by Dudley Pope
“You’re probably right, sir. By a mile, I think.”
“At least a mile. Mr Aitken! Belay that last pipe! Get these forms stowed below, and then you can pipe ‘Hands to dinner.’” With that Ramage strode to the companion-way and went down to his cabin, and Stokes finally bobbed up in the sudden silence, lifted his surplice and scurried below.
Ten minutes later, after Ramage had passed the word for them, Aitken and Southwick reported to his cabin. In answer to Ramage’s wave, Southwick subsided into the single armchair with the contented groan of a man whose back ached and Aitken sat on the settee, very upright at first until he realized this was to be an informal visit, when he leaned back.
“Drunk and a filthy surplice,” Ramage said.
“And smelling like an overworked dray horse, sir,” Aitken added. “The gunroom reeks like a stable.”
“Did either of you notice anything about the sermon?”
“He’s learned it by rote,” Aitken said quickly. “If he’d had to stop, I’ll bet he couldn’t have got started again.”
“Aye, and the sermon had precious little to do with the text he announced,” Southwick added. “He said it was about the trumpet giving an uncertain sound, but even tho’ I’m a free-thinker I’d have sworn it should have been that line about ‘whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.’ I know it well; my father always quoted it, nigh on sixty years ago, when he laid on half a dozen across my buttocks with his belt. I always waited for his trousers to fall down. They never did.”
Both Southwick and Aitken watched Ramage. Southwick had served under him for many years, starting the day the young Lieutenant was given his first command, the Kathleen cutter, by Commodore Nelson. What always struck him was that as an inexperienced young lieutenant or one of the best frigate captains in the Navy today, even though in terms of seniority his name was almost at the bottom of the post list, Mr Ramage was never indecisive. He collected all the facts, seemed to shake them up in a dice cup, and throw the answer across the green baize table. So far it had always been the right answer, with the result that his officers and ship’s company had suffered few casualties in battle and collected a good deal of prize-money.
Southwick had been surprised, when news reached Chatham Dockyard that the Treaty had been signed and Britain was at peace with France, that at least a quarter of the ship’s company had not asked for their discharge. Ships would be paying off by the dozen, and the seamen who had served with Mr Ramage could go home to a tidy pile of money; enough to set up a small business, open a shop in their village, pay for a small house.
While the Captain was in London on leave some had even come to Southwick to discuss it, and as soon as he was back on board many of them had asked to see Mr Ramage, and Southwick knew they were just making sure the Master’s advice was sound. Both Master and Captain, however, had said the same thing: that they thought the peace would be brief and the men risked being hauled back by the press-gang in a year’s time … Neither he nor the Captain had said, in as many words, that there would be no chance of them serving together again. For all that, each man had apparently weighed it up for himself: on one side a year’s leave with money to spend, but ending up fighting another war in another ship, and on the other the wish to serve under Captain Ramage and his officers and with the same shipmates, but at the cost of a year’s liberty.
Southwick disliked tale-bearing and he hated sycophants, but he was in some respects a jealous man: he was jealous of anything concerning his ship and anything concerning his Captain. Jealous or, some might say, protective. He had been thinking about Percy Stokes for some time and this morning’s service had decided him.
“There are one or two things about Stokes, sir. He’s been selling liquor to his servant. Brandy and gin. The servant has been buying it for a crowd of drinkers on the lower-deck. He’s tried to borrow money from Orsini and Kenton against IOUs. Fortunately neither of them have any left.”
Aitken nodded in agreement. “I’d heard about Kenton, but not Orsini. The liquor is a bad business: we’ll be finding seamen drunk on duty in a day or so. Even the best men don’t seem able to control themselves while there’s another tot left in a bottle.”
Ramage listened to the two men and considered what they had reported. He guessed that both men had deliberated for several hours before saying anything and, but for the ludicrous service half an hour ago, might well have tried to deal with the chaplain in their own manner. “Pass the word for the wretched fellow—and stay here: I’ll need witnesses for what I may have to do.”
Stokes arrived still wearing his surplice but almost glassy-eyed: he had obviously been drinking again, but he was nervous, his tongue wetting his protruding teeth like a scullery maid washing a draining board.
