Sharpe's Escape

by Bernard Cornwell

  Lawford was no fool and knew that Hogan did not just make vague conversation. "You think they're connected?"

  "I know they're connected," Hogan said. "Sharpe and this fellow had what you might call a disagreement."

  "Sharpe never told me!" Lawford was piqued.

  "Flour? On a hilltop?"

  "Ah. He did tell me. No details, though."

  "Richard never wastes details on senior officers," Hogan said, then paused to take a pinch of snuff. He sneezed. "He doesn't tell us," he went on, "in case we get confused. But he coped, in a way, and got himself thoroughly beaten up as a result."

  "Beaten up?"

  "The night before the battle."

  "He said he'd tripped."

  "Well, he would, wouldn't he?" Hogan was not surprised. "So, yes, the two were connected, but whether they still are is very dubious. Very dubious, but not impossible. I have great faith in Sharpe."

  "As do I," Lawford said.

  "Indeed you do," Hogan said, who knew more about the South Essex than Lawford would ever have guessed. "So if Sharpe does turn up, Lawford, send him on to the Peer's headquarters, would you? Tell him we need his information about Major Ferreira." Hogan very much doubted that Wellington would want to waste a second on Sharpe, but Hogan did, and it did no harm for Lawford to think that the General shared that wish.

  "Of course I will," Lawford promised.

  "We're at Pero Negro," Hogan said, "a couple of hours' ride westwards. And of course we'll send him back as soon as we can. I'm sure you're eager for Sharpe to resume his proper duties." There was a faint stress on the word "proper" that did not escape Lawford who sensed the mildest of reproofs, and the Colonel was wondering whether he should explain just what had happened between Sharpe and Slingsby when Hogan suddenly gave an exclamation and put his eye to the glass. "Our friends are here," he said.

  For a moment Lawford thought Hogan meant that Sharpe had turned up, but then he saw horses on the far hill and he knew it was the French. The first patrols had come to the lines, and that meant Massena's army could not be far behind.

  The Lines of Torres Vedras, built without the knowledge of the British government, had cost two hundred thousand pounds. They were the greatest, most expensive defensive works ever made in Europe.

  And now they would be tested.

  They were dragoons, the inevitable, green-coated dragoons who rode along the river beneath the looming hills of the Tagus's western bank. There were at least thirty of them and they had plainly been foraging for they had two small cows tied to one man's horse, but now, in the wet afternoon, they saw the small boat with its three men and two women, and the chance for sport was too good for the dragoons to pass up. They began by shouting that the boat was to be brought to their bank, but they had no expectation that their words would be understood, let alone obeyed, and a few seconds afterwards the first man fired.

  The carbine shot splashed into the water five paces short of the boat. Sharpe and Harper began rowing harder, steering the boat obliquely away from the horsemen towards the eastern bank, and the dragoons spurred on ahead, a dozen or more of the horsemen dismounting where a wooded spur projected into the river. "They're getting ready to fire at us," Vicente warned.

  The river made a bend around the wooded headland and on its eastern bank, a hundred paces from the dragoons, a vast tree had fallen into the water where it lay, half in and half out, its gaunt, sun-whitened branches jutting into the drizzle. Sharpe, twisting on the thwart, saw the tree and tugged hard on his left oar to steer for it. The other dragoons had dismounted now and hurried to the river's edge where they knelt, aimed and fired. The balls skipped across the river and one drove a splinter out of the small boat's gunwale. "You see the tree, Pat?" Sharpe asked, and Harper turned on the thwart and grunted confirmation and the two pulled at the heavy oars as another ragged volley crackled from the far bank, then the high, tarred prow of the boat smashed into the dead branches that tangled the backwater formed by the huge, pale trunk. A carbine bullet smacked into the dead wood and another whip-cracked overhead as Vicente pulled the boat farther into the sanctuary made by the fallen tree. Now, so long as they kept their heads down, the dragoons could not see them and could not hit them, but that did not deter the French, who kept up a desultory fire, evidently convinced that sooner or later the boat must reappear.

  Vicente got tired of it first. He stood and edged his rifle over the tree. "I must find out if I can still fire a rifle," he said.

  "Your left shoulder won't stop you," Sharpe said.

