David Dickinson - Goodnight Sweet Prince

The Voltigeurs were moving steadily down the slope, skirmishers who represented the advance guard of the French Army. Behind them, deployed behind and around La Belle Alliance, were the glory of Napoleon’s Grande Armee, headgear glittering with the colours of different lands. There was a martial kaleidoscope, Lancers in red shapkas with a brass plate bearing the letter N and a white plume, Chasseurs in kolbachs with headgear of green and scarlet, Hussars with multi-coloured plumes, Dragoons with brass casques over tigerskin turbans, Cuirassiers in steel helmets with copper crests, Carabiniers in dazzling white and the Grenadiers of the Old Guard in massive, plain bearskins.

Across the valley the British, a motley army in motley uniform, waited for their fate.

‘Fire!’ said a small voice. ‘Fire!’

‘Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!’ shouted two other small voices.

‘If I take a big puff on my cigar,’ said Lord Francis Powerscourt, who normally loathed cigars but felt that sacrifices had to be made in the interests of history, ‘we can have smoke all over the battlefield.’

This had been his Christmas present to three of his nephews, a huge board portraying the battlefield of Waterloo in minute detail, and toy soldiers representing all the different varieties of troops on duty that June day.

William, Powerscourt’s eldest nephew, was eight years old and in command of two younger soldiers, Patrick and Alexander. Patrick was the drummer boy, equipped with a replica of the equipment used to drive the French infantry to success and glory across the battlefields of Europe. Alexander was the bugler, trained to give the different orders to the men of Wellington’s command.

‘After the artillery bombardment,’ Powerscourt puffed bravely on at his cigar, enveloping the battlefield with smoke, ‘the next thing is the attack on the farm at Hougoumont. Four regiments of veterans,’ he pointed to a small cluster of models, ‘began to advance towards the farm. Beat the drum.’

As William moved his troops forward through the smoke Patrick beat out the pas de charge : boom boom, boom boom, boom a boom, boom a boom, boom boom.

‘Splendid,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Now, Alexander,’ he brought in the youngest, ‘you are standing beside the Duke of Wellington, here, on his horse Copenhagen. Your job is to sound the bugle call that sends out his orders. Look! He has seen the French advancing towards the chateau. Reinforcements are needed. Now! Blow!’

It could not be said that Alexander was master of the full repertoire of bugle calls from the reveille to the retreat. But he did make a great deal of noise.

‘ Alors ,’ cried Powerscourt, ‘some of the French did manage to get inside the building. And I’ll show you what happened then. Pretend that this door is the main entrance to Hougoumont. You three go outside, with your drums and bugles, and push as hard as you can to try to get in. You’re going to be French just for once, and I’m going to be Colonel Macdonnell who closed the gate.’

The three boys pushed as hard as they could. ‘Make more noise! Shout in French!’ Powerscourt was getting carried away. Cries of ‘ Allez! Allez! Vive la France! Vive l’Empereur! ’ – Powerscourt himself had taught them that one – sounded out across the upper levels of the house and floated down to the drawing-room two floors below. With a mighty heave Powerscourt at last closed the door. Three small boys fell backwards on the floor in a tumbling melange of arms and legs.

‘Powerscourt! Powerscourt!’ shouted Rosebery. He burst into the room, taking in the battlefield at a glance. ‘I think you’ll find that you have put the British cavalry a bit too far to the left,’ he said absent-mindedly, surveying the order of battle. ‘But come, Powerscourt, come, we must go at once! Reasons on the way!’

Rosebery led a swift charge down three flights of stairs, pausing only to give apologies to Powerscourt’s sister at the bottom. ‘A thousand pardons for this invasion, Lady Rosalind! We shall return to fight another day!’

With that Rosebery bounded down the flight of steps, pulling a bemused Powerscourt behind him into the night, and hurried his friend into a waiting brougham.

‘Liverpool Street! As quick as you can. I have a train waiting!’

‘A train?’ said Powerscourt feebly, wondering if this was all another dream.

‘Yes, yes, yes. If you want to get anywhere in a hurry in this country you have to order yourself a special train. I’ve done it before.’

Even at this moment of crisis Powerscourt found time to reflect on his friend. Most people in a hurry would consult timetables, seek out alternative routes, fret over possible delays on the line. Rosebery simply hired a train, and the best that money could buy, thought Powerscourt, as the engine pulled them slowly out of the station, real smoke billowing out over London’s suburbs.

‘Where are we going? What is the rush?’

‘Rush? Rush? Wild horses couldn’t get us there fast enough. We are going, my dear Powerscourt, to Sandringham. Something terrible has happened. Some disaster we don’t yet know about.’

He thrust a cable into his friend’s hand.: ‘Come immediately. Most urgent. Bring Powerscourt. Brook no delay. Suter.’

‘Death closes all,’ Powerscourt muttered to himself, ‘but something ere the end, some work of noble note, may yet be done, not unbecoming men that strove with Gods . . . sorry, I have been reading Tennyson again last thing at night.’

‘What makes you think of death, Francis?’

‘Think of it, my friend,’ Powerscourt went on, who had thought of little else since they fled the battlefield of Waterloo. ‘If there was some natural act, like a fire or the roof falling in, they would send for the fire brigade or the builders. If it were the death of an aged uncle or aunt, the family would not be summoning you in the middle of a January night. They would not be sending for me. They would be sending for the tribes of relations and a couple of parsons. Bishops, more likely. Maybe Archbishops.’

‘Are you possessed of second sight as well as a photographic memory, Francis?’ Rosebery was peering closely at his friend as if another telegram was about to appear, etched across his forehead.

‘Certainly not,’ Powerscourt laughed. ‘But it seems to me the most likely explanation is that there has been some dirty work afoot in Norfolk. Death not by natural causes is usually called murder. But we must wait for some hard intelligence before our speculations run away with us.’

The two men sat silently, lost in their thoughts. Rosebery was wondering about the political implications of a royal death. Powerscourt looked troubled.

‘I am sure that it is impossible to underestimate the effect a strange death could have on the Royal Family,’ he said, watching Rosebery’s cigar smoke drift down the carriage. ‘I have been thinking about this a lot lately,’ he went on, looking out at the occasional ringlets of light that gleamed faintly against the East Anglian sky. ‘Somewhere at the back of all the royal minds there must be a fear, maybe not a fear, an anxiety, a tremor in their dreams. On the surface, of course, all is serene, the palaces, the pomp, the pageantry. But underneath?

‘Think of it,’ he continued, in what for him was a most animated fashion, ‘like a painting by Claude. There’s a huge mythological landscape, elegant classical buildings, assorted Greeks and Romans like Dido and Cleopatra up to no good. You know the sort of thing.’

Powerscourt drew a large frame in the condensation of the window between them. ‘All the normal Claude tricks are here, the fantastic buildings, the intense sunlight, the faint sense of being in another world. I expect you’ve got a Claude or two, Rosebery, lying about the place?’