He wanted to tell the Sergeant that he did not have to do it, it was Sharpe's dirty-work, but he knew what the Irishman would have said. Instead he watched as the two men, one tall and the other short, picked up the barrel by its ends, jiggled it until powder was flowing from the hole, and then started an awkward progress out the door and across the Plaza. They kept to the gutter, Helmut above it and Harper below, which made the task easier, and Sharpe, through the window, watched as the powder trickled into the shadow of the stone trough and went, inexorably, towards the cathedral. He could not believe what he was doing, driven by the General's 'must' and the questions came back. Could Cox be persuaded? Perhaps, even worse, gold had arrived from London and all this was for nothing, and then, in a heart-stopping moment, the cathedral doors opened and two sentries came out, adjusting their shakoes, and Sharpe knew they must see what was happening. He clenched his fists, and Teresa, beside him at the dirty glass pane, was moving her lips in what seemed to be a silent and inappropriate prayer.
'Sharpe!'
He turned, startled, and saw Lossow. 'You frightened me.'
'It's a guilty conscience.' The German stood in the doorway and nodded down the hill, away from the cathedral. 'We have the house open. The cellar door.'
'I'll see you there.'
Sharpe planned to light the fuse and then run back to a house they had chosen, a house with a deep cellar that opened on to the street. Lossow did not move. He looked at the two Sergeants, still ignored by the sentries.
'I don't believe this, my friend. I hope you're right.'
So do I, thought Sharpe, so do I. It was madness, pure madness, and he put his arm round the girl and watched as the two Sergeants threaded the bollards which kept traffic and market-stalls from encroaching on the cathedral's ground. The sentries were watching the two Sergeants, seeing nothing unusual in two men carrying a barrel, not even stirring as they put it down, on one end, hard by the smaller door.
'God.' Lossow whispered the word, watching with them, as Helmut squatted by the barrel and began to work a strake loose so that the fuse could reach the remaining powder in the keg. Harper strolled the twenty yards to the sentries, chatted with them, and Sharpe thought of the men who must die. The sentries would surely see the German splintering the wood! But no, they laughed with Harper, and suddenly Helmut was walking back, yawning, and the Irishman waved at the sentries and followed him.
Sharpe took out the tinder-box, the cigar, and with hands that were shaky he struck flint on steel and blew the charred linen in the box into a flame. He lit the cigar, puffed it, hated the taste until the tip glowed red.
Lossow watched him. 'You're sure?'
A shrug. 'I'm sure.'
The two Sergeants appeared at the doorway and Lossow spoke in German to Helmut, then turned to Sharpe. 'Good luck, my friend. We see you in a minute.'
Sharpe nodded, the two Germans left, and he drew on the cigar again. He looked at the Irishman in the doorway.
'Take Teresa.'
'No.' Harper was stubborn. 'I stay with you.'
'And me.' Teresa smiled at him.
The girl held his arm as he went into the street. The sky was pearl grey over the cathedral with a wisp of cloud that would soon turn white. It promised to be a beautiful day. He drew on the cigar again and through his mind went jumbled images of the men who had built the cathedral, carved the saints that guarded its doors, knelt on its wide flagstones, been married there, seen their children baptized in its granite font, and been carried on their last visit up its pillared chancel. He thought of the dry voice saying 'must', of the priest whitewashing the rood-screen, of the Battalion with its wives and children, the bodies in the cellar, and he leaned down and touched the cigar tip to the powder, and it sparked and fizzed, the flame beginning its journey.
The first French shell, fired from an ugly little howitzer in a deep pit, burst on the Plaza, and flames shot through the smoke as the casing burst into unnumbered fragments that needled outwards. Before Sharpe could move, before the first explosion had ceased, the second howitzer's shell landed, bounced, rolled to the powder trail just yards from the cathedral, hit a bollard, and the sentries dived for shelter as it flamed crashingly apart, and Sharpe knew that there was no time to reach the cellar. He plucked at Teresa and Harper.
'The ovens!'
