‘Paris by July, lads,’ a sergeant forecast. ‘Just think of all those girls.’
The Duke of Wellington, who had slept in an inn three miles from Quatre Bras, returned to the crossroads at first light. The Highlanders of the 92nd made him a fire and served him tea. He cupped the tin mug in both hands and stared southwards towards Marshal Ney’s positions, but the French troops were silent and unmoving beneath the heavy cloud cover that had spread from the west during the short hours of darkness. One of the Duke’s staff officers, heavily protected by a troop of King’s German Legion cavalry, was sent eastwards to learn the morning’s news from Marshal Blücher.
Officers used French Cuirassiers’ upturned breastplates as shaving bowls; the senior officers having the privilege of the water when it was hot and the Lieutenants and Ensigns being forced to wait till the water was cold and congealed. The infantrymen who had fought the previous day boiled yet more water to clean their fouled musket barrels. Cavalry troopers queued to have their swords or sabres ground to a killing edge on the treadled stones, while the gunners filled the shot-cases of their field carriages with ready ammunition. There was an air of cheerfulness about the crossroads; the feeling that the army had survived an ordeal the previous day, but that now, and thanks largely to the victory of the Prussians, it was on the verge of triumph. The only grumble was that in the desperate hurry to reach Quatre Bras the army had left its commissariat wagons far behind so that most of the battalions started their day hungry.
The battlefield was searched for bodies. The wounded who still lived were taken back to the surgeons, while the dead were collected for burial. Most of the dead officers had been buried the previous night, so now the diggers would look after as many rank and file as they could. Sharpe and Harper, waking in the overcast dawn, found themselves just a few yards away from a work party that was scratching a wide and shallow trench in which the slaughtered men of the 69th would be interred. The waiting bodies lay in such natural poses that they almost seemed to be asleep. Captain Harry Price of the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers found the two Riflemen drinking their morning tea just as the first corpses were being dragged towards the inadequate grave. ‘Any tea for a gallant officer?’ Price begged.
Harper cheerfully scooped another mug of stewed tea out of the breastplate kettle. The dead, who had been stripped of their uniforms, stank already. It was only an hour after dawn yet the day threatened to be humid and sticky and the grave diggers were sweating as they hacked at the soil. ‘They’ll have to dig deeper than that,’ Harper commented as he handed Price the tin mug.
Price sipped the tea, then grimaced at its sour aftertaste of axle grease. ‘Do you remember the chaos we made trying to burn those poor buggers at Fuentes de Oñoro?’
Sharpe laughed. The ground at Fuentes de Oñoro had been too shallow and rocky to make graves, so he had ordered his dead cremated, but even after tearing down a whole wooden barn and lifting the rafters off six small houses to use as fuel, the bodies had refused to burn.
‘They were good days,’ Price said wistfully. He squinted up at the sky. ‘It’ll pour with bloody rain soon.’ The clouds were low and extraordinarily dark, as though their looming heaviness had trapped the vestiges of night. ‘A rotten day for a battle,’ Price said gloomily.
‘Is there going to be a battle?’ Harper asked.
‘That’s what the Brigade Major told our gallant Colonel.’ Price told Sharpe and Harper the dawn news of Prussian victory, and how the French were supposed to be retreating and how the army would be pursuing the French who were expected to make one last stand before yielding the frontier to the Emperor’s enemies.
‘How are our lads feeling about yesterday?’ Harper asked Price, and Sharpe noticed how, to the Irishman, the battalion was still ‘our lads’.
‘They’re pleased that Mr d’Alembord’s a major, but he’s not exactly overjoyed.’
‘Why not?’ Sharpe asked.
‘He says he’s going to die. He’s got a what do you call it? A premonition. He says it’s because he’s going to be married.’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
Price shrugged as if to demonstrate that he was no expert on superstitions. ‘He says it’s because he’s happy. He reckons that the happiest die first and only the miserable buggers live for ever.’
‘You should have been dead long ago,’ Harper commented.
‘Thank you, Sergeant,’ Harry Price grinned. He was a carefree, careless and casual man, much liked by his men, but averse to too much effort. He had served as Sharpe’s Lieutenant at one time, and had been perpetually in debt, frequently drunk, yet ever cheerful. Now he drained the vestiges of his tea. ‘I’m supposed to be reporting to brigade to discover just when we march off.’ He shuddered with sudden distaste. ‘That was a bloody horrible mug of tea.’
