Читать книгу Sharpe’s Waterloo: The Waterloo Campaign, 15–18 June, 1815 - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 15

The bedroom of the hotel on Brussels’ rue Royale stank of vinegar which Jane Sharpe’s maid had sprinkled onto a red-hot shovel to fumigate the room. A small metal bowl of sulphur powders still burned in the hearth to eradicate whatever pestilential airs the vaporizing vinegar might have missed. It was, Jane had complained, a foul little suite of rooms, but at least she would make sure they held no risk of contagion. The previous occupant had been a Swiss merchant who had been evicted to make way for the English milord and his lady, and Jane had a suspicion that the Swiss, like all foreigners, harboured strange and filthy diseases. The noxious stench of the scorched vinegar and burning sulphur was making Jane feel ill, but in truth she had not felt really well ever since the sea crossing from England.

Lord John Rossendale, elegantly handsome in white breeches and silk stockings, black dancing shoes, and a gold-frogged cut-away coat with a tall blue collar and twin epaulettes of gold chain, stood at the bedroom’s window and stared moodily at the Brussels rooftops.

‘I don’t know whether he’ll be there or not. I just don’t know.’ It was the twentieth time he had confessed such ignorance, but for the twentieth time it did not satisfy Jane Sharpe who sat naked to the waist at the room’s small dressing-table.

‘Why can’t we find out?’ she snapped.

‘What do you expect me to do?’ Lord John ascribed Jane’s short temper to her upset stomach. The North Sea crossing seemed to have disagreed with her, and the journey in the coach to Brussels had not improved her nausea. ‘Do you expect me to send a messenger to Braine-le-Comte?’

‘Why not, if he can provide us with the answer.’

‘Braine-le-Comte is not a person, but the village where the Prince has his headquarters.’

‘I cannot think,’ Jane paused to dab her cheeks with the eau de citron which was supposed to blanche the skin of her face and breasts to a fashionable death-mask whiteness, ‘I cannot think,’ she resumed, ‘why the Prince of Orange, whoever in hell he is, should want to appoint Richard as a staff officer! Richard doesn’t have the manners to be a staff officer. It’s like that Roman Emperor who made his horse into a consul. It’s madness!’ She was being unfair. Jane knew just what a good soldier her husband was, but a woman who has deserted her man and stolen his fortune soon learns to denigrate his memory as a justification for her actions. ‘Don’t you agree that it’s madness?’ She turned a furious damp face on Rossendale who could only shrug mute agreement. Lord John thought Jane looked very beautiful but also rather frightening. Her hair was splendidly awry because of the lead curling strips which, when removed, would leave her with a glorious gold-bright halo, but which now gave her angry face the fierce and tangled aspect of a Greek Fury.

Jane turned back to the mirror. She could spend hours at a dressing-table, gravely staring at her reflection just as an artist might gaze on his work in search of a final gloss that might turn a merely pretty picture into a masterpiece. ‘Would you say there’s colour in my cheeks?’ she asked Lord John.

‘Yes.’ He smiled with relief that she had changed the subject away from Richard Sharpe. ‘In fact you’re looking positively healthy.’

‘Damn.’ She glowered at her reflection. ‘It must be the hot weather.’ She turned as her maid appeared from the anteroom with two dresses, one gold and one white, which were held up for Jane’s inspection. Jane pointed to the pale gold dress then returned her attention to the mirror. She dipped a finger into a pot of rouge and, with exquisite care, reddened her nipples. Then, obsessively, she went back to blanching her face. The table was crowded with flasks and vials; there was bergamot and musk, eau de chipre, eau de luce, and a bottle of Sans Pareil perfume that had cost Lord John a small fortune. He did not resent such gifts for he found Jane’s beauty ever more startling and ever more beguiling. Society might disapprove of the adulterous relationship flaunted so openly, but Lord John believed that Jane’s beauty excused everything. He could not bear to think of losing her, or of not wholly possessing her. He was in love.

Jane grimaced at herself in the mirror. ‘So what happens if Richard is at the ball tonight?’

Lord John sighed inwardly as he turned back to the window. ‘He’ll challenge me, of course, then it will be grass before tomorrow’s breakfast.’ He spoke lightly, but in truth he dreaded having to face Sharpe in a dawn duel. To Lord John, Sharpe was nothing but a killer who had been trained and hardened to death on innumerable battlefields, while Lord John had only ever brought about the death of foxes. ‘We needn’t go tonight,’ he said hopelessly.