  "Fire it accurately, I mean," Vicente said, and bent to the sights. The dragoons were using smoothbore carbines that were even less accurate than a musket, but at this range Vicente's rifle was deadly and he aimed at a mounted man he presumed was an officer. The dragoons had seen him, though whether they saw his gun was doubtful, and a flurry of shots banged from the far bank. None came close. Sharpe was peering over the trunk, curious as to how good a marksman Vicente was. He heard the bang of the rifle and saw the dragoon officer twitch hard back to leave a spray of blood. The man fell sideways.

  "Good shooting," Sharpe said, impressed.

  "I practiced all last winter," Vicente said. He could fire the rifle well enough, but reloading hurt his wounded shoulder. "If I am to be a leader of a tirador company then I must be a good marksman, yes?"

  "Yes," Sharpe said, as a volley of French carbine fire rattled through the dead branches.

  "And I won every competition," Vicente said as modestly as he could, "but it was only because of practice." He rammed a new bullet down and stood again. "This time I will kill the horse," he said.

  He did, too, and Sharpe and Harper both added bullets into the group of dismounted dragoons. The carbines retaliated with a furious rattle of shots, but all were wasted. Some thumped into the tree, some threw splashes from the river, but most flew harmlessly overhead. Vicente flinched as he reloaded, then calmly shot a man standing up to his knees in the river in hope of closing the range, and the dragoons at last realized that they were making idiots of themselves by offering easy targets to men who were using rifles, and so they ran back to their horses, mounted, and disappeared into the trees.

  Sharpe watched the horsemen riding south through the trees as he reloaded. "They'll be waiting for us downstream," he said.

  "Unless they're going back to their army." Harper suggested.

  Vicente stood and peered over the tree, but saw no enemy. "I think they'll be staying on the river," he said. "They won't have found much food between here and Coimbra, so they'll be wanting to make a bridge somewhere."

  "A bridge?" Harper asked.

  "To reach this bank," Vicente said. "There will be plenty of food on this bank. And if they do make a bridge it will be at Santarem."

  "Where's that?"

  "South," Vicente said, nodding downstream, "an old fortress above the river."

  "Which we have to pass?" Sharpe asked.

  "I suggest we do it tonight," Vicente said. "We should rest here for a while, wait for dark, then float downstream."

  Sharpe wondered if that was what the Ferreira brothers would be doing. He constantly stared northwards, half expecting to see them, and worried that he did not. Perhaps they had changed their minds? Maybe they had gone to the northern mountains, or else had crossed the Tagus much higher up and used their money to buy horses to carry them down the eastern bank. He told himself it did not really matter, that the only important thing was to get back to the army, but he wanted to find the brothers. Ferreira, at least, should pay for his treachery and Sharpe had a score to settle with Ferragus.

  They lingered till dusk, making a fire ashore and brewing a can of strong, gunpowder-flavored tea with the last leaves from Sharpe and Harper's haversacks. Any dragoons would long have ridden back to their base for fear of the partisans who were at their most dangerous in the darkness, and as the light faded Sharpe and Harper pushed the boat out of their refuge and let it drift downstream again. The rain pers
isted: a soft drizzle that soaked and chilled them as the last light went. Now they were at the mercy of the stream, unable to see or steer, and they let the boat go where it wanted. Sometimes, far off, there was the misted gleam of a fire high in the western hills, and once there was a bigger fire, much closer, but who had lit it was a mystery. Once or twice they bumped into solid pieces of driftwood, and then they brushed past a fallen tree, and an hour or so later, after it seemed to Sharpe that they had drifted for hours, they saw a cluster of rain-hazed lights high up on the western bank. "Santarem," Vicente said softly.

  There were sentries on the high wall, lit up there by fires behind the parapet, and Sharpe assumed they were French. He could hear men singing in the town and he imagined the soldiers in the taverns and wondered if the rape and horror that had raged through Coimbra was being visited on Santarem's townsfolk. He crouched low in the boat, even though he knew that any sentry on that high wall could see nothing against the river's inky blackness. It seemed to take forever to pass beneath the ancient ramparts, but at last the lights faded and there was only the wet darkness. Sharpe fell asleep. Sarah bailed the boat with a tin cup. Harper snored while, beside him, Joana shivered. The river was wider now, wider and faster, and Sharpe woke in the wolf light before dawn to see misted trees on the western bank and fog everywhere else. The rain had stopped. He unshipped his oars and gave a few tugs, to warm himself more than anything else. Sarah smiled at him from the stern. "I've been dreaming," she said, "of a cup of tea."

