The first soldiers went down from the ridge. Some went to bury the dead while others searched for loot. A man found a French sword knot, its gilt braid beautiful and intricate, and kept it as a gift for his girl. Another man picked a silver-handled shaving brush from a stiff pool of congealed blood. Flies buzzed above the dead. A redcoat carefully collected a pack of playing cards that had been strewn around the body of a French skirmisher. The pages of a blood-stained book riffled in the small wind. Pistol shots sounded flat as men put horses out of their long misery. A group of cavalry officers, their uniforms oddly bright in the dull dawn, cantered down from the ridge to search the slew of bodies that marked the ride of the British horse from glory to defeat.
The first civilians arrived from Brussels. They parked their carriages near the elm tree and walked in horrified silence into the valley where the working parties searched for the wounded. Crows were ripping at the white-skinned dead. A woman found her husband and vomited. A local priest, come to minister to the injured French, reeled hopelessly towards the road with a hand clapped to his mouth.
Simon Doggett’s work party came back to the battalion with two tubs of salt beef, a sack of bread, and a barrel of rum. He proudly told Sharpe that he had stolen the food from the cavalry. “So what happens now?” Doggett asked.
Sharpe found it hard to think. It was as if the battle had deadened his senses. “We’ll go to Paris, I suppose.” He could not imagine the Emperor recovering from this defeat.
“Paris?” Doggett sounded surprised, as though he had not realized till this moment just what Wellington’s army had achieved in this valley that stank of smoke and blood. “You really think we’ll go to Paris?” he asked excitedly.
But Sharpe did not reply. Instead he was watching a horseman pick his way up the face of the ridge and across the long dark scars of earth that had been gouged by the French cannonade. He recognized Captain Christopher Manvell and walked to meet him. “Morning.” Sharpe’s greeting was curt.
Manvell touched a gloved hand to his hat. “Good morning, sir. I was hoping to find you.” He seemed embarrassed and turned to look at Sharpe’s men who, muddied and tired, stared malevolently back at the elegant cavalryman. “He’s dead,” Manvell said without any more effort at politeness.
“Rossendale?”
“Yes. He’s dead.” Manvell’s face showed sadness as he looked back to Sharpe. “I thought you should know, sir.”
“Why would I need to know?” Sharpe asked brutally.
Manvell seemed nonplussed, but then shrugged. “I believe he gave you a note? I’m afraid it’s worthless, sir. He didn’t have a penny of his own money. And then there’s – , Manvell stopped suddenly.
“There’s what?” Sharpe pressured him.
“There’s Mrs Sharpe, sir.” Manvell summoned the courage to say the words. “Someone will have to tell her.”
Sharpe gave a harsh brief laugh. “Not me, Captain. She’s a Goddamned whore, and she can rot in hell for all I care. Good day to you, Captain.”
“Good day, sir.” Manvell watched Sharpe walk away, then turned his horse towards the road where, unknown to Sharpe, Jane waited in her carriage for news. Manvell sighed, and went to break her heart.
Sharpe went back to the dying fire, took the promissory note from his pocket, and tore it into shreds. There would be no easy way of putting a new roof on the chateau after all. He scattered the paper scraps to the breeze, then turned towards his men. “Mr Price!”
“Sir?”
“We’ve got some bandsmen left alive, don’t we?”
“Indeed, sir! We’ve even got a bandmaster!”
“Then get the idle buggers to play us a tune! We’re supposed to be celebrating a bloody victory!”
Somewhere in the valley a woman screamed and screamed, paused to take breath, then screamed again because her husband was dead. Behind the battle line in the farm at Mont-St-Jean the pile of amputated limbs grew higher than the dungheap. A white-faced surgeon came to take the air by the roadside while upstairs, where the wounded officers had been taken to recuperate or die, d’Alembord twitched in his shallow sleep. Mr Little, the rotund bandmaster of the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers, launched his few musicians into a ragged version of’Over The Hills and Far Away`. Sharpe ordered the colours, that had been restored to the battalion, to be unfurled and planted above the deepening grave so that the shadows of the silk flags would caress the dead.