Sharpe's Waterloo (28 page)

In the early evening the rain paused, though the wind was still damp and cold. Some of the infantry tried to dry out their sopping uniforms by stripping themselves naked and holding the heavy wool coats over the struggling fires.

Then a single cannon fired from the ridge.

Some of the naked men ran to the crest to see that a nine-pounder had slammed a cannon-ball into a troop of French Cuirassiers who had been crossing the valley floor. The gunshot had stopped the advance of the armoured horsemen. One horse was kicking and bleeding in the hay, while its rider lay motionless. A mass of other enemy horsemen was assembling on the far crest about La Belle Alliance. Four enemy guns were being deployed close to the inn. For a few moments the tiny figures of the French gunners could be seen tending to their weapons, then the crews ran aside and the four guns fired towards the lingering smoke of the British nine-pounder's discharge.

Every gun on the British ridge replied. The massive salvo sounded like a billow of rolling thunder. Smoke jetted from the crest and roundshot screamed across the valley to thump in muddy splashes among the enemy cavalry. Staff officers galloped along the British crest screaming at the gunners to hold their fire, but the damage had already been done. The French staff officers, gazing from the tavern, saw that they were not faced by a handful of retreating guns, but by the artillery of a whole army. They could even tell, from the smoke, just where that army had placed its guns.

So now the Emperor knew that the British retreat was over, and that the Sepoy General had chosen his battlefield.

At a crossroads among farmland where the hay was nearly all cut and the rye was growing tall and the orchards were heavy with fruit, and where three bastions stood like fortresses proud of a ridge that next day the French must capture, and the British must hold. At a place called Waterloo.

‘Not a day for cricket, eh, Sharpe?' Lieutenant-Colonel Ford shouted the jocular greeting, though his expression was hardly welcoming. The Colonel, with Major Vine beside him, crouched in the thin shelter of a straggly hedge, which they had reinforced against the wet and gusting wind with three broken umbrellas.

Sharpe supposed the greeting expressed forgiveness for his usurpation of command the previous day. Sharpe had brusquely ordered the battalion to run while Ford had still been deliberating what to do, but it seemed the Colonel had no desire to make an issue of the affair. Vine, huddled in the roots of the hedge, scowled with dark unfriendly eyes at the Rifleman.

‘I was taking some food to my old company. You don't mind, Ford?' Sharpe still had the cold beef and bread that Rebecque had given him that morning. He did not need Ford's permission to visit the Prince of Wales's Own Volunteer's bivouac, but it seemed polite to ask, especially on a day during which Rebecque had lectured him about the need for tact. Sharpe had sent Lieutenant Doggett on to the village of Waterloo where the Generals had their quarters, but Sharpe had no wish to join the Prince yet. He preferred the company of his old battalion.

Sharpe and Harper found the men of their old light company squatted about some miserable fires made from damp straw and green twigs collected from the hedge. Major d'Alembord was collecting letters from those few men who could write and who wanted to leave a message for their families should anything happen to them the next day.

It had begun to rain again. The men were cold and miserable, though the veterans of the war in Spain pretended that this was a paradise compared to the ordeals they had suffered in their earlier campaigns. The new men, not wanting to appear less tough than the veterans, kept silent.

The veterans of the company made space for Sharpe and Harper near a fire and Sharpe noted how these experienced soldiers were assembled around one blaze and the newcomers about the other feebler campfires. It was as if the old soldiers drew together as an élite against which the newcomers would have to measure themselves, yet even the veterans were betraying a nervousness this rainy night. Sharpe confirmed to them that the Prussians had been beaten, but he promised that Marshal Blücher's army was withdrawing on roads parallel to the British retreat and that the Marshal had promised to march at first light to Wellington's aid.

‘Where are the Prussians exactly, sir?' Colour Sergeant Major Huckfield wanted to know.

‘Over there.' Sharpe pointed to the left flank. The Prince of Wales's Own Volunteers were on the right side of the British position, almost midway between the elm tree and the track which led down to Hougoumont.

‘How far away are they, sir?' Huckfield, an intelligent and earnest man, persisted.

