‘Sir.’ The sergeant came in, buttoning his tunic. He’d shaved and found a half-decent shirt from somewhere.
‘We’ll go and report in and see who is where.’
They walked out into the crowded cobbled streets where men lay on piles of straw under makeshift awnings with townswomen, medical orderlies and nuns tending to them. They kept their eyes skinned for familiar faces or the blue of an artillery uniform jacket.
The news on the street was that Wellington had left his house on Rue Montagne du Parc for Nivelles, where the army was bivouacked. ‘We’d best start at HQ, see what staff he’s left behind and get our orders, then locate the colonel,’ Flint decided as they began the steep climb up from the lower town. It was slow progress.
‘How’s Miss Rose, sir?’
‘Miss?’
Hawkins shrugged. ‘She behaves like a lady, Major. So Maggie says.’
‘She was living with a man from
the Seventy-Third, now no longer with us, poor devil. I doubt that makes her a lady.’
‘I think she’s got a nice way with her, what I’ve seen,’ the sergeant said stubbornly as they stopped to help a nun move a man on to a stretcher without jarring the bloody stump of his leg. ‘Pretty little thing.’
‘Most you’ve seen of her is a filthy waif glued to me like a kitten stuck up a tree. Her nice ways got her into my bed this morning,’ Flint snapped. ‘Not what I’d call ladylike.’
‘Needs a cuddle, most likely,’ Hawkins said, impervious to Flint’s sudden bad temper. ‘Women do when they’re upset. Useful that, I always think. You know, you give her a cuddle, bit of a squeeze, buss on the cheek, the next thing you know she’s stopped crying and you’re—’
‘You can discuss your techniques of courtship with the duke when we catch up with him,’ Flint suggested as they returned the salute of the sentry at the gate of what had been Wellington’s house. ‘They say he’s got about as much finesse as you have between the sheets.’
The scene was somewhat different from the weeks before the battle when the house had been mobbed by every person of fashion—or pretentions of gentility—hoping to gain access to the great man. Now it was all business, with red-eyed adjutants, scurrying orderlies and groups of weary men consulting notes and maps as they dealt with the aftermath of the Field Marshall’s departure.
‘Major!’ Flint turned to see Lieutenant Foster, their brigade surgeon. He looked bone-weary, but he’d managed to change and shave. ‘I was coming to find you. I’ve a list of which of our men are where, I just need the names and locations of any you brought back yesterday.’
‘What’s the butcher’s bill?’ Flint demanded.
‘Eighty, unless any more go in the next few days, and that’s always possible.’ Foster shrugged philosophically. ‘I’ve got as many of the badly wounded ones as I can with the nuns, they’re better at offering comfort and the wards are cleaner and quieter.’
‘Hawkins, take the lieutenant down to see the men at Maggie’s, then get a list from him of where everyone is. We can add a few more to the dead list, Foster. Let me know what needs doing when we both get back to the house. And you, Lieutenant, when you’ve seen those last few men, you get back to your lodgings and sleep until this afternoon at least. That’s an order.’
‘But, Major, the colonel—’
‘Go!’ To hell with Randall, he could wait until Flint had reported in here at HQ before he started throwing out his orders.
The adjutant at the desk consulted a sheaf of papers. ‘Your guns and the fit men have joined the line of march towards the border, sir. Any who recover in the next ten days are to be sent to muster at your base at Roosbos to await onward deployment. You, Major, and your sergeant, have orders here.’ He rifled through the mass of documents on his desk and produced a sealed letter. ‘They are not secret. His lordship has directed that for every hundred men who must remain in the city through wounds, sickness and for assigned duties, one officer, one non-commissioned officer and three men will also stay to keep order and look to their welfare and deployment. There is a list of the other officers included.’
Flint stared at the packet in his hands. This was the end of his war. No more marching, deploying, fighting—the work he was trained for. Now it would be administration, paperwork, policing—the stuff he hated.
‘…news of Lord Randall’s condition when you’ve seen the colonel.’ The adjutant was still talking.
‘His condition? Randall is wounded?’
‘Why, yes, Major. He has a chest wound and the blow to his head, of course. I assumed you were aware?’ Something in the quality of Flint’s glare must have penetrated. ‘Ah, obviously not. There’s no danger, sir, at least, not as far as the surgeon can see at the moment. I don’t think he wants to operate to remove the bullet if it can be avoided.’
Lord, no, Flint thought with an inner shudder. Bullets in the chest were nasty enough, digging the damn things out was usually fatal.
The other man was still talking and Flint closed off the memory of having a ball cut out of his own shoulder. That had been bad, but at least it hadn’t been rattling around his lungs.
‘Concussion is always difficult of course, so they are keeping him in bed and flat on his back for a few days.’
‘Where is he?’
‘His usual lodgings, the house he took in Rue Ducale, sir.’