In camp she joined the officers and, seated on a flour sack, ate curry with her fingers, watched by risaldars and subhadars from every unit in the force. ‘They will not eat with Europeans,’ Amaury explained, ‘but they like to be invited to the mess.’ Wrangham looked disapproving - ‘infernally irregular, not Company style at all!’ - and was seriously distressed by a dearth of wine at dinner. ‘No room in the carts for booze,’ said Amaury laconically. At nightfall Caroline retired to a narrow cot in her tent; the others slept on the ground, using saddles for their pillows and blankets for a mattress.
On the sixth day’s march Amaury reappeared as the army neared its camp site for the night. He gave two creaking bullock carts to Vedvyas’s charge and jingled with his Rahtors to the van. Todd greeted him suspiciously. ‘Where the deuce have you been, Hugo? You took no transport - whence the carts?’
Amaury swigged from a waterskin and wiped his mouth. ‘A trifle needing attention. In a village over there’ - he gestured vaguely to the landscape - ‘a mirasdar collects the Bhonsla’s taxes. I have - um - relieved his burden: seventy thousand rupees.’ Wrangham gobbled like a turkey-cock. ‘You march to encounter an army, and go on a pillaging raid? Heaven bless my soul - what damned impudence!’
‘I am compelled to differ, sir. 'Why should warfare hamper a fellow’s efforts to earn his living?’
Wrangham said despairingly, ‘I connive at highway robbery. Pray God Lord Clive never hears!’
General Beat was at one in the morning; the force moved out in darkness, leaving the baggage train encamped, protected by najibs. They halted, three hours later, in the false dawn’s ghostly radiance. The brigade formed line from column; Welladvice positioned his gun teams, eight on either flank; cavalry held the wings. Officers dressed ranks; the army then advanced in one long line. Nobody spoke, no orders were given. Marching feet and thudding hooves and the rattle of wheels and wagons hammered loud as anvils in the dark. Amaury, flitting from wing to wing, twice halted the line and straightened the dressing. A silvery dawnlight washed the sky, trees like ash-grey puffs of smoke floated on the plain, a man could see the grass clumps underfoot.
Black angular shapes on a bleached horizon - walls and towers and rooftops looming nearer at every step.
Amaury’s trumpeter sounded Halt, piercing like a clanging sword the cavity of silence. Guns unlimbered into action, sabres rasped from cavalry scabbards, the infantry fixed bayonets.
A sleepy watchman above the gate rubbed gummy eyes and stared, brandished a spear and shouted. The town awoke. Men clustered on the battlements, yelling and gesticulating, and surveyed in frightened disbelief the menace that had risen like a steel-fanged dragon from the night: a long blue line of bayonets three hundred yards away, the muzzles of sixteen cannon and cavalry sabres glinting in the leaden light of dawn.
Amaury advanced within hailing distance and cupped his hands. ‘Umree Sahib of Dharia would parley with the headman!’
Commotion on the walls, and beckoning and calling. A man leaning from the battlements bellowed a reply. Amaury dismounted, looped Hannibal’s rein on his arm, sent away his trumpeter and orderly. ‘Come out and speak!’ he called. ‘I promise you are safe.’
He stood within musket range, vulnerable to a well aimed ball - and matchlocks peeped from loopholes. Welladvice growled beneath his breath; Todd shifted uneasily in the saddle and glanced along the ranks behind his horse’s tail. Neither firelocks nor guns were loaded. Amaury leaned on his scabbarded sword, and idly considered the fleecy shoals of a sky the sunrise flushed vermilion.
A postern opened in the gate; a deputation cautiously approached. The leader, a gaunt Hindoo, face pitted by smallpox scars, salaamed and said in quavering tones, ‘I offer ransom, sahib - a lac of rupees if you spare the town.’
Amaury moistened his lips - how sad that he had to refuse! - and said firmly, ‘I come in peace, and intend no harm. I seek neither ransom nor booty, and desire only shelter for my men. Have I leave to enter?’
The man looked over Amaury’s shoulder, scanned the silent ranks, the cannon wheel to wheel, and swallowed spittle. ‘We cannot oppose you. Kohlabad is not a fortress, able to withstand an army with guns. If we open the gates, can you swear your soldiers will do no hurt?’
‘You have heard of me, I think?’
