Ramage and the Guillotine r-6

by Dudley Pope

  He sat up suddenly, as if physical movement would ease the tension, and Stafford glanced round. 'You all right, sir?' he asked anxiously, seeing Ramage's expression.

  Keep the ship's company cheerful, Ramage told himself; don't alarm Stafford, who has the most dangerous job. A confident man succeeds where a nervous man is bound to fail. At that moment there was a double tap on the door and Louis came in, a ribald greeting on his lips for the benefit of anyone outside. He shut the door carefully and grinned.

  'Was your tour of Amiens successful?'

  'Interesting - we weren't doing anything in particular!'

  'Visiting the Cathedral, talking to a man suspected of being an anti-Revolutionary, having lunch in a café frequented by agents of the Church ...'

  'We were being watched, then?' Ramage asked ruefully.

  Louis shrugged his shoulders and continued speaking in French. 'No more than any other strangers walking round the city. The gendarmes are at every corner solely to keep an eye on everyone, and they report before they go off duty.'

  'How do you know what they reported?' Ramage asked curiously.

  'I have friends,' the Frenchman said with a wink. 'But don't worry, no one suspects you. As soon as you both left the Cathedral, the gendarmes checked that you were staying here and that your papers were in order. I'm only telling you so that you have an idea of how these people work. You are not used to a country where everyone is a potential spy, and where some men make a good living by acting as police informers.'

  He sat down at the table and reached for the wine bottle. 'Well, our friend the lieutenant has arrived.'

  'We heard him go to his room. He's still there,' Ramage added gloomily. 'I've just realized he may have his supper there, too.'

  ‘That would have made it difficult for Stafford, eh?'

  'Of course it would - and may,' Ramage said sharply, irritated by the Frenchman's bantering tone.

  'On the contrary,' Louis said cheerfully. 'Instead of the lieutenant eating in his room and we eating in ours, you and I will be eating downstairs at the same table. You'll be able to meet the lieutenant - and the landlord's pretty daughter. Who knows, you might make the lieutenant jealous!'

  The Frenchman thought of everything. Ramage was both relieved and yet irritated: he hated being in another man's hands. He had commanded his own ship for too many years to like having the initiative taken out of his own hands. In the past he had received his orders and was accustomed to the brief nod of acknowledgment when he succeeded and had always been ready for the blame if he failed. But here in France, here on enemy soil, his world was turned upside down.

  He had his orders, yes, and damnably difficult orders they were. Putting the success of his arrival in France in the hands of a smuggler - yes, that was unavoidable and had been anticipated by Lord Nelson. But being in the hands of another smuggler, a Frenchman into the bargain, for the rest of the operation: how could he ever explain that to His Lordship? Damnation, it was as much as he could do to accept it himself, even though he had absolutely no choice if he was to succeed. Well, success would be its own justification, and (he gave an involuntary shiver) if he failed the guillotine would make any explanations on his part not only unnecessary but impossible: the Admiralty would never know if it was the fault of Lieutenant Ramage, the First Consul or the fourth gendarme in the back row.

  An orchestra! He grasped at the idea but knew it was a straw. Louis, Dyson, the two seamen, Stafford and himself - they were an orchestra, and unless he accepted the fact he would make his life a misery. Louis's part was making sure they did the right things in France; Stafford dealt with that part which - he could not suppress a grin - would land him in jail in London; Dyson and the two seamen looked after communications; and himself — well, he was the conductor. He waved his baton, having made sure everyone was playing the same music, and generally kept an eye on the whole thing, hoping no one would blow a wrong note or drop his instrument with a loud bang.

