SHARPE’S
ESCAPE
Richard Sharpe and the
Bussaco Campaign, 1811
BERNARD CORNWELL

Copyright

This novel is a work of fiction. The incidents and some of the characters portrayed in it, while based on real historical events and figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2004

Copyright © Bernard Cornwell 2004

Map © Ken Lewis

Bernard Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007120147

Ebook Edition © MARCH 2012 ISBN: 9780007338658

Version: 2017-05-06

Sharpe’s Escape is for Cece

‘What makes these books such a successful formula is the blend of action, well-researched historical setting, colourful characterization and a juicy sub-plot’

The Times

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Map

Part One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Part Two: Coimbra

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Part Three: The Lines of Torres Vedras

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Historical Note

Sharpe’s Story

Keep Reading

About the Author

The SHARPE Series (in chronological order)

The SHARPE Series (in order of publication)

Also by Bernard Cornwell

About the Publisher

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

Mister Sharpe was in a bad mood. A filthy mood. He was looking for trouble in Sergeant Harper’s opinion, and Harper was rarely wrong about Captain Sharpe, and Sergeant Harper knew well enough not to engage his Captain in conversation when Sharpe was in such a black temper, but on the other hand Harper liked to live dangerously. ‘I see your uniform’s been mended, sir,’ he said cheerily.

Sharpe ignored the comment. He just marched on, climbing the bare Portuguese slope under the searing sun. It was September 1810, almost autumn, yet the heat of late summer hammered the landscape like a furnace. At the top of the hill, another mile or so ahead of Sharpe, stood a barn-like stone building next to a gaunt telegraph station. The station was a black timber scaffolding supporting a high mast from which signalling arms hung motionless in the afternoon’s heat.

‘It’s a rare nice piece of stitching on that jacket,’ Harper went on, sounding as though he did not have a care in the world, ‘and I can tell you didn’t do it yourself. It looks like a woman’s work, so it does?’ He inflected the last three words as a question.

Sharpe still said nothing. His long, straight-bladed cavalry sword banged against his left thigh as he climbed. He had a rifle slung on his shoulder. An officer was not supposed to carry a longarm like his men, but Sharpe had once been a private and he was used to carrying a proper gun to war.

‘Was it someone you met in Lisbon, now?’ Harper persisted.

Sharpe simmered, but pretended he had not heard. His uniform jacket, decently mended as Harper had noticed, was rifle green. He had been a rifleman. No, he still thought of himself as a rifleman, one of the elite men who carried the Baker rifle and wore the dark green instead of the red, but the tides of war had stranded him and a few of his men in a redcoat regiment and now he commanded the light company of the South Essex who were following him up the hill. Most wore the red jackets of the British infantry and carried smoothbore muskets, but a handful, like Sergeant Harper, still kept their old green jackets and fought with the rifle.

‘So who was she?’ Harper finally asked.

‘Sergeant Harper,’ Sharpe was finally goaded into speaking, ‘if you want bloody trouble then keep bloody talking.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Harper said, grinning. He was an Ulsterman, a Catholic and a sergeant, and as such he was not supposed to be friends with an Englishman, a heathen and an officer, but he was. He liked Sharpe and knew Sharpe liked him, though he was wise enough not to say another word. Instead he whistled the opening bars of the song ‘I Would that the Wars Were all Done’.

Sharpe inevitably thought of the words that accompanied the tune; ‘In the meadow one morning, all pearly with dew, a fair pretty maiden plucked violets so blue’, and Harper’s delicate insolence forced him to laugh aloud. He then swore at the Sergeant, who was grinning with triumph. ‘It was Josefina,’ Sharpe admitted.

‘Miss Josefina now! How is she?’

‘She’s well enough,’ Sharpe said vaguely.

‘I’m glad to hear that,’ Harper said with genuine feeling. ‘So you took tea with her, did you, sir?’

‘I took bloody tea with her, Sergeant, yes.’

‘Of course you did, sir,’ Harper said. He walked a few paces in silence, then decided to try his luck again. ‘And I thought you were sweet on Miss Teresa, sir?’

‘Miss Teresa?’ Sharpe said, as though the name were quite unknown to him, though in the last few weeks he had hardly stopped thinking about the hawk-faced girl who rode across the frontier in Spain with the partisan forces. He glanced at the Sergeant, who had a look of placid innocence on his broad face. ‘I like Teresa well enough,’ Sharpe went on defensively, ‘but I don’t even know if I’ll ever see her again!’

‘But you’d like to,’ Harper pointed out.

‘Of course I would! But so what? There are girls you’d like to see again, but you don’t behave like a bloody saint waiting for them, do you?’

‘True enough,’ Harper admitted. ‘And I can see why you didn’t want to come back to us, sir. There you were, drinking tea while Miss Josefina’s sewing, and a fine time the two of you must have been having.’

‘I didn’t want to come back,’ Sharpe said harshly, ‘because I was promised a month’s bloody leave. A month! And they gave me a week!’

Harper was not in the least sympathetic. The month’s leave was supposed to be Sharpe’s reward for bringing back a hoard of gold from behind enemy lines, but the whole of the light company had been on that jaunt and no one had suggested that the rest of them be given a month off. On the other hand Harper could well understand Sharpe’s moroseness, for the thought of losing a whole month in Josefina’s bed would make even a bishop hit the gin.

‘One bloody week,’ Sharpe snarled, ‘bastard bloody army!’ He stepped aside from the path and waited for the company to close up. In truth his foul mood had little to do with his truncated leave, but he could not admit to Harper what was really causing it. He stared back down the column, seeking out the figure of Lieutenant Slingsby. That was the problem. Lieutenant bloody Cornelius bloody Slingsby.

As the company reached Sharpe they sat beside the path. Sharpe commanded fifty-four rank and file now, thanks to a draft from England, and those newly arrived men stood out because they had bright-red coats. The uniforms of the other men had paled under the sun and were so liberally patched with brown Portuguese cloth that, from a distance, they looked more like tramps than soldiers. Slingsby, of course, had objected to that. ‘New uniforms, Sharpe,’ he had yapped enthusiastically, ‘some new uniforms will make the men look smarter. Fine new broadcloth will put some snap into them! We should indent for some.’ Bloody fool, Sharpe had thought. The new uniforms would come in due time, probably in winter, and there was no point in asking for them sooner and, besides, the men liked their old, comfortable jackets just as they liked their French oxhide packs. The new men all had British packs, made by Trotters, that griped across the chest until, on a long march, it seemed that a red-hot band of iron was constricting the ribs. Trotters’ pains, that was called, and the French packs were far more comfortable.

Sharpe walked back down the company and ordered each of the new arrivals to give him their canteen and, as he had expected, every last one was empty. ‘You’re bloody fools,’ Sharpe said. ‘You ration it! A sip at a time! Sergeant Read!’

‘Sir?’ Read, a redcoat and a Methodist, doubled to Sharpe.

‘Make sure no one gives them water, Sergeant.’

‘I’ll do that, sir, I’ll do that.’

The new men would be dry as dust by the time the afternoon was done. Their throats would be swollen and their breath rasping, but at least they would never be so stupid again. Sharpe walked on down the column to where Lieutenant Slingsby brought up the rearguard. ‘No stragglers, Sharpe,’ Slingsby said with the eagerness of a terrier thinking it had deserved a reward. He was a short man, straight-backed, square-shouldered, bristling with efficiency. ‘Mister Iliffe and I coaxed them on.’

Sharpe said nothing. He had known Cornelius Slingsby for one week and in that week he had developed a loathing for the man that verged on being murderous. There was no reason for that hatred, unless disliking a man on sight was good reason, yet everything about Slingsby annoyed Sharpe, whether it was the back of the man’s head, which was as flat as a shovel blade, his protuberant eyes, his black moustache, the broken veins on his nose, the snort of his laughter or the strut of his gait. Sharpe had come back from Lisbon to discover that Slingsby had replaced his Lieutenant, the reliable Robert Knowles, who had been appointed Adjutant to the regiment. ‘Cornelius is by way of being a relation,’ Lieutenant Colonel the Honourable William Lawford had told Sharpe vaguely, ‘and you’ll find him a very fine fellow.’

‘I will, sir?’

‘He joined the army late,’ Lawford had continued, ‘which is why he’s still a lieutenant. Well, he was breveted captain, of course, but he’s still a lieutenant.’

‘I joined the army early, sir,’ Sharpe had said, ‘and I’m still a lieutenant. Breveted captain, of course, but still a lieutenant.’

‘Oh, Sharpe.’ Lawford had sounded exasperated. ‘There is no one more cognizant of your virtues than I. If there was a vacant captaincy …’ He left that notion hanging, though Sharpe knew the answer. He had been made into a lieutenant, and that was something of a miracle for a man who had joined the army as an illiterate private, and he had been breveted a captain, which meant he was paid as such even though his true rank remained lieutenant, but he could only get the real promotion if he either purchased a vacant captaincy or, much less likely, was promoted by Lawford. ‘I value you, Sharpe,’ the Colonel had continued, ‘but I also have hopes for Cornelius. He’s thirty. Or maybe thirty-one. Old for a lieutenant, but he’s keen as mustard, Sharpe, and has experience. Lots of experience.’ That was the trouble. Before joining the South Essex Slingsby had been in the 55th, a regiment serving in the West Indies, and the yellow fever had decimated the officers’ ranks and so Slingsby had been breveted a captain, and captain, moreover, of the 55th’s light company, and as a result he reckoned he knew as much about soldiering as Sharpe. Which might have been true, but he did not know as much about fighting. ‘I want you to take him under your wing,’ the Colonel had finished. ‘Bring him on, Sharpe, eh?’

Bring him to an early grave, Sharpe had thought sourly, but he had to hide his thoughts, and was still doing his best to conceal the hatred as Slingsby pointed up to the telegraph station. ‘Mister Iliffe and I saw men up there, Sharpe. A dozen of them, I think. And one looked as if he was wearing a blue uniform. Shouldn’t be anyone up there, should there?’

Sharpe doubted that Ensign Iliffe, an officer newly come from England, had seen a thing, while Sharpe himself had noticed the men and their horses fifteen minutes earlier and he had been wondering ever since what the strangers were doing on the hilltop, for officially the telegraph station had been abandoned. Normally it was manned by a handful of soldiers who guarded the naval Midshipman who operated the black bags which were hoisted up and down the tall mast to send messages from one end of Portugal to the other. But the French had already cut the chain further north and the British had retreated away from these hills, and somehow this one station had not been destroyed. There was no point in leaving it intact for the Frogs to use, and so Sharpe’s company had been detached from the battalion and given the simple job of burning the telegraph. ‘Could it be a Frenchman?’ Slingsby asked, referring to the blue uniform. He sounded eager, as if he wanted to charge uphill. He was three inches over five feet, with an air of perpetual alertness.

‘Doesn’t matter if it is a bloody Crapaud,’ Sharpe said sourly, ‘there’s more of us than there are of them. I’ll send Mister Iliffe up there to shoot him.’ Iliffe looked alarmed. He was seventeen and looked fourteen, a rawboned youngster whose father had purchased him a commission because he did not know what else to do with the boy. ‘Show me your canteen,’ Sharpe ordered Iliffe.

Iliffe looked scared now. ‘It’s empty, sir,’ he confessed, and cringed as though he expected Sharpe to punish him.

‘You know what I told the men with empty canteens?’ Sharpe asked. ‘That they were idiots. But you’re not, because you’re an officer, and there aren’t any idiot officers.’

‘Quite correct, sir,’ Slingsby put in, then snorted. He always snorted when he laughed and Sharpe suppressed an urge to cut the bastard’s throat.

‘Hoard your water,’ Sharpe said, thrusting the canteen back at Iliffe. ‘Sergeant Harper! March on!’

It took another half-hour to reach the hilltop. The barn-like building was evidently a shrine, for a chipped statue of the Virgin Mary was mounted in a niche above its door. The telegraph tower had been built against the shrine’s eastern gable which helped support the lattice of thick timbers that carried the platform on which the Midshipman had worked his arcane skill. The tower was deserted now, its tethered signal ropes banging against the tarred mast in the brisk wind that blew around the summit. The black-painted bladders had been taken away, but the ropes used to hoist and lower them were still in place and from one of them hung a square of white cloth and Sharpe wondered if the strangers on the hilltop had raised the makeshift flag as a signal.

Those strangers, a dozen civilians, were standing beside the shrine’s door and with them was a Portuguese infantry officer, his blue coat faded to a colour very close to the French blue. It was the officer who strode forward to meet Sharpe. ‘I am Major Ferreira,’ he said in good English, ‘and you are?’

‘Captain Sharpe.’

‘And Captain Slingsby.’ Lieutenant Slingsby had insisted on accompanying Sharpe to meet the Portuguese officer, just as he insisted on using his brevet rank even though he had no right to do so any longer.

‘I command here,’ Sharpe said laconically.

‘And your purpose, Captain?’ Ferreira demanded. He was a tall man, lean and dark, with a carefully trimmed moustache. He had the manners and bearing of privilege, but Sharpe detected an uneasiness in the Portuguese Major that Ferreira attempted to cover with a brusque manner that tempted Sharpe to insolence. He fought the temptation and told the truth instead.

‘We’re ordered to burn the telegraph.’

Ferreira glanced at Sharpe’s men who were straggling onto the hill’s summit. He seemed taken aback by Sharpe’s words, but then smiled unconvincingly. ‘I shall do it for you, Captain. It will be my pleasure.’

‘I carry out my own orders, sir,’ Sharpe said.

Ferreira scented the insolence and gave Sharpe a quizzical look. For a second Sharpe thought the Portuguese Major intended to offer him a reprimand, but instead Ferreira nodded curtly. ‘If you insist,’ he said, ‘but do it quickly.’

‘Quickly, sir!’ Slingsby intervened enthusiastically. ‘No point in waiting!’ He turned on Harper. ‘Sergeant Harper! The combustibles, if you please. Quick, man, quick!’

Harper glanced at Sharpe for approval of the Lieutenant’s orders, but Sharpe betrayed nothing, and so the big Irishman shouted at the dozen men who were burdened with cavalry forage nets that were stuffed full of straw. Another six men carried jars of turpentine, and now the straw was heaped about the four legs of the telegraph station and then soaked with the turpentine. Ferreira watched them work for a while, then went back to join the civilians who appeared worried by the arrival of British soldiers. ‘It’s all ready, sir,’ Harper called to Sharpe, ‘shall I light her up?’

Slingsby did not even give Sharpe time to answer. ‘Let’s not dilly-dally, Sergeant!’ he said briskly. ‘Fire it up!’

‘Wait,’ Sharpe snarled, making Slingsby blink at the harshness of his tone. Officers were expected to treat each other courteously in front of the men, but Sharpe had snapped angrily and the look he gave Slingsby made the Lieutenant step backwards in surprise. Slingsby frowned, but said nothing as Sharpe climbed the ladder to the mast’s platform that stood fifteen feet above the hilltop. Three pock marks in the boards showed where the Midshipman had placed his tripod so he could stare at the neighbouring telegraph stations and read their messages. The station to the north had already been destroyed, but looking south Sharpe could just see the next tower somewhere beyond the River Criz and still behind British lines. It would not be behind the lines for long, he thought. Marshal Masséna’s army was flooding into central Portugal and the British would be retreating to their newly built defensive lines at Torres Vedras. The plan was to retreat to the new fortifications, let the French come, then either kill their futile attacks or watch them starve.

And to help them starve, the British and Portuguese were leaving them nothing. Every barn, every larder, every storehouse was being emptied. Crops were being burned in their fields, windmills were being destroyed and wells made foul with carcasses. The inhabitants of every town and village in central Portugal were being evicted, taking their livestock with them, ordered to go either behind the Lines of Torres Vedras or else up into the high hills where the French would be reluctant to follow. The intention was that the enemy would find a scorched land, bare of everything, even of telegraph ropes.

Sharpe untied one of the signal ropes and pulled down the white flag that turned out to be a big handkerchief of fine linen, neatly hemmed with the initials PAF embroidered in blue into one corner. Ferreira? Sharpe looked down on the Portuguese Major who was watching him. ‘Yours, Major?’ Sharpe asked.

‘No,’ Ferreira called back.

‘Mine then,’ Sharpe said, and pocketed the handkerchief. He saw the anger on Ferreira’s face and was amused by it. ‘You might want to move those horses,’ he nodded at the beasts picketed beside the shrine, ‘before we burn the tower.’

‘Thank you, Captain,’ Ferreira said icily.

‘Fire it now, Sharpe?’ Slingsby demanded from the ground.

‘Not till I’m off the bloody platform,’ Sharpe growled. He looked round one last time and saw a small mist of grey-white powder smoke far off to the southeast. He pulled out his telescope, the precious glass that had been given him by Sir Arthur Wellesley, now Lord Wellington, and he rested it on the balustrade and then knelt and stared towards the smoke. He could see little, but he reckoned he was watching the British rearguard in action. French cavalry must have pressed too close and a battalion was firing volleys, backed up by the cannons of the Royal Horse Artillery. He could just hear the soft thump of the far-off guns. He swept the glass north, the lens travelling over a hard country of hills, rocks and barren pasture, and there was nothing there, nothing at all, until suddenly he saw a hint of a different green and he jerked the glass back, settled it and saw them.

Cavalry. French cavalry. Dragoons in their green coats. They were at least a mile away, in a valley, but coming towards the telegraph station. Reflected sunlight glinted from their buckles, bits and stirrups as Sharpe tried to count them. Forty? Sixty men perhaps, it was hard to tell for the squadron was twisting between rocks in the valley’s deep heart and going from sunshine to shadow. They looked to be in no particular hurry and Sharpe wondered if they had been sent to capture the telegraph station which would serve the advancing French as well as it had served the British.

‘We’ve got company, Sergeant!’ Sharpe called down to Harper. Decency and courtesy demanded that he should have told Slingsby, but he could barely bring himself to talk to the man, so he spoke to Harper instead. ‘At least a squadron of green bastards. About a mile away, but they could be here in a few minutes.’ He collapsed the telescope and went down the ladder and nodded at the Irish Sergeant. ‘Spark it off,’ he said.

The turpentine-soaked straw blazed bright and high, but it took some moments before the big timbers of the scaffold caught the flame. Sharpe’s company, as ever fascinated by wilful destruction, looked on appreciatively and gave a small cheer as the high platform at last began to burn. Sharpe had walked to the eastern edge of the small hilltop, but, denied the height of the platform, he could no longer see the dragoons. Had they wheeled away? Perhaps, if they had hoped to capture the signal tower intact, they would have decided to abandon the effort when they saw the smoke boil off the summit.

Lieutenant Slingsby joined him. ‘I don’t wish to make anything of it,’ he said in a low tone, ‘but you spoke very harshly to me just now, Sharpe, very harshly indeed.’

Sharpe said nothing. He was imagining the pleasure of disembowelling the little bastard.

‘I don’t resent it for myself,’ Slingsby went on, still speaking softly, ‘but it serves the men ill. Very ill indeed. It diminishes their respect for the King’s commission.’

Sharpe knew he had deserved the reproof, but he was not willing to give Slingsby an inch. ‘You think men respect the King’s commission?’ he asked instead.

‘Naturally.’ Slingsby sounded shocked at the question. ‘Of course!’

‘I didn’t,’ Sharpe said, and wondered if he smelt rum on Slingsby’s breath. ‘I didn’t respect the King’s commission,’ he went on, deciding he had imagined the smell, ‘not when I marched in the ranks. I thought most jack-puddings were overpaid bastards.’

‘Sharpe,’ Slingsby expostulated, but whatever he was about to say dried on his tongue, for he saw the dragoons appear on the lower slope.

‘Fifty or so of them,’ Sharpe said, ‘and coming this way.’

