‘So what does that one mean?’
‘Stay out of blind alleys, of course.’
The vestibule below him was now apparently empty except for the growing pile of broken furniture to which his men were still enthusiastically adding tables, chairs, chamber pots, paintings, and chests of drawers. The French had pulled back so they could not be seen from above, but Sharpe could hear them, and when he took a few exploratory steps down the wide staircase he was greeted with a blast of musketry, most of which ricocheted off the marble banisters. ‘They’re not giving up, the buggers,’ Harper commented.
‘There’s at least a company back there,’ Sharpe said ruefully. Any attempt to reach the front door would expose him to their volleys, yet every instinct told him he needed to escape the house and reach the rest of his battalion that was somewhere in the vineyard. Damn it, he thought, but he should have led the main attack, but he had been seduced by the thought of using the tunnel to erupt into his enemy’s rear. Now he was trapped upstairs in this damned house and Lanier controlled the night.
‘Keep them busy, Pat,’ he told Harper, and went along the corridor into the furthest bedroom, where two Riflemen were making sure none of the French tried to use the cannon at the right-hand end of Lanier’s line. The bedroom was dark except for what small moonlight came through the shattered windows. Sharpe peered over a sill.
‘Bastards are good, Mister Sharpe,’ Rifleman Godwin said.
‘They’re well trained,’ Sharpe muttered. Lanier had advanced his line to the forecourt’s edge, from where they still fired platoon volleys down into the vines. The response from his men was desultory, which angered him. Was there no officer there who saw what needed to be done? ‘Where are the Prussians?’
‘All in that big building.’ Godwin jerked his head towards the warehouse. ‘A company of Crapauds followed them.’
Which meant, Sharpe thought, that the Prussians were safe enough in the warehouse, but faced by a well-trained company of French Light Infantrymen who guarded the one door.
Sharpe used the hilt of his sword to knock out shards of glass sticking up from the window’s frame, then leaned out into the night. He could drop to the ground, but reckoned the chance of a broken or turned ankle was too high. He was in enough pain already, and landing behind Lanier’s battalion with a broken ankle was suicidal. He swore.
‘You’re bleeding, Mister Sharpe,’ Godwin said, worried.
‘I’ve had worse.’ He pulled back from the window, troubled by what he had seen. The French were in two ranks and he had counted one company, then multiplied it by the six companies he could see. Lanier had over five hundred men on the forecourt! ‘Just make sure none of the bastards get that cannon working. And try to pick off the officers and Sergeants in their line.’
‘A pleasure, Mister Sharpe,’ Godwin said, ramming a ball down his rifle’s barrel.
Sharpe went back to the stairhead. Nothing had changed. If any man crept down the stairs he was greeted with a fusillade of musketry. Harry Price was still guarding the back stairs, and Butler and O’Farrell were still hurling Madame Delaunay’s furniture into the vestibule, making a crude barricade across the wide space. ‘We still have one rocket?’ Sharpe asked.
‘Here.’ Harper held up the cylinder. The rocket’s stick had been tossed down onto the shattered furniture.
Sharpe turned and looked at his men. He had thirty, and what he planned was insane, yet he was deep in the alley, the walls were high, and the enemy winning. ‘Load,’ he told them, ‘then fix swords.’
Two men staggered from the right-hand corridor somehow carrying a gilded wardrobe. Sharpe let them tip it over the balustrade. It crashed into the furniture heap, turning valuable chairs and tables into matchwood. ‘Is there another like that?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Fetch it.’
He loaded his rifle, pushing two balls down the barrel. ‘We’re going down, lads,’ he told his men, pitching his voice low so no one below could hear him. ‘Save your shot till we get outside the house, and when we go we go like the devil’s on our heels.’
‘Where?’ Harper asked.
‘Straight through Lanier’s line,’ Sharpe said. He could think of no other way to reach the rest of his battalion, and his whole godforsaken idea had been to attack Lanier from behind, so damn it, that’s what he would do. Five hundred Frenchmen against his thirty men, four of whom staggered into sight again with another huge wardrobe on their shoulders. ‘Just put it on the balustrade and wait for my order. Pat? Give me the last rocket. And send for Captain Price, tell him to bring his men.’ Sharpe had crept four steps down the stairs, hugging the wall and staying low so that he would not be a target for the mass of Frenchmen crowded behind the crude barrier of splintered furniture. He could see the front door, which was locked by two iron bolts. The dead French Sergeant lay on the mat just inside the door, his blood still slowly spreading across the marble floor. ‘Private Bee?’
‘Sir?’
‘When we go down, your job is to pull that dead Frog out of our way.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Bee said nervously.
‘Don’t worry, lad,’ Sharpe said, ‘he’s too dead to fight back. And where’s the monkey?’
‘He’s safe in a crate in the museum, sir.’
‘I daresay he’ll be glad to see you.’
‘He will, sir. He’s a good monkey, sir.’
A Frenchman had heard the mutter of voices and shot his musket up from the lower hall. The ball slammed into the wall just over Sharpe’s head, then ricocheted up to the ceiling, where it knocked a lump out of the moulded plasterwork. Sharpe retreated up two steps. ‘Ready?’ he asked.
‘What are we doing?’ Harry Price asked.
‘Attacking the bloody Frogs out front,’ Sharpe said, ‘and listen lads, we go fast! We go through them and join the battalion! Just run like the devil, kill anyone who tries to stop you, and follow me!’
He struck the flint on the steel and puffed the tinderbox into a flame. ‘When I throw this thing,’ he spoke to Rifleman O’Farrell, ‘push that thing over the edge.’