"A hundred times better," one of his Portuguese aides answered.
The Marshal went to a window and stared at the smoke rising from buildings burning in the city. "Are we sure the British are making for the sea?"
"Where else can they go?" a general retorted.
"Lisbon?"
"Can't be defended," the Portuguese aide observed.
"To the north?" Massena turned back to the table and stabbed a finger onto the hatch marks of a map. "These hills?" He was pointing to the terrain north of Lisbon where hills stretched for over thirty-two kilometers between the Atlantic and the wide river Tagus.
"They're low hills," the aide said, "and there are three roads through them and a dozen usable tracks besides."
"But this Wellington might offer battle there."
"He risks losing his army if he does," Marshal Ney intervened.
Massena remembered the sound of the volleys from the ridge at Bussaco and imagined his men struggling into such fire again, then despised himself for indulging in fear. "We can maneuver him out of the hills," he suggested, and it was a sensible idea, for the enemy's army was surely not large enough to guard a front twenty miles wide. Threaten it in one place, Massena thought, and launch the Eagles through the hills ten miles away. "There are forts in the hills, yes?" he asked.
"We've heard rumors that he's making forts to guard the roads," the Portuguese aide answered.
"So we march through the hills," Massena said. That way the new forts could be left to rot while Wellington's army was surrounded, humiliated, and defeated. The Marshal stared at the map and imagined the colors of the defeated army being paraded through Paris and thrown at the feet of the Emperor. "We can turn his flank again," he said, "but not if we give him time to escape. He has to be hurried."
"So we march south?" Ney asked.
"In two days," Massena decided. He knew he needed that much time for his army to recover from its capture of Coimbra. "Let them stay off the leash today," he said, "and tomorrow we'll whip them back to the Eagles and make sure they're ready for departure on Wednesday."
"And what will the men eat?" Junot asked.
"Whatever they damn well can," Massena snapped. "And there has to be food here, doesn't there? The English can't have scraped a whole city bare."
"There is food." A new voice spoke and the Generals, resplendent in blue, red and gold, turned from their maps to see Chief Commissary Poquelin looking unusually pleased with himself.
"How much food?" Massena asked caustically.
"Enough to see us to Lisbon, sir," Poquelin said, "more than enough." For days now he had tried to avoid the Generals for fear of the scorn they heaped on him, but Poquelin's hour had come. This was his triumph. The commissary had done its work. "I need transport," he said, "and a good battalion to help move the supplies, but we have all we need. More! If you remember, sir, you promised to buy these supplies? The man has kept faith. He's waiting outside."
Massena half remembered making the promise, but now that the food was in his possession he was tempted to break the promise. The army's treasury was not large and it was not the French way to buy supplies that could be stolen. Live off the land, the Emperor always said.
Colonel Barreto, who had come to the palace with Poquelin, saw the indecision on Massena's face. "If we renege on this promise, sir," he said respectfully, "then no one in Portugal will believe us. And in a week or two we shall be governing here. We shall need cooperation."
"Cooperation." Marshal Ney spat the word. "A guillotine in Lisbon will make them cooperate quickly enough."
Massena shook his head. Barreto was right, and it was foolish to make new enemies at the very brink of victory. "Pay him," he said, nodding to an aide who kept the key to the money chest. "And in two days," he went on to Poquelin, "you start moving the supplies south. I want a depot at Leiria."
"Leiria?" Poquelin asked.
"Here, man, here!" Massena stabbed a map with his forefinger, and Poquelin nervously edged through the Generals to look for the town which, he discovered, lay some forty miles south of Coimbra on the Lisbon road.
"I need wagons," Poquelin said.
"You will have every wagon and mule we possess," Massena promised grandly.
"There aren't enough horses," Junot said sourly.
"There are never enough horses!" Massena snapped. "So use men. Use these damned peasants." He waved at the window, indicating the town. "Harness them, whip them, make them work!"
"And the wounded?" Junot asked in alarm. Wagons would be needed to carry the wounded southwards if they were to stay with the army and thus be protected from the Portuguese irregulars.
"They can stay here," Massena decided.
"And who guards them?"
"I shall find men," Massena said, impatient with such quibbles. What mattered was that he had food, the enemy was retreating, and Lisbon was only a hundred miles to the south. The campaign was half complete, but from now on his army would be marching on good roads, so this was no time for caution, it was time to attack.
And in two weeks, he thought, he would have Lisbon and the war would be won.
Sharpe had no sooner gone into the street than a man tried to snatch Sarah away from his side. She hardly looked beguiling for her crumpled black dress was torn at the hem, her hair had come loose and her face was dirty, yet the man seized her arm, then protested wildly as Sharpe pinned him against the wall with his rifle butt. Sarah spat at the man and added a couple of words which she hoped were rude enough to shock him. "You speak French?" Sharpe asked Sarah, careless that the French soldier could overhear him.
"French, Portuguese and Spanish," she said.
Sharpe thumped the man in the groin for a remembrance, then led his companions past the bodies of two men, both Portuguese, who lay on the cobbles. One had been eviscerated and his blood trickled ten feet down the gutter from his corpse which was being sniffed by a three-legged dog. A window broke above them, showering them with glittering shards. A woman screamed, and the bells in one of the churches began a terrible cacophony. None of the French soldiers took any notice of them other than to ask if they had finished with the two girls, and only Sarah and Vicente understood those questions. The street became more crowded as they went uphill and got closer to where, rumor said, there was food enough for a multitude. Sharpe and Harper used their size to bully past soldiers, then, reaching the houses that stood opposite Ferragus's warehouse, Sharpe went into the first door and climbed the stairs. A woman, blood on her face and clutching a baby, shrank from them on the landing, then Sharpe was up the last flight of stairs and discovered, to his relief, that the attic here was like the first, a long room that overlaid the separate houses beneath. There had been a score of students living up here, now their beds were overturned, all except one on which a French soldier slept. He woke as their footsteps sounded loud on the boards and, seeing the two women, rolled off the bed. Sharpe was opening a window onto the roof and turned as the man held out his hands to Sarah who smiled at him and then, with surprising force, rammed the muzzle of her French musket into his belly. The man let out his breath in a gasp, bent over, and Joana hit him with the stock of her musket, swinging it in a haymaker's blow to crack the butt onto his forehead, and the man, without a sound, collapsed backwards. Sarah grinned, discovering abilities she had not suspected.
"Stay here with the women," Sharpe told Vicente, "and be ready to run like hell." He was going to attack the dragoons from above, and he reckoned the cavalrymen would come after their assailants by using the stairs closest to the warehouse, ignorant that the attic gave access to four separate stairwells in the four houses. Sharpe planned to go back the way he had come, and by the time the dragoons reached the attic he would be long gone. "Come on, Pat."