"There's always a way out," Sharpe said. "Rats get in, don't they?"
"But there are two dead men here," Vicente sounded disgusted. The smell was overpowering.
"They can't hurt us," Sharpe said in a whisper, "not if they're dead. Take your jacket and shirt off, Jorge, and let Miss Fry bandage you."
Sharpe waited. Waited. Vicente was hissing in pain and Sarah made soothing noises. Sharpe went closer to the hatch. Ferragus was not gone, he knew, and he wondered what the man would do next. Open the hatch and pour a pistol volley down? Take the casualties? Sharpe doubted it. Ferragus was hoping the fugitives would be deceived into thinking the warehouse was empty and would make their own way up the steps, but I Sharpe would not fall for that. He waited, listening to the scrape of Harper's ramrod shoving down the seven bullets.
"Loaded, sir," Harper said.
"Let's hope the bastards come, then," Sharpe said, and Sarah gave a sharp intake of breath that he ignored, then there was a sudden, weighty thump that sounded as loud as a cannon firing and Sharpe flinched back, expecting an explosion, but the thump was followed by silence. Something heavy had been placed on the hatch. Then there was another thump, and another, followed by a heavy scraping sound and then a whole succession of bangs and scrapes. "They're weighting down the hatch," Sharpe said.
"Why?" Sarah asked.
"They're trapping us here, miss, and they'll come back for us when they're good and ready." Ferragus, Sharpe reckoned, did not want to attract more attention to his warehouse by starting another firefight while there were still British and Portuguese troops in the city. He would wait till the army was gone and then, in the time before the French arrived, he would bring more men, more guns and unseal the cellar. "So we've got time," Sharpe said.
"Time to do what?" Vicente asked.
"Get out, of course. All of you, fingers in your ears." He waited a few seconds, then fired the rifle up the stairs. The bullet buried itself in the trapdoor. Sharpe's ears were ringing as he found a new cartridge, bit off the bullet, spat it out, and then primed the rifle. "Give me your hand, Pat," he said, then put the rest of the cartridge, just the paper and powder, into Harper's palm.
"What are you doing?" Vicente asked.
"Being God," Sharpe said, "and making light." He felt inside his jacket and found the copy of The Times that Lawford had given to him and he tore the newspaper in half, put half back inside his jacket and screwed the other half into a tight spill that he laid on the floor.
"Ready, sir." Harper, who had guessed what Sharpe wanted, had twisted the cartridge paper into a tube in which he left most of the powder.
"Find the lock," Sharpe told him, and waited as Harper explored the rifle Sharpe was holding.
"Got it, sir," Harper said, then held the spill close by the shut frizzen.
"Glad you came with me today, Pat?"
"Happiest day of my life, sir."
"Let's see where we are," Sharpe said, and he pulled the trigger, the frizzen flew open as the flint struck it to drive the sparks downwards, there was a flare as the powder in the pan caught fire and Harper had the cartridge paper in just the right place, for a spark went into the tube and it fizzed up, suddenly bright, and Sharpe snatched up the newspaper spill and lit one end. Harper was licking his burned fingers as Sharpe let the tightly rolled paper flare up. He had about one minute now before the newspaper burned out, but there was little to see except the two bodies at the back of the cellar, and they were a foul sight, for the rats had been at the men, chewing their faces to the skulls and excavating their swollen bellies that were now crawling with maggots and thick with flies. Sarah twisted into a corner and vomited while Sharpe examined the rest of the cellar, which was about twenty feet square and stone-floored. The ceiling was of stone and brick, supported by arches made with narrow bricks.
"Roman work," Vicente said, looking at one of the arches.
Sharpe looked up the stairwell, but its sides were of solid stone. The newspaper guttered and he dropped it on the lowest step and looked around one more time as the flames flickered low.
"We're trapped," Vicente said gloomily. He had torn open his shirt and his left shoulder was now clumsily bandaged, but Sharpe could see blood on his skin and on the torn edges of the shirt. Then the flames went out and the cellar returned to darkness. "There's no way out," Vicente said.
"There's always a way out," Sharpe insisted. "I was trapped in a room in Copenhagen once, but I got out."
"How?" Vicente asked.
"Chimney," Sharpe said, and shuddered at the memory of that black, tight, lung-squeezing space up which he had fought, before turning in a soot-filled chamber to wriggle like an eel down another flue.
"Pity the Romans didn't build a chimney here," Harper said.
"We'll just have to wait and fight our way out," Vicente suggested.
"Can't," Sharpe said brutally. "When Ferragus comes back, Jorge, he won't be taking chances. He'll open that trapdoor and have a score of men with muskets just waiting to kill us."
"So what do we do?" Sarah, recovered slightly, asked in a small voice.
"We destroy that food up there," Sharpe said, nodding in the dark towards the supplies in the warehouse above. "That's what Wellington wants, isn't it? That's our duty. We can't spend all our time swarming around universities, miss, we have work to do."
But first, and he did not know how, he had to escape.
Ferragus, his brother and three of the men from the warehouse retired to a tavern. Two men could not come. One had been hit in the skull by one of the seven-barrel gun's bullets and, though he lived, he was unable to speak, control his movements or make sense and so Ferragus ordered him taken to Saint Clara's in hope that some of the nuns were still there. A second man, struck in the arm by the same volley, had gone to his home to let his woman splint his broken arm and bandage his wound. The wounding of the two men had angered Ferragus who stared morosely into his wine.
"I warned you," Ferreira said, "they're soldiers."
"Dead soldiers," Ferragus said. That was his only consolation. The four were trapped, and they would have to stay in the cellar until Ferragus fetched them out and he toyed with the idea of leaving them there. How long would it take them to die? Would they go mad in the stifling dark? Shoot each other? Become cannibals? Perhaps, weeks from now, he would open the trapdoor and one survivor would crawl blinking into the light and he would kick the bastard to death. No, he would rather kick all three men to death and teach Sarah Fry a different lesson. "We'll get them out tonight," he said.
"The British will be in the city tonight," Ferreira pointed out, "and there are troops billeted in the street behind the warehouse. They hear shots? They may not go as easily as those this afternoon." A Portuguese patrol had heard the shots in the warehouse and come to investigate, but Ferreira, who had not joined the fight, but had been standing by the door, had heard the boots on the cobbles and slipped outside to fend off the patrol, explaining that he had men inside killing goats.
"No one will hear shots from that cellar," Ferragus said scornfully.
"You want to risk that?" Ferreira asked. "With that big gun? It sounds like a cannon!"
"Tomorrow morning, then," Ferragus snarled.
"Tomorrow morning the British will still be here," the Major pointed out patiently, "and in the afternoon you and I must ride north to meet the French."
"You ride north to meet the French," Ferragus said, "and Miguel can go with you." He looked at the smaller man who shrugged acceptance.
"They are expecting to meet you," Ferreira pointed out.