It took another hour to deepen the grave sufficiently, but then Dan Hagman was laid in the earth and Sharpe put his own rifle at the side of the corpse and hooked one of the dead man’s fingers through the trigger guard. He touched Hagman’s powder-scarred cheek. ‘If you go to the wrong place, Dan, take a shot at the devil. Tell him it’s from me.’
He climbed out of the pit and helped Harper shovel earth and stones onto the corpse. ‘You want to say a prayer, Pat?’
‘Not me, sir. We want someone who has God’s ear. I might as well fart as pray.’
Sharpe grunted. ‘Find someone who can give him a prayer, Pat, but not Huckfield or any other bloody Methodist.’ He looked up at Burrell who had been walking his horse up and down the ridge top as if impatient to leave. ‘So what does the Duke want?’
‘Best for him to tell you himself, sir. And he did urge the utmost haste.’ Burrell hesitated. ‘You don’t like Methodists, sir?’
‘I hate the bastards,’ Sharpe said, ‘all they do is preach at me. I already know I’m a sinner, and don’t need them telling me. No, I just want a good prayer said for a good man.’ He shovelled more earth to make a mound over the grave, rammed in the crude wooden cross, and was just finishing as Pat Harper returned leading a pale and skinny youth. ‘Who the hell are you?’ Sharpe asked him.
‘Private Bee, sir,’ the youngster said nervously. He looked scarcely a day over seventeen, was as thin as a ramrod, and had long black hair. His red coat was bright, unstained by mud or powder burns.
‘We got a draft of new troops this morning,’ Harper explained, ‘thirty-six men. Young Bee was one of them.’
‘So you missed the battle?’ Sharpe asked the lad.
‘We did, sir.’
‘Then you were lucky,’ Sharpe said, ‘and you know a prayer, Bee?’
‘I do, sir.’
‘Then say it, lad. This was a good man who fought hard and I want him to go to heaven.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Bee sounded excruciatingly nervous as he stepped to the grave’s edge and clasped his hands. ‘Dormi fili, dormi,’ he started uncertainly, then found his voice, ‘mater cantat unigenito. Dormi, puer, dormi. Pater nato clamat parvulo.’ He stopped.
‘Amen,’ Burrell said solemnly.
‘Amen,’ Sharpe said. ‘That sounded good, Bee.’
‘There’s more, sir?’
‘I’m sure that’s enough. It sounded like a proper prayer.’
‘My mother taught it to me,’ Bee said. He looked so frail that Sharpe was surprised the boy could even heft his musket.
‘You did well, lad,’ Harper said, then took a bottle from his pack and poured half the contents onto the grave. ‘A wee drop of brandy to see you to heaven, Dan.’
‘God damn it,’ Sharpe said angrily, cuffing at the tears in his eyes, ‘but he was a good man.’
‘The best,’ Harper agreed.
‘Fetch my horse, Pat,’ Sharpe said, and saw Private Bee look confused.
‘Your horse, sir?’ the boy asked.
‘Is your name Pat too?’
‘It’s Patrick, sir.’
‘Pat Bee,’ Sharpe said, amused, ‘Sergeant Pat Harper can fetch the horse.’ Harper had already left and Sharpe looked up at Burrell. ‘I’ll be with you in a minute, Captain.’ He pulled on his shirt and then the ragged Rifleman’s green jacket, stained with blood and burned powder. He tied the ragged red sash at his waist, strapped on his sword belt, then slung Hagman’s rifle on his shoulder. He exchanged the straw hat for a battered shako that had a ragged split where a French musket ball had hit. He cupped his hands. ‘Captain Price!’
Harry Price ran from the field behind the ridge where the battalion was camped. ‘Sir?’
‘You’re in charge. I’m going to Brussels and Lord only knows when I’ll be back. Set picquets tonight.’
‘You think the French will be back, sir?’
‘The buggers are still running away, Harry, but it’s regulations. Picquets.’ He looked at Bee. ‘What company are you in, Bee?’
‘Haven’t been told, sir.’
‘Take him, Harry, he looks like a Light Infantryman.’
‘About as light as they come, sir,’ Price said, looking at Bee’s frail body.
Sharpe gave Bee two shillings for what had sounded like a good prayer, then hoisted himself into his saddle. The horse had been captured from a French Dragoon and had a green saddlecloth embroidered with a wreathed N. ‘Look after Nosey,’ Sharpe told Harper.
‘Nosey will be eating fresh horse meat tonight, sir,’ Harper said. ‘And Charlie Weller can look after him. I’m coming with you.’
‘There’s no need, Pat.’
‘I’m coming,’ Harper said obstinately. He ran to find his own horse, then joined Sharpe who was trotting west to catch up with the elegant cavalryman.
‘Nosey?’ Burrell asked, amused.
‘My dog.’
‘The Duke might not like that name, sir.’
‘The Duke doesn’t have to know. Besides, he’s spent a lifetime giving me orders, so calling my dog Nosey is payback. So tell me what the Duke wants?’
‘He insists on telling you himself, sir.’
The three horses walked along the road, which ran the length of the ridge. They passed a group of captured French cannon, their muzzles dark, and Sharpe looked to his right to see where the Imperial Guard had attacked up the slope. The bodies were still thick there, most of them stripped naked by the peasants who had crept onto the battlefield after dark to pillage the corpses. ‘Were you here?’ he asked the Captain.
‘I was, sir. I watched you lead your battalion down the slope. It was well done.’
Sharpe grunted. His memory of the battle was confused, mostly images of thick smoke through which the blue-uniformed French had loomed menacingly, but he did remember the battle’s end when he had swung the battalion out of line and wheeled it onto the flank of the Imperial Guard before unleashing a murderous volley of musketry. ‘It was bloody desperate, Captain.’
‘And the Duke named you commanding officer,’ Burrell said admiringly.
‘Maybe he’s about to take that away,’ Sharpe said grimly.
‘I don’t think so, Colonel,’ Burrell said, though he sounded anything but certain, ‘it didn’t sound that way. What happened to Colonel Ford?’
‘He lost his wits,’ Sharpe said. ‘Poor man.’
‘Poor man, indeed.’ Burrell steered his horse around the corpses of a dozen French horses that were bloodily heaped where a blast of canister had ripped the heart from the French cavalry assaults.
‘What’s this place called?’ Sharpe asked.
‘Well, the farm here is called Mont-St-Jean, but the Duke is naming the battle after the closest town, Waterloo.’
‘The battle of Waterloo,’ Sharpe said, thinking how odd that name sounded. ‘Let’s hope it’s the last battle we ever fight.’
‘Amen to that, sir,’ Burrell responded, ‘but who knows what will happen before we get to Paris.’
‘Paris?’
‘We march tomorrow.’ Burrell sounded almost apologetic.
‘To Paris?’
‘Indeed, sir.’
The track along the ridge met the high road to Brussels where they turned left, trotting their horses past the farm of Mont-St-Jean outside of which two redcoats kept marauding dogs away from the pile of amputated arms and legs tossed from the farmhouse where the surgeons worked. ‘Most of the wounded are back in Brussels,’ Burrell said, flinching at the sight of the blood-streaked heap. ‘Poor fellows.’