LITMIR.BIZ

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‘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 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

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