Sharpe's Waterloo

by Bernard Cornwell

  Strangest of all were the rockets. Lord John had heard much of the rocket corps, for they were a pet project of his former master, the Prince Regent, but this was the first time he had seen them fired. The first missile was wonderfully accurate and so lethal that every French gun crew within a hundred yards had fled in panic, but the next salvo was laughable. One rocket had seemed to threaten the group of Lord Uxbridge’s staff officers and they had whooped gleefully as they scattered away from its hissing shell. Lord John spurred his horse too hard and it almost bolted with him. He managed to curb the mare after a hundred yards and turned to see the rocket buried in the mud with its stick burning merrily above it. The buried powder charge exploded harmlessly.

  Then, looking towards the road to find his friends, he saw Sharpe coming towards him instead.

  For a second Lord John knew he must stand and fight. The next second he realized he would be dead if he did.

  And so he turned and fled.

  Lord John’s servants were somewhere ahead with the cavalry’s baggage. Harris, the coachman, who had ridden from Brussels with a letter from Jane, had also ridden ahead to find that night’s quarters. Christopher Manvell and Lord John’s other friends had disappeared in the panic engendered by the rogue rocket. Lord John was suddenly alone in the pelting rain with his one dreadful enemy spurring towards him.

  He gave his horse its head. It was a good horse, five years old and trained on the hunting field. It had stamina and speed, and was certainly a faster horse than Sharpe rode, and Lord John had learned on the hunting field how best to ride treacherous country. He must have stretched his lead by an extra hundred yards in the first half mile. There were ironic cheers from the road where the retreating gunners supposed the two officers to be racing.

  Lord John was oblivious to the cheers and the rain; indeed to everything but his predicament. He was cursing himself; he should have ridden towards his companions and sheltered under their protection, but instead, in a blind panic, he was racing ever further away from help. He dared not look behind. His horse thundered along a field margin, raced over soaking rows of newly scythed hay, then galloped down a gentle incline towards a hedge, beyond which, and across one more field, a long dark copse of trees offered a concealed path back to the road.

  His horse almost baulked at the hedge, not because of the height of the blackthorn, but because the approach to the obstacle was inches deep in mud. Lord John savagely rowelled the beast, and somehow it lumbered and scraped its way over the thorns. It landed heavily, splashing thick mud that soaked Lord John’s red coat. He spurred the horse again, forcing it to struggle up from the sticky ground. The pasture was firmer going, but even here the earth was spongy from rain.

  He reached the trees safely and, looking back from their shelter, saw that Sharpe had yet to negotiate the deep mud at the hedge. Lord John felt safe. He ducked into the thick and leafy copse which proved a perfect hiding place. The road, along which the guns crashed and jangled, was no more than a quarter-mile away and Lord John would be hidden under the wood’s leafy, dripping cover right to the road’s verge. There he could wait until his friends offered him support. Sharpe, he was certain, would try nothing violent in front of witnesses.

  Lord John slowed his blown horse to a walk, letting it pick a twisting path between oak and beech. The rain spattered on the uppermost leaves and dripped miserably from the lower. A scrabbling sound to his right made him whip round in sudden alarm, but it was only a red squirrel racing along an oak branch. He sagged in the saddle, feeling despair.

  He despaired because of honour. Honour was the simple code of the gentleman. Honour said a man did not run from an enemy, honour said a man did not flirt with the temptations of murder, and honour said a man did not show fear. Honour was the thin line that protected the privileged from disgrace, and Lord John, slouched in his wet saddle in a damp wood under a thunderous sky, knew he had run his honour ragged. Jane, in her letter, had threatened to leave him if he fulfilled his promise to return Sharpe’s money. How long, she had asked, would Lord John allow Sharpe to persecute her happiness? If Lord John could not settle Sharpe, then she would find a man who would. She had underlined the word ‘man’ three times.

  He stopped his horse. He could hear the gun wheels ahead of him, and closer, apparently on a ride that must have pierced the wood parallel to the road, the sound of hooves as a troop of cavalry splashed northwards.