They ran, through the door and over the counter, and he picked up the girl and thrust her head-first into the great brick cave of the bread oven. Harper was clambering into the second and Sharpe waited till Teresa was at the back and then he heard an explosion. It was small enough, scarcely audible over the crash of French shells and the distant sound of the Portuguese batteries' reply, and he knew, as he climbed in behind the girl, that the barrel had exploded, and he wondered if the cathedral door had held the blast, or if the cartridges had been moved, and then there was a second explosion, louder and more ominous, and Teresa gripped his thigh where it was wounded, and the second explosion seemed to go on, like a muffled volley from a battle in deep fog, and he knew that the cartridges, down in their stacks behind the door, were setting each other of in an unstoppable chain of explosions.
He wondered, crouched foetus-like in the oven, what was happening in the cathedral. He saw, in his mind's eye, the lurid flames, gouting shafts of light, and then there was a bigger explosion and he knew that the chain had reached the powder stacked at the top of the steps, and it was all done now. Nothing could prevent it. The guards in the cathedral were dead; the great rood was looking down on its last seconds; the eternal presence would soon be swatted out.
Another French shell exploded, the fragments clashing on the bakery walls, and it was drowned by a seething roar, growing and terrifying, and in the first crypt, crate by crate, cartridge by cartridge, the ammunition of Almeida was exploding. The stabbing flames were reaching the weakened curtain; the men in the deep crypt would be on their knees, or in panic, the powder for the great guns all round them.
He had thought that the sound could only grow till it was the last sound on earth, but it seemed to die into silence that was merely the crackling of flames, and Sharpe, knowing it was foolish, uncurled his head and looked through the gap between the oven and its iron door, and he could not believe that the leather curtain had held, and then the hill moved. The sound came, not through the air but through the ground itself, like the groaning of rock, and the whole cathedral turned to dust, smoke, and flames that were the colour of blood that scorched through the utter blackness.
The French gunners, pausing with shells in their hands, jumped to the top of their pits and looked past the low grey ramparts and crossed themselves. The centre of the town had gone, turned into one giant flame that rolled up and up, and became a boiling cloud of darkness. Men could see things in the flame: great stones, timbers, carried upwards as if they were feathers, and then the shock hit the gunners like a giant, hot wind that came with the sound. It was like all the thunder of all the world poured into one town for one moment for one glimpse of the world's end.
The cathedral disappeared, turned into flame, and the castle was scythed clean from the ground, the stones tumbling like toy things. Houses were scoured into flaming shards; the blast took the north of the town, unroofed half the southern slope, and the bakery collapsed on to the ovens, and Sharpe, deafened and gasping, choked on the thick dust and heated air, and the girl gripped him, prayed for her soul, and the blast went past like the breath of the Apocalypse.
On the ramparts the Portuguese died as the wind plucked them outwards. The great defences, nearest the cathedral, were smashed down, and debris filled the ditches so that a huge, flat road was hammered into the heart of the fortress, and still the powder caught. New boilings of flame and smoke writhed into the horror over Almeida, shudder after shudder, a convulsive spasm of the hilltop and the monstrous explosions died, leaving only fire and darkness, the stench of hell, a silence where men were deafened by destruction.
A French gunner, old in his trade, who had on
ce taught a young Corsican Lieutenant how to lay a gun, spat on his hand and touched it to the hot muzzle of the barrel that had fired the last shot. The French were silent, unbelieving, and in the killing-ground before them stones, tiles, and burnt flesh dropped like the devil's rain.
Twenty-five miles away, in Celorico, they heard the sound and the General put down his fork and went to the window and knew, with terrible certainty, what it was. There was no gold. And now the fortress that could have bought him six weeks of failing hope had gone. The smoke came later, a huge grey curtain that smeared the eastern sky, turned morning sunlight into dusk, and edged the border hills with crimson like a harbinger of the armies that would follow the cloud to the sea.
Almeida had been destroyed.
Chapter 24
Kearsey was dead, killed in an instant as he said his prayers on the town rampart, and five hundred other men snatched into eternity by the flame, but Sharpe did not know that yet. He knew he was dying, of suffocation and heat, and he braced his back against the smooth, curved interior of the massive oven and pushed with his legs at a charred length of timber that blocked the door. It collapsed and he pushed himself out, into a nightmare, and turned to pull Teresa clear. She spoke to him, but he could hear nothing, and he shook his head and went to the other opening and pushed away some rubble as Harper crawled out, his face ashen.
