“Good God,” the Colonel said again, then hurried to follow Wellesley south. The enemy had stolen a march, the redcoats had journeyed all night and were bone tired, but Wellesley would have his bat de
CHAPTER 9
“There!” Dodd said, pointing.
“I can’t see,” Simone Joubert complained.
“Drop the telescope, use your naked eye, Madame. There! It’s flashing.”
“Where?”
“There!” Dodd pointed again.
“Across the river. Three trees, low hill.”
“Ah!” Simone at last saw the flash of reflected sunlight from the lens of a telescope that was being used on the far bank of the river and well downstream from where Dodd’s Cobras held the left of Pohlmann’s line.
Simone and her husband had dined with the Major who was grimly happy in anticipation of a British attack which, he claimed, must inevitably fall hardest on his Cobras.
“It will be slaughter, Ma’am,” Dodd said wolfishly, ‘sheer slaughter!” He and Captain Joubert had walked Simone to the edge of the bluff above the Kaitna and shown her the fords, and demonstrated how any men crossing the fords must be caught in the mangling crossfire of the Mahratta cannon, then maintained that the British had no option but to walk forward into that weltering onslaught of canister, round shot and shell.
“If you wish to stay and watch, Madame,” Dodd had offered, “I can find a place of safety for you.” He gestured towards a low rise of ground just behind the regiment.
“You could watch from there, and I credit no British soldier will come near you.”
“I could not bear to watch a slaughter, Major,” Simone had said feelingly.
“Your squeamishness does you credit, Ma’am,” Dodd had answered.
“War is man’s work.” It was then that Dodd had spotted the British soldiers on the opposite bank and had trained his telescope on the distant men. Simone, knowing now where to look, rested the glass on her husband’s shoulder and trained its lens on the far hill. She could see two men there, one in a cocked hat and the other in a shako. Both were keeping low.
“Why are they so far down the river?” she asked.
“They’re looking for a way round our flank,” Dodd said.
“Is there one?”
“No. They must cross here, Ma’am, or else they don’t cross at all.”
Dodd gestured at the fords in front of the compoo. A band of cavalrymen was galloping through the shallow water, spraying silver from their horses’ hooves as they crossed to the Kaitna’s south bank.
“And those horsemen,” Dodd explained, ‘are going to see whether they will cross or not.”
Simone collapsed the telescope and handed it back to the Major.
“They might not attack?”
“They won’t,” her husband answered in English for Dodd’s benefit.
“They have too much sense.”
“Boy Wellesley don’t have sense,” Dodd said scathingly.
“Look how he attacked at Ahmednuggur? Straight at the wall! A hundred rupees says he will attack.”
Captain Joubert shook his head. ‘I do not gamble, Major.”
“A soldier should relish risk,” Dodd said.
“And if they don’t cross,” Simone asked, ‘there is no battle?”
“There’ll be a battle, Ma’am,” Dodd said grimly.
“Pohlmann’s gone to fetch Scindia’s permission for us to cross the river. If they won’t come to us, we’ll go to them.”
Pohlmann had indeed gone to find Scindia. The Hanoverian had dressed for battle, donning his finest coat, which was a blue silk jacket, trimmed in scarlet and decorated with loops of gold braid and black aiguillettes. He wore a white silk sash on which was blazoned a star of diamonds and from which hung a gold-hiked sword, though Dupont, the Dutchman, who accompanied Pohlmann to meet Scindia, noted that the Colonel’s breeches and boots were old and shabby.
“I wear them for luck,” Pohlmann said, noting Dupont’s puzzled glance at his decrepit breeches.
“They’re from my old East India Company uniform.” The Hanoverian was in a fine mood. His short march eastwards had achieved all he had desired, for it had brought one of the two small British armies into his lap while it was still far away from the other.
All he needed to do now was snap it up like a minnow, then march on Stevenson’s force, but Scindia had been insistent that no infantry were to cross the Kaitna’s fords without his permission and Pohlmann now needed that permission. The Hanoverian did not plan to cross immediately, for first he wanted to be certain that the British were retreating, but nor did he wish to wait for permission once he heard news of the enemy’s withdrawal.