Sharpe's Escape

  "There's always a way out," Sharpe said. "Rats get in, don't they?"

  "But there are two dead men here," Vicente sounded disgusted. The smell was overpowering.

  "They can't hurt us," Sharpe said in a whisper, "not if they're dead. Take your jacket and shirt off, Jorge, and let Miss Fry bandage you."

  Sharpe waited. Waited. Vicente was hissing in pain and Sarah made soothing noises. Sharpe went closer to the hatch. Ferragus was not gone, he knew, and he wondered what the man would do next. Open the hatch and pour a pistol volley down? Take the casualties? Sharpe doubted it. Ferragus was hoping the fugitives would be deceived into thinking the warehouse was empty and would make their own way up the steps, but I Sharpe would not fall for that. He waited, listening to the scrape of Harper's ramrod shoving down the seven bullets.

  "Loaded, sir," Harper said.

  "Let's hope the bastards come, then," Sharpe said, and Sarah gave a sharp intake of breath that he ignored, then there was a sudden, weighty thump that sounded as loud as a cannon firing and Sharpe flinched back, expecting an explosion, but the thump was followed by silence. Something heavy had been placed on the hatch. Then there was another thump, and another, followed by a heavy scraping sound and then a whole succession of bangs and scrapes. "They're weighting down the hatch," Sharpe said.

  "Why?" Sarah asked.

  "They're trapping us here, miss, and they'll come back for us when they're good and ready." Ferragus, Sharpe reckoned, did not want to attract more attention to his warehouse by starting another firefight while there were still British and Portuguese troops in the city. He would wait till the army was gone and then, in the time before the French arrived, he would bring more men, more guns and unseal the cellar. "So we've got time," Sharpe said.

  "Time to do what?" Vicente asked.

  "Get out, of course. All of you, fingers in your ears." He waited a few seconds, then fired the rifle up the stairs. The bullet buried itself in the trapdoor. Sharpe's ears were ringing as he found a new cartridge, bit off the bullet, spat it out, and then primed the rifle. "Give me your hand, Pat," he said, then put the rest of the cartridge, just the paper and powder, into Harper's palm.

  "What are you doing?" Vicente asked.

  "Being God," Sharpe said, "and making light." He felt inside his jacket and found the copy of The Times that Lawford had given to him and he tore the newspaper in half, put half back inside his jacket and screwed the other half into a tight spill that he laid on the floor.

  "Ready, sir." Harper, who had guessed what Sharpe wanted, had twisted the cartridge paper into a tube in which he left most of the powder.

  "Find the lock," Sharpe told him, and waited as Harper explored the rifle Sharpe was holding.

  "Got it, sir," Harper said, then held the spill close by the shut frizzen.

  "Glad you came with me today, Pat?"

  "Happiest day of my life, sir."

  "Let's see where we are," Sharpe said, and he pulled the trigger, the frizzen flew open as the flint struck it to drive the sparks downwards, there was a flare as the powder in the pan caught fire and Harper had the cartridge paper in just the right place, for a spark went into the tube and it fizzed up, suddenly bright, and Sharpe snatched up the newspaper spill and lit one end. Harper was licking his burned fingers as Sharpe let the tightly rolled paper flare up. He had about one minute now before the newspaper burned out, but there was little to see except the two bodies at the back of the cellar, and they were a foul sight, for the rats had been at the men, chewing their faces to the skulls and excavating their swollen bellies that were now crawling with maggots and thick with flies. Sarah twisted into a corner and vomited while Sharpe examined the rest of the cellar, which was about twenty feet square and stone-floored. The ceiling was of stone and brick, supported by arches made with narrow bricks.

  "Roman work," Vicente said, looking at one of the arches.

  Sharpe looked up the stairwell, but its sides were of solid stone. The newspaper guttered and he dropped it on the lowest step and looked around one more time as the flames flickered low.

  "We're trapped," Vicente said gloomily. He had torn open his shirt and his left shoulder was now clumsily bandaged, but Sharpe could see blood on his skin and on the torn edges of the shirt. Then the flames went out and the cellar returned to darkness. "There's no way out," Vicente said.

  "There's always a way out," Sharpe insisted. "I was trapped in a room in Copenhagen once, but I got out."

  "How?" Vicente asked.

  "Chimney," Sharpe said, and shuddered at the memory of that black, tight, lung-squeezing space up which he had fought, before turning in a soot-filled chamber to wriggle like an eel down another flue.

  "Pity the Romans didn't build a chimney here," Harper said.

