Sharpe's Waterloo (9 page)

The sound of the hooves faded in the warm air. Rebecque listened again for the sound of musketry, but heard nothing, so instead tapped the map with an ebony ruler. ‘His Royal Highness is quite right, Sharpe, you should be wearing Dutch uniform.'

‘I keep meaning to buy one.'

Rebecque smiled. ‘I can lend you something suitable for tonight.'

‘Bugger tonight.' Sharpe twisted the map round so that it faced him. ‘Do you want me to go to Mons?'

‘I've already sent Harry.' Rebecque went to the open window and stared into the heat haze. ‘Perhaps nothing is happening in Mons.' He spoke softly, almost to himself. ‘Perhaps we're all wrong about Mons. Perhaps Napoleon is just swinging open the front doors and ignoring the back gate.'

‘Sir?'

‘It's a double-leafed front door, Sharpe, that's what it is!' Rebecque spoke with a sudden urgency as he strode back to the table and tapped the map. ‘The Prussians are the left-hand door and we're the right, and when the French push in the middle, Sharpe, the two leaves will hinge apart. Is that what Bonaparte's doing to us?'

Sharpe stared down at the map. From the Prince's headquarters a road ran eastwards through Nivelles to meet the Charleroi highway at an unnamed crossroads. If that crossroads was lost, then Napoleon would have successfully swung the two doors apart. The British and Dutch had been worrying about Mons, but now Sharpe took a scrap of charcoal and scrawled a thick ring round the crossroads. ‘That's the lock on your doors, Rebecque. Who are our closest troops?'

‘Saxe-Weimar's brigade.' Rebecque had already seen the importance of the crossroads. He strode to the door and shouted for clerks.

‘I'll go there,' Sharpe offered.

Rebecque nodded acceptance of the offer. ‘But for God's sake send me prompt news, Sharpe. I don't want to be left in the dark.'

‘If the French have taken that damned crossroads, we'll all be in the dark. Permanently. I'm borrowing one of the Prince's horses. Mine's blown.'

‘Take two. And take Lieutenant Doggett with you. He can carry your messages.'

‘Does that crossroads have a name?' That was an important question, for any messages Sharpe sent had to be accurate.

Rebecque searched the table to find one of the larger scale maps that the Royal Engineers had drawn and distributed to all the army headquarters. ‘It's called Quatre Bras.'

‘Four arms?'

‘That's what it says here, Quatre Bras. Four Arms. Just what you need for opening double doors, eh?'

Sharpe did not respond to the small jest. Instead he shouted for Lieutenant Doggett, then went to the kitchen where he sat and tugged on his boots. He yelled through the open stableyard door for three horses to be saddled, two for himself and one for Lieutenant Doggett. ‘And untie my dog!'

The orders for Prince Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, sealed with Rebecque's copy of the Prince of Orange's personal seal, came ten minutes later. Rebecque brought the orders himself and handed them up to Sharpe who was already mounted. ‘Remember you're supposed to be dancing tonight,' Rebecque smiled at Sharpe.

Paulette had come into the stableyard and was leaning against a sun-warmed wall. She smiled at Sharpe as he twisted the Prince's horse towards the archway. ‘Go carefully, Englishman,' she called.

The courtyard was filling with horses as staff officers, all alerted by the distant musketry, arrived from the various brigade headquarters to seek information and orders. Sharpe blew the Prince's whore a kiss, then rode to find a crossroads.

The bedroom of the hotel on Brussels' rue Royale stank of vinegar which Jane Sharpe's maid had sprinkled onto a red-hot shovel to fumigate the room. A small metal bowl of sulphur powders still burned in the hearth to eradicate whatever pestilential airs the vapourizing vinegar might have missed. It was, Jane had complained, a foul little suite of rooms, but at least she would make sure they held no risk of contagion. The previous occupant had been a Swiss merchant who had been evicted to make way for the English milord and his lady, and Jane had a suspicion that the Swiss, like all foreigners, harboured strange and filthy diseases. The noxious stench of the scorched vinegar and burning sulphur was making Jane feel ill, but in truth she had not felt really well ever since the sea crossing from England.

Lord John Rossendale, elegantly handsome in white breeches and silk stockings, black dancing shoes, and a gold-frogged cut-away coat with a tall blue collar and twin epaulettes of gold chain, stood at the bedroom's window and stared moodily at the Brussels rooftops.

