An Infamous Army (Alastair-Audley Tetralogy 4)

‘Oh, do not think of such a thing! There must be no more wars: we seem to have been fighting ever since I can remember! We shall defeat Bonaparte, and win a lasting peace. Can you doubt it?’

‘Be sure I do not desire to doubt it, madame,’ he replied.

They were climbing a slight hill, and were soon rewarded by the sight of Barbara and Peregrine, resting on the top. Barbara had found shelter from the wind in the lee of a hedge, and was sitting on the bank. She waved, and called out: ‘It is all a hum! Nothing to be seen but a plain sprinkled with hillocks, and a great many fields of green corn.’

Country-bred Peregrine corrected her. ‘No, no, you understate, Lady Bab! There are fields of rye as well, and at least two of clover. What a height the crops must grow to here! I never saw anything to equal it, so early in the year!’

‘Oh, now you go beyond me! I find myself at one with Dr Johnson, who declared—did he not?—that one green field was just like another!’

‘Horrid old man!’ said Judith, who had come up to them by this time. She looked around her. ‘Why, how could you libel the view so perversely? How pretty the grey stone walls look through the trees! Is that the Charleroi road?’

‘Yes, madame,’ said Lavisse. ‘The little farm you are looking at is La Belle Alliance.’

‘Delightful!’ said Judith. ‘So many of the villages and the farms here have pretty names, I find. Can we see the place where you are quartered from here?’

‘No, it is too far. I ride to it by the Nivelles road, until I am tired of that way, which is, in effect, quite straight and not very amusing. If you should ever honour Nivelles with a visit, I recommend you to come by the Charleroi road. It is a little longer, but you would be pleased, I think, with the village of Vieux-Genappe which one passes through. There is an old stone bridge, and many of the quaint cottages you admire.’

‘I know the way you mean,’ said Peregrine. ‘I went to Nivelles one day last autumn, with a party of friends, and I believe we turned off the chaussée about four miles beyond Genappe.’

‘That would be Quatre-Bras,’ said the Count.

‘Another pretty name for you, Lady Worth,’ said Barbara. ‘What is that monument I can see in the distance, Etienne?’

He glanced southwards, following the direction of her pointing finger. ‘Merely the Observatory. There is nothing here of interest, no monuments, no famous scenes.’

‘Very true; it is infamously tame!’ she said, with one of her flickering smiles. ‘And yet I don’t know! Had you taken us to Malplaquet, or Oudenarde, you would have dragged us through hedges and over muddy fields to look at an old battlefield, I daresay. Nothing is more tedious, for there is never anything to be seen but what you may as well look at anywhere else! My late husband plagued my life out with such expeditions. I have seen Sedgemoor, and Naseby, and Newbury—two battlefields there, as I remember—and I give you my word there was nothing to choose between any of them, except that one was not so far from the road as another.’

Peregrine, who had been gazing abstractedly to the south, said: ‘Well, I suppose for all we know there might be a battle fought hereabouts, might there not? Isn’t the Charleroi road one of the main ways into France?’

‘Oh, don’t, Perry!’ said his sister. ‘This is too peaceful a spot for battles. There are other ways into France, are there not, Count?’

‘Assuredly, madame. There is, for instance, the road through Mons. But Sir Peregrine has reason. It is to guard this highway that my division is quartered about Nivelles.’

‘Oh, you don’t frighten us, Etienne!’ said Barbara. ‘When Boney comes—if he comes, which I am beginning to doubt—you will meet him at the frontier, and send him about his business. Or he may send you about yours. I shall certainly remain in Brussels. How exciting to be besieged!’

‘How can you talk so?’ Judith said, vexed at the flippancy of these remarks. ‘You do not know what you are saying! Come, it is time we were returning to the Château!’

But at this Barbara began to take a perverse interest in her surroundings, desiring Lavisse to name all the hamlets she could perceive, and wishing that she could explore the dark belt of woods some miles to the east of them. From where they stood, half a mile to the west of La Belle Alliance, a good view of the undulating country towards Brussels could be obtained, and not until Lavisse had pointed out insignificant farmsteads such as La Hay Sainte, north of La Belle Alliance, on the chaussée; and obscure villages such as Papelotte, and Smohain, away to the east, could she be induced to quit the spot. But at last, when she had satisfied herself that the rising ground beyond the hollow crossroad that intersected the chaussée made it impossible for her to see Mont St Jean, and that the wood she wished to explore was quite three miles away, she consented to go back to the Château.

Lady Taverner had been dozing by the fire, and woke with a guilty start when the others rejoined her. A glance at the clock on the mantelpiece made her exclaim that she had no notion that the afternoon could be so far advanced. She began to think of her children, of course inconsolable without her, and begged Judith to order the horses to be put to.

This was soon done, and in a very short time Harriet was seated in the barouche, warmly tucked up in a rug, with her hands buried deep in her muff.

Barbara was standing in the doorway when Judith came out of the house, and said: ‘I wonder where Charles is now?’

‘In Ghent, I suppose,’ Judith replied.

‘I wish he had been with us,’ Barbara said, with a faint sigh.

‘I wish it too.’

‘Oh! you are disliking me again? Well, I am sorry for it, but the truth is that respectable females and I don’t deal together. I should be grateful to you for getting this party together. Shall I thank you? Confess that it has been an odious day!’

‘Yes, odious,’ Judith said.

She directed a somewhat chilly look at Barbara as she spoke, and for an instant thought that she saw the glitter of tears on the ends of her lashes. But before she could be sure of it Barbara had turned from her, and was preparing to mount her horse. The next glimpse she had of her face made the very idea of tears seem absurd. She was laughing, exchanging jests with Peregrine, once more in reckless spirits.

Any plan that Peregrine might have formed of deserting the barouche was nipped in the bud by his sister, who said so poin