The man nodded vigorously. ‘Umree Sahib Bahadur. Who in Berar has not?’
‘Then you know my word is sure. I promise not a finger will be laid on man or woman or child, not an anna will be taken from your people.’
The headman shot a glance at the gleaming bayonets and looked at Amaury keenly. ‘It is enough, sahib.’ He turned to his companions. ‘Open the gates!’
Amaury remounted, rode leisurely back to Todd. ‘Take in a battalion, secure the gate and bastions. Rest the remainder under arms outside the walls. Send a galloper to Vedvyas - tell him to bring the baggage.’ He pointed to the town, and chuckled. ‘That is Kohlabad, our base - won without firing a shot!’
He repeated his orders to Welladvice, and saw among the bullock teams and limbers in the rear a flustered-looking Anstruther beside a slim blue-coated figure astride an Arab mare. Amaury rammed in spurs, and reined in a scurry of dust.
‘What the devil are you doing here?’
‘I could not stop her, sir!’ Anstruther gabbled. ‘She slipped away and followed the march all night. What could I do but--’
‘Your conduct, Miss Wrangham, is intolerable!’ Amaury barked. ‘Have you no thought for your safety?’
‘You see me safe enough, sir.’ Caroline’s expression showed nothing but candid innocence. ‘I cannot recall you ever forbade me coming!’
Amaury held her gaze. Caroline blushed, and dropped her eyes. A reluctant grin spread over his face.
‘Vixen!’ he observed.
Vedvyas brought up the transport; najibs relieved the town’s Jat garrison; and Amaury promised disembowelment to any man caught thieving. Hircarrahs went scouting widely and reported no signs of the enemy. Amaury withdrew them at sundown; and the army camped in the open.
Kohlabad’s mud-brick; walls enclosed a space of a hundred acres crowded by lofty buildings which, on the outer fringes, overtopped the battlements. Amaury had never intended to quarter his army inside; so at dawn next day every available fighting-man and follower, and labourers impressed from the town, began cutting trees and cactus and piling them round the camp at Kohlabad’s northwest comer. Two days’ gruelling work produced a formidable abattis four feet high and twenty thick, tree trunks roped together with branches pointing outwards, all faced by cactus thorn: a huge three-sided redoubt which the town wall closed on the fourth. In emplacements carved in the barrier he mounted four six-pounders which covered all approaches.
Hircarrahs, meanwhile, made no contacts; but a message from Amaury’s Nagpur spies, forwarded by galloper from Dharia, reported the Bhonsla’s army on the move.
‘He still has to find us,’ Amaury observed. Armies could wander for days in that roadless, unmapped country, moving little faster than two miles in the hour, groping for the enemy like blindfolded hide and seek. ‘The village I sacked in passing will surely send him word.’ He gave Wrangham a twinkling glance. ‘Loot was not the only motive for that excursion, sir. I had to advertise my presence. If we linger for long undiscovered our supplies will be running short.’
While the redoubt was being constructed Amaury took his officers to examine the surrounds. Deep dry watercourses tangled the land on Kohlabad’s southern side: precipitous clefts impassable for wheels. ‘Nature has secured this approach,’ he said. ‘No commander will launch an attack where he can’t advance his guns. Nor is this the direction - unless he completely loses his way - whence the enemy will come. Nagpur lies one hundred miles to the north; from somewhere in that quarter he will blunder upon our position.’
Bushes and infrequent trees spattered a wide flat plain which unrolled like a rumpled tarpaulin for a mile to the north of the town, and slanted to a crest wh
ich hid the ground beyond. ‘This,’ said Amaury, ‘is the killing ground.’ The reconnaissance party trudged to the crest, a rounded ridge five hundred yards in length. The crest was a sandy outcrop, spreading down the farther slope a tawny apron a half mile long. Amaury stamped; his foot sank deep in sand. ‘A cushion for roundshot and a hindrance to enemy gun-wheels. Here, Henry, you will fight your battle.’
Early next morning hircarrahs galloped in and reported the Bhonsla’s cavalry screen six miles away. They brought into the redoubt a captured scout, a frightened Maratha on a rack-ribbed, shaggy pony. Convinced that any obstinacy ensured a lingering death the horseman eagerly answered Amaury’s questions. Yes - Berar had sent a mighty army, numerous as cornstalks in a field, a hundred thousand soldiers and cannon beyond counting. No - Raghujee Bhonsla remained in Nagpur; his nephew Vithujee Rao commanded this unconquerable force.