‘And have all society say that we are cowards?’ Jane, because she was a mistress, rarely had an opportunity to attend the more elegant events of society, and she was not going to miss this chance of being seen at a duchess’s ball. Not even Jane’s tender digestion would keep her from tonight’s dancing, and nor did she have any real fear of meeting her husband, for Jane well knew Sharpe’s reluctance to dance or to dress up in a frippery uniform, but the possibility of his presence was an alarming thought that she could not resist exploring.

‘I shall just try to avoid meeting him,’ Lord John said helplessly.

Jane dabbed a tentative finger to test whether her rouged nipples had dried. ‘How soon before there’s a battle?’

‘I’m told the Peer doesn’t expect the French to move till July.’

Jane grimaced at the implied delay, then stood with her slender arms raised high to allow her maid to drop the gauzy dress over her head. ‘Do you know what happens in battle?’ she asked Lord John from under the cascading cloth of gold.

It seemed a rather broad question, and one for which Lord John could not think of a specific answer. ‘Rather a lot of unpleasantry, I imagine,’ he said instead.

‘Richard told me that in battle a lot of unpopular officers are killed by their own men.’ Jane twisted herself to and fro in front of the mirror to make sure the dress hung properly. The dress was high waisted and low-breasted; a fashionably filmy screen through which her brightly coloured nipples showed as enticing shadows. Other women would doubtless be wearing such dresses, but none, Jane thought, would dare to wear one without any petticoat as she herself intended. Satisfied, she sat as her maid began to untwist the lead strips from her hair and tease the ringlets into perfection. ‘He told me that you can’t tell what happens in a battle because there’s too much smoke and noise. A battle, in short, is an ideal place to commit a murder.’

‘Are you suggesting I should kill him?’ Lord John was genuinely shocked at the dishonour of the suggestion.

Jane had indeed been hinting at the opportunity for her husband’s murder, but she could not admit as much. ‘I’m suggesting,’ she lied smoothly, ‘that he may not wish to risk his career by fighting a duel, but instead might try to kill you during a battle.’ She dipped her finger in scented black paste that she applied to her eyelashes. ‘He’s a man of excessive pride and extraordinary brutality.’

‘Are you trying to frighten me?’ Lord John attempted to pass the conversation off lightly.

‘I am trying to make you resolute. A man threatens your life and our happiness, so I am suggesting that you take steps to protect us.’ It was as close as Jane dared go to a direct suggestion of murder, though she could not resist one more enticement. ‘You’re probably in more danger from a British rifle bullet than you are from any French weapon.’

‘The French,’ Lord John said uneasily, ‘may take care of him anyway.’

‘They’ve had plenty of chances before,’ Jane said tartly, ‘and achieved nothing.’

Then, ready at last, she stood. Her hair, ringleted, bejewelled and feathered, crowned an ethereal and sensuous beauty that dazzled Lord John. He bowed, kissed her hand, and led her down to the courtyard where their carriage waited. It was time to dance.

His Serene Highness Prince Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar took one look at Rebecque’s orders, grunted his acceptance, and tossed the paper to his Brigade Major. ‘Tell the Prince we’ll be at the crossroads in one hour,’ he told Sharpe.

Sharpe did not reveal that the Prince of Orange knew nothing of the orders. Instead he thanked His Serene Highness, bowed his way out of the inn which was Prince Bernhard’s headquarters, and remounted his horse. Lieutenant Simon Doggett, who had been charged with keeping Nosey from killing the chickens that pecked in the inn yard, followed Sharpe out to the road. ‘Well, sir?’ he asked Sharpe, but in a nervous voice which suggested that he expected his temerity in asking to be met with a savage reproof.

‘He’ll be at the crossroads in one hour with four thousand men. Let’s hope the bastards can fight.’ Saxe-Weimar’s men were mostly German troops in Dutch service who had fought for Napoleon in the previous wars, and not even Saxe-Weimar himself was certain whether they would now fight against their old comrades.

Doggett rode eastwards beside Sharpe. Like so many of the Englishmen who served the Prince of Orange, Doggett was an old Etonian. He was now a lieutenant in the First Foot Guards, but had been seconded to the Prince’s staff because his father was an old friend of the Baron Rebecque. Doggett was fair-haired, fair-skinned and, to Sharpe’s eyes, absurdly young. He was in fact eighteen, had never seen a battle, and was very nervous of the notorious Lieutenant-Colonel Sharpe who was thirty-eight years old and had lost count of all his battles.

Sharpe now anticipated another battle; one for a crossroads that linked two armies. ‘If the French already hold Quatre Bras, you’ll have to go back and warn Saxe-Weimar,’ Sharpe told him. ‘Then go to Rebecque and tell him the bad news.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Doggett paused, then found the courage to ask a question. ‘And what will you be doing, sir? If the French have captured the crossroads, I mean?’

