Sharpe's Escape

  "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 around 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 around 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 farther 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 around, 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 fetid 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 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.