  For a few moments he felt better; then he found himself thinking once again that it was not a nightmare; he really was sitting in a room at the Hotel de la Poste in Amiens with a French smuggler and a Cockney picklock: on their efforts, cunning and skill might depend whether or not the British Government would know in good time if Bonaparte's invasion plans were propaganda - a gigantic bluff intended to tie down Britain's Channel Fleet - or a vast operation which would go into action in a matter of weeks, if not days. And which, he told himself coldly in an attempt to drive out the fears, could result in the French Army of England becoming the Army ot Occupation. If life in Boulogne and Amiens were examples of what the new France did to its own people, it required very little imagination to think what the new France would do to old England. Old Britain, he corrected himself.

  'Supper is at seven o'clock,'.Louis said. 'Unfortunately our friend Stafford has an upset stomach and looks too ill to come down, so he will be free to get on with his work while we and the lieutenant attack the soup - onion soup, the landlord tells me; bis wife's speciality. And I think you will have to retire to your bed when you begin to feel ill after the sole - the same symptoms as Stafford and due to something the two of you ate for lunch in that wretched café, no doubt. That will leave you free to inspect Stafford's work while the lieutenant and I attend to the roast sucking pig that you requested me to order specially - and which,' he said with a broad grin, holding out a hand as if to fend off Ramage's protests, 'and which is the reason why we are all supping together downstairs tonight: you ordered roast sucking pig and invited the rest of the guests in the hotel to your table.

  'The lieutenant is the only guest, apart from ourselves. The landlord was very impressed with the generosity of his Italian guest: no doubt it will show on your bill,' Louis added impishly. 'I am, incidentally, a connoisseur of sucking pig: I can tell in a moment if it has tasted anything but its mother's milk; any innkeeper who tries to serve me a wretched little under-sized beast which had been fed on grain for a few days - well he had better watch out! I shall report in due course if I received value for your money!'

  Ramage had never felt so hungry, onion soup had never been so delicious - or less satisfying. The sole melted in the mouth but did damned little to soften the hunger pains in his stomach. The lieutenant, young and fair-haired with long silky moustaches, was expansive and friendly; a casual onlooker would have assumed he was the host and Ramage and Louis his guests. The innkeeper wore a new blue apron and a frilled white shirt and walked round the room beaming, his dumpy daughter's cheeks were pink with barely controlled excitement and her eyes danced and were shiny with love for her lieutenant.

  Louis spoke little and while not appearing to eat fast managed to consume twice as much as Ramage, who was obliged from time to time to answer the lieutenant's questions. The lieutenant, he swore to himself, was an expert in asking short questions that needed long answers. And all the while the delicious aroma of the sucking pig roasting on its spit wafted through every time the door between the kitchen and the small dining-room was opened. Ramage glanced at Louis and thought that if he could have had a few slices of the sucking pig he would not care if a cunning farmer had fattened the runt of a litter with grain; in fact a few slices of the toughest old sow in the whole of Normandy would be welcome.

  Upstairs an even hungrier Stafford was at work: Ramage had tried to avoid thinking about the Cockney, not because he feared that he would fail but, with the French lieutenant sitting on the opposite side of the table, he had the uncomfortable feeling that if he thought about Stafford the Frenchman would suddenly remember something he wanted from his room. He had watched him all the time the soup was on the table: a splash of onion soup down the Frenchman's stock would be enough to send him upstairs to change. Then he had worried that a glass of wine would spill, or a piece of fish drop from a fork. And all the time Louis had eaten stolidly, eyes on his plate, shoulders hunched - but, Ramage sensed, his ears missing nothing, whether a horse's hooves in the street or the crackling of
dripping fat as the sucking pig turned on its spit.

  The innkeeper removed the plate which had been piled with sole and a moment later - for this was the signal - Louis was looking at him anxiously. 'Are you all right, M'sieur?'

  In anticipation of the question, Ramage had been surreptitiously holding his breath until he felt dizzy. He put a hand to his head and groaned and with his head spinning found it required no acting skill. He stood up while he still felt dizzy and in a moment Louis was beside him, solicitous and reassuring the French lieutenant.

  'He and his foreman - they lunched at a café. The foreman is already ill; now M'sieur is stricken.'

