It was three solid phalanxes of infantry that were coming, each twenty-five men deep and one hundred and fifty men wide. All yelling their bone-chilling battle cry, “Vive l’empereur!” But the riflemen were unaware of the statistics when they were finally given the order to rise and fire. They saw only masses of the enemy alarmingly close and soon falling in satisfying heaps to the first volley from their faithful Baker rifles.
Volumes might be written in years to come about the fortunes and misfortunes of that fateful Sunday, June 18, on which the battle was fought that the Duke of Wellington later dubbed the Battle of Waterloo, according to his custom, after the village where he had stayed the night before. But to the men who fought in it there were only themselves and their immediate comrades, their weapons, and the interminable noise and smell, and the day that seemed a week long.
In all the noise and smoke of battle, and the crowds of milling soldiers and the piles of dead and wounded, it was impossible for an individual to know how the battle was going. All each man could know was that he was there and had not yet given an inch of ground, that his comrades were ranged around him, and that his officers were still giving orders that he obeyed without question.
Had Hougoumont fallen? The men of the Ninety-fifth did not know, and probably did not care. Would La Haye Sainte, the farmhouse in front of them being held by a company of German soldiers, hold? It was their job to see that it did. And may pity help them if it did not and the French had a chance to move their guns into the courtyard. They would be blown off the face of the earth.
Had the Prussians come from Wavre? Were they on their way? The lines were getting thinner and there seemed to be no more reserves to move up. But who knew? Perhaps farther along, the line was as solid and thick as ever. Or perhaps there was no other line beyond the little stretch that they could see to either side of them. Perhaps everyone else had fled as Bylandt’s Belgians had done right next to them during that first charge of the French infantry.
General Picton was dead. They all saw him fall a moment after yelling encouragement to his men to push back the advancing French infantry lines. That was real to them.
And then late in the day La Haye Sainte did fall to a concerted attack, and the last surviving defenders fought their way out and back to the crossroads.
“Now all hell will break loose!” someone at Lord Eden’s elbow remarked, and was proved right without further delay.
The men fought doggedly on, all the odds against them. Yet when it seemed they must break, encouragement came that no British soldier could ever resist.
“Stand fast, Ninety-fifth,” the steady voice of the Duke of Wellington said above the din. “We must not be beat. What will they say in England?”
The men fought on, the duke with them, until it was clear to him that they would not break.
But the battle and the world ended for Lord Eden during a momentary lull in the action. A swift glance to either side of him revealed Charlie Simpson lying on the ground, a corporal kneeling over him. Lord Eden elbowed his way through the throng of his own men and fell to his knees beside his friend.
“You have been hit, Charlie?” he asked unnecessarily. “Lie still. I’ll have a stretcher brought up. We’ll have you back from here before you can count to ten.”
But there was that long-familiar look in his friend’s face. The look of sure death.
The glazing eyes searched for his and found them. “I’m done for, lad,” Charlie said.
And they were too old and experienced soldiers to live a lie. Lord Eden closed his mouth, which had opened to make a hearty protest. He took his friend’s limp hand in his own.
“I’m here, Charlie,” he said.
“Ellen.” The voice was faint, dreamy almost. “Jennifer.”
Lord Eden leaned forward until his face was a few inches from Captain Simpson’s. “They will never be in need,” he said. “I swear that to you, Charlie. I will always take care of them. Do you hear me?”
But Charlie was looking through him, beyond him, with eyes that were fast clouding. And then the eyes were lifeless.
His friend was dead.
Lord Eden fought panic and tears. There was no leisure now to grieve. He grasped his sword and started to get to his feet.
And then he knew, with some surprise and no pain at all, that he had been hit. There was a rush of warmth about his ribs. His eyes widened before he fell forward across the body of his friend.
ELLEN KNEW THAT she could not shut herself into her rooms tending the needs of one poor boy. There were more men out there, men in the hundreds, perhaps thousands, and they would need all the nurses that could be found. Besides, Charlie might be out there. She must look for him. Or other men of her acquaintance. She must look for them. Lord Eden might be out there.
And so she ventured out in Saturday afternoon’s torrential rain when the boy had settled into a rather fevered sleep, his arm swathed in a fresh bandage, swollen and angry-looking, it was true, but with the wound clean. She had hopes that she could save him from amputation. It was amazing that the arm had not been sawed off before he left the battlefield. The surgeons had not had time to amputate, the boy had said. In her experience, the very fastest treatment field surgeons knew for arm and leg injuries was amputation. But most of them were unnecessary, she had always felt. She would save the boy. She did not know his name.
The wounded were being carried inside the cathedral not far from where she lived. She stepped sharply over to one sodden bundle whom no one was making any attempt to move. He was Charlie, she thought with a sick lurch of the stomach. But he was a stranger. She knelt and put a hand to his wet brow. He stared straight through her arm.
“Carry this man inside out of the rain,” she called in French to a man who had just emerged from the cathedral.
“It is not worth disturbing him,” the man said, not unkindly. “He will not last.”
“But he will not die untended and unloved,” she said, rising to her feet and running back in the direction of home. A few minutes later she was hurrying back again with two of the menservants from the other part of the house in which she lived. And together they carried the soldier to her rooms and set him down on the bed that had been the maid’s.
“Thank you,” she said as the two servants withdrew, but she did not take her eyes from the wounded soldier, who had not made a sound beyond one faint moan when they had first lifted him. His eyes were open, but they were neither living nor dead.
“It is all right, my dear,” she said softly, taking a towel and dabbing lightly at his wet face and hair. “You are safe now. No one will harm you.”
His boots came off easily, she was thankful to find. She set herself the task of cutting the rest of his clothes away so that she would not have to move him. It looked as if no one had tended his wound, a gaping hole in the stomach that should surely have killed him instantly. Ellen patted him dry and went for one of Charlie’s silk shirts to make a light pad to set over the wound. She covered him with a blanket and smoothed her hand over his bald head. He must be of an age with Charlie.
His eyes were on her, she saw.
“You are dry now,” she said, “and warm. You are safe now. I shall care for you. No one will harm you.”
He continued to look at her. She did not know if he heard her or saw her.
“I will bring you some water,” she said. “You are probably thirsty.”
And the boy was thirsty, she found, and tossing feverishly on his bed and groaning when his bandaged arm touched the mattress. She spent some time with him, straightening the sheets, smoothing back his hair, bending to kiss his forehead when he looked up at her with a boyish trust and hope in his fevered eyes.
Before the day was out, the door to her rooms was permanently open. The house became one again as it filled with wounded and Ellen was called upon to give advice from her experience with tending injured soldiers. Servants from the house watched over her wounded when she occasionally went outside that day and the next and the next. A great battle was raging to the south, she heard. A great disaster. A great defeat, perhaps. No one knew, and the wounded brought conflicting reports, though most seemed agreed that it was going badly for the allies.