‘So is what they do to the French.’ Sharpe surprised himself by saying it, but it was true. He remembered the naked prisoners, wondered how the other captured Hussars had died.
‘Yes.’ Kearsey used the tone of a man trying to avoid an argument.
The girl looked at Sharpe and he saw she was holding back tears, her face rigid with an anger that was frightening. Sharpe swatted at a fly. ‘Where’s the gold?’
Kearsey followed him, spurs clicking on stone, and pointed at a stone slab that was flush with the hermitage floor. The building was not used for services. Even despite the ravages worked by the Poles it had the air of disuse, of being little more than storage for the village cemetery. It was a place that was consecrated only to death. The Major poked the stone slab with his toe. ‘Under there.’
‘Sergeant!’
‘Sir!’
‘Find a bloody pick! Smartly!”
There was a comfort in orders, as if they could recall a war in which small babies did not die. He looked at the slab engraved with the name Moreno and beneath the letters an ornate and eroded coat of arms. Sharpe tried to forget the sound of the bodies being dragged outside. He tapped his toe on the shield.
‘Noble family, sir?’
‘What? Oh.’ Kearsey was subdued. ‘I don’t know, Sharpe. Perhaps once.’
The girl had her back to them and Sharpe realized that this was her family’s vault. It made Sharpe wonder, with an irritating gesture, where his own body would finally rest. Beneath the ashes of some battlefield, or drowned like the poor reinforcements in their transport ships? ‘Sergeant!’
‘Sir?’
‘Where’s that pick?’
Harper kicked at the debris left by the Poles, then grunted and stooped. He had the pick, minus its handle, and he thrust it into the gap between the stones. He heaved, the veins on his face standing out, and with a shudder the slab moved, lifted, and there was a space large enough for Sharpe to slide a piece of broken stone beneath.
‘You men!’ Faces looked round from the door of the hermitage. ‘Come here!’
Teresa had gone to a second door, opening into the cemetery, and stood there as if she was not interested. Harper found another spot, levered again, and this time it was easier and there was enough space for a dozen hands to take hold of the slab and pull it from the floor, swinging it like a trapdoor, while Kearsey fussed that they would let it fall and bequeath to the Morenos a broken vault. Dark steps led down into the blackness. Sharpe stood at the top, claiming the right to be first down.
‘Candle? Come on, someone! There’s got to be a candle!’
Hagman had one in his pack, a greasy but serviceable stump, and there was a pause while it was lit. Sharpe stared into the blackness. Here was where Wellington’s hopes were pinned? It was ludicrous.
He took the candle and began the slow descent into the tomb and to a different kind of smell. This was not a sweet smell, not rank, but dusty because the bodies had been here a long time, some long enough for the coffins to have collapsed and to show the gleam of dry bones. Others were newer, still intact, the stonework below their niches stained with seeping liquid, but Sharpe was not looking at coffins. He held the miserable light high, sweeping it round the small space and saw, bright in the corruption, the flash of metal. It was not gold, just a discarded piece of brass that had once bound the corner of a casket.
Sharpe turned to look at Kearsey. ‘There’s no gold.’
‘No.’ The Major looked round, as if he might have missed sixteen thousand gold coins on the empty floor. ‘It’s gone.’
‘Where was it stored?’ Sharpe knew it was hopeless, but he would not give up.
‘There. Where you are.’
‘Then where’s it gone, sir?’
Kearsey sniffed, drew himself up to his full height. ‘How would I know, Sharpe? All I know is that it is not here.’ He sounded almost vindicated.
‘And where’s Captain Hardy?’ Sharpe was angry. To have come this far, for nothing.