and then the light faded, the last of it writhing in a great blossom of smoke that billowed above one of the French forts, and then the noise came. A thunder rolled over the bay, startling sleeping sentries awake as the shell landed just across the ramparts, a quarter mile ahead of Sharpe. There was a brief silence before the missile exploded. A wavering trace of smoke, left by the burning fuse, hung in the first daylight. The shell had blown itself apart inside a small grove of orange trees and Sharpe, when he reached the spot, could smell the powder smoke. He kicked a shard of broken casing that skittered down the rampart. Then he jumped down to the scorched grass and crossed the grove into a dark street. The house walls were a dirty white now as dawn glowed in the east.
He was lost, but he was at the city’s northern edge where he wanted to be. By exploring the narrow streets he at last found the church with the red-painted crucifix on its outer wall. Lord Pumphrey had told him the crucifix had been brought from Venezuela and it was believed that on the Feast of Saint Vincent the red paint turned to blood. Sharpe wondered when the saint’s feast day was. He would like to see paint turn to blood.
He squatted on the bottom step of the church entrance. The filthy cloak swathed him and the wide hat hid his face. The street here was just five paces wide, and almost opposite him was a four-storied house marked by a stone scallop shell cemented into the white facade. An alley ran down the side of the house that had an ornate front door flanked by two windows. The windows were shuttered on the inside while outside the glass were thick black-painted grilles. The upper floors had three windows apiece facing onto narrow balconies. This, Pumphrey had assured him, was where El Correo de Cadiz was printed. “The house belongs to a man called Nunez, who owns the newspaper. He lives above the printing premises.”
No one stirred in the Nunez house. Sharpe squatted, unmoving, with a wooden bowl taken from the embassy kitchen beside him on the step. He had put a handful of coins in the bowl, remembering that that was the way to encourage generosity, though as the street stayed empty there was no generosity to encourage. He thought about the beggars of his childhood. Blind Michael, who could see like a hawk, and Ragged Kate, who hired babies for tuppence an hour and plucked at the shawls of well-dressed women in the Strand. She had carried a hat pin to make the babies cry and on a good day she had sometimes made two or three pounds that she would drink away in an evening. There had been Stinking Moses who claimed to have been a parson before he fell into debt. He would tell folks’ fortunes for a shilling. “Always tell them they’ll be lucky in love, boy,” he had advised Sharpe, “’cuz they’d rather be lucky in bed than get to heaven.”
It was oddly restful. Sharpe squatted and, when the first pedestrians appeared, he mumbled the words Pumphrey had suggested. “Por favor, Madre de Dios.” He said the words over and over, occasionally muttering thanks when a copper coin rattled into the bowl. And all the time he watched the house with the scallop shell, and he noted that the big front door was never used and that the shutters behind the heavy window grilles were never opened even though the other houses in the street opened their shutters to take advantage of what small light found its way between the high buildings. Six men came to the house and all used a side door down the alley. Late in the morning Sharpe moved there, muttering his incantation as he went, and he squatted again, this time just inside the alley’s mouth, and watched a man go to the side door and knock. A hatch slid open, a question was asked, it was evidently answered satisfactorily, and the door opened. In the next hour three porters delivered crates and a woman brought a bundle of laundry. The same hatch was slid open each time before the visitors were allowed inside. The laundress dropped a coin in Sharpe’s bowl. “Gracias,” he said.
Around midmorning a priest came out of the alley door. He was tall and lantern-jawed. He dropped a coin in Sharpe’s bowl and at the same time gave a command that Sharpe did not understand, but the priest pointed to the church and Sharpe assumed he had been ordered to move out of the alleyway. He picked up his bowl and shuffled toward the church, and there saw trouble waiting.
Three beggars had taken his place on the steps. All were men. At least half the male beggars in Cadiz were cripples, survivors of battles against the British or the French. They were limbless, scarred, and ulcerous. Some wore placards with the names of the battles where they had been wounded, while others proudly wore the remnants of their uniforms, but none of the three waiting men was crippled or wore uniforms, and all three were watching Sharpe.
