“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-inlaw, “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 batt
le, 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 Masséna’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 stack
s 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.
Chapter 7
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.