicente's translation.

The Ferreira brothers reckoned Sharpe was probably dead, but also that he was unimportant so long as they reached the army first and gave their version of events. And they were trying to reach the army by crossing the hills, going towards Castelo Branco because the road to that city would be free of the French, but they planned to cut south as they neared the river. They wanted to get to Lisbon, because that was where the Major's family and fortune had found temporary refuge, and they had left Miguel and two others to watch over the property in Coimbra.

"Is that all he knows?" Sharpe asked.

"It is all he knows," Vicente said, then moved Sharpe's foot away from Miguel's wound.

"Ask him what else he knows," Sharpe said.

"You can't torture a man," Vicente reproved Sharpe.

"I'm not torturing him," Sharpe said, "but I bloody will if he doesn't tell us everything."

Vicente spoke with Miguel again, and Miguel swore on the blessed Virgin that he had told them everything he knew, but Miguel had lied. He could have warned them about the partisans waiting in the hills, but he reckoned he was dying and, as his final wish, he wanted death for the men who had shot him. Those men bandaged him, and promised they would try to find a physician, but no physician came and Miguel, abandoned in the house, slowly bled to death.

As Sharpe and his companions left the city.

The bridge was unguarded. That astonished Sharpe, but he sensed that the French garrison was tiny, which suggested the enemy had decided to throw all their troops into an assault on Lisbon and risk leaving Coimbra barely protected. Folk on the street told them the convent of Santa Clara was full of troops, but it was easy enough to avoid, and by late morning they were well south of the town on the road to Lisbon.

The verges were indeed strewn with discarded plunder, but scores of people were raking through the leavings and Sharpe did not have time to search for clothes and boots for the women. Nor could he stay on the road, for it would lead only to the French rearguard, and so, when the sun was at its height, they struck eastwards across country. Sarah and Joana, neither of whom had robust shoes, went barefoot.

They climbed into steep hills. The few villages were deserted, and by mid-afternoon they were among trees. They stopped to rest where a great outcrop of rock jutted into the valley like the prow of a monstrous ship, and from its summit Sharpe could see French troops far below. He took out his telescope, found it was undamaged after his adventures, and trained it down into the shadows of the valley where he saw fifty or more dragoons searching a small village for food.

Sarah joined him. "May I?" she asked, reaching for the telescope. Sharpe gave it to her and she stared down. "They're just pouring water onto the ground," she said after a while.

"Looking for food, love."

"How does that help?"

"Peasants can't carry their whole harvest off to safety," Sharpe explained, "so sometimes they bury it. Dig a hole, put the grain in, cover it with soil and put the turf back. You could walk right across and never see it, but pour water on the soil and it drains faster where it's been dug."

"They're not finding anything," she said.

"Good," Sharpe said, and watched her, thinking what a fine face she had, and thinking, too, that she was a spirited creature. Like Teresa, he reflected, and wondered what the Spanish girl did, or whether she even lived.

"They're going," Sarah reported, and collapsed the telescope, noticing the small brass plate attached to the biggest barrel. "In gratitude," she read aloud, "AW. Who's AW?"

"Wellington."

"Why was he grateful to you?"

"It was a fight in India," Sharpe said, "and I helped him."

"Just that?"

"He'd come off his horse," Sharpe said. "He was in a bit of trouble, really. Still, he got out safe enough."

Sarah handed him the glass. "Sergeant Harper says you're the best soldier in the army."

"Pat's full of Irish wind," Sharpe said. "Mind you, he's a terror himself. No one better in a fight."

"And Captain Vicente says you taught him everything he knows."

"Full of Portuguese wind."

"Yet you think your captaincy is at risk?"

"The army doesn't care if you're good, love."

"I don't believe you."

"I wish I didn't believe me," Sharpe said, then grinned. "I'll get by, love."

Sarah was about to speak, but whatever she wanted to say went unspoken because there was a crackle of gunfire from across the valley. Sharpe turned, saw nothing. The dragoons in the village were remounting their horses and were gazing southwards, but they could evidently see nothing either for they did not move in that direction. The musketry went on, a distant splintering sound, then slowly died away.

"There," Sharpe said, and he pointed across the wide valley to where more French horsemen were spilling out of a high saddle in the hills. Sarah gazed and could see nothing until Sharpe gave her back the glass and told her where to look. "They've been ambushed, probably," he said.

"I thought no one was supposed to be here. Weren't they ordered to Lisbon?"

"Folk had a choice," Sharpe explained, "they could either go to Lisbon or climb into high ground. My guess is these hills are full of people. We just have to hope they're friendly."

"Why wouldn't they be?"

"How would you feel about an army that says you must leave home? Which tears down your mills, destroys your harvest and breaks your ovens? They hate the French, but they've not much love for us either."

They slept under the trees. Sharpe did not light a fire, for he had no idea who was in these hills or how they regarded soldiers. They woke early, cold and damp, and set off uphill in the gray first light. Vicente led, following a path that climbed steadily eastwards towards a range of rocky peaks, the highest of which was crowned with the stump of an ancient tower. "An atalaia," Vicente said.

"A what?"

"Atalaia. A watchtower. They are very old. They were built to keep a look out for the Moors." Vicente crossed himself. "Some were turned into windmills, others just decay. When we get to that one we will be able to see the route ahead."

The sun, streaked with purple and pink clouds, was behind them. The day was warming, helped by a southern wind. Off to the south, far away, a ragged smear of smoke rose from a valley, evidence that the French were searching the countryside, but Sharpe was confident no horsemen would climb this high. There was nothing up here to steal except heather, gorse and rock.