The ovens had saved their lives. They were built like small fortresses, with walls more than three feet thick and a curved roof that had sent the blast harmlessly overhead. Nothing else remained. The cathedral was a flaming pit, the castle gone, the houses so much dust and fire, and down the street Sharpe had to look a hundred yards before he saw a house that had survived the blast, and it was ablaze, the flames licking at the rooms which had been opened to the world, and the heat was grey around them as he took Teresa's arm.
A man staggered into the road, naked and bleeding, shouting for help, but they ignored him, ran to the cellar door that was covered with fallen stone, and dragged it clear. There was a thumping beneath and shouts, and Harper, still dazed, pulled back the stones and the cellar flap was forced open, and Lossow and Helmut came out. They spoke to Sharpe, who could not hear, and ran towards their own house, at the bottom of the hill, away from the horror, through the Portuguese soldiers who stared, open-mouthed, at the inferno that had once been a cathedral.
Sharpe dropped in the kitchen, found a bottle of the Germans' beer, and knocked the top of, put it to his lips, and let the cool liquid flow into his stomach. He hit his ears, shook his head, and his men stared at him. He shook his head again, willing the sound to come back, and felt tears in his eyes. Damn it, the decision had been made, and he put his head back and stared at the ceiling and thought of the General, and of the blazing pit, and he hated himself.
'You had no choice, sir.' Knowles was speaking to him; the voice sounded far away, but he could hear.
He shook his head. 'There's always a choice.'
'But the war, sir. You said it had to be won.'
Then celebrate it tomorrow, Sharpe thought, or the next day, but dear God, I did not know, and he remembered the flung bodies, stripped of all dignity, wiped out in an instant, draped like streaked fungus on the hot rubble.
'I know.' He turned on his men. 'What are you staring at! Get ready to move!'
He hated Wellington, too, because he knew why the General had picked him: because he wanted a man too proud to fail, and he knew he would do it for the General again. Ruthlessness was good in a soldier, in a General or a Captain, and men admired it, but that was no reason to think that the ruthless man did not feel the bloody pain as well. Sharpe stood up, looked at Lossow.
'We'd better find Cox.'
The town was stunned, bereft of sound except for the crackling of flames and the coughing of vomit as men found comrades' charred and shrunken bodies. The smell of roast flesh hung in the air, like the stench of the burning bodies after Talavera, but that, Sharpe remembered, had been a mistake, an accident of wind and flame, while this chaos, this glimpse of damnation, had been caused by a powder keg that Sharpe had caused to be pierced and trailed to the cathedral's door. The bodies were naked, the uniforms seared of by the blast, and they seemed to have shrunk into small, black mockeries of human beings. A dead battalion, thought Sharpe, killed for the gold, and he wondered if Wellington himself would have put the cigar on to the powder, and then he thrust the thought away as Lossow led the way up a sloping rampart to where Cox surveyed the damage.
It was all over – anyone could see that, the town indefensible – but Cox still hoped. He had been weeping at the death and destruction, the swath that had gone through his town and his hopes.
'How?'
There were answers offered by the staff officers with Cox, good answers, and they told the Brigadier of the French shells that had landed just before the explosion. The officers looked over the wall at the massing crowd of Frenchmen who had come to stare at the giant breach in the town's defences, and at the pall of smoke, as men might watch a once-proud King on his deathbed.
'A shell,' one of the officers told Cox. 'It must have set off the small ammunition.'
'Oh, God.' Cox was close to tears. 'We should have had a magazine.'
Cox tried to stiffen his will to go on fighting, but they all knew it was done. There was no ammunition left, nothing to fight with, and the French would understand. There would be no unpleasantness; the surrender would be discussed in a civilized way, and Cox tried to stave it off, tried to find hope in the smoke-filled air, but finally agreed.
