Sharpe 3-Book Collection 5: Sharpe's Company, Sharpe's Sword, Sharpe's Enemy (70 page)

The chapel door was open and, as Sharpe passed, a hand shot out and grasped his left shoulder. He swung on the hand, right fist already moving, then stopped. A woman stood there, swaying and blinking, and behind her there were candles beyond the open door in the grille. ‘Coming in, darling?’ She smiled at Sharpe, then staggered against the door.

‘Go and sleep it off.’

A man’s voice, speaking in French, called from inside the chapel. The woman shook her head. ‘He’s no bloody good, darling. Brandy, brandy, brandy.’ A child, not three years old, came and stood beside her mother and peered up solemnly at Sharpe, sucking its thumb. The woman squinted at Sharpe. ‘Who are you?’

‘Lord Wellington.’ The French voice shouted again and there was the sound of movement. Sharpe pushed the woman inside the door. ‘Go on, love. He’s feeling better now.’

‘A chance would be a fine thing. Come back, yes?’

‘We’ll be back.’

He led his men, grinning broadly, round the further corner and down to the passageway that led to the inner cloister. Footsteps echoed in it as he approached and then a child burst from the archway, pursued by another child, and they ran into the upper cloister and shrieked with laughter and excitement. A voice yelled at them from a storeroom. The drunks seemed to be sleeping it off in this upper level.

Sharpe motioned his men to wait in the passageway and walked out onto the upper cloister level where he had stood and talked with Madame Dubreton. He stayed in the shadows and he stared down into the eye of chaos. This was the anarchy that Wellington feared, the short step from order, the abandonment of hope and discipline.

Flames lit the deep cloister. A great fire burned on the broken stones, above the wreckage of the delicate canals, and the fire was fed by thorn trees and by planks that had been torn from the great windows of the hall on the northern side of the cloister. The windows ran from the ground level, past the upper walkway, to delicate arches beneath the gallery, and now that the protective planks had been prised from the stonework the window spaces gave free entrance between courtyard and hall. Their glass was long gone. Men and women came and went between the two areas and Sharpe watched from above.

He had run from the Foundling Home before his tenth birthday and he had gone into the dark close alleys of London’s slums. There was work there for a nimble child. It was a world of thieves, body-snatchers, murderers; of drunkards, cripples, and of whores who had sold themselves into disease and ugliness. Hope meant nothing to the inhabitants of St Giles. For many their longest journey in this world was a mile and a half along the length of Oxford Street, due west, to the three-sided gibbet at Tyburn. The countryside, just two miles north up the Tottenham Court Road, was as remote as paradise. St Giles was a place of disease, starvation, and a future so dark that a man measured it in hours and took his pleasures accordingly. The gin-shops, the gutter, the floors of the common lodging houses were the places where men and women dissolved their desperation in drink, coupling, and finally in death that tipped most into the open sewer along with the night’s harvest of dead babies. Without hope there was nothing but desperation

And these people were desperate. They must have known that revenge was coming, perhaps in the spring when the armies stirred from winter torpor, and until it came they numbed their desperation. ,They had drunk and were still drinking. Food lay on the broken stones, men lay with women, children picked their way through the couples to find bones that still had chewable meat or wineskins whose spigots they would suck on desperately. Close to the fire some of the bodies were naked, asleep, while further away they were covered in blankets and clothes. Some moved. One man was dead, blood black on his opened stomach. The noise was not from here, but from the hall and Sharpe could not see what was prompting the sound. He thought of the minutes ticking by, of Frederickson counting in the cold thorns.

He turned to the passageway and kept his voice low. ‘We’re going round the cloister, lads. Walk slowly. Go in twos and threes. There’s a view you’ll like as you go round.’

Harper walked just behind Sharpe, both men clinging to the shadows by the wall. The huge Irishman watched the couples by the fire and his voice was cheerful. ‘Just like the officers’ mess on a Friday night, eh?’

‘Every night, Patrick, every night.’

And what, he wondered, was to stop his own men going to join those in the courtyard? To be offered drink and women instead of work and discipline was the avowed dream of every soldier, so why did they not just go now? Kill him and Harper and take their freedom? He did not know the answer. He just knew that he trusted them. And where, more importantly, were the hostages kept? He pushed open the doors that he passed, but the rooms were either empty or inhabited by sleeping people. None were guarded. Once a man growled in protest from the darkness and two women giggled. Sharpe closed the door. The flames of the great fire were warm on the left side of his face.