‘I don't know whether he'll be there or not. I just don't know.' It was the twentieth time he had confessed such ignorance, but for the twentieth time it did not satisfy Jane Sharpe who sat naked to the waist at the room's small dressing-table.

‘Why can't we find out?' she snapped.

‘What do you expect me to do?' Lord John ascribed Jane's short temper to her upset stomach. The North Sea crossing seemed to have disagreed with her, arid the journey in the coach to Brussels had not improved her nausea. ‘Do you expect me to send a messenger to Braine-le-Comte?'

‘Why not, if he can provide us with the answer.'

‘Braine-le-Comte is not a person, but the village where the Prince has his headquarters.'

‘I cannot think,' Jane paused to dab her cheeks with the
eau de citron
which was supposed to blanche the skin of her face and breasts to a fashionable death-mask whiteness, ‘I cannot think,' she resumed, ‘why the Prince of Orange, whoever in hell he is, should want to appoint Richard as a staff officer! Richard doesn't have the manners to be a staff officer. It's like that Roman Emperor who made his horse into a consul. It's madness!' She was being unfair. Jane knew just what a good soldier her husband was, but a woman who has deserted her man and stolen his fortune soon learns to denigrate his memory as a justification for her actions. ‘Don't you agree that it's madness?' She turned a furious damp face on Rossendale who could only shrug mute agreement. Lord John thought Jane looked very beautiful but also rather frightening. Her hair was splendidly awry because of the lead curling strips which, when removed, would leave her with a glorious gold-bright halo, but which now gave her angry face the fierce and tangled aspect of a Greek Fury.

Jane turned back to the mirror. She could spend hours at a dressing-table, gravely staring at her reflection just as an artist might gaze on his work in search of a final gloss that might turn a merely pretty picture into a masterpiece. ‘Would you say there's colour in my cheeks?' she asked Lord John.

‘Yes.' He smiled with relief that she had changed the subject away from Richard Sharpe. ‘In fact you're looking positively healthy.'

‘Damn.' She glowered at her reflection. ‘It must be the hot weather.' She turned as her maid appeared from the anteroom with two dresses, one gold and one white, which were held up for Jane's inspection. Jane pointed to the pale gold dress then returned her attention to the mirror. She dipped a finger into a pot of rouge and, with exquisite care, reddened her nipples. Then, obsessively, she went back to blanching her face. The table was crowded with flasks and vials; there was bergamot and musk,
eau de chipre, eau
de
luce,
and a bottle of Sans Pareil perfume that had cost Lord John a small fortune. He did not resent such gifts for he found Jane's beauty ever more startling and ever more beguiling. Society might disapprove of the adulterous relationship flaunted so openly, but Lord John believed that Jane's beauty excused everything. He could not bear to think of losing her, or of not wholly possessing her. He was in love.

Jane grimaced at herself in the mirror. ‘So what happens if Richard is at the ball tonight?'

Lord John sighed inwardly as he turned back to the window. ‘He'll challenge me, of course, then it will be grass before tomorrow's breakfast.' He spoke lightly, but in truth he dreaded having to face Sharpe in a dawn duel. To Lord John, Sharpe was nothing but a killer who had been trained and hardened to death on innumerable battlefields, while Lord John had only ever brought about the death of foxes. ‘We needn't go tonight,' he said hopelessly.

‘And have all society say that we are cowards?' Jane, because she was a mistress, rarely had an opportunity to attend the more elegant events of society, and she was not going to miss this chance of being seen at a duchess's ball. Not even Jane's tender digestion would keep her from tonight's dancing, and nor did she have any real fear of meeting her husband, for Jane well knew Sharpe's reluctance to dance or to dress up in a frippery uniform, but the possibility of his presence was an alarming thought that she could not resist exploring.

‘I shall just try to avoid meeting him,' Lord John said helplessly.

Jane dabbed a tentative finger to test whether her rouged nipples had dried. ‘How soon before there's a battle?'

‘I'm told the Peer doesn't expect the French to move till July.'

Jane grimaced at the implied delay, then stood with her slender arms raised high to allow her maid to drop the gauzy dress over her head. ‘Do you know what happens in battle?' she asked Lord John from under the cascading cloth of gold.

It seemed a rather broad question, and one for which Lord John could not think of a specific answer. ‘Rather a lot of unpleasantry, I imagine,' he said instead.