  "We'll just have to wait and fight our way out," Vicente suggested.

  "Can't," Sharpe said brutally. "When Ferragus comes back, Jorge, he won't be taking chances. He'll open that trapdoor and have a score of men with muskets just waiting to kill us."

  "So what do we do?" Sarah, recovered slightly, asked in a small voice.

  "We destroy that food up there," Sharpe said, nodding in the dark towards the supplies in the warehouse above. "That's what Wellington wants, isn't it? That's our duty. We can't spend all our time swarming around universities, miss, we have work to do."

  But first, and he did not know how, he had to escape.

  Ferragus, his brother and three of the men from the warehouse retired to a tavern. Two men could not come. One had been hit in the skull by one of the seven-barrel gun's bullets and, though he lived, he was unable to speak, control his movements or make sense and so Ferragus ordered him taken to Saint Clara's in hope that some of the nuns were still there. A second man, struck in the arm by the same volley, had gone to his home to let his woman splint his broken arm and bandage his wound. The wounding of the two men had angered Ferragus who stared morosely into his wine.

  "I warned you," Ferreira said, "they're soldiers."

  "Dead soldiers," Ferragus said. That was his only consolation. The four were trapped, and they would have to stay in the cellar until Ferragus fetched them out and he toyed with the idea of leaving them there. How long would it take them to die? Would they go mad in the stifling dark? Shoot each other? Become cannibals? Perhaps, weeks from now, he would open the trapdoor and one survivor would crawl blinking into the light and he would kick the bastard to death. No, he would rather kick all three men to death and teach Sarah Fry a different lesson. "We'll get them out tonight," he said.

  "The British will be in the city tonight," Ferreira pointed out, "and there are troops billeted in the street behind the warehouse. They hear shots? They may not go as easily as those this afternoon." A Portuguese patrol had heard the shots in the warehouse and come to investigate, but Ferreira, who had not joined the fight, but had been standing by the door, had heard the boots on the cobbles and slipped outside to fend off the patrol, explaining that he had men inside killing goats.

  "No one will hear shots from that cellar," Ferragus said scornfully.

  "You want to risk that?" Ferreira asked. "With that big gun? It sounds like a cannon!"

  "Tomorrow morning, then," Ferragus snarled.

  "Tomorrow morning the British will still be here," the Major pointed out patiently, "and in the afternoon you and I must ride north to meet the French."

  "You ride north to meet the French," Ferragus said, "and Miguel can go with you." He looked at the smaller man who shrugged acceptance.

  "They are expecting to meet you," Ferreira pointed out.

  "So Miguel will say he's me!" Ferragus snapped. "Will the damned French know the difference? And I stay here," he insisted, "and play my games the moment the British are gone. When will the French arrive?"

  "If they come tomorrow," Ferreira guessed, "in the morning, perhaps? Say an hour or two after dawn?"

  "That gives me time," Ferragus said. He only wanted enough time to hear the three men begging for merc
y that would not come to them. "I'll meet you at the warehouse," he told Ferreira. "Bring the Frenchmen to guard it, and I'll be inside, waiting." Ferragus knew he was allowing himself to be distracted. His priority was to keep the food safe and sell it to the French, and the trapped foursome did not matter, but they mattered now. They had defied him, beaten him for the moment, so now, more than ever, it was an affair of pride, and a man could not back down from an affront to his pride. To do so was to be less than a man.

  Yet, Ferragus knew, there was no real problem left. Sharpe and his companions were doomed. He had piled more than half a ton of boxes and barrels on the trapdoor, there was no other way out of the cellar and it was just a matter of time. So Ferragus had won, and that was a consolation. He had won.

  Most of the retreating British and Portuguese army had used a road to the east of Coimbra and so crossed the Mondego at a ford, but enough had been ordered to use the main road to send a steady stream of troops, guns, caissons and wagons across the Santa Clara bridge which led from Coimbra to its small suburb on the Mondego's southern bank where the new Convent of Saint Clara stood. The soldiers were joined by an apparently unending stream of civilians, handcarts, goats, dogs, cows, sheep and misery that shuffled over the bridge into the narrow streets around the convent and then went south towards Lisbon. Progress was painfully slow. A child was almost run over by a cannon and the driver only avoided her by slewing the gun into a wall where the offside wheel broke, and that took nearly an hour to repair. A handcart collapsed on the bridge, spilling books and clothes, and a woman screamed when Portuguese troops threw the broken cart and its contents into the river which was already thick with flotsam as the troops on the quays shoved shattered barrels and slashed sacks into the water. Boxes of biscuits were jettisoned and the biscuits, baked hard as rock, floated in their thousands downstream. Other troops had gathered timber and coal and were making a huge fire onto which they tossed salt meat. Still other troops, all Portuguese, had been ordered to break all the bakers' ovens in town, while a company of the South Essex took sledgehammers and pickaxes to the tethered boats.