He turned the corner and now he could see into the great hall. A hundred men and as many women crowded the floor. There was a kind of platform at the far end, a raised dais, and a staircase went from the dais to a gallery above that spanned the width of the hall. Sharpe could see two doorways leading from the gallery into corridors or rooms behind. There was easy access to the gallery through the tall, empty windows. A man could simply step from the cloister onto the gallery.

The men and the women were shouting, the shouting orchestrated from the dais. There sat Hakeswill. He had a chair that rose high above his head, like a throne, a chair with decorated armrests. He was dressed in the priest’s finery, the robes too short for him so that his boots were visible almost to his knees. Beside him, leaning on the armrest, Hakeswill’s hand about her waist, was a small, thin girl. She was dressed in brilliant red, a white scarf about her waist, long black hair falling below the scarf.

A woman stood on the dais. She was grinning. She was dressed in a shift over which she wore a vest and a shirt. She had a dress in her right hand and, to the crowd’s roar, she hurled the dress towards a man in the crowd who caught it and waved. Hakeswill held up his hand. The face twitched. ‘Shirt! Come on, then! How much? Shilling?’

It was an auction. She had sold the dress, presumably, and Sharpe saw two small grinning children picking up coins from the floor beneath the dais and carry them to an upturned shako. The shouts came from the hall, two shillings, three, and Hakeswill whipped them up and his eyes looked into the hat to see the takings.

They cheered and screamed as the shirt came off.

The vest went for four shillings. The coins rattled on the stones. Sharpe wondered how many minutes had passed.

The yellow face grinned. The hand jerked up and down on the small girl’s ribcage. ‘Her shift! Make it good. Ten shillings?’ No one answered. ‘You lousy bleeders! You think she’s not as pretty as Sally? Christ! You paid her two quid, now come on!’ He beat them up, higher and higher, and to a great cheer and thrown coins she peeled herself naked for one pound and eighteen shillings. She stood there grinning, hand on hip, and Hakeswill lurched upright and sidled towards her, his gold and white robes ridiculous in the flamelight, and his blue bright eyes leered at the people in the hall as he slid his right arm across the woman’s shoulders. ‘Now then. Who wants her? You’re going to pay! Half to her, half to us, so come on!’

Bids came and to some the woman stuck out her tongue, others she laughed, and Hakeswill egged them on. A consortium of Frenchmen bought her in the end, their price four pounds, and they came to fetch her and the crowd cheered louder as one of them carried the woman sitting on his shoulders towards the fire in the courtyard.

Hakeswill calmed them with long arms. ‘Who’s next?’

Names were shouted, women pushed forward by their men. Hakeswill drank from a bottle, his face twitched on its long neck, and the small girl still clung solemnly to him. A group of men began chanting. ‘A prisoner! A prisoner!’ The chant was taken up, shortened. ‘Prisoner! Prisoner! Prisoner!’

‘Now, lads, now! You know what the Marshal says!’

‘Prisoner! Prisoner! Prisoner!’ The women were screaming with the men, spitting the words like bile from their mouths. ‘Prisoner! Prisoner! Prisoner!’

Hakeswill let them chant, his eyes knowing on them. He raised a hand. ‘You know what the Marshal says! They’re our precious little ones, the prisoners! We can’t touch them, oh no! That’s the Marshal’s orders. Now! If the bastards come! Ah. Then you can have them, I promise.’ The crowd roared at him, protesting, and he let them roar before he held up the hand again. The thin girl clung to him, her left hand tight on the embroidered vestment. ‘But!’ the crowd silenced slowly. ‘But! As it’s Christmas we might have a look at one. Yes? Just one? Not to touch! No, no! Just to check she’s all there? Yes.’

They roared their approval and the yellow face with its lank, grey hair twitched at them while the toothless mouth gaped in silent laughter. People drifted in from the courtyard, attracted by the new noise. Sharpe turned and saw the faces of his men pale in the cloister, anxious, and he wondered how long they had been. It must be near the quarter hour.

Hakeswill’s left hand was twined in the long black hair of the girl. He twisted it and pointed at a man. ‘Go and tell Johnny to fetch one.’ The man started towards the staircase that led from the dais, but Hakeswill stopped him as he was climbing onto the platform. He turned to his audience, his face grinning. ‘Which one do you want?’

