It was empty, mocking him, white stonework in the moonlight, and the ladder had presumably been put there for some repairs and later taken down, though who would repair anything just before the French began their bombardment was a mystery. He padded into the space, a large, square area, and still was hidden from the house by the loom of the transept roof, and now he could hear voices, across the street, calling him. He could hear Harper, alarmed, and Lossow shouting at sentries, and he was about to call back when he heard the creak, and jumped to one side.
The trapdoor opened, an inch or two at first, sending out a plume of cigar smoke. Then it was pushed back until held by a chain and a man appeared, dark-cloaked, who climbed on to the roof and did not see Sharpe in the shadow by the tower, because he did not expect to see anything. The man, heavily moustached, crossed to the transept roof, leaned past it till he could see the street, then softly called back in Spanish. The Partisan must have heard the commotion, Sharpe thought, and sent a sentry to look. The man puffed on his cigar, listened to the shouts, and crouched to stub it out. No one else had appeared; the church interior was in darkness; Sharpe hardly breathed as he pushed himself close to the stonework.
An urgent whisper came from the ladder beneath the trapdoor. The man with the cigar nodded. 'Si, si.' He sounded weary, yawned, and came back to the ladder. At first he was not sure what he saw, just a shadow, and he peered at the shape.
The shape moved, turned into a man with a sword, and the tired sentry jumped back, opened his mouth, but Sharpe was ramming the blade forward, aiming at the throat, and he missed. It grated on a rib, slid, and then went home, but the man had shouted and there were feet on the ladder. The damned sword was stuck. Sharpe let the blade go down with its victim, put his foot on the man's chest, turned, and felt the suction give way and the blade free itself. There was a second man half out the trapdoor, a pistol in his hand, and Sharpe ducked, threw the sword out as the gun exploded and the ball hammered into the roof tiles. Sharpe shouted an inarticulate challenge, flailed the blade down on the man, and heard him fall from the ladder. He grabbed the trapdoor, was about to shut it.
'No!' The voice was from below; the church suddenly lit up. 'Wait!' It was El Catolico's voice, deep and silken. 'Who is that?'
'Sharpe.' He was standing behind the trapdoor, invisible from below, unassailable.
El Catolico chuckled. 'May I come up?'
'Why?'
'You can't come down. There are too many of us. So I have to come up. Will you let me up?'
There were shouts across the street. 'Captain! Captain!'
He ignored them. 'Just you?'
'Just me.' The voice was amused, tolerant. Sharpe heard the footsteps on the ladder, saw the light coming, and then a hand put an unmasked lantern on the roof and there was El Catolico's dark head, turning, smiling, and the other hand brought up his rapier, which he tossed, ringing, on to the far side of the roof. 'There. Now you can kill me. You won't, though, because you are a man of honour.'
'Am I?'
El Catolico smiled again, still halfway through the trapdoor. 'Kearsey doesn't think so, but Kearsey equates honour with God. You don't. May I come up? I'm alone.'
Sharpe nodded. He waited till the tall Spaniard was on the roof and then kicked the trapdoor shut. It was heavy, thick enough to stop a bullet, but for added safety Sharpe pulled the iron ladder on top.
El Catolico watched. 'You are nervous. They won't come up.' He cocked a friendly eye at Sharpe. 'Why are you here?'
'The ladder was missing.'
The tall Spaniard looked puzzled. The hands spread apart in an uncertain gesture. 'Missing?'
Sharpe kicked it. 'It was up the tower this morning. This evening it was gone.'
'Ah!' He laughed. 'We used it to climb the church wall.' He looked at Sharpe's dishevelled uniform. 'I see you had other methods.' In one of his graceful gestures he opened his cloak. 'You see? No pistol. I have only the sword.' He made no attempt to pick it up.
Above the church roof Sharpe could see the sudden flare of torches. Search parties were starting out. There was sweat on the palm of his sword hand, but he would not give the Spaniard the satisfaction of seeing him wipe it off.
'Why are you here?'
'To pray with you.' El Catolico laughed, jerked his head at the street. 'They're making so much noise they won't hear us. No, Captain, I'm here to kill you.'
