Читать книгу Sharpe 3-Book Collection 4: Sharpe’s Escape, Sharpe’s Fury, Sharpe’s Battle - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 18

The first idea was to break through the trapdoor and then work on whatever had been piled above. ‘Go through the edge of the hatch,’ Vicente suggested, ‘then perhaps we can break through the box above? Take everything out of the box? Then wriggle through?’

Sharpe could think of nothing else that might free them, so he and Harper set to work. They tried raising the trapdoor first, crouching beneath it and heaving up, but the wood did not move a fraction of an inch, and so they started to carve away at the timbers. Vicente, with his wounded shoulder, could not help, so he and Sarah sat in the cellar as far from the two decaying bodies as they could and listened as Sharpe and Harper attacked the trapdoor. Harper used his sword bayonet and, because that was a shorter blade than Sharpe’s sword, worked further up the steps. Sharpe took off his jacket, stripped off his shirt and wrapped the linen round the blade so he could grip the edge without being cut. He told Harper what he was doing and suggested he might want to protect his own hands. ‘Pity, though,’ Sharpe said, ‘this is a new shirt.’

‘A present from a certain seamstress in Lisbon?’ Harper asked.

‘It was, yes.’

Harper chuckled, then stabbed the blade upwards.

Sharpe did the same with his sword and they worked in silence mostly, gouging in the dark, splintering and levering out scraps of tough, ancient wood. Once in a while a blade would encounter a nail and they would swear.

‘It’s a real language lesson,’ Sarah said after a while.

‘I’m sorry, miss,’ Sharpe said.

‘You sort of don’t notice when you’re in the army,’ Harper explained.

‘Do all soldiers swear?’

‘All of them,’ Sharpe said, ‘all of the time. Except for Daddy Hill.’

‘General Hill, miss,’ Harper explained, ‘who’s noted for his very clean mouth.’

‘And Sergeant Read,’ Sharpe added, ‘he never swears. He’s a Methodist, miss.’

‘I’ve heard him swear,’ Harper said, ‘when bloody Batten stole eight pages from his Bible to use as…’ He stopped suddenly, deciding Sarah did not want to know what use Batten had made of the book of Deuteronomy, then gave a grunt as a great splinter cracked away. ‘Be through this in no bloody time,’ he said cheerfully.

The timbers of the trapdoor were at least three inches thick, and reinforced by two sturdy beams on their underside. For the moment Sharpe and Harper were ignoring the beam on their side, reckoning it was best to break through the trapdoor before worrying how to remove the bigger piece of timber. The wood was hard, but they learned to weaken its grain by repeated stabbing, then they scraped and gouged and prised the loosened timber away. The broken wood came in thimblefuls, in dust, scrap by scrap, and the cramped area under the steps gave them little space. They had to rest just to stretch their muscles from time to time, and at other times it seemed that no amount of stabbing and scraping would loosen another piece, for the two weapons were ill suited to the work. The steel was too slender, so could not be used for brutal leverage for fear the blades would snap. Sharpe used his knife for a time, the sawdust sifting down into his eyes, then he rammed the sword up again, his linen-wrapped hand near the tip to brace the steel. And even when they broke through, he thought, they would only have a small hole. God knows how they were to enlarge it, but all battles had to be fought one step at a time. No point in worrying about the future if there was to be no future, so he and Harper worked patiently away. Sweat poured down Sharpe’s naked chest, flies crawled on him, the dust was thick in his mouth, and his ribs were hurting.

Time meant nothing in the dark. They could have worked an hour or ten hours, Sharpe did not know, though he sensed that night must have fallen outside in the world that now seemed so far away. He worked doggedly, trying not to think about the passing time, and slowly he chipped and gouged, rammed and scraped, until at last he thrust the sword hard up and the blow jarred down his arm because the tip had hit something more solid than wood. He did it again, then swore viciously. ‘Sorry, miss.’

‘What is it?’ Vicente asked. He had been asleep and sounded alarmed.

Sharpe did not answer. Instead he used his knife, gnawing at the small hole he had made in the upper part of the broken timber and, when he had widened the hole sufficiently, he probed with the knife blade to scratch at whatever lay immediately above the trapdoor and then swore again. ‘The bastards have put paving slabs up there,’ he said. He had broken through, but only to meet immovable stone. ‘Bastards!’

‘Mister Sharpe,’ Sarah said, though tiredly, as if she knew she was fighting a losing battle.

‘They probably are bastards, miss,’ Harper said, then rammed his sword bayonet up into the splintered hole he had made and was rewarded with the same sound of steel against stone. He uttered his opinion, apologized to Sarah, then slumped down.

‘They’ve done what?’ Vicente asked.

‘They’ve put stones on top,’ Sharpe said, ‘and other stuff on top of the stones. The bastards aren’t as daft as they look.’ He edged down the steps and sat with his back against the wall. He felt used up, exhausted and it hurt just to breathe.

‘We can’t get through the trapdoor?’ Vicente asked.

‘Not a bloody chance,’ Sharpe said.

‘So?’ Vicente asked tentatively.

‘So we bloody think,’ Sharpe said, but he could not think of anything else to do. Hell and damnation was all he could think. They were bloody well trapped.

‘How do the rats get in?’ Sarah asked after a while.

‘Those little bastards can get through gaps as small as your little finger,’ Harper said. ‘You can’t keep a good rat out, not if he wants to get in.’

‘So where do they get in?’ she persisted.

‘Round the edge of the trapdoor,’ Sharpe guessed, ‘where we can’t get out.’

They sat in gloomy silence. The flies settled back on the corpses. ‘If we fired our guns,’ Vicente said, ‘someone might hear?’

‘Not down here, they won’t,’ Sharpe said, preferring to keep all his firepower for the moment when Ferragus came for them. He leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes, trying to think. The ceiling? Bricks and stones. Hundreds of the buggers. He imagined himself breaking through, then he was suddenly in a field, bright with flowers, a bullet came past him, then another and he was struck on the leg and he woke suddenly, realizing that someone had tapped his right calf. ‘Was I asleep?’ he asked.