Sharpe shrugged. ‘Not far.' In truth he did not know where the Prussians were bivouacked, nor was he even certain that Marshal Blücher would march to help this bedraggled army in the morning, but Sharpe knew he must give these men some shred of hope. The newcomers to the battalion were edging closer to the veterans' fire to listen to the Rifleman. ‘All that matters,' he said loudly, ‘is that the Prussians will be here and fighting in the morning.'

‘If this rain doesn't stop we'll need the bloody navy here, not the bloody Prussians.' Private Clayton looked up at the darkening clouds. The rain was steady and hard, drumming on the black shako tops of the shivering men and running down the old furrows to puddle at the field's bottom where a troop of officers' horses were unhappily picketed.

‘This rain will bugger up their harvest.' Charlie Weller, who was allowed to bivouac with the veterans because they liked him, plucked a head of soaking wet rye and shook his head sadly. ‘It'll all be black and rotten in a week's time.'

‘But it'll be well dunged next year, though. Corn always grows better on dead flesh.' Hagman, the oldest man in the company, grinned. ‘We saw that in Spain, ain't that right, Mr Sharpe? We saw oats growing taller than a horse where a battle had been fought. The roots was sucking up all that blood and belly, they was.'

‘They don't always bury them, though, do they? You remember that place in Spain? Where all the skulls were?' Clayton frowned as he tried to remember the battlefield over which the battalion had marched some weeks after a fight.

‘Sally-Manker,' Harper offered helpfully.

‘That was the place! There were skulls as thick as bluebottles in cowshit!' Clayton spoke loudly to impress the new recruits who were listening avidly to the conversation, nor did he drop his voice as a blue-coated battalion of Dutch-Belgian infantry marched close by towards their bivouac. ‘I hope those yellow bastards aren't next to us tomorrow,' Clayton said malevolently.

There were growls of agreement. The officers and men of the Prince of Wales's Own Volunteers might be divided between the experienced and the inexperienced, but they were united in their hatred of all outsiders, unless those outsiders had proved themselves as tough, resourceful and uncomplaining as the redcoats. To these men the battalion was their life, their family and probably their death as well. Properly led they would fight for their battalion with a feral and terrifying ferocity, though ill-led, as Sharpe well knew, they could fall apart like a rusted musket. The thought made Sharpe glance towards Colonel Ford.

Clayton still stared with loathing at the Dutch-Belgians. ‘I'll wager those buggers won't go hungry tonight. Bastards can't fight, but they look plump enough. No shortage of bloody food there!'

Daniel Hagman suddenly laughed aloud. ‘You remember that ripe ham we sold to the Portuguese? That was you, Mr Sharpe!'

‘No, it wasn't,' Sharpe said.

The veterans jeered knowingly and affectionately.

‘It was you!' Clayton, a clever and cheeky rogue, pointed an accusing finger at Sharpe, then told the story for the benefit of the newcomers. ‘There were these Portuguese boys, right? It was after some scrap or other and the bastards were hungry as hell, so Mr Sharpe here chopped the bums off some French dead and smoked them over a fire, and then sold them to the Portuguese as joints of ham.'

The newcomers grinned nervously towards the grim-faced officer who seemed oddly embarrassed by the tale.

‘The Portuguese never complained.' Harper justified the barbarity.

‘Did you really do that?' d'Alembord asked Sharpe very quietly.

‘Christ, no. It was some other Riflemen. The Portuguese had eaten their pet dog, so they decided to get even with them.' Sharpe was surprised that the story was now ascribed to him, but he had noticed how men liked to attach outrageous stories to his exploits and it was hopeless to deny the more exotic feats.

‘We could do with some of them Portuguese tomorrow.' Daniel Hagman lit his pipe with a glowing twig from the fire. ‘They were proper little fighters, they were.' The admiration was genuine and earned muttered agreement from the veterans.

‘But we'll be all right tomorrow, won't we, Mr Sharpe?' Charlie Weller asked with undisguised anxiety.

‘You'll be all right, lads. Just remember. Kill their officers first, aim at the bellies of the infantry and at the horses of the cavalry.' The answer was given for the benefit of the men at the outer reaches of Sharpe's audience; the men who had not fought before and who needed simple rules to keep them confident in the chaos of battle.

