watched as the two Sergeants threaded the bollards which kept traffic and market-stalls from encroaching on the cathedral's ground. The sentries were watching the two Sergeants, seeing nothing unusual in two men carrying a barrel, not even stirring as they put it down, on one end, hard by the smaller door.
'God. Lossow whispered the word, watching with them, as Helmut squatted by the barrel and began to work a strake loose so that the fuse could reach the remaining powder in the keg. Harper strolled the twenty yards to the sentries, chatted with them, and Sharpe thought of the men who must die. The sentries would surely see the German splintering the wood! But no, they laughed with Harper, and suddenly Helmut was walking back, yawning, and the Irishman waved at the sentries and followed him.
Sharpe took out the tinder-box, the cigar, and with hands that were shaky he struck flint on steel and blew the charred linen in the box into a flame. He lit the cigar, puffed it, hated the taste until the tip glowed red.
Lossow watched him. 'You're sure?
A shrug. 'I'm sure.
The two Sergeants appeared at the doorway and Lossow spoke in German to Helmut, then turned to Sharpe. 'Good luck, my friend. We see you in a minute.
Sharpe nodded, the two Germans left, and he drew on the cigar again. He looked at the Irishman in the doorway.
'Take Teresa.
'No. Harper was stubborn. 'I stay with you.
'And me. Teresa smiled at him.
The girl held his arm as he went into the street. The sky was pearl grey over the cathedral with a wisp of cloud that would soon turn white. It promised to be a beautiful day. He drew on the cigar again and through his mind went jumbled images of the men who had built the cathedral, carved the saints that guarded its doors, knelt on its wide flagstones, been married there, seen their children baptized in its granite font, and been carried on their last visit up its pillared chancel. He thought of the dry voice saying 'must', of the priest whitewashing the rood-screen, of the Battalion with its wives and children, the bodies in the cellar, and he leaned down and touched the cigar tip to the powder, and it sparked and fizzed, the flame beginning its journey.
The first French shell, fired from an ugly little howitzer in a deep pit, burst on the Plaza, and flames shot through the smoke as the casing burst into unnumbered fragments that needled outwards. Before Sharpe could move, before the first explosion had ceased, the second howitzer's shell landed, bounced, rolled to the powder trail just yards from the cathedral, hit a bollard, and the sentries dived for shelter as it flamed crashingly apart, and Sharpe knew that there was no time to reach the cellar. He plucked at Teresa and Harper.
'The ovens!
They ran, through the door and over the counter, and he picked up the girl and thrust her head-first into the great brick cave of the bread oven. Harper was clambering into the second and Sharpe waited till Teresa was at the back and then he heard an explosion. It was small enough, scarcely audible over the crash of French shells and the distant sound of the Portuguese batteries' reply, and he knew, as he climbed in behind the girl, that the barrel had exploded, and he wondered if the cathedral door had held the blast, or if the cartridges had been moved, and then there was a second explosion, louder and more ominous, and Teresa gripped his thigh where it was wounded, and the second explosion seemed to go on, like a muffled volley from a battle in deep fog, and he knew that the cartridges, down in their stacks behind the door, were setting each other of in an unstoppable chain of explosions.
He wondered, crouched foetus-like in the oven, what was happening in the cathedral. He saw, in his mind's eye, the lurid flames, gouting shafts of light, and then there was a bigger explosion and he knew that the chain had reached the powder stacked at the top of the steps, and it was all done now. Nothing could prevent it. The guards in the cathedral were dead; the great rood was looking down on its last seconds; the eternal presence would soon be swatted out.
Another French shell exploded, the fragments clashing on the bakery walls, and it was drowned by a seething roar, growing and terrifying, and in the first crypt, crate by crate, cartridge by cartridge, the ammunition of Almeida was exploding. The stabbing flames were reaching the weakened curtain; the men in the deep crypt would be on their knees, or in panic, the powder for the great guns all round them.
He had thought that the sound could only grow till it was the last sound on earth, but it seemed to die into silence that was merely the crackling of flames, and Sharpe, knowing it was foolish, uncurled his head and looked through the gap between the oven and its iron door, and he could not believe that the leather curtain had held, and then the hill moved. The sound came, not through the air but through the ground itself, like the groaning of rock, and the whole cathedral turned to dust, smoke, and flames that were the colour of blood that scorched through the utter blackness.
The French gunners, pausing with shells in their hands, jumped to the top of their pits and looked past the low grey ramparts and crossed themselves. The centre of the town had gone, turned into one giant flame that rolled up and up, and became a boiling cloud of darkness. Men could see things in the flame: great stones, timbers, carried upwards as if they were feathers, and then the shock hit the gunners like a giant, hot wind that came with the sound. It was like all the thunder of all the world poured into one town for one moment for one glimpse of the world's end.
The cathedral disappeared, turned into flame, and the castle was scythed clean from the ground, the stones tumbling like toy things. Houses were scoured into flaming shards; the blast took the north of the town, unroofed half the southern slope, and the bakery collapsed on to the ovens, and Sharpe, deafened and gasping, choked on the thick dust and heated air, and the girl gripped him, prayed for her soul, and the blast went past like the breath of the Apocalypse.
On the ramparts the Portuguese died as the wind plucked them outwards. The great defences, nearest the cathedral, were smashed down, and debris filled the ditches so that a huge, flat road was hammered into the heart of the fortress, and still the powder caught. New boilings of flame and smoke writhed into the horror over Almeida, shudder after shudder, a convulsive spasm of the hilltop and the monstrous explosions died, leaving only fire and darkness, the stench of hell, a silence where men were deafened by destruction.
A French gunner, old in his trade, who had once taught a young Corsican Lieutenant how to lay a gun, spat on his hand and touched it to the hot muzzle of the barrel that had fired the last shot. The French were silent, unbelieving, and in the killing-ground before them stones, tiles, and burnt flesh dropped like the devil's rain.
Twenty-five miles away, in Celorico, they heard the sound and the General put down his fork and went to the window and knew, with terrible certainty, what it was. There was no gold. And now the fortress that could have bought him six weeks of failing hope had gone. The smoke came later, a huge grey curtain that smeared the eastern sky, turned morning sunlight into dusk, and edged the border hills with crimson like a harbinger of the armies that would follow the cloud to the sea.
Almeida had been destroyed.
CHAPTER 24
Kearsey was dead, killed in an instant as he said his prayers on the town rampart, and five hundred other men snatched into eternity by the flame, but Sharpe did not know that yet. He knew he was dying, of suffocation and heat, and he braced his back against the smooth, curved interior of the massive oven and pushed with his legs at a charred length of timber that blocked the door. It collapsed and he pushed himself out, into a nightmare, and turned to pull Teresa clear. She spoke to him, but he could hear nothing, and he shook his head and went to the other opening and pushed away some rubble as Harper crawled out, his face ashen.
The ovens had saved their lives. They were built like small fortresses, with walls more than three feet thick and a curved roof that had sent the blast harmlessly overhead. Nothing else remained. The cathedral was a flaming pit, the castle gone, the houses so much dust and fire, and down the street Sharpe had to look a hundred yards before he saw a house that had survived the blast, and it was ablaze, the flames licking at the rooms which had been opened to the world, and the heat was grey around them as he took Teresa's arm.
A man staggered into the road, naked and bleeding, shouting for help, but they ignored him, ran to the cellar door that was covered with fallen stone, and dragged it clear. There was a thumping beneath and shouts,
