A Rifleman beside Sharpe tracked two Frenchmen scrambling across a roof fifty yards away. The Baker rifle slammed back into his shoulder and one of the enemy slid bloodily down the tiles and fell into the street. The other, in desperation, hurled himself across the roof ridge to disappear. Vivar’s men had hunted forward with sabre and carbine, and Sharpe could see French soldiers running into the southern fields. He told his men to hold their fire, then led them down to the street where the beauty of the city’s skyline was replaced by the curdling stench of blood. One of the Riflemen laughed because a child was carrying a human head. A dog lapped at blood in a gutter and snarled when the Riflemen came too close.
Sharpe went back to the edge of the plaza where musket fire still whip-cracked above the flagstones. The wide space was empty but for the dead and dying. The French were still barricaded inside the vast and elegant building from which, whenever a Spaniard dared show himself in the plaza, a thunder of musketry crashed out.
Sharpe kept his Riflemen out of sight. He sidled to the very corner of the street from where he could see what lavish wealth a dead saint had brought to the city’s centre. The wide plaza was surrounded by buildings of spectacular beauty. A scream turned him, and he saw a Frenchman being thrown from one of the cathedral’s bell towers. The body twisted as it fell, then was mercifully hidden by a lower terrace. The cathedral was a miracle of delicately carved stone and intricate design, but on this day, in the labyrinth of its carved roofs, men died. Another Spanish standard was hung from the bell tower as the last Frenchman was killed there. The great bells began their joyful sound, even as a volley of musketry from the French-held side of the plaza tried to take revenge on the Spaniards who had hung the banner into the dawn.
A Spaniard burst from the cathedral’s western doors to brandish a captured French flag. Immediately a fusillade splintered from the west of the plaza, and its bullets buzzed and cracked about the man. By a miracle he lived and, clearly knowing that this day he was both invincible and immortal, he pranced mockingly down the cathedral steps and through the scattered corpses of the plaza. Each step of the way the enemy’s captured flag was riddled by the hissing bullets, but somehow the man lived and the Riflemen cheered as, at last, he stalked into the cover of the street with his tattered trophy safe.
Standing in the shadows, Sharpe had watched the French-held building and had tried to gauge how many muskets or carbines had fired from its facade. He estimated at least a hundred shots, and knew that, if the French had as many men on every other side of the great building, then this would prove a stubborn place to take.
He turned as hooves sounded behind him. It was Bias Vivar, who must have known what threat waited in the plaza for he slid out of the saddle well short of the street’s ending. “Have you seen Miss Louisa?”
“No!”
“Nor me.” Vivar listened to the musketry from the plaza. “They’re still in the palace?”
Tn force,“ Sharpe said.
Vivar peered round the corner to stare at the building. It was under fire from men on the cathedral roof. Window panes shattered. French muskets answered the fire, spurting smoke into the rising sun. He swore. “I can’t leave them in the palace.”
“It’ll be damned hard to get them out.” Sharpe was wiping blood from his sword blade. “Have we found any artillery?”
“None that I’ve seen.” Vivar jerked back as a musket ball slapped the wall close to his head. He grinned as though apologizing for a weakness. “Perhaps they’ll surrender?”
“Not if they think they’ll get slaughtered.” Sharpe gestured to the street behind, where a disembowelled French corpse witnessed to the fate awaiting any enemy who was caught by the townspeople.
Vivar stepped away from the corner. “They might surrender to you.”
“Me!”
“You’re English. They trust the English.”
“I have to promise them life.”
A Spaniard must have shown himself somewhere on the plaza’s edge, for there was a sudden, echoing crash of musket fire which bore witness to just what strength the French had crammed inside the palace. Vivar waited until the splintering volleys were done. “Tell them I’ll set the palace on fire if they don’t surrender.”
Sharpe doubted whether the stone building could be fired, but that was not the threat the French feared most. They feared torture and horrid death. “Can the officers keep their swords?” he asked.
Vivar hesitated, then nodded. “Yes.”
“And you guarantee that every Frenchman will be safe?”
“Of course.”
Sharpe did not want to negotiate the surrender; he felt such diplomacy would be done better by Bias Vivar, but the Spaniard seemed convinced that an English officer would be more reassuring to the French. A Cazador trumpeter sounded the cease-fire.
A bedsheet was found, tied to a broom handle, and waved around the street corner. The trumpeter repeated the call to cease fighting, but it took a full quarter-hour just to convince the vengeful Spaniards about the plaza’s rim that the call was genuine. It was a further ten minutes before a French voice called suspiciously from the palace.
Vivar translated. “They’ll see one man only. I hope it isn’t a trick, Lieutenant.”
“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.