Sharpe's Escape

by Bernard Cornwell

  Time meant nothing in the dark. They could have worked an hour or ten hours, Sharpe did not know, though he sensed that night must have fallen outside in the world that now seemed so far away. He worked doggedly, trying not to think about the passing time, and slowly he chipped and gouged, rammed and scraped, until at last he thrust the sword hard up and the blow jarred down his arm because the tip had hit something more solid than wood. He did it again, then swore viciously. "Sorry, miss."

  "What is it?" Vicente asked. He had been asleep and sounded alarmed.

  Sharpe did not answer. Instead he used his knife, gnawing at the small hole he had made in the upper part of the broken timber and, when he had widened the hole sufficiently, he probed with the knife blade to scratch at whatever lay immediately above the trapdoor and then swore again. "The bastards have put paving slabs up there," he said. He had broken through, but only to meet immovable stone. "Bastards!"

  "Mister Sharpe," Sarah said, though tiredly, as if she knew she was fighting a losing battle.

  "They probably are bastards, miss," Harper said, then rammed his sword bayonet up into the splintered hole he had made and was rewarded with the same sound of steel against stone. He uttered his opinion, apologized to Sarah, then slumped down.

  "They've done what?" Vicente asked.

  "They've put stones on top," Sharpe said, "and other stuff on top of the stones. The bastards aren't as daft as they look." He edged down the steps and sat with his back against the wall. He felt used up, exhausted and it hurt just to breathe.

  "We can't get through the trapdoor?" Vicente asked.

  "Not a bloody chance," Sharpe said.

  "So?" Vicente asked tentatively.

  "So we bloody think," Sharpe said, but he could not think of anything else to do. Hell and damnation was all he could think. They were bloody well trapped.

  "How do the rats get in?" Sarah asked after a while.

  "Those little bastards can get through gaps as small as your little finger," Harper said. "You can't keep a good rat out, not if he wants to get in."

  "So where do they get in?" she persisted.

  "Round the edge of the trapdoor," Sharpe guessed, "where we can't get out."

  They sat in gloomy silence. The flies settled back on the corpses. "If we fired our guns," Vicente said, "someone might hear?"

  "Not down here, they won't," Sharpe said, preferring to keep all his firepower for the moment when Ferragus came for them. He leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes, trying to think. The ceiling? Bricks and stones. Hundreds of the buggers. He imagined himself breaking through, then he was suddenly in a field, bright with flowers, a bullet came past him, then another and he was struck on the leg and he woke suddenly, realizing that someone had tapped his right calf. "Was I asleep?" he asked.

  "We all were," Harper said. "God knows what time it is."

  "Jesus." Sharpe stretched himself, feeling the pain in his arms and legs that had come from working inside the cramped stairway. "Jesus," he said angrily. "We can't afford to sleep. Not with those bastards coming for us."

  Harper did not answer. Sharpe could hear the Irishman moving, apparently stretching on the floor. He supposed the Irishman wanted to sleep again, and he did not approve, but he could not think of anything more useful Harper could do and so he said nothing.

  "I can hear something," Harper spoke after a while. His voice came from the center of the cellar, from the floor.

  "Where?" Sharpe asked.

  "Put your ear on the stone, sir."

  Sharpe stretched out and put his right ear against the floor. His hearing was not what it was. Too many years of muskets and rifles had dulled it, but he held his breath, listened hard, and heard the faintest hint of water running. "Water?"

  "There's a stream down there," Harper said.

  "Like the Fleet," Sharpe said.

  "The what?" Vicente asked.

  "It's a river in London," Sharpe said, "and for a long way it flows underground. No one knows it's there, but it is. They built the city on top of it."

  "They've done the same here," Harper said.

  Sharpe tapped the floor with the hilt of his sword, but was not rewarded with a hollow sound, yet he was fairly certain the noise of water was there, and Sarah, whose hearing had not been dulled by battle, was quite certain of it. "Right, Pat," Sharpe said, his spirits restored and the pain in his ribs even seeming less biting. "We'll lift a bloody stone."

