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
