"I shall see to the paperwork," Lawford said loftily, meaning he wanted to lie down for an hour, and he nodded curtly at Sharpe and, beckoning his servants, went to find his billet.
Sharpe grinned and walked down the vast piles. Men were slitting grain sacks and levering the tops from the meat barrels. The Portuguese were working more enthusiastically, but they had reached the city late at night and so managed to sleep for a few hours. Other Portuguese soldiers had been sent into the narrow streets to tell the remaining inhabitants to flee, and Sharpe could hear women's voices raised in protest. It was still early. A small mist clung to the river, but the west wind had gone around to the south and it promised to be another hot day. The sharp crack of rifles sounded, startling birds into the air, and Sharpe saw that the Portuguese were shooting the rum barrels. Closer by, Patrick Harper was stoving in the barrels with an axe he had filched. "Why don't you shoot them, Pat?" Sharpe asked.
"Mister Slingsby, sir, he won't let us."
"He won't let you?"
Harper swung the axe at another barrel, releasing a flood of rum onto the cobbles. "He says we're to save our ammunition, sir."
"What for? There's plenty of cartridges."
"That's what he says, sir, no shooting."
"Work, Sergeant!" Slingsby marched smartly down the row of barrels. "You want to keep those stripes, Sergeant, then set an example! Good morning, Sharpe!"
Sharpe turned slowly and examined Slingsby from top to bottom. The man might have marched all night and slept in a field, yet he was perfectly turned out, every button shining, his leather gleaming, the red coat brushed and boots wiped clean. Slingsby, uncomfortable under Sharpe's sardonic gaze, snorted. "I said good morning, Sharpe."
"I hear you got lost," Sharpe said.
"Nonsense. A detour! Avoiding wagons." The small man stepped past Sharpe and glared at the light company. "Put your backs into it! There's a war to win!"
"For Christ's sake come back," Harper said softly.
Slingsby swiveled, eyes wide. "Did you say something, Sergeant?"
"He was talking to me," Sharpe said, and he stepped towards the smaller man, towering over him. He forced Slingsby back between two heaps of crates, taking him to where no one from the battalion could overhear. "He was talking to me, you piece of shit," Sharpe said, "and if you interrupt another of my conversations I'll tear your bloody guts out of your arsehole and wrap them round your bleeding throat. You want to go and tell that to the Colonel?"
Slingsby visibly quivered, but then he seemed to shake off Sharpe's words as though they had never been spoken. He found a narrow passage between the crates, slipped through it like a terrier pursuing a rat, and clapped his hands. "I want to see progress!" he yapped at the men.
Sharpe followed Slingsby, looking for trouble, but then he saw that the Portuguese troops were from the same battalion that had taken the rocky knoll, for Captain Vicente was commanding the men shooting at the rum barrels and that was diversion enough to save Sharpe from more foolishness with Slingsby. He veered away and Vicente saw him coming and smiled a welcome, but before the two could utter a greeting, Colonel Lawford came striding across the cobbled quay. "Sharpe! Mister Sharpe!"
Sharpe offered the Colonel a salute. "Sir!"
"I am not a man given to complaint," Lawford complained, "you know that, Sharpe. I am as hardened to discomfort as any man, but that tavern is hardly a fit billet. Not in a city like this! There are fleas in the beds!"
"You want somewhere better, sir?"
"I do, Sharpe, I do. And quickly."
Sharpe turned. "Sergeant Harper! I need you. Your permission to take Sergeant Harper, sir?" he asked Lawford who was too bemused to question Sharpe's need of company, but just nodded. "Give me half an hour, sir," Sharpe reassured the Colonel, "and you'll have the best billet in the city."
"Just something adequate," Lawford said pettishly. "I'm not asking for a palace, Sharpe, just something that's barely adequate."
Sharpe beckoned Harper and walked over to Vicente. "You grew up here, yes?"
"I told you so."
"So you know where a man called Ferragus lives?"
"Luis Ferreira?" Vicente's face mingled surprise and alarm. "I know where his brother lives, but Luis? He could live anywhere."
"Can you show me his brother's house?"
"Richard," Vicente warned, "Ferragus is not a man to…»
"I know what he is," Sharpe interrupted. "He did this to me." He pointed to his fading black eye. "How far is it?"
"Ten minutes' walk."
"Will you take me there?"
"Let me ask my Colonel," Vicente said, and hurried off towards Colonel Rogers-Jones who was sitting on horseback and holding an open umbrella to shade him from the early sun.
Sharpe saw Rogers-Jones nod to Vicente. "You'll have your billet in twenty minutes, sir," he told Lawford, then plucked Harper's elbow so that they followed Vicente off the quays. "That bastard Slingsby," Sharpe said as they went. "The bastard, bastard, bastard, bastard."
"I'm not supposed to hear this," Harper said.
"I'll skin the bastard alive," Sharpe said.
"Who?" Vicente asked, leading them up narrow alleys where they were forced to negotiate knots of unhappy folk who were at last readying themselves to leave the city. Men and women were bundling clothes, hoisting infants onto their backs and complaining bitterly to anyone they saw in uniform.
"A bastard called Slingsby," Sharpe said, "but we'll worry about him later. What do you know about Ferragus?"
"I know most folk are frightened of him," Vicente said, leading them across a small square where a church door stood open. A dozen black-shawled women were kneeling in the porch and they looked around in fear as a sudden rumble, jangle and clatter sounded from a nearby street. It was the noise of an artillery battery heading downhill towards the bridge. The army must have marched long before dawn and now the leading troops had reached Coimbra. "He is a criminal," Vicente went on, "but he wasn't raised in a poor family. His father was a colleague of my father, and even he admitted his son was a monster. The bad one of the litter. They tried to beat the evil from him. His father tried, the priests tried, but Luis is a child of Satan." Vicente made the sign of the cross. "And few dare oppose him. This is a university town!"
"Your father teaches here, yes?"
"He teaches law," Vicente said, "but he is not here now. He and my mother went north to Porto to stay with Kate. But people like my father don't know how to deal with a man like Ferragus."
"That's because your father's a lawyer," Sharpe said. "Bastards like Ferragus need someone like me."
"He gave you a black eye," Vicente said.
"I gave him worse," Sharpe said, remembering the pleasure of kicking Ferragus in the crotch. "And the Colonel wants a house, so we'll find the Ferreira house and give it to him."
"It is not wise, I think," Vicente said, "to mix private revenge with war."
"Of course it's not wise," Sharpe said, "but it's bloody enjoyable. Enjoying yourself, Sergeant?"
"Never been happier, sir," Harper said gloomily.
They had climbed to the upper town where they emerged into a small, sunlit square and on its far side was a pale stone house with a grand front door, a side entrance that evidently led into a stable yard and three high floors of shuttered windows. The house was old, its stonework carved with heraldic birds. "That is Pedro Ferreira's house," Vicente said and watched as Sharpe climbed the front steps. "Ferragus is thought to have murdered many people," Vicente said unhappily, making one last effort to dissuade Sharpe.
"So have I," Sharpe said, and hammered on the door, keeping up the din until the door was opened by an alarmed woman wearing an apron. She chided Sharpe in a burst of indignant Portuguese. A younger man was behind her, but he backed into the shadows when he saw Sharpe while the woman, who was gray-haired and hefty, tried to push the rifleman down the steps. Sharpe stayed where he was. "Ask her where Luis Ferreira lives," he told Vicente.