‘I’ll be riding to Brussels to tell the Duke to run like hell.’

Doggett glanced to see whether the Rifleman was smiling in jest, and decided he was not. The two men fell silent as they cantered their horses between low hedgerows that were bright with the early spears of foxgloves. Beyond the hedges the cornfields were thick with poppies and edged with cornflowers. Swallows whipped low across the fields, while rooks flew clumsily towards their high nests. Sharpe twisted in his saddle to see that the western sky was still clouded, though there were great gaps between the heaping clouds through which the sun poured an incandescent flood of light. It was evening, but there were still four hours of daylight left. In a week’s time it would be the longest day of the year when, in these latitudes, a gunner could accurately sight a twelve-pounder at half-past nine of an evening.

They passed a great dark wood that grew southwards from the road and, quite suddenly, the pale strip of the paved high road stretched stark across the landscape ahead. Sharpe instinctively reined in his horse as he stared at the small cluster of buildings that marked the crossroads called Quatre Bras.

Nothing moved at the crossroads, or nothing that threatened a soldier’s life. There were no troops at the crossroads and the highway was empty, just a pale dusty strip between its vivid green verges. Sharpe tapped his heels to start his horse moving again.

Wisps of smoke revealed that the cottagers were cooking their evening meals at the hearths of the small hamlet which lay to the north of the crossroads. There was one large stone farmhouse, outside which a small dark-haired girl was playing with some kittens by an empty farm-cart. Three geese waddled across the road. Two old women, bonneted and shawled, sat tatting lace outside a thatched cottage. A pig rooted in an orchard, and milk cows lowed from the farmyard. One of the shawled women must have seen Sharpe and Doggett approaching for she suddenly called the small girl who ran nervously towards the thatched cottage. Beyond the tiny hamlet the smaller unpaved road climbed a shallow hill before disappearing eastwards in a stand of dark trees.

‘You understand the importance of this road?’ Sharpe pointed at the smaller road on which he and Doggett travelled.

‘No, sir,’ Doggett replied honestly.

‘It’s the road that joins us and the Prussians. If the French cut it, we’re on our own, so if we lose these crossroads, the Crapauds have won the damned campaign.’ Sharpe spurred down to the crossroads, touched his hat to the old ladies who were staring with alarm at the two horsemen, then he turned to gaze down the long southwards road that led to Charleroi. The highway stretched pale and deserted in the evening sun, yet this was the very same road on which Sharpe had seen a French corps marching that morning. That sighting had been only twelve miles south of this crossroads, yet now there was no sign of any Frenchmen. Had they stopped? Had they retreated? Sharpe felt a sudden fear that he had raised a false alarm and the force he had seen had been nothing but a feint. Or maybe the French had marched past this crossroads and were already nearing Brussels? No. He dismissed that fear instantly, because there was no sign of an army’s passing. The tall rye in the fields either side of the road was untrampled, and the road’s crude paving of cobbles on impacted chalk and flint had no deep ruts like those made by the passage of heavy guns. So where the hell were the French?

‘Let’s go and find the bastards,’ Sharpe grunted, and once he had said it he marvelled at how easy it was to slip back into the old ways of speaking about the enemy. He had lived in Normandy for seven months, he had learned the French language and come to love the French countryside, yet now, just as if he had never met Lucille, he spoke of the French as a hated enemy. The strangeness of that thought suddenly made him miss the château. Lucille’s home was very grandly called a château, though in truth it was nothing more than a large moated farm with a crenellated tower to remind passers-by that the building had once been a small fortress. Now the château was Sharpe’s home, the first home he had ever truly known. The estates had been neglected in the war and Sharpe had begun the laborious task of repairing the years of neglect. At this time of the year, if Napoleon had not returned, Sharpe should have been thinning the apple crop, stripping away basketloads of the young fruit to give the remaining crop a better chance of ripening in the autumn, but instead he was riding a dusty road in Belgium and searching for an enemy that had mysteriously disappeared.

The road dropped gently down to a ford. To Sharpe’s left the stream flowed into a lake, while ahead of him, beyond the shallow ford, a farm with an arched gateway stood on the left-hand side of the road. A woman stared suspiciously from the farm’s arch at the two soldiers, then stepped back into the yard and slammed the heavy gate. Sharpe had stopped at the ford to let the horses drink. Bright blue dragonflies hovered and darted in the reeds. The evening was warm; a gentle quiet dusk in which the only sounds were the rippling water and the slight clatter of the rye stalks moving in the breeze. It seemed impossible that this might become a battlefield, and perhaps it would not, for Sharpe was already beginning to doubt what he had seen that same morning. Where the hell had the French gone?

