“Yours, Hopper,” Sharpe said, and the three men ran to the smoky gateway and Sharpe again lit the tinder. Hopper held his bomb out, Sharpe put the fire to the fuse, then the bomb was rolled like a bowling ball into the courtyard’s center. The three men sheltered behind the wall. Someone shouted from the house. Sharpe suspected men were stationed in the carriage house and that they would be the first into the yard to investigate the first explosion, which was why he was sending them the second bomb. A voice shouted quite close, then Hopper’s bomb cracked the night apart, searing the alley with sudden flame light and filling the yard with more thick smoke.
Clouter was already at the gate with the third bomb. Sharpe struck the flint, blew on the charred linen and lit the fuse. He took the bomb from Clouter, stepped through the gate and ran a few paces into the smoke until he could just see where the steps went down to the basement entrance. The fuse hissed by his belly. He stopped, guaged the distance and heaved the shell over the remains of the shattered gate. The bomb landed on the stones short of the steps, wobbled for a second, then toppled over. Hopper and Clouter had their backs against the stable wall. Both were staring up through the smoke. A musket fired from an upper window and the ball smacked into the cobbles beside Sharpe, who stepped back and almost tripped on a body. So someone had been caught by the second bomb. Then the third exploded, blasting its flame straight up the back of the house. Glass shattered in a dozen windows.
“Come on!” Sharpe shouted. He had the rifle in his right hand as he ran down the steps and pushed through the ruins of the splintered door. He found himself in a kitchen lit by the flaming scraps of the blown door. No one was in sight. He jumped the burning wood, crossed the flagstone floor and pushed open the farther door to see a dark staircase going upward. Pistol shots sounded behind him and he snatched a glance to see that Clouter was firing up into the yard. “You need help?”
“They’re dead!” Clouter said, then backed away from the doorway and started reloading. An oilcloth covering a table by the window had caught fire. Sharpe ignored it, running up the stairs instead. Hopper came with him. Sharpe pushed open the door at the top to find himself in a wide hallway. There was a man on the stairs above, but he turned and vanished before Sharpe could aim the rifle. Clouter came up from the kitchen and behind him the smoke thickened with alarming speed.
“Upstairs,” Sharpe said. There were men up there, men who knew they were coming, men who would have guns, but he did not dare wait. The fire was flickering beneath him. “Wait here,” he told the two sailors. He hung the rifle on his shoulder and took the seven-barreled gun instead. He did not want to charge the stairs, but if he gave the men upstairs any longer then they would barricade themselves. He swore, nerved himself, and ran.
He took the stairs three at a time. Up to the half landing where there were two closed doors. He ignored them. His instinct said that the house’s inhabitants were higher up, so he swung round the corner of the landing and took the next stairs at a run and saw a half-open door ahead of him and saw a musket barrel there and he threw himself down just as the musket flamed. The bullet cracked into a portrait high on the stairwell wall and Sharpe heaved himself up, pushed the seven-barreled gun over the lip and pulled the trigger.
The seven bullets shredded the lower half of the door. A man screamed. Sharpe pulled out a pistol and fired again, then Hopper and Clouter were behind him and each of them fired into the door before running past Sharpe. “Wait!” he called. He wanted to be first into the room, not out of heroism, but because he had promised Captain Chase to look after the two men, but Clouter, the axe in his hand, had already shoulder-charged the door and tumbled through. “Pucelle,” the black man was shouting, “Pucelle!” just as if he was boarding an enemy ship.