Sharpe's Fury

by Bernard Cornwell

  “There won’t be any trouble,” Lord Pumphrey said nervously.

  “But if there is,” Sharpe said, “then it’s up the ladders.”

  “They will not dare attack a diplomat,” Lord Pumphrey insisted in a hoarse whisper.

  “For fifteen hundred beans I’d attack the king himself,” Sharpe said, then led the way down the steps to the crypt. Candlelight glowed in the big round chamber. Sharpe went almost to the foot of the steps and crouched there. He thumbed back the rifle’s flint and the small noise echoed back to him. To his right he could see the second flight of stairs. He could also see three of the cavern archways and he edged down another step until he could see the remaining two passageways to his left. No one was in sight, but a dozen candles burned on the floor. They had been arranged in a wide circle and there was something sinister about them, as if they had been placed for some barbaric ritual. The walls were bare stone and the ceiling a shallow dome of rough masonry. There was no decoration down here. The chamber looked as bare and cold as a cave, which it was, Sharpe realized, for the crypt had been hacked out of the rock on which Cádiz was built. “Watch behind, Pat,” he said softly, and his voice bounced back to him across the wide chamber.

  “I’m watching, sir,” Harper said.

  Then something white flashed in the corner of Sharpe’s vision and he twisted, rifle coming up, and saw it was a packet thrown from a passage on the far side. It landed on the floor and the sound of it hitting the stones reverberated in multiple echoes that did not fade until the package had slid to a stop almost in the center of the ring of candles. “The letters,” Montseny’s voice sounded from one of the dark passageways, “and good evening, my lord.”

  Pumphrey said nothing. Sharpe was watching the dark archways, but it was impossible to tell which cavern Montseny was speaking from. The echo blurred the sound, destroying any hint of its source.

  “You will put down the gold, my lord,” Montseny said, “then pick up the letters and our business is concluded.”

  Pumphrey twitched as if he was going to obey, but Sharpe checked him with the rifle barrel. “We have to look at the letters,” Sharpe said loudly. He could see the package was tied with string.

  “The three of you will examine the letters,” Montseny said, “then leave the gold.”

  Sharpe could still not determine where Montseny was. He thought the packet had been thrown from the passageway nearest the other flight of steps, but he sensed Montseny was in a different chamber. Five chambers. A man in each? And Montseny wanted Pumphrey and his companions in the center of the floor where they would be surrounded by guns. Rats in a barrel, Sharpe thought. “You know what to do,” he said softly. He lowered the flint so the rifle was safe. “Pat? Take His Lordship’s arm, and when we go, we go fast.” He trusted Harper to do the right thing, but suspected Lord Pumphrey would be confused. What was important now was to stay away from the packet of letters, because that was in the lit space, the killing place. Sharpe suspected Montseny did not want to kill, but he did want the gold and he would kill if he had to. Fifteen hundred guineas was a fortune. You could build a frigate with that money, you could buy a palace, you could bribe a church full of lawyers. “We go slow at first,” he said very softly, “then fast.”

  He stood, walked down the last step, looked as if he was leading his companions to the package in the floor’s center, then swerved left, to the nearest passageway where a burly man stood just inside the masonry arch. The man looked astonished as Sharpe appeared. He was holding a musket, but he was plainly not ready to fire it, and he was still just gaping as Sharpe hit him with the rifle’s brass butt. It was a hard hit, smack on the man’s jaw, and Sharpe seized the musket with his left hand and wrenched it away. The man tried to hit him, but Harper was there now and the butt of the volley gun cracked on the man’s skull and he went down like a slaughtered ox. “Watch him, Pat,” Sharpe said, and he went to the back of the chamber where the passage linked the separate crypts. Some small light filtered back here and a shadow moved. Sharpe hauled back the rifle’s flint and the sound made the shadow move away.

  “My lord!” Montseny said sharply from the dark.

  “Shut your face, priest!” Sharpe shouted.

  “What do I do with this bugger?” Harper asked.

  “Kick him out, Pat.”

  “Put the gold down!” Montseny called. He did not sound calm now. Things were not going as he had planned.

  “I must see the letters!” Lord Pumphrey called, his voice high.

  “You may look at the letters. Come out, my lord. All of you! Come out, bring the gold, and inspect the letters.”