‘It had a bit of dead horse in it,’ Harper explained helpfully.
‘God damn Irish cooking. I suppose I’d better go and do my duty.’ Price gave Harper the mug back and ambled on with a cheerful good morning to the burial party.
‘And what are we going to do?’ Harper asked Sharpe.
‘Use the rest of the tea as shaving water, then bugger off.’ Sharpe had no wish to stay with the army. The Prince had relieved him of his duties and, if the rumours were true, the French invasion had been thwarted by Blücher’s Prussians. The rest of the war would be a pursuit through the fortress belt of northern France until the Emperor surrendered. Sharpe decided he might as well sit it out in Brussels, then go back to his apple trees in Normandy. ‘I suppose I never will get to fight the Emperor.’ He spoke wistfully, feeling oddly let down. Yesterday’s battle had been an unsatisfactory way to gain victory, but Sharpe was an old enough soldier to take victory whichever way it came. ‘Is there more tea?’
A troop of King’s German Legion cavalry trotted southwards, presumably going to the picquet line to watch for the beginnings of the enemy’s withdrawal. Some Guardsmen were singing in the wood behind Sharpe, while other redcoats moved slowly across the trampled rye collecting discarded weapons. A few mounted officers rode among the debris of battle, either looking for keepsakes or friends. Among the horsemen, and looking very lost, was Lieutenant Simon Doggett who seemed to be searching the wood’s edge. Sharpe had an impulse to move back into the shelter of the trees, but lazily stayed where he was, then wished he had obeyed the impulse when Doggett, catching sight of his green jacket, spurred past the 69th’s mass grave. ‘Good morning, sir.’ Doggett offered Sharpe a very formal salute.
Sharpe returned the salute by raising his mug of tea. ‘Morning, Doggett. Bloody horrible morning, too.’
‘The Baron would like to see you, sir.’ Doggett sounded deeply uncomfortable as though he was still embarrassed by his memory of Sharpe’s altercation with the Prince. Sharpe may have been right to protest the Prince’s order, but a Prince was still a Prince, and the habit of respectful obedience was deeply ingrained in Doggett.
‘I’m here if Rebecque wants me,’ Sharpe said stubbornly.
‘He’s waiting just beyond the crossroads, sir. Please, sir.’
Sharpe refused to hurry. He finished his tea, shaved carefully, then buckled on his sword and slung his rifle. Only then did he walk back to the crossroads where the Baron Rebecque waited for him.
The Dutchman smiled a greeting at Sharpe, then gestured up the high road as if suggesting that the two of them might care to take a morning stroll. The fields on either side of the road were thick with the men who had reached Quatre Bras during the night and who were now readying themselves to pursue the beaten French. ‘It rather looks like rain, doesn’t it?’ Rebecque observed mildly.
‘It’s going to rain like the very devil,’ Sharpe glanced up at the bellying dark clouds. ‘It won’t be any kind of a day for musketry.’
Rebecque stared at the grass verge rather than at the clouds or at the tall Rifleman who walked beside him. ‘You were right,’ he said at last.
Sharp
e shrugged, but said nothing.
‘And the Prince knows you were right, and he feels badly.’
‘So tell the little bastard to apologize. Not to me, but to the widows of the 69th.’
Rebecque smiled at Sharpe’s vehemence. ‘One is generally disappointed if one expects royalty to make apologies. He’s young, very headstrong, but he’s a good man underneath. He has the impatience of youth; the conviction that bold action will bring immediate success. Yesterday he was wrong, but who can say that tomorrow he won’t be right? Anyway, he needs the advice of people he respects, and he respects you.’ Rebecque, suffering from the day’s first attack of hay fever, blew his nose into a huge red handkerchief. ‘And he’s very upset that you’re angry with him.’
‘What the hell does he expect after he dismisses me?’
Rebecque waved the handkerchief as though to suggest that the dismissal was a nonsense. ‘You’re not just a staff officer, Sharpe, you’re a courtier as well. You have to treat him gently.’
