Sharpe 3-Book Collection 5: Sharpe's Company, Sharpe's Sword, Sharpe's Enemy (71 page)

The man Sharpe’s sword had hit in the face screamed beneath the table. Sharpe ignored him. He turned to the room of Riflemen. ‘Load! Load!’.

Three men in a room, armed, guarding a door. This had to be a guardroom. He reached past the pinned, bleeding figure, and tried the handle to the door. It was locked. Behind him he could hear shouts, the banging of muskets, but he ignored it. He pressed the catch, twisted, and the rifle came free of the bayonet that still nailed the dead man to the door, and then he had space to stand in front of the door, raise his heel, and smash it forward. The door shuddered. He did it again, a third time, and then the door banged open, wood splintering at the old lock, and the corpse was still attached to the wood by the twenty-three inch bayonet as it swung open and Sharpe entered.

Screams, screams of fear, and Sharpe stood in the doorway, his sword bloody, his cheek smeared with the blood of the man he had killed in the guardroom door, and he saw the women huddled against the far wall. He lowered his sword. The blood was fresh on his green uniform, glistening in the candlelight, dripping onto the rug that furnished this prison room. One woman was not hiding her face. She was protecting another woman whose face was buried in her side, beneath the encircling, protective arm, and the face was proud, thin, topped by the piled blonde hair. Sharpe made a half bow. ‘Madame Dubreton?’

Two Riflemen crowded in behind Sharpe, curious, and he turned on them. ‘Get out! There’s a fight! Join it!’

Madame Dubreton frowned. ‘Major? Major Sharpe, is it?’

‘Yes, Ma’am.‘

‘You mean?’ She was still frowning, still disbelieving.

‘Yes, Ma’am. This is a rescue, Ma‘am.’ He wanted to leave them, to go back and see how his men were faring, but he knew these women must be terrified. One of them was sobbing hysterically, staring at his uniform, and Madame Dubreton snapped at her in French. Sharpe tried a smile to lessen their shock. ‘You will be returned to your husbands, Ma’am. I’d be grateful if you would translate that for me. And if you’d excuse me?‘

‘Of course.’ Madame Dubreton still looked as if she were in shock.

‘You are safe now, Ma’am. All of you.‘

The woman whose face had been hidden in Madame Dubreton’s side pulled herself free. She had black hair, lustrous hair, and she pushed it away from her face as she turned hesitatingly towards Sharpe.

Madame Dubreton helped her upright. ‘Major Sharpe? This is Lady Farthingdale.’

Lucky Farthingdale was the thought of a half second, then utter disbelief, and the girl with the black hair saw Sharpe, her eyes widened, and then she screamed. Not in terror, but in some kind of joy, and she leaped across the room, running to him, and her arms were about his neck, her face pressed against his bloodied cheek, and her voice in his ear. ‘Richard!. Richard! Richard!’

Sharpe caught Madame Dubreton’s eyes and he half smiled. ‘We’ve met, Ma’am.‘

‘So I see.’

‘Richard! God, Richard! You? I knew you’d come!’ She pulled back from him, keeping her arms about his neck, and her mouth was as hopelessly generous as he had ever remembered, and her eyes as tempting as a man could want, and even this ordeal had not taken the mischief from her face. ‘Richard?’

‘I have to go and fight a battle.’ The noise was loud outside, orders and shots, screams and the clash of steel.

‘You’re here?’

He wiped at the blood on her cheek. ‘I’m here.’ He pulled her arms from about his neck. ‘Wait here. I’ll be back.’

She nodded, eyes bright, and he grinned at her. ‘I’ll be back.’

God in his heaven! He had not seen her for two years, but here she was, as beautiful as ever, the high-class whore who had at last become a Lady. Josefina.

He left one man guarding the hostages. Two each stood post in the passageways, the rest protected the stairway and the entrance to the gallery through the windows opening to the cloister. Smoke already clotted the gallery, Riflemen were slamming ramrods into fired barrels, others crouched waiting for a target. Harper was reloading the seven-barrelled gun. He looked up at Sharpe, grinned quickly, and held up four fingers. Sharpe raised his voice.

‘We’ve got the women, lads!’

They cheered, and Sharpe made a swift count. All his men were there, all seemingly unwounded. He watched a Rifleman bring his gun into his shoulder, aim swiftly, and a bullet spun into the cloister. There was a yelp from the far side, then a ragged volley of muskets, the balls going high. One struck an iron ring, suspended as a chandelier, old and rusty on its chains, and the four yellow candles fluttered as the ball struck. Sharpe moved to the stairhead.