‘His estimate is valueless,’ Amaury commented. ‘The Bhonsla, at the most, can field fifty thousand men; and I doubt he sends his entire host to destroy a brigand’s nest. But Vithujee--’ Pensively he smoothed his beard. ‘A lucky stroke. Major Royds, before his unhappy end, once catalogued for me the Bhonsla’s generals. Vithujee, he swore, is uncommonly incompetent!’
Todd, dancing with impatience, said, ‘We must post the men in battle stations directly!’
Amaury, finishing a belated breakfast, licked his fingers clean and glanced at the sun. The routine of an army encamped thrummed in the thronged redoubt: muskets like shank-legged tripods piled in rows, sepoys cleaning equipment, troopers wisping horses, cannon in the gun park a serried line of cylinders, bullock carts hub to hub, shafts cocked like forking fingers, baggage mounds and forage bales and unremitting babel from the followers’ crowded enclave.
‘Nearly noon. No hurry, Henry. Vithujee has found us but he is still a long way off. He must pitch his camp, gather his stragglers, find water and forage. He will not attack today.’
Messengers were sent to recall animals from the grazing grounds. In mid-afternoon the hircarrahs, hastily retiring, reported the enemy making camp four miles away. Stray Maratha horsemen speckled the plain and galloped closer to the town.
‘A monstrous nuisance,’ Amaury drawled. ‘I wish to observe their camp. Pray discourage them, Mr Welladvice!’
Emplaced six-pounders fired a salvo; a lucky shot flung a rider grovelling. His companions whirled about and disappeared beyond the ridge. Amaury sent for his horse.
‘You venture out alone, sir?’ Wrangham protested. ‘ ‘Tis singularly rash - why not take an escort?’
‘Hannibal has the legs of any horse in Berar.’ Amaury patted the stallion’s glossy neck. ‘I cannot say as much for the Rahtors’ mounts - so why risk valuable horseflesh and irreplaceable men?’
Caroline ran to his stirrup and gripped his knee. ‘This is madness! Who will replace you, Captain Amaury, should you be killed?’
Distress and consternation stood plainly in her eyes - and something more which Amaury read as plainly. He suppressed a sudden elation, and said, ‘I vow there is no danger. You will see me again before dusk.’
He rode through the redoubt’s one entrance, a narrow gap where wall and abattis met, closed by a movable hurdle of logs. At a steady trot he crossed the plain, mounted the ridge and descended the slope. On firmer ground beyond the sand he reined beneath a tree and lifted a spyglass. The Maratha camp jumped into his vision: a rambling caravanserai scattered over an area two miles square.
In the centre towered a vast pavilion, a gaudy affair striped green and red, nudged by lesser marquees and kitchens, canvas-walled. Tents in orderly rows marked the Bhonsla’s regular infantry; elsewhere they were pitched haphazard, dotting the ground like toadstools. Away to the left were horses in mass, constantly in movement, stirring like a wind-whipped sea as every rider sought his picketing place for the night. Drovers herded cattle out to graze, followers milled round wells, smoke spiralled from a hundred cooking fires. People, carts and animals scurried among the tents; a noise like the gale of a gathering storm carried to Amaury’s ears.
The cannon were grouped in a gun park. Amaury focused his glass. Six-, nine-, twelve-pounders, even a brace of elephant twenty-fours. He rode the encampment’s frontage end to end, pausing frequently to study details through his glass. Nowhere was a gun deployed to defend the camp, nowhere did he see vedettes or pickets posted. Vithujee went to war like a sovereign on progress through a calm, submissive kingdom.
Amaury snapped his spyglass shut and stroked his horse’s mane. He reckoned the Marathas had six thousand indisciplined cavalry, eight regular battalions, six or seven thousand irregular infantry levies and forty-odd guns: some twenty thousand men in all. The odds were eight to one. Should he launch a surprise attack on the unprotected camp - a dawn affair preceded by a four-mile march at night? He considered the imponderables: crossing country strange to his men, losing direction, dragging guns across the sand tract - all the possible delays which might leave him, when the sun rose, caught in the open far from the camp, with the enemy fully alerted.
Amaury dismissed the notion, and walked Hannibal back to the town.
