Slingsby, holding his saber scabbard clear of the rough ground, strutted up and down behind them. He was doubtless snapping his orders and Sharpe felt a surge of hatred for the man. The bastard was going to take his job and all because he had married Lawford’s sister-in-law. The hatred was like bile and Sharpe instinctively reached for his rifle, took it from his shoulder and pulled the flint to half cock. He used his thumb to push the strike plate forward and the frizzen leaped away on its spring. He felt in the pan, making certain the priming was still there after his tumble from the horse. He confirmed the powder was there, gritty under his dirty thumb and, staring all the while at Slingsby, he pulled the frizzen back into place and then cocked the gun fully. He raised it to his shoulder. The horse stirred and he growled at it to be still.
He aimed at Slingsby’s back. At the small of his back. At the place where two brass buttons were sewn above the red jacket’s vent. Sharpe wanted to pull the trigger. Who would know? The Lieutenant was a hundred paces away, a reasonable shot for a rifle. Sharpe imagined Slingsby arching his back as his spine was shot through, shuddering as he fell, the clang of his scabbard chains as he struck the ground and the quiver of life fighting to stay in a dying body. The strutting little bastard, Sharpe thought, and he tightened his finger on the rifle’s trigger. No one was watching him, they were all staring at the column which edged ever closer, or if some men were watching him then they must assume he was aiming at a voltigeur. It would not be Sharpe’s first murder and he doubted it would be his last, and then a sudden spasm of hatred coursed through him, a spasm so fierce that he shivered and, almost involuntarily, pulled the trigger all the way back. The rifle banged into his shoulder, startling his horse, which twitched away to one side.
The ball spun across the heads of number four company, missed Lieutenant Slingsby’s left arm by an inch, struck a rock on the edge of the hillside and ricocheted up to hit a voltigeur beneath the chin. The man had managed to get very near to Slingsby and had just stood to shoot his musket at close range and Sharpe’s bullet lifted him off the ground so that the dead man looked as if he was being propelled backwards by a jet of blood, then the Frenchman collapsed in a crash of musket, bayonet and body.
“Good God, Richard! That was fine shooting!” Major Leroy had been watching. “That fellow was stalking Slingsby! I’ve been watching him.”
“So was I, sir,” Sharpe lied.
“Bloody fine shooting! And from horseback! Did you see that, Colonel?”
“Leroy?”
“Sharpe just saved Slingsby’s life. Damnedest piece of shooting I’ve ever seen!”
Sharpe slung the unloaded rifle. He was suddenly ashamed of himself. Slingsby might be an irritant, he might be a cocky man, but he had never set out to harm Sharpe. It was not Slingsby’s fault that his laugh, his presence and his very appearance galled Sharpe to the quick, and a new misery descended on Sharpe, the misery of knowing he had let himself down, and even Lawford’s energetic and undeserved congratulations did nothing to lift his spirits. He turned away from the battalion, staring blankly at the back area where two men were holding a wounded grenadier on the table outside the surgeon’s tent. Blood sprang from the saw that was being whipped to and fro across the man’s thigh bone. A few yards away a wounded man and two of the battalion’s wives, all with French muskets, were guarding a dozen prisoners. A toddler played with a French bayonet. Monks were leading a dozen mules loaded with barrels of water that they were distributing to the allied troops. A Portuguese battalion, followed by five companies of redcoats, marched north on the new road, evidently going to reinforce the northern end of the ridge. A mounted galloper, carrying a message from one general to another, pounded along the new road, leaving a plume of dust in his wake. The toddler swore at the horseman who had scared him by riding too close and the women laughed. The monks dropped a water barrel behind the South Essex, then went on towards the Portuguese brigade.
“They’re too far away to charge!” Lawford called to Sharpe.