‘We all were,’ Harper said. ‘God knows what time it is.’

‘Jesus.’ Sharpe stretched himself, feeling the pain in his arms and legs that had come from working inside the cramped stairway. ‘Jesus,’ he said angrily. ‘We can’t afford to sleep. Not with those bastards coming for us.’

Harper did not answer. Sharpe could hear the Irishman moving, apparently stretching on the floor. He supposed the Irishman wanted to sleep again, and he did not approve, but he could not think of anything more useful Harper could do and so he said nothing.

‘I can hear something,’ Harper spoke after a while. His voice came from the centre of the cellar, from the floor.

‘Where?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Put your ear on the stone, sir.’

Sharpe stretched out and put his right ear against the floor. His hearing was not what it was. Too many years of muskets and rifles had dulled it, but he held his breath, listened hard, and heard the faintest hint of water running. ‘Water?’

‘There’s a stream down there,’ Harper said.

‘Like the Fleet,’ Sharpe said.

‘The what?’ Vicente asked.

‘It’s a river in London,’ Sharpe said, ‘and for a long way it flows underground. No one knows it’s there, but it is. They built the city on top of it.’

‘They’ve done the same here,’ Harper said.

Sharpe tapped the floor with the hilt of his sword, but was not rewarded with a hollow sound, yet he was fairly certain the noise of water was there, and Sarah, whose hearing had not been dulled by battle, was quite certain of it. ‘Right, Pat,’ Sharpe said, his spirits restored and the pain in his ribs even seeming less biting. ‘We’ll lift a bloody stone.’

That was easier said than done. They used their weapons again, scraping away at the edges of a big flagstone to work down between the slab and its neighbours, and Harper found a place where a chip the size of his little finger was missing from the stone’s edge, and he delved down there, working the sword bayonet into the foundations. ‘It’s rubble down there,’ he said.

‘Let’s just hope the bloody thing isn’t mortared into place,’ Sharpe said.

‘No,’ Harper said scornfully. ‘Why would you mortar a slab? You just lay the buggers on gravel and stamp them down. Move back, sir.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m going to lift the sod.’

‘Why don’t we lever it up?’

‘Because you’ll break your sword, sir, and that’ll put you in a really bad mood. Just give me space. And be ready to hold it when I’ve got the bastard up.’

Sharpe moved, Harper straddled the stone, got two fingers underneath its edge and heaved. It did not move. He swore, braced himself again, and used all his vast strength and there was a grinding sound and Sharpe, touching the stone’s edge with his fingers, felt it move a trifle upwards. Harper grunted, managed to get a third finger underneath and gave another giant pull and suddenly the stone was lifted and Sharpe rammed the muzzle of his rifle under the exposed edge to hold it up. ‘You can let go now.’

‘God save Ireland!’ Harper said, straightening. The stone was resting on the rifle muzzle and they left it there while Harper caught his breath. ‘We can both do it now, sir,’ the Irishman said. ‘You on the other side? We’ll just turn the bugger over. Sorry, miss.’

‘I’m getting used to it,’ Sarah said in a resigned voice.

Sharpe got his hands under the edge. ‘Ready?’

‘Now, sir.’

They heaved and the stone came up, and kept going to turn on its end so that it fell smack on the nearer corpse with a wet, squashing sound that released a gust of noxious vapour along with an unseen cloud of flies. Sarah gave a noise of disgust, Sharpe and Harper were laughing.

Now they could feel a square patch of rubble, a space of broken bricks, stones and sand, and they used their hands to scoop it out, sometimes loosening the packed rubble first with a blade. Vicente used his right hand to help and Sarah pushed the excavated material aside.

‘There’s no end to the bloody stuff,’ Harper said, and the more they pulled out, the more fell in from the sides. They went down two feet and then, at last, the rubble ended as Sharpe’s battered and bleeding hands found a curved surface that felt like tiles stacked on edge. They went on scooping until they had bared two or three square feet of the arched surface.

Vicente used his right hand to probe what Sharpe thought were tiles. ‘Roman bricks,’ Vicente guessed. ‘The Romans made their bricks very thin, like tiles.’ He felt for a while longer, exploring the arched shape. ‘It’s the top of a tunnel.’

‘A tunnel?’ Sharpe asked.

‘The stream,’ Sarah said. ‘The Romans must have channelled it.’

‘And we’re going to break into it,’ Sharpe said. He could hear the trickle far more clearly now. So there was water there, and the water flowed to the river through a tunnel, and that thought filled him with a fierce hope.

He knelt at the edge of the hole, balancing on a slab that was unsteady because of the rubble that had fallen from beneath it, and began hammering down with the brass butt of a rifle.

‘What you’re doing,’ Vicente said, judging what was happening by the dull sound of the stock striking the bricks, ‘is hitting at the top of the arch. That will only wedge the bricks tighter.’

‘What I’m doing,’ Sharpe said, ‘is breaking the bugger.’ He thought Vicente was probably right, but he was too frustrated to work patiently on the old bricks. ‘And I hope I’m doing it with your rifle,’ he added. The butt hammered down again, then Harper joined in from the other side and the two rifles cracked and banged on the bricks and Sharpe could hear scraps dropping into the water, then Harper gave an almighty blow and a whole chunk of the ancient brickwork fell away and suddenly, if it was possible, the cellar was filled with an even worse smell, a stink from the foulest depths of hell.

‘Oh, shit!’ Harper said, recoiling.

‘That’s what it is,’ Vicente said in a faint voice. The smell was so bad that it was hard to breathe.

‘A sewer?’ Sharpe asked in disbelief.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Harper said, after trying to fill his lungs. Sarah sighed.

‘It comes from the upper town,’ Vicente explained. ‘Most of the lower town just use pits in their cellars. It’s a Roman sewer. They called it a cloaca.’

‘I call it our way out,’ Sharpe said and hammered the rifle down again, and the bricks fell more easily now and he could feel the hole widening. ‘It’s time to see again,’ he said.

