JК
Sharpes Havoc :: Корнуэлл Бернард
Страница: 166 из 242The wagons, which were drawn by oxen, werebeing escorted by dragoons and Sharpe used Christopher’s small telescope to see that the vehicles were filled with wounded men. So was Soult sending his invalids back to France? Or just emptying his hospitals before fighting another battle? And he was surely not now thinking of marching on to Lisbon for the British had come north to the Douro and that made Sharpe think that Sir Arthur Wellesley must have arrived in Portugal to galvanize the British forces.
The seminary entrance was framed by an ornate facade rising to a stone cross that had been chipped by musket fire. The main door, approached by stairs, was wooden, studded with nails and, when Sharpe twisted the great wrought-iron handle, surprised him by being unlocked.
He pushed the door wide open with the muzzle of his rifle to see an empty tiled hallway with walls painted a sickly green. The portrait of a half-starved saint hung askew on one wall, the saint’s body riddled with bullet punctures. A crude painting of a woman and a French soldier had been daubed next to the saint and proved that the French had been in the seminary, though there were none evident now. Sharpe went inside, his boots echoing from the walls. „Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Harper said, making the sign of the cross. „I’ve never seen such a huge building!” He gazed in awe down the shadowed corridor. „How many bloody priests does a country need?”
„Depends how many sinners there are,” Sharpe said, „and now we search the place.”
He left six men in the entrance hall to serve as a picquet, then went downstairs to unbolt one of the arched doors facing the river. That door would be his bolt hole if the French came to the seminary and, once that retreat was secure, he searched the dormitories, bathrooms, kitchens, refectory and lecture rooms of the vast building. Broken furniture littered every room and in the library a thousand books lay strewn and torn across the hardwood floor, but there were no people. The chapel had been violated, the altar chopped for firewood and the choir used as a lavatory. „Bastards,” Harper said softly. Gataker, his trigger guard dangling by one last screw, gaped at an amateur painting of two women curiously joined to three French dragoons that had been daubed on the whitewashed wall where once a great triptych of the holy birth had surmounted the altar. „Good that,” he said in a tone as respectful as he might have used at the Royal Academy’s summer exhibition.
„I like my women a bit plumper,” Slattery said.
„Come on!” Sharpe snarled.
The seminary entrance was framed by an ornate facade rising to a stone cross that had been chipped by musket fire. The main door, approached by stairs, was wooden, studded with nails and, when Sharpe twisted the great wrought-iron handle, surprised him by being unlocked.
He pushed the door wide open with the muzzle of his rifle to see an empty tiled hallway with walls painted a sickly green. The portrait of a half-starved saint hung askew on one wall, the saint’s body riddled with bullet punctures. A crude painting of a woman and a French soldier had been daubed next to the saint and proved that the French had been in the seminary, though there were none evident now. Sharpe went inside, his boots echoing from the walls. „Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Harper said, making the sign of the cross. „I’ve never seen such a huge building!” He gazed in awe down the shadowed corridor. „How many bloody priests does a country need?”
„Depends how many sinners there are,” Sharpe said, „and now we search the place.”
He left six men in the entrance hall to serve as a picquet, then went downstairs to unbolt one of the arched doors facing the river. That door would be his bolt hole if the French came to the seminary and, once that retreat was secure, he searched the dormitories, bathrooms, kitchens, refectory and lecture rooms of the vast building. Broken furniture littered every room and in the library a thousand books lay strewn and torn across the hardwood floor, but there were no people. The chapel had been violated, the altar chopped for firewood and the choir used as a lavatory. „Bastards,” Harper said softly. Gataker, his trigger guard dangling by one last screw, gaped at an amateur painting of two women curiously joined to three French dragoons that had been daubed on the whitewashed wall where once a great triptych of the holy birth had surmounted the altar. „Good that,” he said in a tone as respectful as he might have used at the Royal Academy’s summer exhibition.
„I like my women a bit plumper,” Slattery said.
„Come on!” Sharpe snarled.