  Ramage, suddenly afraid that the lieutenant would insist on helping him to his room and already worried about Stafford, found it easy to simulate a retch and a moment later retched again and tasted the onion soup. He muttered in Italian, brushed away Louis's hand, told them both to continue their meal and rushed for the door, as though about to be sick. As he closed the door behind him he heard Louis telling the innkeeper with artful hypocrisy that the Italians had to take the consequences if they chose to eat in cheap cafés . . .

  He managed to stop himself running up the stairs two at a time; instead he walked up slowly and heavily, groaning every now and again. Would Stafford be back in their own room or still in the lieutenant's? For all his play-acting in the dining-room he now felt genuinely queasy, as though the sole had come to life in his stomach and was swimming round vigorously in the onion soup. He recognized it as an old friend (or enemy): the queasiness he always felt when fear and food met together. 'The condemned man ate a hearty breakfast.' Good luck to him; such a man had either no imagination or a stomach of iron.

  He gave the pre-arranged triple tap on their door and heard a movement in the room. A moment later the door opened and as soon as he stepped inside was closed and quietly locked by Stafford. There was nothing on the table - and nothing on his bed or Stafford's. The seaman had failed. He must have entered the room but not found the satchel. Or the lieutenant was on his way to Paris to collect dispatches, not deliver them. The queasiness increased and he belched, a vile compôte of sole and soup.

  He turned to ask Stafford what had gone wrong - and saw that the man was grinning.

  The Cockney walked over to the chest of drawers, pulled out the second drawer and carried it to the table. Lifting out some clothes, he produced a shiny leather satchel the size of a family Bible and with a long shoulder strap. Ramage saw that the top flap was down and the clasp was locked,

  With a flourish Stafford produced a thin sliver of metal, inserted it in the keyhole and turned. The flap sprang open from the natural stiffness of the leather, and Stafford took out a dozen letters and two slim packets.

  Ramage sat down at the table, his heart pounding; one half of him wanted to snatch up the envelopes and see, from the superscriptions, if there was a dispatch from Bruix to the First Consul; the other half of him shied away like a horse balking at a fence, scared to take the plunge because the consequences of there being no such dispatch meant that he would have wasted several days by believing a fool of a corporal.

  Stafford tapped one of the letters. 'My French is a bitrudeemental, sir -'

  'Rudimentary,' Ramage corrected him absent-mindedly.

  ' - rudimentally, sir, but I think this is the one you want.'

  Addressed to,’Le Citoyen Pierre-Alexandre-Laurent Forfait' at 'Le Ministère de la Marine et des Colonies' in Paris, a line of writing above the seal on the back showed it was a dispatch from 'Eustache Bruix, Vice-amiral, Commandant, Force Navale de Boulogne.'

  Ramage put it to one side and looked through the rest. All were addressed to various departments in the Ministry; the sender's name on the back of each indicated its mundane contents — 'L'Ordonnateur de Marine à Boulogne,' 'Bureau des Armements et Inscription Maritime au port de Boulogne' and so on. None was addressed to the First Consul, but Ramage was not surprised: an admiral would report to his Minister. The First Consul was the Corporal's embellishment.

  Stafford was setting out his equipment - a flat spatula with a wooden handle, several sticks of sealing-wax of varying shades of red, and a thin-bladed knife. He gestured to a candle already alight and standing on the chest of drawers - it would be an hour before it was dark and Ramage had not noticed it - and said: 'All right if I close the shutters, sir?'

  Ramage looked out. Anyone at several windows in the house opposite could see into the room. The thought of the watchful gendarmes in their cocked hats decided him and he pulled the shutters close.

