Sharpe's Escape

  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 t
o 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."