FERRAGUS AND HIS BROTHER went back to the Major’s house, which had been spared the plundering suffered by the rest of the city. A troop of dragoons from the same squadron that had ridden to protect the warehouse had been posted outside the house, and they were now relieved by a dozen men sent by Colonel Barreto who, when his day’s work was complete, planned to billet himself in the house. Miguel and five others of Ferragus’s men were at the house, safe there from French attention, and it was Miguel who interrupted the brothers’ celebrations by reporting that the warehouse was burning.

Ferragus had just opened a third bottle of wine. He listened to Miguel, carried the bottle to the window and peered down the hill. He saw the smoke churning up, but shrugged. “It could be any one of a dozen buildings,” he said dismissively.

“It’s the warehouse,” Miguel insisted. “I went to the roof. I could see.”

“So?” Ferragus toasted the room with his bottle. “We’ve sold it now! The loss is to the French, not to us.”

Major Ferreira went to the window and gazed at the smoke. Then he made the sign of the cross. “The French will not see it that way,” he said quietly, and took the bottle from his brother.

“They’ve paid us!” Ferragus said, trying to get the bottle back.

Ferreira placed the wine out of his brother’s reach. “The French will believe we sold them the food, then destroyed it,” he said. The Major glanced towards the street leading downhill as if he expected it to be filled with Frenchmen. “They will want their money back.”

“Jesus,” Ferragus said. His brother was right. He glanced at the money: four saddlebags filled with French gold. “Jesus,” he said again as the implications of the burning building sank into his wine-hazed head.

“Time to go.” The Major took firm command of the situation.

“Go?” Ferragus was still fuddled.

“They’ll be after us!” the Major insisted. “At best they’ll just want the money back, at worst they’ll shoot us. Good God, Luis! First we lost the flour at the shrine, now this? You think they’ll believe we didn’t do it? We go! Now!”

“Stable yard,” Ferragus ordered Miguel.

“We can’t ride out!” Ferreira protested. The French were confiscating every horse they discovered, and Ferreira’s contacts with Colonel Barreto and the French would avail him nothing if he was seen on horseback. “We have to hide,” he insisted. “We hide in the city until it’s safe to leave.”

Ferragus, his brother, and the six men carried what was most valuable from the house. They had the gold newly paid by the French, some money that Major Ferreira had kept hidden in his study and a bag of silver plate, and they took it all up an alley behind the stables, through a second alley and into one of the many abandoned houses that had already been searched by the French. They dared not go farther, for the streets were filled with the invaders, and so they took refuge in the house cellar and prayed that they would not be discovered.

“How long do we stay here?” Ferragus asked sourly.

“Till the French leave,” Ferreira said.

“And then?”

Ferreira did not answer at once. He was thinking. Thinking that the British would not just march away to their boats. They would try to stop the French again, probably near the new forts he had seen being constructed on the road north of Lisbon. That meant the French would have to fight or else maneuver their way around the British and Portuguese armies, and that would provide time. Time for him to reach Lisbon. Time to reach the money secreted in his wife’s luggage. Time to find his wife and children. Portugal was about to collapse and the brothers would need money. Much money. They could go to the Azores or even to Brazil, then wait the storm out in comfort and return home when it had passed. And if the French were defeated? Then they would still need money, and the only obstacle was Captain Sharpe who knew of Ferreira’s treachery. The wretched man had escaped from the cellar, but was he still alive? It seemed more probable that the French would have killed him, for Ferreira could not imagine the French taking prisoners in their orgy of killing and destruction, but the thought that the rifleman lived was worrying. “If Sharpe is alive,” he wondered aloud, “what will he do?”

Ferragus spat to show his opinion of Sharpe.

“He will go back to his army,” Ferreira answered his own question.

“And say you are a traitor?”

“Then it will be his word against mine,” Ferreira said, “and if I am there, then his word will not carry much weight.”

Ferragus stared up at the cellar roof. “We could say the food was poisoned,” he suggested, “say it was a trap for the French?”

Ferreira nodded, acknowledging the usefulness of the suggestion. “What is important,” he said, “is for us to reach Lisbon. Beatriz and the children are there. My money is there.” He thought about going north and hiding, but the longer he was absent from the army, the greater would be the suspicions about that absence. Better to go back, bluff it out and reclaim his possessions. Then, with money, he could survive whatever happened. Besides, he missed his family. “But how do we reach Lisbon?”

“Go east,” one of the men suggested. “Go east to the Tagus and float down.”

Ferreira stared at the man, thinking, though in truth there was nothing really to think about. He could not go directly south for the French would be there, but if he and his brother struck east across the mountains, traveling through the high lands where the French would not dare go for fear of the partisans, they would eventually reach the Tagus and the money they carried would be more than sufficient to buy a boat. Then, in two days, they could be in Lisbon. “I have friends in the mountains,” Ferreira said.

“Friends?” Ferragus had not followed his brother’s thinking.

“Men who have taken weapons from me.” Ferreira, as part of his duties, had distributed British muskets among the hill folk to encourage them to become partisans. “They will give us horses,” he went on confidently, “and they will know whether the French are in Abrantes. If they’re not, we find our boat there. And the men in the hills can do something else for us. If Sharpe is alive…”

“He’s dead by now,” Ferragus insisted.

“If he’s alive,” Major Ferreira went on patiently, “then he will have to take the same route to reach his army. So they can kill him for us.” He made the sign of the cross, for it was all so suddenly clear. “Five of us will go to the Tagus,” he said, “and then go south. When we reach our army we shall say we destroyed the provisions in the warehouse and if the French arrive we shall sail to the Azores.”

“Only five of us?” Miguel asked. There were eight men in the cellar.

“Three of you will stay here,” Ferreira suggested and looked to his brother for approval, which Ferragus gave with a nod. “Three men must stay here,” Ferreira said, “to guard my house and make any repairs necessary before we return. And when we do return those three men will be well rewarded.”

