by Dudley Pope
'Ah, "washes out" - the exact phrase. You've noticed it, then?'
Ramage gave a short laugh. 'Not living in a house means I've seen nearly every dawn and sunset for the past few years, most of them in the Mediterranean, or the West Indies, so I've watched shadows spreading across flat islands and mountainous islands, across the Pyrenees and the Atlas mountains, the Sierras of Spain and the Spanish Main. And at the end of it, Wilkins, I've a confession to make.'
'A confession?' The startled artist swung round, lifting a leg so that both feet were on the top of the carriage.
'Yes, they total more than a thousand wasted dawns, because I am no artist and I haven't been able to record even the dullest of them.'
'Except in your memory,' Wilkins said. 'Don't envy me,' he added, almost a bitter note in his voice.
'But I do. Not just landscapes, but your portraits as well.'
'Well, perhaps a dozen portraits, but no landscapes. With portraits rarely does the sitter, and never his relatives or friends (but particularly his wife) see him through the artist's eyes, or brush. The more worthwhile the landscape, the less popular it is. How many "patrons of the arts" have ever seen dawn breaking from seaward of a West Indian island, or a Tuscan hill town as the first sun of the day washes it with pink? Or the sun setting through the Strait, with your Atlas mountains on the African side and Gibraltar or the High Sierras on the other? Wonderful sights, beautiful enough to make an artist weep for sheer joy - and weep, too, because no visitor to an exhibition of his work, no patron with the money to buy it, is going to believe what he sees on the canvas. "Very imaginative," the patron will say, keeping a firm hand on the strings of his purse. And he will move along the line and buy some miserable daub showing a wet sun setting over the damp Norfolk Broads - a sun looking as though it had been drowned a few times before setting through all that cloud.'
Fascinated at this glimpse of the world of objects, subjects and patrons seen through the eyes of a painter, Ramage said: 'If you can capture Trinidade on canvas just after dawn, noon and sunset, I'll be the first to buy them!'
'That's good of you,' Wilkins said politely, 'but it's not the point I'm making. You've seen it: you know what it's like. I'm grumbling about the people who don't know and refuse to let the painter show them. You probably know the early Florentine painters were laughed at because no one in the north could believe that the light they painted actually existed in Tuscany. Finally, enough people visited Tuscany and saw for themselves, and the Florentines were accepted. But that was a long time ago, and I assure you that Tuscany is still the southern limit of people's credulity!'
'When we get back to London we'll hold an exhibition, showing all your paintings of this expedition - like the paintings of Captain Cook's voyages.'
Wilkins slid off the gun and stood in front of Ramage, the sun's rays giving him a ruddy complexion which did not disguise the serious look in his face.
'Do you really think we shall ever see London again. Captain?'
The sudden question startled Ramage. 'Yes, why ever not?'
Wilkins gestured towards the Lynx and the anchored prizes. 'Those fellows seem to hold all the aces.'
Ramage's harsh laugh was not one intended to reassure Wilkins; it came quite naturally as his memory flickered back over the past few years, when a variety of men had seemed to hold enough aces, yet. . .
'I'm not a gambler, Wilkins; none of the Calypso's officers is. But we've all learned one thing - three aces can be taken by the two of trumps!'
'So we have a two of trumps?'
'I didn't say that; just that we need to find only the two or three if we want to see London again, not necessarily an ace.'
Wilkins laughed, a cheerful laugh which also revealed the relief he felt. 'Tell me, Captain, all those actions of yours described in I don't know how many London Gazettes: how many of those were games won with a two of trumps and how many with an ace?'
'You'd better ask Southwick, he watches the games more closely than I. But I don't remember any aces - or court cards - at all. We always seem to get dealt fives or under!'
Ramage saw the soundings and survey teams assembling on the maindeck and went down to give instructions to Martin.
'Don't be obvious about it, but each day I want you to take three or four soundings and get a rough idea of the depths between us and the Lynx. You'll soon have that reef on the western side of the bay charted, but make sure you cover the eastern side, too.'
Martin grinned and he said: 'Aye aye, sir; it'd be easier to tack than wear to get out of the bay!'
'Indeed?' Ramage said, his face expressionless.
He found Wagstaffe with Kenton cursing the tardiness of Williams, one of the surveyors.
'Once you can look down on the Lynx, I want you to give someone the glass - perhaps you had better do it yourself; it'll be a welcome change from tramping up and down the hills - and watch the Lynx for a few hours. See what you can tell me about the state of discipline, condition of her sails and rigging, check her armament and see if she can mount swivels, and try to see exactly how many men she has on board. Tomorrow I want to know exactly how many men are guarding the prisoners. And, of course, note the boats leaving or arriving at the Lynx.'