The crowd erupted again, but Sharpe had seen enough. The hostages were behind one of the two doorways that led from the gallery. He turned to his men and his voice was urgent, drowned to all but them by the cacophony in the hall. ‘We go to the gallery. We walk as far as the windows. Drop your coats here.’ His own greatcoat was unbuttoned. ‘Even numbers go into the right doorway, odd numbers go into the left. Sergeant Rossner?’

‘Sir?’

‘Take two men and keep the bastards from the stairs. First man to find the hostages, shout! Now enjoy this, lads.’

Sharpe walked down the northern side of the cloister, sure that he must be visible because the windows into the hall made it seem as if the pavement was suspended in mid-air. He put one hand on Harper’s sleeve. ‘Fire as we go in, Patrick. Straight into the bloody hall.’

‘Sir.’

Their boots were loud. Their uniforms, divested of coats, green in the firelight. The voices screamed and chanted below drowning the sound of the Riflemens’ boots. Nemesis was coming to Adrados.

One window, two windows, three windows, and Hakeswill’s voice, sounding close, shouted above the din. ‘You can’t have the Portuguesy! D’you want the English bitch? The one married to the Froggy? D‘you want her?’

They screamed assent, the voices bellowing in excitement, and Sharpe saw two armed men walk from the right hand doorway and cross to the gallery’s balustrade. One glanced at the men on the cloister, thought nothing of what he saw and leaned beside his companion to grin down at the bedlam below. The man who had been sent to fetch one of the hostages began climbing the stairs.

Sharpe touched Harper’s arm again. ‘Take the two on the gallery.’

‘Yes, sir.’

The Riflemen were bunched now. Sharpe looked at them. ‘Draw swords.’ Some would fight with the sword-bayonets fixed on their rifles, some would prefer to use them as short stabbing weapons. He nodded at Harper. ‘Fire.’

Harper filled the window space, the gun squat in his hands, his face broad and hard, and then he touched the trigger and the explosion of the seven barrels echoed in the hall and the two armed men were thrown sideways, ragged and twitching, while Harper was thrown back by the massive kick. Sharpe’s sword was in his hand, he went through the smoke in the window space, and the long blade was red steel in the firelight.

The Riflemen followed him, screaming like the devils of hell come to this feast as Sharpe had ordered them to scream, and Sharpe led the way towards the right hand door, all waiting done, all nervousness dispelled because the fight was on and there was nothing now but to win. This was the Sharpe who had saved Wellington’s life at Assaye, who had hacked through the ranks to take the Eagle with Harper, who had gone, maddened, into the breach at Badajoz. This was the Sharpe whom Major General Nairn had only been able to guess at as he looked at the quiet, dark-haired man across the rug in Frenada.

A man appeared in the doorway, startled, his musket raised with bayonet fixed. It was a French musket and the man raised it higher in desperation as he saw the Rifle officer, but he had no hope, and Sharpe shouted his challenge as the right foot stamped forward, the blade followed, twisted, steel running with light reflected from the candles in the passageway beyond, and the sword was in the Frenchman’s solar plexus and Sharpe twisted it again, kicked at his victim, and the blade was free and he could step over the screaming, dying man.

God, but there was joy in a fight. Not often in battle, but in a fight when the cause was good, and Sharpe was in the passageway, the tip of his sword dark, and he could hear the Riflemen behind him, and then a door opened spilling more light and a man peered nervously out, foolishly out, because Sharpe was on him before he understood that revenge had come and the great cavalry sword slid beneath his jawbone and he gagged, jerked back, and Sharpe was in the doorway and again the sword came forward and the man clutched at the blade which was in his throat and Sharpe could smell the foul smell that a sword drew from a man, and then his weapon was free and he was in the room with two men who fumbled with muskets, shook their heads in fear, and Sharpe bellowed at them, jumped the dead man, and the sword was a flail above the table that separated him from his enemies. Blood flew from the sword tip as it circled, and then it bit, and Sharpe could see a Rifleman going the other way about the table, a grin of maniacal joy on his face, and the second enemy backed away, back until he was hard against another door, and the Rifleman drove rifle and sword-bayonet in a blow that would have pierced stone so that the blade tip buried itself hard in the wood of the door. The enemy folded over it, bubbling and crying, and a second Rifleman, a German, finished him off with far less force and more efficiency.