  Another voice nagged at Lord John. He could not bear it if another man was to take Jane. Jealousy racked him. He had persuaded himself that her sudden desperation to marry him was a measure of Jane’s passionate love, and to think of that passion being expended for another man’s happiness was more than he could endure.

  A curb chain clinked. Lord John looked up to see his enemy in front of him. Sharpe must have guessed Lord John would double back under the cover of the trees, and so had ridden slantwise to where the wood met the road, then turned eastwards. Now, just twenty paces off, he sat his horse and stared at Lord John.

  Lord John felt oddly calm. A few moments before his nerves had been jangled by a squirrel, but now that his enemy had come, and now that he knew what had to be done, he surprised himself by his calmness.

  Neither man spoke. There was nothing to say.

  Lord John licked the rainwater from his lips. If he drew his sword then he knew the green-jacketed killer would be on him like a fury, so he kept his hand well away from the silver-wrapped hilt of his sword, and instead, not caring for honour, he drew the long-barrelled pistol that was holstered on his saddle. It was a beautiful gun, a gift from Jane, with a percussion cap instead of a flint. Its elegantly curved pistol-hilt was of chased walnut and its long rifled barrel was blued and gilded. The rifling gave the weapon a deadly accuracy, while the expensive percussion cap made it proof against the worst downpour of rain. He drew back the hammer, exposing the small copper wafer in which the gunpowder was packed. When that wafer was struck a lance of flame would pierce through the touchhole to spark the main charge.

  He raised the gun. His right hand shook slightly. Sharpe had made no move to defend himself, neither by flight nor by drawing a weapon of his own. Rainwater beaded the gun’s barrel. Its blade foresight wavered. Lord John tried to remember his tuition. He must not be tense. He should take a deep breath, let half the air out of his lungs, momentarily hold his breath and, at the same instant, squeeze the trigger gently.

  Sharpe urged his horse forward.

  The sudden movement disconcerted Lord John, and the gun shook in his hand as he tried to follow Sharpe’s advance. Sharpe seemed utterly oblivious of the pistol’s threat, as though he had not even seen the weapon.

  Lord John stared into his enemy’s eyes. He knew he should pull the trigger, but he was suddenly paralysed by fear. He could hear voices not very far off in the wood and he felt a dreadful fear that the murder might be witnessed, and Lord John knew it would be murder, and he knew the only mercy shown to him as a lord would be that he would be publicly hanged with a rope made of silk instead of a rope made from hemp. He wanted to pull the trigger, but his finger would not move, and all the time the hooves of Sharpe’s horse slurred through the thick wet leaf mould until the Rifleman was so close to Lord John that the two men could have shaken hands without even leaning from their saddles. Sharpe had not once taken his eyes from Lord John’s eyes even though the pistol was now just inches from his face.

  Very slowly, Sharpe raised his right hand and pushed the pistol away. The movement seemed to startle Lord John from his trance, and he tried to pull the weapon back, but Sharpe had gripped the barrel firmly and now twisted it from Lord John’s nerveless fingers. Lord John, expecting death, shivered.

  Sharpe made the gun safe by lowering the hammer onto the percussion cap. Then, holding the barrel in his right hand and the curved stock in his left, he began levering the weapon apart. It took all his strength, but suddenly the wooden stock split away from the barrel pins and, when the trigger assembly had been wren
ched loose, Sharpe was holding the gun in two useless halves which, still without a word, he dropped into Rossendale’s lap. The expensive barrel slid down to thump on the leaves, while the torn walnut stock lodged by his lordship’s topboot.

  Lord John quivered and shook his head as Sharpe reached towards him, but the Rifleman just took hold of Lord John’s sword hilt then, quite slowly, scraped the polished and engraved blade free. Sharpe looked up, thrust the narrow blade into the fork of a branch, and snapped the precious sword with one brutally violent jerk. Nine inches of steel was left with the handle, the rest of the blade slid down to the ground.

  ‘You’re not worth fighting.’ Sharpe still held the broken sword hilt.

  ‘I—’

  ‘Shut your bloody mouth.’