He retrieved the discarded half of Lawford’s copy of The Times and found his own rifle, distinguishing it by the chip missing from the cheek rest on the left side of the butt where a French musket ball had snicked out a splinter. He needed his own rifle because he knew it was still unloaded, and now he primed it while Harper twisted the newspaper into a spill. The spill caught on the second try, and the newspaper flared up, then the flames turned a strange blue-green as Harper moved the burning paper close to the hole.

‘Oh, no!’ Sarah said, looking down.

The sound might be a trickle, but it came from a green-scummed liquid that glistened some seven or eight feet below. Rats, frightened by the sudden light, scuttled along the edge of the slime, scrabbling on the old bricks that were black and furred with growth. Sharpe, judging from the curve of the ancient sewer, reckoned the effluent was about a foot deep, then the flames scorched Harper’s fingers and he let the torch drop. It burned blue for a second, then they were in the dark again. Thank God most of the richer folk were gone from Coimbra, Sharpe thought, or else the old Roman sewer would be brimming over its edge with filth.

‘Are you really thinking of going down into that?’ Vicente asked in a disbelieving voice.

‘No choice, really,’ Sharpe said. ‘Stay here and die, or go down there.’ He took off his boots. ‘You might want to wear my boots, miss,’ he said to Sarah. ‘They should be tall enough to keep you out of the you-know-what, but you might want to take that frock off as well.’

There were a few seconds’ silence. ‘You want me to…’ Sarah began, then her voice faded away.

‘No, miss,’ Sharpe said patiently, ‘I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do, but if your dress gets in that muck then it’ll stink to high heaven by the time we’re through, and so far as I know you haven’t got anything else to wear. Nor have I, and that’s why I’m stripping.’

‘You can’t ask Miss Fry to undress,’ Vicente said, shocked.

‘I’m not asking her,’ Sharpe said, shuffling out of his French cavalry overalls. ‘It’s up to her. But if you’ve got any sense, Jorge, you’ll get undressed as well. Bundle everything inside your jacket or shirt and tie the sleeves round your neck. Bloody hell, man, no one can see! It’s dark as Hades down there. Here, miss, my boots.’ He pushed them over the floor.

‘You want me to go into a sewer, Mister Sharpe?’ Sarah asked in a small voice.

‘No, miss, I don’t,’ Sharpe said. ‘I want you to be in green fields and happy, with enough money to last you the rest of your life. But to get you there I have to go through a sewer. If you like, you can wait here and Pat and I will go through and come back for you, but I can’t promise that Ferragus won’t come back first. So all in all, miss, it’s your choice.’

‘Mister Sharpe?’ Sarah sounded indignant, but was evidently not. ‘You’re right. I apologize.’

For a moment there was only the rustle of clothes, then all four rolled whatever they had stripped off into bundles. Sharpe was wearing his drawers, nothing else, and he wrapped his other clothes inside his overalls, then strapped the bundle tight with the shoulder straps. He laid the clothes beside the hole with his sword belt, which held his ammunition pouch, scabbard and haversack. ‘I’ll go first,’ he said. ‘Miss? You follow me and keep your hand on my back so you know where I am. Jorge? You come next and Pat will be rearguard.’

Sharpe sat on the edge of the hole, then Harper gripped his wrists and lowered him through the hole. Pieces of rubble and masonry splashed into the filth, then Sharpe’s feet were in the liquid and Harper was grunting with the effort. ‘Just another two inches, Pat,’ Sharpe said, and then his wrists slid from Harper’s grip and he fell those last inches and almost lost his balance because the bottom of the sewer was so treacherously slick. ‘Jesus,’ he said, filled with disgust and almost choking because of the noxious air. ‘Someone, hand down my sword belt, then my clothes.’

He hung the buckled sword belt round his neck. His shako was tied to the cartridge box’s buckle and the empty scabbard hung down his spine, then he knotted the overalls’ legs over the belt. ‘Rifle?’ he said, and someone pushed it down and he hung the weapon on his shoulder, then took his sword in his right hand. He reckoned the blade would be useful as a probe. For a moment he wondered which way to go, either uphill towards the university or down to the river, then decided the best hope of escape was the river. The sewer had to spew its muck out somewhere and that was the place he wanted. ‘You next, miss,’ he said, ‘and be careful. It’s slippery as…’ He paused, checking his language. ‘Don’t be frightened,’ he went on as he heard her gasp as she negotiated the hole. ‘Sergeant Harper will lower you,’ Sharpe said, ‘but I’m going to hold on to you because I almost slipped when I got down here. Is that all right?’

‘I don’t mind,’ she said, almost breathless because the stench was so overpowering.

He put out his hands, found her bare waist and half supported her as she put her booted feet into the sewage. She lowered herself, but panic or horror still made her flail for balance and she gripped him hard and Sharpe put his arms round her narrow waist. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘you’ll live.’

Vicente handed down Sarah’s bundle of clothes and, because she was shivering and frightened, Sharpe tied it round her neck while she clung to him. ‘You now, Jorge,’ Sharpe said.

Harper came last. Rats scrabbled past them, the sound of their claws fading up the unseen tunnel. Sharpe could just stand upright, but he stooped in hope of seeing even a glimmer of light further down the sewer, but there was nothing. ‘You’re going to hold on to me, miss,’ he said, deciding that the courtesy of calling her ‘miss’ was really not needed now that they were both virtually naked and standing up to their calves in shit, but he suspected she would object if he called her anything else. ‘Jorge,’ he went on, ‘you hold on to Miss Fry’s clothes. And we all go slowly.’

Sharpe probed every step with the sword, then inched ahead before prodding the blade again, but after a while he became more confident and their pace increased to a shuffle. Sarah had her hands on Sharpe’s waist, gripping him tight, and she felt almost lightheaded. Something strange had happened to her in the last few minutes, almost as if by undressing and lowering herself into a sewer she had let go of her previous life, of her precarious but determined grip on respectability, and had let herself drop into a world of adventure and irresponsibility. She was, suddenly and unexpectedly, happy.

