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 scrap or other and the bastards were hungry as hell, so Mr Sharpe here chopped the bums 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 embarrassed 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 scum 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.

“Bastard wagon drivers,” Clayton said. “Bastards 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 institution 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 pass by, we leave a trace, and then we die.”

Sharpe stared aghast at his friend. “My God, 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 bugger.” 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 damned 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 God. 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 bloody 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 scraping the mud from his fragile shoes against a tuft of grass, 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 horsemen 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 impassioned 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.”