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but that was all.
    Pushing past him was Bonaparte.
    He walked twice round our exhibit and asked who he was.
    'The cook, Sir. A little bit drunk, Sir. These men were removing him.'
    I was desperate to get to the spit where one of the chickens was already burning, but Domino stepped in front of me and, speaking in a rough language he later told me was Bonaparte's Corsican dialect, he somehow explained what had happened and how we had done our best on the lines of his Egyptian campaign. When Domino had done, Bonaparte came towards me and pinched my ear so that it was swollen for days.
    'You see, Captain,' he said, 'this is what makes my army invincible, the ingenuity and determination of even the humblest soldier.' The Captain smiled weakly, then Bonaparte turned to me. 'You'll see great things and you'll eat your dinner off an
    Englishman's plate before long. Captain, see to it that this boy waits on me personally. There will be no weak links in my army, I want my attendants to be as reliable as my Generals. Domino, we are riding this afternoon.'
    I wrote to my friend the priest straight away. This was more perfect than any ordinary miracle. I had been chosen. I didn't foresee that the cook would become my sworn enemy. By nightfall most of the camp had heard the story and had embroidered it, so that we had buried the cook in a trench, beaten him unconscious, or most bizarre of all, that Domino had worked a spell on him.
    Tf only I knew how,' he said. 'We could have saved ourselves the digging.'
    The cook, who sobered up with a thumping head and in a worse temper than usual, couldn't step outside without some soldier winking and poking at him. Finally he came to where I sat with my litde Bible and grabbed me close by the collar.
    'You think you're safe because Bonaparte wants you. You're safe now, but there are years ahead.'
    He pushed me back against the onion sacks and spat in my face. It was a long time before we met again because the Captain had him transferred to the stores outside Boulogne.
    'Forget him,' said Domino when we watched him leave on the back of a cart.
    It's hard to remember that this day will never come again. That the time is now and the place is here and that there are no second chances at a single moment. During the days that Bonaparte stayed in Boulogne there was a feeling of urgency and privilege. He woke before us and slept long after us, going through every detail of our training and rallying us personally. He stretched his hand towards the Channel and made England sound as though she already belonged to us. To each of us. That was his gift. He became the focus of our lives. The thought of fighting excited us. No one wants to be killed but the hardship, the long hours, the cold, the orders were things we would have endured anyway on the farms or in the towns. We were not free men. He made sense out of dullness.
    The ridiculous flat-bottomed barges built in their hundreds took on the certainty ofgalleons. When we putoutto sea, practising for that treacherous twenty-mile crossing, we no longer made jokes about shrimping nets or how these tubs would better serve washerwomen. While he stood on the shore shouting orders we put our faces to the wind and let our hearts go out to him.
    The barges were designed to carry sixty men and it was reckoned that 20,000 of us would be lost on the way over or picked off by the English before we landed. Bonaparte thought them good odds, he was used to losing that number in battle. None of us worried about being one of the 20,000. We hadn't joined up to worry.
    According to his plan, if the French navy could hold the Channel for just six hours, he could land his army and England would be his. It seemed absurdly easy. Nelson himself couldn't outwit us in six hours. We laughed at the English and most of us had plans for our visit there. I particularly wanted to visit the Tower of London because the priest had told me it was full of orphans; bastards of aristocratic descent