He had trespassed. The beggars in London were as organized as any battalion. If a man took post where other beggars had their usual pitches, then the man would be warned, and if he did not heed the warning, the beggar-lords would be summoned from their lairs. Stinking Moses had always worked the church of St. Martins in the Fields, and he had once been robbed by two sailors who had kicked him across the street to the door of the workhouse, where they had taken his coins, then taken his place on the church steps. Next morning Stinking Moses was back at the church and two corpses were found in Moons Yard.
These three men were on a similar mission. They said nothing as Sharpe emerged from the alley, but just surrounded him. One took his bowl and the remaining two held his elbows and hurried him westward until they reached a shadowed archway. “Madre de Dios,” Sharpe mumbled. He was still crouching as though he had a wounded spine.
The man holding the bowl demanded to know who Sharpe was. Sharpe did not understand the man’s fast and colloquial Spanish, but guessed that was what the man wanted to know, just as he guessed what was coming next. It was a knife that came from under the man’s ragged cloak and flashed up toward Sharpe’s throat. At that moment the apparently crippled beggar turned into a soldier. Sharpe seized the man’s wrist and kept the knife moving upward, but now toward its owner, and Sharpe was smiling as the blade slid easily into the soft flesh under the man’s chin. He gave the wrist one last jerk so that the knife went through the man’s tongue into his palate. The man made a mewling noise as blood spilled from his lips. Sharpe, who had easily freed his right arm, now pulled his left free as the man on that side launched a massive kick and Sharpe seized the boot and pushed it upward so that the man flew back, to fall hard on the cobbles, his skull making a sound like a musket butt dropped on stone. Sharpe elbowed the third man between the eyes. It had taken seconds. The first man was staring with wide eyes at Sharpe, who now drew his pistol. The man who had fallen was now on his knees, groggy. The second man had blood pouring from his nose and the pistol was pointing at the leader’s groin. Sharpe cocked the gun and, in the archway, the sound was ominous.
The man, with his own knife still pinning his mouth shut, put down the bowl. He held his hands out as if to ward off trouble. “Bugger off,” Sharpe said in English and, though they did not understand, they obeyed. They backed away slowly until Sharpe leveled the pistol, and then they ran.
“Bugger,” Sharpe said. His head was throbbing. He touched the bandage and flinched from the pain. He crouched and scooped up the coins. When he stood, there was a heartbeat and he felt faint, so he leaned at the archway’s side and looked up, because that seemed to alleviate the pain. There was a cross incised into the keystone of the arch. He stared at it until the pain receded. He put away the pistol, which, carelessly, he was still holding, though the arch was deep enough to hide him from the few pedestrians who passed. He noticed weeds growing at the foot of the gates, which were secured by a big old-fashioned ball padlock, like the one that had guarded the Marquesa’s boathouse. This padlock was rusted. He went out into the street and saw that the building’s windows were shuttered and barred. A watchtower rose above the building, and more weeds grew between the tower’s stones. The building was abandoned and no more than forty paces from Nunez’s house. “Perfect,” he said aloud, and a woman leading a goat on a length of rope made the sign of the cross because she thought he was mad.
It was close to midday. He spent a long time searching the streets for the merchant he wanted, and had to bundle the filthy cloak and hat under his arm before going into the shop, where he bought a new padlock. The lock had been made in Britain and had wards inside the steel case to protect the levers from picks. The shopkeeper charged him too much, probably because his customer was English, but Sharpe did not argue. The money was not his, but had been given him by Lord Pumphrey from the embassy’s cash box.
He went back to the miraculous crucifix and settled on the steps under its stone canopy. He knew the three men would be back, or two of them would be back, but not until they had rousted up reinforcements, and he reckoned that gave him an hour or two. A dog investigated the interesting smells of his borrowed cloak, then pissed against the wall. Women came and went to the church and most dropped small coins into his bowl. Another beggar, a woman, whined at the far side of the steps. She tried to engage Sharpe in conversation, but all he would say was “Mother of God,” and she abandoned her attempts. He just watched the house and wondered how he could ever hope to steal anything from inside, if indeed, the letters were even there. The place was plainly well guarded, and he suspected that the front door and the ground-floor windows had been blocked. A monk had been calling house to house, probably collecting for charity, and the man had hammered unavailingly on the door until the lantern-jawed priest had appeared from the alleyway. He shouted at the monk to go away. So the front door