‘We should deploy, perhaps?’ Slingsby indicated the eastern slope that was dotted with boulders which would hide a skirmish line very efficiently. The Lieutenant straightened his back and snapped his boot heels together. ‘Be an honour to lead the men down the hill, Sharpe.’

‘It might be a bloody honour,’ Sharpe said sarcastically, ‘but it would still be bloody suicide. If we’re going to fight the bastards,’ he went on, ‘then I’d rather be on a hilltop than scattered halfway down a slope. Dragoons like skirmish lines, Slingsby. It gives them sword practice.’ He turned to look at the shrine. There were two small shuttered windows on the wall facing him and he reckoned they would make good loopholes if he did have to defend the hilltop. ‘How long till sunset?’

‘Ten minutes less than three hours,’ Slingsby said instantly.

Sharpe grunted. He doubted the dragoons would attack, but if they did he could easily hold them off till dusk, and no dragoon would linger in hostile country after nightfall for fear of the partisans. ‘You stay here,’ he ordered Slingsby, ‘watch them and don’t do anything without asking me. Do you understand that?’

Slingsby looked offended, as he had every right to be. ‘Of course I understand it,’ he said in a tone of protest.

‘Don’t take men off the hilltop, Lieutenant,’ Sharpe said, ‘and that’s an order.’ He strode towards the shrine, wondering whether his men would be able to knock a few loopholes in its ancient stone walls. They did not have the right tools, no sledgehammers or crowbars, but the stonework looked old and its mortar was crumbling.

To his surprise his path to the shrine door was barred by Major Ferreira and one of the civilians. ‘The door is locked, Captain,’ the Portuguese officer said.

‘Then I’ll break it down,’ Sharpe answered.

‘It is a shrine,’ Ferreira said reprovingly.

‘Then I’ll say a prayer for forgiveness after I’ve knocked it down,’ Sharpe said and he tried to get past the Major who held up a hand to stop him. Sharpe looked exasperated. ‘There are fifty French dragoons coming this way, Major,’ Sharpe said, ‘and I’m using the shrine to protect my men.’

‘Your work is done here,’ Ferreira said harshly, ‘and you should go.’ Sharpe said nothing. Instead he tried once more to get past the two men, but they still blocked him. ‘I’m giving you an order, Captain,’ the Portuguese officer insisted. ‘Leave now.’

The civilian standing with Ferreira had taken off his coat and rolled up his shirtsleeves to reveal massive arms, both tattooed with fouled anchors. So far Sharpe had taken little notice of the man, other than to be impressed by his imposing physical size, but now he looked into the civilian’s face and saw pure animosity. The man was built like a prizefighter, tattooed like a sailor, and there was an unmistakable message in his scarred, brutish face which was astonishing in its ugliness. He had a heavy brow, a big jaw, a flattened nose, and eyes that were like a beast’s eyes. Nothing showed there except the desire to fight. And he wanted the fight to be man to man, fist against fist, and he looked disappointed when Sharpe stepped a pace backwards.

‘I see you are sensible,’ Ferreira said silkily.

‘I’m known for it,’ Sharpe said, then raised his voice. ‘Sergeant Harper!’

The big Irishman appeared round the side of the shrine and saw the confrontation. The big man, broader and taller than Harper, who was one of the strongest men in the army, had his fists clenched. He looked like a bulldog waiting to be unleashed, and Harper knew how to treat mad dogs. He let the volley gun slip from his shoulder. It was a curious weapon, made for the Royal Navy, and intended to be used from the deck of a ship to clear enemy marksmen from their fighting tops. Seven half-inch barrels were clustered together, fired by a single flintlock, and at sea the gun had proved too powerful, as often as not breaking the shoulder of the man who fired it, but Patrick Harper was big enough to make the seven-barrel gun look small and now he casually pointed it at the vast brute who blocked Sharpe’s path. The gun was not cocked, but none of the civilians seemed to notice that. ‘You have trouble, sir?’ Harper asked innocently.

Ferreira looked alarmed, as well he might. Harper’s appearance had prompted some of the other civilians to draw pistols, and the hillside was suddenly loud as flints were clicked back. Major Ferreira, fearing a bloodbath, snapped at them to lower their guns. None obeyed until the big man, the bare-fisted brute, snarled at them and then they hurriedly lowered their flints, holstered their weapons and looked scared of the big man’s disapproval. All the civilians were hard-looking rogues, reminding Sharpe of the cut-throats who ruled the streets of East London where he had spent his childhood, yet their leader, the man with the brutish face and muscled body, was the oddest and most frightening of them. He was a street fighter, that much was obvious from the broken nose and the scars on his forehead and cheeks, but he was also wealthy, for his linen shirt was of fine quality, his breeches cut from the best broadcloth and his gold-tasselled boots were made from soft expensive leather. He looked to be around forty years old, in the prime of life, confident in his sheer size. The man glanced at Harper, evidently judging the Irishman as a possible opponent, then unexpectedly smiled and picked up his coat which he brushed down before putting on. ‘What is in the shrine,’ the big man stepped towards Sharpe, ‘is my property.’ His English was heavily accented and spoken in a voice like gravel.

‘And who are you?’ Sharpe demanded.

‘Allow me to name Senhor …’ Ferreira began to answer.

‘My name is Ferragus,’ the big man interrupted.

‘Ferragus,’ Ferreira repeated, then introduced Sharpe. ‘Capitão Sharpe.’ He offered Ferragus a shrug as if to suggest that events were beyond his control.

Ferragus towered over Sharpe. ‘Your work is done here, Captain. The tower is no more, so you may go.’

Sharpe stepped back out of the huge man’s shadow, sideways to get around him and then went to the shrine and heard the distinctive sound of the volley gun’s ratchet scraping as Harper cocked it. ‘Careful, now,’ the Irishman said, ‘it only takes a tremor for this bastard to go off and it would make a terrible mess of your shirt, sir.’ Ferragus had plainly turned to intercept Sharpe, but the huge gun checked him.

The shrine door was unlocked. Sharpe pushed it open and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust from the bright sunlight to the shrine’s black shadows, but then he saw what was inside and swore.

He had expected a bare country shrine like the dozens of others he had seen, but instead the small building was heaped with sacks, so many sacks that the only space left was a narrow passage leading to a crude altar on which a blue-gowned image of the Virgin Mary was festooned with little slips of paper left by desperate peasants who came to the hilltop in search of a miracle. Now the Virgin gazed sadly on the sacks as Sharpe drew his sword and stabbed one. He was rewarded by a trickle of flour. He tried another sack further down and still more flour sifted to the bare earth floor. Ferragus had seen what Sharpe had done and harangued Ferreira who, reluctantly, came into the shrine. ‘The flour is here with my government’s knowledge,’ the Major said.

‘You can prove that?’ Sharpe asked. ‘Got a piece of paper, have you?’

‘It is the business of the Portuguese government,’ Ferreira said stiffly, ‘and you will leave.’

‘I have orders,’ Sharpe countered. ‘We all have orders. There’s to be no food left for the French. None.’ He stabbed another sack, then turned as Ferragus came into the shrine, his bulk shadowing the doorway. He moved ominously down the narrow passage between the sacks, filling it, and Sharpe suddenly coughed loudly and scuffed his feet as Ferreira squeezed into the sacks to let Ferragus past.

The huge man held out a hand to Sharpe. He was holding coins, gold coins, maybe a dozen thick gold coins, bigger than English guineas and probably adding up to three years’ salary for Sharpe. ‘You and I can talk,’ Ferragus said.

‘Sergeant Harper!’ Sharpe called past the looming Ferragus. ‘What are those bloody Crapauds doing?’

‘Keeping their distance, sir. Staying well off, they are.’

Sharpe looked up at Ferragus. ‘You’re not surprised there are French dragoons coming, are you? Expecting them, were you?’

‘I am asking you to go,’ Ferragus said, moving closer to Sharpe. ‘I am being polite, Captain.’

‘Hurts, don’t it?’ Sharpe said. ‘And what if I don’t go? What if I obey my orders, senhor, and get rid of this food?’

Ferragus was plainly unused to being challenged for he seemed to shiver, as if forcing himself to be calm. ‘I can reach into your little army, Captain,’ he said in his deep voice, ‘and I can find you, and I can make you regret today.’

‘Are you threatening me?’ Sharpe asked in astonishment. Major Ferreira, behind Ferragus, made some soothing noises, but both men ignored him.

‘Take the money,’ Ferragus said.

When Sharpe had coughed and scuffed his feet he had been making enough noise to smother the sound of his rifle being cocked. It hung from his right shoulder, the muzzle just behind his ear, and now he moved his right hand back to the trigger. He looked down at the coins and Ferragus must have thought he had tempted Sharpe for he thrust the gold closer, and Sharpe looked up into his eyes and pressed the trigger.

The shot slammed into the roof tiles and filled the shrine with smoke and noise. The sound deafened Sharpe and it distracted Ferragus for half a second, the half second in which Sharpe brought up his right knee into the big man’s groin, following it with a thrust of his left hand, fingers rigid, into Ferragus’s eyes and then his right hand, knuckles clenched, into his Adam’s apple. He reckoned he had stood no chance in a fair fight, but Sharpe, like Ferragus, reckoned fair fights were for fools. He knew he had to put Ferragus down fast and hurt him so bad that the huge man could not fight back, and he had done it in a heartbeat, for the big man was bent over, filled with pain and fighting for breath, and Sharpe cleared him from the passage by dragging him into the space in front of the altar and then walked past a horrified Ferreira. ‘You got anything to say to me, Major?’ Sharpe asked, and when Ferreira dumbly shook his head Sharpe made his way back into the sunlight. ‘Lieutenant Slingsby!’ he called. ‘What are those damned dragoons doing?’

‘Keeping their distance, Sharpe,’ Slingsby said. ‘What was that shot?’

‘I was showing a Portuguese fellow how a rifle works,’ Sharpe said. ‘How much distance?’

‘At least half a mile. Bottom of the hill.’

‘Watch them,’ Sharpe said, ‘and I want thirty men in here now. Mister Iliffe! Sergeant McGovern!’

He left Ensign Iliffe in nominal charge of the thirty men who were to haul the sacks out of the shrine. Once outside, the sacks were slit open and their contents scattered across the hilltop. Ferragus came limping from the shrine and his men looked confused and angry, but they were hugely outnumbered and there was nothing they could do. Ferragus had regained his breath, though he was having trouble standing upright. He spoke bitterly to Ferreira, but the Major managed to talk some sense into the big man and, at last, they all mounted their horses and, with a last resentful look at Sharpe, rode down the westwards track.

Sharpe watched them retreat then went to join Slingsby. Behind him the telegraph tower burned fierce, suddenly keeling over with a great splintering noise and an explosion of sparks. ‘Where are the Crapauds?’

‘In that gully.’ Slingsby pointed to a patch of dead ground near the bottom of the hill. ‘Dismounted now.’

Sharpe used his telescope and saw two of the green-uniformed men crouching behind boulders. One of them had a telescope and was watching the hilltop and Sharpe gave the man a cheerful wave. ‘Not much bloody use there, are they?’ he said.

‘They could be planning to attack us,’ Slingsby suggested eagerly.

‘Not unless they’re tired of life,’ Sharpe said, reckoning the dragoons had been beckoned westwards by the white flag on the telegraph tower, and now that the flag had been replaced by a plume of smoke they were undecided what to do. He trained his glass further south and saw there was still gun smoke in the valley where the main road ran beside the river. The rearguard was evidently holding its own, but they would have to retreat soon for, further east, he could now see the main enemy army that showed as dark columns marching in fields. They were a very long way off, scarcely visible even through the glass, but they were there, a shadowed horde coming to drive the British out of central Portugal. L’Armée de Portugal, the French called it, the army that was meant to whip the redcoats clear to Lisbon, then out to sea, so that Portugal would at last be placed under the tricolour, but the army of Portugal was in for a surprise. Marshal Masséna would march into an empty land and then find himself facing the Lines of Torres Vedras.

‘See anything, Sharpe?’ Slingsby stepped closer, plainly wanting to borrow the telescope.

‘Have you been drinking rum?’ Sharpe asked, again getting a whiff of the spirit.

Slingsby looked alarmed, then offended. ‘Put it on the skin,’ he said gruffly, slapping his face, ‘to keep off the flies.’

‘You do what?’

‘Trick I learned in the islands.’

‘Bloody hell,’ Sharpe said, then collapsed the glass and put it into his pocket. ‘There are Frogs over there,’ he said, pointing southeast, ‘thousands of goddamn bloody Frogs.’

He left the Lieutenant gazing at the distant army and went back to chivvy the redcoats who had formed a chain to sling the sacks out onto the hillside which now looked as though it were ankle deep in snow. Flour drifted like powder smoke from the summit, fell softly, made mounds, and still more sacks were hurled out the door. Sharpe reckoned it would take a couple of hours to empty the shrine. He ordered ten riflemen to join the work and sent ten of the redcoats to join Slingsby’s picquet. He did not want his redcoats to start whining that they did all the work while the riflemen got the easy jobs. Sharpe gave them a hand himself, standing in the line and tossing sacks through the door as the collapsed telegraph burned itself out, its windblown cinders staining the white flour with black spots.

Slingsby came just as the last sacks were being destroyed. ‘Dragoons have gone, Sharpe,’ he reported. ‘Reckon they saw us and rode off.’

‘Good.’ Sharpe forced himself to sound civil, then went to join Harper who was watching the dragoons ride away. ‘They didn’t want to play with us, Pat?’

‘Then they’ve more sense than that big Portuguese fellow,’ Harper said. ‘Give him a headache, did you?’

‘Bastard wanted to bribe me.’

‘Oh, it’s a wicked world,’ Harper said, ‘and there’s me always dreaming of getting a wee bribe.’ He slung the seven-barrel gun on his shoulder. ‘So what were those fellows doing up here?’

‘No good,’ Sharpe said, brushing his hands before pulling on his mended jacket that was now smeared with flour. ‘Mister bloody Ferragus was selling that flour to the Crapauds, Pat, and that bloody Portuguese Major was in it up to his arse.’

‘Did they tell you that now?’

‘Of course they didn’t,’ Sharpe said, ‘but what else were they doing? Jesus! They were flying a white flag to tell the Frogs it was safe up here and if we hadn’t arrived, Pat, they’d have sold that flour.’

‘God and his saints preserve us from evil,’ Harper said in amusement, ‘and it’s a pity the dragoons didn’t come up to play.’

‘Pity! Why the hell would we want a fight for no purpose?’

‘Because you could have got yourself one of their horses, sir,’ Harper said, ‘of course.’

‘And why would I want a bloody horse?’

‘Because Mister Slingsby’s getting one, so he is. Told me so himself. The Colonel’s giving him a horse, he is.’

‘No bloody business of mine,’ Sharpe said, but the thought of Lieutenant Slingsby on a horse nevertheless annoyed him. A horse, whether Sharpe wanted one or not, was a symbol of status. Bloody Slingsby, he thought, and stared at the distant hills and saw how low the sun had sunk. ‘Let’s go home,’ he said.

‘Yes, sir,’ Harper said. He knew precisely why Mister Sharpe was in a bad mood, but he could not say as much. Officers were supposed to be brothers in arms, not blood enemies.

They marched in the dusk, leaving the hilltop white and smoking. Ahead was the army and behind it the French.

Who had come back to Portugal.

Miss Sarah Fry, she had always disliked her last name, rapped a hand on the table. ‘In English,’ she insisted, ‘in English.’

Tomas and Maria, eight and seven respectively, looked grumpy, but obediently changed from their native Portuguese to English. ‘“Robert has a hoop,”’ Tomas read. ‘“Look, the hoop is red.”’

‘When are the French coming?’ Maria asked.

‘The French will not come,’ Sarah said briskly, ‘because Lord Wellington will stop them. What colour is the hoop, Maria?’

‘Rouge,’ Maria answered in French. ‘So if the French are not coming why are we loading the wagons?’

‘We do French on Tuesdays and Thursdays,’ Sarah said briskly, ‘and today is?’

‘Wednesday,’ said Tomas.

‘Read on,’ Sarah said, and she gazed out of the window to where the servants were putting furniture onto a wagon. The French were coming and everyone had been ordered to leave Coimbra and go south towards Lisbon. Some folk said the French approach was just a rumour and were refusing to leave, others had already gone. Sarah did not know what to believe, only that she had surprised herself by welcoming the excitement. She had been the governess in the Ferreira household for just three months and she suspected that the French invasion might be the means to extricate herself from a position that she now understood had been a mistake. She was thinking about her uncertain future when she realized that Maria was giggling because Tomas had just read that the donkey was blue, and that was nonsense, and Miss Fry was not a young woman to tolerate nonsense. She rapped her knuckles on the crown of Tomas’s head. ‘What colour is the donkey?’ she demanded.

‘Brown,’ Tomas said.

‘Brown,’ Sarah agreed, giving him another smart tap, ‘and what are you?’

‘A blockhead,’ Tomas said, and then, under his breath, added, ‘Cadela.’

It meant ‘bitch’, and Tomas had said it slightly too loudly and was rewarded with a smart crack on the side of his head. ‘I detest bad language,’ Sarah said angrily, adding a second slap, ‘and I detest rudeness, and if you cannot show good manners then I will ask your father to beat you.’

The mention of Major Ferreira snapped the two children to attention and a gloom descended over the schoolroom as Tomas struggled with the next page. It was essential for a Portuguese child to learn English and French if, when they grew up, they were to be accounted gentlefolk. Sarah wondered why they did not learn Spanish, but when she had suggested it to the Major he had looked at her with utter fury. The Spanish, he had answered, were the offspring of goats and monkeys, and his children would not foul their tongues with their savage language. So Tomas and Maria were being schooled in French and English by their governess who was twenty-two years old, blue-eyed, fair-haired and worried for her future.

Her father had died when Sarah was ten and her mother a year later, and Sarah had been raised by an uncle who had reluctantly paid for her schooling, but refused to provide any kind of dowry when she had reached eighteen, and so, cut off from the more lucrative part of the marriage market, she had become a nursery maid for the children of an English diplomat who had been posted to Lisbon and it was there that Major Ferreira’s wife had encountered her and offered to double her salary if she would school her two children. ‘I want our children to be polished,’ Beatriz Ferreira had said.

And so Sarah was in Coimbra, polishing the children and counting the heavy ticks of the big clock in the hall as Tomas and Maria took turns to read from Early Joys for Infant Souls. ‘“The cow is sabbler,”’ Maria read.

‘Sable,’ Sarah corrected her.

‘What’s sable?’

‘Black.’

‘Then why doesn’t it say black?’

‘Because it says sable. Read on.’

‘Why aren’t we leaving?’ Maria asked.

‘That is a question you must put to your father,’ Sarah said, and she wished she knew the answer herself. Coimbra was evidently to be abandoned to the French, but the authorities insisted that the enemy should find nothing in the city except empty buildings. Every warehouse, larder and shop was to be stripped as bare as Mother Hubbard’s cupboard. The French were to enter a barren land and there starve, but it seemed to Sarah, when she took her two young charges for their daily walks, that most of the storehouses were still full and the riverside quays were thickly heaped with British provisions. Some of the wealthy folk had gone, transporting their possessions on wagons, but Major Ferreira had evidently decided to wait until the last moment. He had ordered his best furniture packed onto a wagon in readiness, but he was curiously reluctant to take the decision to leave Coimbra. Sarah, before the Major had ridden north to join the army, had asked him why he did not send the household to Lisbon and he had turned on her with his fierce gaze, seemed puzzled by her question, then dismissively told her not to worry.