Nameless things hanging from the sewer roof brushed against Sharpe’s face and he ducked from them, dreading to think what they were, and after a while he used his sword to clear the air in front of him. He tried to count the feet and yards, but gave up because their progress was so painfully slow. After a while the floor of the sewer rose, while the roof stayed at the same level and he had to crouch to keep going. More tendrils brushed against his hair. Other things dripped from the roof, then the bottom of the tunnel abruptly fell away and he was poking the sword into a stinking nothingness. ‘Hold still,’ he told his companions, then gingerly pushed the sword forward and found the bottom of the sewer again two feet away and at least a foot lower. There was some kind of sump here, or else the base of the tunnel had collapsed into a cavern. ‘Let go of me,’ he told Sarah. He prodded again, measured the distance and then, still bent into a crouch, took one long step and made the far side safely, but his foot slipped as he landed and he fell heavily against the sewer’s side. He used the efficacious word. ‘Sorry, miss,’ he said, his voice echoing in the tunnel. He had managed to keep his clothes out of the muck, but the slip had scared him and his ribs were hurting again so that it was painful to draw breath. He straightened slowly and discovered he could stand up straight because the roof had risen again. He turned to face Sarah. ‘In front of you,’ he told her, ‘there’s a hole in the floor. It’s only a good pace wide. Find the edge of it with one of your feet.’

‘I’ve found it.’

‘You’re going to take a long step,’ Sharpe told her, ‘two feet forward and one foot down, but take my hands first.’ He propped the sword against the wall, reached out and found her hands. ‘Are you ready?’

‘Yes.’ She sounded nervous.

‘Slide your hands forward,’ he told her, ‘hold on to my forearms, and hold hard.’ She did as he ordered and Sharpe gripped her arms close to her elbows. ‘I’ve got you now,’ he said, ‘and you’re going to take one long step, but be careful. It’s slippery as…’

‘Shit?’ Sarah asked, and laughed at herself for daring to say the word aloud, then she took a deep breath of the foetid air, launched herself forward, but her back foot slipped and she fell, crying aloud in fear, only to find herself being hauled to safety. Sharpe had half expected her to slip and now he pulled her hard into his body and she came easily, no weight on her at all, and she clung to him so that he felt her naked breasts against his skin. She was gasping.

‘It’s all right, miss,’ he said, ‘well done.’

‘Is she all right?’ Vicente asked anxiously.

‘She’s never been better,’ Sharpe said. ‘There are some soldiers I wouldn’t bring down here because they’d fall to pieces, but Miss Fry is doing well.’ She was holding on to him, shaking slightly, her hands cold on his bare skin. ‘You know what I like about you, miss?’

‘What?’

‘You haven’t complained once. Well, about our swearing, of course, but you’ll get over that, but you haven’t once complained about what’s happened. Not many women I could take down a sewer without getting an earful.’ He stepped back, trying to disentangle himself from her, but Sarah insisted on holding him. ‘You must give Jorge some room,’ he told her, and led her a pace down the sewer where she kept her arm round his waist. ‘If I didn’t think it was a daft idea,’ Sharpe went on, ‘I’d guess you’re enjoying yourself.’

‘I am,’ Sarah said, then giggled. She was still holding him and her face was against his chest so Sharpe, without really thinking about it, bent his head and kissed her forehead. For a second she went very still, then she put her other arm round him and lifted her face to press her cheek against his. Bloody hell, Sharpe thought. In a sewer?

There was a splashing sound and someone bashed into Sharpe and Sarah, then clutched at both of them. ‘You safe, Jorge?’ Sharpe asked.

‘I’m safe. I’m sorry, miss,’ Vicente said, deciding his hand had inadvertently groped something inappropriate.

Harper came last and Sharpe turned around and led on, conscious of Sarah’s hands on his waist. He shuddered as he passed another sewer that came from the right-hand side. A dribble of something flopped from its outfall and splashed up his thigh. He sensed that their sewer was running more steeply downhill now. The filth was shallower here, for much of the sewage was stopped up behind the place where the floor had buckled upwards, but what there was ran faster and he tried not to think what might be bumping against his ankles. He was going in tiny steps, fearful of the slippery stones beneath him, though for much of the time his toes were squelching in jelly-like muck. He began using the sword as a support as much as a probe, and now he was sure that the fall was steepening. Where did it come out? The river? The sewer began to tilt downwards and Sharpe stopped, suspecting they could go no further without falling and sliding into whatever horror lay below. He could hear the turgid stream splashing far beneath, but into what? A pool of muck? Another sewer? And how long was the drop?

‘What is it?’ Sarah asked, worried that Sharpe had stopped.

‘Trouble,’ he said, then listened again and detected a new sound, a background noise, unstopping and faint, and realized it had to be the river. The sewer fell away, then ran to its outfall in the Mondego, but how far it fell, or how steeply, he could not tell. He felt with his right foot for a loose stone or fragment of brick and, when he found something, edged it up the curve of the sewer’s side until it was out of the liquid. He tossed it ahead of him, heard it rattle against the sides of the sewer as it dropped, then came a splash.

‘The sewer turns down,’ he explained, ‘and it falls into some kind of pool.’

‘Not some kind of pool,’ Harper said helpfully, ‘a pool of piss and shit.’

‘Thank you, Sergeant,’ Sharpe said.

‘We have to go back,’ Vicente suggested.

‘To the cellar?’ Sarah asked, alarmed.

‘God, no,’ Sharpe said. He wondered about lowering himself down, dangling on the rifle slings, but then remembered the terror of thinking himself trapped in the Copenhagen chimney. Anything was better than going through that again. ‘Pat? Turn round, go back slowly and tap the walls. We’ll follow you.’

They turned in the dark. Sarah insisted on going behind Sharpe, keeping her hands on his waist. Harper used the hilt of his sword bayonet, the dull clang echoing forlorn in the foetid blackness. Sharpe was hoping against hope that they would find some place where the sewer ran by a cellar, somewhere that was not blanketed by feet of earth and gravel, and if they could not find it then they would have to go back past the warehouse cellar and find some place that the sewer opened to the surface. It would be a long night, he thought, if it was still night time, and then, not ten paces up the sewer, the sound changed. Harper tapped again, and was again rewarded with a hollow noise. ‘Is that what you’re looking for?’ he asked.