The Major’s suspicion that his house would need repairs was justified for, just a hundred and fifty yards away, dragoons were searching for him. The French believed they had been cheated by Major Ferreira and his brother and now took their revenge. They beat down the front door, but found no one except the cook who was drunk in the kitchen and when she swung a frying pan at the head of a dragoon she was shot. The dragoons tossed her body into the yard, then systematically destroyed everything they could break. Furniture, pictures, porcelain, pots, everything. The banisters were torn from the stairs, windows were smashed, and the shutters ripped from their hinges. They found nothing except the horses in the stables and those they took away to become French cavalry remounts.

Dusk came, and the sun flared crimson above the far Atlantic and then sank. The fires in the city burned on to light the smoky sky. The first fury of the French had subsided, but there were still screams in the dark and tears in the night, for the Eagles had taken a city.

SHARPE LEANED ON THE DOOR frame, shadowed by a small timber porch up which a plant twined and fell. The small garden was neatly planted in rows, but what grew there Sharpe did not know, though he did recognize some runner beans that he picked and stored in a pocket ready for the hungry days ahead. He leaned on the door frame again, listening to the shots in the lower city and to Harper’s snores coming from the kitchen. He dozed, unaware of it until a cat rubbed against his ankles and startled him awake. Shots still sounded in the city, and still the smoke churned overhead.

He petted the cat, stamped his boots, tried to stay awake, but again fell asleep on his feet and woke to see a French officer sitting in the entrance to the garden with a sketch pad. The man was drawing Sharpe and, when he saw his subject had woken, he held up a hand as if to say Sharpe should not be alarmed. He drew on, his pencil making quick, confident strokes. He spoke to Sharpe, his voice relaxed and friendly, and Sharpe grunted back and the officer did not seem to mind that his subject made no sense. It was dusk when the officer finished and he stood and brought the picture to Sharpe and asked his opinion. The Frenchman was smiling, pleased with his work, and Sharpe gazed at the drawing of a villainous-looking man, scarred and frightening, leaning in shirtsleeves against the doorway with a rifle propped at his side and a sword hanging from his waist. Had the fool not seen they were British weapons? The officer, who was young, fair-haired and good-looking, prompted Sharpe for a response, and Sharpe shrugged, wondering if he would have to draw the sword and fillet the man.

Then Sarah appeared and said something in fluent French and the officer snatched off his forage cap, bowed and showed the picture to Sarah who must have expressed delight, for the man tore it from his big book and gave it to her with another bow. They spoke for a few more minutes, or rather the officer spoke and Sarah seemed to agree with everything he said, adding very few words of her own and then, at last, the officer kissed her hand, nodded amicably to Sharpe, and disappeared up the steps through the far archway. “What was that all about?” Sharpe asked.

“I told him we were Dutch. He seemed to think you were a cavalryman.”

“He saw the sword, overalls and boots,” Sharpe explained. “He wasn’t suspicious?”

“He said you were the very picture of a modern soldier,” Sarah said, looking at the drawing.

“That’s me,” Sharpe said, “a work of art.”

“He actually said that you were the image of a people’s fury released on an old and corrupt world.”

“Bloody hell,” Sharpe said.

“And he said it was a shame what was being done in the city, but that it was unavoidable.”

“What’s wrong with discipline?”

“Unavoidable,” Sarah ignored Sharpe’s question, “because Coimbra represents the old world of superstition and privilege.”

“So he was another Crapaud full of…” Sharpe started.

“Shit?” Sarah interrupted him.

Sharpe looked at her. “You’re a strange one, love.”

“Good,” she said.

“Did you sleep?” Sharpe asked her.

“I slept. Now you must.”

“Someone has to stand guard,” Sharpe said, though he had not done a particularly good job. He had been fast asleep when the French officer came and it had only been pure luck that it had been a man with a sketch book instead of some bastard looking for plunder. “What you could do,” he suggested, “is see if the fire in the kitchen can be revived and make us some tea.”

“Tea?”

“There are some leaves in my haversack,” Sharpe said. “You have to scoop them out, and they get a bit mixed up with loose gunpowder, but most of us like that taste.”

“Sergeant Harper’s in the kitchen,” Sarah said diffidently.

“Worried what you might see?” Sharpe asked with a smile. “He won’t mind. There’s not a lot of privacy in the army. It’s an education, the army.”

“So I’m discovering,” Sarah said, and she went to the kitchen, but came back to report that the stove was cold.

She had moved as quietly as she could, but she had still woken Harper who rolled out of his makeshift bed and came bleary-eyed into the small parlor. “What time is it?”

“Nightfall,” Sharpe said.

“All quiet?”

“Except for your snoring. And we had a visit from a Frog who chatted with Sarah about the state of the world.”

“It’s in a terrible state, so it is,” Harper said, “a shame, really.” He shook his head, then hefted the volley gun. “You should get some sleep, sir. Let me watch for a while.” He turned and smiled as Joana came from the kitchen. She had taken off her torn dress and seemed to be wearing nothing except the Frenchman’s shirt, which reached halfway down her thighs. She put her arms round Harper’s waist, rested her dark head against his shoulder and smiled at Sharpe. “We’ll both keep watch,” Harper said.

“Is that what you call it?” Sharpe asked. He picked up his rifle. “Wake me when you’re tired,” he said. He reckoned he needed proper sleep more than he needed tea, but Harper, he knew, could probably drink a gallon. “You want to make some tea first? We were going to light the stove.”

“I’ll brew it on the hearth, sir.” Harper nodded at the small fireplace where there was a three-legged saucepan designed to stand in the embers. “There’s water in the garden,” he added, nodding at a rain butt, “so the kitchen’s all yours, sir. And sleep well, sir.”

