Sharpes Devil   ::   Корнуэлл Бернард

His Lordship, who had been examining the mangled remains of the altar screen, turned around. "Because, my dear Sharpe, common sense tells our Papist brethren that, at the sound of the last trump when the dead rise incorruptible, the saints will rise faster than us mere sinners. The rate of resurrection, so the doctrine claims, will depend on the holiness of the man or woman being raised from the dead, and naturally the saints will rise first and travel fastest to heaven. Thus the wise Papist, leaving nothing to chance, is buried close to the altar because it contains a saint's relic which, on the Day of Judgment, will go speedily to heaven, creating a draught of wind which will catch up those close to the altar and drag them up to heaven with it."

"He'll be dragged up in a barrowload of cement and shingle if he tries to fly out of this bloody grave," Harper grumbled.

Cochrane, who seemed to Sharpe to be taking an inordinate interest in the exhumation, peered down at the mangled grave. "Why don't I have some prisoners do the digging for you?"

Harper tossed the spade down in acceptance of the offer and Cochrane, having shouted for some prisoners to be fetched, stirred the cemented shingle with his toe. "Why on earth do you want to take Vivar's body back to Spain?"

"Because that's where his widow wants him," Sharpe said.

"Ah, a woman's whim! I hope my wife would not wish the same. I can't imagine being slopped home in a vat of brandy like poor Nelson, though I suppose if one must face eternity, then one might as well slip into it drunk." Cochrane, who had been pacing about the church choir, suddenly stopped, placed one foot dramatically ahead of the other, clasped a left hand across his breast, and declaimed in a mighty voice that momentarily stilled even the moaning of the wounded:

"Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, As his corse to the rampart we hurried!"

His Lordship applauded his own rendering of the lines. "Who wrote that?"

"An Irishman!" MacAuley shouted from the nave of the church.

"Was it now?" Cochrane enquired skeptically, then whirled on Sharpe. 'You know the poem, Sharpe?"

"No, my Lord."

"You don't!" Cochrane sounded astonished, then again assumed his declamatory pose:

"But he lay like a warrior taking his rest, With his martial cloak around him"

"The verses, you understand, refer to the burial of Sir John Moore. Did you know Moore?"

"I met him," Sharpe said laconically, recalling a hurried conversation on a snow-bright hillside in Galicia.