  Harper pushed the half-stunned man out into the light. He staggered there, then hurried across the chamber into one of the far passageways. Sharpe was crouching beside Pumphrey. “You don’t move, my lord,” Sharpe said. “Pat, smoke balls.”

  “What are you doing?” Pumphrey asked in alarm.

  “Getting you the letters,” Sharpe said. He slung the rifle and cocked the captured musket instead.

  “My lord!” Montseny called.

  “I’m here!”

  “Hurry, my lord!”

  “Tell him to show himself first,” Sharpe whispered.

  “Show yourself!” Lord Pumphrey called.

  Sharpe had gone back to the dark passage leading around the outer rim of the chambers. Nothing moved there. He heard the click of Harper’s tinderbox, saw the flame spring up, then the sparking of the fuse of the first smoke ball.

  “It is you who want the letters, my lord,” Montseny called, “so come for them!”

  The second, third, and fourth fuses were lit. The worms of fire vanished into the perforated balls, but then nothing seemed to happen. Harper edged away from them, as if fearing they would explode.

  “You wish me to come and fetch the gold?” Montseny shouted, and his voice reverberated around the crypt.

  “Why don’t you?” Sharpe shouted. There was no answer.

  Smoke began leaking from the four balls. It started thinly, but suddenly one of them gave a fizzing sound and the smoke thickened with surprising speed. Sharpe picked it up, feeling the warmth through the papier-mâché case.

  “My lord!” Montseny shouted angrily.

  “We’re coming now!” Sharpe called, and he rolled the first ball into the big chamber. The other three balls were spewing foul-smelling smoke now and Harper tossed them after the first, and suddenly the big central crypt was no longer a well-lit place, but a dark cavern filling with a writhing, choking smoke that obliterated the light of the dozen candles. “Pat!” Sharpe said. “Take His Lordship up the stairs. Now!”

  Sharpe held his breath, ran to the crypt’s center, and scooped up the package. He turned back to the steps just as a man came through the smoke with musket in hand. Sharpe swept his own musket at him, ramming the muzzle into the man’s eyes. The man fell away as Sharpe ran to the steps. Harper was near the top, holding Pumphrey’s elbow. A musket fired in the crypt and the multiple echo made it sound like a batallion volley. The ball clipped the ceiling over Sharpe’s head, striking off a chip of stone, and then Sharpe was up the steps and Harper was there, waiting for Sharpe, and there were two men with muskets halfway down the nave. Sharpe knew Harper was wondering whether to attack them and so escape out of the cathedral’s main doors.

  “Ladder, Pat!” Sharpe said. To go down the nave would be to allow Montseny and his men to fire at them from behind. “Go!” He pushed Pumphrey toward the nearest ladder. “Take him up, Pat! Go! Go!”

  A musket fired from the nave. The shot went past Sharpe and buried itself in a pile of purple cloths waiting to decorate the cathedral’s altars during the coming season of Lent. Sharpe ignored the man who had fired, shooting his captured musket down the crypt stairs. Then he took the rifle off his shoulder and fired that as well. He heard men scrambling in the smoke below, heard them coughing. They expected a third shot, but none came because Sharpe had run for the scaffold and was climbing fo
r his life.

  CHAPTER 7

  S HARPE SCRAMBLED UP THE ladder. A musket fired from the nave, its sound magnified by the cathedral walls. He heard the ball crack on stone and whine off into the transept. Then an enormous crash prompted a shout of alarm from his pursuers. Harper had thrown a block of building stone into the crossing and the limestone shattered there, skittering shards across the floor.

  “Another ladder, sir!” Harper called from above and Sharpe saw the second ladder climbing into the upper gloom. Each of the massive pillars at the corners of the crossing supported a tower of scaffolding, but once the four flimsy towers reached the arches spanning the pillars the scaffolding branched and joined to encompass the walls climbing to the base of the dome. Another musket fired and the ball buried itself in a plank, starting dust that half choked Sharpe as he climbed the second ladder that swayed alarmingly. “Here, sir!” Harper reached out a hand. The Irishman and Lord Pumphrey were on the wide stone ledge of the tambour, a decorative shelf running around the middle of the pillar. Sharpe guessed he was forty feet above the cathedral floor now, and the pillar climbed that far again before the scaffolding spread out beneath the dome. There was a window high in the gloom. He could not see it, but he remembered it.

