Macdonell held his sword extended, ready to slash or slice. He ran at the French and with a thrust of his long arm skewered a voltigeur, twisted his hand and pulled the sword from the man’s stomach. Blood spurted out. The Frenchman clutched the wound and collapsed. A backhand slash almost cut the next man’s arm in two. Around him, the light companies used bayonets, swords and their hands to kill and disable. The Graham brothers were fighting back-to-back, protecting each other’s rear, killing and wounding with bayonet and musket butt.
A man beside Macdonell went down holding his shoulder. Another cursed as his musket misfired before taking the force of a French bullet in his mouth. A third leapt at a Frenchman who was struggling to reload. He drove his bayonet into the man’s throat and screamed in triumph. A moment later he too was dead, his neck half-severed by a French sword.
A shout of warning from his left made Macdonell turn sharply. A French sabre was poised to split open his head. He ducked to one side and thrust the point of his sword into the man’s eye. The sabre fell to the ground but the Frenchman, to Macdonell’s astonishment, remained standing. He reversed his sword and smashed the handle into the man’s face. Bones broke and he too fell. He turned to see Henry Gooch, his face ashen white, staring at the dead Frenchman.
Steel clashed on steel, men screamed and fell and blood splattered on the woodland floor. Macdonell saw Harry block a cutting slash and chop his sword down on his attacker’s neck. For a while the outcome hung in the balance. The French, attacked from two sides, fought bravely. But when the Brunswickers got round behind them, they were doomed. Their captain lay down his sword and called for his men to do the same. Reluctantly, they did.
Macdonell took a moment to catch his breath. When he could speak clearly he ordered Harry to have all French muskets and ammunition collected and the wounded attended to. Those who could walk set off down the lane where they would come to the road back to Quatre Bras. Those who could not were given rum or gin and made as comfortable as possible. With luck, they would be found by medical orderlies.
The French captain was waiting patiently to learn his fate. Macdonell scratched his head. What he was to do with a clutch of French prisoners when the light would soon be fading and he had no idea where the Guards would be spending the night, he did not know. ‘We could shoot them all,’ suggested Harry cheerfully.
‘Then we could eat them,’ added Captain Hellman, licking his lips and patting his stomach. ‘I expect they taste like poodles.’
‘I would rather you did not,’ said the French captain in perfect English.
‘Vous parlez bien, Captain,’ said Macdonell, taken by surprise.
‘Merçi, Colonel. However, we are your prisoners and I expect you to treat us honourably, just as we would treat you honourably if our roles were reversed.’
‘Like the poor wretch we found in the woods?’ asked Joseph Graham. ‘Tortured and murdered, he was, and by cowardly frogs.’
The captain looked horrified. ‘I can assure you that my men would never commit such an act.’
‘Well someone did,’ growled James.
Macdonell made a decision. ‘Captain Hellman, kindly escort the prisoners back to the crossroads. I believe it is in our hands all the way there. If you pass a medical wagon, tell them there are wounded here. And my thanks for your assistance.’
‘As you wish, Colonel. I will do as you say. Perhaps we shall meet again tomorrow.’
‘Now what?’ asked Harry when the Brunswickers had gone.
‘Now I’ll send word to General Byng and await further orders.’ From a pouch attached to his belt, he took a stick of graphite pencil and a small notebook. His report to the general said simply that they had cleared the wood and would shortly be encamping for the night. He tore out the page, folded the paper and peered through the last of the light for a man to take it back down the hill. A young private who looked no more than twelve was trying in vain to scrape blood off his jacket. He jumped up when Macdonell approached him. ‘Take this to General Byng, Private. You’ll find him at the crossroads.’ He tapped the private on the shoulder. ‘And no dallying in the inn.’
The private took the paper and gave his colonel a gap-toothed grin. Despite having marched nearly thirty miles that day, having eaten little and faced French cavalry and artillery for probably the first time, the boy seemed pleased to be given the task. ‘Leave it to me, sir. I’ll be back before you know it,’ he said, smiling through a face streaked with powder and dirt. Macdonell watched him jump into the lane and trot off towards the road. The boy was as likely to carry out the task as anyone.
They followed the line of the wood to the road, passing three dead French cavalry horses and their riders spreadeagled in a ditch. The sounds of war were gradually dying. Macdonell could not be sure that the 90th had retaken the Gemioncourt farm or where their front line was. To the east of the Charleroi Road he had been immersed in his own part in the battle. He had received one message from the Light Dragoon captain and knew from Captain Hellman that the crossroads were secure — or at least they were when the Brunswickers were sent to help him — but that was all. He badly needed accurate intelligence, or, better still, orders. Until they arrived, he would have to wait and hope.
On its western side, the road was separated from the Bossu wood by narrow fields of rye. They chose a flat area near the wood to bivouac for the night. Here, too, lay the bodies of the dead. Macdonell ordered them cleared and pickets to be posted. Beside him, Harry glanced at the darkening sky. In the last of the light, black clouds were gathering. ‘If those are rain clouds, it won’t be a very comfortable night,’ he muttered.
‘No, Harry, it will not. And God knows where the enemy are skulking — in the woods, at the farm, in the next field — but we need rest. A wet night it will have to be. Post pickets, get fires lit and use blankets for bivouacs. Usual procedure — two blankets for four men. Muskets ready. No stacking in case we have to move quickly. Send a watering party back to the stream. Dawson was a butcher. Tell him to take the Grahams and cut what he can off those horses.’ Harry nodded and went to find the two corporals.
Wriggling out of the straps that held his pack was always a pleasure. Macdonell stretched his back and sighed. Then he remembered the soldiers’ saying: ‘Every bullet has a billet’. He found the hole and put his index finger through it, opened the pack and rummaged around among his spare shirt and blanket. There it was. He pulled it out and squinted at it by the light of the fire. At first he did not notice. But then he realised. It was a British bullet, larger than a French musket could take. A French bullet could be used, at a pinch, in a British musket, but not a British one in a French musket. Could the French in the wood have been using captured guns?
He sat cross-legged in the bivouac, tossing the bullet in his hand and trying to remember. Had he not passed Vindle on his dash out of the wood? Despite having been told to run for it, the idiot had stopped to reload. Vindle of all people. Why would he do that? You would expect him to be first out of the wood, not last.
Unless he had a reason. Unless, for example, he had spotted an opportunity and wanted to get behind Macdonell. His haste to reload might explain the weak charge. He might have spilt some powder. Macdonell would not have entertained the thought of any other man, even Luke, being guilty of such an act, but Vindle … He had cause and it would not have been the first such incident in the army.
The storm arrived with sudden and monstrous force. Thunder crashed and forks of lightning lit up the sky. Rain poured down and within a minute every man and every piece of equipment not under cover was soaked.