“Thirteen minutes and forty-three seconds! See?”
“Has everyone gone mad around here?” Sharpe asked.
“Thirteen minutes and forty-three seconds is precisely how long it took us to capture the citadel! This watch measures elapsed time, do you see? You press this trigger to start it and this to stop it. I pressed the trigger as our bows touched the wharf, and stopped it when the last defender abandoned the ramparts. In fact I was a bit late, so we probably took less time, but even thirteen minutes and forty-three seconds is rather good for the capture of a citadel this size, don’t you think?” His Lordship, who was in an excitedly triumphant mood, snapped the watch lid shut. “I must thank you. Both of you.” He graciously bowed to both Sharpe and Harper.
“We didn’t do anything,” Sharpe said modestly.
“Not a great deal,” Harper amended Sharpe’s modesty.
“Numbers count for so much,” His Lordship said happily. “If I’d attacked with just thirty men then there would have been no hope of victory, but I’ve discovered that in this kind of war success is gained by small increments. Besides, your presence was worth more than you think. Half of my men fought in the French wars, and they know full well who you are, both of you! And they feel more confident when they know that famous soldiers such as yourselves are fighting beside them.”
Sharpe tried to brush the compliment aside, but Cochrane would have none of his coyness. “They feel precisely the same about my presence in a scrap. They fight better when I’m in command because they believe in me. And because they believe in my luck!”
“And Mister Sharpe’s always been lucky in a fight,” Harper added.
“There you are!” Cochrane beamed. “Napoleon always claimed he’d rather have lucky soldiers than clever ones, though I pride myself on being both.”
Sharpe laughed at His Lordship’s immodesty. “Why didn’t you tell us you’d arranged to have the O’Higgins fire just over our heads if the attack faltered?”
“Because if men know you’ve got an ace hidden up your sleeve they expect you to play it whether it’s needed or not. I didn’t want to run the risk of using the broadside unless I really had to, but if the men had known the broadside might be used they would have held back in the knowledge that the gunners would do some of the hard work for them.”
“It was a brilliant stroke,” Sharpe said.
“How truly you speak, my dear Sharpe.” Cochrane at last seemed to notice the destruction wrought by Harper’s sledgehammer. “What are you doing, Mister Harper?”
“Bias Vivar,” Harper explained. “He’s under here. We’re digging him up, only since we were last here the buggers have cemented him in place.”
“The devil they have.” Cochrane peered at the mess Harper had made of the slab as though expecting to see Vivar’s decayed flesh. “Do you know why people are buried close to altars?” he asked Sharpe airily.
“No,” Sharpe answered in the tone of a man who did not much care about the answer.
“Because very large numbers of Catholic churches have relics of saints secreted within their altars, of course.” Cochrane smiled, as if he had done Sharpe a great favor by revealing the answer.
The Dominican surgeon, his white gown streaked and spattered with bright new blood, had come to the altar to protest to Lord Cochrane about the spoliation being wrought by Harper, but Cochrane turned on the man and brusquely told him to shut up. “And why,” Cochrane continued blithely to Sharpe, “do you think the relics in the altar are important to the dead?”
“I really don’t know,” Sharpe said.
“Because, my dear Sharpe, of what will happen on the Day of Judgment.”
Harper had fetched a spade with which he chipped away the fragments of limestone. “They have used bloody cement!” he said in exasperation. “Goddamn them. Why did they do that? It was just shingle when we tried to pull him out before!”
“They used cement,” Cochrane said, “because they don’t want you to dig him up.”
“The Day of Judgment?” Sharpe, interested at last, asked Cochrane.
His Lordship, who had been examining the mangled remains of the altar screen, turned around. “Because, my dear Sharpe, common sense tells our Papist brethren that, at the sound of the last trump when the dead rise incorruptible, the saints will rise faster than us mere sinners. The rate of resurrection, so the doctrine claims, will depend on the holiness of the man or woman being raised from the dead, and naturally the saints will rise first and travel fastest to heaven. Thus the wise Papist, leaving nothing to chance, is buried close to the altar because it contains a saint’s relic which, on the Day of Judgment, will go speedily to heaven, creating a draught of wind which will catch up those close to the altar and drag them up to heaven with it.”