Yet she did, and she was worried about Major Ferreira too. He was a generous employer, but he did not come from the highest rank of Portuguese society. There were no aristocrats in Ferreira’s ancestry, no titles and no great landed estates. His father had been a professor of philosophy who had unexpectedly inherited wealth from a distant relative, and that legacy enabled Major Ferreira to live well, but not magnificently. A governess was judged not by how effectively she managed the children in her care, but by the social status of the family for whom she worked, and in Coimbra Major Ferreira possessed neither the advantages of aristocracy, nor the gift of great intelligence which was much admired in the university city. And as for his brother! Sarah’s mother, God rest her soul, would have described Ferragus as being common as muck. He was the black sheep of the family, the wilful, wayward son who had run away as a child and come back rich, not to settle, but to terrorize the city like a wolf finding a home in the sheep pen. Sarah was frightened of Ferragus; everyone except the Major was frightened of Ferragus, and no wonder. The gossip in Coimbra said Ferragus was a bad man, a dishonest man, a crook even, and Major Ferreira was tarred by that brush, and in turn Sarah was smeared by it.

But she was trapped with the family, for she did not have enough money to pay her fare back to England and even if she got there, how was she to secure a new post without a glowing testimonial from her last employers? It was a dilemma, but Miss Sarah Fry was not a timid young woman and she faced the dilemma, as she faced the French invasion, with a sense that she would survive. Life was not to be suffered, it was to be exploited.

‘“Reynard is red,”’ Maria read.

The clock ticked on.

It was not war as Sharpe knew it. The South Essex, withdrawing westwards into central Portugal, was now the army’s rearguard, though two regiments of cavalry and a troop of horse gunners were behind them, serving as a screen to deter the enemy’s forward cavalry units. The French were not pressing hard and so the South Essex had time to destroy whatever provisions they found, whether it was the harvest, an orchard or livestock, for nothing was to be left for the enemy. By rights every inhabitant and every scrap of food should already have gone south to find refuge behind the Lines of Torres Vedras, but it was astonishing how much remained. In one village they found a herd of goats hidden in a barn, and in another a great vat of olive oil. The goats were put to the bayonet and their corpses hurriedly buried in a ditch, and the oil was spilled onto the ground. French armies famously lived off the land, stealing what they needed, so the land was to be ravaged.

There was no evidence of a French pursuit. None of the galloper guns fired and no wounded cavalrymen appeared after a brief clash of sabres. Sharpe continually looked to the east and thought he saw the smear of dust in the sky kicked up by an army’s boots, but it could easily have been a heat haze. There was an explosion at mid morning, but it came from ahead where, in a deep valley, British engineers had blown a bridge. The South Essex grumbled because they had to wade through the river rather than cross it by a roadway, but if the bridge had been left they would have grumbled at being denied the chance to scoop up water as they waded the river.

Lieutenant Colonel the Honourable William Lawford, commanding officer of the first battalion of the South Essex regiment, spent much of the day at the rear of the column where he rode a new horse, a black gelding, of which he was absurdly proud. ‘I gave Portia to Slingsby,’ he told Sharpe. Portia was his previous horse, a mare that Slingsby now rode and thus appeared, to any casual onlooker, to be the commander of the light company. Lawford must have been aware of the contrast because he told Sharpe that officers ought to ride. ‘It gives their men something to look up to, Sharpe,’ he said. ‘You can afford a horse, can’t you?’

What Sharpe could or could not afford was not something he intended to share with the Colonel. ‘I’d prefer they looked up to me instead of at the horse, sir,’ Sharpe commented instead.

‘You know what I mean.’ Lawford refused to be offended. ‘If you like, Sharpe, I’ll cast about and find you something serviceable? Major Pearson of the gunners was talking about selling one of his hacks and I can probably squeeze a fair price from him.’

Sharpe said nothing. He was not fond of horses, but he nevertheless felt jealous that bloody Slingsby was riding one. Lawford waited for a response and, when none came, he spurred the gelding so that it picked up its hooves and trotted a few paces ahead. ‘So what do you think, Sharpe, eh?’ the Colonel demanded.

‘Think, sir?’

‘Of Lightning! That’s his name. Lightning.’ The Colonel patted the horse’s neck. ‘Isn’t he superb?’

Sharpe stared at the horse, said nothing.

‘Come, Sharpe!’ Lawford encouraged him. ‘Can’t you see his quality, eh?’

‘He’s got four legs, sir,’ Sharpe said.

‘Oh, Sharpe!’ the Colonel remonstrated. ‘Really! Is that all you can say?’ Lawford turned to Harper instead. ‘What do you make of him, Sergeant?’

‘He’s wonderful, sir,’ Harper said with genuine enthusiasm, ‘just wonderful. Would he be Irish now?’

‘He is!’ Lawford was delighted. ‘He is! Bred in County Meath. I can see you know your horses, Sergeant.’ The Colonel fondled the gelding’s ears. ‘He takes fences like the wind. He’ll hunt magnificently. Can’t wait to get him home and set him at a few damn great hedgerows.’ He leaned towards Sharpe and lowered his voice. ‘He cost me a few pennies, I can tell you.’

‘I’m sure he did, sir,’ Sharpe said, ‘and did you pass on my message about the telegraph station?’

‘I did,’ Lawford said, ‘but they’re busy at headquarters, Sharpe, damned busy, and I doubt they’ll worry too much about a few pounds of flour. Still, you did the right thing.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of the flour, sir,’ Sharpe said, ‘but about Major Ferreira.’

‘I’m sure there’s an innocent explanation,’ Lawford said airily, then rode ahead, leaving Sharpe scowling. He liked Lawford, whom he had known years before in India and who was a clever, genial man whose only fault, perhaps, was a tendency to avoid trouble. Not fighting trouble: Lawford had never shirked a fight with the French, but he hated confrontations within his own ranks. By nature he was a diplomat, always trying to smooth the corners and find areas of agreement, and Sharpe was hardly surprised that the Colonel had shied away from accusing Major Ferreira of dishonesty. In Lawford’s world it was always best to believe that yapping dogs were really sleeping.

So Sharpe put the confrontation of the previous day out of his mind and trudged on, half his thoughts conscious of what every man in the company was doing and the other half thinking of Teresa and Josefina, and he was still thinking of them when a horseman rode past him in the opposite direction, wheeled around in a flurry of dust and called to him. ‘In trouble again, Richard?’

Sharpe, startled out of his daydream, looked up to see Major Hogan looking indecently cheerful. ‘I’m in trouble, sir?’

‘You do sound grim,’ Hogan said. ‘Get out of bed the wrong side, did you?’

‘I was promised a month’s leave, sir. A bloody month! And I got a week.’

‘I’m sure you didn’t waste it,’ Hogan said. He was an Irishman, a Royal Engineer whose shrewdness had taken him away from engineering duties to serve Wellington as the man who collected every scrap of information about the enemy. Hogan had to sift rumours brought by pedlars, traders and deserters, he had to appraise every message sent by the partisans who harried the French on both sides of the frontier between Spain and Portugal, and he had to decipher the despatches, captured by the partisans from French messengers, some of them still stained with blood. He was also an old friend of Sharpe, and one who now frowned at the rifleman. ‘A gentleman came to headquarters last night,’ he said, ‘to lodge an official complaint about you. He wanted to see the Peer, but Wellington’s much too busy fighting the war, so the man was fobbed off on me. Luckily for you.’

‘A gentleman?’

‘I stretch the word to its uttermost limits,’ Hogan said. ‘Ferragus.’

‘That bastard.’

‘Illegitimacy is probably the one thing he cannot be accused of,’ Hogan said.

‘So what did he say?’

‘That you hit him,’ Hogan said.

‘He can tell the truth, then,’ Sharpe admitted.

‘Good God, Richard!’ Hogan examined Sharpe. ‘You don’t seem hurt. You really hit him?’

‘Flattened the bastard,’ Sharpe said. ‘Did he tell you why?’

‘Not precisely, but I can guess. Was he planning to sell food to the enemy?’

‘Close on two tons of flour,’ Sharpe said, ‘and he had a bloody Portuguese officer with him.’

‘His brother,’ Hogan said, ‘Major Ferreira.’

‘His brother!’

‘Not much alike, are they? But yes, they’re brothers. Pedro Ferreira stayed home, went to school, joined the army, married decently, lives respectably, and his brother ran away in search of sinks of iniquity. Ferragus is a nickname, taken from some legendary Portuguese giant who was reputed to have skin that couldn’t be pierced by a sword. Useful, that. But his brother is more useful. Major Ferreira does for the Portuguese what I do for the Peer, though I fancy he isn’t quite as efficient as I am. But he has friends in the French headquarters.’

‘Friends?’ Sharpe sounded sceptical.

‘More than a few Portuguese joined the French,’ Hogan said. ‘They’re mostly idealists who think they’re fighting for liberty, justice, brotherhood and all that airy nonsense. Major Ferreira somehow stays in touch with them, which is damned useful. But as for Ferragus!’ Hogan paused, staring uphill to where a hawk hovered above the pale grass. ‘Our giant is a bad lot, Richard, about as bad as they come. You know where he learned English?’

‘How would I?’

‘He joined a ship as a seaman when he ran away from home,’ Hogan said, ignoring Sharpe’s surly response, ‘and then had the misfortune to be pressed into the Royal Navy. He learned lower-deck English, made a reputation as the fiercest bare-knuckle fighter in the Atlantic fleet, then deserted in the West Indies. He apparently joined a slave ship and rose up through the ranks. Now he calls himself a merchant, but I doubt he trades in anything legal.’

‘Slaves?’

‘Not any longer,’ Hogan said, ‘but that’s how he made his money. Shipping the poor devils from the Guinea coast to Brazil. Now he lives in Coimbra where he’s rich and makes his money in mysterious ways. He’s quite an impressive man, don’t you think, and not without his advantages?’

‘Advantages?’

‘Major Ferreira claims his brother has contacts throughout Portugal and western Spain, which sounds very likely.’

‘So you let him get away with treason?’

‘Something like that,’ Hogan agreed equably. ‘Two tons of flour isn’t much, not in the greater scheme of things, and Major Ferreira persuades me his brother is on our side. Whatever, I apologized to our giant, said you were a crude man of no refinement, assured him that you would be severely reprimanded, which you may now consider done, and promised that he would never see you again.’ Hogan beamed at Sharpe. ‘So the matter is closed.’

‘So I do my duty,’ Sharpe said, ‘and land in the shit.’

‘You have at last seized the essence of soldiering,’ Hogan said happily, ‘and Marshal Masséna is landing in the same place.’

‘He is?’ Sharpe asked. ‘I thought we were retreating and he was advancing?’

Hogan laughed. ‘There are three roads he could have chosen, Richard, two very good ones and one quite rotten one, and in his wisdom he chose this one, the bad one.’ It was indeed a bad road, merely two rutted wheel tracks either side of a strip of grass and weeds, and littered with rocks large enough to break a wagon or gun wheel. ‘And this bad road,’ Hogan went on, ‘leads straight to a place called Bussaco.’

‘Am I supposed to have heard of it?’

‘A very bad place,’ Hogan went on, ‘for anyone attacking it. And the Peer is gathering troops there in hope of giving Monsieur Masséna a bloody nose. Something to look forward to, Richard, something to anticipate.’ He raised a hand, kicked back his heels and rode ahead, nodding to Major Forrest who came the other way.

‘Two ovens in the next village, Sharpe,’ Forrest said, ‘and the Colonel would like your lads to deal with them.’

The ovens were great brick caves in which the villagers had baked their bread. The light company used pickaxes to reduce them to rubble so the French could not use them. They left the precious ovens destroyed and then marched on.

To a place called Bussaco.

CHAPTER TWO

Robert Knowles and Richard Sharpe stood on the Bussaco ridge and stared at l’Armée de Portugal that, battalion by battalion, battery by battery and squadron by squadron, streamed from the eastern hills to fill the valley.

The British and Portuguese armies had occupied a great ridge that ran north and south and so blocked the road on which the French were advancing towards Lisbon. The ridge, Knowles guessed, was almost a thousand feet above the surrounding countryside, and its eastward flank, which faced the French, was precipitously steep. Two roads zigzagged their way up that slope, snaking between heather, gorse and rocks, the better road reaching the ridge’s crest towards its northern end just above a small village perched on a ledge of the ridge. Down in the valley, beyond a glinting stream, lay a scatter of other small villages and the French were making their way along farm tracks to occupy those lower settlements.

The British and Portuguese had a bird’s-eye view of the enemy who came from a wooded defile in the lower hills, then marched past a windmill before turning south to take up their positions. They, in turn, could look up the high, bare slope and see a handful of British and Portuguese officers watching them. The army itself, with most of its guns, was hidden from the French. The ridge was ten miles long, a natural rampart, and General Wellington had ordered that his men were to stay well back from its wide crest so that the arriving French would have no idea which part of the high ground was most heavily defended. ‘Quite a privilege,’ Knowles said reverently.

‘A privilege?’ Sharpe asked sourly.

‘To see such a thing,’ Knowles explained, gesturing at the enemy, and it was, in truth, a fine sight to see so many thousands of men at one time. The infantry marched in loose formations, their blue uniforms pale against the green of the valley, while the horsemen, released from the discipline of the march, galloped beside the stream to leave plumes of dust. And still they came from the defile, the might of France. A band was playing close to the windmill and, though the music was too far away to be heard, Sharpe fancied he could hear the thump of the bass drum like a distant heartbeat. ‘A whole army!’ Knowles enthused. ‘I should have brought my sketching pad. It would make a fine picture.’

‘What would make a fine picture,’ Sharpe said, ‘is to see the buggers march up this hill and get slaughtered.’

‘You think they won’t?’

‘I think they’d be mad to try,’ Sharpe said, then frowned at Knowles. ‘Do you like being Adjutant?’ he asked abruptly.

Knowles hesitated, sensing that the conversation was approaching dangerous ground, but he had been Sharpe’s Lieutenant before becoming Adjutant and he liked his old company commander. ‘Not excessively,’ he admitted.

‘It’s always been a captain’s job,’ Sharpe said, ‘so why is he giving it to you?’

‘The Colonel feels the experience will be advantageous to me,’ Knowles said stiffly.

‘Advantageous,’ Sharpe said bitterly. ‘It ain’t your advantage he wants, Robert. He wants that piece of gristle to take over my company. That’s what he wants. He wants bloody Slingsby to be Captain of the light company.’ Sharpe had no evidence for that, the Colonel had never said as much, but it was the only explanation that made sense to him. ‘So he had to get you out of the way,’ Sharpe finished, knowing he had said too much, but the rancour was biting at him and Knowles was a friend who would be discreet about Sharpe’s outburst.

Knowles frowned, then flapped at an insistent fly. ‘I truly believe,’ he said after thinking for a moment, ‘that the Colonel believes he’s doing you a favour.’

‘Me! A favour? By giving me Slingsby!’

‘Slingsby has experience, Richard,’ Knowles said, ‘much more than I do.’

‘But you’re a good officer and he’s a jack-pudding. Who the hell is he anyway?’

‘He’s the Colonel’s brother-in-law,’ Knowles explained.

‘I know that,’ Sharpe said impatiently, ‘but who is he?’

‘The man who married Mrs Lawford’s sister,’ Knowles said, refusing to be drawn.

‘That tells you everything you bloody need to know,’ Sharpe said grimly, ‘but he doesn’t seem the kind of fellow Lawford would want as a brother-in-law. Not enough tone.’

‘We don’t choose our relatives,’ Knowles said, ‘and I’m sure he’s a gentleman.’

‘Bloody hell,’ Sharpe grumbled.

‘And he must have been delighted to get out of the 55th,’ Knowles went on, ignoring Sharpe’s moroseness. ‘God, most of that regiment died of the yellow fever in the West Indies. He’s much safer here, even with those fellows threatening.’ Knowles nodded down at the French troops.

‘Then why the hell didn’t he purchase a captaincy?’

‘Six months short of requirements,’ Knowles said. A lieutenant was not allowed to purchase a captaincy until he had served three years in the lower rank, a newly introduced rule that had caused much grumbling among wealthy officers who wanted swifter preferment.

‘But why did he join up so late?’ Sharpe asked. If Slingsby was thirty then he could not have become a lieutenant before he was twenty-seven, by which age some men were majors. Most officers, like young Iliffe, joined long before they were twenty and it was odd to find a man coming to the army so late.

‘I believe …’ Knowles said, then reddened and checked his words. ‘New troops,’ he said instead, pointing down the slope to where a French regiment, its blue coats unnaturally bright, marched past the windmill. ‘I hear the Emperor has sent reinforcements to Spain,’ Knowles went on. ‘The French have nowhere else to fight these days. Austrians out of the war, Prussians doing nothing, which means Boney only has us to beat.’

Sharpe ignored Knowles’s summation of the Emperor’s strategy. ‘You believe what?’ he asked.

‘Nothing. I said too much.’

‘You didn’t say a bloody thing,’ Sharpe protested and waited, but Knowles still remained silent. ‘You want me to slit your skinny throat, Robert,’ Sharpe asked, ‘with a very blunt knife?’

Knowles smiled. ‘You mustn’t repeat this, Richard.’

‘You know me, Robert, I never tell anyone anything. Cross my heart and hope to die, so tell me before I cut your legs off.’

‘I believe Mrs Lawford’s sister was in trouble. She found herself with child, she wasn’t married and the man concerned was apparently a rogue.’

‘Wasn’t me,’ Sharpe said quickly.

‘Of course it wasn’t you,’ Knowles said. He could be pedantically obvious at times.

Sharpe grinned. ‘So Slingsby was recruited to make her respectable?’

‘Exactly. He’s not from the topmost drawer, of course, but his family is more than acceptable. His father’s a rector somewhere on the Essex coast, I believe, but they’re not wealthy, and so Lawford’s family rewarded Slingsby with a commission in the 55th, with a promise to exchange into the South Essex as soon as there was a vacancy. Which there was when poor Herrold died.’

‘Herrold?’

‘Number three company,’ Knowles said, ‘arrived on a Monday, caught fever on Tuesday and was dead by Friday.’

‘So the idea,’ Sharpe said, watching a French gun battery being dragged along the track by the stream below, ‘is that bloody Slingsby gets quick promotion so that he’s a worthy husband for the woman what couldn’t keep her knees together.’

‘I wouldn’t say that,’ Knowles said indignantly, then thought for a second. ‘Well, yes, I would say that. But the Colonel wants him to do well. After all, Slingsby did the family a favour and now they’re trying to do one back.’

‘By giving him my bloody job,’ Sharpe said.

‘Don’t be absurd, Richard.’

‘Why else is the bugger here? They move you out of the way, give the bastard a horse and hope to God the French kill me.’ He fell silent, not only because he had said too much, but because Patrick Harper was approaching.

The big Sergeant greeted Knowles cheerfully. ‘We miss you, sir, we do.’

‘I can say the same, Sergeant,’ Knowles responded with real pleasure. ‘You’re well?’

‘Still breathing, sir, and that’s what counts.’ Harper turned to look down into the valley. ‘Look at those daft bastards. Just lining up to be murdered.’

‘They’ll take one look at this hill,’ Sharpe said, ‘and find another road.’

Yet there was no sign that the French would take that good advice for the blue-uniformed battalions still marched steadily from the east and French gun batteries, dust flying from their big wheels, continued to arrive at the lower villages. Some French officers rode to the top of a spur which jutted east from the ridge and gazed through their telescopes at the few British and Portuguese officers visible where the better road crossed the ridge top. That road, the further north of the two, zigzagged up the slope, climbing at first between gorse and heather, then cutting through vineyards beneath the small village perched on the slope. That was the road which led to Lisbon and to the completion of the Emperor’s orders, which were to hurl the British out of Portugal so that the whole coastline of continental Europe would belong to the French.