'Tomorrow, gentlemen, tomorrow. We fly the flag one more night.' He pushed his way through the group and saw Sharpe and Lossow waiting. 'Sharpe. Lossow. Thank God you're alive. So many gone.'
'Yes, sir.'
Cox was biting back tears. 'So many.' Sharpe wondered if Tom Garrard had survived. Cox noticed the blood on the Rifleman's uniform. 'You're wounded?'
'No, sir. I'm all right. Permission to leave, sir?'
Cox nodded, an automatic reaction. The gold was forgotten in the horror of the lost war.
Sharpe plucked Lossow's sleeve. 'Come on.'
At the bottom of the ramp, a puzzled look on his face, Cesar Moreno waited for them. He put a hand out to stop Sharpe. 'Teresa?'
Sharpe smiled, the first smile since the explosion. 'She's safe. We're leaving now.'
'And Joaquim?'
'Joaquim?' For a second Sharpe was not certain whom Teresa's father was talking about, and then he remembered the fight on the rooftop. 'He's dead.'
'And this?' Cesar Moreno's hand was still on Sharpe's sleeve as he looked round the destruction.
'An accident.'
Moreno looked at him and shrugged. 'Half our men are dead.'
There was nothing Sharpe could say. Lossow broke in. 'The horses?'
Moreno looked at him and shrugged. 'They were not in the house that collapsed. They're all right.'
'We'll use them!' The German went ahead and Moreno checked Sharpe with a hand.
'She'll take over, I suppose.'
The Rifleman nodded. 'Probably. She can fight.'
Moreno gave a rueful smile. 'She knows whose side to be on.'
Sharpe looked at the smoke, at the flames on the hilltop, smelt the burning. 'Don't we all?' He shook himself free, turned again to the grey-haired man. 'I'll be back for her, one day.'
'I know.'
The French had left their lines to gape at the smoking ruins at the northern wall. There was nothing to stop the Company leaving, and they took the gold and went west, under the smoke, and back to the army. The war was not lost.
Epilogue
'What happened, Richard?'
'Nothing, sir.'
Hogan moved his horse forward to a patch of succulent grass. 'I don't believe you.'
Sharpe stirred in his saddle; he hated riding. 'There was a girl.'
'Is that all?'
'All? She was special.'
The breeze from the sea was cool on his
face; the water sparkled with a million flashes of light, like a giant army of lance-tips, and beating northwards towards the Channel a frigate laid its grey sails towards the land and left a streak of white in its path.
Hogan watched the ship. 'Despatches.'
'News of victory?' Sharpe's tone was ironic.
'They won't believe it. It's a funny victory.' Hogan stared at the distant horizon, miles out to sea from the hilltop where their horses stood. 'Do you see the fleet out there? A convoy going home.'
Sharpe grunted, felt the twinge in his healing shoulder. 'More money for the bloody merchants. Why couldn't they have sent it here?'
Hogan smiled. 'There's never enough, Richard. Never.'
'There had better be now. After what we did to get it here.'
'What did you do?'
'I told you, nothing.' He stared a challenge at the gentle Irish Major. 'We were sent to get it, we got it, and we brought it back.'
'The General's pleased.' Hogan said it in a neutral tone.
'He'd bloody better be pleased! For Christ's sake!'
'He thought you were lost.' Hogan's horse moved again, cropping the grass, and the Major took off his cocked hat and fanned his face. 'Pity about Almeida.'
Sharpe made a face. 'Pity about Almeida.'
Hogan sighed patiently. 'We thought it was done for. We heard the explosion, of course, and there was no gold. Without the gold there was no chance.'
'There was a little chance.' Sharpe almost spat the words at him and Hogan shrugged.
'No, not a chance you'd want, Richard.'
Sharpe let his anger sink; he thought of the girl, watched the frigate flap its sails and bend into its next tack. 'Which would you rather have had, sir?' His voice was very cold, very far away. 'The gold, or Almeida?'
Hogan pulled his horse's head up. 'The gold, Richard. You know that.'
'You're sure?'
Hogan nodded. 'Very sure. Thousands might have died without the gold.'
'But we don't know that."
Hogan waved his arm at the landscape. 'We do.'