Sharpe ducked through the low door which he closed to find himself in almost pitch blackness. He groped to find the back door beyond which was a small enclosed yard eerily lit by moonlight filtered by the drifting smoke. There was a pump in the yard’s corner and he worked the handle to splash water into a stone trough. He used a handful of straw to scrub the filth off his boots, then tugged them off and washed his hands. He unstrapped the sword belt and carried belt, boots and sword back into the kitchen. He closed the door, then knelt to find the bed in the darkness.

“Careful,” Sarah said from somewhere in the tangle of blankets and greatcoat.

“What are you…” Sharpe began, then thought it was a stupid question and so did not finish it.

“I don’t think I was really wanted out there,” Sarah explained. “Not that Sergeant Harper was unwelcoming, he wasn’t, but I had the distinct impression that the two of them could cope without me.”

“That’s probably true,” Sharpe said.

“And I won’t keep you awake,” she promised.

But she did.

IT WAS MORNING when Sharpe woke. The cat had somehow got into the kitchen and was sitting on the small shelf beside the stove where it was washing itself and occasionally looking at Sharpe with yellow eyes. Sarah’s left arm was across Sharpe’s chest and he marveled at how smooth and pale her skin was. She was asleep still, a strand of golden hair shivering at her open lips with every breath. Sharpe eased himself from beneath her embrace and, naked, edged open the kitchen door just far enough to see into the parlor.

Harper was in the armchair, Joana asleep across his lap. The Irishman turned at the creak of the hinges. “All quiet, sir,” he whispered.

“You should have woken me.”

“Why? Nothing’s stirring.”

“Captain Vicente?”

“He crept out, sir. Went to see what was happening. Promised he wouldn’t go far.”

“I’ll make some tea,” Sharpe said, and he closed the door.

There was a basket of kindling beside the stove and a box of small logs. He worked as quietly as possible, but heard Sarah stir and turned to see her looking up at him from the jumble of bedclothes. “You’re right,” she said, “the army is an education.”

Sharpe leaned against the stove. She sat up, clutching Harper’s greatcoat to her breasts, and he stared at her, she stared back and neither spoke until she suddenly scratched at her thigh. “When you were in India,” she asked unexpectedly, “did you meet people who believed that after death they came back as another person?”

“Not that I know about,” Sharpe said.

“I’m told they believe that,” Sarah said solemnly.

“They believe all sorts of rubbish. Couldn’t keep up with it.”

“When I come back,” Sarah said, tilting her head to rest against the wall, “I think I’ll come back as a man.”

“Bit of a waste,” Sharpe said.

“Because you’re free,” she said, gazing up at the dried herbs hanging from the beams.

“I’m not free,” Sharpe said. “I’ve got the army all over me. Like fleas.” He watched her scratch again.

“What we did last night,” Sarah said, and blushed very slightly and it was plain she had to force herself to speak of what had happened so naturally in the darkness, “doesn’t leave you changed. You’re the same person. I’m not.”

Sharpe heard Vicente’s voice in the parlor and, a heartbeat later, there was a knock on the kitchen door. “In a minute, Jorge,” Sharpe called out. He looked into Sarah’s eyes. “Should I feel guilty?”

“No, no,” Sarah said quickly. “It’s just that everything’s changed. For a woman,” she looked up at the herbs again, “it’s not a small thing. For a man, I think, it is.”

“I won’t let you be alone,” Sharpe said.

“I wasn’t worried about that,” Sarah said, though she was. “It’s just that everything’s new now. I’m not who I was yesterday. And that means tomorrow is different as well.” She half smiled at him. “Do you understand?”

“You’ll probably have to talk to me some more,” Sharpe said, “when I’m awake. But for the moment, love, I have to let Jorge have his say, and I need some bloody tea.” He leaned over and kissed her, then scooped up his clothes.

Sarah lifted her torn dress from the tangled bedding. She was about to pull it over her head, then shuddered. “It stinks,” she said in distaste.

“Wear this,” Sharpe said, tossing her his shirt, then he pulled on the overalls, shrugged the straps over his bare shoulders and tugged on the boots. “We’ll have a make and mend day,” he said. “Wash everything. I doubt the bloody French will leave today and we seem safe enough here.” He waited until she had buttoned the shirt, then opened the door. “Sorry, Jorge, just making a fire.”

“The French aren’t leaving,” Vicente reported from the door. He was in shirtsleeves and had made a sling for his left arm. “I couldn’t go far, but I could see downhill and they’re not making any preparations.”

“They’re catching their breath,” Sharpe said, “and they’ll probably march tomorrow.” He twisted to look at Sarah. “See if Patrick’s fire is going, will you? Tell him I need a flame for this one.”

Sarah slipped past Vicente who stood aside to let her pass, then he looked from Sarah to Joana, both girls bare-legged and dressed in grubby shirts. He came into the kitchen and frowned at Sharpe. “It looks like a brothel in there,” he said reprovingly.

“Greenjackets always were lucky, Jorge. And they’re both volunteers.”

“Does that justify it?”

Sharpe pushed more kindling into the stove. “Doesn’t have to be justified, Jorge. It’s life.”

“Which is why we have religion,” Vicente said, “to raise us above life.”

“I was always lucky,” Sharpe said, “in escaping law and religion.”

Vicente looked miserable with that reply, but then saw the pencil portrait of Sharpe that Sarah had propped on a shelf and his face brightened. “That’s good! It’s just like you!”

“It’s a picture, Jorge, of a people’s anger let loose on a corrupt world.”

“It is?”

“That’s what the fellow who drew it said, something like that.”

“Miss Fry didn’t do it?”

“It was a Frog officer, Jorge. Did it last night while you were sleeping. Step aside, fire coming.” He and Vicente made way for Sarah who was carrying a burning scrap of wood that she pushed into the stove, then watched to make sure the fire caught. “What we’re going to do,” Sharpe said as Sarah blew on the small flames, “is boil up some water, wash our clothes and pick off the fleas.”

