cook looked frightened now. She spoke fast, glancing up to the top floor. ‘She says,’ Vicente interpreted, ‘that the children’s governess is locked upstairs. An Englishwoman.’
‘Bloody hell. Locked up? What’s her name?’
‘Fry.’
Sharpe climbed up to the attics. The stairs here were uncarpeted and the walls drab. ‘Miss Fry!’ he shouted. ‘Miss Fry!’ He was rewarded by an incoherent cry and the sound of a fist beating on a door. He pushed the door to find it was indeed locked. ‘Stand back!’ he called.
He kicked the door hard, thumping his heel close to the lock. The whole attic seemed to shake, but the door held. He kicked again and heard a splintering sound, drew back his leg and gave the door one last almighty blow and it flew open and there, hunched under the window, her arms wrapped about her knees, was a woman with hair the colour of pale gold. She stared at Sharpe, who stared back, then he looked hastily away as he remembered his manners because the woman, who had struck him as undoubtedly beautiful, was as naked as a new-laid egg. ‘Your servant, ma’am,’ he said, staring at the wall.
‘You’re English?’ she asked.
‘I am, ma’am.’
‘Then fetch me some clothes!’ she demanded. And Sharpe obeyed.
Ferragus had sent his brother’s wife, children and six servants away at dawn, but had ordered Miss Fry up to her room. Sarah had protested, insisting she must travel with the children and that her trunk was already on the baggage wagon, but Ferragus had ordered her to wait in her room. ‘You will go with the British,’ he told her.
Major Ferreira’s wife had also protested. ‘The children need her!’
‘She will go with her own kind,’ Ferragus snapped at his sister-in-law, ‘so get in the coach!’
‘I will go with the British?’ Sarah had asked.
‘Os ingleses por mar,’ he had snarled, ‘and you can run away with them. Your time is done here. You have paper, a pen?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then write yourself a character. I will sign it on my brother’s behalf. But you can take refuge with your own people. So wait in your room.’
‘But my clothes, my books!’ Sarah pointed to the baggage cart. Her small savings, all in coin, were also in the trunk.
‘I’ll have them taken off,’ Ferragus said. ‘Now go.’
Sarah had gone upstairs and written a letter of recommendation in which she described herself as being efficient, hard-working, and good at instilling discipline in her charges. She said nothing about the children being fond of her, for she was not sure that they were, not did she believe it part of her job that they should be. She had paused once in writing the letter to lean from the window when she had heard the stable-yard gates being opened, and she saw the coach and baggage wagon, escorted by four mounted men armed with pistols, swords and malevolence, clatter into the street. She sat again, and added a sentence which truthfully said she was honest, sober and assiduous, and she had just been writing the last word when she had heard the heavy steps climbing the stairs to the servants’ rooms. She had instantly known it was Ferragus and an instinct told her to lock her door, but before she could even get up from behind her small table Ferragus had thrust the door open and loomed in the entrance. ‘I am staying here,’ he had announced.
‘If you think that’s wise, senhor,’ she said in a tone which suggested she did not care what he did.
‘And you will stay with me,’ he went on.
For a heartbeat Sarah thought she had misheard, then she shook her head dismissively. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said. ‘I will travel with the British troops.’ She stopped abruptly, distracted by gunshots coming from the lower town. The sound came from the rifles puncturing the first of the rum barrels, but Sarah could not know that and she wondered if the noise presaged the arrival of the French. Everything was so confusing. First had come news of the battle, then an announcement that the French had been defeated, and now everyone was ordered to leave Coimbra because the enemy was coming.
‘You will stay with me,’ Ferragus repeated flatly.
‘I most certainly will not!’
‘Shut your bloody mouth,’ Ferragus said, and saw the shock on her face.
‘I think you had better leave,’ Sarah said. She still spoke firmly, but her fear was obvious now and it excited Ferragus who leaned on her table, making its spindly legs creak.
‘Is that the letter?’ he asked.
‘Which you promised to sign,’ Sarah said.
Instead he had torn it into shreds. ‘Bugger you,’ he said, ‘damn you,’ and he added some other words he had learned in the Royal Navy, and the effect of each was as though he had slapped her around the head. It might well come to that, he thought. Indeed, it almost certainly would and that was the pleasure of teaching the arrogant English bitch a lesson. ‘Your duties now, woman,’ he had finished, ‘are to please me.’
‘You have lost your wits,’ Sarah said.
Ferragus smiled. ‘Do you know what I can do with you?’ he had asked. ‘I can send you with Miguel to Lisbon and he can have you shipped to Morocco or to Algiers. I can sell you there. You know what a man will pay for white flesh in Africa?’ He paused, enjoying the horror on her face. ‘You wouldn’t be the first girl I’ve sold.’
‘You will go!’ Sarah said, clinging to her last shreds of defiance. She was looking for a weapon, any weapon, but there was nothing within reach except the inkpot and she was on the point of snatching it up and hurling it into his eyes when Ferragus tipped the table on its side and she had backed to the window. She had an idea that a good woman should rather die than be dishonoured and she wondered if she ought to throw herself from the window and fall to her death in the stable yard, but the notion was one thing and the reality an impossibility.
‘Take your dress off,’ Ferragus said.
‘You will go!’ Sarah had managed to say, and no sooner had she spoken than Ferragus punched her in the belly. It was a hard, fast blow and it drove the breath from her, and Ferragus, as she bent over, simply tore the blue frock down her back. She had tried to clutch to its remnants, but he was so massively strong, and when she did hold fast to her undergarments he just slapped her round the head so that her skull rang and she fell against the wall and could only watch as he threw her torn clothes out into the yard. Then, blessedly, Miguel had shouted up the stairs saying that the Major, Ferragus’s brother, had arrived.
Sarah opened her mouth to scream to her employer for help, but Ferragus had given her another punch in the belly, leaving her incapable of making a sound. Then he had thrown her bedclothes out of the window. ‘I shall be back, Miss Fry,’ he said, and he had forced her thin arms apart to stare at her. She was weeping with anger, but just then Major Ferreira had shouted up the stairs and Ferragus had let go of her, walked from the room and locked the door.
Sarah shivered with fear. She heard the brothers leave the house and she thought of trying to escape out of the window, but the wall outside offered no handholds, no ledges, just a long drop into the stable yard where Miguel
