Sharpe returned the salute by raising his mug of tea. “Morning, Doggett. Bloody horrible morning, too.”
“The Baron would like to see you, sir.” Doggett sounded deeply uncomfortable as though he was still embarrassed by his memory of Sharpe’s altercation with the Prince. Sharpe may have been right to protest the Prince’s order, but a Prince was still a Prince, and the habit of respectful obedience was deeply ingrained in Doggett.
“I’m here if Rebecque wants me,” Sharpe said stubbornly.
“He’s waiting just beyond the crossroads, sir. Please, sir.”
Sharpe refused to hurry. He finished his tea, shaved carefully, then buckled on his sword and slung his rifle. Only then did he walk back to the crossroads where the Baron Rebecque waited for him.
The Dutchman smiled a greeting at Sharpe, then gestured up the high road as if suggesting that the two of them might care to take a morning stroll. The fields on either side of the road were thick with the men who had reached Quatre Bras during the night and who were now readying themselves to pursue the beaten French. “It rather looks like rain, doesn’t it?” Rebecque observed mildly.
“It’s going to rain like the very devil,” Sharpe glanced up at the bellying dark clouds. “It won’t be any kind of a day for musketry.”
Rebecque stared at the grass verge rather than at the clouds or at the tall Rifleman who walked beside him. “You were right,” he said at last.
Sharpe shrugged, but said nothing.
“And the Prince knows you were right, and he feels badly.”
“So tell the little bastard to apologize. Not to me, but to the widows of the 69th.”
Rebecque smiled at Sharpe’s vehemence. “One is generally disappointed if one expects royalty to make apologies. He’s young, very headstrong, but he’s a good man underneath. He has the impatience of youth; the conviction that bold action will bring immediate success. Yesterday he was wrong, but who can say that tomorrow he won’t be right? Anyway, he needs the advice of people he respects, arid he respects you.” Rebecque, suffering from the day’s first attack of hay fever, blew his nose into a huge red handkerchief. “And he’s very upset that you’re angry with him.”
“What the hell does he expect after he dismisses me?”
Rebecque waved the handkerchief as though to suggest that the dismissal was a nonsense. “You’re not just a staff officer, Sharpe, you’re a courtier as well. You have to treat him gently.”
“What the hell does that mean, Rebecque?” Sharpe had stopped to challenge the mild Dutchman with a hostile stare. “That I’m to let him slaughter a brigade of British troops just because he’s got a crown on his damned head?”
“No, Sharpe.” Rebecque kept remarkably calm in the face of Sharpe’s truculence. “It means that when he gives you an idiotic order, you say, “Yes, sir. At once, sir,” and you ride away and you waste as much time as you can, and when you get back and he demands to know why the order hasn’t been obeyed, you say you’ll attend to it at once and you ride away again and waste even more time. It’s called tact.”
“Bugger tact,” Sharpe said angrily, though he suspected Rebecque was right.
“Yesterday you should have told him that the brigade was going to obey his order and would deploy into line just as soon as there was any enemy movement in front of them. That way he’d have felt his orders were being obeyed.”
“So it’s my fault they died?” Sharpe protested angrily.
“Of course it isn’t. Oh, damn!” Rebecque sneezed violently. “I’m just asking you to deal with him tactfully. He wants you! He needs you! Why do you think he specifically requested that you should be on his staff?”
“I’ve often wondered,” Sharpe said bitterly.
“Because you’re famous in this army. You’re a soldier’s soldier. If the Prince has you beside him then he reflects some of your fame and valour.”
“You mean I’m like one of those decorations he dangles round his skinny neck?”
Rebecque nodded. “Yes, Sharpe, that is exactly what you are. And that’s why he needs you now. He made a mistake, the whole army knows he made a mistake, but it’s important that we continue to show confidence in him.” Rebecque looked up into Sharpe’s face. “So, please, make your peace with him.”