  ‘I—’

  Sharpe’s left hand slapped hard across Lord John’s face. ‘I’ll tell you when to speak,’ Sharpe said, ‘and it isn’t now. You listen. I don’t care about Jane. She’s your whore now. But I’ve got a farm in Normandy and it needs new apple trees and the barn needs a new roof, and the bloody Emperor took all our horses and cattle for his Goddamned army, and the taxes in France are bloody evil, and you’ve got my money. So where is it?’

  Lord John seemed unable to speak. His eyes were wet, perhaps from the rain or else from the shame of this meeting under the trees.

  ‘Has the whore spent it all?’ Sharpe asked.

  ‘Not all,’ Lord John managed to say.

  ‘Then how much is left?’

  Lord John did not know, because Jane would not tell him, but he guessed that there might be five thousand pounds left. He stammered out the figure, fearing that Sharpe would be angered when he realized how much Jane had squandered.

  Sharpe did not seem to care. Five hundred pounds was a fortune that would have restored Lucille’s château. ‘Give me a note now,’ he told Lord John.

  Lord John seriously doubted whether a promissory note with his signature had the legal force to produce the money, but if it satisfied Sharpe then Lord John was happy to write a thousand such notes. He snatched open the gilded flap of his sabretache and took out a leather-bound notebook and a pencil. He scribbled the words fast, the pencil’s point tearing the paper where the rainwater dripped from his helmet’s visor onto the page. He ripped the page out and handed it wordlessly to his tormentor.

  Sharpe glanced at the words, then folded the paper. ‘Where I come from,’ he said in a conversational tone, ‘men still sell their wives. Have you ever seen it done?’

  Lord John shook his head warily.

  ‘Because the poor can’t afford a divorce, you see,’ Sharpe continued, ‘but if everyone agrees, then the woman can be sold. It has to be done in the market place. You put a rope round her neck, lead her there, and offer her to the highest bidder. The price and the buyer are always fixed in advance, of course, but making it an auction adds a bit of spice. I suppose you prinked up aristocratic bastards don’t do that to your women?’

  Lord John shook his head. ‘We don’t,’ he managed to say. He was beginning to realize that Sharpe was not going to hurt him, and the realization was calming his nerves.

  ‘I’m not a prinked up bastard,’ Sharpe said. ‘I’m the real thing, my lord. I’m a whore’s bastard out of a gutter, so I’m allowed to sell my wife. She’s yours. I’ve got your money,’ Sharpe pushed the promissory note into his pocket, ‘so all you need is this.’ He fumbled in a saddlebag then drew out the scruffy piece of rope that was Nosey’s usual leash. He tossed the dirty scrap of sisal across Lord John’s saddle. ‘Put the noose round her neck and tell her that you bought her. Among the people I come from, my lord, such a divorce is as good as an act of Parliament. The lawyers and the Church don’t reckon it is, but who gives a turd about what those greedy bastards think? She’s yours now. You’ve bought her, so you can marry her, and I won’t interfere. Do you understand me?’

  Lord John tentatively touched the rope. He knew he was being mocked. The poor might sell their wives, but no respectable man would ever so contract into a woman’s second marriage. ‘I understand you,’ he said bitterly.

  ‘But if I don’t get the money, my lord, I’ll come back for you.’

  ‘I understand.’

  Sharpe still held the broken sword. He held it hilt first towards Lord John. ‘Go away, my lord.’

  Rossendale took the truncated blade, stared one more time into the dark eyes, then spurred his horse forward. He fled from the trees, the rope still trailing from his saddle, and burst onto the road where the last of the guns were rolling northwards.

  Sharpe waited a few moments. He swore silently to himself, for there had been no joy in humiliating the weak. But at least he considered he had made a good bargain. A new roof for the château in return for a faithless wife. He patted the pocket where the note was folded, then turned his horse. He was still somewhat shaken for, until he had actually taken the pistol from Lord John, Sharpe had not realized that it was a rainproof percussion weapon. Otherwise he would never have ridden so slowly to its black muzzle.

  Harper waited for Sharpe on the high road. He had seen a shaken Lord John Rossendale burst from the trees, now, with a bemused Doggett beside him, the Irishman watched Sharpe urge his horse up to the paved surface. ‘So what happened?’ Harper asked.