Sharpe smiled. 'Why? You've got the gold.'
El Catolico nodded. 'I don't trust you, Sharpe. As long as you're alive I don't think the gold will be easy to collect, though Brigadier Cox presents you with a problem.' Sharpe acknowledged it with a nod and El Catolico looked at him shrewdly. 'How were you going to solve it?'
'The same way that I intend to solve it tomorrow.' He wished he were as confident as he sounded. He had seen El Catolico in action, measured swords with him, and he was thinking desperately how he could win the fight that must start soon. The tall Spaniard smiled, gestured at his rapier.
'Do you mind? You can kill me, of course, before I reach it, but I don't think you will.' He had talked as he moved and then he stopped, picked it up, and turned round. 'I was right. You see? You are a man of honour!'
Sharpe could feel the new blood wet on his chest and he rested his sword as the Spaniard, with a studied ease, dropped his cloak and flexed the blade. El Catolico took the tip of the rapier in his left hand and bent it, almost double.
'A fine blade, Captain. From Toledo. But then, I forgot, we have already tried each other.' He moved into the swordsman's crouch, right leg bent, left leg extended behind. 'En garde!''
The rapier flickered towards Sharpe, but the Rifleman did not move. El Catolico straightened. 'Captain, do you not want to fight? I assure you it is a better death than the one I had planned.'
'What was that?' Sharpe thought of the ladder, the sudden rush in the dark.
The Spaniard smiled. 'A distraction down the street, a fire, lots of shouts, and you would have come to your balcony. The ever ready Captain, prepared for battle, and then a volley of shots would have stopped you forever.'
Sharpe smiled. It was far simpler than his extraordinary imaginings, and it would have worked. 'And the girl?'
'Teresa?' El Catolico's pose slipped a little. He shrugged. 'What could she have done with you dead? She would have been forced back.'
'You would have enjoyed that.'
The Spaniard shrugged. 'En garde, Captain.'
Sharpe had so little time. He had to unsettle the Spaniard's elegant posture. El Catolico knew he would win, could afford to be magnanimous, was anticipating the inevitable display of his superior swordsmanship. Sharpe still kept his blade low and the rapier went down.
'Captain! Are you frightened?' El Catolico smiled gently. 'You're afraid I'm the better man.'
'Teresa says not.'
It was not much, but enough. Sharpe saw the fury in El Catolico's face, the sudden loss of control, and he brought up the huge blade, rammed it forward, and knew that El Catolico would not parry but simply kill him for the insult. The rapier flickered, lightning-fast, but Sharpe turned his body, saw the blade go past, and brought his elbow hard into El Catolico's ribs, turned back and hammered down with the brass-guarded hilt of the sword on to the Spaniard's head. El Catolico was fast. He twisted away, the blow glanced off his skull, but Sharpe heard the grunt and he followed it with a sweeping killer of a blow, a stroke that would have disembowelled an ox, and the Spaniard leapt backwards, and again, and Sharpe had failed, and he knew, with a fighter's instinct, that El Catolico had recovered, survived the devastating attack, and would now fall back on his skill.
There was a hammering from downstairs, the blast of a musket, and El Catolico smiled. 'Time to die, Sharpe. Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine.' He came forward like quicksilver, past Sharpe's clumsy parry, and the blade drew blood at Sharpe's waist. 'Et lux perpetua luceat eis.' The voice was like silk, beautiful and hypnotic, and the blade went to the other side of Sharpe's waist, razored hi
s skin, and was gone. Sharpe knew he was being toyed with, a plaything, while the prayer lasted, and he could do nothing. He remembered Helmut's techniques and went for El Catolico's eyes, stabbing the empty air, and the Spaniard laughed. 'Go slow, Sharpe! Te decet hymnus, Deus, in Sion.'