Lieutenant Slingsby, his red coat newly brushed and his badges polished, came to offer his opinion of the enemy, and Sharpe, unable to stand the man’s company, walked away southwards. He watched the French cutting down trees to make fires or shelters. Some small streams fell from the far hills to join and make a larger stream that flowed south towards the Mondego River which touched the ridge’s southern end, and the bigger stream’s banks were being trampled by horses, some from the gun teams, some cavalry mounts and some the officers’ horses, all being given a drink after their march.

The French were concentrating in two places. One tangle of battalions was around the village from which the better road climbed to the northern end of the ridge, while others were two miles to the south, gathering at another village from which a track, passable to packhorses or men on foot, twisted to the ridge’s crest. It was not a proper road, there were no ruts from carts, and in places the track almost vanished into the heather, but it did show the French that there was a route up the steep slope, and French batteries were now deploying either side of the village so that the guns could rake the track ahead of their advancing troops.

The sound of axes and falling trees came from behind Sharpe. One company from each battalion had been detailed to make a road just behind the ridge’s crest, a road that would let Lord Wellington shift his forces anywhere along the hill’s ten-mile length. Trees were being felled, bushes uprooted, rocks being rolled away and the soil smoothed so that British or Portuguese guns could be pulled swiftly to any danger point. It was a huge piece of work and Sharpe suspected it would all be wasted for the French would surely not be mad enough to climb the hill.

Except some were already climbing. A score of mounted officers, wanting a closer view of the British and Portuguese position, had ridden their horses along the summit of the spur which jutted out from the long ridge. The spur was less than half the height of the ridge, but it provided a platform on which troops could gather for an assault and the British and Portuguese gunners had plainly marked it as a target for, as the French horsemen neared the place where the spur joined the ridge, a cannon fired. The sound was flat and hard, startling a thousand birds up from the trees which grew thick on the ridge’s reverse slope. The gun’s smoke roiled in a grey-white cloud that was carried east on the small wind. The shell left a trace of powder smoke from its burning fuse as it arced down to explode a few paces beyond the French horsemen. One of the horses panicked and bolted back the way it had come, but the others seemed unworried as their riders took out telescopes and stared at the enemy above them.

Then two more guns fired, their sound echoing back from the eastern hills. One was evidently a howitzer for the smoke of its burning fuse went high in the sky before dropping towards the French. This time a horse was flung sideways to leave a smear of blood on the dry, pale heather. Sharpe was watching through his telescope and saw the unsaddled and evidently unwounded Frenchman get to his feet. He brushed himself down, drew a pistol and put his twitching horse out of its misery, then struggled to release the precious saddle. He trudged back eastwards, carrying saddle, saddle cloth and bridle.

More French, some mounted and some on foot, were coming to the spur. It seemed a madness to go where the guns were aiming, but dozens of French were wading through the stream and then climbing the low hill to stare up at the British and Portuguese. The gunfire continued. It was not the staccato fire of battle, but desultory shots as the gunners experimented with powder loads and fuse lengths. Too much powder and a shot would scream over the spur to explode somewhere above the stream, while if the fuse was cut too long the shell would land, bounce and come to rest with the fuse still smoking, giving the French time to skip out of the way before the shell exploded. Each detonation was a puff of dirty smoke, surprisingly small, but Sharpe could not see the deadly scraps of broken shell casing hiss away from each blast.

No more French horses or men were struck. They were well spread out and the shells obstinately fell in the gaps between the small groups of men who looked as carefree as folk out for a walk in a park. They stared up at the ridge, trying to determine where the defences lay thickest, though it was surely obvious that the places where the two roads reached the summit would be the places to defend. Another score of cavalrymen, some in green coats and some in sky blue, splashed through the stream and spurred up the lower hill. The sun glinted on brass helmets, polished scabbards, stirrups and curb chains. It was, Sharpe thought, as though the French were playing cat and mouse with the sporadic shell fire. He saw a shell burst close by a group of infantrymen, but when the smoke cleared they were all standing and it seemed to him, though they were very far away, that they were laughing. They were confident, he thought, sure they were the best troops in the world, and their survival of the gunfire was a taunt to the defenders on the ridge’s top.

The taunting was evidently too much, for a battalion of brown-jacketed Portuguese light troops appeared on the crest and, scattered in a double skirmish chain, advanced down the ridge’s slope towards the spur. They went steadily downhill in two loose lines, one fifty paces behind the other, both spread out, giving a demonstration of how skirmishers went to war. Most troops fought shoulder to shoulder, but skirmishers like Sharpe went ahead of the line and, in the killing ground between the armies, tried to pick off the enemy skirmishers and then kill the officers behind so that when the two armies clashed, dense line against massive column, the enemy was already leaderless. Skirmishers rarely closed ranks. They fought close to the enemy where a bunch of men would make an easy target for enemy gunners, and so the light troops fought in loose formation, in pairs, one man shooting and then reloading as his comrade protected him.

The French watched the Portuguese come. They showed no alarm, nor did they advance any skirmishers of their own. The shells went on arcing down the slope, their detonations echoing dully from the eastern hills. The vast mass of the French were making their bivouacs, ignoring the small drama on the ridge, but a dozen cavalrymen, seeing easy meat in the scattered Portuguese skirmishers, kicked their horses up the hill.

By rights the cavalrymen should have decimated the skirmishers. Men in a loose formation were no match for swift cavalry and the French, half of them dragoons and the other half hussars, had drawn their long swords or curved sabres and were anticipating some practice cuts on helpless men. The Portuguese were armed with muskets and rifles, but once the guns were fired there would be no time to reload before the surviving horsemen reached them, and an empty gun was no defence against a dragoon’s long blade. The cavalry were curving around to assault the flank of the line, a dozen horsemen approaching four Portuguese on foot, but the ridge was too steep for the horses, which began to labour. The advantage of the cavalry was speed, but the ridge stole their speed so that the horses were struggling and a rifle cracked, the smoke jetting above the grass, and a horse stumbled, twisted away and collapsed. Another two rifles fired and the French, realizing that the ridge was their enemy, turned away and galloped recklessly downhill. The unhorsed hussar followed on foot, abandoning his dying horse with its precious equipment to the Portuguese who cheered their small victory.

‘I’m not sure the cazadores had orders to do that,’ a voice said behind Sharpe, who turned to see that Major Hogan had come to the ridge. ‘Hello, Richard,’ Hogan said cheerfully, ‘you look unhappy.’ He held out his hand for Sharpe’s telescope.

‘Cazadores?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Hunters. It’s what the Portuguese call their skirmishers.’ Hogan was staring at the brown-coated skirmishers as he spoke. ‘It’s rather a good name, don’t you think? Hunters? Better than greenjackets.’

‘I’ll stay a greenjacket,’ Sharpe said.

Hogan watched the cazadores for a few moments. Their riflemen had begun firing at the French on the spur, and that enemy prudently backed away. The Portuguese stayed where they were, not going down to the spur where the horsemen could attack them, content to have made their demonstration. Two guns fired, the shells falling into the empty space between the cazadores and the remaining French. ‘The Peer will be very unhappy,’ Hogan said. ‘He detests gunners firing at hopeless targets. It just reveals where his batteries are placed and it does no damn harm to the enemy.’ He turned the telescope to the valley and spent a long time looking at the enemy encampments beyond the stream. ‘We reckon Monsieur Masséna has sixty thousand men,’ he said, ‘and maybe a hundred guns.’

‘And us, sir?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Fifty thousand and sixty,’ Hogan said, giving Sharpe back the telescope, ‘and half of ours are Portuguese.’

There was something in his tone that caught Sharpe’s attention. ‘Is that bad?’ he asked.

‘We’ll see, won’t we?’ Hogan said, then stamped his foot on the turf. ‘But we do have this.’ He meant the ridge.

‘Those lads seem eager enough.’ Sharpe nodded at the cazadores who were now retreating up the hill.

‘Eagerness in new troops is quickly wiped away by gunfire,’ Hogan said.

‘I doubt we’ll find out,’ Sharpe said. ‘The Crapauds won’t attack up here. They’re not mad.’

‘I certainly wouldn’t want to attack up this slope,’ Hogan agreed. ‘My suspicion is that they’ll spend the day staring at us, then go away.’

‘Back to Spain?’

‘Good Lord, no. If they did but know it there’s a fine road that loops round the top of this ridge,’ he pointed north, ‘and they don’t need to fight us here at all. They’ll find that road eventually. Pity, really. This would be a grand place to give them a bloody nose. But they may come. They reckon the Portuguese aren’t up to scratch, so perhaps they’ll think it’s worth an attempt.’

‘Are the Portuguese up to scratch?’ Sharpe asked. The gunfire had ended, leaving scorched grass and small patches of smoke on the spur. The French, denied their game of dare, were drifting back towards their lines.

‘We’ll find out about the Portuguese if the French decide to have at us,’ Hogan said grimly, then smiled. ‘Can you come for supper tonight?’

‘Tonight?’ Sharpe was surprised by the question.

‘I spoke with Colonel Lawford,’ Hogan said, ‘and he’s happy to spare you, so long as the French aren’t being a nuisance. Six o’clock, Richard, at the monastery. You know where that is?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Go north,’ Hogan pointed up the ridge, ‘until you see a great stone wall. Find a gap in it, go downhill through the trees until you discover a path and follow that till you see rooftops. There’ll be three of us sitting down.’

‘Three?’ Sharpe asked suspiciously.

‘You,’ Hogan said, ‘me and Major Ferreira.’

‘Ferreira!’ Sharpe exclaimed. ‘Why’s that slimy piece of traitorous shit having supper with us?’

Hogan sighed. ‘Has it occurred to you, Richard, that the two tons of flour might have been a bribe? Something to exchange for information?’

‘Was it?’

‘Ferreira says so. Do I believe him? I’m not sure. But whatever, Richard, I think he regrets what happened and wants to make his peace with us. It was his idea to have supper, and I must say I think it decent of him.’ Hogan saw Sharpe’s reluctance. ‘Truly, Richard. We don’t want resentments to fester between allies, do we?’

‘We don’t, sir?’

‘Six o’clock, Richard,’ Hogan said firmly, ‘and try to convey the impression that you’re enjoying yourself.’ The Irishman smiled, then walked back to the ridge’s crest where officers were pacing off the ground to determine where each battalion would be positioned. Sharpe wished he had found a good excuse to miss the supper. It was not Hogan’s company he wanted to avoid, but the Portuguese Major, and he felt increasingly bitter as he sat in the unseasonal warmth, watching the wind stir the heather beneath which an army, sixty thousand strong, had come to contest the ridge of Bussaco.

Sharpe spent the afternoon bringing the company books up to date, helped by Clayton, the company clerk, who had the annoying habit of saying the words aloud as he wrote them. ‘Isaiah Tongue, deceased,’ he said to himself, then blew on the ink. ‘Does he have a widow, sir?’

‘Don’t think so.’

‘He’s owed four shillings and sixpence halfpenny is why I ask.’

‘Put it in the company fund.’

‘If we ever gets any wages,’ Clayton said gloomily. The company fund was where stray money went, not that there ever was much stray money, but wages owed to the dead were put there and, once in a while, it was spent on brandy, or to pay the company wives for the laundry. Some of those wives had come to the ridge’s crest where, joined by scores of civilians, they were gazing down at the French. The civilians had all been ordered to go south, to find the safety of the countryside around Lisbon that was protected by the Lines of Torres Vedras, but plainly many had disobeyed for there were scores of Portuguese folk gawping at the invaders. Some of the spectators had brought bread, cheese and wine and now sat in groups eating and talking and pointing at the French, and a dozen monks, all with bare feet, were among them.

‘Why don’t they wear shoes?’ Clayton asked.

‘God knows.’

Clayton frowned disapprovingly at a monk who had joined one of the small groups eating on the ridge. ‘Déjeuner à la fourchette,’ he said, sniffing with disapproval.

‘Day-jay what?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Dinner with a fork,’ Clayton explained. He had been a footman in a great house before he joined the South Essex, and had a great knowledge of the gentry’s strange ways. ‘It’s what people of quality do, sir, when they don’t want to spend a lot of money. Give ’em food and a fork and let ’em wander round the grounds sniffing the bloody flowers. All titter and giggle in the garden.’ He frowned at the monks. ‘Shoeless bloody papist monks,’ he said. The gowned men were not monks at all, but friars of the Discalced Carmelite order, two of whom were gravely inspecting a nine-pounder cannon. ‘And you should see inside their bloody monastery, sir,’ Clayton went on. ‘The altar in one of the chapels is smothered with wooden tits.’

Sharpe gaped at Clayton. ‘It’s smothered with what?’

‘Wooden tits, sir, all painted to look real. Got nipples and everything! I took the ration returns down there, sir, and one of the guards showed me. I couldn’t believe my eyes! Mind you, them monks ain’t allowed the real things, are they, so perhaps they make do as best they can. Punishment book now, sir?’

‘See if you can scuff up some tea instead,’ Sharpe suggested.

He drank the tea on the crest. The French were plainly not planning to attack this day for their troops were scattered about the bivouacs near the villages. Their numbers had grown so that the low ground was now dark with men, while nearer the ridge shirtsleeved gunners were piling shot beside the newly placed batteries. The position of those batteries suggested where the French would attack, if indeed they did, and Sharpe saw that the South Essex would be just to the left of any assault aimed up the rough southern track that had been barricaded near its top with felled trees, presumably to deter the French from dragging their artillery up towards the crest. More French guns were crowded close to the road at the northern end of the ridge, which suggested there would be two assaults, and Sharpe supposed they would be like every other French attack he had ever endured: great columns of men advancing to the beat of massed drums, hoping to batter their way through the Anglo-Portuguese line like giant rams. The vast columns were supposed to overawe inexperienced troops and Sharpe looked to his left where the officers of a Portuguese battalion were watching the enemy. Would they stand? The Portuguese army had been reorganized in the last few months, but they were enduring the third invasion of their country in three years, and so far no one could pretend that the Portuguese army had covered itself in glory.

There was a parade and inspection of kit in the late afternoon, and when it was done Sharpe walked north along the ridge until he saw the high stone wall enclosing a great wood. The Portuguese and British soldiers, wanting passage through the wall, had knocked gaps in it and Sharpe negotiated one such breach and went into the trees, eventually finding a path which led downhill. There were odd-looking brick sheds beside the path, equally spaced, each about the size of a gardener’s potting shed, and Sharpe stopped at the first to peer through the door which was made of iron bars. Inside were clay statues, life-size, showing a group of women clustered about a half-naked man and then Sharpe saw the crown of thorns and realized the central figure must be Jesus and that the brick sheds had to be part of the monastery. All of the small buildings had the eerie statues, and at several of the shrines shawled women were kneeling in prayer. A very pretty girl was beside another, listening shyly to an impassioned Portuguese officer who paused, embarrassed, as Sharpe walked by. The officer began his harangue again as soon as Sharpe had gone down a flight of stone steps that led to the monastery. An ancient and gnarled olive tree grew by the entrance and a dozen saddled horses were tethered to its branches, while two redcoats stood guard by the doorway. They ignored Sharpe as he ducked through the low archway into a dark passageway lined with doors that were covered with thick layers of cork. One of the doors was open and Sharpe looked inside to see a shirtsleeved surgeon in a monk’s small cell. The surgeon was sharpening a scalpel. ‘I’m open for trade,’ he said cheerfully.

‘Not today, sir. Do you know where I’ll find Major Hogan?’

‘End of the passage, door on the right.’

The supper was awkward. They ate in one of the small cells that was lined with cork to keep out the cold of the coming winter, and their meal was a stew of goat and beans, with coarse bread, cheese and a plentiful supply of wine. Hogan did his best to keep the conversation moving, but Sharpe had little to say to Major Ferreira who never referred to the events on the hilltop where Sharpe had burned the telegraph tower. Instead he talked of his time in Brazil where he had commanded a fort in one of the Portuguese settlements. ‘The women are beautiful!’ Ferreira exclaimed. ‘The most beautiful women in all the world!’

‘Including the slaves?’ Sharpe asked, causing Hogan, who knew Sharpe was trying to turn the subject to the Major’s brother, to roll his eyes.

‘The slaves are the prettiest!’ Ferreira said. ‘And so obliging.’

‘Not much choice,’ Sharpe observed sourly. ‘Your brother didn’t give them any, did he?’

Hogan tried to intervene, but Major Ferreira stilled his protest. ‘My brother, Mister Sharpe?’

‘He was a slaver, yes?’

‘My brother has been many things,’ Ferreira said. ‘As a child he was beaten because the monks who taught us wanted him to be pious. He is not pious. My father beat him because he would not read his books, but the beating did not make him a reader. He was happiest with the servants’ children, he ran wild with them until my mother could take his wildness no longer and so he was sent to the nuns of Santo Espírito. They tried to beat the spirit from him, but he ran away. He was thirteen then, and he came back sixteen years later. He came back rich and quite determined, Mister Sharpe, that no one would ever beat him again.’

‘I did,’ Sharpe said.

‘Richard!’ Hogan remonstrated.

Ferreira ignored Hogan, staring at Sharpe across the candles. ‘He has not forgotten,’ he said quietly.

‘But it’s all cleared up,’ Hogan said. ‘An accident! Apologies have been made. Try some of this cheese, Major.’ He pushed a chipped plate of cheese across the table. ‘Major Ferreira and I, Richard, have been questioning deserters all afternoon.’

‘French?’

‘Lord, no. Portuguese.’ Hogan explained that, following the fall of Almeida, scores of that fortress’s Portuguese garrison had volunteered into the Portuguese Legion, a French unit. ‘It seems they did it,’ Hogan explained, ‘because it gave them a chance to get near our lines and desert. Over thirty came in this evening. And they’re all saying that the French will attack in the morning.’

‘You believe them?’

‘I believe they are telling the truth as they know it,’ Hogan said, ‘and their orders were to make ready for an attack. What they don’t know, of course, is whether Masséna will change his mind.’

‘Monsieur Masséna,’ Ferreira remarked acidly, ‘is too busy with his mistress to think sensibly about battle.’

‘His mistress?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Mademoiselle Henriette Leberton,’ Hogan said, amused, ‘who is eighteen years old, Richard, while Monsieur Masséna is what? Fifty-one? No, fifty-two. Nothing distracts an old man so effectively as young flesh which makes Mademoiselle Leberton one of our more valued allies. His Majesty’s government should pay her an allowance. A guinea a night, perhaps?’

When the supper was eaten Ferreira insisted on showing Hogan and Sharpe the shrine where, as Clayton had said, wooden breasts lay on an altar. A score of small candles flickered around the weird objects and dozens of other candles had burned down to wax puddles. ‘Women bring the breasts,’ Ferreira explained, ‘to be cured of diseases. Women’s diseases.’ He yawned, then pulled a watch from his waistcoat pocket. ‘I must get back to the ridge top,’ he said. ‘An early night, I think. Perhaps the enemy will come at dawn.’

‘Let’s hope so,’ Hogan said.

Ferreira made the sign of the cross, bowed to the altar and left. Sharpe listened as the sound of the Major’s spurred boots faded down the passage. ‘What the hell was that all about?’ he asked Hogan.

‘What was what about, Richard?’

‘That supper!’

‘He was being friendly. Showing you there are no hard feelings.’

‘But there are! He said his brother hadn’t forgotten.’

‘Not forgotten, but persuaded to let the matter rest. And so should you.’

‘I wouldn’t trust that bugger as far as I can spit,’ Sharpe said, then had to step back because the door had been pushed wide open and a noisily cheerful group of British officers stepped into the small room. One man alone was not in uniform, wearing instead a blue top coat and a white silk stock. It was Lord Wellington, who glanced at Sharpe, but appeared not to notice him.

Instead the General nodded to Hogan. ‘Come to worship, Major?’ he asked.

‘I was showing Mister Sharpe the sights, my lord.’

