Sharpe's Waterloo Part 45

They might have deployed out of square, but the Emperor made sure his cavalry was always threatening and so the Irish were forced to stay in their vulnerable square like a great fat target for the gunners and the Voltigeurs who infeated the eastern half of the valley as thickly as they swarmed in the west.

Some of those Voltigeurs, fearful that a French victory and pursuit might take them away from the rich plunder of the battlefield, took care to enrich themselves before the British line shattered. The dead and injured of the British heavy cavalry littered the valley floor and, though the pockets of many of the casualties had been hastily searched already, the Voltigeurs had the luxury of time in which they could slit the uniform seams or tear out the greasy -helmet liners where men liked to hide their precious gold coins. Some of the French skirmishers carried pliers which they used to extract fine white teeth that Parisian dentists would buy to make into dentures.

One fortunate Frenchman found a cavalryman's body that sported a fine pair of brown-topped, silk-ta.s.selled boots. He first took the spurs off the heels, then tugged at the right boot. The body jerked, cried aloud, and a horrid face in which the eyes were nothing but crusts of blood-stared wildly and blindly towards the Frenchman.

"You frightened me!" the Voltigeur chided the wounded man cheerfully.

"For G.o.d's sake, kill me." Lord John Rossendale, half-crazed with pain, spoke in English.

"You just stay still," the Voltigeur said in French, then dragged off his lordship's expensive boots. He noted that the Englishman's breeches were made of the finest whipcord and though the right thigh had been slashed by a blade the breeches would doubtless mend well, and so the Voltigeur undid the waist b.u.t.tons and dragged the breeches free. Lord John, his broken thigh grating with each tug, screamed foully.

"Noisy b.u.g.g.e.r!" The Voltigeur rolled the breeches into a ball that he thrust inside his jacket. Then, fearing that Lord John's scream might have attracted the untimely attraction of his Sergeant, the Frenchman ostentatiously loaded his musket and, pretending to be merely doing his job, used Lord John as a rest for the barrel that he aimed towards the beleaguered Inniskillings. "Mind the bang!" the Voltigeur said happily, then fired.

"Kill me! Please!" Lord John spoke in French. "Please!"

"I'm not going to kill you!" the Voltigeur protested. "I can't do that. It wouldn't be right! I won't even take your teeth!" He gave his lordship's shoulder a sympathetic pat, then went to find more plunder.

And Lord John, lost in a universe of unjust pain, moaned.

Peter d'Alembord lay on the unfolded backboard of a cart that was serving as a surgeon's table. The wooden boards of the cart were soaked with blood, while the surgeon's hands were so steeped in it that the skin of his fingertips had gone soft and wrinkled, "Are you ready, Major?" The surgeon had a strong West Country accent.

"I'm ready." D'Alembord had refused to drink any rum to dull the agony of the surgery, nor would he accept the leather gag to bite on. It was important that he showed no reaction to the pain, for such stoicism was expected of a soldier.

"There are no bones broken," the surgeon said, "and there's not even a major blood vessel cut, so you're a lucky man. Hold his leg, Bates!" The orderlies had already cut away the sash d'Alembord had used as a bandage and slit open the expensive breeches which he had worn to the d.u.c.h.ess's ball. The surgeon wiped away the welling blood from the lips of the wound with his fingers. "This won't be half as bad as having a baby, Major, so be grateful." He thrust a cigar into his mouth and picked up a blood-stained probe.

A pain like a lance of fire streaked up d' Alembord's thigh and into his groin. The surgeon was probing for the bullet with a long thin metal rod. D'Alembord dared not cry aloud, for he had watched a man of his own battalion lose a leg not a moment since, and the man had uttered not a sound as the bone-saw ground away at this thigh bone. Besides, Patrick Harper was close by and d'Alembord would not shame himself by making any noise in front of Harper.

"I've got the little b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" the surgeon mumbled past the wet cigar stub. "Can you hear the little devil, Major?"

D'Alembord could hear nothing but the thud of gun-fire and the crash of sh.e.l.ls exploding and the splintering roar of burning ammunition, but the surgeon was evidently sc.r.a.ping the edge of the musket-ball with his probe. "I won't be long now," the surgeon said cheerfully, then fortified himself with a long swig of rum. "This next moment might be slightly uncomfortable, Major, but be glad you're not whelping a child, eh?"

"Jesus!" D'Alembord could not resist whimpering the imprecation, but he still managed to lie motionless as the pain gouged and routed about inside his leg. A sh.e.l.l exploded nearby and a fragment of its casing whistled and smoked overhead.

"Here it comes!" The surgeon had succeeded in gripping the bullet with his narrow-bladed tongs. "Your hand! Hold out your hand, man! Quick!" D'Alembord dutifully held out his hand and the surgeon dropped the b.l.o.o.d.y little bullet into his palm. ,I'll just extract what's left of your dancing togs, Major, then you'll be as quick as a trivet again."

There was another minute's excruciating pain as the shreds of cloth were picked from the wound, then something cool and soothing was-poured onto d'Alembord's thigh. Sweat was beaded on his forehead, but he knew the worst was over. He wiped the b.l.o.o.d.y bullet on his jacket and held the small missile before his eyes/Such a small thing, no bigger than his thumbnail.

The orderlies bandaged his thigh, then helped him down from the cart. "You should rest for a time." The surgeon wiped his hands on his ap.r.o.n which was already drenched in blood. "Go back into the trees, Major. There's some tarpaulins there to keep the damp out."

