“That’s true.” Yet Frederickson was in a Canadian garrison, just one of the thousands of veterans who had been dispersed round the globe, which meant that the Emperor must be fought with too many raw battalions who had never stood in the battle line and who froze like rabbits when the cavalry threatened.

Far to the west a sheet of lightning flickered in the sky and thunder grumbled like a far sound of gunnery. “Rain tomorrow,” Harper said again.

Sharpe yawned. Tonight, at least, he was well fed and dry. He suddenly remembered that he was supposed to have been given Lord John’s promissory note, but it had not come. That was a problem best left for the morning, but for now he wrapped himself in the cloak that was Lucille’s gift and within a few minutes he was fast asleep.

And the Emperor’s campaign was forty-one hours old.

More battalions, cavalry squadrons and gun batteries arrived at the crossroads throughout the short night until, at dawn, the Duke’s army was at last almost wholly assembled. In the first sepulchral light the newcomers stared dully at the small shapes which lay in the mist that shrouded the hollows of the battlefield. Bugles roused the bivouacs, while the wounded, left all night in the rye, called pitifully for help. The night sentries were called in and a new picquet line set to face the French camp-fires at Frasnes. The British camp-fires were revived with new kindling and a scattering of gunpowder. Men fished in their ammunition pouches for handfuls of tea leaves that were contributed to the common pots. Officers, socially visiting between the battalions, spread the cheerful news that Marshal Blücher had repulsed Bonaparte’s attack, so now it seemed certain that the French would retreat in the face of a united Prussian-British army.

“We’ll be in France next week!” an infantry captain assured his men.

“Paris by July, lads,” a sergeant forecast. “Just think of all those girls.”

The Duke of Wellington, who had slept in an inn three miles from Quatre Bras, returned to the crossroads at first light. The Highlanders of the gand made him a fire and served him tea. He cupped the tin mug in both hands and stared southwards towards Marshal Ney’s positions, but the French troops were silent and unmoving beneath the heavy cloud cover that had spread from the west during the short hours of darkness. One of the Duke’s stafFofficers, heavily protected by a troop of King’s German Legion cavalry, was sent eastwards to learn the morning’s news from Marshal Blücher.

Officers used French Cuirassiers’ upturned breastplates as shaving bowls; the senior officers having the privilege of the water when it was hot and the Lieutenants and Ensigns being forced to wait till the water was cold and congealed. The infantrymen who had fought the previous day boiled yet more water to clean their fouled musket barrels. Cavalry troopers queued to have their swords or sabres ground to a killing edge on the treadled stones, while the gunners filled the shot-cases of their field carriages with ready ammunition. There was an air of cheerfulness about the crossroads; the feeling that the army had survived an ordeal the previous day, but that now, and thanks largely to the victory of the Prussians, it was on the verge of triumph. The only grumble was that in the desperate hurry to reach Quatre Bras the army had left its commissariat wagons far behind so that most of the battalions started their day hungry.

The battlefield was searched for bodies. The wounded who still lived were taken back to the surgeons, while the dead were collected for burial. Most of the dead officers had been buried the previous night, so now the diggers would look after as many rank and file as they could. Sharpe and Harper, waking in the overcast dawn, found themselves just a few yards away from a work party that was scratching a wide and shallow trench in which the slaughtered men of the 69th would be interred. The waiting bodies lay in such natural poses that they almost seemed to be asleep. Captain Harry Price of the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers found the two Riflemen drinking their morning tea just as the first corpses were being dragged towards the inadequate grave. “Any tea for a gallant officer?” Price begged.

Harper cheerfully scooped another mug of stewed tea out of the breastplate kettle. The dead, who had been stripped of their uniforms, stank already. It was only an hour after dawn yet the day threatened to be humid and sticky and the grave diggers were sweating as they hacked at the soil. “They’ll have to dig deeper than that,” Harper commented as he handed Price the tin mug.

Price sipped the tea, then grimaced at its sour aftertaste of axle grease. “Do you remember the chaos we made trying to burn those poor buggers at Fuentes de Onoro?”

Sharpe laughed. The ground at Fuentes de Onoro had been too shallow and rocky to make graves, so he had ordered his dead cremated, but even after tearing down a whole wooden barn and lifting the rafters off six small houses to use as fuel, the bodies had refused to burn.

“They were good days,” Price said wistfully. He squinted up at the sky. “It’ll pour with bloody rain soon.” The clouds were low and extraordinarily dark, as though their looming heaviness had trapped the vestiges of night. “A rotten day for a battle,” Price said gloomily.

“Is there going to be a battle?” Harper asked.

“That’s what the Brigade Major told our gallant Colonel.” Price told Sharpe and Harper the dawn news of Prussian victory, and how the French were supposed to be retreating and how the army would be pursuing the French who were expected to make one last stand before yielding the frontier to the Emperor’s enemies.

“How are our lads feeling about yesterday?” Harper asked Price, and Sharpe noticed how, to the Irishman, the battalion was still ‘our lads’.

“They’re pleased that Mr d’Alembord’s a major, but he’s not exactly overjoyed.”

“Why not?” Sharpe asked.

“He says he’s going to die. He’s got a what do you call it? A premonition. He says it’s because he’s going to be married.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

Price shrugged as if to demonstrate that he was no expert on superstitions. “He says it’s because he’s happy. He reckons that the happiest die first and only the miserable buggers live for ever.”

“You should have been dead long ago,” Harper commented.

“Thank you, Sergeant,” Harry Price grinned. He was a carefree, careless and casual man, much liked by his men, but averse to too much effort. He had served as Sharpe’s Lieutenant at one time, and had been perpetually in debt, frequently drunk, yet ever cheerful. Now he drained the vestiges of his tea. “I’m supposed to be reporting to brigade to discover just when we march off.” He shuddered with sudden distaste. “That was a bloody horrible mug of tea.”

“It had a bit of dead horse in it,” Harper explained helpfully.

“God damn Irish cooking. I suppose I’d better go and do my duty.” Price gave Harper the mug back and ambled on with a cheerful good morning to the burial party.

“And what are we going to do?” Harper asked Sharpe.

“Use the rest of the tea as shaving water, then bugger off.” Sharpe had no wish to stay with the army. The Prince had relieved him of his duties and, if the rumours were true, the French invasion had been thwarted by Blücher’s Prussians. The rest of the war would be a pursuit through the fortress belt of northern France until the Emperor surrendered. Sharpe decided he might as well sit it out in Brussels, then go back to his apple trees in Normandy. “I suppose I never will get to fight the Emperor.” He spoke wistfully, feeling oddly let down. Yesterday’s battle had been an unsatisfactory way to gain victory, but Sharpe was an old enough soldier to take victory whichever way it came. “Is there more tea?”