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 centre, edged with glowing coals and smouldering 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 foetid 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 round 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 round 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 grey 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 grey 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.