Ramage remained sitting beside his desk, the chair sideways so that his right arm rested on the polished top. He inspected Stokes once again, the eyes, the face, the grubby surplice—and the hands, clasped in front of him like an unctuous prelate or a nervous beggar. He thought for a moment of the Chaplain General interviewing Stokes. It must have been a rare event; clerics had never pounded on his door. The Horse Guards was a more popular port of call; for a cleric the mess of a fashionable regiment seemed to Ramage infinitely preferable to the gunroom or wardroom of a ship-of-war. The only advantage of serving in one of the King’s ships was that it took a man out of the country. Ramage suddenly stared at Stokes. If he was wrong, the Chaplain General’s protest to the First Lord would be vociferous, querulous and acidulous. The First Lord would be his usual cryptic self: he would simply order a court martial to be held on Captain the Lord Ramage.
“Ah, Mr Stokes, when you were last here, you said you had never before been in one of the King’s ships.”
“That is correct, sir.”
“But the sea is not unfamiliar to you?”
“Oh yes, indeed, sir; I’m a complete stranger to the sea.”
“To the North Sea?” Ramage asked casually. “To the Irish Sea? To the Marshalsea?”
The knuckles of Stokes’s clasped hands turned white; the man shut his eyes and began to sway, but he was forgetting the height of the beams, and when he raised his head he immediately cracked his brow. His body jerked as though someone had hit him with a cudgel and slowly, like a sack of grain emptying, he subsided to the deck in a faint.
None of the three men moved, but Southwick gave one of his disapproving sniffs. “The Marshalsea—aye, he looks the sort of fellow that’s cruised in that jail more than once!”
“Did he escape or was he released?” Aitken mused. “Or has he been there before and knew his creditors were about to send him back?”
“He’s bolting from his creditors,” Ramage said. “He’s been there before and wasn’t risking another visit. Probably so much in debt he knew that once inside he’d never get out again.”
The Marshalsea Prison was unlike the Bridewell. Thieves, rogues, murderers and vagabonds sentenced by the courts were sent to the Bridewell. But the Marshalsea was reserved for debtors. A creditor could apply for a court order which, if granted, locked a debtor in the Marshalsea and kept him there until the debt was paid.
“It’s the drink,” Aitken said, his voice sombre. “I’m sure his thirst overtook his pocket. But how did he persuade the Admiralty? Is his warrant forged?”
“No, I’m sure it’s genuine enough, though I haven’t inspected it,” Ramage said. “I’m equally sure he’s not a clerk in holy orders—he seemed to be conducting the service as if by rote, and we know about his sermons—ah, he’s recovering: now he can tell us himself!”
Slowly Stokes sat up, a puzzled expression on his face. His head was obviously spinning from the fall; Ramage had the impression it was spinning the other way from the drink.
“I must have fainted,” he mumbled. “It’s the rolling.”
“I should stay there,” Ramage said. “Not so far to fall. Now, you were going to tell us about your cruise in the Marshalsea.”
“I don’t
know what you mean, sir. This is an insult to a man of the cloth—I shall protest to the Chaplain General!”
“We shall not be seeing England again for half a year or more, so your complaint will have to wait. In the meantime, tell me how you obtained a warrant.”
Stokes swallowed and his tongue slid from side to side over the front of his teeth, but his lips were too dry and they stuck on them, giving him a curious, rabbit-like appearance which contrasted with the ferret-like shape of the face.
Ramage said softly: “Stokes, at the moment you are trying to decide whether to attempt to brazen it out, or admit to what amounts to fraud. There are no courts and judges where we are going. I am the judge and jury. I can tell you now that I do not think you are a clerk in holy orders, despite your warrant, and I shall not let you minister to the ship’s company.”
“You could get yourself into a lot of trouble, Mr high and mighty Lord Ramage,” Stokes said viciously.
“Oh yes,” Ramage said, hoping to draw out the man even more, “I could face a court martial; I could be dismissed the service.”
“That’s right; the famous Lord Ramage court-martialled for ill-treating his chaplain. What a scandal that would cause. Be the death of your father, the shame of it.”
