It took Major William Dodd three days to carry the ammunition back to Pohlmann’s compoo which was camped just outside the Mahratta city of Ahmednuggur. The compoo was an infantry brigade of eight battalions, each of them recruited from among the finest mercenary warriors of north India and all trained and commanded by European officers.
Dowlut Rao Scindia, the Maharajah of Gwalior, whose land stretched from the fortress of Baroda in the north to the fastness of Gawilghur in the east and down to Ahmednuggur in the south, boasted that he led a hundred thousand men and that his army could blacken the land like a plague, yet this compoo, with its seven thousand men, was the hard heart of his army.
One of the compoo’s eight battalions was paraded a mile outside the encampment to greet Dodd. The cavalry that had accompanied the sepoys to Chasalgaon had ridden ahead to warn Pohlmann of Dodd’s return and Pohlmann had organized a triumphant reception. The battalion stood in white coats, their black belts and weapons gleaming, but Dodd, riding at the head of his small column, had eyes only for the tall elephant that stood beside a yellow-and-white-striped marquee. The huge beast glittered in the sunlight, for its body and head were armoured with a vast leather cape onto which squares of silver had been sewn in intricate patterns. The silver covered the elephant’s body, continued across its face and then, all but for two circles that had been cut for its eyes, cascaded on down the length of its trunk. Gems gleamed between the silver plates while ribbons of purple silk fluttered from the crown of the animal’s head. The last few inches of the animal’s big curved tusks were sheathed in silver, though the actual points of the tusks were tipped with needle-sharp points of steel. The elephant driver, the mahout, sweated in a coat of old-fashioned chain mail that had been burnished to the same gleaming polish as his animal’s silver armour, while behind him was a howdah made of cedar wood on which gold panels had been nailed and above which fluttered a fringed canopy of yellow silk. Long files of purple-jacketed infantrymen stood to attention on either flank of the elephant. Some of the men carried muskets, while others had long pikes with their broad blades polished to resemble silver.
The elephant knelt when Dodd came within twenty paces and the occupant of the howdah stepped carefully down onto a set of silver-plated steps placed there by one of his purple-coated bodyguards then strolled into the shade of the striped marquee. He was a European, a tall man and big, not fat, and though a casual glance might think him overweight, a second glance would see that most of that weight was solid muscle. He had a round sun-reddened face, big black moustaches and eyes that seemed to take delight in everything he saw. His uniform was of his own devising: white silk breeches tucked into English riding boots, a green coat festooned with gold lace and aiguillettes and, on the coat’s broad shoulders, thick white silk cushions hung with short golden chains. The coat had scarlet facings and loops of scarlet braid about its turned-back cuffs and gilded buttons. The big man’s hat was a bicorne crested with purple-dyed feathers held in place by a badge showing the white horse of Hanover; his sword’s hilt was made of gold fashioned into the shape of an elephant’s head, and gold rings glinted on his big fingers. Once in the shade of the open-sided marquee he settled himself on a divan where his aides gathered about him. This was Colonel Anthony Pohlmann and he commanded the compoo, together with five hundred cavalry and twenty-six field guns. Ten years before, when Scindia’s army had been nothing but a horde of ragged troopers on half-starved horses, Anthony Pohlmann had been a sergeant in a Hanoverian regiment of the East India Company; now he rode an elephant and needed two other beasts to carry the chests off gold coin that travelled everywhere with him.
Pohlmann stood as Dodd climbed down from his horse.
“Well done, Major!” the Colonel called in his German-accented English.