Price paused, evidently seeking some observation that would keep the conversation going. “If the clouds cleared away, it might become a rare old day!”

“Indeed, yes.”

“Good cricketing weather, even.”

D’Alembord looked sideways at his friend, wondering for a second whether Harry Price had gone quite mad, then he saw a muscle quivering in Harry’s cheek and he realized that Price was just trying to hide his own fear.

Price grinned suddenly. “Speaking of cricket, is our brave Colonel happy?”

“He’s not saying very much. He’s just polishing those damned spectacles of his.”

Harry Price dropped his voice as though, in the maelstrom of shells and roundshot, he might yet be overheard. “I put some butter on the tails of his sash this morning.”

“You did what?”

“Buttered his sash,” Price said gleefully. He looked warily upwards as a shell made a curious fluttering noise overhead, then relaxed as the missile exploded far to the rear. “I did it this morning, while he was shaving. I only used a spot of butter, for one doesn’t wish to be obvious. It isn’t the first time I’ve buttered his eyeglasses, either. I did it the last time he insisted we play cricket. Why do you think he couldn’t see the ball?”

D’Alembord wondered how anyone could play such a schoolboy trick on a morning of battle, then, after a pause, he spoke with a sudden passion. “I do hate bloody cricket.”

Price, who liked the game, was offended. “That’s not very English of you.”

“I’m not English. My ancestry is French, which is probably why I find cricket such a bloody tedious game!” D’Alembord feared that he was betraying a note of hysteria.

“There are more tedious games than cricket.” Price spoke very earnestly.

“You really believe so?”

A cannon-ball slammed into Number Four Company. It killed two men and wounded two others so badly that they would die before they could reach the surgeons. One of the two men screamed in a tremulous, nerve-scraping voice until Regimental Sergeant Major Mclnerney shouted for the wounded man to be quiet, then ordered that the dead men be thrown forward to where the corpses were being stacked into a crude barricade. A shell exploded in midair, drowning the RSM’s voice. Harry Price looked up at the drifting billow of smoke left by the shell’s explosion. “One of the Crapaud batteries is cutting its fuses a bit brief, wouldn’t you say?”

“You claim there’s a more tedious game than cricket?” D’Alembord did not want to think about fuses or shells.

Price nodded. “Have you ever seen men play golf?”

D’Alembord shook his head. Off to his left he could see French skirmishers advancing among the Hanoverian dead towards La Haye Sainte. The distinctive sound of rifle-fire betrayed that the farm’s garrison had seen the danger, then the French muskets began to add their own smoke to the battle’s fog. “I’ve never seen golf being played,” d’Alembord said. The effort of controlling his fear made his voice sound very stilted, like a man rehearsing a strange language. “It’s a Scottish game, isn’t it?”

“It’s a bloody weird Scottish game.” Price blinked and swallowed as a roundshot went foully close, fanning both men with the wind of its passing. “You hit a small ball with a bent stick until you get it near a rabbit hole. Then you tap it into the hole, fish it out, and hit it towards another hole.”

D’Alembord looked at his friend who was keeping a very straight face. “You’re inventing this, Harry. You’re making it up just to make me feel better.”

Harry Price shook his head. “God’s honour, Peter. I might not have mastered the finer points of the game, but I saw a man with a beard playing it near Troon.”

D’Alembord started to laugh. He did not quite know why it was so funny, but something about Harry’s solemnity made him laugh. For a few seconds his laughter rang loud across the battalion, then a shell cracked apart with what seemed unusual violence, and Sergeant Huckfield was shouting at his men to stay down. D’Alembord turned and saw three of his old light company men had been turned into blood-stained rag dolls. “What were you doing in Troon, for God’s sake?”

“I have a widowed aunt who lives there, the childless relict of a lawyer. Her will is not yet decided and the lawyer’s fortune was far from despicable. I went to persuade her that I am a godly, sober and deserving heir.”

D’Alembord grinned. “She doesn’t know you’re a lazy, drunken rogue, Harry?”

“I read her the psalms every night,” Price said with a very fragile dignity.

A thudding of hooves turned d’Alembord round to see a staff officer galloping along the ridge crest. The man slowed his horse as he neared the two officers. “You’re to pull back! One hundred yards, no more!“ The man spurred on and shouted the order over the prone battalion to Colonel Ford. ”One hundred yards, Colonel! Back one hundred yards! Lie down there!“

D’Alembord faced the battalion. Far in the rear a shell had exploded an ammunition wagon that now burned to send a plume of boiling smoke up to the low clouds. Colonel Ford was standing in his stirrups, shouting his orders over the din of shells and guns. The Sergeants rousted the men to their feet and ordered them to pace back from the crest. The men, glad to be retreating from the cannonade, went at the double, leaving their bloodied dead behind.

“We walk, I think.” D’Alembord heard a shakiness in his voice, and tried again. “We definitely walk, Harry. We don’t run.”

“I can’t run in these spurs.” Price admitted. “I suppose the thing about spurs is that you need a horse to go with them.”

The small retreat took the leading companies away from the lip of the ridge onto the hidden reverse slope, yet even so, and even lying flat in the trampled corn, the shells and roundshot still found their marks. The wounded limped to the rear, going to the forest’s edge where the surgeons waited. Some men, unable to walk, were carried by the bandsmen. A few shrunken bands still played, but their music was overwhelmed by the hammering of the massive bombardment. More ammunition wagons were struck, their fire and smoke thickening until the forest’s edge looked like a giant crucible in which the flames spat and flared. Frightened horses, cut from the traces of the burning wagons, galloped in panic through the wounded who limped and crawled to the surgeons.

On the southern ridge the French general officers sought vantage points from where their guns’ smoke did not obscure the view and from where they could search the British lines for clues to the effectiveness of their bombardment.

They saw the turmoil of burning ammunition. They saw the wounded limping back; so many wounded that it looked like a retreat. Then, quite suddenly, they saw the battalions that had lined the crest pull back from the crest and disappear.

French infantry still assaulted Hougoumont, and more men had just been sent to capture the awkward bastion of La Haye Sainte, but perhaps neither attack would need to be successful, for it was clear that the vaunted British infantry was beaten. The Goddamns were retreating. Their ranks had been shredded by the Emperor’s jeune files, and the redcoats were fleeing. The Emperor had been right; the British would not stand against a real assault. The guns still fired, but the ridge seemed empty, and the French smelt glory in the powder smoke.

Marshal Ney, bravest of the brave, had been ordered by the Emperor to finish the British quickly. He gazed through his telescope at the enemy ridge and saw a shining chance of swift victory. He slammed his spyglass shut, turned in his saddle, and beckoned to his cavalry commanders.

It was half-past three, and the Prussians had not come.

Sharpe and Harper had instinctively returned to the ridge above Hougoumont where Captain Witherspoon’s body lay. It was the place their battle had started, and where they felt a curious sense of safety. The French bombardment was concentrating on the ground to their left, leaving the slope above the beleaguered chateau in relative peace.