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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 committhem 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.’
    ‘Is Miss Box attending the ball?’ asked Macdonell innocently.
    ‘She says not. Her papa is not senior enough. I shall be damned cross if I find she’s deceived me.’
    By half past seven all the carriages had departed. ‘Ah well,’ said James, ‘there’ll be a few thick heads in the morning. Let us hope Napoleon does not have a spy at the ball to send him reports on the state of the generals.’
    ‘I would not put it beyond the wily little Corsican. Intelligence officers dressed as servants and furnished with something nasty to slip into the peer’s glass. We had better hope not.’
    At the chateau, Francis went to his room. For a few minutes Macdonell stood at the steps