‘I doubt Mister Sharpe needs to see replications,’ Wellington said. ‘He probably sees more of the real article than most of us, eh?’ He spoke genially enough, but with an edge of scorn, then looked directly at Sharpe. ‘I hear you did your duty three days ago, Mister Sharpe,’ he said.

Sharpe was confused, first by the sudden change of tone and then by the statement, which seemed strange after Hogan’s earlier reproof. ‘I hope so, my lord,’ he answered carefully.

‘Can’t leave food for the French,’ the General said, turning back to the modelled breasts, ‘and I would have thought I had made that stratagem entirely clear.’ The last few words were said harshly and left the other officers silent. Then Wellington smiled and gestured at the votive breasts. ‘Can’t quite imagine these things in Saint Paul’s,’ he went on, ‘can you, Hogan?’

‘They might improve the place, my lord.’

‘Indeed they might. I shall advert the matter to the Dean.’ He gave his horse neigh of a laugh, then abruptly looked at Hogan again. ‘Any news from Trant?’

‘None, my lord.’

‘Let us hope that is good news.’ The General nodded at Hogan, ignored Sharpe again and led his guests back to wherever they were having supper.

‘Trant?’ Sharpe asked.

‘There’s a road round the top of the ridge,’ Hogan said, ‘and we have a cavalry vedette there and, I trust, some Portuguese militia under Colonel Trant. They are under orders to alert us if they see any sign of the enemy, but no word has come, so we must hope Masséna is ignorant of the route. If he thinks his only road to Lisbon is up this hill, then up this hill he must come. I must say, unlikely as it seems, that he probably will attack.’

‘And maybe at dawn,’ Sharpe said, ‘so I must get some sleep.’ He grinned at Hogan. ‘So I was right about bloody Ferragus and you were wrong?’

Hogan returned the grin. ‘It is very ungentlemanly to gloat, Richard.’

‘How did Wellington know?’

‘I suppose Major Ferreira complained to him. He said he didn’t, but …’ Hogan shrugged.

‘You can’t trust that Portuguese bugger,’ Sharpe said. ‘Get one of your nasties to slit his throat.’

‘You’re the only nasty I know,’ Hogan said, ‘and it’s past your bedtime. So good night, Richard.’

It was not late yet, probably no more than nine o’clock, but the sky was black dark and the temperature had fallen sharply. A wind had come from the west to bring cold air from the distant sea and a mist was forming among the trees as Sharpe climbed back to the path where the strange statues were housed in their brick huts. The path was deserted now. The bulk of the army was up on the ridge and any troops bivouacking behind the line were encamped around the monastery where their fires offered some small light that filtered through the wood to throw Sharpe’s monstrous shadow flickering across tree trunks, but that small light faded as Sharpe climbed higher. There were no fires on the ridge top because Wellington had ordered that none were to be lit so that their glow could not betray to the French where the allied army was concentrated, though Sharpe suspected the enemy must have guessed. The lack of campfires made the upper hill bleakly dark. The mist thickened. Far off, beyond the wall that encircled the monastery and its forest, Sharpe could hear singing coming from the British and Portuguese encampments, but the loudest noise was his own footsteps on the pine needles that carpeted the path. The first of the shrines came into sight, lit from inside by votive candles that cast a small hazy glow through the chill mist. A black-gowned monk knelt in prayer by the last shrine and, as Sharpe passed, he thought of offering the man a greeting, then decided against interrupting the monk’s devotions, but just then the cowled man lashed out, catching Sharpe behind his left knee, and two more men came from behind the shrine, one with a cudgel that smacked into Sharpe’s belly. He went down hard, his metal scabbard clanging against the ground. He twisted away, trying to draw the sword, but the two men who had come from behind the shrine seized his arms and dragged him into the building where there was a small space in front of the statues. They kicked some candles aside to make more room. One drew Sharpe’s sword and tossed it onto the path outside, while the cowled monk pushed back his hood.

It was Ferragus, vast and tall, filling the shrine with his menace. ‘You cost me a lot of money,’ he said in his strongly accented English. Sharpe was still on the ground. He tried to stand up, but one of Ferragus’s two companions kicked him in the shoulder and forced him back. ‘A lot of money,’ Ferragus said heavily. ‘You wish to pay me now?’ Sharpe said nothing. He needed a weapon. He had a folding knife in one pocket, but he knew he would never have time to pull it out, let alone extract the blade. ‘How much money do you have?’ Ferragus asked. Sharpe still said nothing. ‘Or would you rather fight me?’ Ferragus went on. ‘Bare knuckles, Captain, toe to toe.’

Sharpe made a curt suggestion of what Ferragus could do and the big man smiled and spoke to his men in Portuguese. They attacked with their boots, kicking Sharpe, who drew up his knees to shield his belly. He guessed they were ordered to disable him and thus leave him to Ferragus’s mercies, but the shrine was small, the space left by the statues cramped and the two men got in each other’s way. Their kicks still hurt. Sharpe tried to lunge up at them, but a boot caught him on the side of the face and he fell back heavily, rocking the kneeling image of Mary Magdalene, and that gave him his weapon. He hammered the statue with his right elbow, smacking its knee so hard that the clay shattered and Sharpe snatched up one shard that was nearly a foot long and ended in a wicked point. He stabbed the makeshift dagger at the nearest man, aiming at his groin, but the man twisted aside so that the clay sliced into his inner thigh. The man grunted. Sharpe was up from the floor now, using his head as a battering ram that he thumped into the wounded man’s belly. A fist caught him on the side of the nose, a boot slammed into his ribs, but he lunged the clay dagger at Ferragus, slicing it along the big man’s jawbone, then a mighty blow on the side of his head threw him back and he fell against Christ’s clay lap. Ferragus ordered his men to get out of the shrine, to give him room, and he punched Sharpe again, delivering a ringing blow on the temple, and Sharpe let go of his makeshift knife, put his arm round the Son of God’s neck and jerked it hard so that the whole head came clean off. Ferragus threw a straight left jab and Sharpe dodged it, then came off the ground to ram the broken head with its crown of thorns up into Ferragus’s face. The hollow clay skull cracked apart as it hit, its jagged edges gouging deep cuts in the big man’s cheeks, and Sharpe twisted to his left as Ferragus recoiled. Sharpe scrambled through the door, trying to reach his sword, but the two men were outside and they fell on him. Sharpe heaved, managed to half turn over, and then got a kick in the belly that drove all the wind out of him.

Ferragus had kicked him, and now he ordered his two men to pull Sharpe up. ‘You can’t fight,’ he told Sharpe, ‘you’re feeble,’ and he began punching, using short, hard blows that looked to have little force in them, but they felt to Sharpe as if he was being kicked by a horse. The blows started at his belly, worked up his chest, then one slammed into his cheek and blood started inside Sharpe’s mouth. He tried to free himself from the two men’s grip, but they held him too tight and he was dazed, confused, half conscious. A fist caught him in the throat and now he could hardly breathe, gagging for air, and Ferragus laughed. ‘My brother said I shouldn’t kill you, but why not? Who’ll miss you?’ He spat into Sharpe’s face. ‘Let him go,’ he said to the two men in Portuguese, then changed to English. ‘Let’s see if this Englishman can fight.’

The two men stepped away from Sharpe who spat blood, blinked, and staggered two paces backwards. His sword was out of reach, and even if he could have fetched it he doubted he would have the strength to use it. Ferragus smiled at his weakness, stepped towards him and Sharpe staggered again, this time half falling sideways, and he put his hand down to steady himself and there was a stone there, a big stone, the size of a ration biscuit, and he picked it up just as Ferragus threw a right fist intended to knock Sharpe down for ever. Sharpe, still half aware, reacted instinctively, blocking the fist with the stone, and Ferragus’s knuckles cracked on the rock and the big man flinched and stepped back, astonished by the sudden pain. Sharpe tried to step towards him and use the stone again, but a left jab banged into his chest and threw him back down onto the path.

‘Now you’re a dead man,’ Ferragus said. He was massaging his broken knuckles, and was in such pain from them that he wanted to kick Sharpe to death. He began by aiming a massive boot at Sharpe’s groin but the blow landed short, on the thigh, because Sharpe had managed to twist feebly to one side, and Ferragus kicked his leg away, drew his boot back again and suddenly there was a light on the path behind him and a voice calling.

‘What’s going on!’ the voice shouted. ‘Hold still! Whoever you are, hold still!’ The boots of two or three men sounded on the path. The approaching men must have heard the fight, but they could surely see nothing in the thickening mist and Ferragus did not wait for them. He shouted at his two men and they ran past Sharpe, down through the trees, and Sharpe curled up on the ground, trying to squeeze the pain from his ribs and belly. There were thick gobs of blood in his mouth and his nose was bleeding. The light came nearer, a lantern held by a redcoat. ‘Sir?’ one of the three men asked. He was a sergeant and had the dark-blue facings of the provosts, the army’s policemen.

‘I’m all right,’ Sharpe grunted.

‘What happened?’

‘Thieves,’ Sharpe said. ‘God knows who they were. Just thieves. Jesus. Help me up.’

Two of them lifted him while the Sergeant retrieved his sword and shako. ‘How many were there?’ the Sergeant asked.

‘Three. Bastards ran away.’

‘You want to see a surgeon, sir?’ The Sergeant flinched as he saw Sharpe’s face in the lantern light. ‘I think you should.’

‘Christ, no.’ He sheathed the sword, put his shako on his bruised skull and leaned against the shrine. ‘I’ll be all right,’ he said.

‘We can take you to the monastery, sir.’

‘No. I’ll make my way up to the ridge.’ He thanked the three men, wished them a peaceful night, waited until he had recovered some strength, and then limped back uphill, through the wall and down the ridge to find his company.

Colonel Lawford had pitched a tent close to the new road that had been hacked along the ridge top. The tent flaps were open, revealing a candlelit table on which silver and crystal gleamed, and the Colonel heard a sentry challenge Sharpe, heard Sharpe’s muffled response and shouted through the open flaps, ‘Sharpe! Is that you?’

Sharpe thought briefly about pretending not to have heard, but he was plainly within earshot so he turned towards the tent. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Come and have some brandy.’ Lawford was entertaining Majors Forrest and Leroy, and with them was Lieutenant Slingsby. All had on greatcoats for, after the last few days of brutal heat, the night was suddenly winter cold.

Forrest made space on a bench made out of wooden ammunition crates, then stared up at Sharpe. ‘What happened to you?’

‘Took a tumble, sir,’ Sharpe said. His voice was thick, and he leaned to one side and spat out a glutinous gobbet of blood. ‘Took a tumble.’

‘A tumble?’ Lawford was gazing at Sharpe with an expression of horror. ‘Your nose is bleeding.’

‘Mostly stopped, sir,’ Sharpe said, sniffing blood. He remembered the handkerchief that had been used as a white flag at the telegraph station and fished it out. It seemed a pity to stain the fine linen with blood, but he put it over his nose, flinching at the pain. Then he noticed his right hand was cut, presumably by the makeshift clay dagger.

‘A tumble?’ Major Leroy echoed the Colonel’s question.

‘Treacherous path down there, sir.’

‘You’ve got a black eye too,’ Lawford said.

‘If you’re not up to scratch,’ Slingsby said, ‘then I’ll happily command the company tomorrow, Sharpe.’ Slingsby was high-coloured and sweating, as if he had drunk too much. He looked to Colonel Lawford and, because he was nervous, gave a snort of laughter. ‘Be honoured to command, sir,’ he added quickly.

Sharpe gave the Lieutenant a look that would have killed. ‘I was hurt worse than this,’ he said icily, ‘when Sergeant Harper and I took that damned Eagle on your badge.’

Slingsby stiffened, appalled at Sharpe’s tone, and the other officers looked embarrassed.

‘Have some brandy, Sharpe,’ Lawford said emolliently, pouring it from a decanter and pushing the glass across the trestle table. ‘How was Major Hogan?’

Sharpe was hurting. His ribs were like strips of fire and it took him a moment to comprehend the question and find an answer. ‘He’s confident, sir.’

‘I should hope so,’ Lawford said. ‘Aren’t we all? Did you see the Peer?’

‘The Peer?’ Slingsby asked. He stumbled slightly on the word, then tossed down the rest of his brandy and helped himself to more.

‘Lord Wellington,’ Lawford explained. ‘So did you see him, Sharpe?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I hope you remembered me to him?’

‘Of course, sir.’ Sharpe told the required lie and forced himself to add another. ‘And he asked me to present his regards.’

‘Very civil of him,’ Lawford said, plainly pleased. ‘And does he think the French will come up and dance tomorrow?’

‘He didn’t say, sir.’

‘Perhaps this fog will deter them,’ Major Leroy said, peering out of the tent where the haze was perceptibly thickening.

‘Or it will encourage them,’ Forrest said. ‘Our gunners can’t aim into fog.’

Leroy was watching Sharpe. ‘Do you need a doctor?’

‘No, sir,’ Sharpe lied. His ribs hurt, his skull was throbbing and one of his upper teeth was loose. His belly was a mass of pain, his thigh hurt and he was angry. ‘Major Hogan,’ he forced himself to change the subject, ‘thinks the French will attack.’

‘Then we’d best keep a keen eye in the morning,’ Lawford said, hinting that the evening was over. The officers took the hint, standing and thanking the Colonel, who held out a hand to Sharpe. ‘Stay a moment, if you will, Sharpe.’

Slingsby, who looked the worse for drink, drained his glass, banged it down and clicked his heels. ‘Thank you, William,’ he said to Lawford, presuming on their relationship to use the Colonel’s Christian name.

‘Good night, Cornelius,’ Lawford said, and waited until the three officers had gone from the tent and were lost in the mist. ‘He drank rather a lot. Still, I suppose on the eve of a man’s first battle a little fortification isn’t out of order. Sit, Sharpe, sit. Drink some brandy.’ He took a glass himself. ‘Was it really a tumble? You look as if you’ve been in the wars.’

‘Dark in the trees, sir,’ Sharpe said woodenly, ‘and I missed my footing on some steps.’

‘You must take more care, Sharpe,’ Lawford said, leaning forward to light a cigar from one of the candles. ‘It’s gone damned cold, hasn’t it?’ He waited for a response, but Sharpe said nothing and the Colonel sighed. ‘I wanted to talk to you,’ he went on between puffs, ‘about your new fellows. Young Iliffe shaping up well, is he?’

‘He’s an ensign, sir. If he survives a year he might have a chance of growing up.’

‘We were all ensigns once,’ Lawford said, ‘and mighty oaks from tiny acorns grow, eh?’

‘He’s still a bloody small acorn,’ Sharpe said.

‘But his father’s a friend of mine, Sharpe. He farms a few acres near Benfleet and he wanted me to look after his son.’

‘I’ll look after him,’ Sharpe said.

‘I’m sure you will,’ Lawford said, ‘and what about Cornelius?’

‘Cornelius?’ Sharpe asked, wanting time to think. He swilled his bloody mouth out with brandy, spat it onto the ground, then drank some and fancied it took away some of the hurt.

‘How’s Cornelius doing?’ Lawford asked pleasantly. ‘Being useful, is he?’

‘He has to learn our ways,’ Sharpe said warily.

‘Of course he must, of course. But I particularly wanted him to be with you.’

‘Why, sir?’

‘Why?’ The Colonel seemed taken aback by the direct question, but then waved the cigar as if to say the answer was obvious. ‘I think he’s a capital fellow, and I’ll be honest with you, Sharpe, I’m not sure young Knowles possesses the right verve for skirmishing.’

‘He’s a good officer,’ Sharpe said indignantly, and then wished he had not spoken so forcibly for the pain in his ribs seemed to stab right to his heart.

‘Oh, none finer!’ Lawford agreed hastily. ‘And an admirable character, but you skirmishers aren’t dull fellows, are you? You’re the whippers-in! I need my light company to be audacious! Aggressive! Astute!’ Each quality was accompanied by a thump that rattled the glass and silverware on the table, but the Colonel paused after the third, evidently realizing that astuteness lacked the force of audacity and aggression. He thought for a few seconds, trying to find a more impressive word, then carried on without thinking of it. ‘I believe Cornelius has those qualities and I look to you, Sharpe, to bring him on.’ Lawford paused again, as if expecting Sharpe to respond, but when the rifleman said nothing the Colonel looked acutely embarrassed. ‘The nub of the matter is, Sharpe, that Cornelius seems to think you don’t like him.’

‘Most people think that, sir,’ Sharpe said woodenly.

‘Do they?’ Lawford looked surprised. ‘I suppose they might. Not everyone knows you as well as I do.’ He paused to draw on his cigar. ‘Do you ever miss India, Sharpe?’

‘India,’ Sharpe responded cautiously. He and Lawford had served there together when Lawford had been a lieutenant and Sharpe a private. ‘I liked it well enough.’

‘There are regiments in India that could use an experienced officer,’ Lawford said casually and Sharpe felt a stab of betrayal because the words suggested the Colonel did want to be rid of him. He said nothing, and Lawford seemed unaware of having given any offence. ‘So I can reassure Cornelius that all is well?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Sharpe said, then stood. ‘I must go and inspect the picquets, sir.’

‘Of course you must,’ Lawford said, not hiding his frustration with the conversation. ‘We should talk more often, Sharpe.’

Sharpe took his battered shako and walked out into the fog-shrouded night. He picked his way through the thick darkness, going across the ridge’s wide crest and then some short way down the eastern slope until he could just see the mist-blurred string of enemy fires in the valley’s deep darkness. Let them come, he thought, let them come. If he could not murder Ferragus then he would take out his anger on the French. He heard footsteps behind him, but did not turn round. ‘Evening, Pat,’ he said.

‘What happened to you?’ Harper must have seen Sharpe inside the Colonel’s tent and had followed him down the slope.

‘That bloody Ferragus and two of his coves.’

‘Tried to kill you?’

Sharpe shook his head. ‘Bloody nearly succeeded. Would have done, except three provosts came along.’

‘Provosts! Never thought they’d be useful. And how is Mister Ferragus?’

‘I hurt him, but not enough. He beat me, Pat. Beat me bloody.’

Harper thought about that. ‘And what did you tell the Colonel?’

‘That I had a tumble.’

‘So that’s what I’ll tell the lads when they notice you’re better-looking than usual. And tomorrow I’ll keep an eye open for Mister Ferragus. You think he’ll be back for more?’

‘No, he’s buggered off.’

‘We’ll find him, sir, we’ll find him.’

‘But not tomorrow, Pat. We’re going to be busy tomorrow. Major Hogan reckons the Frogs are coming up this hill.’

Which was a comforting thought to end the day, and the two sat, listening to the singing from the dark encampments behind. A dog began barking somewhere in the British lines and immediately dozens of others echoed the sound, prompting angry shouts as the beasts were told to be quiet, and slowly peace descended again, all but for one dog that would not stop. On and on it went, barking frantically, until there was the sudden harsh crack of a musket or pistol.

‘That’s the way to do it,’ Harper said.

Sharpe said nothing. He just gazed down the hill to where the French fires were a dull, hazed glow in the mist. ‘But what will we do about Mister Ferragus?’ Harper asked. ‘He can’t be allowed to get away with assaulting a rifleman.’

‘If we lose tomorrow,’ Sharpe said, ‘we’ll have to retreat through Coimbra. That’s where he lives.’

‘So we’ll find him there,’ Harper said grimly, ‘and give him what he deserves. But what if we win tomorrow?’

‘God only knows,’ Sharpe said, and nodded down the hill to the misted firelight. There were thousands of fires. ‘Follow those bastards back to Spain, I suppose,’ he went on, ‘and fight them there.’ And go on fighting them, he thought, month after month, year after year, until the very crack of doom. But it would begin tomorrow, with sixty thousand Frenchmen who wanted to take a hill. Tomorrow.