Sharpe turned and saw that the column had stalled again. The ground they had wanted to take had been occupied by the South Essex and now the vast mass of men was content to spread slowly outwards to form a thick line and then trade musket shots with the troops on top of the hill. The attack had been stopped and not all the drumming in the world was going to start it back into motion. “We need a pair of guns here,” Sharpe said and he looked to his left to see whether any batteries were nearby and he saw that the South Essex, in moving to block the column’s advance, had left a great gap on the hilltop between themselves and the Connaught Rangers, and that the gap was being rapidly filled by a cloud of voltigeurs. Those voltigeurs had come from the rocky knoll and, seeing the ridge ahead deserted, they had advanced to occupy the abandoned ground. Then the fog shuddered, was swept aside by a gust of wind, and Sharpe saw it was not just voltigeurs who were filling the gap in the British line, but that the last two French columns had climbed to the same place. They had been shielded by the fog so the Portuguese and British gunners had spared them and now, hurrying, they were scrambling the last few yards to the ridge’s empty crest. Their Eagles reflected the sun, victory was just yards away and there was nothing in front of the French but bare grass and vacancy.
And Sharpe was seeing disaster.
Chapter 4
STRANGELY, ON THE MORNING that the guns began to fire and make the windows, glasses and chandeliers vibrate throughout Coimbra, Ferragus announced that his brother’s household, which had readied itself to go south to Lisbon, was to stay in Coimbra after all. He made the announcement in his brother’s study, a gloomy room lined with unread books, where the family and the servants had gathered on Ferragus’s summons.
Beatriz Ferreira, who was scared of her brother-in-law, crossed herself. “Why are we staying?” she asked.
“You hear that?” Ferragus gestured towards the sound of the guns that was like an unending muted thunder. “Our army and the English troops are giving battle. My brother says that if there is a battle then the enemy will be stopped. Well, there is a battle, so if my brother is right then the French will not come.”
“God and the saints be thanked,” Beatriz Ferreira said, and the servants murmured agreement.
“But suppose they do come?” It was Sarah who asked.
Ferragus frowned because he thought the question impertinent, but he supposed that was because Miss Fry was an arrogant English bitch who knew no better. “If they are not stopped,” he said irritably, “then we shall know, because our army must retreat through Coimbra. We shall leave then. But for the moment you will assume we are staying.” He nodded to show that his announcement was done and the household filed from the room.
Ferragus was uncomfortable in his brother’s house. It was too full of their parents’ belongings, too luxurious. His own quarters in Coimbra were above a brothel in the lower town where he kept little more than a bed, table and chair, but Ferragus had promised to keep a watchful eye on his brother’s house and family, and that watchful eye extended past the battle. If it were won, then the French would presumably retreat, yet Ferragus was also plotting what he should do if the battle were lost. If Lord Wellington could not hold the great, gaunt ridge of Bussaco against the French, then how would he defend the lower hills in front of Lisbon? A defeated army would be in no mood to face the victorious French again, and so a loss at Bussaco would surely mean that Lisbon itself would fall inside a month. Os ingleses por mar. His brother had tried to deny that, to persuade Ferragus that the English would stay, but in his heart Ferragus knew that Portugal’s allies would run back to the sea and go home. And why, if that happened, should he be trapped in Lisbon with the conquering French? Better to be caught here, in his own town, and Ferragus was planning how he would survive in that new world in which the French, at last, captured all of Portugal.
He had never discounted such a capture. Ferreira had warned him of the possibility, and the tons of flour that Sharpe had destroyed on the
hilltop had been a token offer to the invaders, an offer to let them know that Ferragus was a man with whom negotiations could be conducted. It had been insurance, for Ferragus had no love for the French; he certainly did not want them in Portugal, but he knew it would be better to be a partner of the invaders rather than their victim. He was a wealthy man with much to lose, and if the French offered protection he would stay wealthy. If he resisted, even if he did nothing except flee to Lisbon, the French would strip him bare. He had no doubt that he would lose some of his wealth if the French came, but if he cooperated with them he would retain more than enough. That was just common sense and, as he sat in his brother’s study and listened to the shudder of distant gunfire, he was thinking that it had been a mistake to even consider fleeing to Lisbon. If this battle were won then the French would never come here, and if it were lost, all would be lost. Best therefore to stay near his property and so protect it.