Sharpe lunged desperately for the eyes; Helmut had made it look easy, but El Catolico just swayed to one side and the rapier came low at the Rifleman, aiming at the thigh for another flesh wound, and Sharpe had only one, desperate, insane idea left. He let the rapier come, kicked his right thigh forward, and pushed the blade painfully into his flesh so that El Catolico could not use it. The Spaniard tried to drag it free; Sharpe felt the tearing in his leg, but he had the initiative, was still driving forward, and he hit the Spaniard with the heavy guard of the sword, scraping it up the face, and El Catolico abandoned the rapier and went backwards. Sharpe followed, the rapier stuck clean through his thigh, and El Catolico grabbed at it, missed, and Sharpe swept his blade down, caught El Catolico's forearm; the Spaniard cried out and Sharpe back-swung him with the flat of his blade, a scything crack across the skull, and the Partisan fell.
Sharpe stopped. There were shouts below. 'Captain!'
'Up here! On the church roof!'
He could hear footsteps below, pounding in the alleyway, and he suspected the Partisans were abandoning the unequal conflict. He stopped and took hold of El Catolico's rapier. The wound hurt, but Sharpe knew he had been lucky; the blade had gone through the outer muscles and the blood and pain were worse than the damage. He pulled at the sword, clenching his teeth, and it slid free. He held the rapier in his hands, felt its fine balance, and knew he could never have defeated it except for the madness of driving his body on to the inlaid blade and denying El Catolico his skill.
The Spaniard moaned, still unconscious, and Sharpe crossed to him, bleeding and limping, and looked down at his enemy. His eyes were closed, the lids flickering slightly, and Sharpe took his own sword, put it at El Catolico's throat. 'A butcher's blade, eh?' He stabbed down till the point hit the roof, twisted it, then kicked the neck free of the blade. 'That was for Claud Hardy.' There would be no fiefdom in the mountains, no private kingdom, for El Catolico.
There was a thumping on the trapdoor. 'Who's that?'
'Sergeant Harper!'
'Wait!'
He pushed the ladder to one side and the trapdoor was pushed up and Harper appeared, a smoking torch in one hand. The Irishman looked first at Sharpe, then at the body. 'God save Ireland. What were you doing, sir? A competition to see who could bleed the most?'
'He wanted to kill me.'
The eyebrows went up. 'Really?' Harper looked at the dead man. 'He was a fine swordsman, sir. How did you do it?'
Sharpe told him. How he had gone for the eyes, failed, so had impaled himself on the sword. Harper listened, shook his head.
'You're a bloody fool, sir. Let's see the leg.'
Teresa came up, followed by Lossow and Knowles, and the story had to be told again, and Sharpe felt the tension flow out of him. He watched Teresa kneel by the body.
'Does it upset you?'
She shook her head, busy at something, and Sharpe watched as she searched beneath the blood-stained clothes and found, round the dead man's waist, a money-belt thick with coins. She opened one of the pockets.
'Gold.'
'Keep it.'
Sharpe was feeling his leg, tracing the wound, and he knew he had been lucky and that the blade had torn a smaller wound than his stupidity deserved. He looked up at Harper. 'I'll need the maggots.'
Harper grinned. In a tin box he kept fat white maggots that lived only on dead flesh, spurning healthy tissue, and nothing cleaned a simple wound better than a handful dropped into the cut and bound in with a bandage. The Irishman took Sharpe's sash as a temporary dressing, bound it tight. 'It'll mend, sir.'
Lossow looked at the body. 'What now?'
'Now?' Sharpe wanted a glass of wine, another plate of that stew. 'Nothing. They have another leader. We still have to hand the gold over.'
Teresa spoke in Spanish, angry and vehement, and Sharpe smiled.
'What was that, sir?' Knowles was stunned by the blood on the roof.
'I don't think she likes the new leaders.' Sharpe flexed his left arm. 'If El Catolico's Lieutenants don't produce the gold, then they may not be leaders much longer. Is that right?'
She nodded.
'Then who will be?' Knowles sat down on the parapet.
'La Aguja.' Sharpe had trouble pronouncing the Spanish 'J -'
Teresa laughed, pleased, and Harper looked up from his own excursion into El Catolico's pockets.
'La what?'