‘What the hell does that mean, Rebecque?’ Sharpe had stopped to challenge the mild Dutchman with a hostile stare. ‘That I’m to let him slaughter a brigade of British troops just because he’s got a crown on his damned head?’
‘No, Sharpe.’ Rebecque kept remarkably calm in the face of Sharpe’s truculence. ‘It means that when he gives you an idiotic order, you say, “Yes, sir. At once, sir,” and you ride away and you waste as much time as you can, and when you get back and he demands to know why the order hasn’t been obeyed, you say you’ll attend to it at once and you ride away again and waste even more time. It’s called tact.’
‘Bugger tact,’ Sharpe said angrily, though he suspected Rebecque was right.
‘Yesterday you should have told him that the brigade was going to obey his order and would deploy into line just as soon as there was any enemy movement in front of them. That way he’d have felt his orders were being obeyed.’
‘So it’s my fault they died?’ Sharpe protested angrily.
‘Of course it isn’t. Oh, damn!’ Rebecque sneezed violently. ‘I’m just asking you to deal with him tactfully. He wants you! He needs you! Why do you think he specifically requested that you should be on his staff?’
‘I’ve often wondered,’ Sharpe said bitterly.
‘Because you’re famous in this army. You’re a soldier’s soldier. If the Prince has you beside him then he reflects some of your fame and valour.’
‘You mean I’m like one of those decorations he dangles round his skinny neck?’
Rebecque nodded. ‘Yes, Sharpe, that is exactly what you are. And that’s why he needs you now. He made a mistake, the whole army knows he made a mistake, but it’s important that we continue to show confidence in him.’ Rebecque looked up into Sharpe’s face. ‘So, please, make your peace with him.’
‘I don’t even like him,’ Sharpe said bitterly.
Rebecque sighed. ‘I do. And he does want to be liked. You’ll find him much easier if you flatter him. But if you cross him, or make him feel foolish, he’ll just become petulant.’ Rebecque offered a ghost of a smile. ‘And royalty is very good at being petulant. It is, perhaps, its major talent.’
Sharpe waited while a cart of wounded rumbled noisily past, then looked into Rebecque’s eyes. ‘So now you want me to apologize to the little bastard?’
‘I’m astonished how swiftly you learn our courtly ways,’ Rebecque smiled. ‘No. I shall apologize for you. I shall say that you deeply regret having caused his Highness any perturbation and wish only to be at his side as an adviser and friend.’
Sharpe began to laugh. ‘It’s a bloody odd world, Rebecque.’
‘So you’ll report for duty?’
Sharpe wondered just how much duty would be left in the war now that the Emperor was beaten, but he nodded his acceptance anyway. ‘I need the money, Rebecque. Of course I’ll report back.’
Rebecque seemed relieved. He offered his snuffbox to Sharpe, who refused the offer. Rebecque, as though he was not sneezing enough already, put a pinch of the powder on his left hand, sniffed it vigorously, sneezed three times, then wiped his eyes with his handkerchief. A file of shirt-sleeved cavalry troopers walked past with canvas buckets of water for their horses.
‘So where is the Prince?’ Sharpe asked. He supposed the bullet would have to be bitten and he would need to face the bloody boy.
Rebecque gestured northwards, suggesting that the Young Frog was many miles up the road. ‘I’m keeping him well out of harm’s way. It would be politically disastrous if he was taken prisoner today.’
Sharpe stared with surprise at the kindly middle-aged Dutchman. ‘What does that mean? Wasn’t there the same danger yesterday?’
‘Yesterday,’ Rebecque said mildly, ‘we weren’t retreating. Any minute now, Sharpe, and this whole army could be surrounded and fighting for its very existence.’
‘Its existence? I thought we were pursuing the bloody French today!’
It was Rebecque’s turn to look surprised. ‘Didn’t you know? Blücher got beaten. His army wasn’t destroyed, thank God, but they took a thrashing and have been forced to retreat.’ Rebecque sounded very calm as he delivered the appalling news. ‘It seems that their Chief of Staff preferred us to think that they had won. That way, our army stayed here as a temptation for Napoleon. He might prefer to attack us, you see, and let the Prussians escape. It’s really quite a clever Prussian ploy, when you think about it, but likely to be damned uncomfortable for us.’
