The veterans of the company made s.p.a.ce for Sharpe and Harper near a fire and Sharpe noted how these experienced soldiers were a.s.sembled around one blaze and the newcomers about the other feebler campfires. It was as if the old soldiers drew together as an elite against which the newcomers would have to measure themselves, yet even the veterans were betraying a nervousness this rainy night. Sharpe confirmed to them that the Prussians had been beaten, but he promised that Marshal Blcher's army was withdrawing on roads parallel to the British retreat and that the Marshal had promised to march at first light to Wellington's aid,

"Where are the Prussians exactly, sir?" Colour Sergeant Major Huckfield wanted to know.

"Over there." Sharpe pointed to the left flank. The Prince of Wales's Own Volunteers were on the right side of the British position, almost midway between the elm tree and the track which led down to Hougoumont.

"How far away are they, sir?" Huckfield, an intelligent and earnest man, persisted.

Sharpe shrugged. "Not far." In truth he did not know where the Prussians were bivouacked, nor was he even certain that Marshal Blucher would march to help this bedraggled army in the morning, but Sharpe knew he must give these men some shred of hope. The newcomers to the battalion were edging closer to the veterans' fire to listen to the Rifleman. "All that matters," he said loudly, "is that the Prussians will be here and fighting in the morning."

"If this rain doesn't stop we'll need the b.l.o.o.d.y navy here, not the b.l.o.o.d.y Prussians." Private Clayton looked up at the darkening clouds. The rain was steady and hard, drumming on the black shako tops of the shivering men and running down the old furrows to puddle at the field's bottom where a troop of officers' horses were unhappily picketed.

"This rain will b.u.g.g.e.r up their harvest." Charlie Weller, who was allowed to bivouac with the veterans because they liked him, plucked a head of soaking wet rye and shook his head sadly. "It'll all be black and rotten in a week's time."

"But it'll be well dunged next year, though. Corn always grows better on dead flesh." Hagman, the oldest man in the company, grinned. "We saw that in Spain, ain't that right, Mr Sharpe? We saw oats growing taller than a horse where a battle had been fought. The roots was sucking up all that blood and belly, they was."

"They don't always bury them, though, do they? You remember that place in Spain? Where all the skulls were?" Clayton frowned as he tried to remember the battlefield over which the battalion had marched some weeks after a fight.

"Sally-Manker," Harper offered helpfully.

"That was the place! There were skulls as thick as bluebottles in cows.h.i.t!" Clayton spoke loudly to impress the new recruits who were listening avidly to the conversation, nor did he drop his voice as a blue-coated battalion of Dutch-Belgian infantry marched close by towards their bivouac. "I hope those yellow b.a.s.t.a.r.ds aren't next to us tomorrow," Clayton said malevolently.

There were growls of agreement. The officers and men of the Prince of Wales's Own Volunteers might be divided between the experienced and the inexperienced, but they were united in their hatred of all outsiders, unless those outsiders had proved themselves as tough, resourceful and uncomplaining as the redcoats. To these men the battalion was their life, their family and probably their death as well. Properly led they would fight for their battalion with a feral and terrifying ferocity, though ill-led, as Sharpe well knew, they could fall apart like a rusted musket. The thought made Sharpe glance towards Colonel Ford.

Clayton still stared with loathing at the Dutch-Belgians. "I'll wager those b.u.g.g.e.rs won't go hungry tonight. b.a.s.t.a.r.ds can't fight, but they look plump enough. No shortage of b.l.o.o.d.y food there!"

Daniel Hagman suddenly laughed aloud. "You remember that ripe ham we sold to the Portuguese? That was you, Mr Sharpe!"

"No, it wasn't," Sharpe said.

The veterans jeered knowingly and affectionately.

"It was you!" Clayton, a clever and cheeky rogue, pointed an accusing finger at Sharpe, then told the story for the benefit of the newcomers. "There were these Portuguese boys, right? It was after some sc.r.a.p or other and the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds were hungry as h.e.l.l, so Mr Sharpe here chopped the b.u.ms off some French dead and smoked them over a fire, and then sold them to the Portuguese as joints of ham."

The newcomers grinned nervously towards the grim-faced officer who seemed oddly embarra.s.sed by the tale.

"The Portuguese never complained." Harper justified the barbarity.

"Did you really do that?" d'Alembord asked Sharpe very quietly.

"Christ, no. It was some other Riflemen. The Portuguese had eaten their pet dog, so they decided to get even with them." Sharpe was surprised that the story was now ascribed to him, but he had noticed how men liked to attach outrageous stories to his exploits and it was hopeless to deny the more exotic feats.

"We could do with some of them Portuguese tomorrow." Daniel Hagman lit his pipe with a glowing twig from the fire. "They were proper little fighters, they were." The admiration was genuine and earned muttered agreement from the veterans.

"But we'll be all right tomorrow, won't we, Mr Sharpe?" Charlie Weller asked with undisguised anxiety.

"You'll be all right, lads. Just remember. Kill their officers first, aim at the bellies of the infantry and at the horses of the cavalry." The answer was given for the benefit of the men at the outer reaches of Sharpe's audience; the men who had not fought before and who needed simple rules to keep them confident in the chaos of battle.