‘We’ll break the bloody wall down,’ Sharpe said. ‘Jorge? You’ll have to hold Sergeant Harper’s clothes. Miss Fry? You hold mine. And keep the ammunition out of the sludge.’

They tapped the wall some more, finding that the hollow spot was about ten feet long on the upper curve of the sewer. ‘If there’s anybody up there,’ Harper said, ‘we’re going to give them one hell of a surprise.’

‘What if it falls in on us?’ Sarah asked.

‘Then we get crushed,’ Sharpe said, ‘so if you believe in a God, miss, pray now.’

‘You don’t?’

‘I believe in the Baker rifle,’ Sharpe said, ‘and in the 1796 Pattern heavy cavalry sword, so long as you grind down the back blade so that the point don’t slide off a Frog’s ribs. If you don’t grind down the back blade, miss, then you might as well just beat the bastards to death with it.’

‘I’ll remember that,’ Sarah said.

‘Are you ready, Pat?’

‘Ready,’ Harper said, hefting his rifle.

‘Then let’s give this bastard a walloping.’

They did.

The last British and Portuguese troops left Coimbra at dawn on Monday morning. As far as they knew every scrap of food in the city had been destroyed or burned or tossed into the river, and all the bakers’ ovens had been demolished. The place was supposed to be empty, but more than half of the city’s forty thousand inhabitants had refused to leave, because they reckoned flight was futile and that if the French did not overtake them here then they would catch them in Lisbon. Some, like Ferragus, stayed to protect their possessions, others were too old or too sick or too despairing to attempt escape. Let the French come, those who stayed thought, for they would endure and the world would go on.

The South Essex were the last battalion across the bridge. Lawford rode at the back and glanced behind for a sign of Sharpe or Harper, but the rising sun showed the river’s quay was empty. ‘It isn’t like Sharpe,’ he complained.

‘It’s very like Sharpe,’ Major Leroy observed. ‘He has an independent streak, Colonel. The man’s a rebel. He’s truculent. Very admirable traits in a skirmisher, don’t you think?’

Lawford suspected he was being mocked, but was honest enough to realize that he was being mocked by the truth. ‘He wouldn’t just have deserted?’

‘Not Sharpe,’ Leroy said. ‘He’s got caught up in a mess. He’ll be back.’

‘He mentioned something to me about joining the Portuguese service,’ Lawford said worriedly. ‘You don’t think he will, do you?’

‘I wouldn’t blame him,’ Leroy said. ‘A man needs recognition for his service, Colonel, don’t you think?’

Lawford was saved from answering because Captain Slingsby, mounted on Portia, clattered back across the bridge, wheeled the horse and fell in beside Lawford and Leroy. ‘That Irish Sergeant is still missing,’ he said reproachfully.

‘We were just discussing it,’ Lawford said.

‘I shall mark him in the books as a deserter,’ Slingsby announced. ‘A deserter,’ he repeated vehemently.

‘You’ll do nothing of the sort!’ Lawford snapped with an asperity that even he found surprising. Yet, even as he spoke, he realized that he had begun to find Slingsby annoying. The man was like a yapping dog, always at your heels, always demanding attention, and Lawford had begun to suspect that the new commander of his light company was a touch too fond of drink. ‘Sergeant Harper,’ he explained in a calmer tone, ‘is on detached service with an officer of this battalion, a respected officer, Mister Slingsby, and you will not question the propriety of that service.’

‘Of course not, sir,’ Slingsby said, taken aback at the Colonel’s tone. ‘I just like to have everything Bristol fashion. You know me, sir. Everything in its place and a place for everything.’

‘Everything is in its place,’ the Colonel said, except that it was not. Sharpe and Harper were missing, and Lawford secretly feared it was his fault. He turned again, but there was no sign of the missing men, and then the battalion was off the bridge and marching into the shadows of the small streets about the convent.

Coimbra was strangely silent then, as if the city held its breath. Some folk went to the ancient city gates that pierced the medieval wall and stared nervously down the roads, hoping against hope that the French would not come.

Ferragus did not worry about the French, not yet. He had his own sweet revenge to take first and he led seven men to the warehouse where, before he uncovered the trapdoor, he lit two braziers of coal. It took time for the coal to catch fire from its kindling, and he used the minutes to make barricades from barrels of salt beef so that if the three men came charging up the steps they would be trapped between the barriers behind which his men would be sheltered. Once the coal was billowing foul smoke he ordered his men to uncover the hatch. He listened for any sounds from beneath, but heard nothing. ‘They’re asleep,’ Francisco, the biggest of Ferragus’s men, said.

‘They’ll be asleep for ever soon,’ Ferragus said. Three men held muskets, four took away the barrels and boxes, and when they were all removed Ferragus ordered two of the four to get their muskets, and for the other two men to drag away the paving slabs that had covered the trapdoor. He chuckled when he saw the holes in the wood. ‘They tried, eh? Must have taken them hours! Careful now!’ There was only one slab remaining and he expected the trapdoor to be pushed violently upwards at any second. ‘Fire down as soon as they push it up,’ he told his men, then watched as the last paving slab was hauled away.

Nothing happened.

He waited, watching the closed trapdoor and still nothing happened. ‘They think we’re going to go down,’ Ferragus said. Instead he crept onto the trapdoor, seized its metal handle, nodded to his men to make sure they were ready, then heaved.

The trapdoor lifted a few inches and Francisco pushed his musket barrel beneath and lifted it some more. He was crouching, half expecting a shot to come blasting out of the darkness, but there was only silence. Ferragus stepped to the trapdoor and hauled it all the way back so that it crashed against the warehouse’s rear wall. ‘Now,’ he said, and two men pushed the braziers over so that the burning coals cascaded down the steps to fill the cellar with a thick and choking smoke. ‘They won’t last long now,’ Ferragus said, and drew a pistol. Kill the men first, he thought, and save the woman for later.

