was watching the cathedral’s northern flank where Sharpe found the ladders. With Harper now holding the gold, they went down ladder after ladder. Thunder sounded overhead and a flash of lightning lit the intricate pattern of poles and planks down which they climbed. Lord Pumphrey almost kissed the cobblestones when they reached the bottom. “Dear God,” he said. “It’s just sprained, I think.”
“Told you it wasn’t broken,” Sharpe said. He grinned. “It was all a bit hurried at the end, but otherwise it went well.”
“It was a cathedral!” Harper said.
“God will forgive you,” Sharpe said. “He might not forgive those bastards inside, but he’ll forgive you. He loves the Irish, doesn’t he? Isn’t that what you keep telling me?”
It was not far to the embassy. They knocked on the gate and a sleepy doorkeeper pulled it open. “The ambassador’s waiting?” Sharpe asked Pumphrey.
“Of course.”
“Then you can give him His Majesty’s money back,” Sharpe said, “less six guineas.” He opened the valise and found it filled with leather bags. He untied one, counted six guineas, and gave the rest to Pumphrey.
“Six guineas?” Lord Pumphrey asked.
“I might need to bribe someone,” Sharpe said.
“I imagine His Excellency will want to see you in the morning,” Pumphrey said. He sounded dispirited.
“You know where to find me,” Sharpe said. He walked toward the stables, but stopped under the arch and saw that Lord Pumphrey was not going toward the house where the embassy had its offices and Henry Wellesley had his quarters. Instead he went to the courtyard that led to the smaller houses, to his own house. He watched His Lordship disappear, then spat. “They think I’m daft, Pat.”
“They do, sir?”
“They all do. Are you tired?”
“I could sleep for a month, sir, so I could.”
“But not now, Pat. Not now.”
“No, sir?”
“When’s the best time to hit a man?”
“When he’s down?”
“When he’s down,” Sharpe agreed. There was work to do.
SHARPE GAVE each of his riflemen a guinea. They had been fast asleep when he and Harper returned to the stables, but they woke up when Sharpe lit a lantern. “How many of you are drunk?” Sharpe asked.
The faces looked at him resentfully. No one spoke. “I don’t care if you are,” Sharpe said, “I just want to know.”
“I had some,” Slattery said.
“Are you drunk?”
“No, sir.”
“Harris?”
“No, sir. Some red wine, sir, but not much.”
Perkins was frowning at his guinea. He might never have seen one before. “What does m, b, f, et, h, rex, f, d, b, et, l, d, s, r, I, a, t, et, e mean,” he asked. He had read the inscription on the coin and stumbled over the letters, half remembered from some long-ago schooling.
“How the hell would I know?” Sharpe asked.
“King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland,” Harris said. “Defender of the Faith, Duke of Brunswick and Luneburg, Arch-Treasurer and Elector, of course.”
“Bloody hell,” Perkins said, impressed. “So who’s that, then?”
“King George, you idiot,” Harris said.
“Put it away,” Sharpe told Perkins. He was not quite sure why he had given them the guineas, except that on a night when so much money had been treated so lightly he saw no reason why his riflemen should not benefit. “You’re all going to need greatcoats and hats.”
“Jesus,” Harris said, “we’re going out? In this storm?”
“I need the twelve-pounder shells,” Sharpe said, “and the last two smoke balls. Put them in your packs. Did you fill the bottles with lamp oil and brandy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“We need those too. And yes, we’re going out.” He did not want to. He wanted to sleep, but the time to strike was when the enemy was off balance. Montseny had taken at least six men, maybe more, to the cathedral, and those men were probably still entangled with the wreckage of the scaffolding and snared in the questions of the troops who had gone to discover the cause of the commotion. Did that mean the newspaper was unguarded? But guarded or not, the storm was a godsend. “We’re going out,” he said again.
“Here, sir.” Hagman brought him a stone bottle.
“What’s that?”
“Vinegar, sir, for your head, sir. Take off your hat.” Hagman insisted on soaking the bandage with vinegar. “It’ll help, sir.”
“I stink.”
“We all stink, sir. We’re the king’s soldiers.”
The storm was worsening. The rain had started again and was coming harder, driven by a wind that pounded the city’s ocean walls with heavy waves. Thunder rolled like cannon shots above the watchtowers and lightning ripped across the bay where the waiting fleet jerked at its anchor lines.
Sharpe guessed it was past two in the morning when he reached the abandoned building close to Nunez’s house. The rain was malevolent. Sharpe fumbled in his pocket for the key, opened the padlock, and pushed the door open. He had only got lost twice on the way here, and had eventually found the place by taking the route along the harbor wall. There had been Spanish soldiers there, sheltering by the cannons overlooking the bay’s entrance, and Sharpe had feared being asked his business, so he had marched his five men as a squad. He reckoned the Spanish sentinels would assume the five men were a detail from the garrison, forced to endure the weather, and leave them alone. It had worked, and now they were inside the abandoned building. He closed the gates and locked them with the inside bolts. “You’ve got the lantern?” he asked Perkins.
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t light it till you’re inside the building,” Sharpe said. Then he gave Harper careful orders before taking Hagman to the watchtower. They groped their way through the dark and up the steps. Once at the top, it was hard to see anything because the night was so dark. Sharpe was watching for a sentry on the roof of the Nunez house, but could see nothing. He had brought Hagman because the old poacher had the best eyesight of any of his riflemen.
“If he’s there, sir,” Hagman said, “he’s staying out of the wind and rain.”
“Probably.”
A shard of lightning lit the interior of the watchtower. Then thunder echoed across the city. The rain was pelting down, hissing on the roofs below. “Do people live above the printers, sir?” Hagman asked.
“I think so,” Sharpe said. Most of the houses in the city seemed to have shops or workplaces on the ground floor and living quarters above.
“Suppose there are women and children there?”
“That’s why I’ve got the smoke balls.”
Hagman thought about that. “You mean you’ll smoke them out?”
“That’s the idea, Dan.”
“Only I wouldn’t like to kill little ones, sir.”
“You won’t have to,” Sharpe said, hoping he was right.
There was another flash of lightning. “There’s no one there, sir,” Hagman said, nodding toward the roof of Nunez’s house. “On the roof, sir,” he added, realizing that Sharpe could not have seen the nod.
“They all went to the cathedral, didn’t they?”
“They did, sir?”
“I’m talking to myself, Dan,” Sharpe said, staring into the rain and wind. He had seen a sentry on the roof in
