Sharpe 3-Book Collection 4. Bernard Cornwell
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but be careful. It’s slippery as…’
‘Shit?’ Sarah asked, and laughed at herself for daring to say the word aloud, then she took a deep breath of the foetid air, launched herself forward, but her back foot slipped and she fell, crying aloud in fear, only to find herself being hauled to safety. Sharpe had half expected her to slip and now he pulled her hard into his body and she came easily, no weight on her at all, and she clung to him so that he felt her naked breasts against his skin. She was gasping.
‘It’s all right, miss,’ he said, ‘well done.’
‘Is she all right?’ Vicente asked anxiously.
‘She’s never been better,’ Sharpe said. ‘There are some soldiers I wouldn’t bring down here because they’d fall to pieces, but Miss Fry is doing well.’ She was holding on to him, shaking slightly, her hands cold on his bare skin. ‘You know what I like about you, miss?’
‘What?’
‘You haven’t complained once. Well, about our swearing, of course, but you’ll get over that, but you haven’t once complained about what’s happened. Not many women I could take down a sewer without getting an earful.’ He stepped back, trying to disentangle himself from her, but Sarah insisted on holding him. ‘You must give Jorge some room,’ he told her, and led her a pace down the sewer where she kept her arm round his waist. ‘If I didn’t think it was a daft idea,’ Sharpe went on, ‘I’d guess you’re enjoying yourself.’
‘I am,’ Sarah said, then giggled. She was still holding him and her face was against his chest so Sharpe, without really thinking about it, bent his head and kissed her forehead. For a second she went very still, then she put her other arm round him and lifted her face to press her cheek against his. Bloody hell, Sharpe thought. In a sewer?
There was a splashing sound and someone bashed into Sharpe and Sarah, then clutched at both of them. ‘You safe, Jorge?’ Sharpe asked.
‘I’m safe. I’m sorry, miss,’ Vicente said, deciding his hand had inadvertently groped something inappropriate.
Harper came last and Sharpe turned around and led on, conscious of Sarah’s hands on his waist. He shuddered as he passed another sewer that came from the right-hand side. A dribble of something flopped from its outfall and splashed up his thigh. He sensed that their sewer was running more steeply downhill now. The filth was shallower here, for much of the sewage was stopped up behind the place where the floor had buckled upwards, but what there was ran faster and he tried not to think what might be bumping against his ankles. He was going in tiny steps, fearful of the slippery stones beneath him, though for much of the time his toes were squelching in jelly-like muck. He began using the sword as a support as much as a probe, and now he was sure that the fall was steepening. Where did it come out? The river? The sewer began to tilt downwards and Sharpe stopped, suspecting they could go no further without falling and sliding into whatever horror lay below. He could hear the turgid stream splashing far beneath, but into what? A pool of muck? Another sewer? And how long was the drop?
‘What is it?’ Sarah asked, worried that Sharpe had stopped.
‘Trouble,’ he said, then listened again and detected a new sound, a background noise, unstopping and faint, and realized it had to be the river. The sewer fell away, then ran to its outfall in the Mondego, but how far it fell, or how steeply, he could not tell. He felt with his right foot for a loose stone or fragment of brick and, when he found something, edged it up the curve of the sewer’s side until it was out of the liquid. He tossed it ahead of him, heard it rattle against the sides of the sewer as it dropped, then came a splash.
‘The sewer turns down,’ he explained, ‘and it falls into some kind of pool.’
‘Not some kind of pool,’ Harper said helpfully, ‘a pool of piss and shit.’
‘Thank you, Sergeant,’ Sharpe said.
‘We have to go back,’ Vicente suggested.
‘To the cellar?’ Sarah asked, alarmed.
‘God, no,’ Sharpe said. He wondered about lowering himself down, dangling on the rifle slings, but then remembered the terror of thinking himself trapped in the Copenhagen chimney. Anything was better than going through that again. ‘Pat? Turn round, go back slowly and tap the walls. We’ll follow you.’
They turned in the dark. Sarah insisted on going behind Sharpe, keeping her hands on his waist. Harper used the hilt of his sword bayonet, the dull clang echoing forlorn in the foetid blackness. Sharpe was hoping against hope that they would find some place where the sewer ran by a cellar, somewhere that was not blanketed by feet of earth and gravel, and if they could not find it then they would have to go back past the warehouse cellar and find some place that the sewer opened to the surface. It would be a long night, he thought, if it was still night time, and then, not ten paces up the sewer, the sound changed. Harper tapped again, and was again rewarded with a hollow noise. ‘Is that what you’re looking for?’ he asked.
‘We’ll break the bloody wall down,’ Sharpe said. ‘Jorge? You’ll have to hold Sergeant Harper’s clothes. Miss Fry? You hold mine. And keep the ammunition out of the sludge.’
They tapped the wall some more, finding that the hollow spot was about ten feet long on the upper curve of the sewer. ‘If there’s anybody up there,’ Harper said, ‘we’re going to give them one hell of a surprise.’
‘What if it falls in on us?’ Sarah asked.
‘Then we get crushed,’ Sharpe said, ‘so if you believe in a God, miss, pray now.’
‘You don’t?’
‘I believe in the Baker rifle,’ Sharpe said, ‘and in the 1796 Pattern heavy cavalry sword, so long as you grind down the back blade so that the point don’t slide off a Frog’s ribs. If you don’t grind down the back blade, miss, then you might as well just beat the bastards to death with it.’
‘I’ll remember that,’ Sarah said.
‘Are you ready, Pat?’
‘Ready,’ Harper said, hefting his rifle.
‘Then let’s give this bastard a walloping.’
They did.
The last British and Portuguese troops left Coimbra at dawn on Monday morning. As far as they knew every scrap of food in the city had been destroyed or burned or tossed into the river, and all the bakers’ ovens had been demolished. The place was supposed to be empty, but more than half of the city’s forty thousand inhabitants had refused to leave, because they reckoned flight was futile and that if the French did not overtake them here then they would catch them in Lisbon. Some, like Ferragus, stayed to protect their possessions, others were too old or too sick or too despairing to attempt escape. Let the French come, those who stayed thought, for they would endure and the world would go on.
The South Essex were the last battalion across the bridge. Lawford rode at the back and glanced behind for a sign of Sharpe or Harper, but the rising sun showed the river’s quay was empty. ‘It isn’t like Sharpe,’ he complained.
‘It’s very like Sharpe,’ Major Leroy observed. ‘He has an independent streak, Colonel. The man’s a rebel. He’s truculent. Very admirable traits in a skirmisher, don’t you think?’
Lawford suspected he was being mocked, but was honest enough to realize that he was being mocked by the truth. ‘He wouldn’t just have deserted?’
‘Not Sharpe,’ Leroy said. ‘He’s got caught up in a mess. He’ll be back.’
‘He mentioned something to me about joining the Portuguese service,’ Lawford said worriedly. ‘You don’t think he will, do you?’
‘I wouldn’t blame him,’ Leroy said. ‘A man needs recognition for his service, Colonel, don’t you think?’
Lawford was saved from answering because Captain Slingsby, mounted on Portia, clattered