“Maybe.”
The two Riflemen tethered their horses in a clearing among the trees, then Sharpe walked out to the bloody patch of ground where the 69th had died. He picked up four discarded bayonets and took the leather bootlaces off two corpses. Back in the wood he made a fire with twigs and gunpowder. He stuck the bayonets into the ground at the four corners of the fire, then pulled the straps off the Cuirassier’s breastplate that Harper had scavenged earlier. He threaded the bootlaces into the holes at the shoulders and waist of the breastplate, then waited.
Harper had taken his own knife out to the battlefield. He found a dead horse and cut a thick bloody steak from its rump. Then, the steak dripping in his left hand, he crossed to one of the silent British guns and, ignoring its crew, stooped under the barrel to scrape away a handful of the gun’s axle grease.
Back in the wood Harper slapped the axle grease into the upturned breastplate, ripped the pelt off the steak, then dropped the meat into the cold grease. “I’ll water the horses while you cook.”
Sharpe nodded acknowledgement. He fed the fire with branches he had cut and split with his sword. In the morning, before the army marched to join Blcher, he would find a cavalry armourer to put an edge back on the blade. Then he wondered whether he would even be with the army next day. The Prince had dismissed him so he might as well ride back to Brussels and take Lucille to England.
Sharpe tied the breastplate to the four bayonets so that it hung like a steel hammock above the flames. By the time Harper brought the horses back from the stream the steak was sizzling and smoking in the bubbling grease.
Night was falling across the trampled rye. Nine thousand men had been killed or wounded in the fight for the crossroads, and some of the injured still moaned and cried in the darkness. Some bandsmen still searched for the wounded, but many would have to wait till the next day for rescue.
“Rain tomorrow.” Harper sniffed the air.
“Like as not.”
“It’s good to smell proper food again.” A dog ranged near the fire, but Harper drove it away by shying a clod of earth at it.
Sharpe burned the meat black, then carefully cut it in halves and speared one piece on his knife. “Yours.”
They held their meat on knife points, gnawed it down, and shared a canteen of wine that Harper had taken from a dead French Lancer. In the east the first stars pricked pale against a sky still misted by battle smoke. In the west it was darker, made so by the towering clouds. Men sang behind the crossroads while somewhere in The wood a flautist made a melancholy music. The trees sparkled with camp-fires, while to the south, and reflecting against the spreading clouds, a red glow showed where Marshal Ney’s troops made their bivouacs.
“Crapauds fought well today,” Harper said grudgingly.
Sharpe nodded, then shrugged. “They should have attacked with their infantry, though. They’d have won if they had.”
“I suppose we’ll be at it again tomorrow?”
“Unless the Prussians have beaten Boney and won the war for us.”
Sharpe fetched a flask of calvados from his saddlebag, took a swig and handed it to Harper. The flute music was plangent. He had once wanted to learn the flute, and had thought to make an attempt this last winter, but instead he had spent the evenings making an elaborate cradle from applewood. He had meant to decorate the cradle’s hood with carvings of wild flowers, but he had found their intricate curves too difficult to cut so had settled for the straight stark lines of piled drums and weapons. Lucille had been hugely amused by her baby’s martial cot.
“Shouldn’t you go and see the Prince?” Harper asked.
“Why the hell should I? Bugger the bastard.”
Harper chuckled. He sat with his back propped against his saddle and stared into the dark void where the battle had been fought. “It’s not the same, is it?”
“What isn’t?”
“It’s not like Spain.” He paused, thinking of the men who were not here, then named just one of those men. “Sweet William.”