‘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.