The Sage of Waterloo by Leona Francombe Page A

As Charlotte began her journey southward, she naïvely thought that peace was at hand.
    She soon perceived her error.
    In the hot, sultry air of that June two hundred years ago, events were moving behind the scenes with dark swiftness. Charlotte Eaton was perhaps not the most gifted air-reader, it must be said. But if she had studied the details of those days as Old Lavender would have (a Thursday through Sunday, I believe they were)—had perceived the swollen foreboding in them—she would have clearly noticed that Nature was gathering fear and dread to her bosom. The air, forest, soil and all their occupants sensed that human cataclysm was nigh. Even if the natural world wasn’t quite sure when or where, exactly, war was about to break out again, or even that it was Bonaparte himself who happened to be breathing at the door (all human tyrants are alike, after all), a warning had been sounded. Horses and cattle shifted and twitched; small creatures burrowed deep, waiting. The weather brooded, gathered itself and at times broke in brief, violent premonition.
    By the time the Eaton party had arrived in Brussels, the entire city was wearing a military aspect. But how well the magnificence of a soldier masks his job! Charlotte marveled at the tassels and epaulets, the clasps and crosses and braids . . . not things that, when seen on a fine young man, one could ever imagine being darkened with his blood, or left behind in the dirt after he’s been thrown into a communal grave. One didn’t have to imagine it . . . at least, not yet.
    The Eatons entered a city brimming with fine young men. Despite all the rumors charging the air, there was a vigor to the outpost that proved irresistible. The thronged streets pulsed with confidence and expectation, as if something important were about to happen, but to someone else, and not anytime soon. Allied soldiers in every variety of uniform mingled with the locals in convivial groups, or took a turn with the ladies down one of the shaded avenues of the Parc de Bruxelles. There were English soldiers in their red coats and white belts, and hearty, laughing Highlanders, as renowned in battle for their fierceness as for those unimpeachable kilts. Only the so-called Black Brunswickers, a corps under the command of the amiable Duke of Brunswick and kept in reserve by Wellington, offered a bleak counterpoint. They dressed in black, and rode black horses. On their heads they wore shakos decorated with sinister death’s heads and plumes of black horsehair. Their long, regular procession looked “like an immense moving hearse,” Charlotte noted, “that one might take for a bad omen.”
    Twilight drifted in on the humid haze. Dispatches flew from servant to officer, hotelier to guest, washerwoman to valet. The fighting has begun! But how far off do you suppose it is? Are the French in great number? Where are the Prussians? There was no reliable intelligence anywhere. The mood in Brussels traced a great, emotive arc: from the depths of French-fueled panic, to the heights of incredulous relief, and back down to the French again.
    Daylight lingered, as it does during a northern June.
    Night fell.
    After they had dined, officers donned their stockings and dancing shoes. For the Duchess of Richmond’s ball was going ahead as planned.

    N ow, I would like to reduce the stage of events a bit, if I may—well, quite a lot, actually. Specifically, to the size of our hutch. For it was there, in the pleasant fug of dozing family members, that Old Lavender occasionally took us to the Duchess of Richmond’s ball.
    Grandmother wasn’t much of a sentimentalist, as you’ve probably gathered by now, her preference leaning more towards military strategy—battle formations, cavalry charges and the like. So it wasn’t often that she told us this story. I suspect that she had to force the dreamy tone she used for the ball scene—not an easy