His elder brother was the key. Pedro Ferreira was a respected staff officer and his contacts stretched across the gap between the armies to those Portuguese officers who had allied themselves with the French. Ferragus, through his brother, could reach the French and offer them the one thing they most wanted: food. In his warehouse in the lower town he had hoarded six months’ worth of hard biscuit, two months’ supply of salt beef, a month’s supply of salt cod and a stack of other food and materials. There was lamp oil, boot leather, linen, horseshoes and nails. The French would want to steal it, but Ferragus had to devise a way to make them buy it. That way Ferragus would survive.
He opened the study door, shouted for a servant and sent her to summon Miss Fry to the study. “I cannot write,” he explained to her when she arrived, holding up his bruised right hand to prove the incapacity. In truth he could write, though his knuckles were still sore and to flex his fingers was painful, but he did not want to write. He wanted Sarah. “You will write for me,” he went on, “so sit.”
Sarah bridled at his abrupt tone, but obediently sat at the Major’s desk where she pulled paper, inkwell and sand shaker towards her. Ferragus stood close behind her. “I am ready,” she said.
Ferragus said nothing. Sarah looked at the wall opposite that was filled with leather-bound books. The room smelled of cigar smoke. The gunfire was persisting, a grumble from far away like thunder in the next county. “The letter,” Ferragus said, startling her with his gravelly voice, “is for my brother.” He moved even closer so that Sarah was aware of his big presence just behind the chair. “Give him my regards,” Ferragus said, “and tell him that all is well in Coimbra.”
Sarah found a steel-nibbed pen, dipped it in ink and began writing. The nib made a scratching noise. “Tell him,” Ferragus went on, “that the matter of honor is not settled. The man escaped.”
“Just that, senhor?” Sarah asked.
“Just that,” Ferragus said in his deep voice. Damn Sharpe, he thought. The wretched rifleman had destroyed the flour, and so Ferragus’s token gift to the French had stayed ungiven, and the French had been expecting the flour and they would now think Ferragus could not be trusted, and that left Ferragus and his brother with a problem. How to reassure the enemy? And would the enemy need reassurance? Would they even come? “Tell my brother,” he went on, “that I rely on his judgment whether or not the enemy will be stopped at Bussaco.”
Sarah wrote. As the ink began to thin on the nib she dipped the pen again and then froze because Ferragus’s fingers were touching the nape of her neck. For a heartbeat she did not move, then she slapped the pen down. “Senhor, you are touching me.”
“So?”
“So stop! Or do you wish me to call Major Ferreira’s wife?”
Ferragus chuckled, but took his fingers away. “Pick up your pen, Miss Fry,” he said, “and tell my brother that I pray the enemy will be stopped.”
Sarah added the new sentence. She was blushing, not from embarrassment, but out of rage. How dare Ferragus touch her? She pressed too hard on the pen and the ink spattered in tiny droplets across the words. “But tell him,” the harsh voice persisted behind her, “that if the enemy is not stopped, then I have decided to do what we discussed. Tell him he must arrange protection.”
“Protection for what, senhor?” Sarah asked in a tight voice.
“He will know what I mean,” Ferragus said impatiently. “You just write, woman.” He listened to the pen’s tiny noise and sensed, from the force of the nib on the paper, the extent of the girl’s anger. She was a proud one, he thought. Poor and proud, a dangerous mixture, and Ferragus saw her as a challenge. Most women were frightened of him, terrified even, and he liked that, but Miss Fry seemed to think that because she was English she was safe. He would like to see terror replace that confidence, see her coldness warm into fear. She would fight, he thought, and that would make it even better and he considered taking her right there, on the desk, muffling her screams as he raped her white flesh, but there was still a terrible pain in his groin from the kick Sharpe had given him and he knew he would not be able to finish what he began and, besides, he would rather wait until his brother’s wife was gone from the house. In a day or two, he thought, he would take Miss Fry’s English pride and wipe his arse on it. “Read what you have written,” he ordered her.
Sarah read the words in a small voice. Ferragus, satisfied, ordered her to write his name and seal the letter. “Use this.” He gave her his own seal and, when Sarah pressed it into the wax, she saw the image of a naked woman. She ignored it, rightly suspecting that Ferragus had been trying to embarrass her. “You can go now,” he told her coldly, “but send Miguel to me.”
Miguel was one of his most trusted men and he was ordered to carry the letter to where the cannons sounded. “Find my brother,” Ferragus instructed, “give this to him and bring me his answer.”
