“So do I.” Sharpe sheathed his sword.
“And ask them about Louisa!”
“I was going to,” Sharpe said, and stepped into the sunlight.
CHAPTER 15
No fusillade greeted Sharpe; only silence. The rising sun threw the intricate shadow of the cathedral’s pinnacles onto the palace’s bullet-pocked stone, through the haze of dawn mist that had been thickened by musket smoke. The sound of his footsteps echoed from the buildings. A wounded man moaned and turned over in his own blood.
Sharpe could tell some of the morning’s events from the manner in which the wounded and dead lay in the plaza. Frenchmen, fleeing to the safety of the palace, had been cut down by pursuing Spaniards who, in turn, had been repulsed by volleys from the Frenchmen already safe inside. Those Frenchmen now watched him thread his way through the extraordinary litter of battle.
There were bodies lying with curled fists. A dead horse bared yellow teeth to the dawn. A cuirassier’s half-polished breastplate lay beside a single drumstick. Scraps of cartridge paper lay black and curled on the flagstones. A block of pipeclay had crumbled to white dust. A Spanish spur that had come unscrewed from its boot socket glinted beside a bent ramrod. There was an empty sabre scabbard, a helmet cover, cartouches, and French shakos abandoned among the weeds which thrust through the cracks in the paving. A cat bared its teeth at Sharpe, then slunk quickly away.
Sharpe paced through the litter, conscious of the watching eyes in the palace. He also felt ill-accoutred for the diplomatic task he faced. His boot sole flapped and scraped on the flagstones. He had no hat, the seams of his trousers had opened again, while his face and lips were stained black by Powder. His rifle was slung on his right shoulder, and he supposed he should have discarded the weapon as inappropriate to this mission.
Sharpe noted the rejas of black iron that barred the windows of the palace’s lowest storey; bars that would force an assault to attack the double doors. As he approached, one of those doors was opened a few cautious inches. Loopholes had been smashed in its timbers. Shards of glass, broken when the French punched out the windows with their musket butts, lay on the paving amidst misshapen musket balls. Skeins of powder smoke, stinking like rotten eggs, clung to the palace fagade.
Sharpe stepped carefully through the broken glass. A voice from the doorway demanded something of him in harsh Spanish. “English,” he called in reply, “English.” There was a pause, then the door was pulled back.
Sharpe stepped through, finding himself in a high, pillared hall where a group of French infantrymen faced him with bayonets. The men were stationed behind a makeshift battlement of plump sacks; evidence that they had foreseen that the doors might be assaulted. Surely, Sharpe reasoned, the French would not allow him to see such careful preparations if they had not already decided to surrender. That thought gave him confidence.
“You’re English?” An officer spoke from the shadows to Sharpe’s left.
“I’m English. My name is Sharpe, and I command a detachment of His Majesty’s 95th Rifles present in this city.” It seemed best, at this moment, not to betray his lowly rank which would hardly impress men in such desperate danger as these French.
Not that the small deception mattered, for another voice spoke from the gloom of the big stairway ahead of him. “Lieutenant Sharpe!” It was Vivar’s brother, the Count of Mouromorto. “Are you the best emissary they could find, Lieutenant?”
Sharpe said nothing. He wiped his face on his sleeve, thereby smudging his cheeks with the sootlike powder. Somewhere on the city’s edges a volley of musketry sounded, then, closer to the plaza, a cheer. The French officer pulled his sword belt straight. “This way, Lieutenant.” He led him up the stairs, past the Count who, as always dressed in his black riding coat and odd white topboots, fell into step behind. Sharpe wondered if Louisa was in the palace. He was tempted to ask the officer, but supposed the question was better posed to Colonel de l’Eclin or whoever waited to negotiate the surrender upstairs.
“I must congratulate you, Lieutenant.” The French officer, like Sharpe, had a voice made hoarse from the effort of shouting orders in battle. “I understand it was your Riflemen who made the first assault?”
“Indeed.” Sharpe always found the politeness of such truces incongruous. Men who had been trying to disembowel each other at sunrise talking, an hour later, in flowery compliments.
“The Lieutenant was fool enough to sacrifice his men for my brother’s madness.” The Count of Mouromorto was evidently not disposed to compliments, flowery or otherwise. “I thought the British had more sense.”
Sharpe and the French officer both ignored the comment. Sharpe deduced from the Count’s presence that Colonel de l’Eclin would indeed be waiting at the top of these stairs, and he found himself dreading the meeting. He did not think he could deceive de l’Eclin into surrender; the chasseur officer was too good, and Sharpe knew his own fragile confidence would wane before the Colonel’s knowing and sceptical gaze.
“This way, Lieutenant.” The French officer ushered him past another barricade on the half landing, then up to doors which opened into a tall and once gracious room which served as a passage to other, similar rooms. To their right were the palace windows, where infantrymen crouched with loaded weapons amidst the shards of broken glass. Upturned shakos full of cartridges lay beside the men at the firing positions. The upper part of the room’s rear wall was pitted by musket strikes, as was the fine moulding of the plaster ceiling. A huge mirror above the mantel had been shattered into savage glass spikes which leaned dangerously from the gilt frame. A portrait of a stern man, dressed in an ancient ruff, was punctured with bullet holes. The soldiers turned to watch Sharpe with silent and hostile curiosity.
The next room had a score of soldiers embrasured in its windows, too. Like the men in the first room they were mostly infantry, with just a smattering of dismounted cuirassiers or lancers. No Dragoons, Sharpe noted. The men were protected by cushions and upturned furniture, or by sacks which, struck by musket fire, had leaked flour or grain onto the parquet floor. Sharpe’s confidence that the French would surrender was beginning to erode. He could see that this French headquarters had plenty of both men and ammunition for a siege. His feet scrunched the shards of a shattered chandelier as he was led into the third room where a group of officers awaited his arrival.
To Sharpe’s relief de l’Eclin was not among the Frenchmen who stiffened as he appeared in the doorway. Instead it was a blue-coated Colonel of infantry who stepped forward and gave the smallest bow.
“Sir,” Sharpe acknowledged the courtesy, though his voice was little more than a croak because of his hoarseness.
The Colonel’s left arm was in a sling, while his cheek had been scratched by a splinter that had drawn enough blood to soak the white silk stock at his neck. The left tip of his moustache was similarly discoloured by blood. “Coursot,” he said curtly. “Colonel Coursot. I have the honour to command the Headquarter’s Guard of this city.”
“Sharpe. Lieutenant Sharpe. 95th Rifles, sir.”
The Count of Mouromorto, having followed Sharpe in silence from the stairway, went to one of the windows from which he could stare at the cathedral’s shadowed facade. He seemed to disdain the proceedings, as though the fate of Spain was above such petty negotiations.
Yet Colonel Coursot’s opening struck Sharpe as anything but petty. The Frenchman took a watch from his waistcoat pocket and touched the button which sprang open its lid. “You have one hour to leave the city, Lieutenant.”
Sharpe was non-plussed. He had come expecting to deliver the ultimatum, but instead it was this tall, grey-haired Frenchman who so confidently dictated terms. Coursot snapped the watch shut. “You should know, Lieutenant, that an army corps is approaching this city from the north. It will arrive here in a matter of hours.”