down. 'Who's that?
'Robert! Robert Knowles!
'Robert?
'Yes! Open up!
'Where's Richard?
'I don't know. I wasn't with him. Knowles was standing back, staring up at the narrow balcony. The screams were coming nearer, the musket shots, and Teresa looked down the hill at the first flickerings of burning houses. 'Wait! I'll open up! She banged the shutters close, latched them, and opposite, in deep shadow, Hakeswill grinned to himself. He could rush the door as she opened it, but the officer, he could see, was carrying a drawn sabre and he remembered that the bitch herself carried weapons. He looked up to the balcony. It was not high and, beneath it, the groundfloor window was barred with a lattice of black iron. He waited.
The front door opened, creaking on hinges, and he saw the girl silhouetted in the gap for the brief instant it took for Knowles to enter. The door shut and Hakeswill moved, surprisingly fast and soft for such a man, straight to the barred window that gave such easy footholds, up till he could reach back to the balcony's base and then the strength was all in his arms. He paused briefly, his face suddenly twitching, but then the spasm passed and he pulled, the powerful arms making it easy, hand over hand till his feet caught on the balcony and he climbed over the rail. The shutter was wooden, gapped for the night air and he could see the empty room. He pushed at the shutter. It was locked, but he pushed again, increasing the pressure, and the wood creaked, bent, and then splintered inwards. He froze, but the noise of the city's sack was covering his own noise, and he moved again, into the room, and the bayonet whispered from the scabbard.
A cry: he turned, and there, in a wooden cot, was a baby. Sharpe's bastard. He cackled to himself, crossed the room and stared down. The child had cried in its sleep. He took off his hat and held the hat over the baby and talked to the hat. 'Do you see? There it is. Like I was once? Is that right, Mother? Like me. The child moved and Hakeswill crooned. 'Sleepibubber, sleepibubber. You remember saying that, Mother, to your Obadiah?
A footstep on the stairs, another, the creak of wood, and voices outside. He could hear the girl and the officer and he dropped the hat, on to the baby, and pulled the pistol from within his jacket. He was still, listening to her voice, the bayonet in his left hand, pistol in his right, and the baby cried again, in her sleep, and Teresa opened the door and spoke to it in gentle Spanish.
And stopped.
'Hello, missy! The face twitched, yellow in the candlelight, the mouth grinning, black teeth showing on rotten gums, and the raw scar on the ungainly neck, twitching with the head. Hakeswill laughed. 'Hello! Remember me?
Teresa looked at her child and the bayonet was just above Antonia's cot and she gasped. Knowles pushed her aside, brought up the sabre, and the pistol flared, waking the child, and the bullet threw Knowles backward, backward through the door to fall with Hakeswill's cackle the last sound in his life.
Hakeswill kept the bayonet above the baby and pushed the pistol, still smoking, back into his jacket. The blue eyes turned to Teresa, her own gaze fixed on the bayonet, and he grinned at her. 'Didn't need him, missy, did we? Only takes two to do what we're going to do. He cackled, a mad sound, but his eyes were level and his bayonet steady. 'Shut the door, missy.
She swore at him, and he laughed. She was more beautiful than he remembered, the dark hair framing the fine face, and he bent down and put his right hand beneath the baby. It was crying. She moved towards it, but the bayonet flickered, and she stopped. Hakeswill picked the child up, bedclothes bundled, and he held it awkwardly in his right arm and his left was held out and bent back so that the needle-pointed bayonet was at the tiny, soft throat. 'I said shut the door. His voice was low, very low, and he saw the fear on her face and his desire was heavy, so heavy.
She shut the door, slamming it on Knowles's dead feet, and Hakeswill nodded at it. 'Bolt it. The bolt slammed home.
The hat was still in the cot and Hakeswill regretted it because he would like his mother, whose likeness was in the crown, to see this, but it could not be helped. He walked slowly towards Teresa, who backed away, back towards the bed where her rifle was laid, and he grinned at her, twitched, and the triumph was in his voice. 'Just you and me, missy. Just you and Obadiah.
CHAPTER 29
'Which way?
'God knows! Sharpe searched frantically for a main street. The central breach faced a tangle of alleys. He chose an opening at random and started running. 'This way!
There were screams ahead, shots, and bodies lying in the alleyway. It was too dark to tell if the corpses were French or Spanish. The alley stank of blood, death, and the night soil thrown earlier from the upper windows, and the two men slipped in their haste. Light came from a cross-alley and Sharpe turned instinctively, still running, with a huge bloodied sword held like a lance.
A door opened ahead and spilt men into the alley, blocking it, and after them came wine barrels, huge tins, that they hammered with their musket-butts until the staves burst and the wine cascaded on to the cobbles. The men dropped, put mouths to the gushing liquid, scooped at it, and Sharpe and Harper kicked them aside, pushed past, and came out into the small plaza. One house burned, throwing the light that had attracted them, and in the blaze they could see a mediaeval depiction of hell. The people of Badajoz suffered the torments of red-jacketed devils. A naked woman wandered, sobbing and bloodied, in the plaza's centre. She was too hurt to feel any more, too abused to care, and when new men, fresh from the breach, grabbed her and threw her down she made no protest, but sobbed on, and all around it was the same. Some women struggled, some had died, others had watched their children die, and around them the victors capered, half dressed, half drunk, lit by the fire and festooned with their loot.
Some of the devils fought, squabbling over women or wine, and Sharpe saw two Portuguese soldiers bayonet a British Sergeant, seize the woman beneath him, and drag her into a house. Her child, screaming hysterically, toddled after, but the door was slammed and the child left. Harper's face showed a terrible fury. He kicked the door, bursting it open, and plunged into the house. A shot was fired, splintering the lintel, and then the Portuguese came out, one after the other, thrown with a bone-crunching force and the Irishman picked up the child, handed it in, and shut the door as best he could. He shrugged at Sharpe. 'Others will get her.’
Which way? Two roads led uphill, the larger to the left, and Sharpe took it, pushing through the riot, the scenes from hell. Once, inexplicably, the pavement seemed to be running with silver coins that no one touched. One by one the doors were shot open, the houses ripped apart, a whole city at an army's mercy, and the army had little. A few men showed decency, protecting a woman or a family, but the decent men were too often shot down. Officers who tried to stop the carnage were shot, discipline was dead, the mob ruled Badajoz.
Screams deafened the two men, and they were thrown back on to a wall by a horde of women, stark naked, who, slobbering and spitting, had erupted from an unbarred door. A nun screamed at them from the doorway, but more women came from inside and Sharpe knew a madhouse was emptying itself into the streets. There was no point in locking up the mad in Badajoz this night and there were whoops from behind and cheers as the soldiers charged up and into the lunatics. One pulled at the nun, while another leaped on to a huge, naked woman's back, gripped her wild, grey hair as reins, and all the soldiers tried to ride a lunatic.
'There, sir! Harper pointed. Above them and ahead was the cathedral tower, its square, crenellated outline obvious in the sky, and from its arched openings the bells jangled a cacophony because drunken men were dangling on the ropes, signaling a victory.
They stopped at the street's end, in front of the cathedral, and to their left was a great plaza, the rape beneath its trees lit by a huge fire, and to their right a dark alley. Sharpe started towards it, but his arm was pulled, and he turned to see a girl, short and weeping, clinging to his sleeve. She had been roused from a house, chased, and her pursuers came after as she held on to the tall man whose face had looked untouched by the madness. 'Senor! Senor!
Her tormentors, in the white facings of the 43rd, reached for the girl and Sharpe swept the sword at them,