He waited to hear coughing, but no sound came from the darkness. Smoke drifted in the stairwell. Ferragus crept forward, listening, then fired the pistol down the steps before ducking back. The bullet ricocheted off stone, then there was silence again except for the ringing in his ears. ‘Use your musket, Francisco,’ he ordered, and Francisco stepped to the edge, fired down and skipped back.

Still nothing.

‘Maybe they died?’ Francisco suggested.

‘That stench would kill an ox,’ another man said, and indeed the smell coming from the cellar was thick and foul.

Ferragus was tempted to go down, but he had learned not to underestimate Captain Sharpe. In all likelihood, he thought, Sharpe was waiting, hidden to the left or right of the stairwell, just waiting for curiosity to bring one of his enemies down the steps. ‘More flames,’ Ferragus ordered, and two of the men broke up some old crates and the fragments were set alight and tossed down into the cellar to thicken the smoke. More wood was hurled down until the floor at the foot of the steps seemed to be a mass of flame, yet still no one moved down there. No one even coughed.

‘They have to be dead,’ Francisco said. No one could survive that turmoil of smoke.

Ferragus took a musket from one of the men and, very slowly, trying to make no noise, he crept down the steps. The flames were hot on his face, the smoke was fierce, but at last he could see into the cellar and he stared, not believing what he saw, for in the very centre, edged with glowing coals and smouldering wood, was a hole just like a grave. He stared, not comprehending for a moment, and then, suddenly and rarely, he felt afraid.

The bastards were gone.

Ferragus stayed on the bottom step. Francisco, curious, went past him, waited a moment for the worst of the smoke to subside, then kicked aside the flames to peer down the hole. He made the sign of the cross.

‘What’s down there?’ Ferragus asked.

‘Sewer. Maybe they drowned?’

‘No,’ Ferragus said, then shuddered because a hammering sound was coming from the foetid hole. The noise seemed to come from far away, but it was a hard-edged noise, threatening, and Ferragus remembered a sermon he had once endured from a Dominican friar who had warned the people of Coimbra about the hell that waited for them if they did not mend their ways. The friar had described the fires, the instruments of torture, the thirst, the agony, the eternity of hopeless weeping, and in the echoing noise Ferragus thought he heard the implements of hell clanging and he instinctively turned and fled up the stairs. The sermon had been so powerful that for two days afterwards Ferragus had tried to reform himself. He had not even visited any of the brothels he owned in the town, and now, faced with that noise and the sight of the fire-edged hole, the terror of the sinner came back to him. He was overcome with a fear that Sharpe was now the hunter and he the quarry. ‘Up here!’ he ordered Francisco.

‘That noise…’ Francisco was reluctant to leave the cellar.

‘It’s him,’ Ferragus said. ‘You want to go down and find him?’

Francisco glanced down the hole, then fled back up the steps where he closed the trapdoor and Ferragus ordered the boxes piled back on top as if that could stop Sharpe erupting from the stinking underworld.

Then another hammering sounded, this one on the warehouse doors and Ferragus whipped round and raised his gun. The new hammering came again and Ferragus suppressed his fear and walked towards the sound. ‘Who’s there?’ he shouted.

‘Senhor? Senhor? It’s me, Miguel!’

Ferragus dragged open one of the warehouse doors and at least one thing was right with the world, for Miguel and Major Ferreira had returned. Ferreira, sensibly, had abandoned his uniform and was wearing a black suit, and with him was a French officer and a squadron of hard-looking cavalrymen armed with swords and short muskets, and Ferragus was aware of noises in the streets again: a scream somewhere, the clatter of hooves and the sound of boots. He was in the daylight, hell had been shut up and the French had arrived.

And he was safe.

The rifle butts hammered the sewer wall and Sharpe was instantly rewarded by the grating sound of bricks shifting. ‘Richard!’ Vicente called warningly and Sharpe looked round and saw tiny glimmers of light sparking in the far recesses of the sewer. The glints flared, flashed and faded, reflecting their eerie light from things that glistened on the sides of the brick tunnel.

‘Ferragus,’ Sharpe said, ‘chucking fire into the cellar. Is your rifle loaded, Jorge?’

‘Of course.’

‘Just watch that way. But I doubt the buggers will come.’

‘Why wouldn’t they?’

‘Because they don’t want to fight us down here,’ Sharpe said. ‘Because they don’t want to wade through shit. Because they’re frightened.’ He smashed the rifle into the old brickwork, hitting again and again in a kind of frenzy, and Harper worked beside him, timing his blows to strike at the same time as Sharpe’s, and suddenly the ancient masonry collapsed. Some of the bricks cascaded down to Sharpe’s feet, splashing his legs with sewage, but most fell into whatever space was beyond the wall. The good news was that they fell with a dry clatter, not with a splash that would announce they had only managed to break into one of the many cesspits dug beneath the houses of the lower town. ‘Can you get through, Pat?’ Sharpe asked.

Harper did not answer, but just clambered through the black space. Sharpe turned again to watch the tiny sparks of falling fire that he reckoned were no more than a hundred paces away. The journey through the sewer had seemed much longer. A larger scrap fell, flared blue-green and splashed into oblivion, but not before its sheen of light had flickered off the walls to show that the tunnel was empty.

‘It’s another damned cellar,’ Harper said, his voice echoing in the dark.

‘Take these,’ Sharpe said, and pushed his rifle and sword through the gap. Harper took the weapons, then Sharpe climbed up, scratching his belly on the rough edge of the shattered brickwork, then wriggling over onto a stone floor. The air was suddenly fresh. The stench was still there, of course, but less concentrated and he breathed deep before helping Harper lift the bundles of clothes through the hole. ‘Miss Fry? Give me your hands,’ Sharpe said, and he lifted her through the gap, stepped back and she fell against him so that her hair was against his face. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m all right,’ she said. She smiled. ‘You’re right, Mister Sharpe, and for some reason I am enjoying myself.’

Harper was helping Vicente through the hole. Sharpe lifted Sarah gently. ‘You must get dressed, miss.’