  That was easier said than done. They used their weapons again, scraping away at the edges of a big flagstone to work down between the slab and its neighbors, and Harper found a place where a chip the size of his little finger was missing from the stone's edge, and he delved down there, working the sword bayonet into the foundations. "It's rubble down there," he said.

  "Let's just hope the bloody thing isn't mortared into place," Sharpe said.

  "No," Harper said scornfully. "Why would you mortar a slab? You just lay the buggers on gravel and stamp them down. Move back, sir."

  "What are you doing?"

  "I'm going to lift the sod."

  "Why don't we lever it up?"

  "Because you'll break your sword, sir, and that'll put you in a really bad mood. Just give me space. And be ready to hold it when I've got the bastard up."

  Sharpe moved, Harper straddled the stone, got two fingers underneath its edge and heaved. It did not move. He swore, braced himself again, and used all his vast strength and there was a grinding sound and Sharpe, touching the stone's edge with his fingers, felt it move a trifle upwards. Harper grunted, managed to get a third finger underneath and gave another giant pull and suddenly the stone was lifted and Sharpe rammed the muzzle of his rifle under the exposed edge to hold it up. "You can let go now."

  "God save Ireland!" Harper said, straightening. The stone was resting on the rifle muzzle and they left it there while Harper caught his breath. "We can both do it now, sir," the Irishman said. "You on the other side? We'll just turn the bugger over. Sorry, miss."

  "I'm getting used to it," Sarah said in a resigned voice.

  Sharpe got his hands under the edge. "Ready?"

  "Now, sir."

  They heaved and the stone came up, and kept going to turn on its end so that it fell smack on the nearer corpse with a wet, squashing sound that released a gust of noxious vapor along with an unseen cloud of flies. Sarah gave a noise of disgust, Sharpe and Harper were laughing.

  Now they could feel a square patch of rubble, a space of broken bricks, stones and sand, and they used their hands to scoop it out, sometimes loosening the packed rubble first with a blade. Vicente used his right hand to help and Sarah pushed the excavated material aside.

  "There's no end to the bloody stuff," Harper said, and the more they pulled out, the more fell in from the sides. They went down two feet and then, at last, the rubble ended as Sharpe's battered and bleeding hands found a curved surface that felt like tiles stacked on edge. They went on scooping until they had bared two or three square feet of the arched surface.

  Vicente used his right hand to probe what Sharpe thought were tiles. "Roman bricks," Vicente guessed. "The Romans made their bricks very thin, like tiles." He felt for a while longer, exploring the arched shape. "It's the top of a tunnel."

  "A tunnel?" Sharpe asked.

  "The stream," Sarah said. "The Romans must have channeled it."

  "And we're going to break into it," Sharpe said. He could hear the trickle far more clearly now. So there was water there, and the water flowed to the river through a tunnel, and that thought filled him with a fierce hope.

  He knelt at the edge of the hole, balancing on a slab that was unsteady because of the rubble that had fallen from beneath it, and began hammering down with the brass butt of a rifle.

  "What you're doing," Vicente said, judging what was happening by the dull sound of the stock striking the bricks, "is hitting at the top of the arch. That will only wedge the bricks tighter."

  "What I'm doing," Sharpe said
, "is breaking the bugger." He thought Vicente was probably right, but he was too frustrated to work patiently on the old bricks. "And I hope I'm doing it with your rifle," he added. The butt hammered down again, then Harper joined in from the other side and the two rifles cracked and banged on the bricks and Sharpe could hear scraps dropping into the water, then Harper gave an almighty blow and a whole chunk of the ancient brickwork fell away and suddenly, if it was possible, the cellar was filled with an even worse smell, a stink from the foulest depths of hell.

  "Oh, shit!" Harper said, recoiling.

  "That's what it is," Vicente said in a faint voice. The smell was so bad that it was hard to breathe.

  "A sewer?" Sharpe asked in disbelief.

  "Jesus Christ!" Harper said, after trying to fill his lungs. Sarah sighed.

