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