  Stafford put the candle on the table and added paper, a bottle of ink and a quill to the collection of items. Ramage picked up Bruix's letter and examined it. The blob of red wax was perhaps half an inch in diameter, and soot from the clerk's candle flame had made black streaks in it. The oval crest - the impression of an anchor with 'Rep. Fran.' at the top and 'Marine' below - had been carelessly applied by the clerk who canted the seal as he pressed so that the wax was wafer-thin on the left side and a quarter of an inch thick on the right. Several small blobs of wax were spattered round it, as though the clerk's hands shook - or else he was a damned clumsy or careless fellow. Ramage could imagine what would happen if a British admiral ever saw his letter sent to the First Lord of the Admiralty in such a state: the clerk would suddenly find himself at sea as a cook's mate!

  Stafford was holding the spatula blade in the candle flame, moving it so the metal heated evenly. 'That the one you want opening, sir?'

  The Cockney was casual, almost offhand. Ramage had no idea how the devil the man was going to open a letter sealed with the stamp of the French Navy when he did not have the seal to make a fresh impression when he closed the letter again. Was he being too offhand? Did he realize that, apart from anything else, their lives might depend on his skill? 'Yes, but will you be able to seal it again so a clerk in Paris doesn't spot anything?'

  'You won't be able to spot anything, sir.' He reached for the envelope. 'If you'll just hold this spatchler in the flame, movin' it like so, I'll get ready.'

  Ramage took the blade, watching shadows dancing over the walls, and was reminded of a magician. Stafford picked up the letter and ran his fingers over it. 'One sheet of paper folded three times, ends turned into the middle, put inside a plain sheet which is folded three times and ends folded in the middle, an' a blob o' wax to seal it. People never learn!'

  'Never learn what?'

  Stafford grinned impishly. 'Never learn it ain't a safe way to send a secret letter wiv people like me around!' He picked up two sheets of plain paper from his pile and compared them with the letter. "Bout the same thickness: that's lucky.'

  'Why?'

  'Means we can experimentate wiv the 'eat o' that blade.' He folded the first sheet into three, and then folded the two ends inwards so that they met edge to edge in the middle, running his fingers along the folds to crease them, and making a neat packet. He then took another sheet, put the packet in the middle and folded again in the same way, holding the ends down with his finger. He picked up a stick of sealing-wax. 'Have to use the candle for a moment, sir - can you hold it for me?'

  He heated the stick of wax and ran it on to seal the paper, dripping enough until he had the same thickness as on Bruix's letter. 'That's it: now, if you'll carry on hotting up the spatchler, sir ...'

  He held his own packet in one hand and Bruix's letter in the other, as though comparing the weight; then he felt each of them with the forefinger and thumb of his right hand, as a tailor would examine cloth. 'Both about the same thickness,' he commented, putting Bruix's letter to one side and his own packet in front of him, next to it. 'That's what matters.' He took a piece of cloth from his pocket. 'Let me have the spatchler, sir!'

  He wiped off the soot, slid it beneath his own packet directly under the wax, and pressed down, gently pulling up one end. In a few moments, as the spatula warmed the wax through several thicknesses of paper, the end lifted and he flicked away the spatula. 'Warm it up
again, will yer, sir. Just right, that was.'

  'Here, let me look at that,' Ramage demanded, and Stafford passed over his packet, taking the spatula and keeping it in the flame.

  Ramage looked at the blob of wax. It was still the same shape except that it was neatly divided in two, half on one end of the paper, half on the other. Stafford's spatula had been warm enough to allow him to separate the ends, but not so hot that the heat distorted the impression of the seal.

  'Can you guarantee to do that with the Admiral's letter - 1 mean, not damage the impression?'

  'Bit 'ard to guarantee it, sir; just say I'm certain, sure I can,' Stafford said, still waving the spatula through the flame. 'Look on the back - no scorching of the paper, eh?'

  There was no sign that the warm blade had been used.

  'That's it, see. Most people think o' wax as 'aving to be 'ot to work it, but warm is enough. 'Ot on top fer an impression with a seal, yus; but warm's enough to separate it underneath, like you saw. Now, see the clerk was careless; the wax is thin on one side and thick on the other. Very lucky we are.'