Marshal Ney, second in command of l’Armée de Portugal, reckoned the whole of the enemy army was on the ridge. There were no fires in the high darkness to betray their presence, but Ney could smell them. A soldier’s instinct. The bastards were laying a trap, hoping the French would stroll up the hill to be slaughtered, and Ney reckoned they should be obliged. Send the Eagles up the hill and beat the bastards into mincemeat, but Ney was not the man to make that decision and so he summoned an aide, Captain D’Esmenard, and told him to find Marshal Masséna. ‘Tell his highness,’ Ney said, ‘that the enemy’s waiting to be killed. Tell him to get back here fast. Tell him there’s a battle to be fought.’

Captain D’Esmenard had a journey of more than twenty miles and he had to be escorted by two hundred dragoons who clattered into the small town of Tondela long after nightfall. A tricolour flew above the porch of the house where Masséna lodged. Six sentries stood outside, their muskets tipped by bayonets that reflected the firelight of the brazier that offered a small warmth in the sudden cold.

D’Esmenard climbed the stairs and hammered on the Marshal’s door. There was silence.

D’Esmenard knocked again. This time there was a woman’s giggle followed by the distinct sound of a hand slapping flesh, then the woman laughed. ‘Who is it?’ the Marshal called.

‘A message from Marshal Ney, your highness.’ Marshal André Masséna was Duke of Rivoli and Prince of Essling.

‘From Ney?’

‘The enemy has definitely stopped, sir. They’re on the ridge.’

The girl squealed.

‘The enemy has what?’

‘Stopped, sir,’ D’Esmenard shouted through the door. ‘The Marshal believes you should come back.’ Masséna had been in the valley beneath the ridge for a few moments in the afternoon, given his opinion that the enemy would not stand and fight, and ridden back to Tondela. The girl said something and there was the sound of another slap followed by more giggling.

‘Marshal Ney believes they are offering battle, sir,’ D’Esmenard said.

‘Who are you?’ the Marshal asked.

‘Captain D’Esmenard, sir.’

‘One of Ney’s boys, eh?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Have you eaten, D’Esmenard?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Go downstairs, Captain, tell my cook to give you supper. I shall join you.’

‘Yes, sir.’ D’Esmenard paused. He heard a grunt, a sigh, then the sound of bedsprings rhythmically squeaking.

‘Are you still there, Captain?’ the Prince of Essling shouted.

D’Esmenard crept downstairs, timing his steps on the creaking stair treads to the regular bounce of the bedsprings. He ate cold chicken. And waited.

Pedro and Luis Ferreira had always been close. Luis, the oldest, the rebel, the huge, uncontrollable boy, had been the brighter of the two, and if he had not been exiled from his family, if he had not been sent to the nuns who beat and mocked him, if he had not run away from Coimbra to see the world, he might have secured an education and become a scholar, though in truth that would have been an unlikely fate for Luis. He was too big, too belligerent, too careless of his own and other men’s feelings, and so he had become Ferragus. He had sailed the world, killed men in Africa, Europe and America, had seen the sharks eat the dying slaves thrown overboard off the Brazilian coast, and then he had come home to his younger brother and the two of them, so different and yet so close, had embraced. They were brothers. Ferragus had come home rich enough to set himself up in business, rich enough to own a score of properties about the city, but Pedro insisted that he have a room in his house to use when he wished. ‘My house is your house,’ he had promised Ferragus, and though Major Ferreira’s wife might wish otherwise she dared not protest.

Ferragus rarely used the room in his brother’s house, but on the day when the two armies faced each other at Bussaco, after his brother had promised to lure Captain Sharpe to a beating among the trees, Ferragus had promised Pedro that he would return to Coimbra and there guard the Ferreira household until the pattern of the French campaign was clear. Folk were supposed to be fleeing the city, going to Lisbon, but if the French were stopped then no such flight would be necessary, and whether they were stopped or not, there was unrest in the streets because people were unhappy with the orders to abandon their homes. Ferreira’s house, grand and rich, bought with the legacy of his father’s wealth, would be a likely place for thieves to plunder, though none would dare touch it if Ferragus and his men were there and so, after his failure to kill the impudent rifleman, the big man rode to keep his promise.

The journey from the ridge of Bussaco to the city of Coimbra was less than twenty miles, but the mist and the darkness slowed Ferragus and his men, so it was just before dawn that they rode past the imposing university buildings and down the hill to his brother’s house. There was a squeal from the hinges of the gates to the stable yard where Ferragus dismounted, abandoned his horse and pushed into the kitchen to thrust his injured hand into a vat of cool water. Sweet Jesus, he thought, but the damned rifleman had to die. Had to die. Ferragus brooded on the unfairness of life as he used a cloth to wipe the wounds on his jawbone and cheeks. He winced at the pain, though it was not as bad as the throbbing in his groin that persisted from their confrontation at the shrine. Next time, Ferragus promised himself, next time he would face Mister Sharpe with nothing but fists and he would kill the Englishman as he had killed so many other men, by pulverizing him into a bloody, whimpering mess. Sharpe had to die, Ferragus had sworn it, and if he did not keep the oath then his men would think he was weakening.

He was being weakened anyway. The war had seen to that. Many of his victims had fled Coimbra and its surrounding farmlands, gone to take shelter in Lisbon. That temporary setback would pass, and, anyway, Ferragus hardly needed to go on extorting money. He was rich, but he liked to keep cash flowing for he did not trust the banks. He liked land, and the vast profits of his slaving years had been invested in vineyards, farms, houses and shops. He owned every brothel in Coimbra and scarcely a student at the university did not live in a house owned by Ferragus. He was rich, rich beyond his childhood dreams, but he could never be rich enough. He loved money. He yearned for it, loved it, caressed it, dreamed of it.

He rinsed his jaw again and saw how the water dripped pink from the cloth. Capitâo Sharpe. He said the name aloud, feeling the pain in his mouth. He looked at his hand that was hurting. He reckoned he had cracked some knuckle bones, but he could still move his fingers so the damage could not be that bad. He dipped the knuckles in the water, then turned suddenly as the kitchen door opened and his brother’s governess, Miss Fry, dressed in a nightdress and a heavy woollen gown, came into the kitchen. She was carrying a candle and gave a small start of surprise when she saw her employer’s brother. ‘I am sorry, senhor,’ she said, and made to leave.

‘Come in,’ Ferragus growled.

Sarah would rather have gone back to her room, but she had heard the horses clattering in the stable yard and, hoping it might be Major Ferreira with news of the French advance, she had come to the kitchen. ‘You’re hurt,’ she said.

‘I fell from my horse,’ Ferragus said. ‘Why are you up?’

‘To make tea,’ Sarah said. ‘I make it every morning. And I wondered, senhor,’ she took a kettle off the shelf, ‘whether you have news of the French.’

‘The French are pigs,’ Ferragus said, ‘which is all you need to know, so make your tea and make some for me too.’

Sarah put down the candle, opened the stove and fed kindling onto the embers. When the kindling was blazing she put more wood onto the fire. By the time the fire was properly burning there were other servants busy around the house, opening shutters and sweeping the corridors, but none came into the kitchen where Sarah hesitated before filling the kettle. The water in the big vat was bloodstained. ‘I’ll draw some from the well,’ she said.

Ferragus watched her through the open door. Miss Sarah Fry was a symbol of his brother’s aspirations. To Major Ferreira and his wife an English governess was as prized a possession as fine porcelain or crystal chandeliers or gilt furniture. Sarah proclaimed their good taste, but Ferragus regarded her as a priggish waste of his brother’s money. A typical, snobbish Englishwoman, he reckoned, and what would she turn Tomas and Maria into? Little stuck-up copies of herself? Tomas did not need manners or to know English; he needed to know how to defend himself. And Maria? Her mother could teach her manners, and so long as she was pretty, what else mattered? That was Ferragus’s view, anyway, but he had also noticed, ever since Miss Fry had come to his brother’s house, that she was pretty, more than just pretty, beautiful. Fair-skinned, fair-haired, blue-eyed, tall, elegant. ‘How old are you?’ he asked as she came back to the kitchen.

‘Is it any business of yours, senhor?’ Sarah asked briskly.

Ferragus smiled. ‘My brother sent me here to protect you all. I like to know what I’m protecting.’

‘I’m twenty-two, senhor.’ Sarah set the kettle on the stove, then stood the big brown English teapot close by so that the china would warm. She took down the tin caddy, then had nothing to do because the pot was still cold and the kettle would take long minutes to boil on the newly awakened fire so, abhorring idleness, she began polishing some spoons.

‘Are Tomas and Maria learning properly?’ Ferragus addressed her back.

‘When they apply themselves,’ Sarah said briskly.

‘Tomas tells me you hit him.’

‘Of course I hit him,’ Sarah said, ‘I am his governess.’

‘But you don’t hit Maria?’

‘Maria does not use bad language,’ Sarah said, ‘and I detest bad language.’

‘Tomas will be a man,’ Ferragus said, ‘so he will need bad language.’

‘Then he may learn it from you, senhor,’ Sarah retorted, looking Ferragus in the eye, ‘but I shall teach him not to use it in front of ladies. If he learns that alone then I shall have been useful.’

Ferragus gave a grunt that might have been amusement. He was challenged by her gaze, which showed no fear of him. He was accustomed to his brother’s other servants shrinking when he passed; they dropped their eyes and tried to become invisible, but this English girl was brazen. But also beautiful, and he marvelled at the line of her neck which was shadowed by unruly fair hair. Such white skin, he thought, so delicate. ‘You teach them French. Why?’ he asked.

‘Because the Major’s wife expects it,’ Sarah said, ‘because it is the language of diplomacy. Because possession of French is a requisite of gentility.’

Ferragus made a growling noise in his throat that was evidently a verdict on gentility, then shrugged. ‘The language will at least be useful if the French come here,’ he said.

‘If the French come here,’ Sarah said, ‘then we should be long gone. Is that not what the government has ordered?’

Ferragus flinched as he moved his right hand. ‘But perhaps they won’t come now. Not if they lose the battle.’

‘The battle?’

‘Your Lord Wellington is at Bussaco. He hopes the French will attack him.’

‘I pray they do,’ Sarah said confidently, ‘because then he will beat them.’

‘Perhaps,’ Ferragus said, ‘or perhaps your Lord Wellington will do what Sir John Moore did at La Coruña. Fight, win and run away.’

Sarah sniffed to show her opinion of that statement.

‘Os ingleses,’ Ferragus said savagely, ‘por mar.’

The English, he had said, are for the sea. It was a general belief in Portugal. The British were opportunists, looking for victory, but running from any possible defeat. They had come, they had fought, but they would not stay to the end. Os ingleses por mar.

Sarah half feared Ferragus was right, but would not admit it. ‘You say your brother sent you to protect us?’ she asked instead.

‘He did. He can’t be here. He has to stay with the army.’

‘Then I shall rely on you, senhor, to make certain I am long gone to safety if, as you say, the English take to the sea. I cannot stay here if the French come.’

‘You cannot stay here?’

‘Indeed not. I am English.’

‘I shall protect you, Miss Fry,’ Ferragus said.

‘I am glad to hear it,’ she said briskly and turned back to the kettle.

Bitch, Ferragus thought, stuck-up English bitch. ‘Forget my tea,’ he said and stalked from the kitchen.

And then, from far off, half heard, there was a noise like thunder. It rose and fell, faded to nothing, came again, and at its loudest the windows shook softly in their frames. Sarah stared into the yard and saw the cold grey mist and she knew it was not thunder she heard from so far away.

It was the French.

Because it was dawn and, at Bussaco, the guns were at work.

CHAPTER THREE

Sharpe slept badly. The ground was damp, it got colder as the night wore on and he was hurting. His damaged ribs stabbed like knives every time he moved, and when he finally abandoned sleep and stood in the pre-dawn darkness, he wanted to lie down again because of the pain. He fingered his ribs, wondering if the injury was worse than he feared. His right eye was swollen, tender to the touch and half shut.

‘You awake, sir?’ a voice called from nearby.

‘I’m dead,’ Sharpe said.

‘Mug of tea, then, sir?’ It was Matthew Dodd, a rifleman in Sharpe’s company who had been newly made up to corporal while Sharpe was away. Knowles had given Dodd the extra stripe and Sharpe approved of the promotion.

‘Thanks, Matthew,’ Sharpe said and grimaced with pain as he stooped to collect some damp scraps of wood to help make a fire. Dodd had already used a steel and flint to light some kindling that he now blew into bright flame.

‘Are we supposed to have fires, sir?’ Dodd asked.

‘We weren’t supposed to last night, Matthew, but in this damned fog who could see one? Anyway, I need some tea, so get her going.’ Sharpe added his wood, then listened to the crack and hiss of the new flames as Dodd filled a kettle with water and threw in a handful of tea leaves that he kept loose in his pouch. Sharpe added some of his own, then fed the fire with more wood.

‘Damp old morning,’ Dodd said.

‘Bloody mist.’ Sharpe could see the fog was still thick.

‘Be reveille soon,’ Dodd said, settling the kettle in the flames.

‘Can’t even be half past two yet,’ Sharpe said. Here and there along the ridge other men were lighting fires that made glowing, misted patches in the fog, but most of the army still slept. Sharpe had picquets out at the ridge’s eastern edge, but he did not need to check them for another few minutes.

‘Sergeant Harper said you fell down some steps, sir,’ Dodd said, looking at Sharpe’s bruised face.

‘Dangerous things, steps, Matthew. Especially in the dark when it’s slippery.’

‘Sexton back home died like that,’ Dodd said, his gaunt face lit by the flames. ‘He went up the church tower to fasten a new rope on the big tenor bell and he slipped. Some said he was pushed, mind, because his wife was sweet on another man.’

‘You, Matthew?’

‘Mister Sharpe!’ Dodd said, shocked. ‘Not me, no!’

The tea brewed quickly enough and Sharpe scooped some out with his tin mug and then, after thanking Dodd, went across the ridge top towards the French. He did not go down the slope, but found a small spur that jutted out close to the road. The spur, which protruded like a bastion from the ridge’s top, extended out for a hundred paces before ending in a knoll crowned with a ragged jumble of scattered boulders and it was there he expected to find the sentries. He stamped his feet as he went, wanting to alert the picquets to his presence.

‘Who’s there?’ The challenge came smartly enough, but Sharpe had expected it because Sergeant Read was doing duty.

‘Captain Sharpe.’

‘Countersign, Captain?’ Read demanded.

‘A sip of hot tea, Sergeant, if you don’t shoot me,’ Sharpe said.

Read was a stickler for following the rules, but even a Methodist could be persuaded to ignore a missing password by an offer of tea. ‘The password’s Jessica, sir,’ he told Sharpe reprovingly.

‘The Colonel’s wife, eh? Mister Slingsby forgot to tell me.’ He handed Read the mug of tea. ‘Anything nasty about?’

‘Not a thing, sir, not a thing.’

Ensign Iliffe, who was nominally in charge of the picquet, though under standing orders to do nothing without his Sergeant’s agreement, came and gawped at Sharpe.

‘Good morning, Mister Iliffe,’ Sharpe said.

‘Sir,’ the boy stammered, too scared to make conversation.

‘All quiet?’

‘I think so, sir,’ Iliffe said and stared at Sharpe’s face, not quite sure he believed the damage he saw in the half light and much too nervous to ask what had caused it.

The eastern slope dropped into the fog and darkness. Sharpe crouched, wincing at the pain in his ribs, closed his eyes and listened. He could hear men stirring on the slope above him, the clang of a kettle, the crackle of small fires being revived. A horse thumped the ground with its foot and somewhere a baby cried. None of those sounds concerned him. He was listening for something from below, but all was quiet. ‘They won’t come till dawn,’ he said, knowing that the French needed some light to find the track up the hill.

‘And you think they will come, sir?’ Read asked apprehensively.

‘That’s what their deserters say. How’s your priming?’

‘In this fog? I don’t trust it,’ Read said, then frowned at Sharpe. ‘You hurt yourself, sir?’

‘I fell down some steps,’ Sharpe said. ‘Wasn’t watching out. You’d best blow the guns out at reveille,’ he went on, ‘and I’ll warn the battalion.’ The six men of the picquet had stood guard on the rocky promontory through the darkness with loaded muskets and rifles. By now the damp air would have penetrated the priming in the lock pans and the odds were that the sparks would not light the powder. So, when the army was woken by bugle calls, the picquets would put a fresh pinch of dry powder in their pans and fire the musket to clear out the old charge and, if folk were not warned, they might think the shots meant the French had climbed through the fog. ‘Keep your eyes open till then,’ he said.

‘We’re being relieved at reveille?’ Read asked anxiously.

‘You can get a couple of hours’ sleep after stand-to,’ Sharpe said. ‘But sharpen your bayonets before you put your heads down.’

‘You think …’ Ensign Iliffe started the question, but did not finish it.

‘I don’t know what to expect,’ Sharpe answered him anyway, ‘but you don’t face battle with a blunt blade, Mister Iliffe. Show me your sabre.’

Iliffe, as befitted an officer in a skirmishing company, wore a light cavalry sabre. It was an old one, bought cheap back home, with a tarnished hilt and a worn leather grip. The Ensign gave the weapon to Sharpe who ran a thumb down its curved fore blade, then down the sharpened upper edge of the back blade. ‘Half a mile back,’ he told Iliffe, ‘there’s a regiment of Portuguese dragoons, so when it’s light go back there, find their smith, and give him a shilling to put an edge on that blade. You couldn’t skin a cat with that sabre.’ He gave the blade back, then half drew his own.

Sharpe, perversely, did not carry the light cavalry sabre. Instead he wore a heavy cavalry sword, a long and straight-bladed weapon that was ill-balanced and too heavy, but a brutal instrument in a strong man’s hands. It seemed sharp enough when he felt the fore blade, but he would still have a keener edge ground onto the sword. Money well spent, he reckoned.

He went back up to the ridge top and scrounged another mug of tea just a moment before the first bugle sounded. It was muffled, far off, for it came from the valley beneath, from the invisible French, but within a moment scores of bugles and trumpets were blasting the ridge with their clamour. ‘Stand to! Stand to!’ Major Leroy shouted. He saw Sharpe through the mist. ‘Morning, Sharpe! Damned cold one, eh? What happened to summer?’

‘I’ve told the picquets to empty their guns, sir.’

‘I won’t be alarmed,’ Leroy said, then brightened. ‘Is that tea, Sharpe?’

‘I thought Americans didn’t drink tea, sir.’

‘The loyal Americans do, Sharpe.’ Leroy, the son of parents who had fled the rebel victory in the Thirteen Colonies, stole Sharpe’s mug. ‘The rebellious sort feed their tea to the codfish.’ He drank and looked disgusted. ‘Don’t you use sugar?’

‘Never.’

Leroy took a sip and grimaced. ‘It tastes like warm horse piss,’ he said, but drained the mug nonetheless. ‘Good morning, lads! Time to shine! Fall in!’

Sergeant Harper had led the new picquet towards the rocks on the small spur where Sergeant Read ordered his men to shoot their guns out into the foggy void. Leroy called that the sound should be ignored. Lieutenant Slingsby, despite having been drunk the night before, now looked as fresh and smart as though he were mounting guard on Windsor Castle. He came from his tent, plucked his red coat straight, adjusted the angle of his sabre scabbard, then marched after the picquet. ‘You should have waited for me, Sergeant!’ he called to Harper.

‘I told him to go,’ Sharpe said.

Slingsby swivelled round, his bulging eyes showing surprise at seeing Sharpe. ‘Morning, Sharpe!’ The Lieutenant sounded indecently cheerful. ‘My word, but that’s a rare black eye! You should have put a beefsteak on it last night. Beefsteak!’ Slingsby, finding that advice funny, snorted with laughter. ‘How are you feeling? Better, I trust?’