Three bodies lay on the stairs, thrown back by rifle fire. The German Sergeant, Rossner, his face blackened by the powder from his rifle pan, looked happily at Sharpe. ‘They run, sir.’

They did, too. The deserters and their women were screaming and shouting, pushing and scrambling, going into the courtyard of the cloister. Sharpe looked for Hakeswill, but the big man in his priest’s vestments had disappeared in the crush. Rossner gestured with his rifle down the stairs. ‘We go down, sir?’

‘No.’ Sharpe was worried about Frederickson’s men. He would rather that the main force of Riflemen found the advance party concentrated, so that no one shot a man of his own side in the confusion and the shadows. He went back to the windows where Harper waited hopefully with the big gun reloaded. ‘Frederickson?’

‘Not yet, sir.’

Someone was shouting in the courtyard, bellowing for order, someone who had, perhaps, realized that the attackers were few in number and that a concentrated counter-attack could overwhelm them. Sharpe stared at the far side of the upper cloister. He could see no men there in the firelight, the rifles had made it an unhealthy place, but then it was suddenly filled with running figures, shouting for aid, and Sharpe pushed down a rifle that was brought up to fire. ‘Hold it!’

Women and children were fleeing, which meant Frederickson’s men must be in the outer cloister, and Sharpe bellowed at the men who guarded the windows. ‘Watch out for Captain Frederickson!’

Then there were dark figures in the entrance way of the upper cloister, figures that took immediate cover as they emerged into the wide-open space of the cloister, and Sharpe shouted again. ‘Rifles! Rifles! Rifles!’ He stepped through the window, out onto the cloister where the firelight illuminated his uniform. ‘Rifles! Rifles!’ A musket flamed below, the ball ricocheting off the balustrade into the night. ‘Rifles! Rifles!’

‘See you, sir!’ A man with a curved sabre standing across the cloister. Riflemen were going left and right, clearing the upper gallery, and Frederickson came with them towards Sharpe.

Sweet William looked dreadful. He had taken the patch from his eye, and the false teeth from his mouth. It was a face from a nightmare, a face that would terrify any child, but it was a face that was smiling as he approached Sharpe. ‘Do we have them, sir?’

‘Yes!’

Frederickson’s sabre was bloodied. He flexed it, wanting to use it again, and watched as his men burst open doors and shouted at men and women to surrender. One man hopped down the cloister, his right leg in his trousers, his left leg caught at the ankle, and he turned ludicrously as Riflemen blocked his way only to find Riflemen behind him. He rolled over the balustrade, dropped into the courtyard, and hobbled away towards an archway on the far side.

One of Frederickson’s Lieutenants blew long blasts on his whistle, then shouted over the cloister. ‘All secure, sir!’

Frederickson looked at Sharpe. ‘Which way down?’

‘In there.’ Sharpe pointed at the gallery. There had to be another way down, but he had not seen it. ‘One section to guard the gallery.’

‘Sir.’ Frederickson was already moving, his mutilated face eager for more fighting. Sharpe followed him and slapped Harper on the shoulder. ‘Come on!’

Now it was a romp, a riot, a headlong charge down the stairs, a yelling pursuit of the enemy who had crowded through the archway across the cloister, a sabre-hacking, sword-swinging fight at the arch itself, a crash as the seven-barrelled gun cleared the few defenders from the room within, and the cloister echoed to the cries of children, the shouting of their mothers, and Riflemen rounded them up, herded them, and dragged men from hiding places.

Sharpe went through the arch, through the room, and he seemed to be in some kind of dark crypt, damp and freezing, and he shouted for light. A Rifleman brought one of the straw and resin torches that burned in the outer room and it showed a huge, empty cave, another entrance opposite.‘Come on!’

There was a current of air blowing towards them, shivering the torch flame, and Sharpe knew these rooms must lead to the blanket covered hole that looked out onto the lip of the pass. If there was a gun there, and he knew the Spanish garrison had possessed four guns, then there would be powder there, and a defender could just be lighting a fuse that would bring flame and destruction billowing into this crypt. ‘On! On! On!’ He led the way, sword out, boots pounding on the cold stones, and the flame-light showed that he had charged into a strange passageway and that his shoulders were brushing against curiously rounded yellow-white stones that reached from floor to ceiling.

