Sharpe’s Waterloo: The Waterloo Campaign, 15–18 June, 1815. Bernard Cornwell
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.
CHAPTER SIX
Lucille Castineau stared gravely at her reflection in the mirror which, because it was only a small broken sliver, was being held by her maid, Jeanette, who was forced to tilt the glass up and down in an effort to show her mistress the whole dress. ‘It looks lovely,’ Jeanette said reassuringly.
‘It’s very plain. Oh, well. I am plain.’
‘That’s not true, madame,’ Jeanette protested.
Lucille laughed. Her ball gown was an old grey dress which she had prettified with some lengths of Brussels lace. Fashion dictated a filmy sheath that would scarcely cover the breasts and with a skirt slit to reveal a length of thigh barely disguised beneath a flimsy petticoat, but Lucille had neither the tastes nor the money for such nonsense. She had taken in the grey dress so that it hugged her thin body more closely, but that was her sole concession to fashion. She would not lower its neckline, nor would she have dreamed of cutting the skirt.
‘It looks lovely,’ Jeanette said again.
‘That’s because you haven’t seen what anyone else will be wearing.’
‘I still think it’s lovely.’
‘Not that it matters,’ Lucille said, ‘for I doubt whether anyone will be looking at me. Or will even dance with me.’ She well knew Richard Sharpe’s reluctance to dance, which was why she had been surprised when the message came from the Prince of Orange’s headquarters informing her that Lieutenant-Colonel Sharpe would be attending His Royal Highness at the Duchess of Richmond’s ball, in anticipation of which His Royal Highness took pleasure in enclosing a ticket for Madame la Vicomtesse de Seleglise. Lucille herself never used her title, but she knew Sharpe was perversely proud of it and must have informed the Prince of its existence.
The reluctant Vicomtesse now propped the broken mirror on a shelf and poked fingers at her hair which she had piled loosely before decorating with an ostrich feather. ‘I don’t like the feather.’
‘Everyone’s wearing them.’
‘I’m not.’ Lucille plucked it out and tickled the sleeping baby with its tip. The baby twitched, but slept on. Henri-Patrick had black hair like his father, but Lucille fancied she already saw her own family’s long skull in the baby’s wrinkled face. If he had his father’s looks and his mother’s brains, Lucille liked to say, Henri-Patrick should be well blessed.
She was unfair, at least to herself. Lucille Castineau had lived all her twenty-seven years in the Norman countryside and, though she came from a noble family, she