Walking to the door was like walking the deck of a ship. He feared that even his footsteps might tip the precarious balance of the fragile house, that at any moment he would be felled by the falling masonry and collapsing floors.
The building shuddered again. A man shouted outside, then another, and Sharpe stepped over the threshold to see the young, cheerful guard lying dead. A shell had come through the landing window and blowft him apart.
Masonry rumbled. A crack sounded like a whiplash. He jumped recklessly down the rubble and dust-choked stairs. His uniform was thick with the white dust. Instinctively, as he reached the door to the courtyard, he began to beat it off, then stopped. It was as good a disguise as he could hope for.
Masonry fell somewhere, provoking shouts, and Sharpe knew that soon men would be in the castle who were not dazed, men who would begin the process of rescue and recovery. He hurried into the courtyard and turned left, towards the gate, and saw there a knot of men who stared aghast into the glimpse of hell that had been the keep.
He turned. He walked away from them, going towards the fire, but keeping the wall close to his right. He passed dead men, wounded men, men who cried, men who were past crying. The flesh smelt thick. He wished he had kept hold of the champagne to clear the taste of dust and smoke from his mouth.
Then a crash, a splintering, growing, hellish noise erupted to his right in the building where he had been prisoner, and he had a glimpse of the walls falling, of roof beams coming like lances through the breaking stones, and then it was blotted by dust and he was running, the stones falling, and he felt a massive blow on his leg that twisted him to his side, threw him down, and his mouth, nose, ears and eyes were thick with the dust and the noise and he was crawling blindly towards the light.
He felt his leg. It seemed whole. He drew it up, pushed, and staggered to his feet. Someone shouted, but Sharpe could barely help himself. He felt sick again, choking on dust, limping from the bruise on his leg.
He went on. He was going away from the gate where the enemy were gathered, going ever closer to the fire. He could feel the heat, a scorching, terrible, searing heat that made him swerve back to his right and there, in a tunnel of the wall, he saw daylight.
He went down the tunnel, cannoning off the walls, his scabbard scraping the stone. At the far end there was a shattered door, and beneath it steps that led down to a ruined church that clung high on the rock hill of the castle.
He sat on the steps. He had not quite gathered that he was free, that he was outside the fortress, that the wide world was spread before him and that he was breathing warm, clean air. He wiped his eyes that were stinging with dust and stared at the view.
The city was spread beneath him along the banks of the River Arlanzon. The spires of the great cathedral dominated the houses, and Sharpe, blinking from the dust and smoke, saw that there were holes torn in the roof of the huge building, holes from which smoke came, and that there was more smoke in the town, buildings burning, and he guessed that the shells had been blasted up and outwards to fall randomly on the city. He knew he must move.
The castle hill fell two hundred steep feet to the houses. He stumbled down, falling twice, sliding one section in a scrabble of soil, loose stone, and pain.When he got up he saw that the bandage on his right hand was soaked through with fresh, bright blood. Blood was sticky on his face too, the wounds reopened. His leg felt as if it had been struck by a musket ball. He limped the last few yards to the shelter of an alleyway. A woman watched him from a window.
There were shouts and screams in the city. He could hear the fires burning. ‘Jesus.’ He spoke aloud. He was feeling dazed, his ears ringing. He could hardly remember leaving the castle. He leaned on the wall.
The woman spat through the window. She would think he was a Frenchman.
He walked down the alley that stank of the nightsoil that was indiscriminately thrown from the bedrooms. He knew he was free now, but he knew little else.
He came to the plaza before the magnificent cathedral. He saw civilians running with buckets through the great doors and he glimpsed, as he went forward, the glow of fires deep in the gloom inside. Then he looked right.
A division of French troops had been forming in the plaza before beginning their march north eastwards. They looked now as if they had been in a battle. Shells had fallen into their ranks and the dead and wounded were scattered on the cobbles. Some screamed, some wandered dazed, others tried to help. Above him the sky was dark with the smoke. Ashes fluttered in the air and fell soft as snow onto the shattered ranks.
He suddenly felt alarm. He had escaped the castle, only to walk like a fool into a city of the enemy. He went back into an alley, leaned on the wall, and tried to make plans. tried to force the ringing from his ears and sense into his head. A horse. For God’s sake, a horse. What was it Hogan had once said to him? For some reason the strangeness of the words had stuck. ‘A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse.’ The Irish Major was always saying odd things like that. Sharpe supposed they were lines of poetry, but had not liked to ask.
He felt sick again. He bent down, his back against the wall, and groaned. He should hide, he decided. He was in no state to steal a horse.
There were footsteps to his right. He looked and saw men in the darkness of the alley. They wore no uniforms. They stared at him suspiciously.
He straightened up. ‘Ingles’ The word was choked by the dust in his throat.
The man closest to him carried a wooden mallet. He stepped forward, his face twisted with hatred. Sharpe knew they took him for a Frenchman and he shook his head.
He could not draw his sword with his bloody, bandaged right hand. He tried, but the mallet struck him on the head, there was a rush of feet on the cobbles, hisses of anger and curses, and then dozens of boots and fists thumped into him, the mallet swung again, and he was dragged away, beaten half insensible, the blood flowing from his opened wounds.
They kicked him, dragged him deeper into the alley and into a small, foul courtyard. A man produced a long butcher’s blade, Sharpe. tried to ward it off, felt the edge sear into his left hand, then the mallet smashed onto his head again and he knew nothing more.
The French left Burgos that day, marching north east and leaving the city with its great spire of smoke that drifted up as a mark of their retreat.
It began to rain as they left, a steady rain that helped extinguish the fires in the city. It seemed the kind of rain that might last for ever.
The French would have liked to have held Burgos and to have forced Wellington to try once more to take the high fortress on its hill, but Wellington had marched his army to the north, into the hills which common wisdom said were impassable for an army. Wellington’s army was passing the impassable hills, threatening to come south and cut off the French army in Burgos, cutting its supply lines, and so the French went backwards. Back towards the hills about Vitoria where other French armies would join them and they could turn and offer battle.
The British army saw the smoke rising from the city. They were far away. A few British cavalrymen, their horses smeared with mud. rode into the city and confirmed that the French were gone. They stayed long enough to water their horses and buy wine from an inn, then, the city abandoned by their enemy, its castle ruined, and nothing else in Burgos to hold their interest, they rode away. The war had come, taken its toll, and passed on.
CHAPTER 18
The British army left the pyre of smoke over Burgos far behind them. They marched in four great columns. At times two columns would come close, joining for a river crossing before they split again and took their separate paths in the hills. Always the order was speed. Speed to get ahead of the enemy, speed to cut the Road, speed to turn the French right flank, speed to meet the French before the enemy armies joined to outnumber Wellington’s men.
And fighting against speed were the wagon wheels that broke, the horses that went lame, the sick who fell out on the road, the gun-axles that broke, the rain that made the tracks slippery, the flooding of a stream making a
