Bernard Cornwell - Gallows Thief

His lordship was in a wheeled chair like those Sandman's mother had liked to use in Bath when she was feeling particularly poorly, and the squeak had been the sound of the ungreased axles turning as a servant pushed the Earl towards his visitor.

The Earl was dressed in the old fashion that had prevailed before men had adopted sober black or dark blue. His coat was of flowered silk, red and blue, with enormously wide cuffs and a lavish collar over which fell a cascade of lace. He wore a full-bottomed wig that framed an ancient, lined face that was incongruously powdered, rouged and decorated with a velvet beauty spot on one sunken cheek. He had not been properly shaved, and patches of white stubble showed in the folds of his skin. 'You are wondering,' he addressed Sandman in a shrill voice, 'how the models are inserted onto the centre of the table, are you not?'

The question had not even occurred to Sandman, but now he did find it puzzling, for the table was far too big for its centre to be reached from the sides, and if a person were to walk across the model then they would inevitably crush the little trees that were made from sponge or else they would disarrange the serried ranks of painted soldiers. 'How is it done, my lord?' Sandman asked. He did not mind calling the Earl 'my lord' for he was an old man and it was a mere courtesy that youth owed to age.

'Betty, dearest, show him,' the earl commanded, and one of the two girls dropped her paintbrush and disappeared beneath the table. There was a scuffling sound, then a whole section of the valley rose into the air to become a wide hat for the grinning Betty. 'It is a model of Waterloo,' the Earl said proudly.

'So I see, my lord.'

'Maddox tells me you were in the 52nd. Show me where they were positioned.'

Sandman walked about the table's edge and pointed to one of the red-coated battalions on the ridge above the Chateau of Hougoumont. 'We were there, my lord,' he said. The model really was extraordinary. It showed the two armies at the beginning of the fight, before the ranks had been bloodied and thinned and before Hougoumont had burnt to a black shell. Sandman could even make out his own company on the 52nd's flank, and assumed that the little mounted figure just ahead of the painted ranks was meant to be himself. That was an odd thought.

'Why are you smiling?' the Earl demanded.

'No reason, my lord,' Sandman looked at the model again, 'except that I wasn't on horseback that day.'

'Which company?'

'Grenadier.'

The Earl nodded. 'I shall replace you with a foot soldier,' he said. His chair squealed as he pursued Sandman about the table. His lordship had blue-gartered silk stockings, though one of his feet was heavily bandaged. 'So tell me,' the Earl demanded, 'did Bonaparte lose the battle by delaying the start?'

'No,' Sandman said curtly.

The Earl signalled the servant to stop pushing the chair. He was close to Sandman now and could stare up at him with red-rimmed eyes that were dark and bitter. The Earl was much older than Sandman had expected. Sandman knew the Countess had still been young when she died, and she had been beautiful enough to be painted naked, yet her husband looked ancient despite the wig, the cosmetics and the lace frills. He stank, too; a reek of stale powder, unwashed clothes and sweat. 'Who the devil are you?' the Earl growled.

'I have come from Viscount Sidmouth, my lord, and…'

'Sidmouth?' the Earl interrupted. 'I don't know a Viscount Sidmouth. Who the devil is the Viscount Sidmouth?'

'The Home Secretary, my lord.' That information prompted no reaction at all, so Sandman explained further. 'He was Henry Addington, my lord, and was once the Prime Minister? Now he is Home Secretary.'

'Not a real lord then, eh?' the Earl declared. 'Not an aristocrat! Have you noticed how the damned politicians make themselves into peers? Like turning a toilet into a fountain, ha! Viscount Sidmouth? He's no gentleman. A bloody politician is all he is! A trumped up liar! A cheat! I assume he is first viscount?'

'I am sure he is, my lord,' Sandman said.

'Ha! A back-alley aristo, eh? A piece of Goddamn slime! A well-dressed thief! I'm the sixteenth earl.'

'Your family amazes us all, my lord,' Sandman said, with an irony that was utterly wasted on the Earl, 'but however new his ennoblement, I still come with the viscount's authority.' He produced the Home Secretary's letter, which was waved away. 'I have heard, my lord,' Sandman went on, 'that the servants from your town house in Mount Row are now here?' He had heard nothing of the sort, but perhaps the bald statement would elicit agreement from the Earl. 'If that's so, my lord, then I would like to talk with one of them.'

The Earl shifted in the chair. 'Are you suggesting,' he asked in a dangerous voice, 'that Blucher might have come sooner had Bonaparte attacked earlier?'

'No, my lord.'

'Then if he'd attacked earlier he'd have won!' the Earl insisted.

Sandman looked at the model. It was impressive, comprehensive and all wrong. It was too clean for a start. Even in the morning, before the French attacked, everyone was filthy because, on the previous day, most of the army had slogged back from Quatre Bras through quagmires of mud and then they had spent the night in the open under successive cloudbursts. Sandman remembered the thunder and the lightning whiplashing the far ridge and the terror when some cavalry horses broke free in the night and galloped among the sodden troops.

'So why did Bonaparte lose?' the Earl demanded querulously.

'Because he allowed his cavalry to fight unsupported by foot or artillery,' Sandman said shortly. 'And might I ask your lordship what happened to the servants from the house in Mount Street?'

'So why did he commit his cavalry when he did, eh? Tell me that?'

'It was a mistake, my lord, even the best generals make them. Did the servants come back here?'

The Earl petulantly slapped the wicker arms of his chair. 'Bonaparte didn't make futile mistakes! The man might be scum, but he's clever scum. So why?'

Sandman sighed. 'Our line had been thinned, we were on the reverse slope of the hill and it must have seemed, from their side of the valley, that we were beaten.'

'Beaten?' The Earl leapt on that word.

'I doubt we were even visible,' Sandman said. 'The Duke had ordered the men to lie down so, from the French viewpoint, it must have looked as if we just vanished. The French saw an empty ridge, they doubtless saw our wounded retreating into the forest behind, and they must have thought we were all retreating, so they charged. My lord, tell me what happened to your wife's servants.'

'Wife? I don't have a wife. Maddox!'

'My lord?' The servant who had let Sandman into the house stepped forward.

'The cold chicken, I think, and some champagne,' the Earl demanded, then scowled at Sandman. 'Were you wounded?'

'No, my lord.'

'So you were there when the Imperial Guard attacked?'

'I was there, my lord, from the guns that signalled the first French assault to the very last shot of the day.'

The Earl seemed to shudder. 'I hate the French,' he said suddenly. 'I detest them. A race of dancing-masters, and we brought glory on ourselves at Waterloo, Captain, glory!'

Sandman wondered what glory came from defeating dancing-masters, but said nothing. He had met other men like the Earl, men who were obsessed by Waterloo and who wanted to know every remembered minute of the battle, men who could not hear enough tales from that awful day, and all of those men, Sandman knew, had one thing in common: none had been there. Yet they revered that day, thinking it the supreme moment of their lives and of Britain's history. Indeed, for some it seemed as though history itself had come to its end on June 18th, 1815, and that the world would never again see a rivalry to match that of Britain and France. That rivalry had given meaning to a whole generation, it had burnt the globe, matching fleets and armies in Asia, America and Europe, and now it was all gone and there was only dullness in its place and, for the Earl of Avebury, as for so many others, that dullness could only be driven away by reliving the rivalry. 'So tell me,' the Earl said, 'how many times the French cavalry charged.'