Sharpe's Escape (30 page)

"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 center, edged with glowing coals and smoldering 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 fetid 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 around 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 around 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 gray 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 gray 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.