‘I was thinking my life must change,’ she said, ‘but I wasn’t expecting this.’ She was still holding him and he could feel she was shivering. Not with cold. He ran a hand down her back, tracing her spine. ‘There’s light,’ she said in a kind of amazement, and Sharpe turned to see that there was indeed the faintest strip of grey at the far side of the wide room. He took Sarah’s hand and groped his way past piles of what felt like pelts. He realized that the room stank of leather, though that smell was a relief after the thickness of the stench inside the sewer. The grey strip was high, close to the ceiling, and Sharpe had to clamber up a pile of leather skins to discover that one pelt had been nailed across a small high window. He ripped it down to see that the window was only a foot high and crossed with thick iron bars, but it opened onto the pavement of a street which, after the last few hours, looked like a glimpse of heaven. The glass was filthy, but it still seemed as though the cellar was flooded with light.

‘Sharpe!’ Vicente said chidingly, and Sharpe twisted to see that the small light was revealing Sarah’s near nakedness. She looked dazzled by the light, then ducked behind a stack of pelts.

‘Time to get dressed, Jorge,’ Sharpe said. He fetched Sarah’s bundle and took it to her. ‘I need my boots,’ he said, turning his back.

She sat down to take the boots off. ‘Here,’ she said, and Sharpe turned to see she was still almost naked as she held the boots up. There was a challenge in her eyes, almost as if she was astonished at her own daring.

Sharpe crouched. ‘You’re going to be all right,’ he said. ‘Anyone as tough as you will survive this.’

‘From you, Mister Sharpe, is that a compliment?’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘and so’s this,’ and he leaned forward to kiss her. She returned the kiss and smiled as he rocked back. ‘Sarah,’ he said.

‘I think we’ve been introduced properly now,’ she allowed.

‘Good,’ Sharpe said, then left her to dress.

‘So what do we do now?’ Harper asked when they were all clothed again.

‘We get the hell out of here,’ Sharpe said. He twisted as he heard boots in the street, then saw feet going past the small window. ‘The army’s still here,’ he said, ‘so we get out and make sure Ferragus loses all that food in the warehouse.’ He buckled on the sword belt and shouldered the rifle. ‘And then we arrest him,’ he went on, ‘stand him against a wall and shoot the bastard, though no doubt you’d like him to have a trial first, Jorge.’

‘You can just shoot him,’ Vicente said.

‘Well said,’ Sharpe commented and crossed the room to where some wooden steps climbed to a door. It was locked, evidently bolted on the far side, but the hinges were inside the cellar and their screws were sunk into rotted wood. He rammed his sword under one of the hinges, levered it cautiously in case the hinge was stronger than it looked, then gave it a good heave that splintered the screws out of the jamb. A troop of cavalry clattered past outside. ‘They must be leaving,’ Sharpe said, moving the sword to the lower hinge, ‘so let’s hope the French aren’t too close.’

The second hinge tore out of the frame and Sharpe pulled on it to force the door inwards. It tilted on the bolt, but opened far enough for him to see down a passageway that had a heavy door at its far end and, just as Sharpe was about to step through the half-blocked opening, someone began thumping that far door. He could see it shaking, could see the dust jarring off its timbers, and he held up a hand to caution his companions to silence as he backed away. ‘What day is it?’ he asked.

Vicente thought for a second. ‘Monday?’ he guessed. ‘October the first?’

‘Jesus,’ Sharpe said, wondering whether the horses in the street had been French and not British. ‘Sarah? Get up close to the window and tell me if you can see a horse.’

She scrambled up, pressed her face against the grimy glass, and nodded. ‘Two horses,’ she said.

‘Do they have docked tails?’

‘Docked?’

‘Are their tails cut off?’ The door at the passageway’s end was shaking with the blows and he knew it must give way at any second.

Sarah looked through the glass again. ‘No.’

‘Then it’s the French,’ Sharpe said. ‘See if you can block the window, love. Push a piece of leather against it. Then hide! Go back to Pat.’

The cellar went dark again as Sarah propped a stiff piece of leather over the small window, then she went back to join Harper and Vicente in the far corner where they were concealed by one of the massive heaps of hides. Sharpe stayed, watching the far door shake, then it splintered inwards and he saw the blue uniform and white crossbelt and he backed away down the steps. ‘Frogs,’ he said grimly, and crossed the cellar and crouched with the others.

There was a cheer as the French broke into the house. Footsteps were loud on the floorboards above, then someone kicked at the half-broken cellar door and Sharpe could hear voices. French voices and not happy voices. The men evidently paused at the cellar door and one made a sound of disgust, presumably at the stench of sewage. ‘Merde,’ one of the voices said.

‘C’est un puisard.’ Another spoke.

‘He says it’s a cesspit,’ Sarah whispered in Sharpe’s ear, then there was a splashing sound as one of the soldiers urinated down the steps. There was a burst of laughter, then the Frenchmen went away. Sharpe, crouching close beside Sarah in the cellar’s darkest corner, heard the distant sounds of boots and hooves, voices and screaming. A shot sounded, then another. It was not the sound of battle, for that was many shots melding together to make an unending crackle, but single shots as men blew off padlocks or just fired for the hell of it.

‘The French are here?’ Harper asked in disbelief.

‘The whole damn army,’ Sharpe said. He loaded his rifle, shoved the ramrod back in its hoops, then waited. He heard boots clattering down the stairs in the house above, more boots in the passageway and then there was silence and he decided the French had gone to find a wealthier place to plunder. ‘We’re going up,’ he said, ‘to the attic.’ Perhaps it was because he had been underground too long, or perhaps it was just an instinct to get high, but he knew they could not stay here. Eventually some Frenchmen would search the whole cellar and so he led them through the stacked hides and up the steps. The outer door was open, showing sunlight in the streets, but there was no one in sight and so he ran down the passage, saw stairs to his right and took them two at a time.

The house was empty. The French had searched it and found nothing except some heavy tables, stools and beds, so they had gone to look for richer pickings. At the top of the second flight of stairs was a broken door, its padlock split away, and above it was a narrow staircase that climbed to a set of attic rooms that seemed to extend across three or four houses. The largest room, long, low and narrow, had a dozen low wooden beds. ‘Student quarters,’ Vicente said.

