The Baron Jean de Constant Rebecque informed His Highness that Dornberg’s report had indeed arrived and contained nothing alarming. No French troops troubled the road to Mons; it seemed that the Belgian countryside slept under its summer heat.

The relieved Prince grunted an acknowledgement, then leaned forward to gaze critically in the mirror. He twisted his head left and right before looking anxiously at Rebecque. “Am I losing too much hair?”

Rebecque pretended to make a careful inspection, then shook his head reassuringly. “I can’t see that you’re losing any, sir.”

“I thought I’d wear British uniform tonight.”

“A very apt choice, sir.” Rebecque spoke in English because the Prince preferred that language.

The Prince glanced at a clock. It would take his coach at least two hours to reach Brussels, and he needed a good hour to change into the scarlet and gold finery of a British major-general. He would allow himself another three hours to enjoy a private supper before going to the Duchess’s ball where, he knew, the food would be cold and inedible. “Has Sharpe returned yet?” he asked Rebecque.

“No, sir.”

The Prince frowned. “Damn. If he gets back, tell him I expect his attendance at the ball.”

Rebecque could not hide his astonishment. “Sharpe? At the Duchess’s ball?” Sharpe had been promised that his duties to the Prince were not social, but only to provide advice during battle.

The Prince did not care what promises had been made to the Englishman; forcing Sharpe to dance would demonstrate to the Rifleman that the Prince commanded this headquarters. “He told me that he hates dancing! I shall nevertheless oblige him to dance for his own good. Everyone should enjoy dancing. I do!” The Prince laughingly trod some capering steps about the bedroom. “We shall make Colonel Sharpe enjoy dancing! Are you sure you don’t want to dance tonight, Rebecque?”

“I shall be Your Highness’s eyes and ears here.”

“Quite right.” The Prince, reminded that he had military responsibilities, suddenly looked grave, but he had an irrepressibly high-spirited nature and could not help laughing again. “I imagine Sharpe dances like a Belgian heifer! Thump, thump, thump, and all the time with that gloomy expression on his face. We shall cheer him up, Rebecque.”

“I’m sure he’ll be grateful for it, sir.”

“And tell him he’s to wear Dutch uniform tonight!”

“Indeed I will, sir.”

The Prince left for Brussels an hour and a half later, his carriage escorted by an honour guard of Dutch Carabiniers who had learned their trade in the French Emperor’s service. Paulette, relieved at the Prince’s departure, lay cosily in his bed while Rebecque took a book to his own quarters. The clerks laboriously copied out the orders listing which battalions the Prince would visit in the coming week, and what manoeuvres each battalion should demonstrate for the Prince’s approval.

Clouds heaped higher in the west, but the sun still shone on the village. A cat curled up by the boot-scraper at the front door of the.Prince’s headquarters where the sentry, a British redcoat, stooped to fondle the animal’s warm fur. Wheat and rye and barley and oats ripened in the sun. It was a perfect summer’s day, shimmering with heat and silence and all the beauty of peace.

The first news of French activity reached the Duke of Wellington while he ate his early dinner of roast mutton. The message, which had originated in Charleroi just thirty-two miles away, had first been sent to Marshal Blücher at Namur, then copied and sent on to Brussels, a total journey of seventy miles. The message merely reported that the French had attacked at dawn and that the Prussian outposts had been driven in south of Charleroi.

“How many French? It doesn’t say. And where are the French now? And is the Emperor with them?” the Duke demanded of his staff.

No one could tell. The mutton was abandoned on the table while the Duke’s staff gathered about a map pinned to the dining-room wall. The French might have advanced into the country south of Charleroi, but the Duke, as ever, brooded over the left-hand side of the map which showed the great sweep of flat country between Mons and Tournai. That was where he feared a French advance that would cut the British off from the North Sea. If the French took Ghent then the Duke’s army would be denied its supply roads from the North Sea, as well as its route home.

Wellington, had he been in the Emperor’s boots, would have chosen that strategy. First he would have pushed a strong diversionary force at Charleroi, then, when the allies moved to defend Brussels from the south, he would have launched the real attack to the west. It was by just such dazzling manoeuvres that the Emperor had held off the Russian, Prussian and Austrian armies in the spring of 1814. Napoleon, in the weeks before his abdication, had never fought more brilliantly, and no one, least of all Wellington, expected anything but the same cleverness now.

“We’ve heard nothing from Dornberg?” the Duke snapped.

“Nothing.”

The Duke looked back at the Prussian message. It did not tell him, how many French had crossed the frontier, nor whether Blücher was concentrating his army; all it told him was that a French force had pushed back the Prussian outposts.

He went back to the dinner-table. His own British and Dutch forces were scattered across five hundred square miles of countryside. They had to be thus dispersed, not only to guard every possible French invasion route, but also so that the mass of men and horses did not strip any one locality of food and grazing. Now, however, he knew the army must begin to shrink towards its battle order. “We’ll concentrate,” the Duke said. Every division of the army had a prearranged town or village where it would gather and wait for further orders. “And send a good man to Dornberg to find out what’s happening in front of him.”

The Duke frowned again at Blücher’s message, wondering whether he had over-reacted to its small news. Surely, if the French incursion was serious, the Prussians would have sent a more urgent messenger? No matter. If it turned out to be a false alarm then the army’s concentration could be reversed next day.

Nine miles to the south, in the little village of Waterloo, the hugely fat Prussian Major had stopped his plodding horse at a small inn opposite the church. The wine he had taken for lunch, together with the oppressive afternoon heat, had quite tired him out. He asked for a little restorative brandy, then saw a baker’s tray of delicious cakes being carried into the inn’s side-door. “And some of those pastries, I think. The ones with the almond paste, if you’d be so kind.”

He slid out of the saddle and gratefully sat on a bench that was shaded by a small chestnut tree. The despatch which would have told Wellington of the loss of Charleroi and the further French advance lay in the Major’s saddlebag.

The Major leaned against the chestnut’s trunk. Nothing much stirred in the village. The paved road ran between wide grass verges where two tethered cows and four goats grazed. A few chickens scratched by the church steps where a dog twitched in its sleep. A small child played tipcat in the archway of the inn’s stableyard. The fat Major, pleased with such a scene of rural innocence, smiled happily, then, as he waited for his snack, dozed.

Sharpe’s horse limped into the Prince of Orange’s headquarters just ten minutes after the Prince had left for Brussels. Aggressive French patrols had prevented Sharpe getting close to the road a second time, but he had ridden near enough to see the dust clouds drifting away from the boots, hooves and wheels of an army on the march. Now, flinching at the soreness in his thighs, he eased himself out of the saddle. He shouted for an ostler, tied Nosey to a metal ring on the stableyard wall and gave the dog a bowl of water before, carrying his map and weapons, he limped into the silent house. Dust floated in the beams of light that flooded through the fanlight over the front door. He looked into the map room, but no one was there.