Sharpe's Escape

Sarah slipped past Vicente who stood aside to let her pass, then he looked from Sarah to Joana, both girls bare-legged and dressed in grubby shirts. He came into the kitchen and frowned at Sharpe. 'It looks like a brothel in there,' he said reprovingly.

'Greenjackets always were lucky, Jorge. And they're both volunteers.'

'Does that justify it?'

Sharpe pushed more kindling into the stove. 'Doesn't have to be justified, Jorge. It's life.'

'Which is why we have religion,' Vicente said, 'to raise us above life.'

'I was always lucky,' Sharpe said, 'in escaping law and religion.'

Vicente looked miserable with that reply, but then saw the pencil portrait of Sharpe that Sarah had propped on a shelf and his face brightened. 'That's good! It's just like you!'

'It's a picture, Jorge, of a people's anger let loose on a corrupt world.'

'It is?'

'That's what the fellow who drew it said, something like that.'

'Miss Fry didn't do it?'

'It was a Frog officer, Jorge. Did it last night while you were sleeping. Step aside, fire coming.' He and Vicente made way for Sarah who was carrying a burning scrap of wood that she pushed into the stove, then watched to make sure the fire caught. 'What we're going to do,' Sharpe said as Sarah blew on the small flames, 'is boil up some water, wash our clothes and pick off the fleas.'

'Fleas?' Sarah sounded alarmed.

'Why do you think you're scratching, darling? You've probably got worse than fleas, but we've got all day to clean up. We'll wait for the Crapauds to go, which will be tomorrow at the earliest.'

'They won't go today?' Sarah asked.

'That drunken lot? Their officers will never get them in march order today. Tomorrow if they're lucky. And tonight we'll have a look at the streets, but I doubt we can get out tonight. They're bound to have patrols. Best to wait till they've gone, then cross the bridge and head south.'

Sarah thought for a second, then frowned as she scratched at her waist. 'You just follow the French?' she asked. 'How do you get past them?'

'The safest way,' Vicente said, 'would be to head for the Tagus. We must cross some high hills to reach the river, but once there we might find a boat. Something to take us downstream to Lisbon.'

'But before that,' Sharpe said, 'there's another job to do. Look for Ferragus.'

Vicente frowned. 'Why?'

'Because he owes us, Jorge,' Sharpe said, 'or at least he owes Sarah. He stole her money, the bastard, so we have to get it back.'

Vicente was plainly unhappy at the idea of prolonging the feud with Ferragus, but he did not voice any objections. 'And what if a patrol comes here today?' he asked instead. 'They'll be searching the town for their own troops, won't they?'

'You speak Frog?'

'Not well, but I speak some.'

'So tell them you're an Italian, a Dutchman, anything you like, and promise we'll rejoin our unit. Which we will, if we can get out of here.'

They made tea, shared a breakfast of biscuit, salt beef and cheese, then Sharpe and Vicente stood guard while Harper helped the two women do the laundry. They boiled the clothes to get the stench of the sewer out of the cloth and, when everything was dry, which took most of the day, Sharpe used a heated poker to kill the lice in the seams. Harper had torn down some curtains from the bedroom, washed them, torn them into long strips, and now insisted on bandaging Sharpe's ribs that were still bruised and painful. Sarah saw the scars on his back.

'What happened?' she asked.

'I was flogged,' Sharpe explained.

'For what?'

'Something I didn't do,' Sharpe said.

'It must have hurt.'

'Life hurts,' Sharpe said. 'Wrap it tight, Pat.'

His ribs were still painful, but he could take a deep breath without wincing, which surely meant things were mending. They were mending in the city too, for Coimbra was quieter today, though the plume of smoke, thinner now, still drifted up from the warehouse. Sharpe suspected the French would have rescued some supplies from the blaze, but not nearly enough to release them from the hunger that Lord Wellington had deployed to defeat their invasion. At midday Sharpe crept to the end of the tortuous alley and saw, as he had suspected, patrols of French soldiers rooting men out of houses, and he and Harper then filled the alley with garden rubbish to suggest that it was not worth exploring, and the ruse must have worked, for no patrol bothered to explore the narrow passage. At nightfall there were the sounds of hooves and iron-rimmed wheels on the nearby streets and when it was fully dark Sharpe negotiated the obstacles in the alley and saw that two batteries of artillery were parked in the street. A half-dozen sentries guarded the vehicles and one, more alert than the others, saw Sharpe's shadow in the alley's entrance and shouted a challenge. Sharpe crouched. The man called again and, receiving no answer, shot into the blackness. The ball ricocheted above Sharpe's head as he crept backwards. 'Un chien,' another sentry called. The first man peered down the alley, saw nothing and agreed it must have been a dog in the night.

Sharpe stood guard for the second half of the night. Sarah stayed with him, staring into the moonlit garden. She spoke of growing up and of losing her parents. 'I became a nuisance to my uncle,' she said sadly.

'So he got shot of you?'

'As fast as he could.' She was sitting in the armchair and reached out to run a finger down the zigzag leather reinforcements on the leg of Sharpe's overalls. 'Will the British really stay in Lisbon?'

'It'll take more than this pack of Frenchmen to get them out,' Sharpe said scornfully. 'Of course we're staying.'

'If I had a hundred pounds,' she said wistfully, 'I'd find a small house in Lisbon and teach English. I like children.'

'I don't.'

'Of course you do.' She slapped him lightly.

'You wouldn't go back to England?' Sharpe asked her. 'What can I do there? No one wants to learn Portuguese, but plenty of Portuguese want their children to know English. Besides, in England I'm just another young woman with no prospects, no fortune and no future. Here I benefit from the intrigue of being different.'

'You intrigue me,' Sharpe said, and got slapped again. 'You could stay with me,' he added.

'And be a soldier's woman?' She laughed.

'Nothing wrong with that,' Sharpe said defensively.

'No, there's not,' Sarah agreed. She was silent for a while. 'Until two days ago,' she went on suddenly, 'I thought my life depended on other people. On employers. Now I think it depends on me. You taught me that. But I need money.'

'Money's easy,' Sharpe said dismissively.

'That is not the conventional wisdom,' Sarah said dryly.

'Steal the stuff,' Sharpe said.

'You were really a thief?'

'Still am. Once a thief, always a thief, only now I steal from the enemy. And some day I'll have enough to stop doing it and then I'll stop others thieving from me.'

'You have a simple view of life.'

'You're born, you survive, you die,' Sharpe said. 'What's hard about that?'

'It's an animal's life,' Sarah said, 'and we are more than animals.'

'That's what they tell me,' Sharpe said, 'but when war comes they're grateful for men like me. At least they were.'

'Were?'

He hesitated, then shrugged. 'My Colonel wants rid of me. He's got a brother-in-law he wants to have my job, a man called Slingsby. He's got manners.'