The enemy’s drums and bands faded as a cheer billowed from the line’s centre. A small man on a grey horse had appeared. He wore the undress uniform of a colonel of the Imperial Guard’s chasseurs a cheval; a green coat faced with red over a white waistcoat and white breeches. The man wore a grey overcoat loose on his shoulders like a cloak. His bicorne hat had ho cockades. His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor of France, galloped along the face of his army and was greeted by the cheers of men who knew they were on the brink of victory.
The Duke of Wellington had long turned scornfully away from the display. “Tell the men to lie down.”
The British and Dutch obeyed. Men lying flat in the long grass of the ridge’s plateau could not see the overwhelming enemy, nor were they visible to the enemy’s gunners.
The Duke rode along the right of his line. He did not gallop like his opponent, but trotted sedately. No one cheered the Duke. His gunners, posted on the ridge’s crest, watched the Emperor. One gunner captain, his weapon loaded, squinted along its crude sights then called out to the Duke that in a moment the Emperor would gallop directly into the gun’s line. “Permission to fire, Your Grace?”
“It is not the business of army commanders to fire on each other. Save your ammunition.” The Duke rode on, not even deigning to look towards his opponent.
The Duke and his entourage passed near Sharpe, then angled towards the troops who guarded the open flank beyond Hougou-mont. The closest battalion was Dutch-Belgian and the troops, seeing the knot of horsemen come down from the ridge, opened fire. The musket bullets fluttered near the Duke, but did not hit any of his party. The Duke swerved away as the Dutch officers shouted at their men to cease their fire. The Duke, grim-faced, rode back towards the elm tree that would be his command post.
A shower of rain briefly obscured the valley as the French redeployed themselves for battle. The great display was evidently over for most of the enemy troops now retreated from the ridge’s crest. The French gunners could be seen charging their barrels with powder and shot.
“What’s the time?” Sharpe asked a nearby gunner officer who commanded a battery of howitzers.
“Just on half-past eleven.”
If the Prussians came at one in the afternoon? Sharpe tried to guess how long the British could sustain their defence against the onslaught of the huge force he had just watched parade. One and a half hours? It seemed unlikely.
The French, perhaps certain that they had plenty of time in which to do their work, were in no hurry to begin. More guns were manhandled into their battle line, yet none opened fire. Sharpe gazed eastwards to see if any Prussian cavalry scouts had yet appeared beyond the valley’s edge, but nothing moved there. He wished he had a watch so he could see the progress of the minutes that must be bringing the Prussians closer. “The time?” he apologetically asked the gunner officer again.
The gunner obligingly clicked open the lid of his watch. “A quarter of twelve.”
Behind the howitzers the nearest British redcoats sat or lay on the wet turf. Some smoked their clay pipes. Their canteens were filled with rum or gin, and their pouches with dry cartridges. The wind was dying. The clouds still stretched across the sky, but they must have been thinning for Sharpe saw yet more gauzy floods of sunlight patching the distant fields with gold. The day was warming, though Sharpe’s clothes were still clammy and uncomfortable. The minutes passed. The gunner officer fidgeted with his watch, obsessively opening and closing the silver lid. No one spoke. It was almost as if the whole army held its breath. Patrick Harper was watching a pair of skylarks who tumbled in the lower veil of clouds.
Then a French gun fired.
The barrel of the gun was cold, so the shot did not carry the full distance to the British ridge. Instead the roundshot slammed into the valley, scattering rye, then bounced in a flurry of wet soil to bury itself just below the elm tree. The smoke of the gun drifted grey along the French ridge.