"No." D'Alembord tried to walk and found he could hobble without too much pain. Thank you, but no."

The surgeon had already forgotten him. A man with an arm blown away and three ribs exposed was being lifted onto the cart. Harper brought the horses forward. "Shouldn't you rest, Mr d'Alembord?"

"I'm going back to the battalion, Harper."

"Are you sure, now?"

"It was a flesh wound, nothing else."

"But painful, eh?"

D'Alembord almost screamed with agony as Harper heaved him up into Sharpe's saddle. "You should know," he managed to reply with admirable self-restraint.

"Funnily enough," the Irishman said, "I've never had a bad wound. Mr Sharpe, now, he's different, he's always getting bits chopped out of him, but I must be lucky."

"Don't tempt fate," d'Alembord said fervently.

"Considering what fate's done to Ireland, Major, what the h.e.l.l more can it do to me?" Harper laughed. "Back to duty, eh?"

"Back to duty." D'Alembord knew he could have ridden away from the battlefield, and no one would have blamed him, but in his time he had seen more than one officer lose an arm and still go back to the battle line after the surgeon had chopped and sawed the stump into shape. So d'Alembord would go back, because he was an officer and that was his duty. He hid his terror, tried to smile, and rode to the ridge.

Major Vine was shot through his left eye by a skirmisher. He gave a last bad-tempered grunt, fell from his saddle, and lay stone-dead beside Lieutenant-Colonel Ford's horse. The Colonel whimpered, then stared down at the fallen Major whose face now appeared to have one vast red Cyclopean eye. "Major Vine?" Ford asked nervously.

The dead man did not move.

Ford tried to remember Vine's Christian name. "Edwin?" He tried, or perhaps it was Edward? "Edward?" But Edwin Vine lay quite still. A fly settled next to the fresh pool of blood that had been his left eye.

"Major Vine!" Ford snapped as though a direct order would resurrect the dead.

"He's a gonner, sir," a sergeant from the colour party offered helpfully, then, seeing his Colonel's incomprehension, made a more formal report. "The Major's dead, sir."

Ford smiled a polite response and stifled an urge to scream. He did not know it, but a quarter of the men who had marched with him to battle were now either dead or injured. RSM Mclnerney had been disembowelled by a roundshot that had killed two other men and torn the arm off another. Daniel Hagman was bleeding to death with a bullet in his lungs. His breath bubbled with blood as he tried to speak. Sharpe knelt beside him and held his hand. "I'm sorry, Dan." Sharpe had known Hagman the longest of all the men in the light company. The old poacher was a good soldier, shrewd, humorous and loyal. ,I'll get you to the surgeons, Dan."

"b.u.g.g.e.r them surgeons, Mr Sharpe," Hagman said, then said nothing more. Sharpe shouted at two of the bandsmen to carry him back to the surgeons, but Hagman was dead. Sergeant Huckfield lost the small finger of his left hand to a musket ball. He stared in outrage at the wound, then, refusing to leave the battalion, sliced once with his knife then asked Captain Jefferson to wrap a strip of cloth round the bleeding stump. Private Clayton was shaking with fear, but somehow managed to stand steady and look straight into the eyes of the French skirmishers who still roamed the ridge crest with apparent impunity. Next to him Charlie Weller was trying to remember childhood's prayers, but, though childhood was not very far in his past, the prayers would not come. "Oh, G.o.d," he said instead.

"G.o.d's no b.l.o.o.d.y help," Clayton said, then ducked as a skirmisher's bullet almost knocked the crown off his shako.

"Stand still there!" Sergeant Huckfield shouted.

Clayton pulled his shako straight and muttered a few curses at the Sergeant. "We should be b.l.o.o.d.y attacking," he said after he had exhausted his opinion of Huckfield's mother.

"In time we will." Charlie Weller still had a robust faith in victory.

Another musket bullet went within inches of Clayton's head. He shivered helplessly. "If I'm a dead 'un, Charlie, you'll look after Sally, won't you?" Clayton's wife, Sally, was by far the prettiest wife in the battalion. "She likes you, she does," Clayton explained his apparent generosity.

"You're going to be all right." Charlie Weller, despite the hiss and crash of bullet and sh.e.l.l, felt a frisson of excitement at the thought of Sally.

"Sweet G.o.d, I've had enough of this!" Clayton looked round to see what officers still lived. "b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l! Major Vine's a dead 'un! Good riddance to the b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

"Look to your front, Private Clayton!" Sergeant Huckfield touched the New Testament in his top pocket, and prayed that the d.a.m.ned French skirmishers would soon run out of ammunition.

Colonel Joseph Ford almost vomited as he tried to wipe away the globules of Major Vine's brains that smeared his breeches. Ford was feeling horribly alone; one major was dead, the other was wounded and gone to the surgeons, and ail around him his precious battalion was being chewed to pieces by the guns and the skirmishers. He took off his spectacles and rubbed frantically at the lens, only to discover that his sash was thickly smeared with sc.r.a.ps of Major Vine's brains. Ford gasped for horrified breath and knew he was going to vomit helplessly. -":

"It's nothing to do with me!" a harsh voice suddenly spoke from beside Ford's horse, "but I'd suggest a fifty-pace advance, give the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds one good volley, then retire."

Ford, his impulse to vomit checked by the voice, frantically pulled on the smudged eyegla.s.ses and found himself staring into the sardonic face of Lieutenant-Colonel Sharpe. Ford tried to say something in reply, but no sound came.

"With your permission, sir?" Sharpe asked punctiliously.