  "It comes from the upper town," Vicente explained. "Most of the lower town just use pits in their cellars. It's a Roman sewer. They called it a cloaca."

  "I call it our way out," Sharpe said and hammered the rifle down again, and the bricks fell more easily now and he could feel the hole widening. "It's time to see again," he said.

  He retrieved the discarded half of Lawford's copy of The Times and found his own rifle, distinguishing it by the chip missing from the cheek rest on the left side of the butt where a French musket ball had snicked out a splinter. He needed his own rifle because he knew it was still unloaded, and now he primed it while Harper twisted the newspaper into a spill. The spill caught on the second try, and the newspaper flared up, then the flames turned a strange blue-green as Harper moved the burning paper close to the hole.

  "Oh, no!" Sarah said, looking down.

  The sound might be a trickle, but it came from a green-scummed liquid that glistened some seven or eight feet below. Rats, frightened by the sudden light, scuttled along the edge of the slime, scrabbling on the old bricks that were black and furred with growth. Sharpe, judging from the curve of the ancient sewer, reckoned the effluent was about a foot deep, then the flames scorched Harper's fingers and he let the torch drop. It burned blue for a second, then they were in the dark again. Thank God most of the richer folk were gone from Coimbra, Sharpe thought, or else the old Roman sewer would be brimming over its edge with filth.

  2OO I BERNARD CORNWELL

  "Are you really thinking of going down into that?" Vicente asked in a disbelieving voice.

  "No choice, really," Sharpe said. "Stay here and die, or go down there." He took off his boots. "You might want to wear my boots, miss," he said to Sarah. "They should be tall enough to keep you out of the you-know-what, but you might want to take that frock off as well."

  There were a few seconds' silence. "You want me to ... " Sarah began, then her voice faded away.

  "No, miss," Sharpe said patiently, "I don't want you to do anything you don't want to do, but if your dress gets in that muck then it'll stink to high heaven by the time we're through, and so far as I know you haven't got anything else to wear. Nor have I, and that's why I'm stripping."

  "You can't ask Miss Fry to undress," Vicente said, shocked.

  "I'm not asking her," Sharpe said, shuffling out of his French cavalry overalls. "It's up to her. But if you've got any sense, Jorge, you'll get undressed as well. Bundle everything inside your jacket or shirt and tie the sleeves around your neck. Bloody hell, man, no one can see! It's dark as Hades down there. Here, miss, my boots." He pushed them over the floor.

  "You want me to go into a sewer, Mister Sharpe?" Sarah asked in a small voice.

  "No, miss, I don't," Sharpe said. "I want you to be in green fields and happy, with enough money to last you the rest of your life. But to get you there I have to go through a sewer. If you like, you can wait here and Pat and I will go through and come back for you, but I can't promise that Ferragus won't come back first. So all in all, miss, it's your choice."

  "Mister Sharpe?" Sarah sounded indignant, but was evidently not. "You're right. I apologize."

  For a moment there was only the rustle of clothes, then all four rolled whatever they had stripped off into bundles. Sharpe was wearing his drawers, nothing else, and he wrapped his other clothes inside his overalls, then strapped the bundle tight with the shoulder straps. He laid the clothes beside the hole with his sword belt, which held his ammunition pouch, scabbard and haversack. "I'll go first," he said. "Miss? You follow me and keep your hand on my back so you know where I am. Jorge? You come next and Pat will be rearguard."

  SHARPE'S ESCAPE I 2O1

  Sharpe sat on the edge of the hole, then Harper gripped his wrists and lowered him through the hole. Pieces of rubble and masonry splashed into the filth, then Sharpe's feet were in the liquid and Harper was grunting with the effort. "Just another two inches, Pat," Sharpe said, and then his wrists slid from Harper's grip and he fell those last inches and almost lost his balance because the bottom of the sewer was so treacherously slick. "Jesus," he said, filled with disgust and almost choking because of the noxious air. "Someone, hand down my sword belt, then my clothes."

