A single horsemen rode slowly in the emptiness behind the British battalions. His horse picked a slow path through the broken gun carriages and past the rows of red-coated dead. Shell fragments smoked on the scorched and trampled crops. The horseman was Simon Doggett who now sought his own battalion of Guardsmen, but as he rode westwards he saw the two Riflemen crouching close to the ridge’s crest. Doggett turned his horse towards the Greenjackets and reined in close behind them.
“He did it again, sir. He damn well did it again,” Doggett’s outraged indignation made him sound very young, “so I told him he was a silk stocking full of shit.”
Sharpe turned. For a second he blinked in surprise as though he did not recognize Doggett, then he seemed to snap out of the trance induced by the numbing gun-fire. “You did what?”
Doggett was embarrassed. “I told him he was a silk stocking full of shit.”
Harper laughed softly. A shell whimpered overhead to explode far in the rear. A roundshot followed to strike the ridge in front of Sharpe and spew up a shower of wet earth. Doggett’s horse jerked its face away from the spattering mud.
“He killed them,” Doggett said in pathetic explanation.
“He killed who?” Harper asked.
“The KGL. There were two battalions, all that was left of a brigade, and he put them in line and sent them to where the cavalry were waiting.”
“Again?” Sharpe sounded incredulous.
“They died, sir.” Doggett could not forget the sight of the swords and sabres rising and falling. He had watched one German running from the slaughter; the man had already lost his right arm to a sabre’s slice, yet it had seemed that the man would still escape, but a Cuirassier had spurred after him and chopped down with his heavy blade and Doggett could have sworn that the dying man threw one hateful look up the slope to where his real killer was. “I’m sorry, sir. There’s no point in telling you. I tried to stop him, but he told me to go away.”
Sharpe did not respond, except to unsling his rifle and probe a finger into its pan to discover whether the weapon was still primed.
Doggett wanted Sharpe to share his anger at the Prince’s callous behaviour. “Sir!” he pleaded. Then, when there was still no reply, he spoke more self-pityingly. “I’ve ruined my career, haven’t I?”
Sharpe looked up at the young man. “At least we can mend that, Doggett. Just wait here.”
Sharpe, without another word, began walking towards the centre of the British line while Harper took Doggett’s bridle and turned his horse away from the valley. “There are still a few skirmishers who wouldn’t mind making you into a notch on their muskets,” the Irishman explained to Doggett. “Did you really call the skinny bastard a silk stocking filled with shit?”
“Yes.” Doggett was watching Sharpe walk away.
“To his face?” Harper insisted.
“Indeed, yes.”
“You’re a grand man, Mr Doggett! I’m proud of you.” Harper released Doggett’s horse a few paces behind the colour party of the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers. “Now just wait here, sir. The Colonel and I won’t be long.”
“Where are you going?” Doggett shouted after the Irishman.
“Not far!” Harper called back, then he followed Sharpe into a drifting bank of powder smoke and disappeared.
Sharpe was half-way to the elm tree when Harper caught him. “What are you doing?” the Irishman asked.
“I’m sick of the royal bastard. How many more men will he kill?”
“So what are you doing?” Harper insisted.
“What someone should have done at his bloody birth. I’m going to strangle the bugger.”
Harper put a hand on Sharpe’s arm. “Listen – ,
Sharpe threw the hand off and turned a furious face on his friend. “I’m going, Patrick. Don’t stop me!”
“I don’t give a bugger if you kill him.” Harper was just as angry. “But I’ll be damned if you hang for it.”
“Damn the bloody rope.” Sharpe walked on, carrying his rifle in his right hand.
The ridge’s centre was more thickly smothered with smoke than its flanks. The muzzle blast of the two cannon that the French had placed in La Haye Sainte’s kitchen garden carried almost to the ridge’s summit, and every shot pumped a filthy stinking fog to blanket the slope. The French were firing canister, punching a massive weight of musket-balls into the heart of the British defences. The British gunners, exposed on the skyline as they tried to return the fire, had been killed or wounded, allowing the enemy skirmishers to creep ever closer to the bullet-scarred elm tree from which every leaf and most of the bark had been blasted away.