Sharpe's Waterloo Part 41

Upstairs in the hotel the windows shivered under the impact of the gun-fire. Jane Sharpe lay in bed, the curtains closed and her eyes shut. She felt sick.

She listened to the guns, praying that one small part of their appalling violence would free her by killing Sharpe. She prayed pa.s.sionately, nagging G.o.d, beseeching him, weeping at him. She did not ask for much. She only wanted to be married, and t.i.tled, and mother of Lord John's heir. She thought life was so very unfair. She had taken every precaution, yet still she was pregnant, so now, as the guns echoed, she prayed for a death. She must marry Lord John, or else he might marry elsewhere and she would be left a wh.o.r.e, and her child a wh.o.r.eson. That child felt sour in her belly. She turned on her side in the darkened room, cursed the kitchen smells that made her want to vomit, and wept.

The guns fired on, and Brussels waited.

Peter d'Alembord was resigned to death. The day's only miracle so far was that his death had not yet come.

It seemed certain to come now for a sudden torrent of metal was being poured at the ridge. The French guns were in fury, and the soil about d'Alembord was being churned to ragged turmoil by roundshot and sh.e.l.l. His horse had been killed in the bombardment that had opened the battle, so now d'Alembord was forced to stand quite still while the air hummed and quivered and shook with the pa.s.sage of the missiles, and as the ground thumped and trembled and spewed up great gobs of mud and stone.

He stood in front of the battalion, which in turn was a few hundred paces to the right of the elm tree. Not that the tree could be seen any more, for gun smoke had settled over the British ridge to hide anything more than a hundred yards away. D'Alembord had earlier watched the attacks on Hougoumont, then seen the Hanoverians march to their deaths, but the great cavalry charge had been hidden from him by the smoke of the cannons firing from the British centre. He wished he could see more of the battle, for at least that would be a diversion while he waited for death. He had accepted that he would die, and he was determined that he would do it with as much grace as he could muster.

Which was why he had gone to the front of the battalion to stand in the place of greatest danger at the crest of the ridge. He could have stayed with the colour party where Colonel Ford fretted and continually polished his eyegla.s.ses with his officer's sash, or he could have taken his proper post at the rear right flank of the Prince of Wales's Own Volunteers, but instead d'Alembord had gone a few paces ahead of the company officers and now stood, quite still, staring into the cannon smoke across the valley. Behind him the men were lying flat, but no officer could thus take shelter. An officer's job was to set an example. An officer's duty was to stand still; to show insouciance. The time would come when the men would have to stand up in the face of the French fire, and therefore the officers must set an example of absolute stoicism. That was an infantry officer's prime task in battle; to set an example, and it did not matter if his belly was churning with fear, or that his breath sometimes came with a whimper, or that his brain was cringing with terror; he must still show utter calmness.

If an officer had to move under fire, then it had to be done very slowly and deliberately, with the air of a man distractedly taking a meditative stroll in the country. Captain Harry Price so moved, though his deliberate gait was somewhat spoilt when his new spurs caught in a tangle of crushed rye and almost tipped him a.r.s.e over heels. He caught his balance, tried to show dignity by plucking at his new pelisse, then stood at ease alongside Peter d'Alembord. "A bit of heat in the day now, Peter, wouldn't you say?"

D'Alembord had to control his breathing, but managed a creditable response. "It's definitely become warmer, Harry."

Price paused, evidently seeking some observation that would keep the conversation going. "If the clouds cleared away, it might become a rare old day!"

"Indeed, yes."

"Good cricketing weather, even."

D'Alembord looked sideways at his friend, wondering for a second whether Harry Price had gone quite mad, then he saw a muscle quivering in Harry's cheek and he realized that Price was just trying to hide his own fear.

Price grinned suddenly. "Speaking of cricket, is our brave Colonel happy?"

"He's not saying very much. He's just polishing those d.a.m.ned spectacles of his."

Harry Price dropped his voice as though, in the maelstrom of sh.e.l.ls and roundshot, he might yet be overheard. "I put some b.u.t.ter on the tails of his sash this morning."

"You did what?"

"b.u.t.tered his sash," Price said gleefully. He looked warily upwards as a sh.e.l.l made a curious fluttering noise overhead, then relaxed as the missile exploded far to the rear. "I did it this morning, while he was shaving. I only used a spot of b.u.t.ter, for one doesn't wish to be obvious. It isn't the first time I've b.u.t.tered his eyegla.s.ses, either. I did it the last time he insisted we play cricket. Why do you think he couldn't see the ball?"

D'Alembord wondered how anyone could play such a schoolboy trick on a morning of battle, then, after a pause, he spoke with a sudden pa.s.sion. "I do hate b.l.o.o.d.y cricket."

Price, who liked the game, was offended. "That's not very English of you."

"I'm not English. My ancestry is French, which is probably why I find cricket such a b.l.o.o.d.y tedious game!" D'Alembord feared that he was betraying a note of hysteria.

"There are more tedious games than cricket." Price spoke very earnestly.

"You really believe so?"

A cannon-ball slammed into Number Four Company. It killed two men and wounded two others so badly that they would die before they could reach the surgeons. One of the two men screamed in a tremulous, nerve-sc.r.a.ping voice until Regimental Sergeant Major Mclnerney shouted for the wounded man to be quiet, then ordered that the dead men be thrown forward to where the corpses were being stacked into a crude barricade. A sh.e.l.l exploded in midair, drowning the RSM's voice. Harry Price looked up at the drifting billow of smoke left by the sh.e.l.l's explosion. "One of the c.r.a.paud batteries is cutting its fuses a bit brief, wouldn't you say?"

"You claim there's a more tedious game than cricket?" D'Alembord did not want to think about fuses or sh.e.l.ls.

Price nodded. "Have you ever seen men play golf?"

