There was no need for her to say who ‘he’ was; her eager face was enough.

The bloodied General smiled. “He’s coming, mapoule.”

“These are for you.” She offered the General the drooping flowers. Throughout Napoleon’s exile the violet had been the symbol of the Bonapartistes, for the violet was the flower which, like the deposed Emperor, would return in the spring.

The General reached down and took the little bouquet. He fixed the fragile blossoms in a buttonhole of his braided uniform, then leaned down and kissed the woman. Like her, the General had prayed and hoped for the violet’s return, and now it had come and it would surely blossom more gloriously than ever before. France was on the march, Charleroi had fallen, and there were no more rivers between the Emperor and Brussels. The General, scenting victory, turned his horse to search for the infantry Colonel who had refused to attack the bridge and whose military career was therefore finished. France had no need of prudence, only of audacity and victory and of the small dark-haired man who knew how to make glory bright as the sun and as sweet as the violet. Vive I’Empereur.

CHAPTER 3

A single horseman approached Charleroi from the west. He rode on the Sambre’s northern bank, drawn towards the town by the sound of musketry which had been loud an hour before, but which now had faded into silence.

The man rode a big docile horse. He did not like horses and rode badly.

He was a tall man with a weathered face on which a blade had slashed a cruel scar. The scar gave his face a mocking, sardonic cast except when he smiled. His hair was black, but with a badger’s streak of white. Behind his horse a dog loped obediently. The dog suited the man, for it was big, fierce, and unkempt.