‘Richard told me that in battle a lot of unpopular officers are killed by their own men.' Jane twisted herself to and fro in front of the mirror to make sure the dress hung properly. The dress was high waisted and low-breasted; a fashionably filmy screen through which her brightly coloured nipples showed as enticing shadows. Other women would doubtless be wearing such dresses, but none, Jane thought, would dare to wear one without any petticoat as she herself intended. Satisfied, she sat as her maid began to untwist the lead strips from her hair and tease the ringlets into perfection. ‘He told me that you can't tell what happens in a battle because there's too much smoke and noise. A battle, in short, is an ideal place to commit a murder.'

‘Are you suggesting I should kill him?' Lord John was genuinely shocked at the dishonour of the suggestion.

Jane had indeed been hinting at the opportunity for her husband's murder, but she could not admit as much. ‘I'm suggesting,' she lied smoothly, ‘that he may not wish to risk his career by fighting a duel, but instead might try to kill you during a battle.' She dipped her finger in scented black paste that she applied to her eyelashes. ‘He's a man of excessive pride and extraordinary brutality.'

‘Are you trying to frighten me?' Lord John attempted to pass the conversation off lightly.

‘I am trying to make you resolute. A man threatens your life and our happiness, so I am suggesting that you take steps to protect us.' It was as close as Jane dared go to a direct suggestion of murder, though she could not resist one more enticement. ‘You're probably in more danger from a British rifle bullet than you are from any French weapon.'

‘The French', Lord John said uneasily, ‘may take care of him anyway.'

‘They've had plenty of chances before,' Jane said tartly, ‘and achieved nothing.'

Then, ready at last, she stood. Her hair, ringletted, bejewelled and feathered, crowned an ethereal and sensuous beauty that dazzled Lord John. He bowed, kissed her hand, and led her down to the courtyard where their carriage waited. It was time to dance.

 

His Serene Highness Prince Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar took one look at Rebecque's orders, grunted his acceptance, and tossed the paper to his Brigade Major. ‘Tell the Prince we'll be at the crossroads in one hour,' he told Sharpe.

Sharpe did not reveal that the Prince of Orange knew nothing of the orders. Instead he thanked His Serene Highness, bowed his way out of the inn which was Prince Bernhard's headquarters, and remounted his horse. Lieutenant Simon Doggett, who had been charged with keeping Nosey from killing the chickens that pecked in the inn yard, followed Sharpe out to the road. ‘Well, sir?' he asked Sharpe, but in a nervous voice which suggested that he expected his temerity in asking to be met with a savage reproof.

‘He'll be at the crossroads in one hour with four thousand men. Let's hope the bastards can fight.' Saxe-Weimar's men were mostly German troops in Dutch service who had fought for Napoleon in the previous wars, and not even Saxe-Weimar himself was certain whether they would now fight against their old comrades.

Doggett rode eastwards beside Sharpe. Like so many of the Englishmen who served the Prince of Orange, Doggett was an old Etonian. He was now a lieutenant in the First Foot Guards, but had been seconded to the Prince's staff because his father was an old friend of the Baron Rebecque. Doggett was fair-haired, fair-skinned and, to Sharpe's eyes, absurdly young. He was in fact eighteen, had never seen a battle, and was very nervous of the notorious Lieutenant-Colonel Sharpe who was thirty-eight years old and had lost count of all his battles.

Sharpe now anticipated another battle; one for a crossroads that linked two armies. ‘If the French already hold Quatre Bras, you'll have to go back and warn Saxe-Weimar,' Sharpe told him. ‘Then go to Rebecque and tell him the bad news.'

‘Yes, sir.' Doggett paused, then found the courage to ask a question. ‘And what will you be doing, sir? If the French have captured the crossroads, I mean?'

‘I'll be riding to Brussels to tell the Duke to run like hell.'

Doggett glanced to see whether the Rifleman was smiling in jest, and decided he was not. The two men fell silent as they cantered their horses between low hedgerows that were bright with the early spears of foxgloves. Beyond the hedges the cornfields were thick with poppies and edged with cornflowers. Swallows whipped low across the fields, while rooks flew clumsily towards their high nests. Sharpe twisted in his saddle to see that the western sky was still clouded, though there were great gaps between the heaping clouds through which the sun poured an incandescent flood of light. It was evening, but there were still four hours of daylight left. In a week's time it would be the longest day of the year when, in these latitudes, a gunner could accurately sight a twelve-pounder at half-past nine of an evening.