  “What have you done?” Lord Pumphrey asked angrily. “We should have negotiated! We didn’t even see the letters!”

  “You can see them now,” Sharpe said, and he thrust the packet into Pumphrey’s hands.

  “Do you know what offense this will cause the Spaniards?” Lord Pumphrey’s anger was unassuaged by the gift of the packet. “This is a cathedral! They’ll have soldiers here at any moment!”

  Sharpe gave his opinion of that statement, then peered over the tambour’s edge as he reloaded the rifle. They were safe enough for the moment because the stone ledge was wide and it protected them from any shots fired from the crossing’s floor, but he guessed their enemies would soon try to climb the scaffold and attack them from the flanks. He could hear men talking below, but he could also hear something odd, something that sounded like battle. It was a booming sound like cannon fire. It crackled, rose, and fell, and Sharpe realized it was the wind tearing at the tarpaulins covering the unfinished roof. A louder grumble overlaid the booming, and that was thunder. Any noise of guns in the cathedral would be drowned by the storm and besides, Montseny had bolted the doors. The priest would send for no soldiers. He wanted the gold.

  A volley of musketry cracked and echoed and the balls spattered all around the tambour. Sharpe guessed the shots must have been fired to protect someone climbing a ladder. He looked, saw the shadow on the opposite pillar, aimed the rifle, and pulled the trigger. The man was hurled sideways off the rungs and fell to the floor before crawling into the nave’s choir stalls and so out of sight.

  “You have a knife?” Pumphrey asked.

  Sharpe gave him his pocketknife. He heard the string being cut, then the rustle of papers. “You want Sergeant Harper to strike a light?” he offered.

  “No need,” Pumphrey said sadly. He unfolded a large sheet of paper. Even in the semidarkness above the tambour, Sharpe could see the package had not contained letters, but a newspaper. Presumably El Correo de Cádiz. “You were right, Sharpe,” Pumphrey said.

  “Fifteen hundred beans,” Sharpe said, “one thousand five hundred and seventy-five pounds. A man could retire on that. You and me, Pat, we could take the money”—Sharpe paused to bite off the end of a cartridge—“we could sail off to America, open a tavern, live well forever.”

  “Wouldn’t need a tavern, sir, not with fifteen hundred guineas.”

  “Be nice though, wouldn’t it?” Sharpe said. “A tavern in a town by the sea? We could call it the Lord Pumphrey.” He took a leather patch from his cartridge pouch, wrapped the bullet, and rammed it down the barrel. “But they don’t have lords in America, do they?”

  “They don’t,” Lord Pumphrey said.

  “So maybe we’ll call it the Ambassador and the Whore instead,” Sharpe said, sliding the ramrod back into place beneath the barrel. He primed and cocked the rifle. No one was moving below, which suggested Montseny was considering his tactics. He and his men had learned to fear the firepower above them, but that would not deter them for long, not when there were fifteen hundred golden English guineas to be won.

  “You wouldn’t do that, Sharpe, would you?” Pumphrey asked nervously. “I mean, you’re not planning on taking the money?”

  “For some reason, my lord, I’m a loyal bastard. God knows why. But Sergeant Harper is Irish. He’s got plenty of cause to hate us English. One shot from that volley gun and you and I are dead meat. Fifteen hundred guineas, Pat. You could do a lot with that.”

  “I could, sir.”

  “But what we have to do now,” Sharpe said, “is go to our left. We climb to that window.” He pointed. His eyes had adjusted to the gloom and he could see a slight sheen betraying the window beneath the dome. “We break through. There’s scaffolding on the outer wall. We go down that and we’re off into the city like rats into a hole.”

  To get there they would have to climb the scaffold above the tambour, then cross a narrow plank and climb another ladder, which led to a rickety platform just beneath the window. The ladders, like the scaffolding poles, were tied in place with rope. It was not a long journey, no more than thirty feet upward, the same across, and half as much up again, but to make it they must expose themselves to the men below. Sharpe guessed there were eight or nine men there, all with muskets, and even a musket could hit at that distance. Once they left the shelter of the wide stone ledge, then one of them would surely be struck by a bullet. “What we have to do,” he said, “is distract the bastards. Pity we don’t have those other smoke balls.”

