cathedral’s western transept.
The first horse pierced itself on a spike. The iron went into the frog of its hoof, and then more horses came. They reared, screamed, and lunged in desperation from the pain. Men fell from saddles. A horse, made frantic with agony, bolted back across the plaza. Another reared so high that it toppled backwards and its rider shouted as he fell under the horse’s collapsing body.
“Hold your fire!” The Riflemen had formed a line fifteen yards short of the caltrops. It was a race now. The French infantry would be climbing the western steps to flood into the cathedral. It would take at least a minute for them to reach the door from the transept and erupt behind Sharpe’s back. Some of them, seeing the agony of the horses, had come to kick the iron spikes away. They were led by a Sergeant. “Hagman?” Sharpe said. “Kill that bastard!”
“Sir.” Hagman knelt, aimed, and fired. The Sergeant somersaulted backwards in a jet of blood from his chest. The infantry noticed the Riflemen for the first time. “Fire!” Sharpe shouted.
The volley was small, but it drove more chaos and pain into the narrow space. “Reload!” There was no point in shouting at the greenjackets to hurry. They knew as well as Sharpe how fragile was the balance between survival and death in this darkening city, and to shout them to speed would merely fluster them.
Sharpe turned. The last of Vivar’s congregation was running down the steps. A Spanish officer carried the gonfalon that had been hastily drawn into shining loops. Two priests gathered up their skirts and ran eastwards. Louisa appeared on the steps and Sharpe saw two Cazadores bring her a horse. Vivar pulled himself into his own saddle and drew his sword. “They’re in the cathedral!” he shouted at Sharpe.
“Steady, lads. Fix swords!” As the bayonets were drawn, Sharpe looked around for Harper, but the Irishman was still nowhere to be seen. There were screams within the city. Trumpets were shrill in the evening air. It would be cold tonight. A frost would silver the flagstones where the French would take their revenge for the insults of this day.
“Steady now, lads!” The caltrops had delayed the enemy and his men were reloaded, but a mass of mounted Frenchmen still waited beyond the spikes that were being frantically cleared by infantry. Carbine bullets cracked above the Riflemen, but the Dragoons fired from the saddle and aimed too hurriedly. Sharpe knew he only had seconds. He cupped his hands. “Sergeant! Sergeant Harper!”
“Retire, Lieutenant!” Vivar shouted at Sharpe.
“Sergeant Harper!”
“Bastard!” The voice came from the top of the steps that led into the southern transept. Sharpe whipped round. After distributing his caltrops, Harper must have known he could not reach Sharpe by running across the cathedral’s western front. Instead he had taken the short cut through the cathedral and now appeared with a French officer in his left hand. “Bastard!” The Irishman was in a fury. “He tried to kill me, the bastard!” He kicked the Frenchman, hit him, then turned and flung the man back into the cathedral’s darkness. Vivar, seeing more shapes beyond the doors, fired a pistol into the transept.
“Sir!” Hagman warned that the last caltrops were being cleared.
“Present!” Sharpe shouted. “I thought I’d lost you!” he called out to Harper.
“Bugger tried to stick a sword into me! In a church, God damn it! A cathedral. Can you credit it, sir?”
“Jesus Christ! I thought I’d lost you!” Sharpe’s relief at Harper’s survival was heartfelt.
“Sir!” Hagman warned again.
Dragoons and infantry were mixed together in the charge that was funnelled into the narrow space beneath the bridge. Swords were lifted, men shouted their war cry, and the French spurred to vengeance. “Fire!” Sharpe called.
The volley flayed into the narrow space, tumbling horses in blood and pain. A fallen sword clanged and scraped across the stone. The horsemen who followed hacked with their swords to clear a passage through the wounded and dying. Infantry appeared at the top of the cathedral’s southern steps.
“Run!” Sharpe bellowed.
Then was the chaos of flight. The Riflemen sprinted across the plaza to the dubious refuge of a narrow street. Louisa was gone ahead and Vivar, surrounded by a knot of his scarlet-coated elite, shouted at Sharpe to follow her. The Cazadores would stay to meet the French attack.