He touched the horse’s flanks, splashed through the ford and began to climb the gradual slope beyond. Dogs barked in the farmyard, and Nosey howled in reply till Sharpe snapped at him to be quiet. The familiar homely stink of a dungheap wafted across the highway. Sharpe rode slowly, as though hurrying might spoil the calm of this perfect summer’s evening. The road was unhedged, running between wide strips of rank grass in which wood garlic, foxgloves, columbine and yellow archangel grew. Elder and blackthorn bushes offered patches of shade. A rabbit thumped the verge in alarm at the horsemen’s approach, then scurried into the rye stalks. The evening was fragrant, warm and rich, lit by the great wash of gold light that flooded through the cloud chasms in the western skies.

Off to Sharpe’s left, about a mile away, he could see the roofs of two more farmhouses, while to his right the wood gave way to rolling cornfields intersected by a farm track that twisted between the crops. Nothing untoward moved in the landscape. Had he come to the wrong crossroads? He had a sudden fear that this was not the Charleroi to Brussels road. He took out his map, which indeed suggested that he was riding on the main Brussels highway, but maps were notoriously inaccurate. He looked for a milestone, but none was in sight. He stopped again and listened, but could hear neither musketry nor the sounds of marching men. Had he imagined the enemy this morning? Or the musketry this afternoon? But Rebecque had heard the musketry too. So where were the French? Had they been swallowed into the warm fields?

The road bent slightly to the right. The rye was growing so tall that Sharpe could not see what lay around the bend. He loosened his rifle in its holster and called Nosey to heel. Simon Doggett, riding alongside Sharpe with the spare horse, seemed to share the Rifleman’s nervousness. Both men were instinctively curbing their horses.

They edged round the road’s bend. Ahead now was a road junction shaded by two big chestnut trees. The highway bent to the left, while a smaller track went off to the right. Far beyond the junction, and half-obscured by the tall rye, was a village. The map tallied with what Sharpe saw, so the village had to be Frasnes.

‘We’ll go as far as the village,’ Sharpe said.

‘Yes, sir.’

The sound of their voices broke the nervous spell and both men dug in their heels to make their horses trot. Sharpe had to duck under a low chestnut branch as he turned the next corner to see, five hundred yards ahead of him, the wide village street.

He stopped again. The street seemed empty. He pulled out the battered sea captain’s telescope that he had bought in Caen to replace the expensive glass that he had lost after Toulouse. He trained the awkward heavy instrument on the village’s single street.

Three men sat outside what must be the village inn. A woman in thick black skirts led a donkey laden with hay. Two children ran towards the church. The image of the church wavered, Sharpe checked the glass’s tremor, then froze. ‘Jesus Christ!’

‘Sir?’ Doggett asked in alarm.

‘We’ve got the bastards!’ Sharpe’s voice was filled with satisfaction.

The French had not disappeared, and he had not imagined them. They were in Frasnes. At the far end of the village street, just coming into sight and foreshortened by distance and the ancient lens, was a battalion of French infantry. They must have been singing for, though Sharpe could hear nothing, he could see their mouths opening and closing in unison. This battalion wore darker blue coats than most French infantry and had very dark blue trousers. ‘They’re a battalion of Voltigeurs,’ Sharpe told Doggett. ‘Light infantry. Skirmishers. So where the hell are their Dragoons?’ He panned the telescope left and right, but no horsemen showed in the evening sunlight.

Doggett had taken out his own glass and was staring at the French. They were the first enemy troops he had ever seen and the sight of them had made him go pale. He could hear the beat of his bloodstream echoing fast in his ears. He had often imagined seeing the enemy for the first time, but it was strange how very commonplace and yet how exciting this baptism was. ‘How many of them are there?’ he asked.

‘Six hundred?’ Sharpe guessed. ‘And they’re cocksure bastards to march without a cavalry screen.’ The only horsemen he could see were ten mounted French officers, but he knew the cavalry and guns could not be far behind. No General pushed unsupported skirmishers too far ahead of the main force. He turned to Doggett. ‘Right! You go back to Quatre Bras. Wait there for Saxe-Weimar. Give him my compliments and tell him there’s at least one battalion of French skirmishers coming his way. Suggest he advances as far as the stream and stops them there, but make it a tactful suggestion. Take Nosey and the spare horse, then wait for me at the crossroads. Understand?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Doggett turned his own horse and awkwardly led the spare horse round in a circle. ‘What will you do, sir?’

