"So Miguel will say he's me!" Ferragus snapped. "Will the damned French know the difference? And I stay here," he insisted, "and play my games the moment the British are gone. When will the French arrive?"
"If they come tomorrow," Ferreira guessed, "in the morning, perhaps? Say an hour or two after dawn?"
"That gives me time," Ferragus said. He only wanted enough time to hear the three men begging for mercy that would not come to them. "I'll meet you at the warehouse," he told Ferreira. "Bring the Frenchmen to guard it, and I'll be inside, waiting." Ferragus knew he was allowing himself to be distracted. His priority was to keep the food safe and sell it to the French, and the trapped foursome did not matter, but they mattered now. They had defied him, beaten him for the moment, so now, more than ever, it was an affair of pride, and a man could not back down from an affront to his pride. To do so was to be less than a man.
Yet, Ferragus knew, there was no real problem left. Sharpe and his companions were doomed. He had piled more than half a ton of boxes and barrels on the trapdoor, there was no other way out of the cellar and it was just a matter of time. So Ferragus had won, and that was a consolation. He had won.
Most of the retreating British and Portuguese army had used a road to the east of Coimbra and so crossed the Mondego at a ford, but enough had been ordered to use the main road to send a steady stream of troops, guns, caissons and wagons across the Santa Clara bridge which led from Coimbra to its small suburb on the Mondego's southern bank where the new Convent of Saint Clara stood. The soldiers were joined by an apparently unending stream of civilians, handcarts, goats, dogs, cows, sheep and misery that shuffled over the bridge into the narrow streets around the convent and then went south towards Lisbon. Progress was painfully slow. A child was almost run over by a cannon and the driver only avoided her by slewing the gun into a wall where the offside wheel broke, and that took nearly an hour to repair. A handcart collapsed on the bridge, spilling books and clothes, and a woman screamed when Portuguese troops threw the broken cart and its contents into the river which was already thick with flotsam as the troops on the quays shoved shattered barrels and slashed sacks into the water. Boxes of biscuits were jettisoned and the biscuits, baked hard as rock, floated in their thousands downstream. Other troops had gathered timber and coal and were making a huge fire onto which they tossed salt meat. Still other troops, all Portuguese, had been ordered to break all the bakers' ovens in town, while a company of the South Essex took sledgehammers and pickaxes to the tethered boats.
Lieutenant Colonel Lawford returned to the quays in the early afternoon. He had slept well and enjoyed a surprisingly good meal of chicken, salad and white wine while his red coat was being brushed and pressed. Then, mounted on Lightning, he rode down to the quayside where he discovered his battalion hot, sweating, disheveled, dirty and tired. "The problem," Major Forrest told him, "is the salt meat. God knows, it won't burn."
"Didn't Sharpe say something about turpentine?"
"Haven't seen him," Forrest said.
"I was hoping he was here," Lawford said, looking around the smoke-wreathed quay that stank of spilled rum and scorched meat. "He rescued rather a pretty girl. An English girl, of all things. I was a little abrupt with her, I fear, and thought I should pay my respects."
"He isn't here," Forrest said bluntly.
"He'll turn up," Lawford said, "he always does."
Captain Slingsby marched across the quay, stamped to a halt and offered Lawford a cracking salute. "Man gone missing, Colonel."
Lawford touched the heel of his riding crop to the forward tip of his cocked hat in acknowledgement of the salute. "How are things going, Cornelius? All well, I hope?"
"Boats destroyed, sir, every last one."
"Splendid."
"But Sergeant Harper's missing, sir. Absent without permission."
"I gave him permission, Cornelius."
Slingsby bristled. "I wasn't asked, sir."
"An oversight, I'm sure," Lawford said, "and I'm equally sure Sergeant Harper will be back soon. He's with Mister Sharpe."
"That's another thing," Slingsby said darkly.
"Yes?" Lawford ventured cautiously.
"Mister Sharpe had more words with me this morning."
"You and Sharpe must patch things up," Lawford said hastily.
"And he has no right, sir, no right whatsoever, to take Sergeant Harper away from his proper duties. It only encourages him."
"Encourages him?" Lawford was slightly confused.
"To impertinence, sir. He is very Irish."
Lawford stared at Slingsby, wondering if he detected the smell of rum on his brother-in-law's breath. "I suppose he would be Irish," the Colonel finally said, "coming, as he does, from Ireland. Just like Lightning!" He leaned forward and fondled the horse's ears. "Not everything Irish is to be disparaged, Cornelius."
"Sergeant Harper, sir, does not show sufficient respect for His Majesty's commission," Slingsby said.
"Sergeant Harper," Forrest put in, "helped capture the Eagle at Talavera, Captain. Before you joined us."
"I don't doubt he can fight, sir," Slingsby said. "It's in their blood, isn't it? Like pugdogs, they are. Ignorant and brutal, sir. I had enough of them in the 55th to know." He looked back to Lawford. "But I have to worry about the internal economy of the light company. It has to be straightened and smartened, sir. Doesn't do to have men being impertinent."
"What is it you want?" Lawford asked with a touch of asperity.
"Sergeant Harper returned to me, sir, where he belongs, and made to knuckle down to some proper soldiering."
"It will be your duty to see that he does when he returns," Lawford said grandly.
"Very good, sir," Slingsby said, threw another salute, about-turned and marched back towards his company.
"He's very enthusiastic," Lawford said.
"I had never noticed," Forrest said, "any lack of enthusiasm or, indeed, absence of efficiency in our light company."
"Oh, they're fine fellows!" Lawford said. "Fine fellows indeed, but the best hounds sometimes hunt better with a change of master. New ways, Forrest, dig out old habits. Don't you agree? Perhaps you'll take supper with me tonight?"
"That would be kind, sir."
"And it's an early start in the morning. Farewell to Coimbra, eh? And may the French have mercy on it."
Twenty miles to the north the first French troops reached the main road. They had brushed aside the Portuguese militia who had blocked the track looping north around Bussaco's ridge, and now their cavalry patrols galloped into undefended and deserted farmland. The army turned south. Coimbra was next, then Lisbon, and with that would come victory.
Because the Eagles were marching south.
CHAPTER 8
The first idea was to break through the trapdoor and then work on whatever had been piled above. "Go through the edge of the I hatch," Vicente suggested, "then perhaps we can break through the box above? Take everything out of the box? Then wriggle through?"
Sharpe could think of nothing else that might free them, so he and Harper set to work. They tried raising the trapdoor first, crouching beneath it and heaving up, but the wood did not move a fraction of an inch, and so they started to carve away at the timbers. Vicente, with his wounded shoulder, could not help, so he and Sarah sat in the cellar as far from the two decaying bodies as they could and listened as Sharpe and Harper attacked the trapdoor. Harper used his sword bayonet and, because that was a shorter blade than Sharpe's sword, worked farther up the steps. Sharpe took off his jacket, stripped off his shirt and wrapped the linen round the blade so he could grip the edge without being cut. He told Harper what he was doing and suggested he might want to protect his own hands. "Pity, though," Sharpe said, "this is a new shirt."