After meeting the officers, who seemed to him a wholesome lot, Hervey took Maclean aside and told him confidentially what might be their predicament. They both wore the Waterloo Medal, and between men who’d been at Waterloo there could be extra trust.

Maclean listened in silence. He might only lately have been promoted, but long years’ soldiering, much of it in India, had formed his opinion. When Hervey was finished, Maclean inclined his head and said, ‘Well, for my own part, I am not dismayed. We were barely two hundred at Campo Maior and beat three times the number of French. These Pindaree horse, they won’t stand the charge. For that’s evidently what these Chintal devils are, fugitives of fugitives. If this Ashok intends using them to cover Chintalpore while he and his hoplites make a fortress of the city, then he’ll go the way of Bhurtpore.’

Hervey was heartened by the Highland resolution, but cautious yet. ‘We must hope he does, but if, as I say, his Swiss friends have trained his men to manoeuvre in the open, then we shall be sore pressed. That said, if they can be induced to attack …’

‘That would be to break with practice.’

‘But if they could be …’

‘Then we’ll drive them back.’

Maclean smiled, and Hervey knew why. The regiment still cherished Lord Hill’s order at Waterloo when the Imperial Guard tried to force the line: ‘Drive them back, Thirteenth!’, for it was punctually obeyed.

‘And so, we may take heart that whatever may be, you and I will do our duty.’

‘Just so, General. Shall you dine with us this evening? I’ve sent word already for your officers.’

‘I beg you would forgive me. I’ve despatches to attend to, which must go at dawn. Tomorrow, though, I’d be delighted.’

They parted with warm handshakes, Hervey much fortified. There was always comfort in Cromwell’s ‘A few honest men are better than numbers’, and the assurance of Ecclesiastes that the race was not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong (even if in practice it usually was).

He’d intended returning at once to quarters, but, spirits high, he thought instead to ride over to the camp of the other, if much bracketed, ‘Thirteenth’: the 13th (1st Somersetshire) Regiment (Light Infantry).

It was not, in truth, a prospect that pleased him as much as Maclean’s Thirteenth, for the Somersetshires had of late acquired a tempestuous reputation. He’d known them in Ava, where their colonel, Robert Sale, ‘Fighting Bob’, was grievously wounded. They’d been in garrison at Agra for the past three years. It wasn’t in the Madras presidency (nor soon would it be in Bengal when the fourth presidency, of Agra itself, was created), but news of ‘tempest’ always travelled post in India.

The trouble appeared to have begun in their previous station, Dinapore, where in four years they’d lost some four hundred men, women and children through sickness and the like – not a shot fired – and too from the measures that ‘Fighting Bob’ had taken to improve discipline. Drink, evidently, and as ever, lay at the root of much of it, but inspecting officers had also made mention of the high number of courts martial and solitary confinements – if also of the attempts at reward for good conduct. The adjutant had even begun a temperance movement (with ‘Fighting Bob’ himself taking the pledge, so the stories went), getting himself made Baptist preacher, distributing bibles and even building a chapel. This, according to the hircarrahs of military gossip, had been all very well until the major succeeded to command, for Colonel Dennie made his priority not the flattering of soldiers into virtue, but bullying them out of vice. Not only had the courts martial increased, he’d authorized certain non-commissioned officers to administer corporal punishment – ‘summary justice’ as he called it – without informing the company commanders.