Sharpe's Escape (25 page)

"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 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.