  He hung the buckled sword belt round his neck. His shako was tied to the cartridge box's buckle and the empty scabbard hung down his spine, then he knotted the overalls' legs over the belt. "Rifle?" he said, and someone pushed it down and he hung the weapon on his shoulder, then took his sword in his right hand. He reckoned the blade would be useful as a probe. For a moment he wondered which way to go, either uphill towards the university or down to the river, then decided the best hope of escape was the river. The sewer had to spew its muck out somewhere and that was the place he wanted. "You next, miss," he said, "and be careful. It's slippery as ... " He paused, checking his language. "Don't be frightened," he went on as he heard her gasp as she negotiated the hole. "Sergeant Harper will lower you," Sharpe said, "but I'm going to hold on to you because I almost slipped when I got down here. Is that all right?"

  "I don't mind," she said, almost breathless because the stench was so overpowering.

  He put out his hands, found her bare waist and half supported her as she put her booted feet into the sewage. She lowered herself, but panic or horror still made her flail for balance and she gripped him hard and Sharpe put his arms round her narrow waist. "It's all right," he said, "you'll live."

  Vicente handed down Sarah's bundle of clothes and, because she was shivering and frightened, Sharpe tied it around her neck while she clung to him. "You now, Jorge," Sharpe said.

  Harper came last. Rats scrabbled past them, the sound of their claws fading up the unseen tunnel. Sharpe could just stand upright, but he stooped in hope of seeing even a glimmer of light farther down the sewer, but there was nothing. "You're going to hold on to me, miss," he said, deciding that the courtesy of calling her "miss" was really not needed now that they were both virtually naked and standing up to their calves in shit, but he suspected she would object if he called her anything else. "Jorge," he went on, "you hold on to Miss Fry's clothes. And we all go slowly."

  Sharpe probed every step with the sword, then inched ahead before prodding the blade again, but after a while he became more confident and their pace increased to a shuffle. Sarah had her hands on Sharpe's waist, gripping him tight, and she felt almost light-headed. Something strange had happened to her in the last few minutes, almost as if by undressing and lowering herself into a sewer she had let go of her previous life, of her precarious but determined grip on respectability, and had let herself drop into a world of adventure and irresponsibility. She was, suddenly and unexpectedly, happy.

  Nameless things hanging from the sewer roof brushed against Sharpe's face and he ducked from them, dreading to think what they were, and after a while he used his sword to clear the air in front of him. He tried to count the feet and yards, but gave up because their progress was so painfully slow. After a while the floor of the sewer rose, while the roof stayed at the same level and he had to crouch to keep going. More tendrils brushed against his hair. Other things dripped from the roof, then the bottom of the tunnel abruptly fell away and he
was poking the sword into a stinking nothingness. "Hold still," he told his companions, then gingerly pushed the sword forward and found the bottom of the sewer again two feet away and at least a foot lower. There was some kind of sump here, or else the base of the tunnel had collapsed into a cavern. "Let go of me," he told Sarah. He prodded again, measured the distance and then, still bent into a crouch, took one long step and made the far side safely, but his foot slipped as he landed and he fell heavily against the sewer's side. He used the efficacious word. "Sorry, miss," he said, his voice echoing in the tunnel. He had managed to keep his clothes out of the muck, but the slip had scared him and his ribs were hurting again so that it was painful to draw breath. He straightened slowly and discovered he could stand up straight because the roof had risen again. He turned to face Sarah. "In front of you," he told her, "there's a hole in the floor. It's only a good pace wide. Find the edge of it with one of your feet."

  "I've found it."

  "You're going to take a long step," Sharpe told her, "two feet forward and one foot down, but take my hands first." He propped the sword against the wall, reached out and found her hands. "Are you ready?"

  "Yes." She sounded nervous.

  "Slide your hands forward," he told her, "hold on to my forearms, and hold hard." She did as he ordered and Sharpe gripped her arms close to her elbows. "I've got you now," he said, "and you're going to take one long step, 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 fetid 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.