JК
Sharpes Havoc :: Корнуэлл Бернард
Страница: 190 из 242The smoke about the building slowly cleared until the air felt clean again. The slopes beneath the seminary were strewn with discarded French packs and French bodies, not all of them dead. A wounded man crawled away between the blood-spattered blossoms of ragweed. A dog sniffed at a corpse. Ravens came on black wings to taste the dead, and women and children hurried from the houses in the valley to begin the plunder. A wounded man tried to twitch away from a girl who could not have been more than eleven and she drew a butchering knife from her apron belt, a knife that had been sharpened so often that its blade was little more than a whisper of thin steel attached to a bone handle, and she sliced it across the Frenchman’s throat, then grimaced because his blood had splashed onto her lap. Her little sister was dragging six muskets by their slings. The small fires started by wadding smoked between the corpses where the plump Portuguese priest, the blunderbuss still in one hand, made the sign of the cross over the Frenchmen he had helped to kill.
While the living French, in panicked disarray, ran.
And the city of Oporto had been recaptured.
The letter, addressed to Richard Sharpe, Esq, was waiting on the mantel of the parlor in the House Beautiful and it was a miracle it had survived because that afternoon a score of Royal Artillery gunners made the house into their billet and the first thing they did was to break up the parlor’s furniture to make a fire and the letter was an ideal piece of kindling, but then Captain Hogan arrived just before the fire was lit and managed to retrieve the paper. He had come looking for Sharpe and had asked the gunners if any messages had been left in the house, thinking Sharpe might have left one. „English folk live here, lads,” he told the gunners as he opened the unsealed letter, „so wipe your feet and clean up behind yourselves.” He read the brief message, and thought for a while. „I suppose none of you have seen a tall Rifle officer from the 95th? No? Well, if he shows up, tell him to go to the Palacio das Carrancas.”
„The what, sir?” a gunner asked.
„Big building down the hill,” Hogan explained. „Headquarters.” Hogan knew Sharpe was alive for Colonel Waters had told him of meeting Sharpe that morning, but though Hogan roamed the streets he had not found Sharpe and so a pair of orderlies were sent to search the city for the stray rifleman.
A new pontoon bridge was already being floated across the Douro. The city was free again and it celebrated with flags, wine and music.
While the living French, in panicked disarray, ran.
And the city of Oporto had been recaptured.
The letter, addressed to Richard Sharpe, Esq, was waiting on the mantel of the parlor in the House Beautiful and it was a miracle it had survived because that afternoon a score of Royal Artillery gunners made the house into their billet and the first thing they did was to break up the parlor’s furniture to make a fire and the letter was an ideal piece of kindling, but then Captain Hogan arrived just before the fire was lit and managed to retrieve the paper. He had come looking for Sharpe and had asked the gunners if any messages had been left in the house, thinking Sharpe might have left one. „English folk live here, lads,” he told the gunners as he opened the unsealed letter, „so wipe your feet and clean up behind yourselves.” He read the brief message, and thought for a while. „I suppose none of you have seen a tall Rifle officer from the 95th? No? Well, if he shows up, tell him to go to the Palacio das Carrancas.”
„The what, sir?” a gunner asked.
„Big building down the hill,” Hogan explained. „Headquarters.” Hogan knew Sharpe was alive for Colonel Waters had told him of meeting Sharpe that morning, but though Hogan roamed the streets he had not found Sharpe and so a pair of orderlies were sent to search the city for the stray rifleman.
A new pontoon bridge was already being floated across the Douro. The city was free again and it celebrated with flags, wine and music.