“I think we’ll just let the bugger 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 damned 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 bloody 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 embarrassed by the tortured admission he had provoked from his friend.

“I gave him his damned 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.

“It’s a matter of honour.” Lord John was staring into the darkening street.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Tomorrow“, Lord John said, ”has become a rather desperate matter of honour.“ He was very slightly drunk, and his voice held a hint of hysteria. ”I never realized before today how very simple battle is. There’s no compromise, is there? It’s victory or defeat, and nothing in between, while real life is so damned complicated. Perhaps that’s why the best soldiers are such very simple souls.“ He turned in the porch to stare at his friend. ”You see, if I want to keep the woman then I have to kill a man, and I don’t have the nerve to face him. And he’s done nothing to deserve death! It is his money! But if I do the honest thing to the man, then I lose the woman, and I don’t think I can live with that loss — „

“I’m sure you can — „Christopher Manvell interrupted and, in his turn, was cut off.

“No!” Lord John did not even wish to discuss Jane. He frowned in puzzlement at his friend. “Do you think lost honour can be retrieved on a battlefield?”

“I’m sure it’s the very best place to retrieve it.” Manvell felt a surge of pity for his friend. He had never realized till this moment just how Lord John’s honour had been trampled and destroyed.

“So tomorrow’s become rather important to me,” Lord John said. “Because tomorrow I can take my honour back by fighting well.” He smiled as if to soften the overdramatic words. “But to do it I’ll need a sword, and my spare blade is in Brussels. I suppose you don’t have one you could lend me?”

“With pleasure.”

Lord John stared into the drenching twilight. “I wish it was over. The rain, I mean,” he added hurriedly.

“I think it’s slackening.”

Lightning flickered in the west, followed a few seconds later by thunder that crashed across the far sky like the passage of a cannon-ball. Laughter and singing sounded from a house further up the street, temporarily drowning the ominous and repetitive scraping noise of a stone putting an edge onto a sword. A dog howled in protest at the thunder and a horse whinnied from the stables behind the Earl of Uxbridge’s billet.

Lord John turned back into the house. He could retrieve his honour and he could retrieve Jane by becoming a hero. Tomorrow.

Captain Harry Price, commander of the first company of the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers, climbed onto a makeshift platform constructed from spare ammunition boxes. In front of him, standing in the rain-soaked field, were forty or fifty infantry officers who had assembled from the various battalions bivouacked nearby. The last light was draining in the west, while the rain had slackened to a drizzle.

“Are we ready, gentlemen?* Price called.

“Get on with it!”

Price, enjoying himself, bowed to the hecklers, then took the first article from Colour Sergeant Major Huckfield. It was a silver-cased watch that Harry Price held high into the last vestiges of the light. “A watch, gentlemen, property of the late Major Micklewhite! The item is only very slightly blood-stained, gentlemen, so a good cleaning will have it ticking in no time. I offer you a very fine fob watch, gentlemen, made by Mastersons of Exeter.”

“Never heard of them!” a voice shouted.

“Your ignorance is of no interest to us. Mastersons are a very old and reputable firm. My father always swore by his Mastersons watch and he was never late for a rogering in his life. Do I hear a pound for Major Micklewhite’s ticker?”

“A shilling!”

“Now, come along! Major Micklewhite left a widow and three sweet-natured children. You wouldn’t want your wives and little ones left derelict because some thieving bastards weren’t generous! Let me hear a pound!”

“A florin!”

“This isn’t a dolly-shop, gentlemen! A pound? Who’ll offer me a pound?”

No one would. In the end Micklewhite’s watch fetched six shillings, while the dead Major’s signet ring went for one shilling. A fine silver cup that had belonged to Captain Carline went for a pound, while the top price went for Carline’s sword that fetched a full ten guineas. Harry Price had to auction sixty-two articles, all the property of those officers of the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers who had been killed by the French cavalry at Quatre Bras. The prices were low because the French had caused a glut on the market by killing so many officers; at least four other auctions had already taken place this evening, but this night’s glut, Harry Price thought, would be as nothing compared to tomorrow night’s supply of goods.

“A pair of Captain Carline’s spurs, gentlemen! Gold if I’m not mistaken.” That claim was greeted by jeers of derision. “Do I hear a pound?”

“Sixpence.”

“You’re a miserable bloody lot. How would you feel if it was your belongings I was giving away for tuppence? Let us be generous, gentlemen! Think of the widows!”

“Carline wasn’t married!” a lieutenant shouted.

“A guinea for his whore, then! I want some Christian generosity, gentlemen!”

„I’ll give you a guinea for his whore, but sixpence for his spurs!“

Micklewhite’s effects made eight pounds, fourteen shillings and sixpence. Captain Carline’s belongings fetched a good deal more, though all the items had been knocked down at bargain prices. Harry Price, who had always wanted to look like a cavalry officer, bought the spurs himself for ninepence. He also bought Carline’s fur-edged pelisse; an elegantly impractical garment that high fashion imposed on wealthy officers. A pelisse was a short jacket that was worn from one shoulder like a cloak, and Harry Price took immense satisfaction in draping Carline’s expensively braided foible about his own shabby red coat.

He took the money and the promissory notes to the battalion’s paymaster who, after he had taken his share, would send the balance on to the bereaved families.