‘Dead,’ Sharpe said, and turned back to the ridge top where the battalion was forming into line. They would stay there through the dull moments of dawn, through the dangerous time when the enemy might make a surprise attack. Sharpe, standing ahead of the light company, looked down the line and felt an unexpected surge of affection for the battalion. It was nearly six hundred men strong, most from the small villages of southern Essex, but a good few from London and a lot from Ireland, and they were mostly thieves, drunks, murderers and fools, but they had been hammered into soldiers. They knew each other’s weaknesses, liked each other’s jokes, and reckoned no battalion in God’s world was half as good as theirs. They might not be as wild as the Connaught Rangers, who were now moving up to take post to the left of the South Essex, and they were certainly not as fashionable as the Guards battalions further north, but they were dependable, stubborn, proud and confident. A ripple of laughter went through number four company and Sharpe knew, even without hearing its cause, that Horace Pearce had just made a jest and he knew his men would want the joke passed down. ‘Silence in the ranks!’ he called and wished he had kept silent because of the pain.

A Portuguese unit was formed to the battalion’s right and beyond them was a battery of Portuguese six-pounders. Useless guns, Sharpe thought, but he had seen enough nine-pounders on the ridge to know that the cannons could do some slaughter this day. He reckoned the mist was clearing, for he could see the small six-pounders more clearly with every passing minute, and when he turned north and stared at the tops of the trees beyond the monastery’s far wall he saw the whiteness thinning and shredding.

They waited the best part of an hour, but no French came. The mist drained from the ridge top, but still filled the valley like a great white river. Colonel Lawford, mounted on Lightning, rode down the battalion’s front, touching his hat in answer to the companies’ salutes. ‘We shall do well today,’ he told each company, ‘and add lustre to our reputation. Do your duty, and let the Frenchmen know they’ve met better men!’ He repeated this encouragement to the light company at the left of the line, ignored the man who asked what lustre was, then smiled down at Sharpe. ‘Come and have breakfast with me, will you, Sharpe?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good man.’ A bugle sounded from half a mile north and Lawford twisted in his saddle to find Major Forrest. ‘We can stand down, Major. Half and half, though, I think.’

Half the men stayed in line, the others were released to make tea, to eat and relieve themselves, but none was permitted to go beyond the newly made road and so vanish from the battalion’s sight. If the French came then the men were expected to be in line within half a minute. Two of the light company wives sat by a fire honing bayonets with sharpening stones and cackling with laughter at a joke told by Rifleman Hagman. Sergeant Read, off duty for the moment, was on one knee, a hand on his musket, praying. Rifleman Harris, who claimed to believe in none of the gods, was making certain that his lucky rabbit’s foot was in his pouch, while Ensign Iliffe was trying to hide behind the Colonel’s tent where he was being sick. Sharpe called to him. ‘Mister Iliffe!’

‘Sir.’ Iliffe, strands of yellowish liquid straggling from his unshaven chin, came nervously to Sharpe, who drew his sword.

‘Take that, Mister Iliffe,’ Sharpe said, pretending not to notice that the Ensign had been vomiting. ‘Find the Portuguese cavalry smith and have an edge put on it. A proper edge. One I can shave with.’ He gave the boy two shillings, realizing that his earlier advice, that Iliffe should pay a shilling himself, had been impractical because Iliffe probably did not have a penny to spare. ‘Go on with you. Bring it back to me as soon as you can.’

Robert Knowles, stripped to his waist, was shaving outside Lawford’s tent. The skin of his chest and back was milk white while his face was as dark as old wood. ‘You should grow a moustache, Robert,’ Sharpe said.

‘What a ghastly notion,’ Knowles said, peering into the mirror that was propped against the water bowl. ‘I had an uncle with a moustache and he went bankrupt. How are you feeling?’

‘Horrible.’

Knowles paused, face half lathered, razor poised by his cheek, and stared at Sharpe. ‘You look horrible. You’re to go in, Richard, the Colonel’s expecting you.’

Sharpe thought of borrowing the razor, but his jaw was still tender where he had been kicked and he reckoned he could go a day without a shave, though at the end of it his chin would be black as powder. He ducked into the tent to find Lawford sitting at a trestle table covered with fine linen and expensive porcelain. ‘Boiled eggs,’ the Colonel greeted him warmly. ‘I do so relish a properly boiled egg. Sit yourself down, Sharpe. The bread’s not too hard. How are your wounds?’

‘Hardly notice them, sir,’ Sharpe lied.

‘Good man.’ The Colonel spooned some runny egg into his mouth, then gestured through the canvas towards the east. ‘Fog’s lifting. You think the French will come?’

‘Major Hogan seemed sure of it, sir.’

‘Then we shall do our duty,’ Lawford said, ‘and it will be good practice for the battalion, eh? Real targets! That’s coffee, very good coffee as well. Do help yourself.’

It seemed that Sharpe was to be Lawford’s only guest, for there were no plates or silverware for another man. He poured himself coffee, helped himself to an egg and a slice of bread, and ate in silence. He felt uncomfortable. He had known Lawford for over ten years, yet he could think of nothing to say. Some men, like Hogan or Major Forrest, were never short of conversation. Put them down among a group of strangers and they could chatter away like magpies, but Sharpe was always struck dumb except with those he knew really well. The Colonel did not seem to mind the silence. He ate steadily, reading a four-week-old copy of The Times. ‘Good Lord,’ he said at one point.

‘What’s that, sir?’

‘Tom Dyton’s dead. Poor old chap. Of an advanced age, it says here. He must have been seventy if he was a day!’

‘I didn’t know him, sir.’

‘Had land in Surrey. Fine old fellow, married a Calloway, which is always a sensible thing to do. Consols are holding steady, I see.’ He folded the paper and pushed it across the table. ‘Like to read it, Sharpe?’

‘I would, sir.’

‘All yours, then.’

Sharpe would not read it, but the paper would be useful anyway. He cracked the top off another egg and wondered what Consols were. He knew they had something to do with money, but just what he had no idea.

‘So you think the French will come?’ Lawford asked, forcing a heartiness into his voice and apparently unaware that he had voiced the identical question just minutes before.

Sharpe sensed a nervousness in the Colonel and wondered what caused it. ‘I think we have to assume they’ll come, sir.’

‘Quite so, quite so. Prepare for the worst, eh, and hope for the best? Very wise that, Sharpe.’ Lawford buttered a slice of bread. ‘So let’s assume there’s going to be a scrap, shall we? Wellington and Masséna playing King of the Castle, eh? But it shouldn’t be a difficult day, should it?’

Was Lawford nervous of a battle? It seemed unlikely, for the Colonel had been in enough actions to know what must be coming, but Sharpe attempted to reassure him anyway. ‘It never does to understimate the Crapauds, sir,’ he said carefully, ‘and they’ll keep coming whatever we chuck at them, but no, it shouldn’t be difficult. That hill will slow them and we’ll kill them.’

‘That’s rather what I thought, Sharpe,’ Lawford said, offering a dazzling smile. ‘The hill will slow them and then we’ll kill them. So, all in all, the fox is running, the scent’s high, we’re mounted on a damned fine horse and the going’s firm.’

‘We should win, sir,’ Sharpe said, ‘if that’s what you mean. And if the Portuguese fight well.’

‘Ah yes, the Portuguese. Hadn’t thought of them, but they seem fine fellows. Do have that last egg.’

‘I’m full, sir.’

‘You’re sure? Very kind. I never say no to a well-boiled egg. My father, God rest him, always believed he would be met at the gates of heaven by an angel carrying two decently boiled eggs on a silver salver. I do hope it turned out that way for him.’ Sharpe decided there was nothing to say to that so stayed silent as the Colonel sliced off the egg’s top, sprinkled it with salt and dug in his spoon. ‘The thing is, Sharpe,’ Lawford went on, but hesitantly now, ‘if the going is firm and we don’t need to be over-anxious, then I’d like to spread some experience through the battalion. Know what I mean?’

‘The French do that, sir,’ Sharpe said.

‘Do they?’ Lawford seemed surprised.

‘Every time they fight us, sir, they shovel experience all over us.’

‘Ah, I see your drift!’ Lawford ate some egg, then dabbed his lips with a napkin. ‘I mean real experience, Sharpe, the kind that will serve the regiment well. Fellows don’t learn their duties by watching, do they? But by doing. Don’t you agree?’

‘Of course, sir.’

‘So I’ve decided, Sharpe,’ Lawford was not looking at Sharpe any more, but concentrating on his egg, ‘that Cornelius ought to command the light company today. He’s not taking it over, don’t think that for a moment, but I do want him to stretch his wings. Want to see how he does, eh? And if it ain’t going to be a tricky business, then today will blood him gently.’ He spooned more egg into his mouth and dared to give Sharpe a quizzical look. Sharpe said nothing. He was furious, humiliated and helpless. He wanted to protest, but to what end? Lawford had plainly made up his mind and to fight the decision would only make the Colonel dig in his heels. ‘And you, Sharpe,’ Lawford smiled now he felt the worst was over, ‘I think you probably need a rest. That tumble you took did some damage, eh? You look battered. So let Cornelius show us his stuff, eh? And you can use his horse and serve as my eyes. Advise me.’

‘My advice, sir,’ Sharpe could not help saying, ‘is to let your best man command the light company.’

‘And if I do that,’ Lawford said, ‘I’ll never know what potential Cornelius has. No, Sharpe, let him have his canter, eh? You’ve already proved yourself.’ Lawford stared at Sharpe, wanting his approval of the suggestion, but again Sharpe said nothing. He felt as though the bottom had dropped from his world.

And just then a gun fired from the valley.

The shell screamed through the fog, burst into sunlight above the ridge where, showing as a black ball against a clear sky, it arched over the troops to fall close beside the newly made road which linked the British and Portuguese troops along the ridge. It exploded after its first bounce, doing no harm, but a scrap of shell casing, almost spent, rapped against Lawford’s tent, making the taut grey canvas shudder. ‘Time to go, Sharpe,’ Lawford said, throwing down his egg-stained napkin.

Because the French were coming.

Thirty-three French battalions formed into four columns were launched across the stream and up the far slope that was thickly obscured by fog. This was only the first attack. The second attack was still assembling, their twenty-two battalions forming into two more great columns which would advance either side of the better road that led towards the northern end of the ridge while a third, smaller column would follow behind them to exploit their success. Together the two attacks made a hammer and an anvil. The first assault, the heaviest, would follow the lesser road up to the lowest part of the ridge, capture its wide summit, then turn north to drive in the defenders desperately fending off the second blow. Marshal Masséna, waiting close to the troops who would deliver that second thunderous strike, imagined the English and Portuguese troops reduced to panic; he saw them fleeing from the ridge, throwing down packs and weapons, discarding anything that would slow them, and then he would release his cavalry to sweep across the ridge’s northern end and slaughter the fugitives. He drummed his fingers against his saddle’s pommel in time to the fog-muffled rhythm of the drums that sounded to the south. Those drums were driving the first attack up the slope. ‘What’s the time?’ he asked an aide.

‘A quarter to six, sir.’

‘The fog’s lifting, don’t you think?’ Masséna stared into the vapour with his one eye. The Emperor had taken the other in a shooting accident while they were hunting, and, ever since, Masséna had worn a patch.

‘Perhaps a little, sir,’ the aide said doubtfully.

Tonight, Masséna thought, he would sleep in the monastery said to be on the ridge’s far slope. He would send a troop of dragoons to escort Henriette from Tondela from where he had been so abruptly summoned the previous night, and he smiled as he recalled her white arms reaching playfully for him as he dressed. He had slept an hour or two with the army, and risen early to find a cold, foggy dawn, but the fog, he reckoned, was France’s friend. It would let the troops get most of the way up the slope before the British and Portuguese could see them, and once the Eagles were close to the summit the business should not take long. Victory by midday, he thought, and he imagined the bells ringing out in Paris to announce the triumph of the Eagles. He wondered what new honours would come to him. He was already the Prince of Essling, but by tonight, he thought, he might have earned a dozen other royal titles. The Emperor could be generous in such things, and the Emperor expected great things of Masséna. The rest of Europe was at peace, cowed into submission by the armies of France, and so Napoleon had sent reinforcements into Spain, had formed this new Army of Portugal that had been entrusted to Masséna, and the Emperor expected Lisbon to be captured before the leaves fell. Victory, Masséna thought, victory by midday, and then the enemy’s remnants would be pursued all the way to Lisbon.

‘You’re sure there’s a monastery across the ridge?’ he enquired of one of his Portuguese aides, a man who fought for the French because he believed they represented reason, liberty, modernity and rationality.

‘There is, sir.’

‘We shall sleep there tonight,’ Masséna announced, and turned his one eye to another aide. ‘Have two squadrons ready to escort Mademoiselle Leberton from Tondela.’ That essential comfort assured, the Marshal spurred his horse forward through the fog. He stopped close to the stream and listened. A single cannon sounded to the south, the signal that the first attack was under way, and when the cannon’s reverberating echo had died away Masséna could hear the drums fading in the distance as the four southern columns climbed the slope. It was the sound of victory. The sound of the Eagles going into battle.

It had taken over two hours to form the four columns. The men had been roused in the dark, and the reveille had been sounded an hour later to fool the British into thinking that the French had slept longer, but the columns had been forming long before the bugles sounded. Sergeants with flaming torches served as guides, and the men formed on them, company by company, but it had all taken much longer than expected. The fog confused the newly woken men. Officers gave orders, sergeants bellowed, shoved, and used their musket stocks to force men into the ranks, and some fools mistook their orders and joined the wrong column, and they had to be pulled out, cursed, and sent to their proper place, but eventually the thirty-three battalions were assembled in their four assault columns in the small meadows beside the stream.

There were eighteen thousand men in the four columns. If those men had been paraded in a line of three ranks, which was how the French made their lines, they would have stretched for two miles, but instead they had been concentrated into the four tight columns. The two largest led the attack, while the two smaller came behind, ready to exploit whatever opening the first two made. Those two larger columns had eighty men in their front ranks, but there were eighty more ranks behind and the great blocks made two battering rams, almost two miles of infantry concentrated into two moving squares that were designed to be hammered against the enemy line and overwhelm it by sheer weight. ‘Stay close!’ the sergeants shouted as they began to ascend the ridge. A column was no good if it lost cohesion. To work it had to be like a machine, every man in step, shoulder to shoulder, the rear ranks pushing the front rank on into the enemy guns. That front rank would probably die, as would the one behind, and the one behind that, but eventually the impetus of the massive formation should force it across its own dead and through the enemy line and then the real killing could begin. The battalions’ drummers were concentrated at the centre of each column and the boys played the fine rhythm of the charge, pausing every so often to let the men call out the refrain, ‘Vive l’Empereur!’

That refrain became breathless as the columns climbed. The ridge was horribly steep, lung-sapping, and men tired and so began to lag and stray. The fog was still thick. Scattered gorse bushes and stunted trees obstructed the columns which split to pass them, and after a while the fragments did not join up again, but just struggled up through the silent fog, wondering what waited for them at the summit. Before they were halfway up the hill both the leading columns had broken into groups of tired men, and the officers, swords drawn, were shouting at the groups to form ranks, to hurry, and the officers shouted from different parts of the hill and only confused the troops more so that they went first one way and then the other. The drummer boys, following the broken ranks, beat more slowly as they grew more tired.

Ahead of the columns, way ahead, and scattered in their loose formation, the French skirmishers climbed towards the light. The fog thinned as they neared the ridge’s top. There was a swarm of French light troops, over six hundred voltigeurs in front of each column, and their job was to drive away the British and Portuguese skirmishers, force them back over the ridge top and then start shooting at the defending lines. That skirmish fire was designed to weaken those lines ready for the hammer blows coming behind.

Above the disordered columns, unseen in the fog, the Eagles flew. Napoleon’s Eagles, the French standards, the gilt statuettes shining on their poles. Two had their tricolour flags attached, but most regiments took the flags off the poles and stored them at the depot in France, relying on the Emperor’s Eagle to be the mark of honour. ‘Close on the Eagle!’ an officer shouted, and the scattered men tried to form their ranks and then, from above them, they heard the first staccato snapping as the skirmishers began their fight. A gun fired from the valley, then another, and suddenly two batteries of French artillery were firing blind into the fog, hoping their shells would rake the defenders at the ridge top.

‘God’s teeth!’ The exclamation was torn from Colonel Lawford who, peering down the slope, saw the horde of French skirmishers break out of the fog. The voltigeurs far outnumbered the British and Portuguese light companies, but those redcoats, cazadores and greenjackets fired first. Puffs of smoke jetted from the hillside. A Frenchman twisted and fell back and then the voltigeurs went down onto one knee and aimed their muskets. The volley splintered the morning, thickening the fog with powder smoke, and Sharpe saw two redcoats and a Portuguese go down. The second men of the allied skirmishing pairs fired, but the voltigeurs were too numerous and their musket fire was almost continuous and the red, green and brown jackets were falling back. The voltigeurs advanced in short rushes, at least two of them for every allied skirmisher, and it was plain the French were winning this early contest by sheer weight of numbers.

Lieutenant Slingsby and the South Essex light troops had deployed ahead of the battalion and now found themselves on the flank of the French advance. Ahead of them was mostly empty hillside, but the voltigeurs were thick to their right and for a few moments the company was able to stand and drive in that enemy flank, but a French officer saw what was happening and shouted for two companies to chase the redcoats and greenjackets away. ‘Back away now,’ Sharpe muttered. He was mounted on Portia, Slingsby’s horse, and the extra height gave him a clear view of the fight that was some three hundred paces away. ‘Back off!’ he said louder, and the Colonel gave him an irritated look. But then Slingsby understood the danger and gave eight whistle blasts. That told the light company to retreat while inclining to their left, an order that would bring them back up the slope towards the battalion, and it was the right order, the one Sharpe would have given, but Slingsby had his blood up and did not want to fall too far back too soon and thus yield the fight to the French and so instead of slanting back up the hill as he had ordered he ran straight across the slope’s face.

The men had started back up the ridge, but seeing the Lieutenant stay lower down, they hesitated. ‘Keep firing!’ Slingsby shouted at them. ‘Don’t bunch! Smartly now!’ A ball struck a rock by his right foot and ricocheted up to the sky. Hagman shot the French officer who had led the move against the South Essex and Harris put down an enemy sergeant who fell into a gorse bush, but the other Frenchmen kept advancing and Slingsby slowly backed away, yet instead of being between the French and the South Essex he was now on the enemy’s flank, and another French officer, reckoning that the South Essex’s light company had been brushed aside, shouted at the voltigeurs to climb straight up the hill towards the right flank of the South Essex line. Cannon opened fire from the ridge top, shooting from the left of the battalion down into the fog behind the voltigeurs. ‘They must have seen something,’ Lawford said, patting Lightning’s neck to calm the stallion, which had been frightened by the sudden crash of the six-pounders. ‘Hear the drums?’

‘I can hear them,’ Sharpe said. It was the old sound, the French pas de charge, the noise of attacking Eagles. ‘Old trousers,’ he said. That was the British nickname for the pas de charge.

‘Why do we call it that?’

‘It’s a song, sir.’

‘Do I want to hear it?’

‘Not from me, sir. Can’t sing.’

Lawford smiled, though he had not really been listening. He took off his cocked hat and ran a hand through his hair. ‘Their main body can’t be far off now,’ he said, wanting the confrontation over. The voltigeurs were no longer advancing, but shooting at the line to weaken it before the column arrived.

Sharpe was watching Slingsby who, seeing the French turn away from him, now seemed momentarily bereft. He had not done badly. All his men were alive, including Ensign Iliffe who, when he had returned Sharpe’s sword, had been pale with nervousness. The boy had stood his ground, though, and that was all that could be expected of him, while the rest of Slingsby’s men had scored some hits on the enemy, but now that enemy climbed away from the company. What Slingsby should do, Sharpe thought, was climb the hill and spread his men across the face of the South Essex, but just then the first of the columns came into view from the fog.

