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.