‘Pity the Romans didn’t build a chimney here,’ Harper said.
‘We’ll just have to wait and fight our way out,’ Vicente suggested.
‘Can’t,’ Sharpe said brutally. ‘When Ferragus comes back, Jorge, he won’t be taking chances. He’ll open that trapdoor and have a score of men with muskets just waiting to kill us.’
‘So what do we do?’ Sarah, recovered slightly, asked in a small voice.
‘We destroy that food up there,’ Sharpe said, nodding in the dark towards the supplies in the warehouse above. ‘That’s what Wellington wants, isn’t it? That’s our duty. We can’t spend all our time swanning around universities, miss, we have work to do.’
But first, and he did not know how, he had to escape.
Ferragus, his brother and three of the men from the warehouse retired to a tavern. Two men could not come. One had been hit in the skull by one of the seven-barrel gun’s bullets and, though he lived, he was unable to speak, control his movements or make sense and so Ferragus ordered him taken to Saint Clara’s in hope that some of the nuns were still there. A second man, struck in the arm by the same volley, had gone to his home to let his woman splint his broken arm and bandage his wound. The wounding of the two men had angered Ferragus who stared morosely into his wine.
‘I warned you,’ Ferreira said, ‘they’re soldiers.’
‘Dead soldiers,’ Ferragus said. That was his only consolation. The four were trapped, and they would have to stay in the cellar until Ferragus fetched them out and he toyed with the idea of leaving them there. How long would it take them to die? Would they go mad in the stifling dark? Shoot each other? Become cannibals? Perhaps, weeks from now, he would open the trapdoor and one survivor would crawl blinking into the light and he would kick the bastard to death. No, he would rather kick all three men to death and teach Sarah Fry a different lesson. ‘We’ll get them out tonight,’ he said.
‘The British will be in the city tonight,’ Ferreira pointed out, ‘and there are troops billeted in the street behind the warehouse. They hear shots? They may not go as easily as those this afternoon.’ A Portuguese patrol had heard the shots in the warehouse and come to investigate, but Ferreira, who had not joined the fight, but had been standing by the door, had heard the boots on the cobbles and slipped outside to fend off the patrol, explaining that he had men inside killing goats.
‘No one will hear shots from that cellar,’ Ferragus said scornfully.
‘You want to risk that?’ Ferreira asked. ‘With that big gun? It sounds like a cannon!’
‘Tomorrow morning, then,’ Ferragus snarled.
‘Tomorrow morning the British will still be here,’ the Major pointed out patiently, ‘and in the afternoon you and I must ride north to meet the French.’
‘You ride north to meet the French,’ Ferragus said, ‘and Miguel can go with you.’ He looked at the smaller man who shrugged acceptance.
‘They are expecting to meet you,’ Ferreira pointed out.
‘So Miguel will say he’s me!’ Ferragus snapped. ‘Will the damned French know the difference? And I stay here,’ he insisted, ‘and play my games the moment the British are gone. When will the French arrive?’
‘If they come tomorrow,’ Ferreira guessed, ‘in the morning, perhaps? Say an hour or two after dawn?’
‘That gives me time,’ Ferragus said. He only wanted enough time to hear the three men begging for mercy that would not come to them. ‘I’ll meet you at the warehouse,’ he told Ferreira. ‘Bring the Frenchmen to guard it, and I’ll be inside, waiting.’ Ferragus knew he was allowing himself to be distracted. His priority was to keep the food safe and sell it to the French, and the trapped foursome did not matter, but they mattered now. They had defied him, beaten him for the moment, so now, more than ever, it was an affair of pride, and a man could not back down from an affront to his pride. To do so was to be less than a man.
Yet, Ferragus knew, there was no real problem left. Sharpe and his companions were doomed. He had piled more than half a ton of boxes and barrels on the trapdoor, there was no other way out of the cellar and it was just a matter of time. So Ferragus had won, and that was a consolation. He had won.
Most of the retreating British and Portuguese army had used a road to the east of Coimbra and so crossed the Mondego at a ford, but enough had been ordered to use the main road to send a steady stream of troops, guns, caissons and wagons across the Santa Clara bridge which led from Coimbra to its small suburb on the Mondego’s southern bank where the new Convent of Saint Clara stood. The soldiers were joined by an apparently unending stream of civilians, handcarts, goats, dogs, cows, sheep and misery that shuffled over the bridge into the narrow streets around the convent and then went south towards Lisbon. Progress was painfully slow. A child was almost run over by a cannon and the driver only avoided her by slewing the gun into a wall where the offside wheel broke, and that took nearly an hour to repair. A handcart collapsed on the bridge, spilling books and clothes, and a woman screamed when Portuguese troops threw the broken cart and its contents into the river which was already thick with flotsam as the troops on the quays shoved shattered barrels and slashed sacks into the water. Boxes of biscuits were jettisoned and the biscuits, baked hard as rock, floated in their thousands downstream. Other troops had gathered timber and coal and were making a huge fire onto which they tossed salt meat. Still other troops, all Portuguese, had been ordered to break all the bakers’ ovens in town, while a company of the South Essex took sledgehammers and pickaxes to the tethered boats.
Lieutenant Colonel Lawford returned to the quays in the early afternoon. He had slept well and enjoyed a surprisingly good meal of chicken, salad and white wine while his red coat was being brushed and pressed. Then, mounted on Lightning, he rode down to the quayside where he discovered his battalion hot, sweating, dishevelled, dirty and tired. ‘The problem,’ Major Forrest told him, ‘is the salt meat. God knows, it won’t burn.’
‘Didn’t Sharpe say something about turpentine?’
‘Haven’t seen him,’ Forrest said.
‘I was hoping he was here,’ Lawford said, looking around the smoke-wreathed quay that stank of spilled rum and scorched meat. ‘He rescued rather a pretty girl. An English girl, of all things. I was a little abrupt with her, I fear, and thought I should pay my respects.’
‘He isn’t here,’ Forrest said bluntly.
‘He’ll turn up,’ Lawford said, ‘he always does.’
Captain Slingsby marched across the quay, stamped to a halt and offered Lawford a cracking salute. ‘Man gone missing, Colonel.’
Lawford touched the heel of his riding crop to the forward tip of his cocked hat in acknowledgement of the salute. ‘How are things going, Cornelius? All well, I hope?’
‘Boats destroyed, sir, every last one.’
‘Splendid.’
‘But Sergeant Harper’s missing, sir. Absent without permission.’
‘I gave him permission, Cornelius.’
Slingsby bristled. ‘I wasn’t asked, sir.’
‘An oversight, I’m sure,’ Lawford said, ‘and I’m equally sure Sergeant Harper will be back soon. He’s with Mister Sharpe.’
‘That’s another thing,’ Slingsby said darkly.
‘Yes?’ Lawford ventured cautiously.
‘Mister Sharpe had more words with me this morning.’
‘You and Sharpe must patch things up,’ Lawford said hastily.
‘And he has no right, sir, no right whatsoever, to take Sergeant Harper away from his proper duties. It only encourages him.’
‘Encourages