“How much did you owe?” Southwick suddenly asked.
“Owe who?” Stokes said sharply.
Ramage said: “Stokes, you are not a clerk in holy orders; you do not even have the education necessary for a sexton, so let us agree on that. I am not really interested in your debts or why you bolted. I’m concerned only with that warrant. You are not entitled to it, but somehow you got it.”
“Ah, frightens you, doesn’t it? You daren’t touch me while I have the warrant. That proves the Admiralty believe me.”
“It’s issued by the Navy Office, not the Admiralty, and it certainly does not prove the Navy Board believe you. Describe the Chaplain General,” Ramage said suddenly.
The question took Stokes completely unawares. “Well, he’s—he’s rather like me. No, perhaps taller. A very nice man; sympathetic, and concerned that the Navy has only the best men as chaplains …”
“What does he look like?” Ramage persisted. “Bald, white hair, grey, black, fifty years old or eighty? Does he walk with a limp? Deep voice or shrill?” He had seen him once at Lord Spencer’s, and like many such clerics who owed their position to patronage, the Chaplain General was portly and pink, but his nose was an object few would forget: it was purple, bulbous and almost incredibly long, like an elephant’s trunk. Also the voice emerging from the bulky cleric was little more than a squeak; not a voice to fill a modest drawing-room, let alone a vast cathedral.
Stokes shrugged his shoulders. As the fainting fit receded in his memory and the word “warrant” obviously took on the role of a talisman, his cunning was returning and with it a shoddy bravado. “Can’t remember; I only saw him for a moment or two.”
“If you saw the Chaplain General only once and at a distance there are things about him you would remember.”
“Well, I don’t, and that’s that.”
“Get up,” Ramage said, the quietness of his voice making both Southwick and Aitken prepare to move swiftly. Stokes, too, realized that there was a change of mood in the cabin. “Take off that surplice.”
“Whoa, my Lord!” Stokes protested, “you can’t give orders like that to a man of the cloth!”
“I know, but you are a vagabond, not a man of the cloth, and I’m not having vagabonds walking about this ship disguised as men of God. Take it off or the Marine sentry will strip you bare.”
Stokes suddenly realized that the quiet voice was a danger signal. Swaying and frightened, he pulled off the surplice and cassock and stood in his underwear, holding them out to Ramage like a peace offering.
“What happened?” Ramage asked.
“When, sir?” Stokes was admitting defeat, but now fright was changing to panic.
“How did you get that warrant?”
“It’s all legal, sir,” the man whined. “I wrote to the Chaplain General applying for a position in one of the King’s ships, and saying I looked forward to visiting foreign countries. I enclosed a recommendation from the Bishop of London and the Dean of Westminster.”
“How did you get them?”
“Oh, that was easy. I knew their names and styles, you see.”
“How did that get you recommendations?” Ramage asked, puzzled by Stokes’s patient explanation of what seemed so obvious to him.
“Well, it means I got all the details right in the letters of recommendation. I write a fair hand and a change of pen is a change of style.”
“Oh, you forged them!”
“Of course, sir,” Stokes said contemptuously. “I got my new name out of a University register, so if anyone looked up Percival Stokes they’d see he had a good degree and was a clerk in holy orders. The Chaplain General was ill and his secretary accepted my letters, and the next thing was an Admiralty messenger delivered my warrant and orders to report to ‘His Majesty’s ship Calypso, frigate.’ And I did.”
“So you are not ‘Percival Stokes’?”
“Not likely!” the man said scornfully. “Percival—what a name. No, the Reverend Percival Stokes lives in Bristol, according to the University register.”
“What’s your name, then? Your real name?”
“Robert Smith.”
“Very well, Robert Smith. What debts are you bolting from?” “Well, there are several,” he admitted.
“Were all your creditors taking you to court?”
“Well, no, only one, but the others would have the minute they heard about it.”
“How large is that one debt?”
“Sixteen pounds.”
Southwick sniffed and Aitken grinned: they could see the way their Captain’s mind was working.
