There was a brief silence, then Rebecque nodded. “Indeed they are, sir.”
The Prince’s face showed outrage. “Then why wasn’t I consulted about their placement?”
No one wanted to answer, at least not with the truth which was that the Duke of Wellington did not trust the Prince’s judgement. Rebecque just shrugged while Sharpe stared at the smoke of the French guns. Harry Webster, beyond Rebecque, looked at his watch, while Simon Doggett slowly moved his horse back till he had left the group of embarrassed staff officers and was next to Harper’s horse. The Prince drew his sabre a few inches then rammed it back into its scabbard. “No one gives orders to my brigades without my permission!”
“When I was in the ranks, Mr Doggett, we had a way of dealing with young gentlemen like His Royal Highness,” Harper said quietly. “
“You did?”
“We shot the little buggers.” Harper smiled happily.
Doggett stared into the battered and friendly face. “You did?”
“Especially buggers like him.” Harper nodded scornfully towards the Prince. “He’s nothing but a silk stocking full of shit.”
Doggett stared in horror at Harper. Doggett’s sense of propriety, as well as his natural respect for royalty, were outraged by the Irishman’s words. “You can’t say things like that!” he blurted out. “He’s royalty!”
“A silk stocking full of shit with a crown, then.” Harper was quite unmoved by Doggett’s outrage. “And if the little bugger doesn’t watch out, Mr Sharpe will feed his guts to the hogs. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s done it.”
“Murdered someone?” Doggett blurted out the question.
Harper turned innocent eyes on the Guards Lieutenant. “I know for a fact he’s rid the world of some bad officers. We all have! Don’t be shocked, Mr Doggett! It happens all the time!”
“I can’t believe it!” Doggett protested, but too loudly, for the sound of his voice made the Prince turn irritably in his saddle.
“Is something offending you, Mr Doggett?”
“No, sir.”
“Then get back here, where you belong.” The Prince looked back to the four battalions of Halkett’s brigade which were an itch to his wounded self-esteem. Closest to the crossroads, and just forward of _the Highlanders across the highway was a battalion of Lincolnshire men, the 69th, who were unknown to Sharpe. They had never fought in Spain, instead they had been a part of the disastrous expedition that had failed to free the Netherlands at the end of the previous war. Beyond them was the 30th, the Three Tens, a Cambridgeshire battalion which, like the 33rd next in line, had also been a part of the Dutch debacle. Furthest south was the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers, the only veterans of the Spanish campaign in the brigade.
“So who ordered them to form square?” the Prince demanded petulantly.
No one knew, so Harry Webster was sent to discover the answer and came back after ten minutes to say that Sir Thomas Picton had deployed the brigade.
“But they’re not in Picton’s division!” The Prince’s pique had turned to a real anger that flushed his sallow face.
“Indeed not, sir,” Rebecque said gently, “but- „
“But nothing, Rebecque! But bloody nothing! Those men are in my corps! Mine! I do not give orders to brigades in Sir Thomas Picton’s division, nor do I expect him to interfere with my corps! Sharpe! My compliments to Sir Colin Halkett, and instruct him to deploy his brigade in line. Their task is to give fire, not cower like schoolboys from non-existent cavalry.” The Prince had taken a sheet of paper from his sabretache and was scribbling the order in pencil.
“But the cavalry — „Sharpe began to protest.
“What cavalry?” The Prince made a great fuss of pretending to stare across the battlefield. “There is no cavalry.”
“In the dead ground over- „
“You’re frightened of unseen horsemen on the left? But this brigade is on the right! Here, take this.” He thrust the written order at Sharpe.
“No, sir,” Sharpe said.
The bulbous eyes swivelled to stare in amazement at Sharpe. Rebecque hissed a warning at the Rifleman, while the other staff officers held their breath. The Prince licked his lips. “What did you say, Sharpe?” His voice was filled with horror and revulsion.