Both girls were suffering. The path was stony and Sarah's bare feet were too tender for the hard going so Sharpe made her wear his boots, first wrapping her feet in strips of cloth that he tore from the ragged hem of what was left of her dress. "You'll still get blisters," he warned her, but for a time she made better progress. Joana, more used to hardship, kept going, though the soles of her feet were bleeding. And still they climbed, sometimes losing sight of the watchtower as the path twisted through gullies.

"Goat paths," Vicente guessed. "Nothing else could live up here."

They dropped into a small high valley where a tiny stream trickled between mossy rocks and Sharpe filled their canteens, then distributed the last of the food he had taken from Ferragus's warehouse. Joana was massaging her feet and Sarah was trying not to show the pain of her newly forming blisters. Sharpe jerked his head to Harper. "You and me," he said, "up that hill."

Harper looked at the hill looming to their left. It lay north of them, off their path, and his face showed puzzlement as to why Sharpe should want to climb it.

"Give them a rest," Sharpe said, and he took his boots back from Sarah who gratefully put her feet into the water. "We can see a long way from that peak," Sharpe said. Perhaps not as far as they would from the watchtower, but going up the hill was an excuse to give the girls some time to recover.

They climbed. "How are your feet?" Harper asked.

"Cut to bloody pieces," Sharpe said.

"I was thinking I should give my boots to Joana."

"She'd probably think she was wearing a boat on each foot," Sharpe said.

"She's managing, though. A tough one, that."

"Needs to be if she's going to endure you, Pat."

"Soft as lights with women, I am."

They climbed straight up through the tangling heather, the slope every bit as steep as the one the French had assailed at Bussaco, and both stopped talking long before they reached the summit. They were saving their breath. Sweat was pouring down Sharpe's face as he neared the peak which was crowned with a scatter of rocks and he kept looking up, willing the rocks to get closer, and it was on his fourth or fifth glance that he saw the small movement, saw the foreshortened barrel moving and he threw himself sideways. "Down, Pat!"

Sharpe was pushing the rifle forward when the musket fired. The puff of smoke blossomed among the rocks and the bullet ripped through the heather between him and Harper, and Sharpe immediately stood and, his tiredness forgotten, ran diagonally up the hill, daring anyone else on the summit to take a shot at him, but no shot sounded. Instead he could hear the clatter of a ramrod on a barrel and he knew whoever had fired was reloading and he swerved uphill, always watching the rocks for the sight of another barrel, and then he saw the man, a young man, just rising from behind a boulder, and Sharpe stopped and brought the rifle up. The young man saw him then, saw the soldier fifty paces from where he had expected him to be, and he began to move the musket and then understood that one more inch of movement would mean that the green-jacketed soldier would pull the trigger and he went very still. "Put the gun down," Sharpe said.

The young man did not understand him. He looked from Sharpe to Harper, who was now climbing towards his other side. "Put the bloody gun down!" Sharpe snarled and walked forward, keeping the rifle at his shoulder. "Down!"

"Arma!" Harper called. "Por terra!"

The young man looked as if he would twist and run away. "Go on, son," Sharpe said, "give me an excuse." And then the boy put the musket down and looked terrified as the two green men came up either side of him. He dropped behind a boulder, cowering there, expecting to be shot.

"Jesus," Sharpe said, for now he was on the hilltop and he could see that the young man had been a lookout, and that on the long downwards sweep of the far slope there were a score of other men, some of them bunched where the path that Sharpe and his companions had been using crossed the hill's shoulder. A half-dozen others, evidently alerted by the young man, were climbing towards the hilltop, but they stopped abruptly when they saw Sharpe and Harper appear on the summit.

"You were sleeping, son, weren't you?" Sharpe said. "Didn't see us till it was too late."

The young man did not understand and just looked helplessly from Sharpe to Harper.

"That was good, Pat," Sharpe said, picking up the young man's musket and tossing it to one side. "You learned Portuguese quickly."

"Picked up a word or two, sir."

Sharpe laughed. "So what do these buggers want, eh?" He turned and gazed at the six closest men who were staring up the long slope.

They were all civilians, refugees or possibly partisans. They were two hundred paces away and one had a dog, almost a wolf, on a rope leash. The dog was barking and trying to get away from his master to attack up the hill. All the men had muskets. Sharpe turned away and looked down to where Vicente was gazing up the slope, and Sharpe beckoned him. He waited, then saw Vicente and the two women begin to climb. "Best if we're all in the same place," he explained to Harper, then turned back because one of the six men had fired his musket. The men down the hill could not see their companion, who was hidden by the boulder, and perhaps they assumed he had escaped and so one of them opened fire. The ball went wild. Sharpe did not even hear it pass, but then a second man fired. The dog, excited by the sound of gunfire, was howling now, howling and leaping. A third man fired and this time the ball snapped past Sharpe's head.

"They need a bloody lesson," Sharpe said. He strode to the young man, pulled him to his feet and put the rifle to his head. The muskets stopped firing.

"We could shoot the bloody dog." Harper suggested.

"You can be sure to kill it at two hundred paces?" Sharpe asked. "And not just wound it? Because if you just wing it, Pat, that dog will want a mouthful of Irish meat as revenge."

"Better to shoot this bastard, sir, you're right," Harper said, standing on the other side of their terrified prisoner. The six men were now arguing amongst each other, while the rest, those who looked as if they had been waiting in ambush where the path crossed the lower crest, began to climb to the summit.

"There's almost thirty of them," Harper said. "We'll be hard put to deal with thirty."

"Fifteen each?" Sharpe suggested flippantly, then shook his head. "It won't come to that." He hoped it would not, but first he needed Vicente on the hilltop so that he could talk with the men.

Who began to spread out so that Sharpe could not get past them.

They had been waiting for him and he had come to them. And they had orders to kill.