  "None left," Sharpe said.

  "That's why I was dreaming of it," she said.

  Harper had woken and started rowing now, but it seemed to Sharpe they were making no progress at all. The fog had thickened and the boat seemed suspended in a pearly whiteness into which the water faded. He tugged harder at the oars and finally saw the vague shape of a twisted tree on the eastern bank and he kept his eyes on the tree, kept rowing as strongly as he could, and slowly became convinced that the tree was staying in the same place however hard he pulled.

  "Tide," Vicente said.

  "Tide?"

  "It comes up the river," Vicente said, "and it's carrying us backwards. Or trying to. But it will turn."

  Sharpe thought about going to the eastern bank and mooring the boat, but then decided that the Ferreira brothers, who could not be so very far behind, might slip past in the fog, so he and Harper pulled at the oars until their hands were blistered with the effort of fighting the flooding tide. The fog grew brighter, the tide at last slackened and a gull flew overhead. They were still miles from the sea, but there was a smell of salt and the water was brackish. The day was growing warmer, and that seemed to thicken the fog which drifted in patches like gun smoke above the swirling gray water. They had to go nearer the western bank to avoid the bedraggled remains of a fish trap made of nets, withies and poles that jutted far out from the eastern shore. There was no movement on the western bank so that they seemed to be alone on a pale river beneath a pearly sky, but then, from ahead, came the unmistakable bang of a cannon. Birds shot up from the trees on the bank and flew in circles as the sound echoed from some unseen hills, rumbled up the river's valley and faded.

  "I can't see anything," Vicente reported from the bow.

  Sharpe and Harper had rested on their oars and both twisted to see ahead, but there was only the fog over the river. Another cannon sounded and Sharpe thought he saw a patch of the mist thicken, then he rowed two more strokes and there, appearing like a ghost ship in the vapor, was a gunboat firing at the western shore. There were dragoons there, half seen in the mist, scattering from the gunfire. Another cannon blasted from the boat that was anchored in midstream, and a barrel-load of grapeshot threw down two horses and Sharpe saw a sudden spray of blood, almost instantly gone, discolor the fog, and then the gunboat's forward cannon fired and a round shot skipped across the water a score of yards ahead of the skiff. It had been a warning shot, and a man was standing in the gunboat's forepeak, shouting at them to come alongside.

  "They're English," Vicente said. He stood in the skiff's bow and waved both arms while Sharpe and Harper pulled towards the gunboat that had one high mast, a low waist, and six gunports visible on its port side which faced upstream. A white ensign hung at the stern while a union flag drooped at the topmast.

  "Here!" the man shouted. "Bring that bloody boat here!"

  The two aft cannon fired at the retreating dragoons who were now galloping into the fog, leaving dead horses behind. Three seamen with muskets were waiting for the skiff, pointing their guns down into the boat.

  "Any of you speak English?" another man called.

  "My name's Captain Sharpe!"

  "Who?"

  "Captain Sharpe, South Essex regiment. And point those bloody muskets somewhere else!"

  "You're English?" The astonishment might have come from Sharpe's appearance for he was not wearing his jacket and his beard had grown to a thick stubble.

  "No, I'm bloody Chinese," Sharpe snapped. The skiff bumped against the tarred side of the gunboat and Sharpe looked up at a very young naval lieutenant. "Who are you?"

  "Lieutenant Davies, commanding here."

  "I'm Captain Sharpe, that's Captain Vicente of the Portuguese army, and the big fellow is Sergeant Harper and I'll introduce the ladies later. What we need, Lieutenant, if you'd be so kind, is some proper tea."

