ONE

      Captain Jack Steel, his right hand clenched tightly around the grip of his sword, stared into the morning mist. He paused, listening closely to the emptiness. Then, relaxing his hold on the sword hilt yet keeping it, still sheathed, close by his side, he took up the pace and walked on and waited for death. If it came to him it would be from the front. But the only noises Steel could hear as yet were close behind him. He could sense the presence of his men there although he could not see them, knew that they carried their muskets primed and their bayonets fixed. His men; a company of the finest infantry in all of Queen Anne’s army. The finest infantry in all the world: British Grenadiers.

      Yet at this moment, not even the knowledge of their presence was of any real comfort to Steel. Such mists as this he knew could often be the soldier’s friend, shrouding whole armies from unwanted eyes as they advanced to spring a surprise attack. But, he knew too, from bitter experience, that this watery grey haze could also be a deadly foe. With every step now he felt the growing presence of the enemy; imagined the tall horsemen who would appear like ghosts from the enfolding shroud of grey, heard in his imagination the cruel hiss of their sabres as they slashed down towards him. Steel hoped to God that his mind was only chasing phantoms. His commanders had assured him that the French were still far away to their front and he was realistic enough to know that, whether or not this proved to be the case, at this precise moment the only people in whom he could place his faith were those very commanders, and the men who followed him to battle. Ignoring the knot of fear that gnawed at his stomach, Steel brushed away the horrors in his mind and pressed on.

      It was approaching six-thirty on a cool May morning – Whitsunday – on a barren patch of high ground which straddled the border between the Spanish Netherlands and Dutch Brabant. This should have been by tradition a day of rest and godliness, but Jack Steel knew that this day would not see God’s work. They were moving west in the vanguard of the army and his orders left him in no doubt as to their purpose. ‘Halt before the village to your front and and take positions for assault.’

      The trouble was that Steel had no earthly idea of where that village might be. Nor, for that matter, where he might find the enemy. And now he was starting to wish that the spectres in the mist would prove real. As far as Steel was concerned, battle could not come soon enough. He cussed to himself and spat out the wad of tobacco on which he had been chewing and eased the worn leather strap of the short-barrelled fusil which it was his unique privilege as an officer of Grenadiers to carry on his shoulder. The soft ground was caking his boots with mud and particularly to someone of Steel’s tall frame and muscular build, every step seemed heavier than the last.

      The sound of raised voices made him look to his left. Instinctively, his right hand went across to the sword hilt and began to ease the newly greased blade from its scabbard. The red-coated figures of two of his men appeared through the swirling mist, apparently oblivious to their officer, one goading the other in some private joke. Steel relaxed and let the sword slide back. He was about to address them when from behind him another voice, its thick Geordie accent reassuringly familiar, muttered an order whose anger and purpose, though muted, were bitingly clear.

      ‘Quiet there, you two men. You’re both on sarn’t’s orders now. And don’t go thinking that I don’t know who you are.’

      Steel turned to the rear and saw the large frame of his sergeant, the Geordie, Jacob Slaughter, his face boiling with rage. ‘God’s blood, Jacob! Wasn’t this meant to be a surprise attack? Advance to contact with the enemy were my orders, without a word spoken. What price now surprise? The French’ll have us for breakfast. Who the hell were those men? Are they ours? Do I know them?’

      Slaughter shook his head. ‘New intake, sir. But they’ll give you no more trouble. On my word.’

      ‘I’m sure they won’t, Jacob. Not once you’ve finished with them. But it’s too late now for all that. They’ll learn soon enough from the French. Keep talking like that and they won’t see another dawn. It’s no fault of yours. This army’s not what it was.’

      Steel knew himself to be right. This was not the same army that had carried its colours at bayonet-point deep into the French lines at Blenheim two years ago and sent the combined armies of France and Bavaria limping back to Alsace. The casualties it had incurred in that bloody campaign had been high and Steel’s unit, Colonel Sir James Farquharson’s Regiment of Foot, had been no exception. There had been other battles too since then and now, of the men with whom he had started this war four years ago, barely half remained, their fallen comrades replaced with green recruits, some of them fresh from Britain. The two garrulous soldiers were only too typical of that lack of experience. Steel shook his head as he paused for a moment and more men advanced past them. He watched one slip on the boggy ground and grope to retrieve his musket and the tall embroidered mitre cap which marked out the Grenadiers, however inexperienced, as a class of their own. And he knew that, for all the losses, the men he had about him now in the company, those who had managed to stay alive these past two years, were as good as he would ever find. Marlborough might have made the army, but this company belonged, heart and soul, to Jack Steel.

      Steel wiped a weary hand over his eyes: ‘I tell you, Jacob. What this army needs is another victory. Another Blenheim. And Marlborough knows that as well as we do. That’s why we’re here, in this bloody fog.’

      Two tall shapes approached them out of the mist. Two of Steel’s fellow officers, clad in the distinctive blue-trimmed scarlet coats of Farquharson’s regiment, one a lieutenant in his late twenties, the other an ensign of no more than nineteen. Unlike Steel, who chose to tie back his long brown hair with a black silk ribbon, both