Weller put a finger into the can of water and found it still lukewarm. He took a twist of dry kindling that he had stored deep in his clothes and put it onto the flames. Sharpe hoped the boy would survive, for Weller was different from the other men. He was a country boy who had joined the army out of a sense of patriotism and adventure. Those motives had helped make him a good soldier, though no better than most of the men who had taken the King's shilling for altogether less honourable motives. Clayton was a thief, and probably would have been hanged if he had not donned the red coat, but his sly cunning made him a good skirmisher. Most of the other men around the fire were drunkards and criminals. They were the leavings of Britain, the unwanted men, the scum of the earth, but in battle they were as stubborn as mules. To Sharpe's mind they were gutter fighters, and he would not have wanted them any other way. They were not impressive to look at; small, scarred, gap-toothed and dirty, but tomorrow they would show an emperor how a redcoat could fight, though tonight their main concern was when the rum ration would reach them.

‘The quartermaster has promised it by midnight,' d'Alembord told the company.

‘Bastard wagon drivers,' Clayton said. ‘Bastards are probably tucked up in bed.'

Sharpe and Harper stayed another half-hour and left the company discussing the chances of finding the French brothel among the enemy baggage. All British soldiers were convinced that the French travelled with such a brothel; a magical institution that they had never quite succeeded in capturing, but which occupied in their mythology the status of a golden prize of war.

‘They seem well enough,' Sharpe said to d'Alembord. The two officers were walking towards the ridge top while Harper went to fetch the horses.

‘They are well enough,' d‘Alembord confirmed. He was still in his dancing clothes which were now stained and ragged. His proper uniform was lost with the missing baggage. One of his dancing shoes had somehow lost its buckle and was only held in place by a piece of string knotted round d'Alembord's instep. ‘They're good lads,' he said warmly.

‘And you, Dally?'

Peter d‘Alembord smiled ruefully. ‘I can't shake off a rather ominous dread. Silly, I know, but there it is.'

‘I felt that way before Toulouse,' Sharpe confessed. ‘It was bad. I lived, though.'

D‘Alembord, who would not have admitted his fears to anyone but a very close friend, walked a few paces in silence. ‘I can't help thinking about the wheat on the roads. Have you noticed that wherever our supply wagons go the grain falls off and sprouts? It grows for a season, then just dies. It seems to me that's rather a good image of soldiering. We pass by, we leave a trace, and then we die.'

Sharpe stared aghast at his friend. ‘My God, but you have got it bad!'

‘My Huguenot ancestry, I fear. I am bedevilled by a Calvinist guilt that I'm wasting my life. I tell myself that I'm here to help punish the French, but in truth it was the chance of a majority that kept me in uniform. I need the money, you see, but that seems a despicable motive now. I've behaved badly, don't you see? And consequently I have a conviction that I'll become nothing but dung for a Belgian rye field.'

Sharpe shook his head. ‘I'm only here for the money too, you silly bugger.' They had reached the ridge top and could see the twisting trails of French cooking fires rising beyond the southern crest. ‘You're going to live, Dally.'

‘So I keep telling myself, then I become convinced of the opposite.' D‘Alembord paused before revealing the true depths of his dread. ‘For tuppence I'd ride away tonight and hide. I've been thinking of it all day.'

‘It happens to us all.' Sharpe remembered his own terror before the battle at Toulouse. ‘The fear goes when the fighting starts, Dally. You know that.'

‘I'm not the only one, either.' D‘Alembord ignored Sharpe's encouragement. ‘CSM Huckfield has suddenly taken to reading his Bible. If I didn't like him so much I'd accuse him of being a damned Methodist. He tells me he's marked to die in this campaign, though he adds that he doesn't mind because his soul is square with God. Major Vine says the same thing.' D'Alembord shot a poisonous glance towards the hedge where Ford and his senior Major crouched against the rain. ‘They asked me whether I thought we should have divine service tomorrow morning. I told them it was a bloody ridiculous notion, but I've no doubt they'll find some idiot chaplain to mumble inanities at us. Have you noticed how we're getting so very pious? We weren't pious in Spain, but suddenly there's a streak of moral righteousness infecting senior officers. I'll say my prayers in the morning, but I won't need to make a display of it.' He began scraping the mud from his fragile shoes against a tuft of grass, then abandoned the cleaning job as hopeless. ‘I apologize, Sharpe. I shouldn't burden you with this.'