“Fleas?” Sarah sounded alarmed.

“Why do you think you’re scratching, darling? You’ve probably got worse than fleas, but we’ve got all day to clean up. We’ll wait for the Crapauds to go, which will be tomorrow at the earliest.”

“They won’t go today?” Sarah asked.

“That drunken lot? Their officers will never get them in march order today. Tomorrow if they’re lucky. And tonight we’ll have a look at the streets, but I doubt we can get out tonight. They’re bound to have patrols. Best to wait till they’ve gone, then cross the bridge and head south.”

Sarah thought for a second, then frowned as she scratched at her waist. “You just follow the French?” she asked. “How do you get past them?”

“The safest way,” Vicente said, “would be to head for the Tagus. We must cross some high hills to reach the river, but once there we might find a boat. Something to take us downstream to Lisbon.”

“But before that,” Sharpe said, “there’s another job to do. Look for Ferragus.”

Vicente frowned. “Why?”

“Because he owes us, Jorge,” Sharpe said, “or at least he owes Sarah. He stole her money, the bastard, so we have to get it back.”

Vicente was plainly unhappy at the idea of prolonging the feud with Ferragus, but he did not voice any objections. “And what if a patrol comes here today?” he asked instead. “They’ll be searching the town for their own troops, won’t they?”

“You speak Frog?”

“Not well, but I speak some.”

“So tell them you’re an Italian, a Dutchman, anything you like, and promise we’ll rejoin our unit. Which we will, if we can get out of here.”

They made tea, shared a breakfast of biscuit, salt beef and cheese, then Sharpe and Vicente stood guard while Harper helped the two women do the laundry. They boiled the clothes to get the stench of the sewer out of the cloth and, when everything was dry, which took most of the day, Sharpe used a heated poker to kill the lice in the seams. Harper had torn down some curtains from the bedroom, washed them, torn them into long strips, and now insisted on bandaging Sharpe’s ribs that were still bruised and painful. Sarah saw the scars on his back. “What happened?” she asked.

“I was flogged,” Sharpe explained.

“For what?”

“Something I didn’t do,” Sharpe said.

“It must have hurt.”

“Life hurts,” Sharpe said. “Wrap it tight, Pat.” His ribs were still painful, but he could take a deep breath without wincing, which surely meant things were mending. They were mending in the city too, for Coimbra was quieter today, though the plume of smoke, thinner now, still drifted up from the warehouse. Sharpe suspected the French would have rescued some supplies from the blaze, but not nearly enough to release them from the hunger that Lord Wellington had deployed to defeat their invasion. At midday Sharpe crept to the end of the tortuous alley and saw, as he had suspected, patrols of French soldiers rooting men out of houses, and he and Harper then filled the alley with garden rubbish to suggest that it was not worth exploring, and the ruse must have worked, for no patrol bothered to explore the narrow passage. At nightfall there were the sounds of hooves and iron-rimmed wheels on the nearby streets and when it was fully dark Sharpe negotiated the obstacles in the alley and saw that two batteries of artillery were parked in the street. A half-dozen sentries guarded the vehicles and one, more alert than the others, saw Sharpe’s shadow in the alley’s entrance and shouted a challenge. Sharpe crouched. The man called again and, receiving no answer, shot into the blackness. The ball ricocheted above Sharpe’s head as he crept backwards. “Un chien,” another sentry called. The first man peered down the alley, saw nothing and agreed it must have been a dog in the night.

Sharpe stood guard for the second half of the night. Sarah stayed with him, staring into the moonlit garden. She spoke of growing up and of losing her parents. “I became a nuisance to my uncle,” she said sadly.

“So he got shot of you?”

“As fast as he could.” She was sitting in the armchair and reached out to run a finger down the zigzag leather reinforcements on the leg of Sharpe’s overalls. “Will the British really stay in Lisbon?”

“It’ll take more than this pack of Frenchmen to get them out,” Sharpe said scornfully. “Of course we’re staying.”

“If I had a hundred pounds,” she said wistfully, “I’d find a small house in Lisbon and teach English. I like children.”

“I don’t.”

“Of course you do.” She slapped him lightly.

“You wouldn’t go back to England?” Sharpe asked her.

“What can I do there? No one wants to learn Portuguese, but plenty of Portuguese want their children to know English. Besides, in England I’m just another young woman with no prospects, no fortune and no future. Here I benefit from the intrigue of being different.”

“You intrigue me,” Sharpe said, and got slapped again. “You could stay with me,” he added.

“And be a soldier’s woman?” She laughed.

“Nothing wrong with that,” Sharpe said defensively.

“No, there’s not,” Sarah agreed. She was silent for a while. “Until two days ago,” she went on suddenly, “I thought my life depended on other people. On employers. Now I think it depends on me. You taught me that. But I need money.”

“Money’s easy,” Sharpe said dismissively.

“That is not the conventional wisdom,” Sarah said dryly.

“Steal the stuff,” Sharpe said.

“You were really a thief?”

“Still am. Once a thief, always a thief, only now I steal from the enemy. And some day I’ll have enough to stop doing it and then I’ll stop others thieving from me.”

“You have a simple view of life.”

“You’re born, you survive, you die,” Sharpe said. “What’s hard about that?”

“It’s an animal’s life,” Sarah said, “and we are more than animals.”

“That’s what they tell me,” Sharpe said, “but when war comes they’re grateful for men like me. At least they were.”

“Were?”

He hesitated, then shrugged. “My Colonel wants rid of me. He’s got a brother-in-law he wants to have my job, a man called Slingsby. He’s got manners.”

“A good thing to have.”

“Not when fifty thousand Frogs are coming at you. Manners don’t get you far then. What you need is sheer bloody-mindedness.”

