‘I had four horses shot from under me yet I too have not a scratch,’ added Saltoun.
‘You know,’ went on Byng, ‘the young frog ordered me to evacuate Hougoumont when he saw the fire. He did not believe it could be held. I ignored the order. He, too, is wounded, although not seriously.’
‘One trusts there will not be ramifications, General.’
‘There will not. The Prince was proved wrong and in any event will have forgotten the matter or possibly even remembered that his orders were to hold the place.’ He gazed out over the valley. ‘Look at the poor devils. Brave men who fought and died and are now robbed and stripped and will be dumped in unmarked holes.’
‘Was it not ever the lot of the soldier, General?’ asked Macdonell.
‘It was, of course, James, yet I pray never to look on anything like this again. I doubt if the Duke is yet aware of the scale of his victory or of its price and I shall not be the one to tell him. I do not have the words. It was a desperate affair, was it not? And your own efforts will not go unnoticed, gentlemen.’
‘Others would have done the same,’ replied Macdonell, a trifle gruffly. He had never been comfortable with compliments.
‘Perhaps,’ replied the general. ‘Old Blücher did arrive, although late in the day, and I thank God for it. His Prussians kept two French divisions occupied around Planchenois. Their losses were high, but without them, the outcome might have been very different.’
‘And what now, General?’ asked Saltoun. ‘Will Buonaparte try again?’
‘Good God, Alexander, I pray not. Can you imagine another day like yesterday? No, his invincible Imperial Guard proved anything but, and their reputation, and his, have been destroyed. Surely the French will not rise for him again.’
‘I recall hearing similar words when he escaped from Elba, General,’ said Macdonell quietly.
‘It will not be Elba this time, James, if the Duke has his way, which, of course, he will. Somewhere very much more distant and inhospitable will be found for him. If the royalists do not get their hands on him first, that is. Looking at what lies before us, I for one rather hope that they do.’ For some minutes they sat in silence. ‘Gentlemen, the Duke sent his preliminary despatch to London last night. He intends to send another, more complete, within a day or two and has asked me for my report. To write it, I shall need yours.’
‘You shall have mine this evening, General,’ replied Macdonell, dreading the prospect of having to sit down and write it.
‘And mine, General,’ added Saltoun.
Byng nodded. ‘It was a terrible day. I thank God it is over.’ He turned his horse and trotted back up the road to the village. Macdonell and Saltoun did not move. For all its horror, the battlefield had a mesmerising effect. They sat and stared at it.
A carriage rattled down the road towards them. The driver reined in his huge black carthorse and came to a halt at the crossroads. He wore the grey trousers of the Royal Waggon Train. The door of the carriage opened and a crimson-jacketed surgeon with a large bag of instruments stepped out, followed by three women in floral dresses and pink bonnets. Each of them carried a basket of bandages. All four were so bloodstained and filthy that their own mothers might not have recognised them. They took no notice of the two mounted men under the elm tree but walked a little way along the ridge and looked down into the valley.
A single rider had followed the carriage. ‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ he said as he approached. He looked down on the battlefield. ‘Well, perhaps not good, but for us at least better than it might have been.’
‘Good morning, Francis,’ replied James. ‘Have you ever set eyes on a more desolate sight? I certainly have not. Did you find a billet for the night?’
‘No. I slept in a haystack in the village. A trifle prickly but not too bad. The surgeons and their assistants were at work all night. I came down with Daisy. She’s exhausted.’
‘Is that Daisy with the surgeon?’ asked James. ‘I did not recognise her.’
‘It is.’
‘There were two women with us at Hougoumont, wives of privates helping with the wounded. One was wounded, a shot to the breast.’
‘I am sorry for it. Now I shall attend the ladies. Daisy has taken to calling me general, the impertinent child, although I have told her not to.’
‘General?’
‘When General Cooke was wounded, General Byng took his place and I in turn took General Byng’s place. A temporary state of affairs only but it amuses Daisy to think otherwise.’
‘Yet you remained in the orchard.’
‘I did.’ He grinned. ‘From there I could stand in for the general whilst keeping an eye on you. My new role made no difference. The orchard had to be defended.’
‘Yet you might have told me,’ replied Macdonell. ‘I should have been happy for you.’
‘Tush, James, you were much too busy.’
‘There,’ said the surgeon loudly, ‘the battlefield. It is as we were warned, is it not? Let us waste no time. Miss Brown, Miss Westfield, kindly make your way down the slope to the left. Take great care where you step. Call out if you find a man living. Miss Box, if you would, accompany me. We will do what we can for them.’
Francis dismounted and led his horse along the path to where the little party stood. He called out. Daisy turned. Tears ran down her unwashed cheeks but her eyes were blank. Francis put his arms around her shoulders and embraced her. It was no time for convention.
‘Time I went to work,’ said James quietly. With a flick of the reins he set off down the path towards Hougoumont, leaving Saltoun on the ridge.
He passed groups of haggard soldiers, sitting, squatting and lying around their fires or in roughly constructed bivouacs. The men glanced up but looked quickly away again when they realised he was not an officer in their battalion and was not there to give them orders. Soldiers need orders and they had none. Until orders came they would have to stay where they were and fend for themselves.
Behind the rows of bivouacs, Gunners sat propped against the wheels and carriages of their artillery pieces, smoking their pipes and sipping from their canteens. Their carriage horses, hobbled together, searched in vain for tufts of grass in the narrow strip of mud between the guns and the wood.
At the top of the ridge the path was still stony and hard. Lower down, the earth had been churned to mud and they had to go slowly. Twice Macdonell’s mount slipped and he only just avoided a fall. The ground was littered with discarded packs, shakos and blankets. The dead had been cleared to one side to await burial or burning. The looters would find them soon.
In the field outside the orchard that Saltoun and Hepburn had defended all day, half a dozen soldiers were going from body to body. At first Macdonell thought they were checking for signs of life but soon realised that they too were looting. He spurred his horse and cantered towards them. When they saw him, they ran off towards the woods. None of them wore jackets. It was hard to be sure but he thought three were British and three French.
Smoke was still rising from the ruins of the chateau and the farm. He entered through the north gates, battered but intact and standing open. Bodies filled the yard, many, to his fury, already stripped naked. The looters had been at their foul work during the night. What had been the barn was a smouldering heap of debris. Fragments of bone and skull lay flensed and charred in the ashes. The cowshed and the farmer’s house were gone, the draw well was a hellish tangle of bricks and bodies, the garden wall was barely standing.