Sharpe had come to the ball after all. He stood, blinking in the sudden candlelight, a shabby Rifleman among the dancing Scotsmen.
“Good God Almighty!” D’Alembord stared in awe at his friend.
Silence spread slowly across the supper tables as the hundreds of guests turned to stare at the Rifleman who, in turn, searched the supper tables for a particular person. A woman gasped in horror at the sight of him, and the pipes groaned a last uneasy note before the dancers froze above their swords.
Sharpe had come to the ball, but drenched in blood. His face was powder-stained and his uniform darkened with gore. Every other man in the room wore white breeches and silk stockings, yet here, looking like the ghost in the Scottish play, came a soldier from a battlefield; a soldier bloodied and marked, grim-faced as slaughter.
Jane Sharpe screamed; the last sound before the room went wholly silent.
Lucille half stood, as if to reveal herself to Sharpe, but he had seen the Duke and, seemingly oblivious of the effect his entrance had caused on the ball’s guests, now strode between the tables to the Duke’s side.
Wellington’s face seemed to shudder in reaction to the stench of powder, blood, sweat and crushed grass that wafted from Sharpe’s uniform. He waved the Rifleman down to a crouch so that their conversation could be more private. “What is it?” the Duke asked curtly.
“I’ve just come from a crossroads called Quatre Bras, sir. It’s north of Charleroi on the Brussels road. The French attacked there at sunset, but were checked by Saxe-Weimar’s men. Prince Bernhard is certain the enemy will make a much stronger attack in the morning.” Prince Bernhard had said no such thing, but Sharpe had decided it would be more efficacious to assign the opinion to the prince than to confess that it was his own view.
The Duke stared at Sharpe for a few seconds, then flinched at the blood which was caked on the Rifleman’s jacket. “Are you wounded?”
“A dead Frenchman, sir.”
The Duke dabbed his mouth with a napkin, then, very casually, leaned towards his host. “You have a good map in the house?”
“Upstairs, yes. In my dressing-room.”
“Is there a back staircase?”
“Indeed.”
“Pray let us use it.” Wellington looked to an aide who was seated a few places down the table. “All officers to their regiments, I think.” He spoke quite calmly. “Come with us, Sharpe.”
Upstairs, in a room filled with boots and coats, the two Dukes leaned over a map while Sharpe amplified his report. Wellington moved a candle across the map to find the village of Fleurus where the Prussians now faced the French. That had been the first news this night had brought the Duke – that Napoleon’s army had branched off the Brussels road to drive the Prussians eastwards away from the British. That news had been serious, but not disastrous. The Duke had planned to assemble as much of his army as possible, then march at dawn on to the French flank to help Blucher’s Prussians, but now Sharpe had brought much worse news. The French had closed on Quatre Bras, effectively barring the Duke’s planned march. Now, before he could help the Prussians, the Duke must thrust the French aside. The gap between the British and Prussian armies was still very narrow, yet Sharpe’s news proved that the Emperor had his foot between the two doors and, in the morning, he would be heaving damned hard to drive the doors apart.
Wellington bit his lower lip. He had been wrong. Napoleon, far from manoeuvring about the Duke’s right flank, had rammed his troops into the seam between the allied armies. For a second the Duke’s eyes closed, then he straightened up and spoke very quietly. “Napoleon has humbugged me, by God! He has gained twenty-four hours!” He sounded astonished, even hurt.
“What do you intend doing?” The Duke of Richmond had gone pale.
“The army will concentrate on Quatte Bras,” the Duke of Wellington seemed to be speaking to himself as though he groped towards a solution of the problem Napoleon posed, “but we shan’t stop him there, and if so,” Wellington’s gaze flicked across the map, then settled, “I must fight him,” he paused again to lean over the map for a few final seconds, “here.” He pressed his thumbnail into the map’s thick paper.