“And you have that?”

“Buckets of it, darling,” Sharpe said.

Sarah smiled. “So what happens to you now?”

“I don’t know. I go back, and if I don’t like what’s there then I’ll find another regiment. Join the Portuguese, perhaps.”

“But you’ll stay a soldier?”

Sharpe nodded. He could imagine no other life. There were times when he thought he would like to own a few acres and farm them, but he knew nothing of farming and recognized the wish as a dream. He would stay a soldier, and he supposed, when he thought about it at all, that he would reach a soldier’s end, either sweating in a fever ward or dead on a battlefield.

Sarah must have guessed what he was thinking. “I think you’ll survive,” she said.

“I think you will too.”

Somewhere in the dark a dog howled and the cat arched its back in the doorway and spat at the sound. After a while Sarah fell asleep and Sharpe crouched beside the cat and watched the light slowly creep across the sky. Vicente woke early and joined him.

“How’s the shoulder?” Sharpe asked him.

“It hurts less.”

“It’s healing then,” Sharpe said.

Vicente sat in silence. “If the French do leave today,” he said after a while, “wouldn’t it be sensible to go ourselves?”

“Forget Ferragus, you mean?”

Vicente nodded. “Our duty is to rejoin the army.”

“It is,” Sharpe agreed, “but we rejoin the army, Jorge, and they’ll give us black marks for being absent. Your Colonel won’t be pleased. So we have to take them something.”

“Ferragus?”

Sharpe shook his head. “Ferreira. He’s the one they need to know about. But to find him we look for his brother.”

Vicente nodded acceptance. “So when we go back we haven’t just been absent, but doing something useful?”

“And instead of stamping all over us,” Sharpe said, “they’ll be thanking us.”

“So when the French go, we look for Ferreira? Then march him south under arrest?”

“Simple, eh?” Sharpe said with a smile.

“I’m not as good as you at this.”

“At what?”

“At being away from the regiment. At being on my own.”

“You miss Kate, eh?”

“I miss Kate too.”

“You should miss her,” Sharpe said, “and you’re good at this, Jorge. You’re as good a damn soldier as any in the army, and if you give the army Ferreira then they’ll think you’re a hero. Then in two years you’ll be a colonel and I’ll still be a captain, and you’ll wish we’d never had this conversation. Time to make some tea, Jorge.”

The French left. It took most of the day for the guns, wagons, horses and men to cross the Santa Clara bridge, twist through the narrow streets beyond, and so out onto the main road that would lead them south towards Lisbon. All day patrols went through the streets, blowing bugles and shouting for men to rejoin their units, and it was late afternoon before the last bugle sounded and the noise of boots, hooves and wheels faded from Coimbra. The French were not wholly gone. Over three thousand of their wounded were left in the big Saint Clara convent south of the river and such men needed protection. The French had raped, murdered and plundered their way through the city and wounded soldiers made for easy vengeance, and so the injured were guarded by one hundred and fifty French marines reinforced by three hundred convalescents who were not fit enough to march with the army, but could still use their muskets. The small garrison was commanded by a major who was given the grandiose title of Governor of Coimbra, but the tiny number of men under his command gave him no control of the city. He posted most of his force at the convent, for that was where the vulnerable men lay, and put picquets on the main roads out of the city, but everything in between was unguarded.

And so the surviving inhabitants emerged into a ravaged city. Their churches, schools and streets were filled with bodies and litter. There were hundreds of dead and the wailing of the mourners echoed up and down the alleys. Folk sought revenge, and the convent’s whitewashed walls were pitted with musket balls as men and women fired blindly at the building where the French cowered. Some foolhardy folk even tried to attack the convent and were cut down by volleys from windows and doors. After a while the madness ended. The dead lay in the streets outside the convent, and the French were barricaded inside. The small picquets on the outlying streets, none larger than thirty men, fortified themselves in houses and waited for Marshal Masséna to trounce the enemy and send reinforcements back to Coimbra.

Sharpe and his companions left their house soon after dawn. They wore their own uniforms again, but twice in the first five minutes they were cursed by angry women and Sharpe realized that the people of the city did not recognize the green and brown jackets and so, before someone tried a shot from an alleyway, they stripped off their coats, tied their shakoes to their belts and walked in shirtsleeves. They passed a priest who knelt in the street to offer the last rites to three dead men. A crying child clung to one of the dead hands, but the priest eased her grip from the stiff fingers and, with a reproachful glance at the gun on Sharpe’s shoulder, hurried the girl away.

Sharpe stopped before the corner that opened onto the small plaza in front of Ferragus’s house. He did not know whether the man was in Coimbra or not, but he would take no chances and peered cautiously around the wall. He could see the front door was off its hinges, every piece of window glass was missing and the shutters had been torn away or broken. “He’s not there,” he said.

“How can you tell?” Vicente asked.

“Because he’d have at least blocked the door,” Sharpe said.

“Maybe they killed him,” Harper suggested.

“Let’s find out.” Sharpe took the rifle from his shoulder, cocked it, told the others to wait, then ran across the patch of sunlight, took the house steps three at a time and then was inside the hallway where he crouched at the foot of the stairs, listening.

Silence. He beckoned the others over. The two girls came through the door first and Sarah’s eyes widened in shock as she saw the destruction. Harper gazed up the stairwell. “They kicked the living shit out of this place,” he said. “Sorry, miss.”

“It’s all right, Sergeant,” Sarah said, “I don’t seem to mind any longer.”

“It’s like sewers, miss,” Harper said. “Stay in them long enough and you get used to them. Jesus, they did a proper job here!” Everything that could be broken had been smashed. Pieces of crystal from a chandelier crunched under Sharpe’s boots as he explored the hallway and looked into the parlor and study. The kitchen was a mess of broken pots and bent pans. Even the stove had been pulled from the wall and taken apart. In the schoolroom the small chairs, low table and Sarah’s desk had been hammered into splinters. They climbed the stairs, looking in every room, finding nothing except destruction and deliberate fouling. There was no sign of Ferragus or his brother.

