Sharpe’s Havoc by Bernard Cornwell

„Depends how many sinners there are,” Sharpe said, „and now we search the place.”

He left six men in the entrance hall to serve as a picquet, then went downstairs to unbolt one of the arched doors facing the river. That door would be his bolt hole if the French came to the seminary and, once that retreat was secure, he searched the dormitories, bathrooms, kitchens, refectory and lecture rooms of the vast building. Broken furniture littered every room and in the library a thousand books lay strewn and torn across the hardwood floor, but there were no people. The chapel had been violated, the altar chopped for firewood and the choir used as a lavatory. „Bastards,” Harper said softly. Gataker, his trigger guard dangling by one last screw, gaped at an amateur painting of two women curiously joined to three French dragoons that had been daubed on the whitewashed wall where once a great triptych of the holy birth had surmounted the altar. „Good that,” he said in a tone as respectful as he might have used at the Royal Academy’s summer exhibition.

„I like my women a bit plumper,” Slattery said.

„Come on!” Sharpe snarled. His most urgent task now was to find the seminary’s store of wine-he was certain there would be one-but when at last he discovered the cellar he saw, with relief, that the French had already been there and nothing remained but broken bottles and empty barrels. „Real bastards!” Harper said feelingly, but Sharpe would have destroyed the bottles and barrels himself to prevent his men from drinking themselves insensible. And that thought made him realize that he had already unconsciously decided that he would stay in this big building as long as he could. The French doubtless wanted to hold Oporto, but whoever held the seminary dominated the city’s eastern flank.

The long facade with its myriad windows facing the river was deceptive, for the building was very narrow; scarce a dozen windows looked straight toward Oporto, though at the rear of the seminary, furthest from the city, a long wing jutted north. In the angle of the two wings was a garden where a score of apple trees had been cut down for firewood. The two sides of the garden not cradled by the building were protected by a high stone wall pierced by a pair of fine iron gates that opened toward Oporto. In a shed, hidden beneath a pile of netting that had once been used to keep birds from the fruit bushes, Sharpe found an old pickaxe that he gave to Cooper. „Start making loopholes,” he said, pointing to the long wall. „Patrick! Find some more tools. Detail six men to help Coops, and the rest of the men are to go to the roof, but they’re not to show themselves. Understand? They’re to stay hidden.”

Sharpe himself went to a large room that he suspected had been the office of the seminary’s master. It was shelved like a library, and it had been plundered like the rest of the building. Torn and broken-spined books lay thick on the floorboards, a large table had been thrown against one wall and a slashed oil painting of a saintly-looking cleric was half burned in the big hearth. The only undamaged object was a crucifix, black as soot, that hung high on the wall above the mantel.

Sharpe threw open the window that was immediately above the seminary’s main door and used the little telescope to search the city that lay so tantalizingly close across the valley. Then, disobeying his own instructions that everyone was to stay hidden, he leaned across the sill in an attempt to see what was happening on the river’s southern bank, but he could see nothing meaningful and then, while he was still craning his neck, a stranger’s voice boomed behind him. „You must be Lieutenant Sharpe. Name’s Waters, Lieutenant Colonel Waters, and well done, Sharpe, bloody well done.”

Sharpe pulled back and turned to see a red-coated officer stepoine through the mess of books and papers. „I’m Sharpe, sir,” he acknowledged.

„Bloody Frogs are dozing,” Waters said. He was a stocky man, bow-legged from too much horse-riding, with a weather-beaten face. Sharpe guessed he was in his low forties, but looked older because his grizzled hair was gray. „They should have had a battalion and a half up here, shouldn’t they? That and a couple of gun batteries. Our enemies are dozing, Sharpe, bloody dozing.”

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