“I’m not taking that order, sir. You’ll kill every man jack of that brigade if you insist on it.”
For a second the Prince literally shook with rage. “Are you refusing to obey an order?”
“I’m refusing to take that order, sir, yes.”
“Rebecque! Suspend Colonel Sharpe from his duties. Have this order sent immediately.”
“You can’t — „Sharpe began, but Rebecque seized Sharpe’s bridle and tugged his horse out of the Prince’s reach. ”Rebecque, for God’s sake!“ Sharpe protested.
“He’s entitled!” Rebecque insisted. “Listen, by tomorrow he’ll have forgotten this. Give him an apology tonight and you won’t be suspended. He’s a good-hearted man.”
“I don’t give a damn for his heart, Rebecque. It’s those men I care about!”
“Rebecque!” The Prince turned petulantly in his saddle. “Has that order gone!”
“Immediately, sir.” Rebecque shrugged at Sharpe, then turned away to find another officer to carry the Prince’s command.
The order was sent. Sir Colin Halkett rode back to the Prince’s command post vehemently to protest the command, but the Prince would not be denied. He insisted that there was no danger of a French cavalry attack and that, by deploying in square, the brigade was sacrificing three-quarters of the firepower that might be needed to rake the-flank of a French infantry attack.
“We mustn’t be cautious!” the Prince lectured the experienced Sir Colin. “Caution won’t win battles! Only daring. You will form line! I insist you form line!”
Sir Colin rode unhappily away while Sharpe, goaded beyond endurance by the Prince’s crowing voice, spurred forward. “Sir,” he said to the Prince.
The Prince ignored him. Instead he looked at Winckler, one of his Dutch aides, and deliberately spoke in English. “I can’t think why the Duke called his men the scum of the earth, Winckler. I think he must have meant his officers, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” Winckler, a sycophantic man, smiled.
Sharpe ignored the provocation. “Permission to rejoin my old battalion, sir.”
The Prince gave the smallest, curtest nod.
Sharpe turned his horse away and spurred it forward. Hooves sounded loud behind him, making him twist in his saddle. “I thought you promised Isabella you’d stay out of trouble?”
“There isn’t any trouble yet,” Harper said. “When there is I’ll get the hell out of it, but till then I’ll keep you company.”
Harper followed Sharpe down the bank onto the Nivelles road where Sharpe exploded in rage. “Bastard! What a cretinous dirty-minded little Dutch bastard! I’d like to ram his poxed bloody crown up his royal arse.” Instead Sharpe snatched the tricorne hat off his head and ripped the black, gold and scarlet cockade of the Netherlands from its crown. He hurled the silken scrap into a patch of nettles. “Bastard!”
Harper just laughed.
They scrambled up the bank into the trampled field of rye. To their right the trees were heavy with leaf, though here and there a splintered branch showed where a French cannon-ball or shell had struck high. There was not much litter in this part of the field; merely the corpses of two dead Voltigeurs, a scatter of dead horses, and a discarded and undamaged Cuirassier’s breastplate that Harper dismounted to retrieve. “Useful, that,” he said as he tied the polished piece of armour to the strap of a saddlebag.
Sharpe did not reply. Instead, he watched as Sir Colin Halkett’s brigade staff ordered the four battalions out of square and into line. The regimental bands played behind the brigade. Sharpe saluted the colours of the 69th, the 30th and the 33rd. He felt a particular fondness for the 33rd, the Yorkshire regiment which he had joined as a sullen youth twenty-two years before. He wondered if their recruiters still carried oatcakes pierced on a sword, the curious symbol he’d seen as Sergeant Hakeswill had expounded to the sixteen-year-old Sharpe the benefits of an army life. Hakeswill was long dead, as were almost all the other men Sharpe remembered from the battalion, except for the Lieutenant-Colonel who had led the 33rd when Sharpe had first joined and who was now His Grace the Duke of Wellington.