  ‘He pissed himself, then bought the bitch.’

  Harper laughed. Doggett did not like to ask for any explanation. Behind them a gun fired a shell at the threatening Lancers, making Sharpe glance south at the pursuing French.

  ‘Come on.’ Sharpe lifted his face to the cleansing rain, then spurred his horse northwards.

  Just twelve miles south of Brussels the highway to Charleroi and France became the wide main street of the village of Waterloo. South of the village the road threaded the forest of Soignes where the villagers grazed their pigs and chopped their firewood.

  Two miles south of the village the trees gave way to a wide expanse of farmland which lay about the hamlet and crossroads of Mont-St-Jean. A half-mile further south still and the highway crossed a shallow, flat-topped ridge which lay east and west. At the crest of the ridge a solitary elm tree grew beside the highroad, which then descended into a wide and shallow valley that was filled with fields of rye, barley, oats and hay. The road crossed the valley before rising to another low ridge which lay three-quarters of a mile to the south. The crest of the southern ridge was marked by a white painted tavern called La Belle Alliance.

  If an army took up a position on the northern ridge that was marked by the lone elm tree, and if an opposing army was to assemble around the tavern, then the gentle valley between would become a battlefield.

  Between the elm tree and the tavern the road ran straight as a ramrod. A traveller riding the road would probably see nothing very remarkable in the valley other than the richness of its crops and the solidity of its farmhouses. It was evidently a good place to be a farmer.

  In the centre of the valley, hard by the road itself, was a farm called La Haye Sainte. It was a prosperous place with a courtyard bounded by stone barns and a stout wall. To the east, three-quarters of a mile down the valley, was a huddle of cottages about a farm called Papelotte, while to the west there was another large farm with a walled courtyard and an extensive orchard which lay just north of a patch of rough woodland. That western farm was called the château of Hougoumont.

  If a man wished to defend the northern ridge against an attack from the south, the château of Hougoumont might serve as a bastion on his right flank. La Haye Sainte would stand as a bulwark in the front and centre of his lines, while Papelotte would guard the left-hand edge of his defences.

  All three farmsteads stood in the valley in front of the northern ridge, and as the ridge itself was the position where a soldier would make his stand, so the three farms in the valley would serve like breakwaters standing proud of a beach. If an assault was to come across the valley the attackers would be driven away from the stone-walled farms and compressed into the spac
es between where they would be fired on from in front and from either side.

  There was worse news still for an attacker. If a man was to gaze north from La Belle Alliance he would be blind to what lay behind the ridge where the elm tree grew. In the far distance, if the battle smoke permitted, he might see rising pastureland leading to the forest of Soignes, but he would see nothing of the dead ground behind the ridge, and would not know that a hidden farm lane ran east and west behind the crest that would allow his enemy to shift reinforcements swiftly to wherever the ridge was threatened most.

  But perhaps that blindness did not matter if the attacker was the Emperor of the French, for Napoleon Bonaparte was a man in love with war, a man accustomed to glory, a man confident of victory, and the leader of over a hundred thousand veterans who had already defeated the Prussians and sent the British reeling back from Quatre Bras. Besides, the ridge where the elm tree grew was not steep. A man could stroll up its face without feeling any strain in his legs or any shortening of his breath, and the Emperor knew that his enemy had few good troops to defend that gentle slope. Indeed the Emperor knew much about his enemy for all day long the Belgian deserters had flocked to his colours and told their tales of panic and flight. Some of the Emperor’s Generals who had been defeated by Wellington in Spain advised caution, but the Emperor would have none of their cavils. The Englishman, he said, was a mere Sepoy General, nothing but a man who had learned his trade against the undisciplined and ill-armed tribal hordes of India, while the Emperor was Europe’s master of war, blooded and hardened by battles against the finest troops of a continent. Napoleon did not care where Wellington chose to make his stand; he would beat him anyway, then march triumphant into Brussels.

  The Duke of Wellington chose to make his stand on the ridge where the solitary elm tree grew.

  And there, in the rain, his army waited.