He had decided that taking all his men upstairs would create too much noise. Better that he and Harper made a silent exploration, and so he took one lantern that he placed at the foot of the huge curving staircase, then began to climb. The stairs were made of a pale stone so his steps were silent. He carried his rifle with a sword-bayonet fixed. Harper, the volley gun in his hands, followed. Their shadows flickered across portraits that hung in the stairwell which made Sharpe think of Fox. The portraits showed men and women in elaborate costumes and with fantastic hair. Ancestors, he supposed, and wondered who his own ancestors were. His mother, he knew, had been called Lizzie Sharpe, but he knew he would never discover who his father was. Just another man who had sought out a whore. It was best not to know, he thought, as he reached the first landing where another stairway led straight to the top floor, while corridors stretched left and right. In front of him was a door which, he supposed, led to the principal bedroom. There were more portraits on the walls, while an elaborate chandelier, its candles long dead, hung from the ceiling. The light was dim here. He moved to the door and put his ear against it. Harper was close behind him. ‘Can you hear anything?’
‘Hush,’ Sharpe whispered. He thought he heard male voices, low and insistent, then he was certain he heard a woman moan. ‘Try not to use the volley gun,’ he said to Harper in a whisper. ‘We don’t want to wake the bastards in other rooms.’
Harper slung the volley gun and pulled out his sword-bayonet. ‘We kill them?’
‘Just sing them a lullaby, Pat.’
The door handle was a lever which Sharpe slowly pushed down, flinching as the lock’s tongue grated on the socket. It freed itself with a click and Sharpe pushed the door open. His first impression was of three men, two of them naked, the third sprawled in an armchair beside an empty hearth, The naked men were on an enormous bed and, as Sharpe stepped into the room, he saw a girl was tied there, her wrists and ankles roped to the bed’s corner posts. ‘Take the man in the chair, Pat,’ he said, and crossed the room, reversing the rifle in his hands.
One man bellowed in alarm, then tried to back away across the bed. Sharpe hit him with the rifle’s brass butt and felt the man’s skull cave in from the force of the blow. The second man launched himself at Sharpe, who managed to step back and swing the rifle so that the sword-bayonet sliced across his attacker’s belly. The man fell off the bed, sprawling on a rug, and Sharpe jabbed the bayonet down at the man’s ribs, then reversed the gun and hit him with the butt. ‘That’s your lullaby,’ he said as the man went still.
‘This bugger doesn’t know whether it’s Christmas or Tuesday,’ Harper said, and Sharpe turned to see that the third man was on the hearth, with a bloodied scalp and apparently unconscious.
‘Cut the girl free, Pat, and give her a blanket.’
The man on the rug suddenly tried to lunge at Sharpe’s legs, then yelped as the bayonet scored a second cut across his ribs. ‘Stupid bastard,’ Sharpe said, and kicked the man between the legs. The man yelped in pain, clutched himself, and bent over in agony which made it easy for Sharpe to thump the rifle’s butt on his skull. He did it harder this time and the man fell back, unmoving.
‘Poor wee thing,’ Harper said, and Sharpe turned to the girl who was sitting up and covering her breasts as Harper cut her ankles free.
‘Who are you, mademoiselle?’
‘I work here, monsieur,’ she managed to answer. Harper had pulled a blanket from the bed’s wreckage and she gathered it around herself. She was crying, her tears trickling silently down her face.
‘Take her downstairs, Pat,’ Sharpe said, ‘then bring the others up here. Be quick, we made too much noise.’
The girl staggered as she stood and Harper just tossed the volley gun onto the bed and scooped her up in his arms. ‘I’ll be back,’ he said to Sharpe, and carried the girl out onto the landing and down the stairs. And as Harper went downstairs Sharpe heard footsteps from the attic floors above. He went to the bedroom door and peered up the staircase that led to the attics. He could hear voices now, men muttering in that upper darkness, and he slung his rifle and went back to the bed where he retrieved Harper’s volley gun. He cocked it, hauling the stiff doghead back and flinching at the small noise it made. He instinctively ran a finger against the flint, making sure it was firmly seated, then a man called from the upper storey. ‘Jean?’
Back to the door. Sharpe stood in shadow, the door just a few inches ajar. The top of the attic stairs were dark, but he thought he saw movement on the landing there.
‘Jean!’ the man called again and, when there was no answer, the man said something and Sharpe heard muttered replies, then the unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked. He stayed in the shadows, then saw more shadows moving at the top of the straight stairway. ‘Jean!’ a man called even louder, then started down the stairs. Others followed him. Sharpe reckoned there were five or six men, two of whom carried muskets. One of them shouted encouragement and they all started to hurry, so Sharpe kicked the bedroom door wide open, raised the volley gun and pulled the trigger.
The gun’s stock hammered into Sharpe’s shoulder, while its noise was magnified by the stone walls. The house seemed to shake as the seven barrels gouted smoke and the sound hammered the walls as the seven bullets scoured the staircase. A vast gold-framed portrait shook on the stairway wall, a rip gouged across its canvas, then the whole thing collapsed onto the shrieking men who bled on the stairs. Sharpe tossed the volley gun back onto the bed and unslung his rifle. A woman screamed from the attic.
‘Sir?’ Harper called anxiously from downstairs.
‘Come on up, Pat! All of you!’
The vast fallen portrait was canted across the staircase, trapping most of the men beneath its ruined canvas. But one man, choking and clutching his bloodied chest, had slid to the landing and now gazed in horror as Sharpe approached. ‘Non, non,’ he moaned as Sharpe got nearer, then suddenly a man stood halfway up the stairs, thrusting his upper body through the ripped canvas and levelling a musket.
Sharpe lifted the rifle, pulled the trigger, and again the hallways echoed with noise. The bullet caught the man in the upper chest, throwing him backwards and spattering blood on the wall. ‘I hate stupid bastards,’ Sharpe growled.
‘God save Ireland,’ Harper, a lantern in his hand, had joined Sharpe and stared at the carnage. The torn, bloodstained canvas moved as wounded men stirred beneath it.
‘I think there are six of them under that mess,’ Sharpe said, ‘we put three down in the bedroom, so there must be others.’
‘Upstairs?’
‘Could be anywhere, Pat. Your gun is on the bed.’
Harper went to retrieve his volley gun, and Charlie Weller gazed at the fallen portrait. ‘Want us to move it, Mister Sharpe?’
‘Please, Sergeant.’
Geoghegan and O’Farrell pushed the vast portrait almost upright, then propped the heavy gilded frame against the wall while Weller and McGurk began hauling wounded men down the stairs. ‘What do we do with them?’ McGurk asked.
‘Find a window and throw them out.’
‘This one’s hurt bad, Mister Sharpe.’
‘Then throw him harder.’
‘Where do you want this?’ Harper asked, dragging one of the naked men from the bedroom.
‘Downstairs, Pat.’
Harper lifted the man and tossed him into the stairwell. McGurk flinched at the crunching sound of the man’s fall onto the stone floor below. ‘He’s a rapist, thief, and God knows what else,’ Sharpe explained. ‘Toss the others, Pat.’
‘A pleasure, sir.’
Sharpe took McGurk and Butler along the two hallways which led from the landing, looking in each room, but found no more intruders, while Harper took the rest of the men upstairs. Sharpe heard two shots fired, and moments later seven men and three women were pushed down the upper stairway. All were naked or near naked. ‘Send them all downstairs, Pat,’ Sharpe said, grinning.
‘This one’s a maid here,’ Harper indicated a girl wrapped in a blanket.