Sharpe's Gold

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.