‘I’ll keep an eye on these bastards. If you hear shooting, don’t worry. That’s just me playing games. Give Nosey a good kicking if the bastard gives you any trouble.’

Doggett spurred away, followed by a reluctant Nosey, while Sharpe dismounted and led his horse back to the chestnut trees which grew at the road’s fork. Just beyond the chestnuts, in the long grass of the verge, a heavy wooden brush harrow had been abandoned. Sharpe tied the horse’s reins to the harrow’s stout frame, then slid his rifle out of its saddle holster. He checked that the weapon was loaded, then that the flint was firmly seated in its leather-padded jaws.

He went back past the chestnuts, keeping in the shadows of the tall rye on the western side of the road. He ran steadily, getting ever closer to the village and to the approaching enemy. The French troops had not stopped in Frasnes, but were marching doggedly on towards Sharpe who supposed that their orders were to seize the crossroads at Quatre Bras before nightfall. If Saxe-Weimar could reach the crossroads first, and if his men would fight, the French would fail, but it would be a very close race.

Sharpe wanted to slow the French advance. Even a few minutes would help. He dropped in a shallow scrape by the roadside, half hidden by a hazel bush which had been invaded by pink dog roses. None of the approaching enemy seemed to have noticed him. He slid his rifle through the thick grass, then pushed his tricorne hat back so that its peak would not catch on the weapon’s doghead.

He waited. The pistol in his belt dug into his belly. The grass of the road’s verge was warm and dank. There had been rain earlier in the week and the soil under the thick vegetation was still damp. A ladybird crawled up a dry stalk, then stepped delicately across to the oiled and battered stock of the rifle. The enemy marched careless and unsuspecting. The shadows stretched long over the road. It was a summer’s evening as beautiful as God had ever blessed on a wicked world.

A hare appeared on the opposite verge, quivered for a second, then ran swiftly up the road only to leap sideways out of the path of the approaching French infantry. The enemy was three hundred yards away now and marching in a column of four ranks. Sharpe could hear their strong singing. An officer rode ahead of the column on a grey horse. The officer had a red plume on his blue shako and a tall red collar on his unbuttoned blue coat. The red plume was nodding to the rhythm of the horse’s steps. Sharpe aimed at the plume, suspecting that at this extreme range the bullet would drop to hit the horse.

He fired. Birds squawked and exploded out of the crops.

Smoke banged from the pan by Sharpe’s right eye and the burning scraps of powder flayed back to his cheek. The rifle’s heavy brass butt crashed back into his shoulder. He moved even before the singing stopped, rolling into the thick rye stalks where, without bothering to see what damage his shot had done, he began reloading. Prime the pan, close it, pour the cartridge powder down the smoking barrel, then ram in the cartridge’s paper and the ball. He slid the ramrod out, jammed it down the long barrel, then pulled it free. No one had shot back. He rolled again into the shadow of the hazel bush where his foul-smelling powder smoke still lingered.

The column had stopped. The officer had dismounted from the grey horse which was skittering nervously at the road’s edge. Birds wheeled overhead. The officer was unhurt, and none of the men seemed to have been hit. Perhaps the horse was wounded? Sharpe took the loaded pistol from his belt, cocked it, and laid it beside him. Then he aimed the rifle again, this time at one of the men in the front rank.

He fired. Within seconds he fired again, this time emptying the pistol towards the Frenchmen. The second shot would do no damage, but it might persuade the Frenchmen that there was a group of enemy in front of them. Sharpe rolled right again, this time plunging deeper into the rye stalks before reloading the rifle. He pushed the pistol into his belt.

French muskets banged. He heard the heavy lead balls flicking through the stalks of rye, though none went near him. Sharpe was loading fast, going through the drill he had first learned twenty-two years before. Another volley of musketry hammered from the French who were firing blind into the tall crops.

Sharpe did the same, simply aiming the rifle in the direction of the column, and pulling the trigger so that the bullet whipped off through the stalks. He tap-loaded the next cartridge, not bothering to use the cumbersome ramrod, but just slamming the rifle’s butt hard on the ground in hope that the blow would jar the ball down to the loose charge. He fired again, and felt the lesser kick which told him the ball had only lodged half-way down the barrel. That bullet would be lucky to go a hundred yards, but that was not the point. The point was to fire fast to persuade the French that they had run into a strong picquet line.

He fired one more tap-loaded bullet, then ran back parallel to the road. He forced his way through the rye till he was past the chestnuts, then turned to his right. He ran across the road and heard the French shout as they saw him, but by the time they had pulled their triggers, he was already in the shelter of the tall trees. The nervous horse rolled its eyes white and flicked its ears towards the crackling sound of the muskets.

