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.
“So where is the Prince?” Sharpe asked. He supposed the bullet would have to be bitten and he would need to face the bloody boy.
Rebecque gestured northwards, suggesting that the Young Frog was many miles up the road. “I’m keeping him well out of harm’s way. It would be politically disastrous if he was taken prisoner today.”
Sharpe stared with surprise at the kindly middle-aged Dutchman. “What does that mean? Wasn’t there the same danger yesterday?”
“Yesterday,” Rebecque said mildly, “we weren’t retreating. Any minute now, Sharpe, and this whole army could be surrounded and fighting for its very existence.”
“Its existence? I thought we were pursuing the bloody French today!”
It was Rebecque’s turn to look surprised. “Didn’t you know? Blucher got beaten. His army wasn’t destroyed, thank God, but they took a thrashing and have been forced to retreat.” Rebecque sounded very calm as he delivered the appalling news. “It seems that their Chief of Staff preferred us to think that they had won. That way, our army stayed here as a temptation for Napoleon. He might prefer to attack us, you see, and let the Prussians escape. It’s really quite a clever Prussian ploy, when you think about it, but likely to be damned uncomfortable for us.”
“The Prussians are retreating?” Sharpe sounded disbelieving.
“They went late last night, which means we’re stranded here on our own. Marshal Ney is still in front of us and at any minute the rest of the French army will attack our left flank.”
Sharpe instinctively looked to the east, but nothing moved in the cloud shadowed landscape of woods and fields. He tried to understand this new reality. Yesterday’s victory at Quatre Bras was all for nothing, because Napoleon had kicked the two doors wide apart and the allies were separated. The Prussians had fled in the night and the British had been left isolated to face the full power of the Emperor’s whole army.
“So very soon,” Rebecque continued placidly, “we’re going to retreat. The Duke’s not making too much fuss, because he doesn’t want to start any panic. There’s only this one road we can use, you see, and once the rain starts it’s likely to be difficult going.”
Sharpe remembered Wellington leaning over the map in the Duke of Richmond’s dressing-room. “Are we going to Waterloo?” he asked Rebecque.
The Dutchman seemed surprised that Sharpe had even heard of the village, but nodded. “We’re going just to the south of Waterloo, to a place called Mont-St-Jean. We march there today, make a stand there tomorrow, and pray that the Prussians will rescue us.”
“Rescue?” Sharpe bridled at the word.
“Of course.” Rebecque, as ever, was imperturbable. “Blucher has promised that if we make a stand he’ll march to our aid. That’s so long as the French don’t stop him, of course, and undoubtedly they’ll be trying. Yesterday we failed to reach him, so we can only pray that tomorrow he doesn’t repay the compliment. We certainly can’t beat Napoleon on our own, so if Blucher lets us down we’re all beaten.” Rebecque smiled at his catalogue of bad news. “All in all, Sharpe, things are not good. Are you sure you still wish to serve on His Highness’s staff?”
“I told you, I need the money.”
“Of course, we may never reach Mont-St-Jean today. The Emperor must realize that he has us at his mercy, so I’ve no doubt he’s hurrying to attack us even now. Might I suggest that you serve as the Prince’s personal picquet on the retreat? If it looks as though the Emperor will break through and destroy us, send word to me. I’d rather His Royal Highness wasn’t taken prisoner because it would be politically very embarrassing. Keep young Doggett as a messenger. Did you have any breakfast?”
“Some tea.”
“I’ve got some bread and cold beef in my saddlebag.” Rebecque turned back towards the crossroads and offered to shake Sharpe’s hand. The knack of being right, Sharpe, is not to show it. It embarrasses the incompetent who rule over us.“
Sharpe smiled and took the offered hand. “Then thank God for the Duke of Wellington.”
“Even he may not be good enough for this predicament. We shall see.” Rebecque walked back to his horse and used a stone wall by the crossroads as a mounting block. He settled himself in the saddle. “Send word if disaster threatens, otherwise, do your best to keep dry.” He handed the food down to Sharpe, then clicked his tongue and rode northwards.
Sharpe turned to stare east and south. Somewhere under the lowering clouds was the man he had fought against for most of his life, yet had never once seen. The Emperor of France, conqueror of the world, was coming to fight the British at last.
The rain, like the French, held off.
The news of the Prussian defeat spread swiftly. Optimism turned to resignation, then to nervousness as the army realized how precarious was its position. The whole might of the French army was about to be concentrated on Quatre Bras and there was no hope of any help from the Prussians.
The retreat began. One by one the battalions of infantry were despatched towards the crossroads at Mont- St-Jean which lay twelve miles to the north. The men who waited their turn grew increasingly tense; every battalion which escaped north was one battalion less to face the expected French onslaught, which left the rearguard ever more likely to be outnumbered and overwhelmed. Marshal Ney’s troops were still just to the south, and the Emperor was presumably hurrying from the east, yet battalion after British battalion slipped away unmolested as the morning passed without any French attack.
The Duke of Wellington pretended insouciance. For a time he sat on the trampled rye reading a newspaper, and even lay down and slept with its pages over his face. He still slept as the outermost picquets were pulled back, yielding the stream and Gemioncourt farm to the French if they cared to advance. Strangely the French did not move and their camp-fires still burned to drift placid smoke up to the darkening clouds.
By midday those clouds were as looming and threatening as the monsoon skies of India. The windless air was curiously still and heavy, presaging disaster. The last infantry battalions edged towards the road that led northwards out of the unsprung French trap. The horse artillery who, together with the cavalry, would form the British rearguard nervously watched the enemy-held ground, but still no French troops marched from Frasnes or appeared in the east. The only sign of the enemy was their smoke.
“They always used to do that,” Harper commented. The Irishman, with Sharpe and Doggett, waited at the edge of the wood by the half-covered grave of the 69th.
“Do what?” Doggett asked.
“Take a morning off after a battle and cook themselves a meal.”
“Let’s hope it’s a big meal,” Doggett grinned.
The Guards were the last of the British infantry to march north, leaving only the horse gunners, the cavalry and the staff at the crossroads. That rearguard waited long after the Guards had left, giving the slower infantry a good chance to march well clear of Quatre Bras. Still the French hesitated, and still the rain did not come. The first of the British cavalry trotted north and Sharpe saw the Duke of Wellington at last pull himself into his saddle. “Time for us to go too,” Sharpe said.
A vagary of the storm-threatening clouds caused a rent somewhere in the churning sky and a leprous shaft of sunlight, yellow and misted, slanted down to shine on the highway beside Gemioncourt farm.
“Dear God!” Doggett was staring at the curiously bright patch of land beneath the sky’s unnatural blackness.
In which sunlit patch were Lancers.
There were suddenly thousands of Lancers. Lancers in green coats and Lancers in scarlet coats. The farmland had sprouted a thicket of flag-hung spear points that were touched gold by the errant shaft of sunlight.
“Let’s get the hell out of here!” Sharpe settled himself into his saddle.
“No, sir! Look! Look!” An excited Doggett was standing in his stirrups, pointing south. Sharpe turned back, saw nothing, so pulled his telescope from his saddlebag.
