‘Very good, Colonel,’ replied Dawson.
Macdonell turned on his heel and strode off. It was time for the light companies to parade.
In appearance, Wellington’s army had changed in the few years since it had chased the French around Spain and over the Pyrenees. Then officers wore whatever they liked and soldiers whatever they could find. A dead Frenchman’s trousers were as good as any if they were intact. Wives and daughters were kept busy darning and sewing and making up whatever they could from bits and pieces into shirts and jackets.
The three hundred men of the Coldstream and Third Guards Light Companies, however, had done no fighting for over a year and new uniforms had not long arrived from London. In their red jackets, white trousers, stovepipe shakos and good leather shoes, they had been formed up in four lines and looked as fine as if they were in Horse Guards Parade. The shoes, especially, were a godsend. The flimsy things they had worn in the Peninsula had lasted no time on rough Spanish roads. Each man held a musket and carried a bayonet, a pouch of cartridges, another of balls, a wooden canteen and an oilskin knapsack. Only the pattern of buttons on their jackets told the two companies apart.
These were the skirmishers, the ghosts and spirits who would work their way close to the enemy by hiding in fields and behind trees, and would pick off as many Frenchmen as they could before withdrawing quietly whence they came. Macdonell was proud of them and, in the expectation that they would march that morning, had prepared a few words of encouragement. Nothing grand, nothing Agincourt-like, just a quiet reminder of the great traditions of their regiment. But all he could tell them was that they were going nowhere until further orders arrived from Brussels. As he spoke, faces dropped and shoulders slumped. Another day hanging about with little to do, they were thinking, and he could hardly blame them. Three months in Enghien, not a Frenchman in sight and fingers itching to pull triggers. Last night, the news that the frogs were at the Sambre would have been around the camp like the plague. Why were they not being sent to meet their advance? Would they have to wait until the frogs were hopping around the gates of Brussels before attacking?
James Macdonell, their colonel, who had fought in Spain, France and Italy, who wore the Gold Medal for Maida, could not tell them. He could only instruct Captain Wyndham to dismiss the parade and to find what work he could to keep them busy. It was not what he or they had expected.
Nor was it what the two young ensigns attached to the Coldstream Light Company had expected. Superficially alike — smart, ambitious, hard-working sons of well-to-do families — in temperament they were as far apart as beef and mutton. Henry Gooch, seldom lost for a word, boasted of being impatient to ‘make widows of a hundred French madames’. Thoughtful, devout James Hervey, when pressed, would say only that he prayed he would let neither his regiment nor his family down. Very different, yet perhaps no more than two sides of the same coin. A coin minted in fear of what was to come — one side braggadocio, the other prayer.
The two of them had been standing with Captain Wyndham during the parade. ‘Why are we not marching, Colonel?’ asked Gooch, as the men dispersed.
‘It is not for me to say, Mister Gooch,’ replied Macdonell, ‘nor for you to ask. We shall await orders.’
‘But, Colonel, if the French — ’
‘Enough, sir. Your leadership skills will be tested today.’
‘I daresay the order to march will come soon enough,’ ventured Hervey, ‘It sounds like Buonaparte means to fight and I wonder that the Duke did not receive earlier warning from his agents in Paris. Surely they would have known?’
‘An interesting point, Mister Hervey, and another to which I have no answer. Now, kindly be about your business, gentlemen. Find work for your companies and for yourselves. Muskets, drill, packs. Check and check again. Keep them busy.’
The ensigns saluted smartly and marched off towards the camp. Macdonell watched them go. Neither had seen battle and he doubted they had much inkling of what it was like to see the head of the man next to you blown to splinters of bone, or to face ranks of cheering cavalry whose sole intention is to slice you in half, or to stand in square and face artillery round shot without flinching. They would have heard stories but they would never know the awful horror of it until they experienced it for themselves. No one did.
The day dragged on. He walked again around the park. He watched the Coldstream band at practice. He had no ear for music and could only just tell the French horn from the serpent. Pipes and trumpets and drums and cymbals — the instruments of battle — were more to his liking.
He made another circuit of the camp, exchanged a few words with the Grahams and some of the men, made a show of checking musket barrels and boots — reminding the new recruits that an infantryman’s boots could kill him as readily as a French sabre — before retiring to his room to rest and to write to his mother in Glengarry.
He was not an artist or a diarist, as some were, preferring to hold images and words in his mind rather than commit them to paper, but he was a dutiful correspondent. He wrote of his pride in his men and of the frustration of waiting. He wrote of the coming battle and his certainty of victory. He wrote of his friends, Harry Wyndham and Francis Hepburn, and he wrote of little things — Belgian bread, the kingfisher at the stream, a good claret. He inquired after his brothers and promised he would see them soon. The letter would go with the next despatch rider to Brussels and thence to Dover, London, Glasgow and Fort William. By the time it arrived, word would probably have already reached Glengarry that Napoleon had been defeated, but the Macdonells would have to wait a little longer to discover if James had survived.
He passed the afternoon by walking slowly around Lac d’Enghien, dozing in his room, and trying with little success to read his battered copy of Waverley. His mother had assured him that Walter Scott’s splendid Fergus MacIvor was modelled on his mercurial brother, Alasdair. Perhaps. After a light supper he wandered down to the north gate of the chateau to watch the carriages and cabriolets departing for the Duchess’s Ball.
Francis Hepburn, puffing at an enormous cigar, was there before him. He was raising his shako in salute to every carriage that passed and wishing its occupants a glorious evening. From General Byng’s open cabriolet, Colonel Woodford and Harry Wyndham, in sparkling dress uniforms, gleaming buttons and gold lace everywhere, waved happily to them. The general himself, all in black, looked rather miserable. ‘I don’t think Sir John will be dancing much, do you, James?’ asked Francis. ‘Looks like he’s off to a funeral.’
‘I do not blame him. He’d rather be killing Frenchmen than attempting one of their impossible dances. By the way, is it true that the ball is to be held in a coachmaker’s workshop? Seems an odd place to me.’
‘Not a workshop, a coach house, I believe. It’s probably the only place in Brussels big enough to accommodate all the guests. Everyone but us seems to have been invited. It is an odd place for a ball, though.’ He raised his shako to Major General Maitland, commander of the 1st Brigade. ‘Good man, Maitland,’ he said as Maitland’s carriage passed. ‘And a fine cricketer. Plays for the Marylebone Club.’