D'Alembord shook his head. Off to his left he could see French skirmishers advancing among the Hanoverian dead towards La Haye Sainte. The distinctive sound of rifle-fire betrayed that the farm's garrison had seen the danger, then the French muskets began to add their own smoke to the battle's fog. "I've never seen golf being played," d'Alembord said. The effort of controlling his fear made his voice sound very stilted, like a man rehearsing a strange language. "It's a Scottish game, isn't it?"

"It's a b.l.o.o.d.y weird Scottish game." Price blinked and swallowed as a roundshot went foully close, fanning both men with the wind of its pa.s.sing. "You hit a small ball with a bent stick until you get it near a rabbit hole. Then you tap it into the hole, fish it out, and hit it towards another hole."

D'Alembord looked at his friend who was keeping a very straight face. "You're inventing this, Harry. You're making it up just to make me feel better."

Harry Price shook his head. "G.o.d's honour, Peter. I might not have mastered the finer points of the game, but I saw a man with a beard playing it near Troon."

D'Alembord started to laugh. He did not quite know why it was so funny, but something about Harry's solemnity made him laugh. For a few seconds his laughter rang loud across the battalion, then a sh.e.l.l cracked apart with what seemed unusual violence, and Sergeant Huckfield was shouting at his men to stay down. D'Alembord turned and saw three of his old light company men had been turned into blood-stained rag dolls. "What were you doing in Troon, for G.o.d's sake?"

"I have a widowed aunt who lives there, the childless relict of a lawyer. Her will is not yet decided and the lawyer's fortune was far from despicable. I went to persuade her that I am a G.o.dly, sober and deserving heir."

D'Alembord grinned. "She doesn't know you're a lazy, drunken rogue, Harry?"

"I read her the psalms every night," Price said with a very fragile dignity.

A thudding of hooves turned d'Alembord round to see a staff officer galloping along the ridge crest. The man slowed his horse as he neared the two officers. "You're to pull back! One hundred yards, no more!" The man spurred on and shouted the order over the p.r.o.ne battalion to Colonel Ford. "One hundred yards, Colonel! Back one hundred yards! Lie down there!"

D'Alembord faced the battalion. Far in the rear a sh.e.l.l had exploded an ammunition wagon that now burned to send a plume of boiling smoke up to the low clouds. Colonel Ford was standing in his stirrups, shouting his orders over the din of sh.e.l.ls and guns. The Sergeants rousted the men to their feet and ordered them to pace back from the crest. The men, glad to be retreating from the cannonade, went at the double, leaving their bloodied dead behind.

"We walk, I think." D'Alembord heard a shakiness in his voice, and tried again. "We definitely walk, Harry. We don't run."

"I can't run in these spurs." Price admitted. "I suppose the thing about spurs is that you need a horse to go with them."

The small retreat took the leading companies away from the lip of the ridge onto the hidden reverse slope, yet even so, and even lying flat in the trampled corn, the sh.e.l.ls and roundshot still found their marks. The wounded limped to the rear, going to the forest's edge where the surgeons waited. Some men, unable to walk, were carried by the bandsmen. A few shrunken bands still played, but their music was overwhelmed by the hammering of the ma.s.sive bombardment. More ammunition wagons were struck, their fire and smoke thickening until the forest's edge looked like a giant crucible in which the flames spat and flared. Frightened horses, cut from the traces of the burning wagons, galloped in panic through the wounded who limped and crawled to the surgeons.

On the southern ridge the French general officers sought vantage points from where their guns' smoke did not obscure the view and from where they could search the British lines for clues to the effectiveness of their bombardment.

They saw the turmoil of burning ammunition. They saw the wounded limping back; so many wounded that it looked like a retreat. Then, quite suddenly, they saw the battalions that had lined the crest pull back from the crest and disappear.

French infantry still a.s.saulted Hougoumont, and more men had just been sent to capture the awkward bastion of La Haye Sainte, but perhaps neither attack would need to be successful, for it was clear that the vaunted British infantry was beaten. The G.o.dd.a.m.ns were retreating. Their ranks had been shredded by the Emperor's jeune files, and the redcoats were fleeing. The Emperor had been right; the British would not stand against a real a.s.sault. The guns still fired, but the ridge seemed empty, and the French smelt glory in the powder smoke.

Marshal Ney, bravest of the brave, had been ordered by the Emperor to finish the British quickly. He gazed through his telescope at the enemy ridge and saw a shining chance of swift victory. He slammed his spygla.s.s shut, turned in his saddle, and beckoned to his cavalry commanders.

It was half-past three, and the Prussians had not come.

Sharpe and Harper had instinctively returned to the ridge above Hougoumont where Captain Witherspoon's body lay. It was the place their battle had started, and where they felt a curious sense of safety. The French bombardment was concentrating on the ground to their left, leaving the slope above the beleaguered chateau in relative peace.

They reined in close to Witherspoon's disembowelled corpse. A glossy crow noisily protested their arrival, then went back to its feeding. "There goes my colonel's pay," Sharpe said after staring in silence at the shifting smoke above the valley.

Harper was frowning at the corpse, wondering if it was that of the pleasant young Captain who had been so friendly at the beginning of the battle.

"Worth it, though, just to tell that poxy little Dutch b.a.s.t.a.r.d one home truth," Sharpe continued. He was staring at Hougoumont. The roof of the chateau was burning fiercely, spewing sparks high and thick into the smoky sky. The western end of the house had already been reduced to bare walls and blackened beams, though, judging from the amount of musket smoke which ringed the chateau, the conflagration had not diminished the defenders' resistance. The French attacks still broke to nothing on the chateau's walls and musketry.

"So what do you want to do?" Sharpe asked Harper.

"We can go, you mean?" Harper sounded vaguely surprised.