Arthur pointed at the bedroll. In the corner was a stencil: Property of the East India Company. ‘Since they belong to the Company the Company can pay for the replacements. See to it. Now, please.’

The quartermaster puffed out his cheeks and shook his head, but Arthur glared at him, daring him to make any further protest, and the man turned away and walked stiffly back towards headquarters.Arthur smiled as he watched him leave, then turned and saw that the two soldiers were grinning at him.

He frowned. ‘What are you standing there for? Get that bedroll up and burn the damned thing before anyone catches anything from it.’

‘Yes, sir!’ The soldiers bent to their task at once, lifting the spoiled bedroll by the ends and carrying it over to the blaze before tossing it on to the pyre. There was a faint pop and crack as the lice started to burst in the flames.

The next day, Arthur began to drill his men in earnest. The Governor General’s hint that the regiment would soon be seeing action was at the front of Arthur’s mind as he watched the sergeants and officers putting the 33rd through its paces over the following weeks.

Sir John made sure that the newly arrived colonel was introduced to Calcutta society, such as it was, as soon as possible. Calcutta was as wild a town as Dublin; the officers drank and gambled to even greater excess than any of the young swells that Arthur had known at the castle. He did his best to partake of the social life of the small European community of Calcutta, and drank with the officers in moderation, but he tended to withdraw from their company once the high jinks began, as befitted a man with his senior rank.

The officers were not accommodated in the barracks and had to look to their own resources to find accommodation in the better housing that had grown up close to the fort, on raised ground overlooking the teeming ramshackle sprawl of Calcutta. While the junior officers shared chummeries, Arthur rented a one-storey building with a wide veranda running around it: what the locals referred to as a bungalow. It was far finer than anything he could have hired in Dublin for the same price, and it overlooked a neat garden planted with mango trees and enclosed in a white-washed wall. Often, when the day’s duties were complete, Arthur sat on his veranda and wrote letters to Kitty describing his new life in India, and his longing to return to her as soon as he could. Even though it might be in several years’ time, he assured her of his undying love and urged her to write to him as often as possible.