Sharpe reloaded the rifle, this time ramming the bullet hard down against the charge, then released the horse. It was a big black stallion, one of the best in the Prince’s stable and Sharpe hoped the beast was battle trained. Men had died because an untrained horse had taken fright at the sound of musketry. He pulled himself into the saddle, settled his sore thighs, and pushed the rifle into its holster. He pulled the horse round to face eastwards, then spurred it into the tall field of rye. So far the French had been fired on from the field on their left, now they would see an officer on the right of their advance.

A shout told Sharpe he had indeed been seen. The rye hid him from the French rankers, and only those officers on horseback could see the Rifleman over the tall crop. Sharpe waved his right arm as though he was beckoning a skirmish line forward. For all the French officers knew the thick rye might have concealed two whole battalions of Greenjackets.

A trumpet sounded from the French. Sharpe trotted in a semi-circle, going to the enemy’s flank to suggest an enfilading attack, then he turned and spurred back towards Quatre Bras. A wasteful volley was shot towards him, but the range was far too long and the balls spent themselves among the thick stalks. Three mounted officers rode into the field after the volley, but Sharpe had spurred well clear of any threat from the three men. He just trotted northwards, thinking to fire some more rifle shots from the farm by the ford.

Then hoofbeats pounded to Sharpe’s left and he saw another French officer galloping furiously down the high road. Sharpe urged the black stallion on, but the footing under the rye was treacherous; the soil was damp and still held the shape of the plough furrows, and the stallion could not match the Frenchman’s speed on the paved road. The stallion stumbled and Sharpe almost fell, and when he recovered himself he saw that the Frenchman had swerved off the road and, with drawn sabre, was charging straight for him. The man was young, probably a lieutenant.

Damn the bloody man. In all armies there were officers who needed to prove their bravery by single combat. The duel could also help a career; if this young French Lieutenant could take Sharpe’s horse and weapons back to his battalion he would be a hero. Maybe he would even be made into a captain.

Sharpe slowed his horse and dragged his big unwieldy sword out of its scabbard. ‘Go back!’ he shouted in French.

‘When you’re dead, monsieur!’ The Frenchman spoke cheerfully. He looked as young as Doggett. His horse, like Sharpe’s, had been slowed by the plough furrows in the rye field, but the Frenchman rowelled it on as he got close to Sharpe.

Sharpe stood his ground, his right arm facing the attack. The Lieutenant, like all French skirmishing officers, carried a light curved sabre; a good slashing weapon, but not the most accurate blade for the lunge. This man, eager to draw first blood, swerved as he neared Sharpe, then leaned out of his saddle to give a gut-slicing sweep with the glittering blade.

Sharpe simply parried the blow by holding his own heavy sword vertically. The clash of steel jarred up his arm, then he kicked his heels back to force the stallion towards the road. The Frenchman had swept past him, and now tried to turn in the clinging rye.

Sharpe only wanted to reach the road. He had no need to prove anything in single combat. He glanced over his left shoulder and saw the three other officers were still two hundred yards away, then a shouted challenge from his right revealed that the French Lieutenant had succeeded in turning his horse and was now spurring back to make a new attack. He was approaching from behind and slightly to the right of Sharpe. That was foolish, for it meant the Frenchman would have to make his sabre cut across his own and his horse’s body. ‘Don’t be stupid!’ Sharpe called back to him.

‘Are you frightened, Englishman?’ the Lieutenant laughed.

Sharpe felt the anger then; the cold anger that seemed to slow the passage of time itself and make everything appear so very distinctly. He saw the Frenchman’s small moustache above the bared teeth. The man’s shako had a red, white and blue cockade, and some of the shako’s overlapping brass plates were missing from its leather chin-strap. The Lieutenant’s horse was tossing its head, snorting, raising its bright hooves high as it trampled the crop. Husks of rye and scraps of straw were being splintered aside by the charging horse. The Lieutenant’s sabre was raised, reflecting the dying sun in its brilliant polish and ready for the downwards cut that was supposed to hack into Sharpe’s skull. Sharpe was holding his own sword low beside his stirrup, almost as if he could not be bothered to fight. The long blade was whipped by the rye stalks. Sharpe was deliberately curbing the stallion to take shorter slower steps, thus letting the eager Frenchman overtake him, but, just a heartbeat before the sun-bright sabre whipped hard down, Sharpe jerked the long sword back and upwards.

