Sledge-hammers sounded above them, the crashes muffled by the intervening stones. The gunners would have their embrasures in the southern wall.
One of the Frenchmen smoked a short pipe, his back comfortable against the skulls, though the others had seen him lean there and had sketched the sign of the cross on their greatcoats.
'Steam. One of them said.
‘What?
'I've been thinking about it. Steam, that's what they were. Steam.
They had been talking of the strange weapon that had torn into the column. One of the men spat into the darkness. 'Steam. He was scornful.
'Have you ever seen a steam engine? Asked the first man.
'No.
'I saw one in Rouen. Bloody great noise! Just like this morning! Fire, smoke, noise. Has to be steam!
A new conscript who had hardly spoken all night plucked up courage to say something. 'My father says the future is with steam.
The first man looked at him, dubious of this unmoustached support. He decided it was welcome. 'There you are then! I tell you! I saw one in a mill. A bloody great room with bloody great beams going up and down, and smoke everywhere! Like hell it was, like hell! He shook his head, intimating that he had seen things that they had not seen, horrors of which they could have no comprehension, though in truth his glimpse had been brief at best, and incomprehensible as well. 'Your father's right, son. Steam! It'll be everywhere.
Another man laughed. 'You'll have a steam musket, Jean.
'And why not? The first man had been carried away by his vision of the future. 'Steam infantry. I tell you! It'll happen! You saw what happened this morning.
'I could do with a steam whore right now.
There was a crash outside, a cheer, and a section of the wall fell into the snow. The man with the pipe blew smoke that was snatched into the pass. 'They should block this hole up.
'They should march us back to bloody Salamanca.
There were footsteps in the cellar behind and Jean peered between the skulls. 'Officer.
They swore quietly, pulled their uniforms straight, and adopted poses that suggested an unceasing watch on the snow outside. The Lieutenant stopped at the gun. 'Anything?
'No, sir. All quiet. Reckon they're tucked up in bed.
The officer fingered the filed nail in the touch-hole. 'It'll soon be over, lads.
'That's what they told them, sir. The man with the pipe jerked its stem at the skulls of the nuns.
The Lieutenant looked at the skulls. 'Bit eerie, aren't they?
'We don't mind, sir.
'Well, it'll soon be over. We've got four howitzers upstairs. There'll be four other guns as well. They're just putting them into place. Another hour and we'll open fire.
'Then what, sir?'Jean asked.
'Then nothing! He grinned at them. 'We guard the guns and watch the attack.’
'Really!
'Truly.
The soldiers grinned. Someone else would be doing the fighting and the dying. The Lieutenant peered through the great hole and watched the snow smoke off the crest of the pass. 'It'll soon be over.
The hour passed slowly. Overhead the gunners prepared, the tools of their trade, their rippers and wormheads, rammers and swabbers, buckets and portfires, spikes and fuses. The howitzers, obscenely squat guns, pointed into the air and the gunners fussed about them. The range was short and the officers were debating how much powder to put into each barrel and the gunners waited with their long-handled scoops to feed the skyward muzzles that would lob the six inch shells over the valley. The hornbeam had long been taken away as fuel for the fires that burned in the lower courtyard.
To the east there was the faintest lightening of a strip of sky over the horizon, a false dawn that was seen by few except the Riflemen on the watchtower hill, and for the four sentries alone again in the room of skulls and bones the night was as dark as ever. It seemed to them that the dawn would never come, that they were trapped eternally in this cold place, this dark place, where the skulls of the dead reached to the ceiling, and they shivered, watched the night above the snow, and hoped for dawn. One of them looked suddenly alarmed. 'What was that?
'What?
'A noise! In here. Listen!
They listened. The conscript shook his head. 'A rat?
'Shut your bloody face!
Jean, his enthusiasm of an hour before gone, leaned back against the gunwheel. 'Rats. Must be thousands of bloody rats. Anyway, I don't know how you can hear a bloody thing with all that thumping upstairs. What are they doing up there? Mardi Gras?
The gunners were spiking the trails of the twelve-pounders to face the same spot on the Castle wall.
The gunner Colonel had ridden to the Convent and now he strode into the other cloister, his hands rubbing together, and grinned at his men. 'All ready?
'Yes, sir.
'How much powder in the howitzers?
'Half pound, sir.
'Too much. Still! It'll warm the barrels. Christ! It's cold. He walked into the chapel, open now to the south, and saw two of his twelve pounders that had been dragged through the widened door and now pointed through gaping holes at the Castle. 'Those Riflemen worrying you?
'No, sir.
'Let's hope the bastards are low on bullets. He walked across the wreckage of the chapel and found a curious lump of granite that stuck through the floor. The top of it was polished smooth and he wondered why it was there. Typical of the bloody Spanish not to clear the site properly before they built the Convent, though why anyone would want to build a Convent in this benighted spot was beyond him. No wonder the nuns had left. He went back to the door. 'Well done, lads! You did a good job moving them in here! They had too.
In the cloister he looked east and saw the first faint flush of the real dawn to the east. Snow was two inches deep on the shattered remains of the Convent's wall. 'All right! Let's try the howitzers! You'll fire over, you'll see!
A Captain shouted at a Lieutenant on the roof to watch the fall of shot, and then he yelled the order to fire and four linstocks touched four fuses, and the howitzers seemed to try and bury themselves into the snow-trampled tiles, and the noise shook snow from the tiles and the smoke was thick and choking and the Lieutenant on the roof shouted into the courtyard. 'Two hundred over!’
’Told you so!
Morning in the Gateway of God. The cough of howitzers, the sudden almost imperceptible streak of burning fuses hurtling into the air, falling, and the shells bounced on the hillside to the south of the keep, rolled, then exploded in dirty smoke. The snow was streaked black, thorns cracked as the fragments hurtled outwards.
Then the twelve-pounders fired, hammering the loose plaster of the chapel, loosening flakes of gold paint that fluttered into the dust on the floor, and the solid shot smashed at the Castle wall, chipped great shards from it, and Sharpe, on the turret, shouted to the ramparts below. 'Don't fire till my order!
Over fifty Riflemen lined the northern ramparts, Riflemen who had been put there by Sharpe and then forbidden to fire at the ragged embrasures which had just blossomed flame and smoke into the morning darkness. The Fusiliers guarded into the dawn, facing the rising sun, but the Riflemen had been summoned by Sharpe. 'Wait!
The firing of the guns was a signal. It shook the sleep from men throughout the valley, warned them that death was striding again into the Gateway, but most of all it was a signal to one man. He stretched massive muscles, wondering if the cold had made him useless, and he prayed for one more deafening volley from the guns above him. His right hand curled about the lock of the seven-barrelled gun.
Sharpe and Harper had told no one of this plan, no one, for a single prisoner taken in the night could have blurted the truth. Harper had made a lair in the bones, a lair that was lined with blankets and supported by a table, the legs of which had been sawed short so there was just room for the huge Irishman to lie flat. When Price had bellowed the order to run Harper had echoed the shout, had pushed men on, and then stepped aside into a shadow to watch his comrades scramble out of the Convent. No one had missed him, they were all too intent on escaping the French whose shouts were audible beyond the wrecked wall, and Harper had turned back to the ossuary. He had wriggled backwards beneath the wooden shelter, drawn blankets about him, piled skulls in front of his face, and waited.