"What about you?" Vicente asked.

"Someone has to stand guard," Sharpe said.

The cottage had one small bedroom, little more than a cupboard, and Vicente was given that because he was an officer, while Harper went into the kitchen where he made a bed from curtains, blankets and a greatcoat. Joana followed him and the kitchen door was firmly shut behind her. Sarah collapsed in an old, broken armchair from which tufts of horsehair protruded. "I'll stay awake with you," she told Sharpe, and a moment later she was fast asleep.

Sharpe loaded his rifle. He dared not sit for he knew he would never stay awake and so he stood in the doorway, the loaded rifle beside him, and he listened to the distant screams and he saw the great plume of smoke smearing the cloudless sky and he knew he had done his duty. Now all he had to do was get back to the army.

CHAPTER 10

Ferragus and his brother went back to the Major's house, which had been spared the plundering suffered by the rest of the city. A troop of dragoons from the same squadron that had ridden to protect the warehouse had been posted outside the house, and they were now relieved by a dozen men sent by Colonel Barreto who, when his day's work was complete, planned to billet himself in the house. Miguel and five others of Ferragus's men were at the house, safe there from French attention, and it was Miguel who interrupted the brothers' celebrations by reporting that the warehouse was burning.

Ferragus had just opened a third bottle of wine. He listened to Miguel, carried the bottle to the window and peered down the hill. He saw the smoke churning up, but shrugged. "It could be any one of a dozen buildings," he said dismissively.

"It's the warehouse," Miguel insisted. "I went to the roof. I could see."

"So?" Ferragus toasted the room with his bottle. "We've sold it now! The loss is to the French, not to us."

Major Ferreira went to the window and gazed at the smoke. Then he made the sign of the cross. "The French will not see it that way," he said quietly, and took the bottle from his brother.

"They've paid us!" Ferragus said, trying to get the bottle back.

Ferreira placed the wine out of his brother's reach. "The French will believe we sold them the food, then destroyed it," he said. The Major glanced towards the street leading downhill as if he expected it to be filled with Frenchmen. "They will want their money back."

"Jesus," Ferragus said. His brother was right. He glanced at the money: four saddlebags filled with French gold. "Jesus," he said again as the implications of the burning building sank into his wine-hazed head.

"Time to go." The Major took firm command of the situation.

"Go?" Ferragus was still fuddled.

"They'll be after us!" the Major insisted. "At best they'll just want the money back, at worst they'll shoot us. Good God, Luis! First we lost the flour at the shrine, now this? You think they'll believe we didn't do it? We go! Now!"

"Stable yard," Ferragus ordered Miguel.

"We can't ride out!" Ferreira protested. The French were confiscating every horse they discovered, and Ferreira's contacts with Colonel Barreto and the French would avail him nothing if he was seen on horseback. "We have to hide," he insisted. "We hide in the city until it's safe to leave."

Ferragus, his brother, and the six men carried what was most valuable from the house. They had the gold newly paid by the French, some money that Major Ferreira had kept hidden in his study and a bag of silver plate, and they took it all up an alley behind the stables, through a second alley and into one of the many abandoned houses that had already been searched by the French. They dared not go farther, for the streets were filled with the invaders, and so they took refuge in the house cellar and prayed that they would not be discovered.

"How long do we stay here?" Ferragus asked sourly.

"Till the French leave," Ferreira said.

"And then?"

Ferreira did not answer at once. He was thinking. Thinking that the British would not just march away to their boats. They would try to stop the French again, probably near the new forts he had seen being constructed on the road north of Lisbon. That meant the French would have to fight or else maneuver their way around the British and Portuguese armies, and that would provide time. Time for him to reach Lisbon. Time to reach the money secreted in his wife's luggage. Time to find his wife and children. Portugal was about to collapse and the brothers would need money. Much money. They could go to the Azores or even to Brazil, then wait the storm out in comfort and return home when it had passed. And if the French were defeated? Then they would still need money, and the only obstacle was Captain Sharpe who knew of Ferreira's treachery. The wretched man had escaped from the cellar, but was he still alive? It seemed more probable that the French would have killed him, for Ferreira could not imagine the French taking prisoners in their orgy of killing and destruction, but the thought that the rifleman lived was worrying. "If Sharpe is alive," he wondered aloud, "what will he do?"

Ferragus spat to show his opinion of Sharpe.

"He will go back to his army," Ferreira answered his own question.

"And say you are a traitor?"

"Then it will be his word against mine," Ferreira said, "and if I am there, then his word will not carry much weight."

Ferragus stared up at the cellar roof. "We could say the food was poisoned," he suggested, "say it was a trap for the French?"

Ferreira nodded, acknowledging the usefulness of the suggestion. "What is important," he said, "is for us to reach Lisbon. Beatriz and the children are there. My money is there." He thought about going north and hiding, but the longer he was absent from the army, the greater would be the suspicions about that absence. Better to go back, bluff it out and reclaim his possessions. Then, with money, he could survive whatever happened. Besides, he missed his family. "But how do we reach Lisbon?"

"Go east," one of the men suggested. "Go east to the Tagus and float down."

Ferreira stared at the man, thinking, though in truth there was nothing really to think about. He could not go directly south for the French would be there, but if he and his brother struck east across the mountains, traveling through the high lands where the French would not dare go for fear of the partisans, they would eventually reach the Tagus and the money they carried would be more than sufficient to buy a boat. Then, in two days, they could be in Lisbon. "I have friends in the mountains," Ferreira said.

"Friends?" Ferragus had not followed his brother's thinking.

"Men who have taken weapons from me." Ferreira, as part of his duties, had distributed British muskets among the hill folk to encourage them to become partisans. "They will give us horses," he went on confidently, "and they will know whether the French are in Abrantes. If they're not, we find our boat there. And the men in the hills can do something else for us. If Sharpe is alive…»

"He's dead by now," Ferragus insisted.

"If he's alive," Major Ferreira went on patiently, "then he will have to take the same route to reach his army. So they can kill him for us." He made the sign of the cross, for it was all so suddenly clear. "Five of us will go to the Tagus," he said, "and then go south. When we reach our army we shall say we destroyed the provisions in the warehouse and if the French arrive we shall sail to the Azores."

"Only five of us?" Miguel asked. There were eight men in the cellar.

"Three of you will stay here," Ferreira suggested and looked to his brother for approval, which Ferragus gave with a nod. "Three men must stay here," Ferreira said, "to guard my house and make any repairs necessary before we return. And when we do return those three men will be well rewarded."