The girl came up the rim and watched, silently, as the cavalry left her village. Their weapons flashed needles of light through the brown haze of the dust; the ranks seemed endless, the glorious might of France that had ridden down the best cavalry in Europe but could not defeat the Guerrilleros. Sharpe looked at the girl, at Kearsey, who talked with her, and was glad once more that he did not have to fight the Partisans. The only way to win was to kill them all, every one, young and old, and even that, as the French were finding, did not work. He thought of the bodies in the blood of the basement. It was not the war of Talavera.
They spent the night in the gully, cautious lest the French should still be watching, and some time in the small hours the bubbles stopped in Kelly's throat. Pru Kelly, though she did not know it, was a widow again, and Sharpe remembered the small Corporal's smile, his willingness. They buried him at dawn, in a grave scratched from the soil, and they heaped it with rocks that would be forced apart by a fox and perched on by the vultures who would tear his chest further apart.
Kearsey said the words, from memory, and the men stood round the heaped stones awkwardly. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, and in a few weeks, Sharpe thought, Pru Kelly would marry again because that was the way with the women who marched with soldiers. The Polish Sergeant, tied up with musket slings, watched the burial and, for a few moments, stopped his struggles. The new day came, still hot, the rain still keeping away, and the Light Company marched into the empty valley to find their gold.
CHAPTER 9
It was a sweet smell, sticky-sweet, that left a foul deposit somewhere at the top of the nostrils, yet it was impossible to describe why it was so unpleasant. Sharpe had smelt it often enough, so had most of the Company, and they knew it fifty yards from the village. It was not so much a smell, Sharpe thought, as a state of the air, like an invisible mist. It seemed, like a mist, to thicken the air, make breathing difficult, yet all the time to have that sweet promise, as if the corpses the French had left behind were made of sugar and honey.
Not even the dogs had been left alive. A few cats, too difficult to catch, had survived the French, but the dogs, like their owners, had been killed, splayed open with desperate savagery, as if the French thought that death by itself was not enough and a body must be turned inside out if it was not to come magically alive to ambush them again. Only one man lived in the village, one of Sharpe's men left behind in the attack, and the French, true to the curious honour that prevailed between the armies, had left John Rorden propped on a mattress, with bread and water to hand and a bullet somewhere in his pelvis that would kill him before this new day was done.
Ramon, in slow English, told Sharpe that four dozen people had been left in the village, mostly the old or the very young, but they had all died. Sharpe stared at the wrecked houses, the blood splashed on low, white walls.
'Why were they caught?
Ramon shrugged, waved a bandaged hand. 'They were good.
'Good?
'Francese. He was lost for a word and Sharpe helped.
'Clever?
The young man nodded. He had his sister's nose, the same dark eyes, but there was a friendliness to him that Sharpe had not seen in Teresa. Ramon shook his head hopelessly. 'They were not all Guerrilleros, yes? Each group of words was a question, as if he wanted assurance that his English was adequate. Sharpe kept nodding. 'They want peace? But now. He spoke two quick sentences in Spanish, his tone bitter, and Sharpe knew that those people of the uplands who had tried to stay aloof from the war would be drawn in whether they wanted it or not. Ramon blinked back tears; the dead had been of his village. 'We went there? He pointed north. 'They were before us, yes? We were… He described a circle with his two bandaged hands.
'Surrounded?
'Si. He looked down at his right hand, at the fingers that poked from the grey bandage, and Sharpe saw the index finger moving as if it were pulling a trigger. Ramon would fight again.
The bodies were not just in the cellar. Some, perhaps for the amusement of the lancers, had been taken to the hermitage to meet their bitter end, and on the steps of the building Sharpe found Isaiah Tongue, the admirer of Napoleon, throwing up the dry bread that had been his breakfast. The Company waited by the hermitage. The prisoner, tall and proud, stood by Sergeant McGovern, and Sharpe stopped by the Scotsman.
'Look after him, Sergeant.
'Aye, sir. They'll not touch him. The sturdy face was twisted as if in pain. McGovern, like Tongue, had looked inside the hermitage. 'Savages, sir, that's what they are. Savages!
'I know.
There was nothing to say that would reach McGovern's pain, the hurt of a father far from his children who had just seen small, dead bodies. The stench was thick by the hermitage, buzzing with flies, and Sharpe paused by the steps. There was almost a reluctance to go inside, not just because of the bodies, but because of what the hermitage might not contain. The gold. So close, so near to the war's survival, and instead of a feeling of triumph he felt stained, touched by a horror that brought an anger against his job. He climbed the steps, his face a mask, and wondered what his men would do if they found themselves, as they probably would, in a place where the rules no longer counted. He remembered the uncontrollable savagery that followed a siege, the sheer, exploding rage that he had felt after death had touched him a score of times in one small breach and he knew, as the cold air of the hermitage struck him, that this war in Spain, if it should go on, would not be won until British infantry had been fed into the narrow meat grinder of a small gap in a city wall.
'Out! Get them out! The men, pale-faced, looked shocked at Sharpe's anger, but he knew no other way to react to the small bodies. 'Bury them!
Harper was crying, tears running down his cheeks. So much innocence, so much waste, as if a baby had earned this. Kearsey stood there, with Teresa, and neither cried. The Major flicked at his moustache. 'Terrible. Awful.
'So is what they do to the French. Sharpe surprised himself by saying it, but it was true. He remembered the naked prisoners, wondered how the other captured Hussars had died.
'Yes. Kearsey used the tone of a man trying to avoid an argument.
The girl looked at Sharpe and he saw she was holding back tears, her face rigid with an anger that was frightening. Sharpe swatted at a fly. 'Where's the gold?
Kearsey followed him, spurs clicking on stone, and pointed at a stone slab that was flush with the hermitage floor. The building was not used for services. Even despite the ravages worked by the Poles it had the air of disuse, of being little more than storage for the village cemetery. It was a place that was consecrated only to death. The Major poked the stone slab with his toe. 'Under there.
'Sergeant!
'Sir!
'Find a bloody pick! Smartly!"
There was a comfort in orders, as if they could recall a war in which small babies did not die. He looked at the slab engraved with the name Moreno and beneath the letters an ornate and eroded coat of arms. Sharpe tried to forget the sound of the bodies being dragged outside. He tapped his toe on the shield.
'Noble family, sir?
'What? Oh. Kearsey was subdued. 'I don't know, Sharpe. Perhaps once.
The girl had her back to them and Sharpe realized that this was her family's vault. It made Sharpe wonder, with an irritating gesture, where his own body would finally rest. Beneath the ashes of some battlefield, or drowned like the poor reinforcements in their transport ships? 'Sergeant!
'Sir?
'Where's that pick?
Harper kicked at the debris left by the Poles, then grunted and stooped. He had the pick, minus its handle, and he thrust it into the gap between the stones. He heaved, the veins on his face standing out, and with a shudder the slab moved, lifted, and there was a space large enough for Sharpe to slide a piece of broken stone beneath.
'You men! Faces looked round from the door of the hermitage. 'Come here!
Teresa had gone to a second door, opening into the cemetery, and stood there as if she was not interested. Harper found another spot, levered again, and this time it was easier and there was enough space for a dozen hands to take hold of the slab and pull it from the floor, swinging it like a trapdoor, while Kearsey fussed that they would let it fall and bequeath to the Morenos a broken vault. Dark steps led down into the blackness. Sharpe stood at the top, claiming the right to be first down.