Weller put a finger into the can of water and found it still lukewarm. He took a twist of dry kindling that he had stored deep in his clothes and put it onto the flames. Sharpe hoped the boy would survive, for Weller was different from the other men. He was a country boy who had joined the army out of a sense of patriotism and adventure. Those motives had helped make him a good soldier, though no better than most of the men who had taken the King's shilling for altogether less honourable motives. Clayton was a thief, and probably would have been hanged if he had not donned the red coat, but his sly cunning made him a good skirmisher. Most of the other men around the fire were drunkards and criminals. They were the leavings of Britain, the unwanted men, the sc.u.m of the earth, but in battle they were as stubborn as mules. To Sharpe's mind they were gutter fighters, and he would not have wanted them any other way. They were not impressive to look at; small, scarred, gap-toothed and dirty, but tomorrow they would show an emperor how a redcoat could fight, though tonight their main concern was when the rum ration would reach them.

"The quartermaster has promised it by midnight," d'Alembord told the company.

"b.a.s.t.a.r.d wagon drivers," Clayton said. "b.a.s.t.a.r.ds are probably tucked up in bed."

Sharpe and Harper stayed another half-hour and left the company discussing the chances of finding the French brothel among the enemy baggage. All British soldiers were convinced that the French travelled with such a brothel; a magical inst.i.tution that they had never quite succeeded in capturing, but which occupied in their mythology the status of a golden prize of war.

"They seem well enough," Sharpe said to d'Alembord. The two officers were walking towards the ridge top while Harper went to fetch the horses.

"They are well enough," d'Alembord confirmed. He was still in his dancing clothes which were now stained and ragged. His proper uniform was lost with the missing baggage. One of his dancing shoes had somehow lost its buckle and was only held in place by a piece of string knotted round d'Alembord's instep. "They're good lads," he said warmly.

"And you, Dally?"

Peter d'Alembord smiled ruefully. "I can't shake off a rather ominous dread. Silly, I know, but there it is."

"I felt that way before Toulouse," Sharpe confessed. "It was bad. I lived, though."

D'Alembord, who would not have admitted his fears to anyone but a very close friend, walked a few paces in silence. "I can't help thinking about the wheat on the roads. Have you noticed that wherever our supply wagons go the grain falls off and sprouts? It grows for a season, then just dies. It seerns to me that's rather a good image of soldiering. We pa.s.s by, we leave a trace, and then we die."

Sharpe stared aghast at his friend. "My G.o.d, but you have got it bad!"

"My Huguenot ancestry, I fear. I am bedevilled by a Calvinist guilt that I'm wasting my life. I tell myself that I'm here to help punish the French, but in truth it was the chance of a majority that kept me in uniform. I need the money, you see, but that seems a despicable motive now. I've behaved badly, don't you see? And consequently I have a conviction that I'll become nothing but dung for a Belgian rye field."

Sharpe shook his head. "I'm only here for the money too, you silly b.u.g.g.e.r." They had reached the ridge top and could see the twisting trails of French cooking fires rising beyond the southern crest. "You're going to live, Dally."

"So I keep telling myself, then I become convinced of the opposite." D'Alembord paused before revealing the true depths of his dread. "For tuppence I'd ride away tonight and hide. I've been thinking of it all day."

"It happens to us all." Sharpe remembered his own terror before the battle at Toulouse. "The fear goes when the fighting starts, Dally. You know that."

"I'm not the only one, either." D'Alembord ignored Sharpe's encouragement. "GSM Huckfield has suddenly taken to reading his Bible. If I didn't like him so much I'd accuse him of being a d.a.m.ned Methodist. He tells me he's marked to die in this campaign, though he adds that he doesn't mind because his soul is square with G.o.d. Major Vine says the same thing." D'Alembord shot a poisonous glance towards the hedge where Ford and his senior Major crouched against the rain. "They asked me whether I thought we should have divine service tomorrow morning. I told them it was a b.l.o.o.d.y ridiculous notion, but I've no doubt they'll find some idiot chaplain to mumble inanities at us. Have you noticed how we're getting so very pious? We weren't pious in Spain, but suddenly there's a streak of moral righteousness infecting senior officers. I'll say my prayers in the morning, but I won't need to make a display of it." He began sc.r.a.ping the mud from his fragile shoes against a tuft of gra.s.s, then abandoned the cleaning job as hopeless. "I apologize, Sharpe. I shouldn't burden you with this."

"It's not a burden."

"I was unconcerned till yesterday," d'Alembord went on as though Sharpe had not spoken. "But those hors.e.m.e.n completely unnerved me. I was shaking like a child when they attacked us. Then there's the Colonel, of course. I have no faith in Ford at all. And there's Anne, I feel I don't deserve her and that any man who is as fortunate as is bound to be punished for it."

"Love makes us vulnerable," Sharpe admitted.

"Doesn't it just?" d'Alembord said warmly. "But virtue should give us confidence."

"Virtue?" Sharpe wondered just what moral claims his friend was making for himself.

"The virtue of our cause," d'Alembord explained as though it was the most natural thing in the world. "The French have got to be beaten."

Sharpe smiled. "They're doubtless saying the same of us."

D'Alembord was silent for a few seconds, then spoke in a sudden and impa.s.sioned rush. "I don't count Lucille, of course, and you mustn't think I do, but it is a filthily evil nation, Sharpe. I cannot forget what they did to my family or to our co-religionists. And think of their revolution! All those poor dead innocent people. And Bonaparte's no better. He just attacks and attacks, then steals from the countries he conquers, and all the time he talks of virtue and law and the glories of French civilization. Their virtue is all hypocrisy, their law applies only to benefit themselves, and their civilization is blood on the cobblestones."

Sharpe had never suspected that such animosity lay beneath his friend's elegant languor. "So it isn't just the majority, Peter?"

D'Alembord seemed embarra.s.sed to have betrayed such feelings. "I'm sorry, I truly am. You must think me very rude. I heartily like Lucille, you know I do. I exaggerate, of course. It is not the French who are essentially evil, but their government." He stopped abruptly, evidently stifling yet more anti-French venom;