‘A lot are still out on the field,’ Sharpe commented. At dawn he had sent four companies to rescue wounded men from the valley. The other companies had been digging graves.
‘It was bad,’ Burrell said.
‘Worst I’ve seen.’
‘And the Duke tells me you’ve seen a lot, sir?’ The young cavalry officer made it sound like a question.
‘The Duke said that?’
‘He says you’re a remarkable man, sir.’
Sharpe hid his surprise. ‘Nice of him,’ he grunted.
‘You were a ranker, sir?’ Burrell asked cautiously.
‘You saw my back, Captain. You ever saw an officer flogged?’
‘No, sir.’
‘I enlisted in ’93,’ Sharpe said, ‘into the Havercakes. Made Sergeant in ’99 and was commissioned four years later.’
‘And you captured an Eagle,’ the Captain said admiringly, ‘at Talavera?’
‘Aye,’ Sharpe said.
‘How did you do it?’ Burrell asked.
Sharpe looked at him. A youngster, he thought, fresh-faced and blue-eyed, and to Sharpe’s eyes he looked as if he was only two or three years out of school. But he was a lordling and so already a Captain and enjoying the patronage of the Duke. ‘Patrick and I did it,’ Sharpe said harshly, gesturing at Harper, ‘by cutting our way into a French column. Damn nearly did it yesterday too, but there were too many of the buggers.’
‘And now you command a battalion,’ Burrell said.
Sharpe was not so sure. His promotion to Lieutenant-Colonel had been purely to give him suitable rank as an aide to William, Prince of Orange, a young and idiotic princeling who had been wished on the Duke as the price to be paid for the Dutch troops who had helped defeat the Emperor on the low ridge. Orange, who had done more harm than good to the allied cause, had dismissed Sharpe during the battle and Sharpe had rejoined his battalion and taken command of it when Ford, the Colonel, had fled in panicked confusion. The Duke, seeing Sharpe lead the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers against the Imperial Guard, had called out that the battalion now belonged to Sharpe, but whether that was permanent Sharpe did not know. He wanted the command, but feared and expected that the Duke would now demote him and appoint another man.
The road led into the forest of Soignes where scores of men bivouacked beneath the trees, their campfires sifting smoke into the leaves. Beyond the forest was the small town of Waterloo and then the road led between peaceful fields to the smoke-crowned city of Brussels. ‘I suppose the war really is over,’ Burrell said when they saw the great smear of grey rising from Brussels’ chimneys.
‘Aye, you can go home, Captain.’
‘Paris first,’ Burrell said eagerly.
‘We might have to fight for that,’ Sharpe warned.
‘You think so, sir?’
‘What do I know? I hope not, but we’ll do whatever we must. And the sooner it’s over, the better, then we can all go home.’
‘Where is home for you, sir?’
‘Normandy.’
Burrell looked at him in astonishment. ‘Normandy, sir?’
‘I have a French woman,’ Sharpe explained, ‘and she has a farm in Normandy.’ He smiled at Burrell’s expression. ‘It’s not what I expected, Captain. I spend a lifetime fighting the buggers, then end up living with them. Life is never what you expect.’
‘I do have some good news,’ Burrell said suddenly.
‘What?’
‘The Prince of Orange is recovering well, sir, I thought you’d like to know.’
Sharpe grunted. The Prince had taken a bullet in the shoulder and Sharpe would have been happy if the ball had struck lower, straight into the heart, because in three days the Prince had destroyed four or five battalions with his idiocy. ‘The surgeons removed the bullet,’ Burrell said, ‘and the wound is clean.’
‘Good,’ Sharpe said unconvincingly.
‘But the Duke said the bullet was one of ours!’
‘One of ours?’
‘It still had scraps of leather, sir, and don’t our Riflemen wrap their bullets in a leather patch?’
‘We do,’ Sharpe said. ‘It helps the barrel grip the bullet.’
‘The Duke surmised that one of our men shot the Prince,’ Burrell said.
‘Why would they do that?’ Sharpe asked, and wondered if that was why the Duke had summoned him. When Sharpe had fired at the Prince he was scarcely a hundred paces beneath the ridge from which the Duke had been watching the battle. Damn it, he thought, but the ball should have hit the Prince plumb in the middle of his chest to explode his heart, but instead had gone high. And had the Duke seen him fire the shot? In which case, he thought, he no longer commanded a battalion, indeed he would be lucky to escape a court martial and disgrace. What was the penalty for shooting royalty? The rope? Or a firing squad? ‘Some Frogs use our captured rifles,’ Sharpe added, sounding unconvincing even to himself.
Burrell said nothing more, just led Sharpe into the city, and then it was time to hand the horses to waiting orderlies and climb the steps to the Duke’s headquarters.
Captain Burrell showed Pat Harper the door which led to the kitchens, assuring the big Irishman there would be food and drink, then led Sharpe through a maze of corridors. ‘The Duke is in the library,’ he told Sharpe as he rapped on a large door. A stern voice responded and Burrell accompanied Sharpe into the library that was lit by a huge north-facing window. The walls were lined with shelves holding leather-bound books, and the Duke was seated at a round table covered in papers. But most worrying, Rebecque was seated beside him.
Baron Rebecque was a good man who served as the Prince of Orange’s chief aide and adviser. He smiled as Sharpe entered, nodding a greeting. The Duke, however, looked at Sharpe coldly and grunted his name.
‘Your Grace,’ Sharpe responded awkwardly, wishing he had taken time to shave before leaving the battalion.
‘Rebecque tells me the Prince of Orange will live.’
‘That’s good news, Your Grace.’
‘The wound is clean, Sharpe,’ Rebecque said, ‘though His Highness is still in considerable pain, but the surgeons are certain he will recover.’
‘I’m glad,’ Sharpe said.
‘Are you, Sharpe?’ the Duke demanded.
‘Of course, sir.’
‘The ball was one of ours,’ the Duke said, ‘rifle calibre. The French don’t use that size ball.’
‘They use captured ammunition, my lord,’ Sharpe said. ‘And a rifle ball fits their musket almost exactly.’
‘Then how do you explain the scrap of leather found around the bullet? The French won’t wrap a bullet!’
‘They won’t, my lord, but I remember that the Prince was wearing a leather strap over his shoulder. It was probably from the strap.’ In fact he was sure of that because, in his haste, Sharpe had not wrapped the bullet in its greased leather patch, which might explain why it had struck too high. ‘And our patches burn up, my lord.’ He knew he should call the Duke ‘Your Grace’, but he found it awkward.
‘We ask, Colonel,’ Rebecque said gently, ‘because you were seen on the slope beneath the Prince’s position shortly before he was wounded.’
‘I was there, sir. I went to help Major Dunnett’s Riflemen.’
‘Who were fighting the French,’ the Duke said pointedly.