snapped angrily and the look he gave Slingsby made the Lieutenant step backwards in surprise. Slingsby frowned, but said nothing as Sharpe climbed the ladder to the mast’s platform that stood fifteen feet above the hilltop. Three pock marks in the boards showed where the Midshipman had placed his tripod so he could stare at the neighbouring telegraph stations and read their messages. The station to the north had already been destroyed, but looking south Sharpe could just see the next tower somewhere beyond the River Criz and still behind British lines. It would not be behind the lines for long, he thought. Marshal Masséna’s army was flooding into central Portugal and the British would be retreating to their newly built defensive lines at Torres Vedras. The plan was to retreat to the new fortifications, let the French come, then either kill their futile attacks or watch them starve.
And to help them starve, the British and Portuguese were leaving them nothing. Every barn, every larder, every storehouse was being emptied. Crops were being burned in their fields, windmills were being destroyed and wells made foul with carcasses. The inhabitants of every town and village in central Portugal were being evicted, taking their livestock with them, ordered to go either behind the Lines of Torres Vedras or else up into the high hills where the French would be reluctant to follow. The intention was that the enemy would find a scorched land, bare of everything, even of telegraph ropes.
Sharpe untied one of the signal ropes and pulled down the white flag that turned out to be a big handkerchief of fine linen, neatly hemmed with the initials PAF embroidered in blue into one corner. Ferreira? Sharpe looked down on the Portuguese Major who was watching him. ‘Yours, Major?’ Sharpe asked.
‘No,’ Ferreira called back.
‘Mine then,’ Sharpe said, and pocketed the handkerchief. He saw the anger on Ferreira’s face and was amused by it. ‘You might want to move those horses,’ he nodded at the beasts picketed beside the shrine, ‘before we burn the tower.’
‘Thank you, Captain,’ Ferreira said icily.
‘Fire it now, Sharpe?’ Slingsby demanded from the ground.
‘Not till I’m off the bloody platform,’ Sharpe growled. He looked round one last time and saw a small mist of grey-white powder smoke far off to the southeast. He pulled out his telescope, the precious glass that had been given him by Sir Arthur Wellesley, now Lord Wellington, and he rested it on the balustrade and then knelt and stared towards the smoke. He could see little, but he reckoned he was watching the British rearguard in action. French cavalry must have pressed too close and a battalion was firing volleys, backed up by the cannons of the Royal Horse Artillery. He could just hear the soft thump of the far-off guns. He swept the glass north, the lens travelling over a hard country of hills, rocks and barren pasture, and there was nothing there, nothing at all, until suddenly he saw a hint of a different green and he jerked the glass back, settled it and saw them.
Cavalry. French cavalry. Dragoons in their green coats. They were at least a mile away, in a valley, but coming towards the telegraph station. Reflected sunlight glinted from their buckles, bits and stirrups as Sharpe tried to count them. Forty? Sixty men perhaps, it was hard to tell for the squadron was twisting between rocks in the valley’s deep heart and going from sunshine to shadow. They looked to be in no particular hurry and Sharpe wondered if they had been sent to capture the telegraph station which would serve the advancing French as well as it had served the British.
‘We’ve got company, Sergeant!’ Sharpe called down to Harper. Decency and courtesy demanded that he should have told Slingsby, but he could barely bring himself to talk to the man, so he spoke to Harper instead. ‘At least a squadron of green bastards. About a mile away, but they could be here in a few minutes.’ He collapsed the telescope and went down the ladder and nodded at the Irish Sergeant. ‘Spark it off,’ he said.
The turpentine-soaked straw blazed bright and high, but it took some moments before the big timbers of the scaffold caught the flame. Sharpe’s company, as ever fascinated by wilful destruction, looked on appreciatively and gave a small cheer as the high platform at last began to burn. Sharpe had walked to the eastern edge of the small hilltop, but, denied the height of the platform, he could no longer see the dragoons. Had they wheeled away? Perhaps, if they had hoped to capture the signal tower intact, they would have decided to abandon the effort when they saw the smoke boil off the summit.
Lieutenant Slingsby joined him. ‘I don’t wish to make anything of it,’ he said in a low tone, ‘but you spoke very harshly to me just now, Sharpe, very harshly indeed.’
Sharpe said nothing. He was imagining the pleasure of disembowelling the little bastard.
‘I don’t resent it for myself,’ Slingsby went on, still speaking softly, ‘but it serves the men ill. Very ill indeed. It diminishes their respect for the King’s commission.’
Sharpe knew he had deserved the reproof, but he was not willing to give Slingsby an inch. ‘You think men respect the King’s commission?’ he asked instead.
‘Naturally.’ Slingsby sounded shocked at the question. ‘Of course!’
‘I didn’t,’ Sharpe said, and wondered if he smelt rum on Slingsby’s breath. ‘I didn’t respect the King’s commission,’ he went on, deciding he had imagined the smell, ‘not when I marched in the ranks. I thought most jack-puddings were overpaid bastards.’
‘Sharpe,’ Slingsby expostulated, but whatever he was about to say dried on his tongue, for he saw the dragoons appear on the lower slope.
‘Fifty or so of them,’ Sharpe said, ‘and coming this way.’
‘We should deploy, perhaps?’ Slingsby indicated the eastern slope that was dotted with boulders which would hide a skirmish line very efficiently. The Lieutenant straightened his back and snapped his boot heels together. ‘Be an honour to lead the men down the hill, Sharpe.’
‘It might be a bloody honour,’ Sharpe said sarcastically, ‘but it would still be bloody suicide. If we’re going to fight the bastards,’ he went on, ‘then I’d rather be on a hilltop than scattered halfway down a slope. Dragoons like skirmish lines, Slingsby. It gives them sword practice.’ He turned to look at the shrine. There were two small shuttered windows on the wall facing him and he reckoned they would make good loopholes if he did have to defend the hilltop. ‘How long till sunset?’
‘Ten minutes less than three hours,’ Slingsby said instantly.
Sharpe grunted. He doubted the dragoons would attack, but if they did he could easily hold them off till dusk, and no dragoon would linger in hostile country after nightfall for fear of the partisans. ‘You stay here,’ he ordered Slingsby, ‘watch them and don’t do anything without asking me. Do you understand that?’
Slingsby looked offended, as he had every right to be. ‘Of course I understand it,’ he said in a tone of protest.
‘Don’t take men off the hilltop, Lieutenant,’ Sharpe said, ‘and that’s an order.’ He strode towards the shrine, wondering whether his men would be able to knock a few loopholes in its ancient stone walls. They did not have the right tools, no sledgehammers or crowbars, but the stonework looked old and its mortar was crumbling.
To his surprise his path to the shrine door was barred by Major Ferreira and one of the civilians. ‘The door is locked, Captain,’ the Portuguese officer said.
‘Then I’ll break it down,’ Sharpe answered.
‘It is a shrine,’ Ferreira said reprovingly.
‘Then
