“I want to twist their tails, and I need every European officer nodding like a demented monkey in agreement with me.”
A hundred men had gathered under the dripping silk. Scindia, the Maharajah of Gwalior, and Bhonsla, the Rajah of Berar, sat on musnuds, elegant raised platform-thrones that were draped in brocade and sheltered from the intrusive rain by silk parasols. Their Highnesses were cooled by men waving long-handled fans while the rest of the durbar sweltered in the close, damp heat. The high-class brahmins, all in baggy trousers cut from gold brocade, white tunics and tall white turbans, sat closest to the two thrones, while behind them stood the military officers, Indian and European, who were perspiring in their finest uniforms. Servants moved unobtrusively through the crowd offering silver dishes of almonds, sweetmeats or raisins soaked in arrack. The three senior European officers stood together. Pohlmann, in a purple coat hung with golden braid and loops of chain, towered over Colonel Dupont, a wiry Dutchman who commanded Scindia’s second compoo, and over Colonel Saleur, a Frenchman, who led the infantry of the Begum Somroo. Dodd lingered just behind the trio and listened to their private durbar. The three men agreed that their troops would have to take the brunt of the British attack, and that one of them must exercise overall command. It could not be Saleur, for the Begum Somroo was a client ruler of Scindia’s, so her commander could hardly take precedence over her feudal overlord’s officers, which meant that it had to be either Dupont or Pohlmann, but the Dutchman generously ceded the honour to the Hanoverian.
“Scindia would have chosen you anyway,” Dupont said.
“Wisely,” Pohlmann said cheerfully, ‘very wisely. You’re content, Saleur?”
“Indeed,” the Frenchman said. He was a tall, dour man with a badly scarred face and a formidable reputation as a disciplinarian. He was also reputed to be the Begum Somroo’s lover, a post that evidently accompanied the command of that lady’s infantry.
“What are the bastards talking about now?” he asked in English.
Pohlmann listened for a few seconds.
“Discussing whether to retreat to Gawilghur,” he said. Gawilghur was a hill fort that lay north and east of Borkardan and a group of brahmins were urging the army to retire there and let the British break their skulls against its cliffs and high walls.
“Goddamn brahmins,” Pohlmann said in disgust.
“Don’t know a damn thing about soldiering. Know how to talk, but not how to fight.”
But then an older brahmin, his white beard reaching to his waist, stood up and declared that the omens were more suitable for battle.
“You have assembled a great army, dread Lord,” he addressed Scindia, ‘and you would lock it away in a citadel?”
“Where did they find him?” Pohlmann muttered.
“He’s actually talking sense!”
Scindia said little, preferring to let Surjee Rao, his chief minister, do the talking, while he himself sat plump and inscrutable on his throne.
He was wearing a rich gown of yellow silk that had emeralds and pearls sewn into patterns of flowers, while a great yellow diamond gleamed from his pale-blue turban.
Another brahmin pleaded for the army to march south on Seringapatam, but he was ignored. The Rajah of Berar, darker-skinned than the pale Scindia, frowned at the durbar in an attempt to look warlike, but said very little.
“He’ll run away,” Colonel Saleur growled, ‘as soon as the first gun is fired. He always does.”
Beny Singh, the Rajah’s warlord, argued for battle.
“I have five hundred camels laden with rockets, I have guns fresh from Agra, I have infantry hungry for enemy blood. Let them loose!”
“God help us if we do,” Dupont growled.
“Bastards don’t have any discipline.”
“Is it always like this?,” Dodd asked Pohlmann.
“Good God, no!” the Hanoverian said.
“This durbar is positively decisive!
Usually it’s three days of talk and a final decision to delay any decision until the next time.”
“You think they’ll come to a decision today?” Saleur asked cynically.
“They’ll have to,” Pohlmann said.
“They can’t keep this army together for much longer. We’re running out of forage! We’re stripping the country bare.” The soldiers were still receiving just enough to eat, and the cavalrymen made certain their horses were fed, but the camp followers were near starvation and in a few days the suffering of the women and children would cause the army’s morale to plummet. Only that morning Pohlmann had seen a woman sawing at what he had assumed was brown bread, then realized that no Indian would bake a European loaf and that the great lump was actually a piece of elephant dung and that the woman was crumbling it apart in search of undigested grains. They must fight now.