The heavy blade smashed brutally hard into the mouth of the Lieutenant’s horse. The beast reared up on its hind legs, screaming, with blood showing at its lips and teeth. Sharpe was already turning the stallion across its front. The Lieutenant was desperately trying to stay in his saddle. He flailed for balance with his sabre arm, then screamed because he saw the heavy sword coming at his throat. He tried to twist away, but instead his horse plunged back onto its forefeet and threw the Lieutenant’s weight fast forward.

Sharpe held his straight-bladed sword pointed at the Lieutenant’s throat and locked his elbow as the Frenchman fell onto the blade. There was an instant’s resistance, then the sword’s point punctured skin and muscle to tear into the great blood vessels of the Frenchman’s neck. His scream of fear was silenced instantly. He seemed to stare at Sharpe as he died; offering the Englishman a look of mingled surprise and remorse, then a gout of blood, bright as the sun itself, slashed out to soak Sharpe’s right arm and shoulder. Specks of the blood spattered his face, then the Frenchman was falling away and his dying weight ripped his body clear of the long steel blade.

Sharpe twisted the stallion away. He thought briefly of taking the Lieutenant’s horse, but he did not want to be encumbered by the beast. He saw the other three French officers check their advance. He flourished the bloody sword at them in a mocking salute, then trotted back to the road.

He stopped there, wiped the blade on his overalls, and sheathed the sword. His right arm was soaked with the Frenchman’s blood that had saturated the flimsy green sleeve of his old uniform. He grimaced at the smell of fresh blood, then pulled the loaded rifle from its holster. The three officers watched him, but none tried to come close.

He watched the turn in the road by the chestnut trees. After a minute the first French skirmishers ran into sight. They stopped when they saw him, then dived right and left, but at fifty yards the rifle was lethal and Sharpe saw his bullet lift a man clean off the ground.

But at fifty yards the French muskets were almost as accurate as the Baker rifle. Sharpe slammed back his heels and took off down the road as if the demons of hell were at his heels. He counted to eight, then swerved hard left into the tall rye, just as the French volley whipped through the dust cloud left by the stallion’s hooves.

The small volley missed. Sharpe rode on down the slope till he reached the stream where, as the stallion drank, he reloaded the rifle and shoved the weapon into its holster. Then, satisfied that the French would check their advance till they were certain no picquet line waited in ambush, he stared westwards towards the clouds and let out a long heavy breath.

He was measuring the fear he had just felt. For months he had been haunted by his memories of the battle of Toulouse; reliving the bowel-loosening terror he had felt at that last conflict of the last war. There had been no horror particular to Toulouse to explain that extraordinary fear; the battle had been less threatening than a half-dozen of the Spanish engagements, yet Sharpe had never forgotten the awful fear, nor his relief when peace had been declared. He had hung the battered sword over the spice cupboard in Lucille’s kitchen, and had claimed to be glad that he would never again have to draw the war-dulled blade from its metal scabbard. Yet, ever since Toulouse, he had wondered whether his nerve had gone for ever.

Now, holding his blood-soaked right hand to the evening light, he found his answer. The hand was motionless, yet at Toulouse that hand had shaken like a man afflicted with the palsy of St Vitus’s dance. Sharpe slowly closed the hand into a fist. He felt an immense relief that his nerve had come back, but he also felt ashamed that he had enjoyed the discovery.

He looked up at the clouds. He had assured Lucille that he fought only because his pension would be jeopardized if he refused, but in truth he had wanted to know whether the old skills were still there or whether, like a cannon fired too fast and too often, he had simply worn himself out as a soldier. Now he knew, and it had all been so damned easy. The young Lieutenant had ridden on to the blade, and Sharpe had felt nothing. He doubted if his pulse had even quickened as he killed. Twenty-two years of war had honed that skill to near perfection, and as a result a mother in France would soon be weeping.

He looked southwards. Nothing moved among the tall crops. The French would be collecting their casualties, and their officers would be staring northwards in search of a non-existent picquet line.

Sharpe patted the stallion, then walked him downstream until he reached the ford where, once more, he waited for the enemy’s advance. The woman had come back to the farm’s archway from where she and two men stared nervously up the road towards Frasnes. A horsefly settled on the stallion’s neck. Sharpe slapped it bloody, then unsheathed the rifle and held it across his saddle. He would give the French one more shot before retreating back to the crossroads.

Then, from behind him, from the north, he heard the thump of heavy drums and the jaunty thin notes of a flute playing. He twisted in the saddle to see a column of infantry at the crossroads of Quatre Bras. For a second Sharpe’s heart leapt, thinking that a battalion of Riflemen had arrived, then he saw the yellow crossbelts over the green coats and he knew he was seeing Prince Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar’s force of Nassauers. The German brigade officers were already spurring down the road towards Sharpe.

