Sharpe's Escape

by Bernard Cornwell

  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.

  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.

  "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 scream
ed 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?"