Wagstaffe saluted. 'Surveying is a very boring job; I seem to end up holding these striped poles and measuring angles. By the way, sir, once the draughtsmen really get to work, we're going to have to give names to the bays, headlands and peaks. I mention it, sir, in case you want to state your preferences.'
Ramage was still absorbing Wagstaffe's tact when Southwick came bustling up, holding a slate. 'You want the same watch on the prizes, sir?'
'Yes. Not a boat visited any one of them yesterday.'
'No reason why one should, come to think of it, sir; each ship must have plenty of water and provisions. Any trouble with hostages, and the privateersmen would be going over to the Lynx.'
'Ah, what eyes and brains lost to the Revenue Service,' Ramage teased.
Southwick sniffed contemptuously. 'My big mistake, sir, was not joining the smugglers when I was a boy. I'd be retired now with a big mansion, a stable of horses, two carriages...'
Aitken came up and saluted. 'The swimmers, sir. They're ready for inspection, and the carpenter and his mates have nearly finished the first raft. Would you care to look at it before they put the last nails on the decking and start on the second?'
The raft looked in fact like a large toboggan with wide and deep runners. On the front of what would be the section on which a person would sit to slide on snow was an eyebolt, with another at the back.
'I want a couple of fathoms of line on each eyebolt, and secure line along the sides, so that men can hold on.'
'How many men, sir?'
Ramage shrugged his shoulders. He looked at the raft and said: 'She won't take more than six holding on each side, plus one forward and one astern. That'll make fourteen, and should be enough. Put a batten each side on the decking, carpenter, here and there, so that something put on top won't roll off.'
He left the raft and walked along the line of men drawn up on the larboard gangway. They represented the Calypso's best swimmers, and he jumped on to the breech of a gun. 'Gather round,' he said. 'This is what you'll be training to do in the next few days.'
Four days later, as he listened to the splashing of a couple of dozen men swimming beside the ship, out of sight of the privateersmen, Ramage sat at his desk staring at several sheets of paper held down by a large polished pebble.
His life at the moment seemed divided into halves. One was Gianna, the other was the problem of the Lynx and her prizes.
Since leaving the house in Palace Street and joining the Calypso at Chatham, he had tried to avoid thinking of her. He realized now that he had in fact tried deliberately to destroy every memory of her, particularly of their first meeting, in the darkness and mystery of the Torre di Buranaccio, and the desperation he felt holding her in an open boat knowing she had a musket ball in her s
houlder and fearing she would die before he could find a surgeon ... So many memories, some of danger, some of peace. When she came out to Lisbon to see him and the way she had the ambassador, Hookham Frere, dancing a jig in an effort to please her, and quiet days at St Kew when they had walked together over the Cornish moors or rode as far as Roughtor and Brown Willie, the distant peaks which looked as though they had been dropped by a giant... When her eyes glinted and she became imperious, the Marchesa breaking through, revealing a childhood spent in the palace at Volterra with dozens of servants and an early adulthood surrounded by ministers, the ruler of her own state, Volterra. He remembered the walled city of Volterra with its dozens of towers, tall, very narrow rectangles rising high like tree trunks.
Was she safely there, consulting with her ministers, restoring order and without French troops? Had the French removed their guillotines and rusty iron trees of Liberty? Was she ruling wisely and patiently, realizing that forgiving and forgetting might be a wiser policy than judging and revenging? Or was she dead, an assassin's victim?
Because he had previously refused to think about it, chasing away the random thoughts that leapt at him from dark corners of his mind before he went to sleep, or when he woke at night, his head a turmoil and his muscles knotted, he found that new fears for Gianna had spawned and demanded his consideration.
He tried to fight them off by imagining what had happened to her from the time she had boarded the Dover packet with the Herveys. They would have arrived in Calais and presented their passports, duly signed by Hawkesbury and probably, because Jenks was a fool, countersigned by Otto. The Herveys' carriages would have been loaded with their baggage, and knowing both the Herveys and Gianna, he could imagine just how many trunks would be involved. Then they would have set off along the Paris road, probably intending to spend the first night of the journey at Amiens.
They would be little prepared for what they saw: Bonaparte's secret police, the near-starvation, the nearness of the guillotine, the sheer lack of an occasional coat of paint on houses - all had combined to give French towns the appearance of places that have been stripped by locusts, or at least occupied by an enemy army. In fact France's own army had taken so heavy a toll of able-bodied men that the inhabitants of towns and cities were mainly women - many in the eternal black of mourning - and old men. There would be many cripples, too; men who had lost a leg or an arm in battle or even in the ice and snow of the Alps or Apennines.
