A feitor was an official storekeeper, appointed by the government to make certain there were sufficient rations for the Portuguese army. Every sizable town in Portugal had a feitor, answerable to the Junta of Provisions in Lisbon, and Coimbra's storekeeper was a middle-aged, corpulent man called Rafael Pires who snatched off his hat when he saw Ferragus and seemed about to drop to one knee.
"Senhor Pires," Ferragus greeted him affably enough. "Your wife and family are well?"
"God be praised, senhor, they are."
"They are still here? You have not sent them south?"
"They left yesterday. I have a sister in Bemposta." Bemposta was a small place nearer to Lisbon, the kind of town the French might ignore in their advance.
"Then you are fortunate. They won't starve on the streets of Lisbon, eh? So what brings you here?"
Pires fidgeted with his hat. "I have orders, senhor."
"Orders?"
Pires gestured with his hat at the great heaps of food. "It is all to be destroyed, senhor. All of it."
"Who says so?"
"The Captain-Major."
"And you take orders from him?"
"I am directed to do so, senhor."
The Captain-Major was the military commander of Coimbra and its surrounding districts. He was in charge of recruiting and training the ordenanqa, the "armed inhabitants," who could reinforce the army if the enemy came, but the Captain-Major was also expected to enforce the government's decrees.
"So what will you do?" Ferragus asked Pires. "Eat it all?"
"The Captain-Major is sending men here," Pires said.
"Here?" Ferragus's voice was dangerous now.
Pires took a breath. "They have my files, senhor," he explained. "They know you have been buying food. How can they not know? You have spent much money, senhor. I am ordered to find it."
"And?" Ferragus asked.
"It is to be destroyed," Pires insisted and then, as if to show that he was helpless in this situation, he invoked a higher power. "The English insist."
"The English," Ferragus snarled. "Os ingleses por mar" he shouted at Pires, then calmed down. The English were not the problem. Pires was. "You say the Captain-Major took your papers?"
"Indeed."
"But he does not know where the food is stored?"
"The papers only say how much food is in the town," Pires said, "and who owns it."
"So he has my name," Ferragus asked, "and a list of my stores?"
"Not a complete list, senhor." Pires glanced at the massive stacks of food and marvelled that Ferragus had accumulated so much. "He merely knows you have some supplies stored and he says I must guarantee their destruction."
"So guarantee it," Ferragus said airily.
"He will send men to make sure of it, senhor" Pires said. "I am to bring them here."
"So you don't know where the stores are," Ferragus said.
"I am to make a search this afternoon, senhor, every warehouse in the city!" Pires shrugged. "I came to warn you," he said in helpless appeal.
"I pay you, Pires," Ferragus said, "to keep my food from being taken at a thief's price to feed the army. Now you will lead men here to destroy it?"
"You can move it, perhaps?" Pires suggested.
"Move it!" Ferragus shouted. "How, in God's name, do I move it? It would take a hundred men and twenty wagons."
Pires just shrugged.
Ferragus stared down at the feitor. "You came to warn me," he said in a low voice, "because you will bring the soldiers here, yes? And you do not want me to blame you, is that it?"
"They insist, senhor, they insist!" Pires was pleading now. "And if our own troops don't come, the British will."
"Os ingleses por mar," Ferragus snarled, and he used his left hand to punch Pires in the face. The blow was swift and extraordinarily powerful, a straight jab that broke the feitor's nose and sent him staggering back with blood pouring from his nostrils. Ferragus followed fast, using his wounded right hand to thump Pires in the belly. The blow hurt Ferragus, but he ignored the pain because that was what a man must do. Pain must be endured. If a man could not take pain then he should not fight, and Ferragus backed Pires against the warehouse wall and systematically punched him, left and right, each blow traveling a short distance, but landing with hammer force. The fists drove into the feitor's body, cracking his ribs and breaking his cheekbones, and blood spattered on Ferragus's hands and sleeves, but he was oblivious of the blood just as he was oblivious of the pain in his hand and groin. He was doing what he loved to do and he hit even harder, silencing the feitor's pathetic screams and yelps, seeing the man's breath come bubbling and pink as his huge fists crunched the broken ribs into the lungs. It took awesome strength to do this. To kill a man with bare hands without strangling him.
Pires slumped against the wall. He no longer resembled a man, though he lived. His visible flesh was swollen, bloody, pulpy. His eyes had closed, his nose was destroyed, his face was a mask of blood, his teeth were broken, his lips were split to ribbons, his chest was crushed, his belly was pounded, yet still he managed to stay upright against the warehouse wall. His ruined face looked blindly from side to side, then a fist caught him on the jaw and the bone broke with an audible crack and Pires tottered, groaned and fell at last.
"Hold him up," Ferragus said, stripping off his coat and shirt.
Two men seized Pires under his arms and hauled him upright and Ferragus stepped in close and punched with a vicious intensity. His fists did not travel far, these were not wild swinging clouts, but short, precise blows that landed with sickening force. He worked on the man's belly, then moved up to his chest, pounding it so that Pires's head flopped with every strike and his bloody mouth sprayed drops of reddened spittle onto Ferragus's chest. He went on punching until the man's head jerked back and then flopped sideways like a puppet whose crown-string had snapped. There was a rattling noise from the battered throat, Ferragus hit him one last time and then stepped back. "Put him in the cellar," Ferragus ordered, "and slit his belly."
"Slit his belly?" one of the men asked, thinking he had misheard.
"Give the rats something to work on," Ferragus said, "because the sooner they're done with him, the sooner he's gone." He crossed to Miguel who gave him a rag with which he wiped the blood and spittle from his chest and arms that were covered in tattoos. There were anchors wrapped in chains on both his forearms, three mermaids on his chest, and snakes encircling his vast upper arms. On his back was a warship under full sail, its skyscrapers aloft, studding sails spread, and at its stern a British flag. He pulled on his shirt, then a coat, and watched the corpse being dragged to the back of the warehouse where a trapdoor opened into a cellar. There was already one belly-slitted corpse rotting in that darkness, the remnants of a man who had tried to betray Ferragus's hoard to the authorities. Now another had tried, failed and died.
Ferragus locked the warehouse. If the French did not come, he thought, then this food could be sold legally and at a profit, and if they did come, then it might mean a greater profit. The next few hours would reveal all. He made the sign of the cross, then went to find a tavern because he had killed a man and was thirsty.
No one came from battalion to give Sharpe orders, which suited him just fine. He was standing guard on the rocky knoll where, he reckoned, a hundred French infantry were keeping their heads well down because of his desultory rifle fire. He wished he had enough men to shift the voltigeurs off the hill, for their presence was an invitation to the enemy to try for the summit again. They could throw a couple of battalions up to the knoll and use them to attack along the spur, and such a move might be encouraged by the new French attack that was heating up a mile to the north. Sharpe went a small way along the spur, too far probably because a couple of musket shots whirred past him as he crouched and took out his telescope. He ignored the voltigeurs, knowing they were shooting far beyond a musket's accurate range, and he stared at the vast French columns climbing the better road that twisted up to the village just beneath the ridge's northern crest. A stone windmill, its sails and vanes taken away and machinery dismantled like every other mill in central Portugal, stood near the crest itself and there was a knot of horsemen beside the stumpy tower, but Sharpe could not see any troops except for the two French columns that were halfway up the road and a third, smaller column, some way behind. The huge French formations looked dark against the slope. British and Portuguese guns were blasting shot from the crest, blurring his view with their gray-white smoke.