Against the abattis’ inner face Vedvyas had piled barley sacks to form a walled enclosure where the Europeans found some privacy and shade from the afternoon sun. Here he collected his native officers and described his estimation of Maratha strength and composition. ‘Their cavalry and irregular foot attack in disorganized mobs: you will have to contend only with the men in front - the rest can’t influence a battle one way or the other. The regular battalions, French-trained and thoroughly disciplined, are a different proposition; and the guns they bring into action will probably be well served.’
Amaury dumped pebbles on the ground, named one as Kohlabad, nudged another close to it and called it the redoubt, placed a crossbelt to represent the ridge, a cartridge pouch for the enemy camp. ‘We march an hour from dawn. The First and Second battalions will occupy the sand ridge, eight six-pounders in support - bullock-guns, Mr Welladvice. Henry, you will command this force: my pivot of manoeuvre.’
Amaury touched a pebble. ‘To repulse attempted escalades the najibs man Kohlabad’s walls. Here in the redoubt will be half the Third battalion and four six-pounder guns. Redoubt and town together form my secure base, and must be held at every cost.’
Serious brown faces listened gravely. Amaury traced a squiggle on the ground. ‘The rest of the Third battalion, the cavalry and galloper guns will assemble at this point, midway between the ridge and Kohlabad. This, my mass of manoeuvre, I shall command in person.’
General Wrangham made choking noises. ‘I cannot have understood you, sir - my mastery of Hindi is somewhat superficial. Four companies, four guns and ninety troopers - is that your mass of manoeuvre?’
‘Indeed, Sir John.’ Amaury looked surprised. ‘Sufficient, I assure you, for the purpose.’
‘God save us!’ The general seemed utterly bewildered. ‘I fear you must be driven helter-skelter on the town, the enemy closely following. You will need a cool intelligence directing our defences. Will you permit me, sir, to command the redoubt?’
Amaury bowed. ‘Willingly, Sir John.’ He smiled wickedly. ‘I shall use every endeavour to prevent the shocking news from reaching Lord Clive in Madras!’
He dismissed the native officers, stretched supine on a blanket and clasped hands behind his head. The sun had gone; darkness like an indigo screen climbed from the eastern skyline. Caroline left her tent and sat beside him. She wore loose cotton trousers, white silk shirt and cravat; a slender, boylike beauty all in white.
‘You have rattled the box, Captain Amaury, and tomorrow you cast the dice. What happens to me, should the throw be nothing but deuces?’
Amaury raised himself on an elbow, studied her face in the failing light, and saw not a trace of fear. He took her hand, and tenderly caressed her fingers one by one.
‘I could say, Miss Wrangham, you have no one but yourself to blame for tumbling into this
pickle. However, ’tis done, and the fault is partly mine. I might easily have stopped you.’ He frowned and shook his head, in the manner of a man who seeks the key to a conundrum. ‘My complaisance quite dumbfounds me - is there no one can resist you?’
‘You, sir, for two long years.’ She saw his startled expression, and added hastily, ‘I pray you find me a pistol. If your battle goes awry I must not be left defenceless.’
Amaury regarded her sombrely. ‘The ball intended for yourself, Miss Wrangham, at the last? Unduly pessimistic - the Marathas, I assure you, are already good as beat.’
‘War is a chancy business, sir.’
‘You lack faith in my ability. However, to relieve your mind...’ Amaury drew two small pistols from his sash. ‘Over and under pocket pistols - Furber’s best. Keep them in your lappet pockets. There - four shots in your locker! Richard, pray come here.’ Seated round a lantern - night had fallen like a cloak on the transient Indian twilight - Amaury gave the couple his instructions, tapping forefinger on palm to emphasize each point. Their horses, saddled at dawn, must be stationed near the entrance to the redoubt. ‘Watch my own contingent - nothing else. If you see it overrun then get out fast. Go like the devil for Hyderabad state, three days’ ride due south. Do you understand?’
Anstruther moistened his lips. ‘As a subordinate officer, sir, I have to obey you - but it is an odious direction! I protest you consign me to a disgraceful--’
‘Not really.’ Amaury yawned and stretched his arms. ‘In truth I waste my breath: tomorrow night you will sleep in Vithujee’s pavilion, covered by silken sheets and lapped in downy mattresses!’
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