  “They worked fine, didn’t they?” Harper said happily. Smoke was leaking out of the crypt stairways and spreading on the crossing floor, but there was not enough to obscure the high dome.

  Sharpe crouched on the tambour, staring at the scaffolding all about the crossing. Montseny and his men were just out of sight in the nave. They were doubtless waiting for Sharpe to move off the safety of the stone ledge. Then they would fire a volley. So distract them, he thought, confuse them, but how? “You got any more stone, Pat?”

  “There’s a dozen blocks here, sir.”

  “Throw them down. Just to keep them happy.”

  “Can I use the volley gun, sir?”

  “Only if you see two or three of them.” The volley gun was a vicious thing, but took so long to reload that it was useless once it was fired.

  “What about you, sir?”

  “I’ve got an idea,” Sharpe said. It was a desperate idea, but Sharpe had seen the long rope that was tied to the base of the scaffold opposite. It climbed into the gloom, vanishing somewhere in the dome, then reappeared closer to him. There was a great iron hook on its end and that hook was tied to the scaffold to his right and on the next platform down. The rope was used to hoist the masonry blocks to the dome. “Give me back the knife,” he said to Pumphrey. “Now, Pat!” he said, and Harper heaved a block of limestone into the transept. When it crashed onto the floor, Sharpe dropped down the ladder. He did not use the rungs, but went down it like a seaman using a companionway, hands and feet on the outer edge, and he swore as a splinter drove into his right hand. He hit the plank platform hard and felt it shake. A second stone banged onto the cathedral floor, and Montseny must have thought they were hurling the masonry because they had run out of ammunition, for he and three other men stepped out with muskets.

  “God bless you,” Harper said, and fired the volley gun. The sound was deafening, a massive explosion that reverberated around the cathedral as the seven bullets flayed the space between the choir stalls. A man cursed below as Sharpe reached the hook. A musket fired at him, but the shot came from the far transept and the ball missed by a yard. He seized the heavy hook and sawed through the rope lashing it in place, then carried the hook and its heavy line back along the plank, up the
ladder, and onto the tambour just as another two shots cracked bright in the gloom below. He gave the hook to Harper. “Pull on it,” he said. “Don’t jerk it, just pull as hard as you can.” He did not want the men below to understand what was happening, so the tension on the rope had to be gradual.

  A faint squeal from the upper darkness betrayed that the rope went through a sheave up there. Sharpe saw the line tighten and heard Harper grunt. A shadow moved below and Sharpe snatched up his rifle, aimed too quickly, and fired. The shadow vanished. Harper was pulling with all his huge strength as Sharpe took out another cartridge.

  “It’s not moving,” Harper said.

  Sharpe finished reloading, then gave the rifle and his pistol to Lord Pumphrey. “Keep them amused, my lord,” he said. Then he crouched by Harper and both of them heaved on the rope. It did not budge an inch. The bitter end was tied to a scaffold pole and the pole seemed immovable. The knot had slid up to where a second pole was tied crosswise and it would move no farther. The angle was all wrong, too acute, but if Sharpe could just move that pole he might have his distraction.

  Lord Pumphrey fired one of his dueling pistols, then the second one, and Sharpe heard a yelp from the nave. “Well done, my lord,” he said. He decided to abandon caution now. “Jerk it,” Sharpe told Harper, and they gave the rope a series of hard pulls. Sharpe thought the pole moved slightly, just a shudder, and the men below must have realized what they were doing for one of them ran out of the nave with a knife in his hand. Lord Pumphrey fired a sea-service pistol and the ball struck the flagstone floor and whipped away down the nave. The man had reached the scaffold and was climbing to cut the rope. “Pull!” Sharpe said, and he and Harper gave a huge heave. The scaffold pole bent outward. The scaffolding was old. It had been in place for almost twenty years and the lashings were frayed. Masonry blocks were piled on its platforms and some of them shifted. Once they began to move, they would not stop. “Pull!” Sharpe said again, and they tugged on the rope once more. This time the far scaffold pole snapped clean away from the rest of the structure. Stones began to crash through the planking. The man with the knife jumped for his life, and just then the rest of the scaffolding on the crossing’s far side collapsed in a welter of noise and dust.