There were screams from nearby houses, the sound of shots, then voices down below and Sharpe reckoned more troops had come to the house. ‘The window,’ he said, and pushed the closest one open and climbed through to find himself in a gutter that ran just behind a low stone parapet. The others followed Sharpe who found a refuge at the northern gable end that was not overlooked by any of the attic windows. He peered over the parapet into a narrow, shadowed alley. A French cavalryman, a woman across his pommel, rode beneath Sharpe. The woman screamed and the man slapped her rump, then hauled up her black dress and slapped it again. ‘They’re having fun and games,’ Sharpe said sourly.

He could hear the French in the attic rooms, but none came out onto the roof and Sharpe sat back on the tiles and stared uphill. The great university buildings dominated the skyline, and beneath them were thousands of roofs and church towers. The streets were flooding with the invaders, but none were up high, though here and there Sharpe could see frightened people who, like him, had taken refuge on the tiles. He was trying to find Ferragus’s warehouse. He knew it was not far away, knew it had a high, pitched roof, and finally reckoned he had spotted it a hundred or more paces up the hill.

He looked across the alley. The houses on the far side had the same kind of parapet protecting their roof and he reckoned he could jump the gap easily enough, but Vicente, with his wounded shoulder, might be clumsy, and Sarah’s long, torn frock would hamper her. ‘You’re going to stay here, Jorge,’ he told Vicente, ‘and look after Miss Fry. Pat and I are going exploring.’

‘We are?’

‘Got anything better to do, Pat?’

‘We can come with you,’ Vicente said.

‘Better if you stay here, Jorge,’ Sharpe said, then took out his pocket knife and unfolded the blade. ‘Have you ever looked after wounds?’ he asked Sarah.

She shook her head.

‘Time to learn,’ Sharpe said. ‘Take the bandage off Jorge’s shoulder and find the bullet. Take it out. Take out any scraps of his shirt or jacket. If he tells you to stop because it’s hurting, dig harder. Be ruthless. Dig out the bullet and anything else, then clean up the wound. Use this.’ He gave her his canteen that still had a little water in it. ‘Then make a new bandage,’ he went on, before laying Vicente’s loaded rifle beside her, ‘and if a Frog comes out here, shoot him. Pat and I will hear and we’ll come back.’ Sharpe doubted that he or Harper could recognize a rifle’s bark amidst all the other shots, but he reckoned Sarah might need the reassurance. ‘Think you can do all that?’

She hesitated, then nodded. ‘I can.’

‘It’s going to hurt like hell, Jorge,’ Sharpe warned, ‘but God knows if we can find you a doctor in this town today, so let Miss Fry do her best.’ He straightened up and turned to Harper. ‘Can you jump that alley, Pat?’

‘God save Ireland.’ Harper looked at the gap between the houses. ‘It’s a terrible long way, sir.’

‘So make sure you don’t fall,’ Sharpe said, then stood on the parapet where it made a right angle to the alleyway. He gave himself a few paces to build up speed, then ran and made a desperate leap across the void. He made it easily, clearing the far parapet and crashing into the roof tiles so that agony flared in his ribs. He scrambled aside and watched as Harper, bigger and less lithe, followed him. The Sergeant landed right across the parapet, winding himself as its edge drove into his belly, but Sharpe grabbed his jacket and hauled him over.

‘I said it was a long way,’ Harper said.

‘You eat too much.’

‘Jesus, in this army?’ Harper said, then dusted himself off and followed Sharpe along the next gutter. They passed skylights and windows, but no one was inside to see them. In places the parapet had crumbled away and Sharpe scrambled up to the roof ridge because it gave them safer footing. They negotiated a dozen chimneys, then slid down to another alley and another jump. ‘This one’s narrower,’ Sharpe said to encourage Harper.

‘Where are we going, sir?’

‘The warehouse,’ Sharpe said, pointing to its great stone gable.

Harper eyed the gap. ‘It would be easier to go through the sewer,’ he grumbled.

‘If you want to, Pat. Meet me there.’

‘I’ve come this far,’ Harper said, and winced as Sharpe made the leap. He followed, arriving safely, and the two clambered up the next roof and along its ridge until they arrived at the street which divided the block of houses from the building Sharpe reckoned was the warehouse.

Sharpe slid down the tile slope to the gutter by the parapet, then peered over. He pulled back instantly. ‘Dragoons,’ he said.

‘How many?’

‘Dozen? Twenty?’ He was sure it was the warehouse. He had seen the big double doors, one of them ajar, and from the roof ridge he had just seen the skylights on the warehouse which was slightly higher up the hill. The street was too wide to be jumped, so there was no way of reaching those skylights from this roof, but then Sharpe peered again and saw that the dragoons were not plundering. Every other Frenchman in the city seemed to have been let off the leash, but these dragoons were sitting on their horses, their swords drawn, and he realized they must have been posted to guard the warehouse. They were turning French infantrymen away, using the flat of their swords if any became too insistent. ‘They’ve got the bloody food, Pat.’

‘And they’re welcome to it.’

‘No, they’re bloody not,’ Sharpe said savagely.

‘So how in Christ are we supposed to take it away from them?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Sharpe said. He knew the food had to be taken away if the French were to be beaten, yet for a moment he was tempted to let the whole thing slide. To hell with it. The army had treated him badly, so why the hell should he care? Yet he did care, and he would be damned before Ferragus helped the French win the war. The noise in the city was getting louder, the noise of screaming, of disorder, of chaos let loose, and the frequent musket shots were startling hundreds of pigeons into the air. He peered a third time at the dragoons and saw how they had formed two lines to block the ends of the small street to keep the French infantry away from the warehouse. Scores of men were protesting to the dragoons and Sharpe guessed that the horsemen’s presence had started a rumour that there was food in the street, and the infantry, who had become ever more hungry as they marched through a stripped land, were probably desperate with hunger. ‘I’m not sure,’ Sharpe said again, ‘but I’ve got an idea.’

‘An idea for what, sir?’

‘To keep those bastards hungry,’ Sharpe said, which was what Wellington wanted, so Sharpe would give it to his lordship. He would keep the bastards hungry.