‘The Prussians are retreating?’ Sharpe sounded disbelieving.
‘They went late last night, which means we’re stranded here on our own. Marshal Ney is still in front of us and at any minute the rest of the French army will attack our left flank.’
Sharpe instinctively looked to the east, but nothing moved in the cloud shadowed landscape of woods and fields. He tried to understand this new reality. Yesterday’s victory at Quatre Bras was all for nothing, because Napoleon had kicked the two doors wide apart and the allies were separated. The Prussians had fled in the night and the British had been left isolated to face the full power of the Emperor’s whole army.
‘So very soon,’ Rebecque continued placidly, ‘we’re going to retreat. The Duke’s not making too much fuss, because he doesn’t want to start any panic. There’s only this one road we can use, you see, and once the rain starts it’s likely to be difficult going.’
Sharpe remembered Wellington leaning over the map in the Duke of Richmond’s dressing-room. ‘Are we going to Waterloo?’ he asked Rebecque.
The Dutchman seemed surprised that Sharpe had even heard of the village, but nodded. ‘We’re going just to the south of Waterloo, to a place called Mont-St-Jean. We march there today, make a stand there tomorrow, and pray that the Prussians will rescue us.’
‘Rescue?’ Sharpe bridled at the word.
‘Of course.’ Rebecque, as ever, was imperturbable. ‘Blücher has promised that if we make a stand he’ll march to our aid. That’s so long as the French don’t stop him, of course, and undoubtedly they’ll be trying. Yesterday we failed to reach him, so we can only pray that tomorrow he doesn’t repay the compliment. We certainly can’t beat Napoleon on our own, so if Blücher lets us down we’re all beaten.’ Rebecque smiled at his catalogue of bad news. ‘All in all, Sharpe, things are not good. Are you sure you still wish to serve on His Highness’s staff?’
‘I told you, I need the money.’
‘Of course, we may never reach Mont-St-Jean today. The Emperor must realize that he has us at his mercy, so I’ve no doubt he’s hurrying to attack us even now. Might I suggest that you serve as the Prince’s personal picquet on the retreat? If it looks as though the Emperor will break through and destroy us, send word to me. I’d rather His Royal Highness wasn’t taken prisoner because it would be politically very embarrassing. Keep young Doggett as a messenger. Did you have any breakfast?’
‘Some tea.’
‘I’ve got some bread and cold beef in my sad
dlebag.’ Rebecque turned back towards the crossroads and offered to shake Sharpe’s hand. ‘The knack of being right, Sharpe, is not to show it. It embarrasses the incompetent who rule over us.’
Sharpe smiled and took the offered hand. ‘Then thank God for the Duke of Wellington.’
‘Even he may not be good enough for this predicament. We shall see.’ Rebecque walked back to his horse and used a stone wall by the crossroads as a mounting block. He settled himself in the saddle. ‘Send word if disaster threatens, otherwise, do your best to keep dry.’ He handed the food down to Sharpe, then clicked his tongue and rode northwards.
Sharpe turned to stare east and south. Somewhere under the lowering clouds was the man he had fought against for most of his life, yet had never once seen. The Emperor of France, conqueror of the world, was coming to fight the British at last.
The rain, like the French, held off.
The news of the Prussian defeat spread swiftly. Optimism turned to resignation, then to nervousness as the army realized how precarious was its position. The whole might of the French army was about to be concentrated on Quatre Bras and there was no hope of any help from the Prussians.
The retreat began. One by one the battalions of infantry were despatched towards the crossroads at Mont-St-Jean which lay twelve miles to the north. The men who waited their turn grew increasingly tense; every battalion which escaped north was one battalion less to face the expected French onslaught, which left the rearguard ever more likely to be outnumbered and overwhelmed. Marshal Ney’s troops were still just to the south, and the Emperor was presumably hurrying from the east, yet battalion after British battalion slipped away unmolested as the morning passed without any French attack.
The Duke of Wellington pretended insouciance. For a time he sat on the trampled rye reading a newspaper, and even lay down and slept with its pages over his face. He still slept as the outermost picquets were pulled back, yielding the stream and Gemioncourt farm to the French if they cared to advance. Strangely the French did not move and their camp-fires still burned to drift placid smoke up to the darkening clouds.