he would retain more than enough. That was just common sense and, as he sat in his brother’s study and listened to the shudder of distant gunfire, he was thinking that it had been a mistake to even consider fleeing to Lisbon. If this battle were won then the French would never come here, and if it were lost, all would be lost. Best therefore to stay near his property and so protect it.
His elder brother was the key. Pedro Ferreira was a respected staff officer and his contacts stretched across the gap between the armies to those Portuguese officers who had allied themselves with the French. Ferragus, through his brother, could reach the French and offer them the one thing they most wanted: food. In his warehouse in the lower town he had hoarded six months’ worth of hard biscuit, two months’ supply of salt beef, a month’s supply of salt cod and a stack of other food and materials. There was lamp oil, boot leather, linen, horseshoes and nails. The French would want to steal it, but Ferragus had to devise a way to make them buy it. That way Ferragus would survive.
He opened the study door, shouted for a servant and sent her to summon Miss Fry to the study. ‘I cannot write,’ he explained to her when she arrived, holding up his bruised right hand to prove the incapacity. In truth he could write, though his knuckles were still sore and to flex his fingers was painful, but he did not want to write. He wanted Sarah. ‘You will write for me,’ he went on, ‘so sit.’
Sarah bridled at his abrupt tone, but obediently sat at the Major’s desk where she pulled paper, inkwell and sand shaker towards her. Ferragus stood close behind her. ‘I am ready,’ she said.
Ferragus said nothing. Sarah looked at the wall opposite that was filled with leather-bound books. The room smelt of cigar smoke. The gunfire was persisting, a grumble from far away like thunder in the next county. ‘The letter,’ Ferragus said, startling her with his gravelly voice, ‘is for my brother.’ He moved even closer so that Sarah was aware of his big presence just behind the chair. ‘Give him my regards,’ Ferragus said, ‘and tell him that all is well in Coimbra.’
Sarah found a steel-nibbed pen, dipped it in ink and began writing. The nib made a scratching noise. ‘Tell him,’ Ferragus went on, ‘that the matter of honour is not settled. The man escaped.’
‘Just that, senhor?’ Sarah asked.
‘Just that,’ Ferragus said in his deep voice. Damn Sharpe, he thought. The wretched rifleman had destroyed the flour, and so Ferragus’s token gift to the French had stayed ungiven, and the French had been expecting the flour and they would now think Ferragus could not be trusted, and that left Ferragus and his brother with a problem. How to reassure the enemy? And would the enemy need reassurance? Would they even come? ‘Tell my brother,’ he went on, ‘that I rely on his judgement whether or not the enemy will be stopped at Bussaco.’
Sarah wrote. As the ink began to thin on the nib she dipped the pen again and then froze because Ferragus’s fingers were touching the nape of her neck. For a heartbeat she did not move, then she slapped the pen down. ‘Senhor, you are touching me.’
‘So?’
‘So stop! Or do you wish me to call Major Ferreira’s wife?’
Ferragus chuckled, but took his fingers away. ‘Pick up your pen, Miss Fry,’ he said, ‘and tell my brother that I pray the enemy will be stopped.’
Sarah added the new sentence. She was blushing, not from embarrassment, but out of rage. How dare Ferragus touch her? She pressed too hard on the pen and the ink spattered in tiny droplets across the words. ‘But tell him,’ the harsh voice persisted behind her, ‘that if the enemy is not stopped, then I have decided to do what we discussed. Tell him he must arrange protection.’
‘Protection for what, senhor?’ Sarah asked in a tight voice.
‘He will know what I mean,’ Ferragus said impatiently. ‘You just write, woman.’ He listened to the pen’s tiny noise and sensed, from the force of the nib on the paper, the extent of the girl’s anger. She was a proud one, he thought. Poor and proud, a dangerous mixture, and Ferragus saw her as a challenge. Most women were frightened of him, terrified even, and he liked that, but Miss Fry seemed to think that because she was English she was safe. He would like to see terror replace that confidence, see her coldness warm into fear. She would fight, he thought, and that would make it even better and he considered taking her right there, on the desk, muffling her screams as he raped her white flesh, but there was still a terrible pain in his groin from the kick Sharpe had given him and he knew he would not be able to finish what he began and, besides, he would rather wait until his brother’s wife was gone from the house. In a day or two, he thought, he would take Miss Fry’s English pride and wipe his arse on it. ‘Read what you have written,’ he ordered her.
Sarah read the words in a small voice. Ferragus, satisfied, ordered her to write his name and seal the letter. ‘Use this.’ He gave her his own seal and, when Sarah pressed it into the wax, she saw the image of a naked woman. She ignored it, rightly suspecting that Ferragus had been trying to embarrass her. ‘You can go now,’ he told her coldly, ‘but send Miguel to me.’
Miguel was one of his most trusted men and he was ordered to carry the letter to where the cannons sounded. ‘Find my brother,’ Ferragus instructed, ‘give this to him and bring me his answer.’
The next few days, Ferragus thought, would be dangerous. Some money and lives would be lost, but if he was clever, and just a little bit lucky, much could be gained.
Including Miss Fry. Who did not matter. In many ways, he knew, she was a distraction and distractions were dangerous, but they also made life interesting. Captain Sharpe was a second distraction, and Ferragus wryly noted the coincidence that he was suddenly obsessed by two English folk. One, he was sure, would live and scream while the other, the one who wore the green jacket, must scream and die.
It would just take luck and a little cleverness.
The French strategy was simple. A column must gain the ridge, turn north and fight its way along the summit. The British and Portuguese, turning to meet that threat, would be hammered by the second attack at the ridge’s northern end and, thus pincered, Wellington’s troops would collapse between the two French forces. Masséna’s cavalry, released to the pursuit, would harry the defeated enemy all the way to Coimbra. Once Coimbra was captured the march on Lisbon could not take long.
Lisbon would then fall. British shipping would be ejected from the Tagus and other French forces would advance north to capture Porto and so deny the British another major harbour. Portugal would belong to the French, and what remained of the British army would be marched into captivity and the forces that had defeated it would be free to capture Cadiz and maul the scattered Spanish armies in the south. Britain would face a decision then, whether to sue for peace or face years of futile war, and France, once Spain and Portugal were pacified, could turn her armies to whatever new lands the Emperor wished to bless with French civilization. It was all so very simple, really, just so long as a column reached the ridge of Bussaco.
And two columns were there. Both were small columns, just seven battalions between them, fewer than four thousand men, but they were there, on top, in the sunlight, staring at the smoky remnants of British campfires, and more Frenchmen were coming up behind, and the only immediate threat was a Portuguese battalion that was marching north on the new road made just behind the ridge’s crest. That unsuspecting battalion was met by the closest French column with a blast of musketry and, because the Portuguese were in column of companies, in march order rather than fighting order, the volley drove into their leading troops, and the French, seeing an opportunity, began to deploy into a ragged line, thus unmasking the files in the centre of the column who could now add their fire. Voltigeurs had advanced across the summit, almost
