Sharpe's Escape (24 page)

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 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 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 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.

T
HIS 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 "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."