The Riflemen ran. The retreat from the city had become a mad scramble in the dusk, a plunge downhill through the tight medieval streets. Sharpe led his men into a small plaza decorated with a well and a stone cross. The exits from the plaza were jammed with refugees and he halted his men, formed them into ranks, and allowed the rear rank to tap load their rifles. The men poured in powder, spat the bullet after, then hammered the rifle butt on the ground in the hope that the impact would jar the bullet down. “Present!”
The rifles, their muzzles weighted with sword bayonets, came up. They could not fire yet, for their aim was blocked by the handful of Cazadores who tried to delay the French Dragoons. Swords clashed in the street with a sound like cracked bells. A Spaniard, blood streaming from his face, spurred away from the fight. A Dragoon screamed as his belly was ripped with a sword.
“Major!” Sharpe shouted to Vivar that the rifles were ready.
Vivar slashed at a Frenchman, then turned away from the riposte. “Go! Lieutenant! Go!”
“Major!”
A Cazador went down under a French blade. Vivar lunged to wound the Frenchman. It seemed to Sharpe that the Spaniard must be overwhelmed when suddenly a rush of volunteers in their brown tunics erupted behind the Dragoons and attacked them with knives, hammers, muskets, and swords. Vivar wrenched his horse around and shouted at his men to retreat.
Sharpe had backed his own Riflemen to the eastern edge of the small plaza and now he split them to let the Spaniards through. The volunteers did not want to retreat but Vivar beat them back with the edge of his sabre. Sharpe waited till the plaza was clear and the first enemy appeared at its far side. “Rear rank! Fire!”
The volley was feeble, but it checked the French rush. “Back!” Sharpe drew his sword, knowing he had cut it too fine.
The Riflemen followed Vivar into the next street. It was darker now as the day slipped towards a winter’s night. Muskets fired from the windows above Sharpe, but the small volley could not prevent the French from flooding into the narrow street.
“Behind you!” Harper called.
Sharpe turned. He screamed his challenge and swung the heavy blade at a horse’s face. The beast swerved, the pig-tailed Dragoon chopped down, but Sharpe had parried quickly and the two swords clanged together. Harper lunged with his bayonet to the horse’s chest and the animal reared, blocking the street, and Sharpe slashed at one of its fetlocks. His sword must have broken bone for, as the horse came down, it collapsed. The Dragoon tried to chop at Sharpe as he fell, but the Rifleman’s sword was hissing up, driven with all his strength, and the steel sliced into the cavalryman’s neck. Blood spurted in a sudden spray that spattered from the gutter to ten feet high on the whitewashed wall of the alley. The broken-legged and screaming horse blocked the street. “Run!” Sharpe shouted.
The Riflemen ran to the next corner where Vivar waited for them. “That way!” He pointed to the left, then spurred in the other direction with his handful of Cazadores.
The Riflemen ran past a church, rounded a corner, and found themselves at the top of a steep flight of steps leading to a street that ran behind a stretch of medieval city wall. Vivar must have known the steps would offer safety from the Dragoons’ pursuit, and had sent them to find refuge while he stayed behind to check the French fury.
Sharpe ran down the steps, then led his men along the street. He had no idea if Vivar was safe, nor if Louisa had escaped, nor even if the gonfalon had survived the turmoil in the narrow streets. All he could do was take the salvation Vivar had offered. “That bastard was a clever bugger!” Sharpe said to Harper. “Inside the city all the time! Christ, he must have been laughing at us!” Doubtless, after Louisa had seen the Frenchmen parade in the plaza, de l’Eclin and most of his men had simply returned to the rear of the palace while a few hundred of the Dragoons had ridden south. It was clever, and it had led to this shambles. There was no honour in it, none, for the French had broken the truce, but Sharpe had seen what little honour there was in this bitter war between Spain and France.
“Fighting in a bloody cathedral!” Harper was still indignant.
“You did for him, anyway.”
