‘then we should be long gone. Is that not what the government has ordered?’
Ferragus flinched as he moved his right hand. ‘But perhaps they won’t come now. Not if they lose the battle.’
‘The battle?’
‘Your Lord Wellington is at Bussaco. He hopes the French will attack him.’
‘I pray they do,’ Sarah said confidently, ‘because then he will beat them.’
‘Perhaps,’ Ferragus said, ‘or perhaps your Lord Wellington will do what Sir John Moore did at La Coruña. Fight, win and run away.’
Sarah sniffed to show her opinion of that statement.
‘Os ingleses,’ Ferragus said savagely, ‘por mar.’
The English, he had said, are for the sea. It was a general belief in Portugal. The British were opportunists, looking for victory, but running from any possible defeat. They had come, they had fought, but they would not stay to the end. Os ingleses por mar.
Sarah half feared Ferragus was right, but would not admit it. ‘You say your brother sent you to protect us?’ she asked instead.
‘He did. He can’t be here. He has to stay with the army.’
‘Then I shall rely on you, senhor, to make certain I am long gone to safety if, as you say, the English take to the sea. I cannot stay here if the French come.’
‘You cannot stay here?’
‘Indeed not. I am English.’
‘I shall protect you, Miss Fry,’ Ferragus said.
‘I am glad to hear it,’ she said briskly and turned back to the kettle.
Bitch, Ferragus thought, stuck-up English bitch. ‘Forget my tea,’ he said and stalked from the kitchen.
And then, from far off, half heard, there was a noise like thunder. It rose and fell, faded to nothing, came again, and at its loudest the windows shook softly in their frames. Sarah stared into the yard and saw the cold grey mist and she knew it was not thunder she heard from so far away.
It was the French.
Because it was dawn and, at Bussaco, the guns were at work.
Sharpe slept badly. The ground was damp, it got colder as the night wore on and he was hurting. His damaged ribs stabbed like knives every time he moved, and when he finally abandoned sleep and stood in the pre-dawn darkness, he wanted to lie down again because of the pain. He fingered his ribs, wondering if the injury was worse than he feared. His right eye was swollen, tender to the touch and half shut.
‘You awake, sir?’ a voice called from nearby.
‘I’m dead,’ Sharpe said.
‘Mug of tea, then, sir?’ It was Matthew Dodd, a rifleman in Sharpe’s company who had been newly made up to corporal while Sharpe was away. Knowles had given Dodd the extra stripe and Sharpe approved of the promotion.
‘Thanks, Matthew,’ Sharpe said and grimaced with pain as he stooped to collect some damp scraps of wood to help make a fire. Dodd had already used a steel and flint to light some kindling that he now blew into bright flame.
‘Are we supposed to have fires, sir?’ Dodd asked.
‘We weren’t supposed to last night, Matthew, but in this damned fog who could see one? Anyway, I need some tea, so get her going.’ Sharpe added his wood, then listened to the crack and hiss of the new flames as Dodd filled a kettle with water and threw in a handful of tea leaves that he kept loose in his pouch. Sharpe added some of his own, then fed the fire with more wood.
‘Damp old morning,’ Dodd said.
‘Bloody mist.’ Sharpe could see the fog was still thick.
‘Be reveille soon,’ Dodd said, settling the kettle in the flames.
‘Can’t even be half past two yet,’ Sharpe said. Here and there along the ridge other men were lighting fires that made glowing, misted patches in the fog, but most of the army still slept. Sharpe had picquets out at the ridge’s eastern edge, but he did not need to check them for another few minutes.
‘Sergeant Harper said you fell down some steps, sir,’ Dodd said, looking at Sharpe’s bruised face.
‘Dangerous things, steps, Matthew. Especially in the dark when it’s slippery.’
‘Sexton back home died like that,’ Dodd said, his gaunt face lit by the flames. ‘He went up the church tower to fasten a new rope on the big tenor bell and he slipped. Some said he was pushed, mind, because his wife was sweet on another man.’
‘You, Matthew?’
‘Mister Sharpe!’ Dodd said, shocked. ‘Not me, no!’
The tea brewed quickly enough and Sharpe scooped some out with his tin mug and then, after thanking Dodd, went across the ridge top towards the French. He did not go down the slope, but found a small spur that jutted out close to the road. The spur, which protruded like a bastion from the ridge’s top, extended out for a hundred paces before ending in a knoll crowned with a ragged jumble of scattered boulders and it was there he expected to find the sentries. He stamped his feet as he went, wanting to alert the picquets to his presence.
‘Who’s there?’ The challenge came smartly enough, but Sharpe had expected it because Sergeant Read was doing duty.
‘Captain Sharpe.’
‘Countersign, Captain?’ Read demanded.
‘A sip of hot tea, Sergeant, if you don’t shoot me,’ Sharpe said.
Read was a stickler for following the rules, but even a Methodist could be persuaded to ignore a missing password by an offer of tea. ‘The password’s Jessica, sir,’ he told Sharpe reprovingly.
‘The Colonel’s wife, eh? Mister Slingsby forgot to tell me.’ He handed Read the mug of tea. ‘Anything nasty about?’
‘Not a thing, sir, not a thing.’
Ensign Iliffe, who was nominally in charge of the picquet, though under standing orders to do nothing without his Sergeant’s agreement, came and gawped at Sharpe.
‘Good morning, Mister Iliffe,’ Sharpe said.
‘Sir,’ the boy stammered, too scared to make conversation.
‘All quiet?’
‘I think so, sir,’ Iliffe said and stared at Sharpe’s face, not quite sure he believed the damage he saw in the half light and much too nervous to ask what had caused it.
The eastern slope dropped into the fog and darkness. Sharpe crouched,
