Astrid had been directing people into the sailors’ cemetery, but now ran back through the gate’s archway and up the stairs. “There are still the cripples,” she told Sharpe.
“Where?”
She pointed to a corner room and Sharpe ran round the open balcony to find six terrified children in their beds. Clouter had come back to the courtyard and Sharpe simply carried the children out to the balcony one by one and threw them down to the seaman who caught and handed them to other adults who had come to help. Sharpe tossed the last child down just as a bomb splintered through the remnants of the chapel and exploded in its doorway to slash metal fragments and slivers of wood across the yard. No one was touched. Sharpe had blood on his back where scraps of the stained glass window had slit through his coat and jacket, but he was unaware of it. “Is that all?” he shouted to Astrid over the thump of bombs and the sound of fire.
“That’s all!”
The last of the children had been carried to the graveyard and Clouter was alone in the courtyard. “Get out!” Sharpe shouted to him, then he took Astrid’s hand and led her around the balcony toward the stairhead. The burning dormitory was like a furnace as he passed, then a bomb crashed through the outside staircase, splintering its steps. A carcass followed, hissing tongues of white fire in the courtyard. Sharpe pulled Astrid into the main landing and ran down the inside stairs to find Clouter in the small hallway. “I told you to get out.”
“Came to get this,” Clouter said, brandishing Hopper’s seven-barreled gun. Sharpe picked up his own weapons. Tiles were clattering into the courtyard as more bombs hit the building, and he hoped to God the gunners were not shifting their aim northward for then the cemetery would be under fire. “All we have to do now,” he told Clouter, “is look after Mister Skovgaard.” The orphanage shuddered as two new bombs exploded. A child’s doll, its hair burning bright, skidded across the smoke-filled yard as Sharpe led Astrid and Clouter toward the gate, then he suddenly twisted to his right and shouted a warning.
He shouted because there were soldiers in the archway and Lavisser was with them, and the men were bringing their muskets up to their shoulders. Sharpe picked up the shell that Hopper had defused and hurled it one-handed toward the men who, seeing it, flinched away and Sharpe dragged Astrid back through the door. He slammed it shut, shot its bolt then took Astrid by the shoulders. “Do the windows on this floor have bars?”
She looked at him uncertainly, then shook her head. “No.”
“Then find a window, climb out and go to the cemetery. Hurry!” Musket butts were already pounding on the bolted door.
Sharpe pushed Astrid down the corridor then he ran up the stairs and out onto the smoke-wreathed balcony. Clouter followed as Sharpe ran to the undamaged end of the building where he stopped, turned and aimed the seven-barreled gun at the soldiers trying to break the door down. Then he hesitated. His quarrel was with Lavisser, not with the soldiers, but he could not see Lavisser, or Barker, though he did see a man climbing through one of the windows that opened onto the courtyard. Was Lavisser already inside? Flames were flying high to his right, licking at the rafters of the dormitories. He and Clouter were going to be trapped here, Sharpe thought, burned to death. Then one of the soldiers saw them and shouted to his comrades and Sharpe, still unwilling to start a private war in the burning building, pulled Clouter back into the undamaged dormitory. A bomb smashed into the yard and he heard screams. “What are we going to do?” Clouter asked him.
“God knows.” Sharpe slung the seven-barreled gun on his shoulder and went to the windows. They were barred to stop boys from being daredevils and he shook the bars, hoping that they could be loosened and that he and Clouter could drop down into the orphanage garden and make their way unseen to the cemetery, but the iron bars felt frustratingly solid. He swore and tugged again. Clouter saw what he was doing and came to help and the big man gave a grunt as he heaved on an iron rod. It came away in his hand, splintering the wooden sill.