  Lieutenant Colonel Lawford returned to the quays in the early afternoon. He had slept well and enjoyed a surprisingly good meal of chicken, salad and white wine while his red coat was being brushed and pressed. Then, mounted on Lightning, he rode down to the quayside where he discovered his battalion hot, sweating, disheveled, dirty and tired. "The problem," Major Forrest told him, "is the salt meat. God knows, it won't burn."

  "Didn't Sharpe say something about turpentine?"

  "Haven't seen him," Forrest said.

  "I was hoping he was here," Lawford said, looking around the smoke-wreathed quay that stank of spilled rum and scorched meat. "He rescued rather a pretty girl. An English girl, of all things. I was a little abrupt with her, I fear, and thought I should pay my respects."

  "He isn't here," Forrest said bluntly.

  "He'll turn up," Lawford said, "he always does."

  Captain Slingsby marched across the quay, stamped to a halt and offered Lawford a cracking salute. "Man gone missing, Colonel."

  Lawford touched the heel of his riding crop to the forward tip of his cocked hat in acknowledgement of the salute. "How are things going, Cornelius? All well, I hope?"

  "Boats destroyed, sir, every last one."

  "Splendid."

  "But Sergeant Harper's missing, sir. Absent without permission."

  "I gave him permission, Cornelius."

  Slingsby bristled. "I wasn't asked, sir."

  "An oversight, I'm sure," Lawford said, "and I'm equally sure Sergeant Harper will be back soon. He's with Mister Sharpe."

  "That's another thing," Slingsby said darkly.

  "Yes?" Lawford ventured cautiously.

  "Mister Sharpe had more words with me this morning."

  "You and Sharpe must patch things up," Lawford said hastily.

  "And he has no right, sir, no right whatsoever, to take Sergeant Harper away from his proper duties. It only encourages him."

  "Encourages him?" Lawford was slightly confused.

  "To impertinence, sir. He is very Irish."

  Lawford stared at Slingsby, wondering if he detected the smell of rum on his brother-in-law's breath. "I suppose he would be Irish," the Colonel finally said, "coming, as he does, from Ireland. Just like Lightning!" He leaned forward and fondled the horse's ears. "Not everything Irish is to be disparaged, Cornelius."

  "Sergeant Harper, sir, does not show sufficient respect for His Majesty's commission," Slingsby said.

  "Sergeant Harper," Forrest put in, "helped capture the Eagle at Talavera, Captain. Before you joined us."

  "I don't doubt he can fight, sir," Slingsby said. "It's in their blood, isn't it? Like pugdogs, they are. Ignorant and brutal, sir. I had enough of them in the 55th to know." He looked back to Lawford. "But I have to worry about the internal economy of the light company. It has to be straightened and smartened, sir. Doesn't do to have men being impertinent."

  "What is it you want?" Lawford asked with a touch of asperity.

  "Sergeant Harper returned to me, sir, where he belongs, and made to knuckle down to some proper soldiering."

  "It will be your duty to see that he does when he returns," Lawford said grandly.

  "Very good, sir," Slingsby said, threw another salute, about-turned and marched back towards his company.

  "He's very enthusiastic," Lawford said.

  "I had never noticed," Forrest said, "any lack of enthusiasm or, indeed, absence of efficiency in our light company."

  "Oh, they're fine fellows!" Lawford said. "Fine fellows indeed, but the best hounds sometimes hunt better with a change of master. New ways, Forrest, dig out old habits. Don't you agree? Perhaps you'll take supper with me tonight?"

  "That would be kind, sir."

  "And it's an early start in the morning. Farewell to Coimbra, eh? And may the French have mercy on it."

  Twenty miles to the north the first French troops reached the main road. They had brushed aside the Portuguese militia who had blocked the track looping north around Bussaco's ridge, and now their cavalry patrols galloped into undefended and deserted farmland. The army turned south. Coimbra was next, then Lisbon, and with that would come victory.

  Because the Eagles were marching south.

  Chapter 8

  The first idea was to break through the trapdoor and then work on whatever had been piled above. "Go through the edge of the I 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 farther 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.