“Bastards have gone,” Sharpe said after opening the cupboards in the big bedroom and finding nothing except a pack of playing cards.

“But Major Ferreira was on the side of the French, wasn’t he?” Harper asked, puzzled that the French would have destroyed the house of an ally.

“He doesn’t know what side he’s on,” Sharpe said. “He just wants to be on the winning side.”

“But he sold them the food, didn’t he?” Harper asked.

“We think he did,” Sharpe said.

“And then you burned it,” Vicente put in, “and what will the French conclude? That the brothers cheated them.”

“So the odds are,” Sharpe said, “that the French shot the pair of them. That would be a good day’s work for a bloody Frog.” He slung his rifle and climbed the last stairs to the attic. He expected to find nothing there, but at least the high windows offered a vantage point from which he could look down at the lower town and see what kind of presence the French were maintaining. He knew they were still in the city for he could hear distant sporadic shots that seemed to come from close to the river, but when he stared through a broken window he could see no enemy, nor even any musket smoke. Sarah had followed him upstairs while the others stayed on the floor below. She leaned on the window sill and gazed south across the river to the far hills.

“So what do we do now?” she asked.

“Join the army.”

“Just like that?”

“We have to walk a long way,” Sharpe said, “and you’re going to need better boots, better clothes. We’ll look for them.”

“How far will we have to walk?”

“Four days? Five? Maybe a week? I don’t know.”

“And where will you find me clothes?”

“By the road, my love, by the road.”

“The road?”

“When the French left,” he explained, “they were carrying all their plunder, but a mile or two of marching changes your mind. You start throwing things away. There’ll be hundreds of things on the road south.”

She looked down at her dress, torn, dirty and wrinkled. “I look horrid.”

“You look wonderful,” Sharpe said, then turned because two smart taps had sounded from the floor below and he held his finger to his lips and, moving as softly as he could, edged back to the stairwell. Harper was at the bottom of the flight and the Irishman held up three fingers, then pointed down the next stairs. So three people were in the house. Harper looked back down the stairs, then held up four fingers and rocked his hand from side to side, telling Sharpe there could be more than three. Plunderers, probably. The French had gone through Coimbra once, but there would be pickings left and enough folk ready to come up from the lower town to enrich themselves from the upper.

Sharpe had edged down the top stairs, stepping at the side of the treads, going very slowly. Vicente was behind Harper, his rifle pointing down into the hall while Joana was in the bedroom door, her musket at her shoulder. Sharpe reached Harper’s side. He could hear voices now. Someone was angry. Sharpe cocked the rifle, flinching at the small noise the mechanism made, but no one below heard. He pointed to himself, then down the stairs and Harper nodded.

Sharpe took these stairs even more slowly. They were strewn with pieces of balustrade and littered with crystal drops and he had to find a clear space for his foot with every step and transfer his weight gently. He had got halfway down the flight when he heard the footsteps coming from the passage at the bottom of the stairs and he crouched, brought the rifle up, and just then a man came into view, saw Sharpe and gaped at him in astonishment. Sharpe did not fire. If Ferragus had come back then he did not want to alert him, and instead he gestured at the man to drop onto the floor, but instead the man twisted away, shouting a warning. Harper fired, the bullet blasting over Sharpe’s shoulder to catch the man in the back and send him sprawling onto the hallway floor. Sharpe was moving now, taking the stairs four at a time. The wounded man was scrambling down the passage. Sharpe kicked him in the back, jumped over him and a second man showed in the dark entrance to the kitchen and Sharpe fired, the flame of the rifle flashing bright in the dim passageway before the smoke filled the space. Harper was downstairs now, the volley gun in his hand. Sharpe leaped down the few steps to the kitchen, found a body at the foot of the steps, ran to the back door and threw himself backwards as a man fired at him from the yard.

Harper ran to the back door, did not pause, but just raised his empty rifle and the threat was enough to send whoever was there running. Sharpe was reloading. Joana came into the kitchen and he took her musket, gave her the half-loaded rifle and ran back up the passage, jumped over the dead man and over the wounded man and pushed into the parlor because its window overlooked the yard. The sash, the broken glass glinting at its edges, was raised and Sharpe ran to it and saw no one beneath him. “Yard’s empty,” he called to Harper.

Harper appeared from the kitchen door, crossed the yard and closed the gate. “Plunderers?” he asked Sharpe.

“Probably.” Sharpe was wishing he had not opened fire. The menace of the rifles would have been enough to frighten off plunderers, but he supposed he had been nervous and so had killed a man who almost certainly did not deserve it. “Bugger,” he said in self-reproof, then went to collect his rifle from Joana, but Sarah was crouching beside the wounded man in the passageway.

“It’s Miguel,” she said.

“Who?”

“Miguel. One of Ferragus’s men.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

“Talk to him,” Sharpe said to Vicente. “Find out where those damn brothers are.” Sharpe stepped over the wounded man and fetched his rifle. He finished reloading it, then went back to the passage where Vicente was questioning Miguel.

“He won’t speak,” Vicente said, “except to ask for a doctor.”

“Where’s he shot?”

“The side,” Vicente said, pointing to Miguel’s waist where the clothes were darkened by blood.

“Ask him where Ferragus is.”

“He won’t tell me.”

Sharpe put his boot on the blood-soaked patch of clothing and Miguel gave a gasp of pain. “Ask him again,” Sharpe said.

“Sharpe, you can’t…” Vicente began.

“Ask him again!” Sharpe snarled and he stared into Miguel’s eyes and then smiled at the wounded man, and there was a wealth of meaning in the smile. Miguel began talking. Sharpe left his boot on the wound, listening to Vicente’s translation.