Saxe-Weimar had arrived at the very nick of time. On the long slope above Sharpe the French battalion had spread into skirmish order. They were invisible in the tall rye, yet their purposeful advance could be traced by the disturbance of the crop through which they moved. The Nassauers’ battalion was doubling down the road, while their officers spurred towards the stream to mark the place where the infantry would form a line.

Sharpe rode back behind the advancing troops. Some of the men gave him curious looks because of the blood that had sheeted his right side. He uncorked his canteen and took a long drink of water. More Nassauer infantry were running down the road, their heavy boots stirring a thick dust. Small drummer boys, their lips caked with the road’s dust, beat a ragged advance as they ran. The troops seemed eager enough, but the next few seconds would be the acid test of their willingness to fight against their old master, Napoleon.

The first Nassauer battalion was formed in a line of four ranks on the left-hand side of the road. The battalion’s Colonel stared at the thrashing of unseen men in the rye field on the stream’s far bank, then ordered his men to make ready.

The muskets were lifted to the men’s shoulders.

The Colonel paused. ‘Fire!’

There was a split second’s silence, then the volley crashed hugely loud in the still evening air. The musketballs slammed across the small stream and bent the rye crop as though a squall of wind had struck the stalks. Rooks protested at the disturbance by flapping angrily up from the roadside.

‘Reload!’ To Sharpe’s eyes the battalion’s musket drill was lamentably slow, but it did not matter; they were fighting.

A few French skirmishers returned the fire, but they were massively outnumbered and their shooting was wild. Another Nassauer battalion had formed a line to the right of the stream. ‘Fire!’ Again a volley hammered at the evening’s perfection. A bank of smoke, thick and vile smelling, rolled across the stream.

‘Fire!’ That was the first battalion again. Yet more men were coming from the crossroads and deploying left and right beyond the first two units. Staff officers were galloping busily behind the lines where the battalion’s colours were bright in the dusk. The drummers kept up their din.

‘How many of them?’ The Brigade Major, who spoke English with a thick German accent, reined in beside Sharpe.

‘I only saw one battalion of skirmishers.’

‘Guns? Cavalry?’

‘None that I saw, but they can’t be far behind.’

‘We’ll hold them here as long as we can.’ The Brigade Major glanced at the sun. It was not long now till nightfall, and the French advance would certainly stop with the darkness.

‘I’ll let headquarters know you’re here,’ Sharpe said.

‘We’ll need help by morning,’ the Brigade Major said fervently.

‘You’ll get it.’ Sharpe hoped he spoke the truth.

Lieutenant Simon Doggett waited at the crossroads and frowned when he saw the blood on Sharpe’s arm. ‘Are you hurt, sir?’

‘That’s someone else’s blood.’ Sharpe brushed at the bloodstain, but it was still wet. ‘You’re to go back to Braine-le-Comte. Tell Rebecque that the crossroads at Quatre Bras are safe, but that the French are bound to attack in greater strength in the morning. Tell him we need men here; as many as possible!’

‘And you, sir? Are you staying here?’

‘No. I’ll take the spare horse.’ Sharpe slid out of the saddle and began unbuckling its girth. ‘You take this horse back to headquarters.’

‘Where are you going, sir?’ Doggett, seeing the flicker of irritation on Sharpe’s face, justified his question. ‘The Baron’s bound to ask me, sir.’

‘Tell Rebecque I’m going to Brussels. The Prince wants me to go to a bloody ball.’

Simon Doggett’s face blanched as he looked at Sharpe’s frayed and blood-drenched uniform. ‘Like that, sir? You’re going to a ball dressed like that?’

‘There’s a bloody war on. What does the Young Frog expect? Bloody lace and pantaloons?’ He handed Doggett the stallion’s bridle, then carried the saddle over to the spare horse. ‘Tell Rebecque I’m riding to Brussels to see the Duke. Someone has to tell him what’s happening here. Go on with you!’

Behind Sharpe the firing had died away. The French had retreated, presumably back to Frasnes, while Saxe-Weimar’s men had begun to make their bivouacs. Their axes sounded loud in the long wood as they cut the timber for their cooking fires. The people of the hamlet, sensing what destruction would follow the coming of these soldiers, were packing their few belongings into the farm cart. The small girl was crying, looking for her lost kittens. A man cursed at Sharpe, then went to help harness a thin mule to the cart.

Sharpe wearily mounted his fresh horse. The cross-roads were safe, at least for this one night. He clicked his fingers for Nosey to follow him, then rode northwards in the dusk. He was going to a dance.