“Listen carefully, Smith. I can stop a ship returning to England and have you landed under an arrest, charged with impersonation, defrauding the Admiralty, and various other things that will put you in the Bridewell—the Bridewell, not the Marshalsea—for several years, and when you’re released your creditors will still be there waiting to pop you in the Marshalsea. Or …”
Smith was now pale and shaking; the perspiration was pouring down his face and he was too panic-stricken to lift a hand to wipe it away. He was watching Ramage, waiting for the next words.
“Or what, sir?” he exclaimed.
“Well, the Navy won’t surrender a seaman for a civil debt of £20 or less. Although we’re now at peace, the wartime laws concerning our seamen still apply. If you want to volunteer for the Navy, you’re free to do so. Sleep on it and tell Mr Southwick tomorrow morning. In the meantime Mr Aitken will tell the purser to issue you with a hammock. Now, clear your gear out of the cabin you’ve been using and get forward!”
Smith almost ran through the door, remembering to keep his head down.
Aitken said: “Not one of the King’s best bargains, sir!”
“No, but it’s got him out of the gunroom.”
“Aye, and for that many thanks, sir.”
“And as soon as we meet another of the King’s ships, we can transfer him.”
Southwick said, “I have to admit I admire the rogue, sir. Fancy forging references from the Bishop of London and the Dean of Westminster! He was lucky the Chaplain General was ill: if there’d been an interview … he doesn’t look much like a chaplain.”
“I’ve seen worse,” Ramage said, “even if they smell fresher, but I admire him, too.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
BECAUSE Ramage hated all the paperwork attached to commanding one of the King’s ships he set aside one complete afternoon a week. On that day his clerk brought him the pile of forms, reports and letters that he had to read or sign—rarely both—and Aitken and Southwick trod carefully, knowing the Captain would be ill-tempered and, so the Master claimed, equipped with a magic shovel that in a couple of seconds could make a mountain out of a molehill
.
He opened the muster book, curious to read the latest entry. Robert Smith was now entered and rated a landman. He was noted down as being 38 years old and born in Peckham, London. The purser had dated the entry the day before the Calypso sailed from Chatham. In that way, Smith would be paid from the day he joined the ship—but at the rate of a landman, not a chaplain. Ironically the pay was about the same; it was the “groats” that lined a chaplain’s pocket.
Closing the muster book, he looked at the muster table, and then at a single sheet of paper which showed all that was known and needed to be known about the ship’s company of the Calypso on her first voyage in peacetime. Ironically the form was still drawn in the usual wartime wording.
There were four “classes” of men—ship’s company, Marines, supernumeraries “victuals and wages” and supernumeraries “victuals only.” Each of these four had then to be placed in one of five categories, “Borne” (which meant carried on the Calypso’s books), “Mustered” (paraded and answering their names as read from the muster book), “Checqued” (not on parade but their presence on board confirmed), “Sick on shore,” and “In prizes.”
So today the Calypso’s ship’s company totalled (“borne”) 211, with 199 mustered and twelve checqued, with none sick on shore or away in prizes. The figure sixteen appeared in the “supernumeraries victuals and wages” column because in addition to the dozen masons and bricklayers, the surveyors and draughtsmen were being paid and fed as part of the ship’s company, while the figure two in the “supernumeraries victuals only” showed that the botanist and the artist were being fed but not paid—the Admiralty or Navy Board had made some private arrangement.
He pushed aside the muster documents and pulled over the Calypso’s log. There were in fact two, one kept by Southwick and referred to as the “Master’s Log,” and his own, known as “the Captain’s Journal.” He had not filled it in since leaving Chatham, and he used Southwick’s times and positions. He filled in the words “Calypso,” “Ramage,” “fourth” and “September” in the blank spaces at the top of the page where it said: “Log of the Proceedings of His Majesty’s ship ______, Captain ______, commander, between the __ day of ____, and the __ day of _____.” The last two spaces were left blank. There were certain superstitions few officers cared to ignore. One was never to write the final date in a log book or journal (they were supposed to be sent to the Admiralty every two months) until it was actually completed, and even though a page equalled a day, and another was not to write in the final entry of a voyage which said “From _____ to _____” until one actually arrived. Life was uncertain enough without teasing fate.