Sharpe smiled. "Where Lucille and I live they will tell you that France is blessed by G.o.d but cursed with Paris. They perceive Paris as an evil place inhabited by the most loathsome and grasping people."

"It sounds like London." D'Alembord smiled wanly. "You won't tell Lucille my thoughts? I would not like to offend her."

"Of course I won't tell her."

"And perhaps you will do me one more favour?"

"With pleasure,"

D'Alembord took a creased and damp letter from his pocket. "If I do become rye dung tomorrow, perhaps you'll deliver this to Anne? And tell her I didn't suffer? No tales of surgeon's knives, Sharpe, and no descriptions of nasty wounds, just a clean bullet in the forehead will do for my end, however nasty the truth will probably be."

"I won't need to deliver it, but I'll keep it for you." Sharpe pushed the letter into a pocket, then turned as a spatter of musket fire sounded from the right of the line, about the chateau of Hougoumont.

A scatter of French infantry were running back from the orchard where British musket flames sparked bright in the dusk. Sharpe could see redcoats going forward among the trees south of the farm. The French must have sent a battalion to discover whether the farmstead was garrisoned, or else the enemy was merely foraging for firewood, but, whatever their mission, the blue-coated infantry had run into a savage firefight. More redcoats ran from the farm to take their bayonets into the woodland.

"What angers me", d'Alembord was taking no notice of the sudden skirmish, "is not knowing how it will all end. If I die tomorrow, I'll never know, will I?"

Sharpe shook his head in scornful dismissal of his friend's fears. "By summer's end, my friend, you and I will sit in a conquered Paris and drink wine. We probably won't even remember a day's fighting in Belgium! And you'll go home and marry your Anne and be happy ever after."

D'Alembord laughed at the prophecy. "And you, Sharpe, what happens to you? Do you go back to Normandy?"

"Yes."

"And the local people won't mind that you fought against France?"

"I don't know." That worry was never far from Sharpe's thoughts, nor indeed, from Lucille's. "But I'd like to go back," Sharpe went on. "I'm happy there. I'm planning to make some calvados this year. The chateau used to make a lot, but it hasn't produced any for twenty or more years. The local doctor wants to help us. He's a good fellow." Sharpe suddenly thought of his meeting with Lord John and of the promissory note that, if it was honoured, would make so many things possible in Lucille's chateau. "I met b.l.o.o.d.y Rossendale today. I took the 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 a.s.sembled staff at supper. "The d.a.m.ned horse bolted on me."

"You should learn to ride, John."

Lord John waited for the laughter to subside. "d.a.m.n thing ran me into a wood off to one side of the road, and d.a.m.n 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. d.a.m.n 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 d.a.m.n 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 d.a.m.n nearly skewered me." He gave a modest smile. "Thought I was dead, to be honest. I slashed at the fellow, but he was d.a.m.ned fast. He drew a sabre and had a good hack at me, I parried, and that's when my sword broke. Then, d.a.m.n me, if the fellow didn't just turn tail and run!"

The a.s.sembled 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 d.a.m.n 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, d.a.m.ned well." The Earl of Uxbridge spoke gruffly. "You killed a brace of the b.u.g.g.e.rs, eh? d.a.m.n 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 ent.i.tled 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 b.u.g.g.e.r 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 d.a.m.ned 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 embarra.s.sed by the tortured admission he had provoked from his friend.

"I gave him his d.a.m.ned 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.