They were shadows first, then dark shapes, and Sharpe could make no sense of it, for the column was no longer a coherent mass of men, but rather groups of men who emerged ragged from the whiteness. Two more cannons opened fire from the ridge, their round shot banging through files of men to spray the fog with blood, and still more men came, hundreds of men, and as they came into the light they hurried together, trying to reform the column, and the cannons, reloaded with canister, blasted great jagged holes in the blue uniforms.

Slingsby was still out on the flank, but the sight of the column prompted him to order his men to open fire. The voltigeurs saw what was happening and dozens ran to cut off the light company. ‘For Christ’s sake!’ Sharpe said aloud, and this time Lawford did not look irritated, just worried, but Slingsby saw the danger and shouted at his men to retreat as quickly as they could. They scrambled up the slope. It was not a dignified withdrawal, they were not firing as they backed, but just running for their lives. One or two, furthest down the slope, ran downhill to hide in the fog, but the rest managed to scramble their way back to the ridge’s summit where Slingsby barked at them to spread along the battalion’s face.

‘Too late,’ Lawford said quietly, ‘too damn late. Major Forrest! Call in skirmishers.’

The bugle sounded and the light company, panting from their near escape, formed at the left of the line. The voltigeurs who had chased the light company off the column’s flank were firing at the South Essex now and the bullets hissed close to Sharpe, for most of the Frenchmen were aiming at the colours and at the group of mounted officers clustered beside the two flags. A man went down in number four company. ‘Close ranks!’ a sergeant shouted, and a corporal, appointed as a file closer, dragged the wounded man back from the ranks.

‘Take him to the surgeon, Corporal,’ Lawford said, then watched as the great mass of Frenchmen, thousands of them now visible at the swirling margins of the fog, turned towards his ranks. ‘Make ready!’

Close to six hundred men cocked their muskets. The voltigeurs knew what was coming and fired at the battalion. Bullets twitched the heavy yellow silk of the regimental colour. Two more men were hit in front of Sharpe and one was screaming in pain. ‘Close up! Close up!’ a corporal shouted.

‘Stop your bleeding noise, boy!’ Sergeant Willetts of five company growled.

The column was two hundred paces away, still ragged, but in sight of the crest now. The voltigeurs were closer, just a hundred paces away, kneeling and firing, standing to reload and then firing again. Slingsby had let his riflemen go a few paces forward of the line and those men were hurting the voltigeurs, taking out their officers and sergeants, but a score of rifles could not blunt this attack. That would be a job for the redcoats. ‘When you fire,’ Lawford called, ‘aim low! Don’t waste His Majesty’s lead! You will aim low!’ He rode along the right of his line, repeating the message. ‘Aim low! Remember your training! Aim low!’

The column was coalescing, the ranks shuffling together as if for protection. A nine-pounder round shot seared through it, sending up a long fast spray of blood. The drummers were beating frantically. Sharpe glanced left and saw the Connaught Rangers were closing on the South Essex, coming to add their volleys, then a voltigeur’s bullet slapped off the top of his horse’s left ear and twitched at the sleeve of his jacket. He could see the faces of the men in the column’s front rank, see their moustaches, see their mouths opening to cheer their Emperor. A canister from a nine-pounder tore into them, twitching files red and ragged, but they closed up, stepped over the dead and dying, and came on with their long bayonets gleaming. The Eagles were bright in the new sunlight. Still more cannons opened fire, blasting the column with canisters loaded over round shot, and the French, sensing that there was no artillery off to their left, slanted that way, climbing now towards the Portuguese battalion on the right of the South Essex. ‘Offering themselves to us,’ Lawford said. He had ridden back to the battalion’s centre and now watched as the French turned away to reveal their right flank to his muskets. ‘I think we should join the dance, Sharpe, don’t you? Battalion!’ He took a deep breath. ‘Battalion will advance!’

Lawford marched the South Essex forward, only twenty yards, but the movement scared the voltigeurs who thought they might be the target of a regimental volley and so they hurried away to join the column that now marched slantwise across the front of the South Essex. ‘Present!’ Lawford shouted, and nearly six hundred muskets went into men’s shoulders.

‘Fire!’

The massive volley pumped out a long cloud of gun smoke that smelt like rotting eggs, and then the musket stocks thumped onto the ground and men took new cartridges and began to reload. ‘Platoon fire now!’ Lawford called to his officers, and he took off his hat again and wiped sweat from his forehead. It was still cold, the wind blowing chill from the far-off Atlantic, yet Lawford was hot. Sharpe heard the splintering crack of the Portuguese volley, then the South Essex began their own rolling fire, shooting half company by half company from the centre of the line, the bullets never ending, the men going through the well-practised motions of loading and firing, loading and firing. The enemy was invisible now, hidden from the battalion by its own gun smoke. Sharpe rode along the right of the line, deliberately not going left so no one could accuse him of interfering with Slingsby. ‘Aim low!’ he called to the men. ‘Aim low!’ A few bullets were coming back out of the smoke, but they were nearly all high. Inexperienced men usually shot high and the French, who were being flayed by the Portuguese and by the South Essex, were trying to fire uphill into a cloud of smoke and they were taking a terrible punishment from muskets and cannons. Some of the enemy must be panicking because Sharpe saw two ramrods go wheeling overhead, evidence that the men were too scared to remember their musket drill. He stopped by the grenadier company and watched the Portuguese and he reckoned they were firing as efficiently as any redcoat battalion. Their half-company volleys were steady as clockwork, the smoke rolling out from the battalion’s centre, and he knew the bullets must be striking hard into the disintegrating column’s face.

More muskets flared as the 88th, the feared Connaught Rangers, wheeled forward of the line to blast at the wounded French column, but somehow the French held on. Their outer ranks and files were being killed and injured, but the mass of men inside the column still lived and more were climbing the hill to replace the dead, and the whole mass, in no good order, but crowding together, tried to advance into the terrible volleys. More red- and brown-jacketed troops were moving towards the fight, adding their musketry, but still the French pushed against the storm. The column was dividing again, torn by the slashing round shots and ripped by canister, so now it seemed as though disorganized groups of men were struggling uphill past piles of dead. Sharpe could hear the officers and sergeants shouting them on, could hear the rattle of the frantic drums, which was now challenged by a British band that was playing ‘Men of Harlech’. ‘Not very appropriate!’ Major Forrest had joined Sharpe and had to shout to make himself heard over the dense sound of musketry. ‘We’re hardly in a hollow.’

‘You’re wounded,’ Sharpe said.

‘A scratch.’ Forrest glanced at his right sleeve, which was torn and bloodstained. ‘How are the Portuguese?’

‘Good!’

‘The Colonel was wondering where you were,’ Forrest said.

‘Did he think I’d gone back to the light company?’ Sharpe asked sourly.

‘Now, now, Sharpe,’ Forrest chided him.

Sharpe clumsily turned his horse and kicked it back to Lawford. ‘The buggers aren’t moving!’ the Colonel greeted him indignantly. Lawford was leaning forward in his saddle, trying to see through the smoke and, between the half-company volleys, when the foul-smelling cloud thinned a little, he could just make out the huge groups of stubborn Frenchmen clinging to the hillside beneath the crest. ‘Will bayonets shift them?’ he asked Sharpe. ‘By God, I’ve a mind to try steel. What do you think?’

‘Two more volleys?’ Sharpe suggested. It was chaos down the slope. The French column, broken again, was now clumps of men who fired uphill into the smoke, while more men, perhaps another column altogether or else stragglers from the first, were continually joining the groups. French artillery was adding to the din. They must have brought their howitzers to the foot of the slope and the shells, shot blind into the fog, were screaming overhead to crash onto the rear area where women, campfires, tents and tethered horses were the only casualties. A group of French voltigeurs had taken the rocky spur where Sharpe had placed his picquet in the night. ‘We should move those fellows away,’ Sharpe said, pointing to them.

‘They’re not harming us,’ Lawford shouted above the din, ‘but we can’t let those wretches stay here!’ He pointed to the smoke-wreathed Frenchmen. ‘That’s our land!’ He took a breath. ‘Fix bayonets! Fix bayonets!’

Colonel Wallace, commander of the 88th, must have had the same thought, for Sharpe was aware that the Irishmen had stopped firing, and they would only do that to fix the seventeen-inch blades on their muskets. Clicks sounded all along the South Essex line as the two ranks slotted their bayonets onto blackened muzzles. The French, with extraordinary bravery, used the lull in the musket fire to try and advance again. Men clambered over dead and dying bodies, officers shouted them forward, the drummers redoubled their efforts and suddenly the Eagles were moving again. The leading Frenchmen were among the bodies of the dead voltigeurs now and must have been convinced that one more hard push would break through the thin line of Portuguese and British troops, yet the whole hilltop must have seemed ripples of flame and rills of smoke to them. ‘South Essex!’ Lawford shouted. ‘Advance!’ The cannons jetted more powder smoke and flaming scraps of wadding deep into the tight French ranks. Sharpe could hear the screaming of wounded men now. Musket shots hammered from a knot of Frenchmen to the right, but the South Essex and the men of Connaught were going forward, bayonets bright, and Sharpe kicked the horse forward, following the battalion, which suddenly broke into the double and shouted their challenge. The Portuguese, seeing the redcoats advance, cheered and fixed their own blades.

The charge struck home. The French were not formed properly, most did not have loaded muskets and the British line closed on the clumps of blue-coated infantry and then wrapped around them as the redcoats lunged with bayonets. The enemy fought back and Sharpe heard the crack of muskets clashing, the scrape of blades, the curses and shouts of wounded soldiers. The enemy dead obstructed the British, but they clambered over the bodies to rip with long blades at the living. ‘Hold your lines! Hold your lines!’ a sergeant bellowed, and in some places the companies had split because some files were attacking one French group and the rest another, and Sharpe saw two French soldiers break clear through such a gap and start uphill. He turned the horse towards them and drew his sword, and the two men, hearing the blade’s long scrape against the scabbard’s throat, immediately threw down their muskets and spread their hands. Sharpe pointed the sword uphill, indicating they were prisoners now and should go to the South Essex colour party. One obediently set off, but the other snatched up his musket and fled downhill. Sharpe let him go. He could see the Eagles were being hurried down the slope, being carried away from the danger of capture, and more Frenchmen, seeing their standards retreat, broke from the unequal fight. The allied cannons had stopped their fire because their targets were masked by their own men, but the French guns still shot through the thinning fog and then, off to Sharpe’s right, more cannons opened and he saw a second column, even larger than the first, appearing on the lower slope.

The first French attack broke from the back. Most of the men in the front ranks could not escape because they were trapped by their comrades behind, and those men were being savaged by Portuguese and British bayonets, but the French rear ranks followed the Eagles and, as the pressure eased, the remnants of the column fled. They ran, leaping over the dead and wounded that marked their passage up the hill, and the redcoats and Portuguese pursued them. A man from the grenadier company rammed his bayonet into the small of a Frenchman’s back, stabbed him again when he fell, then kicked him and stabbed him a third time when the man obstinately refused to die. A drum, painted with a French Eagle, rolled downhill. A drummer boy, his arm shot off by a cannonball, hunched in misery beside a gorse bush. British redcoats and blue-jacketed Portuguese ran past him, intent on pursuing and killing the fleeing enemy. ‘Come back!’ Lawford shouted angrily. ‘Come back!’ The men did not hear him, or did not care; they had won and now they simply wanted to kill. Lawford looked for Sharpe. ‘Get them, Sharpe!’ the Colonel snapped. ‘Fetch them back!’

Sharpe wondered how the hell he was to stop such a chaotic pursuit, but he obediently kicked his borrowed horse, which immediately bolted downhill so violently that he was nearly thrown off the back of the saddle. He yanked the reins to slow the mare and she swerved to her left and Sharpe heard a bullet flutter past him and looked up to see that scores of voltigeurs still held the rocky knoll and were firing at him. The horse ran on, Sharpe clinging to the saddle’s pommel for dear life, then she stumbled and he felt himself flying. By a miracle his feet came clear of the stirrups and he landed on the slope with an almighty thump, rolled for a few yards and then banged against a boulder. He was sure he must have broken a dozen bones, but when he picked himself up he found he was only bruised. Ferragus had hurt him much worse, but the fall from the horse had exacerbated those injuries. He thought the mare must have been shot, but when he turned round to look for his fallen sword he saw the horse trotting calmly uphill without any apparent damage except her bullet-cropped ear. He swore at the mare, abandoned her, picked up his sword and rifle and went on downhill.

He shouted at redcoats to get back to the ridge. Some were Irishmen from the 88th, many of them busy plundering the bodies of French dead and, because he was an officer they did not know, they snarled, swore or simply ignored him, implicitly daring him to tangle with them. Sharpe let them be. If there was one regiment in the army that could look after itself it was the men of Connaught. He ran on down, shouting at troops to get the hell up to the ridge top, but most were halfway down the long slope, almost to where the fog had retreated, and Sharpe had to run hard to get within shouting distance and it was then, as the fog swirled away, that he saw two more French columns climbing from the valley. There was another column, he knew, somewhere near the summit, but these were new troops making a fresh attack. ‘South Essex!’ he shouted. He had been a sergeant once and still had a voice that could carry halfway across a city, though using it caused his ribs to bang pain into his lungs. ‘South Essex! Back! Back!’ A shell struck the hill not five paces away, bounced up and exploded in jets of hissing smoke. Two scraps of casing spun past his face so close that he felt the momentary warmth and the slap of the hot air. French cannon were at the foot of the slope, just visible in the thinning fog, and they were firing at the men who had pursued the broken column, but who now had checked their reckless downhill run to watch the new columns advance. ‘South Essex!’ Sharpe roared, and the anger in his voice was harsh, and at last men turned to trudge uphill. Slingsby, his sabre drawn, was watching the columns, but, hearing Sharpe, he suddenly snapped at men to turn around and go back to the ridge top. Harper was one of them and, seeing Sharpe, the big man angled across the slope. His seven-barrelled gun was slung on his back and in his hand was his rifle with its twenty-three-inch sword bayonet reddened to its brass handle. The rest of the light company, at last aware that more columns were attacking, hurried after Harper.

Sharpe waited to make sure that every redcoat and rifleman had turned back. French shells and round shot were banging onto the hill, but using artillery against such scattered targets was a waste of powder. One cannonball, spent after its bouncing impact, rolled down the hill to make Harper skip aside, then he grinned at Sharpe. ‘Gave it to them proper, sir.’

‘You should have stayed up top.’

‘It’s a hell of a climb,’ Harper said, surprised to see how far down the hill he had gone. He fell in beside Sharpe and the two climbed together. ‘Mister Slingsby, sir,’ the Irishman said, then fell silent.

‘Mister Slingsby what?’

‘He said you weren’t well, sir, and he was taking command.’

‘Then he’s a lying bastard,’ Sharpe said, careless that he ought not to say such a thing of another officer.

‘Is he now?’ Harper said tonelessly.

‘The Colonel told me to step aside. He wants Mister Slingsby to have a chance.’

‘He had that right enough,’ Harper said.

‘I should have been there,’ Sharpe said.

‘And so you should,’ Harper said, ‘but the lads are all alive. Except Dodd.’

‘Matthew? Is he dead?’

‘Dead or alive, I don’t know,’ Harper said, ‘but I couldn’t see him anywhere. I was keeping an eye on the boys, but I can’t find Matthew. Maybe he went back up the hill.’

‘I didn’t see him,’ Sharpe said. They both turned and counted heads and saw the light company were all present except for Corporal Dodd. ‘We’ll look for him as we climb,’ Sharpe said, meaning they would look for his body.

Lieutenant Slingsby, red-faced and sabre drawn, hurried over to Sharpe. ‘Did you bring orders, Sharpe?’ he demanded.

‘The orders are to get back to the top of the hill as quick as you can,’ Sharpe said.

‘Quick, men!’ Slingsby called, then turned back to Sharpe. ‘Our fellows did well!’

‘Did they?’

‘Outflanked the voltigeurs, Sharpe. Outflanked them, by God! We turned their flank.’

‘Did you?’

‘Pity you didn’t see us.’ Slingsby was excited, proud of himself. ‘We slipped past them, drove in their wing, then hurt them.’

Sharpe thought the light company had been led to one side where it had been about as much use as a kettle with a hole in it, and had then been ignominiously chased away, but he kept silent. Harper unclipped his sword bayonet, cleaned the blade on the jacket of a French corpse, then quickly ran his hands over the man’s pockets and pouches.

He ran to catch up with Sharpe and offered a half sausage. ‘I know you like Crapaud sausage, sir.’

Sharpe put it into his pouch, saving it for dinner. A bullet whispered past him, almost spent, and he looked up to see puffs of smoke from the rocky knoll. ‘Pity the voltigeurs took that,’ he said.

‘No trouble to us,’ Slingsby said dismissively. ‘Turned their flank, by God, turned their damn flank and then punished them!’

Harper glanced at Sharpe, looked as though he would start laughing, and managed to keep a straight face. The big British and Portuguese guns were hammering at the second big column, the one that had arrived just after the first had been defeated. That column was fighting at the top of the ridge and the two fresh columns, both smaller than the first pair, were climbing behind. Another bullet from the voltigeurs in their rocky nest whipped past Sharpe and he angled away from them.

‘You still have my horse, Sharpe?’ Slingsby demanded.

‘Not here,’ Sharpe said, and Harper made a choking sound which he turned into a cough.

‘You said something, Sergeant Harper?’ Slingsby demanded crisply.

‘Smoke in my throat, sir,’ Harper said. ‘It catches something dreadful, sir. I was always a sickly child, sir, on account of the peat smoke in our cottage. My mother made me sleep outside, God rest her soul, until the wolves came for me.’

‘Wolves?’ Slingsby sounded cautious.

‘Three of them, sir, big as you’d like, with slobbery great tongues the colour of your coat, sir, and I had to sleep inside after that, and I just coughed my way through the nights. It was all that smoke, see?’

‘Your parents should have built a chimney,’ Slingsby said disapprovingly.

‘Now why didn’t we think of that?’ Harper enquired innocently and Sharpe laughed aloud, earning a vicious look from the Lieutenant.

The rest of the light company was close now and Ensign Iliffe was among them. Sharpe saw the boy’s sabre was red at the tip. Sharpe nodded at it. ‘Well done, Mister Iliffe.’

‘He just came at me, sir.’ The boy had suddenly found his voice. ‘A big man!’

‘He was a sergeant,’ Harris explained, ‘and he was going to stick Mister Iliffe, sir.’

‘He was!’ Iliffe was excited.

‘But Mister Iliffe stepped past him neat as a squirrel, sir, and gave him steel in the belly. It was a good stroke, Mister Iliffe,’ Harris said, and the Ensign just blushed.

Sharpe tried to recall the first time he had been in a fight, steel against steel, but the trouble was he had been brought up in London and almost born to that kind of savagery. But for Mister Iliffe, son of an impoverished Essex gentleman, there had to be a shock in realizing that some great brute of a Frenchman was trying to kill him and Sharpe, remembering how sick the boy had been, reckoned he had done very well. He grinned at Iliffe. ‘Only the one Crapaud, Mister Iliffe?’

‘Only one, sir.’

‘And you an officer, eh? You’re supposed to kill two a day!’

The men laughed. Iliffe just looked pleased with himself.

‘Enough chatter!’ Slingsby took command of the company. ‘Hurry up!’ The South Essex colours had moved south along the ridge top, evidently going towards the fight with the second leading column, and the light company slanted that way. The French shells had stopped their futile harassment of the slope and were instead firing at the ridge top now, their fuses leaving small pencil traces in the sky above the light company. The sound of the second column was loud now, a cacophony of drums, war cries and the stutter of the skirmishers’ muskets.

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