The Ferreira brothers reckoned Sharpe was probably dead, but also that he was unimportant so long as they reached the army first and gave their version of events. And they were trying to reach the army by crossing the hills, going towards Castelo Branco because the road to that city would be free of the French, but they planned to cut south as they neared the river. They wanted to get to Lisbon, because that was where the Major’s family and fortune had found temporary refuge, and they had left Miguel and two others to watch over the property in Coimbra.

“Is that all he knows?” Sharpe asked.

“It is all he knows,” Vicente said, then moved Sharpe’s foot away from Miguel’s wound.

“Ask him what else he knows,” Sharpe said.

“You can’t torture a man,” Vicente reproved Sharpe.

“I’m not torturing him,” Sharpe said, “but I bloody will if he doesn’t tell us everything.”

Vicente spoke with Miguel again, and Miguel swore on the blessed Virgin that he had told them everything he knew, but Miguel had lied. He could have warned them about the partisans waiting in the hills, but he reckoned he was dying and, as his final wish, he wanted death for the men who had shot him. Those men bandaged him, and promised they would try to find a physician, but no physician came and Miguel, abandoned in the house, slowly bled to death.

As Sharpe and his companions left the city.

THE BRIDGE WAS UNGUARDED. That astonished Sharpe, but he sensed that the French garrison was tiny, which suggested the enemy had decided to throw all their troops into an assault on Lisbon and risk leaving Coimbra barely protected. Folk on the street told them the convent of Santa Clara was full of troops, but it was easy enough to avoid, and by late morning they were well south of the town on the road to Lisbon.

The verges were indeed strewn with discarded plunder, but scores of people were raking through the leavings and Sharpe did not have time to search for clothes and boots for the women. Nor could he stay on the road, for it would lead only to the French rearguard, and so, when the sun was at its height, they struck eastwards across country. Sarah and Joana, neither of whom had robust shoes, went barefoot.

They climbed into steep hills. The few villages were deserted, and by mid-afternoon they were among trees. They stopped to rest where a great outcrop of rock jutted into the valley like the prow of a monstrous ship, and from its summit Sharpe could see French troops far below. He took out his telescope, found it was undamaged after his adventures, and trained it down into the shadows of the valley where he saw fifty or more dragoons searching a small village for food.

Sarah joined him. “May I?” she asked, reaching for the telescope. Sharpe gave it to her and she stared down. “They’re just pouring water onto the ground,” she said after a while.

“Looking for food, love.”

“How does that help?”

“Peasants can’t carry their whole harvest off to safety,” Sharpe explained, “so sometimes they bury it. Dig a hole, put the grain in, cover it with soil and put the turf back. You could walk right across and never see it, but pour water on the soil and it drains faster where it’s been dug.”

“They’re not finding anything,” she said.

“Good,” Sharpe said, and watched her, thinking what a fine face she had, and thinking, too, that she was a spirited creature. Like Teresa, he reflected, and wondered what the Spanish girl did, or whether she even lived.

“They’re going,” Sarah reported, and collapsed the telescope, noticing the small brass plate attached to the biggest barrel. “In gratitude,” she read aloud, “AW. Who’s AW?”

“Wellington.”

“Why was he grateful to you?”

“It was a fight in India,” Sharpe said, “and I helped him.”

“Just that?”

“He’d come off his horse,” Sharpe said. “He was in a bit of trouble, really. Still, he got out safe enough.”

Sarah handed him the glass. “Sergeant Harper says you’re the best soldier in the army.”

“Pat’s full of Irish wind,” Sharpe said. “Mind you, he’s a terror himself. No one better in a fight.”

“And Captain Vicente says you taught him everything he knows.”

“Full of Portuguese wind.”

“Yet you think your captaincy is at risk?”

“The army doesn’t care if you’re good, love.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I wish I didn’t believe me,” Sharpe said, then grinned. “I’ll get by, love.”

Sarah was about to speak, but whatever she wanted to say went unspoken because there was a crackle of gunfire from across the valley. Sharpe turned, saw nothing. The dragoons in the village were remounting their horses and were gazing southwards, but they could evidently see nothing either for they did not move in that direction. The musketry went on, a distant splintering sound, then slowly died away. “There,” Sharpe said, and he pointed across the wide valley to where more French horsemen were spilling out of a high saddle in the hills. Sarah gazed and could see nothing until Sharpe gave her back the glass and told her where to look. “They’ve been ambushed, probably,” he said.

“I thought no one was supposed to be here. Weren’t they ordered to Lisbon?”

“Folk had a choice,” Sharpe explained, “they could either go to Lisbon or climb into high ground. My guess is these hills are full of people. We just have to hope they’re friendly.”

“Why wouldn’t they be?”

“How would you feel about an army that says you must leave home? Which tears down your mills, destroys your harvest and breaks your ovens? They hate the French, but they’ve not much love for us either.”

They slept under the trees. Sharpe did not light a fire, for he had no idea who was in these hills or how they regarded soldiers. They woke early, cold and damp, and set off uphill in the gray first light. Vicente led, following a path that climbed steadily eastwards towards a range of rocky peaks, the highest of which was crowned with the stump of an ancient tower. “An atalaia,” Vicente said.

“A what?”

“Atalaia. A watchtower. They are very old. They were built to keep a look out for the Moors.” Vicente crossed himself. “Some were turned into windmills, others just decay. When we get to that one we will be able to see the route ahead.”

The sun, streaked with purple and pink clouds, was behind them. The day was warming, helped by a southern wind. Off to the south, far away, a ragged smear of smoke rose from a valley, evidence that the French were searching the countryside, but Sharpe was confident no horsemen would climb this high. There was nothing up here to steal except heather, gorse and rock.

