“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 gir,th. “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 crossroads 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 6
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 proudly considered herself to be a farm woman. The rural life had denied her Jane Sharpe’s fashionable pallor; instead Lucille’s skin had the healthy bloom of country weather. She had a long, narrow and strong-boned face, its severity softened by her eyes which seemed to glow with laughter and sense. She was a widow. Her husband had been an elegant officer in Napoleon’s cavalry, and Lucille had often wondered why such a handsome man had sought to marry her, but Xavier Castineau had thought himself most fortunate in his wife. They had been married for only a few weeks before he had been hacked down by a sabre. In the peace after the wars, when Lucille had found herself alone in her family’s Norman chateau, she had met Sharpe and become his lover. Now she was the mother of his son.
Loyalty to her man had brought Lucille to Brussels. She had never been a Bonapartist, yet that distaste had not made it any easier for her to leave France and follow an army that must fight against her countrymen. Lucille had left France because she loved Sharpe, whom she knew was a better man than he thought himself to be. The war, she told herself, would end one day, but love was timeless and she would fight for it, just as she would fight to give her child his father’s company. Lucille had lost one good man; she would not lose a second.
And tonight, surprisingly, she had an opportunity to dance with her good man. Lucille took a last look in the mirror, decided there was nothing that could be done to make herself any more elegant or beautiful, and so picked up her small bag that contained the precious pasteboard ticket. She kissed her child, gave her hair one last despairing pat, and went to a ball.
A tall man waited at the stable entrance of the lodging house where Lucille Castineau had rented two attic rooms. He was a man whose frightening appearance commanded instant respect. His height, four inches over six feet, was formidable enough, yet he also carried the muscles to match his inches and this evening he looked even more threatening for he hefted an oak cudgel and had a long-barrelled horse-pistol thrust into his belt and British army rifle slung on one shoulder. He had sandy hair and a flat hard face. The man was in civilian clothes, yet, in this city thronged with soldiers, he had a confidence that suggested he might well have worn a uniform in his time.
The tall man had been leaning against the stable’s open gates, but straightened up as Lucille appeared from the house. She looked nervously at the western sky, tumultuous with dark clouds that had so hastened the dusk that the first lamps were already being lit in the city’s archways and windows. “Shall I bring an umbrella?“ she asked.
“It’s not going to rain tonight, ma’am.” The tall man spoke with the harsh accent of Ulster.
“You don’t have to walk me, Patrick.”
“And what else would I be doing tonight? Besides, the Colonel doesn’t want you walking the streets alone
