promissory note off him direct. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Of course not,” d’Alembord said.
“Oddly enough,” Sharpe said, “I rather liked him. I don’t know why. I think I felt sorry for him.”
“ ”Love your enemies“,” d’Alembord quoted mockingly,“ ”bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you“? I told you we were getting more pious, even you.”
“But we’ll still slaughter the bloody French tomorrow.” Sharpe smiled and held out his hand. “You’ll be safe, Peter. TOmorrow night we’ll laugh at these fears.”
They shook hands on the promise.
The musket-fire at Hougoumont died away as the French yielded possession of the woodland to the British. A roll of thunder sounded in the west and a spear of lightning glittered brief and stark on the horizon. Then the rain began to pelt down hard again.
The armies had gathered, and now waited for morning.
The lintel of every house in Waterloo’s street bore a chalked inscription, put there by the Quartermaster- General’s department to identify which general and staff officers would be billeted inside. The inn opposite the church bore the chalked words ‘His Grace the Duke of Wellington’, while three doors away a two storey house was inscribed ‘The Earl of Oxbridge’. Another substantially built house was marked ‘His Royal Highness the Prince William of Orange’. Thatched cottages with dungheaps hard under their windows were this night to be the homes for marquesses or earls, yet such men counted themselves fortunate to be sheltered at all, and not to be enduring the numbing cold misery of the rain that thrashed the ridge.
In the Earl of Uxbridge’s house the staff officers crammed themselves about a table to share the Earl’s supper of boiled beef and beans. It was an early supper, for the whole staff was on notice to rise long before dawn. In the centre of the table, propped against the single candelabra, was Lord John Rossendale’s broken sword. One of the staff officers had discovered the snapped blade after Lord John had tried to throw it away and had demanded to know just how the weapon had been broken. The truth was too painful, and so Lord John had invented a rather more flattering account.
“It was after the rocket explosion,” he explained to the assembled staff at supper. “The damned horse bolted on me.”
“You should learn to ride, John.”
Lord John waited for the laughter to subside. “Damn thing ran me into a wood off to one side of the road, and damn me if there weren’t three Lancers lurking there.”
“Green or red?” The Earl of Uxbridge, just returned from a conference with the Duke of Wellington, had taken his place at the head of the supper table.
“The green ones, Harry.” That bit was easy for Lord John to invent, for he had watched the green-coated Lancers running from the attack of the Life Guards. “I shot one with the pistol, but had to throw it down to draw my sword. Damn shame, really, because it was an expensive gun.”
“A Mortimer percussion pistol, with a rifled barrel.” Christopher Manvell confirmed the value of the lost pistol. “A damn shame to lose it, John.”
Lord John shrugged as though to suggest the loss was nothing really. “The second fellow charged me, I got past his point and gave him the sword in the belly, then the third one damn nearly skewered me.” He gave a modest smile. “Thought I was dead, to be honest. I slashed at the fellow, but he was damned fast. He drew a sabre and had a good hack at me, I parried, and that’s when my sword broke. Then, damn me, if the fellow didn’t just turn tail and run!”
The assembled officers stared at the broken sword which lay like a trophy on the supper table.
“The trick of it‘, Lord John said, ”is to get past the lance point. Once you’re past the spike it’s a bit like killing rabbits. Too easy, really.“
“So long as your sword doesn’t break?” Christopher Manvell asked drily.
“There is that, yes.”
The Earl frowned. “So if the fellow ran away, why didn’t you pick up the pistol, Johnny? You said it was expensive.”
“I could hear more of the scoundrels among the trees. I thought I’d better give them a run.” Lord John gave a small disarming smile. “To tell you the truth, Harry, I was frightened! Whatever, I whipped my damn horse and ran like the devil!”
Christopher Manvell, who had seemed somewhat less impressed by Lord John’s ordeal than the other officers about the table, at least confirmed the story’s ending. “He came back to the road white as a sheet.”
“You did well, Johnny, damned well.” The Earl of Uxbridge spoke gruffly. “You killed a brace of the buggers, eh? Damn good.” There was a spatter of applause, then Christopher Manvell asked the Earl what news he had gleaned from his conference with the Duke of Wellington.
The truth was that the Earl had gleaned nothing at all. He was second in command to the Duke and had thought that appointment entitled him to know just what the Duke planned for the next day, but his enquiry had met with a very dusty answer indeed. The Duke had said his plans depended entirely on Napoleon, and as Napbleon had not yet confided in the Duke, the Duke could not yet confide in the Earl, and so good-night.
“I think we’ll just let the bugger attack us, then see him off, eh?” the Earl said lazily, as though the events of the next day were really not very significant at all.
“But the Prussians are coming?” Manvell insisted.
“I think we can do the business without a few damned Germans, don’t you?” The Earl pushed a box of cigars into the table’s centre. “But one thing’s certain, gentlemen. No doubt our cavalry will make England proud!”
“Bravo!” A drunken staff officer pounded the table.
After supper Christopher Manvell found Lord John standing in the open front porch from where he was staring into the wet dusk. “I wish I’d been there to help you against those Lancers,” Manvell said.
For a few seconds it seemed that Lord John would not reply at all, then he just shrugged the subject away. “Harry seems very sanguine about our chances tomorrow.”
Manvell blew a stream of cigar smoke into the drizzle. “It’s strange, Johnny. I saw you come out of the wood, then not a moment later I saw Colonel Sharpe in the same place. You were lucky not to meet him.”
Again Lord John was silent for a few seconds, then spoke in a rush of quiet bitterness. “Of course I met him. And of course there were no bloody Lancers. What was I supposed to do? Admit to Harry and everyone else that I was humiliated by a Rifleman?”
“I’m sorry.” Manvell was embarrassed by the tortured admission he had provoked from his friend.
“I gave him his damned note. Not that it will do me any good. Jane won’t give me the money unless I marry her, but Sharpe doesn’t know that.” Lord John laughed suddenly. “He gave me a length of rope and told me it was a peasant divorce. He says I’m free to marry her.”
Manvell smiled, but said nothing. The gutters either side of the paved high road were gurgling and flooding. Across the street a sentry ran cursing through the puddles to open a gate for a mounted officer. An orderly hung a lantern outside the stable entrance of the house where the Prince of Orange was billeted.
“It’s a matter of honour.” Lord John was staring into the darkening street.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Tomorrow“, Lord John said, ”has become a rather desperate matter of honour.“ He was very slightly drunk, and his voice held a hint of hysteria. ”I never realized before today how very simple battle is. There’s no compromise, is there? It’s victory or defeat, and nothing in between, while real life is so damned complicated. Perhaps that’s why the best soldiers are such very simple souls.“ He turned in the porch to stare at his friend. ”You see, if I want to keep the woman then I have to kill a man, and I don’t have the nerve to face him. And he’s done nothing to deserve death! It is his money! But if I do the honest thing to the man, then I lose the woman, and I don’t think I can live with that loss — „
“I’m sure you can — „Christopher Manvell interrupted and, in his turn, was cut off.
“No!” Lord John did not even wish to discuss Jane. He frowned in puzzlement at his friend. “Do you think lost honour can be retrieved on a battlefield?”
“I’m sure it’s the very best place to retrieve it.” Manvell felt a surge of pity for his friend. He had never realized till this moment just how Lord John’s honour had been trampled and destroyed.
“So tomorrow’s become rather important to me,” Lord John said. “Because tomorrow I can take my honour back by fighting well.” He smiled as if to soften the overdramatic words. “But to do it I’ll need a sword, and my
