High above Cox, by the castle and cathedral that topped Almeida's hill, Sharpe pushed open the bakery door. The ovens were curved shapes in the blackness, cold to the touch, and Teresa shivered beside him despite being swathed in the Rifleman's long green greatcoat. He ached. His leg, shoulder, the sliced cuts either side of his waist, and a head that throbbed after talking too deep into the early morning.
Knowles had pleaded, 'There must be another way!
'Tell me.
Now, in the cold silence, Sharpe still tried to find another way. To talk to Cox? Or Kearsey? But only Sharpe knew how desperately Wellington needed the gold. To Cox and Kearsey it was unimaginable that a few thousand gold coins could save Portugal, and Sharpe could not tell them how, because he had not been told. He damned the secrecy. It would mean death for hundreds; but if the gold did not get through it would mean a lost war.
Teresa would be gone, anyway. In a few hours they would part, he to the army, she back to the hills and her own fight. He held her close, smelling her hair, wanting to be with her, but then they stepped apart as footsteps sounded outside and Patrick Harper pushed open the door and peered into the gloom.
'Sir?
'We're here. Did you get it?
'No problem. Harper sounded happy enough. He gestured past Helmut. 'One barrel of powder, sir, compliments of Tom Garrard.
'Did he ask what it was for?
Harper shook his head. 'He said if it was for you, sir, it was all right. He helped the German bring the great keg through the door. 'Bloody heavy, sir.
'Will you need help?
Harper straightened up with a scoffing look. 'An officer carrying a barrel, sir? This is the army! No. We got it here; we'll do the rest.
'You know what to do?
The question was unnecessary. Sharpe looked through the dirty window, across the Plaza, and in the thin light saw that the cathedral doors were still shut. Perhaps the pile of cartridges had been moved. Had Wellington sent a messenger on a fast horse with orders for Cox on the half chance that Sharpe was in Almeida? He forced his mind away from the nagging questions.
'Let's get on with it.
Helmut borrowed Harper's bayonet and chipped at the centre of the barrel, making a hole, widening it till it was the size of a musket muzzle. He grunted his satisfaction. Harper nodded at Sharpe. 'We'll be on our way. He sounded casual. Sharpe made himself grin.
'Go slowly.
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.