Sharpe's Waterloo Part 23

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 b.u.g.g.e.rs at Fuentes de Onoro?"

Sharpe laughed. The ground at Fuentes de Onoro 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 superst.i.tions. "He says it's because he's happy. He reckons that the happiest die first and only the miserable b.u.g.g.e.rs 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 b.l.o.o.d.y horrible mug of tea."

"It had a bit of dead horse in it," Harper explained helpfully.

"G.o.d d.a.m.n 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 b.u.g.g.e.r 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 Blcher'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 hors.e.m.e.n, 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 Ggth's ma.s.s grave. "Good morning, sir." Doggett offered Sharpe a very formal salute.

Sharpe returned the salute by raising his mug of tea. "Morning, Doggett. b.l.o.o.d.y horrible morning, too."

"The Baron would like to see you, sir." Doggett sounded deeply uncomfortable as though he was still embarra.s.sed 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 gra.s.s verge rather than at the clouds or at the tall Rifleman who walked beside him. "You were right," he said at last.

Sharpe shrugged, but said nothing.

"And the Prince knows you were right, and he feels badly."

"So tell the little b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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, arid 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 h.e.l.l 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 h.e.l.l 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 d.a.m.ned 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."

"b.u.g.g.e.r 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, d.a.m.n!" 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d?"

"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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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.