The next few days, Ferragus thought, would be dangerous. Some money and lives would be lost, but if he was clever, and just a little bit lucky, much could be gained.
Including Miss Fry. Who did not matter. In many ways, he knew, she was a distraction and distractions were dangerous, but they also made life interesting. Captain Sharpe was a second distraction, and Ferragus wryly noted the coincidence that he was suddenly obsessed by two English folk. One, he was sure, would live and scream while the other, the one who wore the green jacket, must scream and die.
It would just take luck and a little cleverness.
THE FRENCH STRATEGY WAS SIMPLE. A column must gain the ridge, turn north and fight its way along the summit. The British and Portuguese, turning to meet that threat, would be hammered by the second attack at the ridge’s northern end and, thus pincered, Wellington’s troops would collapse between the two French forces. Masséna’s cavalry, released to the pursuit, would harry the defeated enemy all the way to Coimbra. Once Coimbra was captured the march on Lisbon could not take long.
Lisbon would then fall. British shipping would be ejected from the Tagus and other French forces would advance north to capture Porto and so deny the British another major harbor. Portugal would belong to the French, and what remained of the British army would be marched into captivity and the forces that had defeated it would be free to capture Cadiz and maul the scattered Spanish armies in the south. Britain would face a decision then, whether to sue for peace or face years of futile war, and France, once Spain and Portugal were pacified, could turn her armies to whatever new lands the Emperor wished to bless with French civilization. It was all so very simple, really, just so long as a column reached the ridge of Bussaco.
And two columns were there. Both were small columns, just seven battalions between them, fewer than four thousand men, but they were there, on top, in the sunlight, staring at the smoky remnants of British campfires, and more Frenchmen were coming up behind, and the only immediate threat was a Portuguese battalion that was marching north on the new road made just behind the ridge’s crest. That unsuspecting battalion was met by the closest French column with a blast of musketry and, because the Portuguese were
in column of companies, in march order rather than fighting order, the volley drove into their leading troops, and the French, seeing an opportunity, began to deploy into a ragged line, thus unmasking the files in the center of the column who could now add their fire. Voltigeurs had advanced across the summit, almost to the newly made road, and they began firing at the flank of the embattled Portuguese. British and Portuguese women fled from the voltigeurs, scrambling away with their children.
The Portuguese edged back. An officer tried to deploy them into line, but a French general, mounted on a big gray stallion, ordered his men to fix bayonets and advance. “En avant! En avant!” The drums beat frantically as the French line lurched forward and the Portuguese, caught as they deployed, panicked as the leading companies, already decimated by the French volleys, broke. The rear companies kept their ranks and tried to shoot past their own comrades at the French.
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Lawford had said when he saw the French athwart the ridge. He had seemed stunned by the sight, and no wonder, for he was seeing a battle lost. He was seeing an enemy column occupy the land where his battalion had been posted. He was seeing disaster, even personal disgrace. The French General, Sharpe presumed he was a general for the man’s blue coat had as much gold decoration as the frock of a successful Covent Garden whore, had hoisted his plumed hat on his sword as a signal of victory. “Dear God!” Lawford said.
“About turn,” Sharpe said quietly, not looking at the Colonel and sounding almost as though he were talking to himself, “then right wheel ’em.”
Lawford gave no sign of having heard the advice. He was staring at the unfolding horror, watching the Portuguese being cut down by bullets. For a change it was the French who outflanked an allied column and they were giving to the blue-coated troops what they themselves usually received. The French were not in proper line, not in their three ranks, it was more like a thick line of seven or eight ranks, but enough of them could use their muskets and the men behind jostled forward to fire at the hapless Portuguese. “Call in the skirmishers,” Lawford said to Forrest, then gave an anxious glance at Sharpe. Sharpe remained expressionless. He had made his suggestion, it was unorthodox, and it was up to the Colonel now. The Portuguese were running now, some streaming down the reverse slope of the ridge, but most hurrying back to where a half-battalion of redcoats had halted. The French had more ground to exploit and, even better, they could attack the exposed left flank of the South Essex. “Do it now,” Sharpe said, maybe not quite loud enough for the Colonel to hear.