The path was steep. The drizzle had made it slick and treacherous, causing one of Sharpe’s men to slip and crash into a tangle of thorn branches. Everyone froze. Spines of thorn snappedand tore as the man pulled himself free.
Sharpe could see the great arched door of the Convent, a single slit of light showing where the doors were slightly ajar. Shouts and laughter came from the building, and once a crash of glass and loud jeers. There were womens’ voices among the mens. He went slowly, testing each foothold, feeling the excitement because he was so close to revenging himself for the insults of his last visit.
The door opened. He stopped, the men behind him stopped without orders, and two figures were silhouetted in the archway of the Convent. One man, with a musket on his shoulder, clapped the shoulder of the second man and pushed him out into the roadway. Clear over the sounds of revelry was the noise of the second man retching. Christmas was working its magic in the Convent. The first man, presumably the sentry, laughed from the archway. He stamped his feet, blew on his hands, and Sharpe heard him shout for the sick man to come inside. The door closed on them.
The slope was gentler now and Sharpe risked a glance behind and was shocked by how naked and visible his men appeared to be. Surely they must be seen! Yet no one had shouted an alarm from the valley, no shot had stabbed the night, and then he was at the edge of the bushes and he brought his men to a halt. ‘Taylor and Bell?’
‘Sir?’
‘Good luck to you.’
The two Riflemen, greatcoats hiding their uniforms, went forward towards the Convent. Sharpe would have liked to have done this piece of work, but there was a danger that the sentry might recognize him or Harper. He must wait.
He had chosen both men carefully, for to kill a man silently with a bare blade was no job for a keen beginner. Bell had learned his skills in the London streets, Taylor across the other side of the world, but both men were confident. Their job was simply to kill the sentry or sentries in the entrance-way.
They made no attempt to hide their approach. Their feet dragged on the roadway, their voices slurred as if with drink, and Sharpe heard foul oaths from Bell as the Rifleman stepped in the vomit at the foot of the steps. The door opened, and the sentry looked out. The door was pushed wider open and a second man stood there, musket slung. ‘Come on! It’s bloody cold!’ A brazier flamed behind them.
Taylor sat down on the bottom step and began singing. He held a bottle up that had been provided by Sharpe. ‘Got a present for you.’ He sang the words over and over, laughing at the same time.
Bell bowed to them. ‘A present!’
‘Christ! Come on!’
Bell gestured at Taylor. ‘He can’t walk.’
The bottle was still held up. The two sentries came down the steps good-naturedly and one reached for the bottle and never saw the right hand pull the honed blade from inside the greatcoat, swing, and the sentry’s right hand was touching the bottle as Taylor’s blade went in under the armpit, travelling slightly upwards, straight to the tangle of heart and arteries. Taylor still held the bottle, but now he supported the dead weight of the man as well.
Bell grinned at the second sentry just as alarm touched his face and the Londoner was still grinning as his blade cut any shout from the man’s throat. Sharpe saw the body lurch, saw it held, saw the two Riflemen taking the corpses into the shadows. ‘Come!’
He took the rest of his men forward. Frederickson was at the foot of the slope now, beginning the slow count towards fifteen minutes or the sound of the shot that would signal vengeance for Adrados.
The Convent steps were messy with the blood of Bell’s victim and Sharpe’s boots made dark footprints in the entrance tunnel beside the brazier. He walked alone into the upper cloister, stepping into the shadows of the arched walkway, and the cloister seemed to be deserted. The shouts, the laughter, both came from the inner cloister, but as he waited, his eyes searching the courtyard, he heard moans and small voices from the’darkness. The tunnel ahead of him, the passage through which he and Dubreton had been escorted to see the woman branded with the word ‘puta’ was empty, the door and grille open. He held out his left hand and clicked his fingers and then led his men under the dark of the cloister’s walkway, going slowly. Their boots seemed to be loud on the stones. The brazier touched light on the tiles about the raised pool.