  They scrambled aboard by using the chain plates which secured the ratlines for the big mast and Sharpe saluted Davies who, though he only looked about nineteen years old and was a lieutenant, nevertheless outranked Sharpe because, as an officer commanding one of His Majesty's vessels, he had the equivalent rank of major in the army. The seamen gave a small cheer as Joana and Sarah climbed over the side in their rain-shrunken breeches. "Quiet on deck!" Davies snarled and the seamen went instantly silent. "Secure the guns," Davies ordered. "Make fast that boat! Lively, lively!" He gestured that Sharpe and his companions should go to the boat's stern. "Welcome to the Squirrel," he said, "and I think we can supply tea. Might I ask why you're here?"

  "We've come from Coimbra," Sharpe said, "and you, Lieutenant?"

  "We're here to amuse the Frogs," Davies said. He was a very tall, very thin young man in a shabby uniform. "We come upstream on the tide, kill any Frogs foolish enough to appear on shore, and drift back down again."

  "Where are we?" Sharpe asked.

  "Three miles north of Alhandra. That's where your lines reach the river." He paused by a companionway. "There's a cabin below," he said, "and the ladies are welcome to it, but I must say it's damned poky. Damp as well."

  Sharpe introduced Sarah and Joana who both elected to stay on the stern deck, which was cumbered by a vast tiller. The Squirrel had no wheel, and its quarterdeck was merely the after part of the maindeck which was crowded with seamen. Davies explained that his vessel was a twelve-gun cutter and that, though it could easily be managed by six or seven men, it needed a crew of forty to man its guns, "and even then we're short-handed," he complained, "and can only fire one side of guns. Still, one side is usually enough. Tea, yes?"

  "And the loan of a razor?" Sharpe asked.

  "And something to eat," Harper said under his breath, staring innocently up at the huge mainsail that was brailed onto a massive boom which jutted out over the diminutive white ensign.

  "Tea, shave, breakfast," Davies said. "Stop gawking, Mister Braithwaite!" This was to a midshipman who was staring at Joana and Sarah and evidently trying to decide whether he preferred his women dark- or fair-haired. "Stop gawking and tell Powell we need breakfast for five guests."

  "Five guests, sir, aye aye, sir."

  "And might I beg you to keep an eye out for another boat?" Sharpe asked Davies. "I have a suspicion that five fellows are following us, and I want them stopped."

  "That's my job," Davies said. "Stop anything that tries to float down river. Miss Fry? Might I bring you a chair? You and your companion?"

  A breakfast was served on deck. There were thick white ch
ina plates heaped with bacon, bread and greasy eggs, and afterwards Sharpe blunted Davies's razor by scraping at the stubble on his chin. Davies's servant had brushed his green jacket, cleaned and polished his boots, and burnished his sword's metal scabbard. He leaned on the gunwale, feeling a sudden relief that the journey was over. In a matter of hours, he thought, he could be back with the battalion, and that spoiled his good mood, for he supposed he would be doomed to Lawford's continuing displeasure. The fog had thinned into a mist, and the tide was dropping, swirling past the Squirrel, which was anchored at bow and stern so that her small broadside pointed up river. Sharpe could see a chain of islands off the western bank, low-lying streaks of grassy sand that sheltered a smaller inshore channel, while down river, beyond a wide bend and just visible above the skeins of mist, Sharpe could see the masts of other ships. It was a whole squadron of gunboats, Davies said, posted to guard the flank of the defensive lines. Somewhere in the distance a cannon fired, its sound flat in the warming air.

  "It's going to be a nice day for a change," Davies leaned on the gunwale beside Sharpe, "if this damn mist clears."

  "I'm glad to be rid of the rain," Sharpe said.

  "Rather rain than fog," Davies said. "Can't fire guns if you can't see the bloody target." He glanced up at the dim glow of the sun through the mist, judging the time. "We'll stay here for another hour," he said, "then drop down to Alhandra. We'll put you ashore there." He looked up at the union flag that stirred listlessly at the masthead. "Bloody south wind," he said, meaning that he could not sail down river, but would have to let the current take him.

  "Sir!" There was a man at the crosstrees where the topmast met the mainmast. "Boat, sir!"

  "Where away?"

  The man pointed and Sharpe took out his glass and searched westwards and then, through a shimmer of mist, saw a small boat running down the inshore channel. He could only see the heads of the men in the boat. Davies was running down the deck. "Let go the after spring," he shouted, "man numbers one and two!"