The gun was there, abandoned by Pot-au-Feu’s men, pointing at the gaping hole that had been prised out of the Convent’s thick wall. The rammer leaned against the dirty barrel, next to it a powder scoop and a ripper or ‘wormhead’, the giant corkscrew used to pull out a damp charge. Sharpe could see roundshot, canister, both piled up against the curious white walls that opened up into the space where the gun had been put.

A priming tube was in the gun’s vent, suggesting that the cannon was loaded, but Sharpe ignored it, went to the opening from which the blanket had been torn aside, and listened. Boots scrambling on the turf and rocks outside, the gasping and crying of women and children, the shouts of men. Those who had escaped from the Convent were going for the Castle. Torches flared on the battlement.

‘Can we fire it?’ Frederickson was fingering the priming tube, a quill filled with fine powder that flashed the fire down to the charge in its canvas bag.

‘No, there are children out there.’

‘God save Ireland!’ Harper had picked up one of the whitish rounded stones that had fallen behind the gun. He held it as if it would kill him, his face screwed in distaste. ‘Would you look at this? Good God!’

It was a skull. All the ‘stones’ were skulls. The man with the torch pressed closer until Frederickson barked him back because of the powder barrels, but in the smoky light Sharpe could see that the piled skulls walled in a great pile of other human bones. Thigh bones, ribs, pelvises, arms, small curled hands and long feet bones, all piled in this cellar. Frederickson, his face more ghastly than any skull, shook his head in wonderment. ’An ossuary.‘

‘A what?’

‘Ossuary, sir, a bone house. The nuns. They bury them here.’

‘Jesus!’

‘They strip the flesh off first, sir. God knows how. I’ve seen it before.’

There were hundreds of the bones, perhaps thousands. To make a space for the trail of the gun Pot-au-Feu’s men had broken into the neat pile and the skeletons had tumbled down onto the floor, the bones had been shovelled to one side, and Sharpe could see a fine white powder littered with shards where men had stepped on the human remains. ‘Why do they do it?’

Frederickson shrugged. ‘So they’re all together at the resurrection, I think.’

Sharpe had a sudden image of the mass graves at Talavera and Salamanca heaving on the last day, the dead soldiers coming to life, their eye sockets rotten like Frederickson‘s, the earth shedding off the dead ranks coming from the grave. ’Good God!‘ There was a pail of dirty water under the gun, ready for the sponge, and a rag beside it. He stooped and cleaned off his sword before pushing it home in the scabbard. ’We’ll need six men here. No one’s to fire the gun without my order.‘

‘Yes, sir.’ Frederickson was cleaning the sabre, pulling the curved blade slowly through the wet rag.

Sharpe went back through the pathway of skulls, following Harper’s broad back. He remembered walking across Salamanca’s battlefield in the autumn, before the retreat to Portugal, and there had been so many dead that not all had been buried. He could -remember the hollow sound as a horse’s hooves had clipped a skull which had rolled like a misshapen football. That had been in November, not even four months after the battle, yet already the enemy dead had been flensed white.

He walked into the cloister, a place of the living, and the fire showed disconsolate prisoners hedged by sword-bayonets. A child cried for its mother, a Rifleman carried a tiny baby deserted by its parents, and the women screamed at Sharpe as he appeared. They wanted to leave, it was not their doing, they were not soldiers, but he bellowed at them to be quiet. He looked at Frederickson. ‘How’s your Spanish?’

‘Good enough.’

‘Find whatever women were captured up here. Give them decent quarters.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘The hostages can stay where they are. They’re comfortable enough, but make sure you’ve half a dozen reliable men to protect them.’

‘Yes, sir.’ They were walking across the courtyard, stepping over the small canals. ‘What about this scum, sir?’

Frederickson stopped beside the deserters who had been captured. No Hakeswill there, just three dozen sullen frightened men. Sharpe looked at them. Two-thirds were in British uniform. He raised his voice so that all the Riflemen in the courtyard and on the upper gallery could hear him. ‘These bastards are a disgrace to their uniforms. All of them. Strip them!’

A Rifle Sergeant grinned at Sharpe. ‘Naked, sir?’

‘Naked.’

Sharpe turned round and cupped his hands. ‘Captain Cross! Captain Cross!’ Cross had been detailed to capture the outer cloister, the chapel, and the storerooms.

‘He’s coming, sir!’ A shout from above.

‘Sir?’ Cross leaned over the balustrade.

‘Wounded? Killed?’

‘None, sir!’

‘Give the signal for Lieutenant Price to come up! Make sure your picquets know.’