had hoped, that they were linen. He shook two of the bolts out, letting the cloth lie loosely across the wagon's load.
He jumped down, sheathed the sword, then broke open a cartridge to make a paper spill filled with gunpowder. He primed the unloaded volley gun, then glanced around the warehouse where men were dragging at supplies like fiends. A stack of rum barrels collapsed, crushing a man, who screamed as his legs were broken by a full barrel that split apart to flood rum across the floor. A Frenchman beat at another barrel with an axe, then dipped a tin cup into the rum. A dozen others went to join him, and no one took any notice of Sharpe as he cocked the unloaded volley gun.
He pulled the trigger, the priming flared and the spill caught. It fizzed angrily; he let the flame grow until the spill was burning well, then he tossed it down into the oil on the wagon bed. For a second the paper burned on its own, then a sheet of flame spread across the wagon and Sharpe snatched up the sack of food and ran.
For a few steps he was unimpeded. The men around the rum barrels ignored him as he edged past, but then the linen caught the fire and there was a sudden flare of light. A man shouted a warning, smoke began to spread, and the panic began. A dozen dragoons were fighting their way into the warehouse, ordered to the hopeless task of ejecting the men stealing the precious food, and now a wave of terrified soldiers struck the dragoons, two of whom fell, and there was screaming and snarling, the sound of a shot, and then the smoke thickened with appalling rapidity as the wagon caught fire. The cartridges in the pouch of the man whose food Sharpe had stolen began to explode and a burning scrap of paper fell into the rum and sudden blue flames rippled across the floor.
Sharpe ripped men away from his path, stamped on them, kicked them, then drew his sword because he reckoned it was the only thing that would clear the way. He stabbed men with the blade and they twisted aside, protesting, then shrank from the anger on his face, and behind him a small barrel of gunpowder exploded and the fire sprayed across the warehouse as Sharpe fought his way through the crush, except there was no way through. Scores of terrified men were blocking the gaps between the heaps, so Sharpe sheathed his sword, threw his sack of food up to the top of a stack of boxes and clambered up the side. He ran across the top. Cats fled from him. Smoke billowed in the rafters. He jumped to a half-collapsed heap of flour sacks, crossed them towards the doorway, then slid down the far side. He put his head down and ran, trampling fallen men, using his strength to escape the smoke, and burst out of the doors into the street where, gripping the sack of food to keep it safe, he worked his way back down to the house where he had left Harper.
'God save Ireland.' Harper was standing in the doorway, watching the chaos. Smoke was tumbling out of the great doors and more was spewing up from the broken skylight. Soldiers, scorched and coughing, were staggering out of the door. Screams sounded inside the warehouse, and then there was another explosion as the rum barrels cracked apart. There was a glow like a giant furnace in the doors now, and the sound of the fire was like the roaring of a huge river going through a ravine. 'You did that?' Harper asked.
'I did that,' Sharpe said. He felt tired suddenly, tired and ravenously hungry, and he went into the house where Vicente and the girls were waiting in a small room decorated with a picture of a saint holding a shepherd's crook. He looked at Vicente. 'Take us somewhere safe, Jorge.'
'Where's safe on a day like this?' Vicente asked.
'Somewhere a long way from this street,' Sharpe said, and the five of them went out of the back door and, looking back, Sharpe saw that the warehouse next to Ferragus's had caught the fire and its roof was now burning. More dragoons were evidently coming because Sharpe could hear the hooves loud in the narrow streets, but it was too late.
They went down one alley, up another, crossed a street and went through a courtyard where a dozen French soldiers were lying dead drunk. Vicente led them. 'We'll go uphill,' he said, not because he thought the upper town was any safer than the lower town, but because it had been his home.
No one accosted them. They were just another band of exhausted soldiers stumbling through the city. Behind them was fire, smoke and anger. 'What do we say if they challenge us?' Sarah asked Sharpe.
'Tell them we're Dutch.'
'Dutch?'
'They have Dutch soldiers,' Sharpe said.
The upper town was quieter. It was mostly cavalrymen quartered here and some of them told the interloping infantrymen to go away, but Vicente led them down an alley, through a courtyard, down some steps and into the garden of a big house. At the side of the garden was a cottage. 'The house belongs to a professor of theology,' Vicente explained, 'and his servants live here.' The cottage was tiny, but so far no French had found it. Sharpe, on his way uphill, had seen how some houses had a uniform coat hung in the doorway to denote that soldiers had taken up residence and that the place was not to be plundered, and so he took off his blue jacket and hung it from a nail above the cottage door. Maybe it would keep the enemy away, maybe not. They ate, all of them ravenous, tearing at the salt beef and hard biscuit, and Sharpe wished he could lie down and sleep for the rest of the day, but he knew the others must be feeling the same. 'Get some sleep,' he told them.
'What about you?' Vicente asked.
'Someone has to stand guard,' Sharpe said.
The cottage had one small bedroom, little more than a cupboard, and Vicente was given that because he was an officer, while Harper went into the kitchen where he made a bed from curtains, blankets and a greatcoat. Joana followed him and the kitchen door was firmly shut behind her. Sarah collapsed in an old, broken armchair from which tufts of horsehair protruded. 'I'll stay awake with you,' she told Sharpe, and a moment later she was fast asleep.
Sharpe loaded his rifle. He dared not sit for he knew he would never stay awake and so he stood in the doorway, the loaded rifle beside him, and he listened to the distant screams and he saw the great plume of smoke smearing the cloudless sky and he knew he had done his duty. Now all he had to do was get back to the army.
CHAPTER 10
Ferragus and his brother went back to the Major's house, which had been spared the plundering suffered by the rest of the city. A troop of dragoons from the same squadron that had ridden to protect the warehouse had been posted outside the house, and they were now relieved by a dozen men sent by Colonel Barreto who, when his day's work was complete, planned to billet himself in the house. Miguel and five others of Ferragus's men were at the house, safe there from French attention, and it was Miguel who interrupted the brothers' celebrations by reporting that the warehouse was burning.
Ferragus had just opened a third bottle of wine. He listened to Miguel, carried the bottle to the window and peered down the hill. He saw the smoke churning up, but shrugged. 'It could be any one of a dozen buildings,' he said dismissively.
'It's the warehouse,' Miguel insisted. 'I went to the roof. I could see.'
'So?' Ferragus toasted the room with his bottle. 'We've sold it now! The loss is to the French, not to us.'
Major Ferreira went to the window and gazed at the smoke. Then he made the sign of the cross. 'The French will not see it that way,' he said quietly, and took the bottle from his brother.
'They've paid us!' Ferragus said, trying to get the bottle back.
Ferreira placed the wine out of his brother's reach. 'The French will believe we sold them the food, then destroyed it,' he said. The Major glanced towards the street leading downhill as if he expected it to be filled with Frenchmen. 'They will want their money back.'
'Jesus,' Ferragus said. His brother was right. He glanced at the money: four saddlebags filled with French gold. 'Jesus,' he said again as the implications of the burning building sank into his wine-hazed head.
'Time to go.' The Major took firm command of the situation.
'Go?' Ferragus was still fuddled.
'They'll be after us!' the Major insisted. 'At best they'll just want the money back, at worst they'll shoot us. Good God, Luis! First we lost the flour at the shrine, now this? You think they'll believe we didn't do it? We go!
