‘Maybe.’ Vincent sounded dubious. ‘Marshal Grouchy led his Corps south, and Davout has at least a hundred thousand men in and around Paris. And the Emperor don’t give up easy! He’ll fight to the end.’
‘Then we’ll just have to beat him again,’ Sharpe said. They had reached the floor of the valley where there were fewer corpses, though the foul smoke of the fires still soured the air. A woman with a baby strapped to her back was busy pulling teeth from a French corpse. She grunted as her pliers dragged another free, then grinned at Sharpe. ‘Need new teeth?’ She pushed the extracted tooth into a bag and went back to work.
‘Teeth?’ Vincent asked with a shudder.
‘She’ll get good money for them,’ Sharpe said. ‘They make the best false teeth.’
‘We collected a sackful after Salamanca,’ Harper said cheerfully, ‘sold them too!’
Sharpe nodded a greeting to a dozen artillerymen who were guarding a group of captured French cannon, then climbed the slope towards the ridge where Napoleon had arrayed his army, and where the French attacks had started, only to die under the flail of British musketry. There was a tavern at the top of the slope and not far away a rickety tower made of slender tree trunks lashed together to support a platform reached by a ladder. ‘Boney spent much of the battle up that contraption,’ Vincent said, ‘watching us through his glass.’
‘And where were you?’ Sharpe asked.
‘I spent most of the day out there,’ Vincent waved eastwards, ‘looking for the Prussians.’
Sharpe spurred his horse towards the head of the column. He noticed two or three soldiers wearing new bright redcoats, meaning they had come with the new draft. Private Bee was one of them, and Sharpe beckoned the lad. ‘Can you ride a horse, Bee?’
‘Never ridden one, sir.’
‘Time you learned then, Pat Bee.’ Sharpe gave the boy the horse’s reins. ‘He’s an easy horse, just don’t kick him too hard, and try to stay close to me.’ He helped him into the saddle. ‘How old are you, Bee?’
‘Seventeen, sir?’ the boy sounded uncertain and, to Sharpe’s eyes, appeared little more than a boy, no taller than his musket, which looked too heavy for him to carry.
‘Where are you from, Bee?’
‘I was born in Balham, sir, but live in Shoreditch now.’
‘I’m from that part of the world,’ Sharpe said, ‘and why did you join up?’
‘Magistrate, sir.’
Sharpe laughed. ‘Me too. What did you do?’
‘Pickpocket, sir.’ Bee sounded ashamed.
‘You were a clouter!’ Sharpe said, using the Londoners’ word for a pickpocket.
‘Not a very good one, sir.’
‘Then be a good soldier, Bee,’ Sharpe said, then strode to the front of the column. He would set the pace and it would be a fast one. They were south of the battlefield now, though the fields on either side of the road were littered with muskets and knapsacks that had been discarded by French soldiers fleeing the carnage. Harry Price caught up with Sharpe and fell into step. ‘Showing the men you can march like them, sir?’ Price asked, amused.
‘Exactly, Harry.’
‘So what are we doing, sir?’
‘Following the Duke’s orders, Harry.’
‘Which are what, sir?’
‘Not very much, Harry. Get first into France, capture a fortress, release some prisoners, and then rejoin the army.’
Price marched a few paces in silence. ‘I knew you wouldn’t tell me.’
‘You shouldn’t have asked, Harry. Oh, and once we do rejoin the army I want you to detail half a dozen men to accompany the Vicomtesse.’ Lucille was the Vicomtesse de Seleglise, a title she rarely used and which never ceased to astonish Sharpe. ‘Reliable men.’
‘That I can do, sir, but capturing a fortress? Ha ha.’
The dawn was obscured by clouds and by the time the battalion reached the crossroads called Quatre Bras a light rain was falling. Sharpe turned right at the crossroads, leading the battalion through yet more unburied corpses of men and horses killed in the battle two days before the bigger conflict at Mont-St-Jean. The corpses were mostly naked, having been stripped by villagers. He looked left to where the French heavy cavalry had hammered three battalions of good infantry that the Prince of Orange had insisted stay in line despite Sharpe’s warnings that enemy horsemen were lurking in the fields of rye.
They stopped beyond the battlefield to rest for a few minutes and to let the men fill their canteens from a small stream. Major Vincent unfolded a map and ineffectually tried to protect it from the rain with his pelisse. ‘A good start, Sharpe!’ he said happily. ‘On to Mons, eh?’
‘How far’s that, sir?’
Vincent traced the route with a finger. ‘Oh, about thirty miles.’
‘We’ll not make it today,’ Sharpe said.
‘Then we’d best press on!’
They marched through the fortress town of Mons next morning, assailed by folk wanting news of the battle. Sharpe purchased bread and salt pork in the town and ignored the ale that his men bought. They deserved it after their hard marching. He had marched with them, setting a brisk pace.
That afternoon they crossed into France. The road, which was gravel over stone, suddenly deteriorated. ‘Boney ordered it ploughed up,’ Vincent explained. ‘He didn’t want to make it easy for an invasion.’ Any invasion of France must follow the main roads and, while infantry and cavalry could move easily through the fields on either side, the big guns and the supply wagons must stay on the road, which was now a churned mess. They passed through villages where sullen folk watched them. Sharpe had spoken to the battalion the night before, warning them that the Duke had ordered that there was to be no pillaging. ‘The bloody Frogs aren’t going to like us, but we don’t want them angry enough to fight us. If you want bread or beer you pay for it! And not with buttons either.’ In Spain the British soldiers had learned to detach their uniform buttons and hammer them flat, then persuade villagers that they were genuine coinage. ‘I’m not a flogger,’ Sharpe had told his men, ‘but if you mistreat French civilians I’ll beat the shit out of you myself.’
‘Or I will!’ Harper put in.
They marched on. Sharpe had decided to start early each morning, before dawn, and march through the morning and early afternoon, then stop long before sundown to give the men time to make shelters. The rain followed them, but never fell hard. Major Vincent had a hoard of French currency which Sharpe used to buy bread, wine, eggs and meat. A half-dozen men, their feet blistered or bleeding, had to drop out of the marching column, and Sharpe left them behind with a scribbled note that listed the men’s names and testified they were not deserters. Vincent countersigned it. ‘Wait for the army,’ Sharpe told them.