by the time they reached the long hill above the big house and the small town. “That’s where we’ll go,” Moon announced the moment he saw the house.
“I think they might be anfrancesados, sir,” Sharpe said.
“Talk English, man, talk English.”
“I think they’re sympathetic to the French, sir.”
“How can you possibly tell?”
“Because the house hasn’t been plundered, sir.”
“You can’t surmise that,” the brigadier said, though without much conviction. Sharpe’s words had given him pause, but still the house drew him like a magnet. It promised comfort and the company of gentle folk. “There’s only one way to find out, though, isn’t there?” he proclaimed. “That’s to go there! So let’s be moving.”
“I think we should go to the town, sir,” Sharpe persisted.
“And I think you should keep quiet, Sharpe, and obey my orders.”
So Sharpe kept quiet as they went down the hill, through the upper vineyards and then beneath the pale leaves of an olive grove. They maneuvered the brigadier’s stretcher over a low stone wall and approached the house through wide gardens of cypress, orange trees, and fallow flower beds. There was a large pond, full of brown leaves and stagnant water, and then an avenue of statues. The statues were all of saints writhing in their death agonies. Sebastian clutched at the stub of an arrow piercing his ribs, Agnes stared serenely heavenward despite the sword in her throat, while next to her Andrew hung upside down on his cross. There were men being burned, women being disemboweled, and all of them preserved in white marble streaked with lichen and bird droppings. The ragged soldiers stared wide-eyed and the Catholics among them made the sign of the cross while Sharpe looked for any sign of life in the house. The windows remained shuttered, but smoke still drifted from a chimney, and then the big door that opened onto a balustraded terrace was thrown open and a man, dressed in black, stepped into the sunlight and waited as though he had been expecting them. “We had best observe the proprieties,” Moon said.
“Sir?” Sharpe asked.
“For God’s sake, Sharpe, gentry live here! They don’t want their drawing room filled with common soldiers, do they? You and I can go in, but the men have to find the servants’ quarters.”
“Do they drop your stretcher outside, sir?” Sharpe asked innocently, and thought he heard a slight snort from Harper.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Sharpe,” the brigadier said. “They can carry me in first.”
“Yes, sir.”
Sharpe left the men on the terrace as he accompanied the brigadier into a vast room filled with dark furniture and hung with gloomy pictures, most showing scenes of martyrdom. More saints burned here, or else gazed in rapture as soldiers skewered them, while over the mantel was a life-size painting of the crucifixion. Christ’s pale body was laced with blood while behind him a great thunderstorm unleashed lightning on a cowering city. A crucifix made of a wood so dark it was almost black hung at the other end of the room and beneath it was a private shrine draped in black on which a saber lay between two unlit candles.
The man who had greeted them was a servant who informed the brigadier that the Marquesa would join him very soon, and was there anything that his guests needed? Sharpe did his best to translate, using more Portuguese with the servant than Spanish. “Tell him I need breakfast, Sharpe,” the brigadier commanded, “and a doctor.”
Sharpe passed on the requests, then added that his men needed food and water. The servant bowed and said he would take the soldiers to the kitchen. He left Sharpe alone with Moon who was now lying on a couch. “Damned uncomfortable furniture,” the brigadier said. He grimaced from a stab of pain in his leg, then looked up at the paintings. “How do they live with this gloom?”
“I suppose they’re religious, sir.”
“We’re all bloody religious, man, but that doesn’t mean we hang paintings of torture on our walls! Good God incarnate. Nothing wrong with a few decent landscapes and some family portraits. Did he say there was a Marquesa here?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well let’s hope she’s easier on the eye than her damned paintings, eh?”
“I think I ought to make sure the men are properly settled, sir,” Sharpe said.
“Good idea,” Moon said, subtly insinuating that Sharpe would be happier in the servants’ quarters. “Do take your time, Sharpe. That fellow understood I need a doctor?”
“He did, sir.”
“And food?”
“He knows that too, sir.”
“Pray God he gets both here before sundown. Oh, and Sharpe, send that bright young fellow, the one who speaks the languages, to translate for me. But tell him to smarten himself up first.” The brigadier jerked his head, dismissing Sharpe who went back onto the terrace and found his way through an alley, across the stable yard, and so to a whitewashed kitchen hung with hams and smelling of wood smoke, cheese, and baking bread. A crucifix hung above the huge fireplace where two cooks were busy at a blackened stove. A third woman pounded a mass of dough on a long scrubbed table.
Harper grinned at Sharpe, then gestured at the cheeses, hams, and the two fat wine barrels on their stands. “You wouldn’t think there was a war going on, sir, would you now?”
“You’ve forgotten something, Sergeant.”
“And what would that be, sir?”
“There’s a battalion of French infantry within half a day’s march.”
“So there is.”
Sharpe walked to the twin wine barrels and rapped the nearest. “You know the rules,” he told the watching soldiers. “If any of you get drunk I’ll make you wish you hadn’t been born.” They stared at him solemnly. What he should do, he knew, was take the two barrels outside and stave them in, but if they wanted to get drunk they would still find liquor in a house this size. Put a British soldier in a wilderness and he would soon discover a taproom. “We might have to get out of here fast,” he explained, “so I don’t want you drunk. When we get to Lisbon, I promise I’ll fill you all so full of rum that you won’t be able to stand for a week. But today, lads? Today you stay sober.”
They nodded and he slung his rifle on his shoulder. “I’m going to stand watch until you’ve eaten,” he told Harper. “Then you and two others take over from me. You saw that old castle tower?”
“Couldn’t miss it, sir.”
“That’s where I’ll be. And Harris? You’re to be an interpreter for the brigadier.”
Harris shuddered. “Do I have to, sir?”
“Yes, you bloody do. And you’re to smarten yourself up first.”
“Three bags full, sir,” Harris said.
“And Harris!” Sergeant Harper called.
“Sergeant?”
“Make sure to tell His Lordship if us teagues are causing trouble.”
“I’ll do that, Sergeant, I promise.”
Sharpe went to the tower that formed the eastern end of the stable yard. He climbed to the parapet that was some forty feet above the ground and from there he had a good view of the road that ran eastward along the smaller river. It was the road the French would use if they decided to come here. Would they come? They knew a handful of British troops was stranded on the Spanish bank of the river, but would they bother to pursue? Or perhaps they might just send a forage party. It was evident that this large house had been spared the usual French cruelties and that was doubtless because the Marquesa was anfrancesado, and that meant she must be supplying the French garrisons with provisions. So had the French refrained from plundering the town as well? If so, was there a boat? And if there was, then they could cross the river as soon as the brigadier had seen a doctor, if any doctor was available. Though once across the river, what then? The brigadier’s troops had blown up Fort Joseph and were withdrawing westward, going back to the Tagus, and as long as Moon had a broken leg there was no hope of catching them. Sharpe worried for a moment, then decided it was not his problem. Brigadier Moon was the senior officer, so all Sharpe had to do was wait for orders. In the meantime he would have his men make