Both girls were suffering. The path was stony and Sarah’s bare feet were too tender for the hard going so Sharpe made her wear his boots, first wrapping her feet in strips of cloth that he tore from the ragged hem of what was left of her dress. “You’ll still get blisters,” he warned her, but for a time she made better progress. Joana, more used to hardship, kept going, though the soles of her feet were bleeding. And still they climbed, sometimes losing sight of the watchtower as the path twisted through gullies. “Goat paths,” Vicente guessed. “Nothing else could live up here.”

They dropped into a small high valley where a tiny stream trickled between mossy rocks and Sharpe filled their canteens, then distributed the last of the food he had taken from Ferragus’s warehouse. Joana was massaging her feet and Sarah was trying not to show the pain of her newly forming blisters. Sharpe jerked his head to Harper. “You and me,” he said, “up that hill.” Harper looked at the hill looming to their left. It lay north of them, off their path, and his face showed puzzlement as to why Sharpe should want to climb it. “Give them a rest,” Sharpe said, and he took his boots back from Sarah who gratefully put her feet into the water. “We can see a long way from that peak,” Sharpe said. Perhaps not as far as they would from the watchtower, but going up the hill was an excuse to give the girls some time to recover.

They climbed. “How are your feet?” Harper asked.

“Cut to bloody pieces,” Sharpe said.

“I was thinking I should give my boots to Joana.”

“She’d probably think she was wearing a boat on each foot,” Sharpe said.

“She’s managing, though. A tough one, that.”

“Needs to be if she’s going to endure you, Pat.”

“Soft as lights with women, I am.”

They climbed straight up through the tangling heather, the slope every bit as steep as the one the French had assailed at Bussaco, and both stopped talking long before they reached the summit. They were saving their breath. Sweat was pouring down Sharpe’s face as he neared the peak which was crowned with a scatter of rocks and he kept looking up, willing the rocks to get closer, and it was on his fourth or fifth glance that he saw the small movement, saw the foreshortened barrel moving and he threw himself sideways. “Down, Pat!”

Sharpe was pushing the rifle forward when the musket fired. The puff of smoke blossomed among the rocks and the bullet ripped through the heather between him and Harper, and Sharpe immediately stood and, his tiredness forgotten, ran diagonally up the hill, daring anyone else on the summit to take a shot at him, but no shot sounded. Instead he could hear the clatter of a ramrod on a barrel and he knew whoever had fired was reloading and he swerved uphill, always watching the rocks for the sight of another barrel, and then he saw the man, a young man, just rising from behind a boulder, and Sharpe stopped and brought the rifle up. The young man saw him then, saw the soldier fifty paces from where he had expected him to be, and he began to move the musket and then understood that one more inch of movement would mean that the green-jacketed soldier would pull the trigger and he went very still. “Put the gun down,” Sharpe said.

The young man did not understand him. He looked from Sharpe to Harper, who was now climbing towards his other side. “Put the bloody gun down!” Sharpe snarled and walked forward, keeping the rifle at his shoulder. “Down!”

“Arma!” Harper called. “Por terra!”

The young man looked as if he would twist and run away. “Go on, son,” Sharpe said, “give me an excuse.” And then the boy put the musket down and looked terrified as the two green men came up either side of him. He dropped behind a boulder, cowering there, expecting to be shot.

“Jesus,” Sharpe said, for now he was on the hilltop and he could see that the young man had been a lookout, and that on the long downwards sweep of the far slope there were a score of other men, some of them bunched where the path that Sharpe and his companions had been using crossed the hill’s shoulder. A half-dozen others, evidently alerted by the young man, were climbing towards the hilltop, but they stopped abruptly when they saw Sharpe and Harper appear on the summit.

“You were sleeping, son, weren’t you?” Sharpe said. “Didn’t see us till it was too late.”

The young man did not understand and just looked helplessly from Sharpe to Harper.

“That was good, Pat,” Sharpe said, picking up the young man’s musket and tossing it to one side. “You learned Portuguese quickly.”

“Picked up a word or two, sir.”

Sharpe laughed. “So what do these buggers want, eh?” He turned and gazed at the six closest men who were staring up the long slope. They were all civilians, refugees or possibly partisans. They were two hundred paces away and one had a dog, almost a wolf, on a rope leash. The dog was barking and trying to get away from his master to attack up the hill. All the men had muskets. Sharpe turned away and looked down to where Vicente was gazing up the slope, and Sharpe beckoned him. He waited, then saw Vicente and the two women begin to climb. “Best if we’re all in the same place,” he explained to Harper, then turned back because one of the six men had fired his musket. The men down the hill could not see their companion, who was hidden by the boulder, and perhaps they assumed he had escaped and so one of them opened fire. The ball went wild. Sharpe did not even hear it pass, but then a second man fired. The dog, excited by the sound of gunfire, was howling now, howling and leaping. A third man fired and this time the ball snapped past Sharpe’s head.

“They need a bloody lesson,” Sharpe said. He strode to the young man, pulled him to his feet and put the rifle to his head. The muskets stopped firing.

“We could shoot the bloody dog.” Harper suggested.

“You can be sure to kill it at two hundred paces?” Sharpe asked. “And not just wound it? Because if you just wing it, Pat, that dog will want a mouthful of Irish meat as revenge.”

“Better to shoot this bastard, sir, you’re right,” Harper said, standing on the other side of their terrified prisoner. The six men were now arguing amongst each other, while the rest, those who looked as if they had been waiting in ambush where the path crossed the lower crest, began to climb to the summit.

“There’s almost thirty of them,” Harper said. “We’ll be hard put to deal with thirty.”

“Fifteen each?” Sharpe suggested flippantly, then shook his head. “It won’t come to that.” He hoped it would not, but first he needed Vicente on the hilltop so that he could talk with the men.

Who began to spread out so that Sharpe could not get past them.

They had been waiting for him and he had come to them. And they had orders to kill.