'La Aguja. The Needle. Teresa. We have a bargain.'
Knowles looked astonished. Teresa? Miss Moreno?'
'Why not? She fights better than most of them.' He had made up the name, saw that it pleased her. 'But to make that happen we must keep the gold from the Spanish, get it out of the city, and finish this job.'
Lossow sighed, scraped his unused sabre back into its curved scabbard. 'Which brings us back to the old question, my friend. How?'
Sharpe had dreaded this moment, wanted to lead them gently towards it, but it had come. 'Who's stopping us?'
Lossow shrugged. 'Cox.'
Sharpe nodded. He spoke patiently. 'And Cox has his authority as Commander of the garrison. If there were no garrison, there would be no authority, no way to stop us.'
'So?' Knowles was frowning.
'So, at dawn tomorrow we destroy the garrison.'
There was a moment's utter silence, broken by Knowles. 'We can't!'
Teresa laughed at the sheer joy of it. 'We can!'
'God in his heaven!' Lossow's face was appalled, fascinated.
Harper did not seem surprised. 'How?'
So Sharpe told them.
Chapter 23
Almeida stirred early, that Monday morning; it was well before first light as men stamped their boots on cobbled streets and made the small talk that is the talisman against great events. The war, after all, had come to the border town, and between the defenders' outer glacis and the masked guns of the French, the hopes and fears of Europe were concentrated. In far-off cities men looked at maps. If Almeida could hold, then perhaps Portugal could be saved, but they knew better. Eight weeks at the most, they said, and probably just six, and then Massena's troops would have Lisbon at their mercy. The British had had their run and now it was over, the last hurdles to be cleared, but in St Petersburg and Vienna, Stockholm and Berlin, they let the maps curl up and wondered where the victorious blue-jacketed troops would be next sent. A pity about the British, but what did anyone expect?
Cox was on the southern ramparts, standing by a brazier, waiting for the first light to show him the new French batteries. Yesterday the French had fired a few shots, destroying the telegraph, but today, Cox knew, things would begin in earnest. He hoped for a great defence, a struggle that would make the history books, that would block the French till the rains of late autumn could save Portugal; but he also imagined the siege guns, the paths blasted through the great walls, and then the screaming, steel-tipped battalions that would come forward in the night to drown his hopes in chaos and defeat. Cox and the French both knew the town was the last obstacle to French victory, and, hope as Cox did, in his heart he did not believe that the town could hold out till the roads were swamped and the rivers made impassable by rain.
High above Cox, by the castle and cathedral that topped Almeida's hill, Sharpe pushed open the bakery door. The ovens were curved shapes in the blackness, cold to the touch, and Teresa shivered beside him despite being swathed in the Rifleman's long green greatcoat. He ached. His leg, shoulder, the sliced cuts either side of his waist, and a head that throbbed after talking too deep into the early morning.
Knowles had pleaded, 'There must be another way!'
'Tell me.'
Now, in the cold silence, Sharpe still tried to find another way. To talk to Cox? Or Kea
rsey? But only Sharpe knew how desperately Wellington needed the gold. To Cox and Kearsey it was unimaginable that a few thousand gold coins could save Portugal, and Sharpe could not tell them how, because he had not been told. He damned the secrecy. It would mean death for hundreds; but if the gold did not get through it would mean a lost war.
Teresa would be gone, anyway. In a few hours they would part, he to the army, she back to the hills and her own fight. He held her close, smelling her hair, wanting to be with her, but then they stepped apart as footsteps sounded outside and Patrick Harper pushed open the door and peered into the gloom.
'Sir?'
'We're here. Did you get it?'
'No problem.' Harper sounded happy enough. He gestured past Helmut. 'One barrel of powder, sir, compliments of Tom Garrard.'
'Did he ask what it was for?'
Harper shook his head. 'He said if it was for you, sir, it was all right.' He helped the German bring the great keg through the door. 'Bloody heavy, sir.'
'Will you need help?'
Harper straightened up with a scoffing look. 'An officer carrying a barrel, sir? This is the army! No. We got it here; we'll do the rest.'
'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.'