Sharpe’s Fury: The Battle of Barrosa, March 1811

‘Nothing but what?’

Noolan cast a helpless look at Sharpe. ‘Scraps, sir,’ the sergeant tried again. ‘Bits and pieces, sir.’

‘And you say our fellows are gone? How the hell do you know they’ve gone?’

‘Because the Crapauds are over there, sir, so they are. Using a boat. Going back and forth, they are, sir, back and forth, and we watched them.’

‘Good God incarnate,’ Moon said in disgust.

‘You did well, Noolan,’ Sharpe said.

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘And we’re buggered,’ the brigadier said irritably, ‘because our forces have buggered off and left us here.’

‘In that case, sir,’ Sharpe suggested, ‘the sooner we get to the town and find some food the better.’

Harper, because he was the strongest man, carried the front end of the brigadier’s stretcher while the tallest of the Connaught Rangers took the rear. It took three hours to go the short distance and it was late morning 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 afrancesados, 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 gentlefolk. ‘There’s only one way to find out, though, isn’t there?’ he proclaimed. ‘And 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 manoeuvred 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 heavenwards despite the sword in her throat, while next to her Andrew hung upside down on his cross. There were men being burned, women being disembowelled 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 sabre 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 her 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.