"We do French on Tuesdays and Thursdays," Sarah said briskly, "and today is?"

"Wednesday," said Tomas.

"Read on," Sarah said, and she gazed out of the window to where the servants were putting furniture onto a wagon. The French were coming and everyone had been ordered to leave Coimbra and go south towards Lisbon. Some folk said the French approach was just a rumor and were refusing to leave, others had already gone. Sarah did not know what to believe, only that she had surprised herself by welcoming the excitement. She had been the governess in the Ferreira household for just three months and she suspected that the French invasion might be the means to extricate herself from a position that she now understood had been a mistake. She was thinking about her uncertain future when she realized that Maria was giggling because Tomas had just read that the donkey was blue, and that was nonsense, and Miss Fry was not a young woman to tolerate nonsense. She rapped her knuckles on the crown of Tomas's head. "What color is the donkey?" she demanded.

"Brown," Tomas said.

"Brown," Sarah agreed, giving him another smart tap, "and what are you?

"A blockhead," Tomas said, and then, under his breath, added, "Cadela."

It meant "bitch," and Tomas had said it slightly too loudly and was rewarded with a smart crack on the side of his head. "I detest bad language," Sarah said angrily, adding a second slap, "and I detest rudeness, and if you cannot show good manners then I will ask your father to beat you."

The mention of Major Ferreira snapped the two children to attention and a gloom descended over the schoolroom as Tomas struggled with the next page. It was essential for a Portuguese child to learn English and French if, when they grew up, they were to be accounted gentlefolk. Sarah wondered why they did not learn Spanish, but when she had suggested it to the Major he had looked at her with utter fury. The Spanish, he had answered, were the offspring of goats and monkeys, and his children would not foul their tongues with their savage language. So Tomas and Maria were being schooled in French and English by their governess who was twenty-two years old, blue-eyed, fair-haired and worried for her future.