They would see - particularly in Amiens, where he had once been imprisoned and threatened with it - the Widow set up in most squares. The guillotine had become part of every French square; La Veuve dans la place, usually set up high on a platform so the crowds could watch the spectacle, a wicker basket to catch the head . . .
This the Herveys and Gianna would see - well, not the basket and not the darkened bloodstains, which the rains would have washed away, nor the heavy blade of the guillotine, which was removed by the executioner when not required, so the edge could be sharpened again and greased well to protect it against rust. They would see the gaunt, wooden framework and probably sigh that it had ever been used. It was all over now, they would say, the Treaty had been signed, the war was over. Would Hervey himself, or Gianna, realize that La Veuve had nothing to do with the war and with the Treaty; that it was used by the French government of the day against the French people?
Anyway, eventually they would arrive in Paris, and there they, along with all foreigners, would have to register their presence and their address at the Prefecture. So if they were waiting for her, Bonaparte's secret police did not have to look for the Marchesa di Volterra; she would come to them . . . Leaving the safety of England, she would have walked like the fly into the parlour of the spider Bonaparte. And all, he thought bitterly, in the completely mistaken idea that she was doing it for the good of Volterra.
What good was she to Volterra if she was lodged in a French jail? What influence could she have on Bonaparte when he had her behind a locked door? She argued, of course, that while in England she had no influence on Bonaparte, and both Ramage and his father had immediately pointed out that while she was free she had an influence on Bonaparte: he always knew that the rightful ruler of Volterra was waiting patiently to return; that his French regime there were simply puppets.
There was only one way that Bonaparte eould destroy the Kingdom of Volterra, and that would be by destroying its rightful ruler, and Ramage found he had crushed the quill pen with which he had been tapping the pile of papers representing the other half of his problem.
Destroy . . . another word for murder. And murder was another word for what? Not the guillotine, that would be too public. The garotte - did Bonaparte's police favour the Spanish garotte for simple killings of women? Or perhaps just a pistol shot in the head. God help him, he was considering the fate of the woman he had loved. Yes, he had to admit now it was in the past tense. Had loved but still respected, like a favourite sister. Yet now was hardly the time to think about it any further. He had to keep the door shut in his mind. otherwise dreadful thoughts sneaked out. Gianna dead, murdered on Bonaparte's orders; Gianna locked in a cell, wasting away in darkness and subsisting only on sparse prison fare, and no one knowing what had become of her, outside the upper circle of Bonaparte's police . . .
Deliberately he picked up the top pages. They were the reports of four days' watch on the prizes, four pages for each of the five ships. He selected another quill, found it had been cut to give too broad a tip, and took a knife from a drawer inthe desk and cut it again. He then found the ink, removed the cap, found a blank sheet of paper, and on the left side wrote down the names of the five ships. To the right of the names he drew four more columns, and at the top of them he wrote, in sequence, 'Passengers', 'Guards', 'Crew', 'Flag'.
Starting with the Earl of Dodsworth, he saw that each day Bowen had reported seeing sixteen passengers (eight women and eight men) and he filled in the first column. Eight guards - he saw the same eight men each day, so it was reasonable to suppose they were the only eight on board, and that filled in the next column.
Southwick's four daily reports on the Amethyst and the Friesland showed the same consistency. Yorke's ship - Ramage found himself picturing the young shipowner as he read the name - had three women and seven men on board as hostages, and four guards. Southwick noted that on the second day he had seen only three guards, but the fourth man, easily recognizable by his red hair, reappeared next day and was there on the fourth day. Ramage filled in the appropriate columns, and then worked through the Heliotrope and Commerce, slowly filling in the columns.
Then he drew a line across the bottom and filled in the totals: exactly forty passengers (seventeen women, twenty-one men and two children), and twenty-four guards.
But most important: in four days, no boats had visited the prizes. No one had come round from the Lynx; no men from one prize had visited another. It would be such a normal and commonplace thing for them to do so that obviously Tomás or Hart had forbidden it.
Southwick's estimates of the sizes of the ships' companies of the five prizes before they were taken agreed with his own and showed there should be ninety-five or a hundred British, Dutch and French ships' officers and men held prisoner in what Wagstaffe had called an amphitheatre on shore.
The John Company ship, apart from being the most valuable, was physically the nearest: the Earl of Dodsworth was anchored about two hundred yards away. Close enough, he noted ruefully, for him to see that at least four of the women were young, two were elderly, and two had been impossible to guess at because they wore large, flopping hats, presumably to keep the sun off their faces.
The problem, he thought to himself, was going to be keeping the hostages out of the way when the fighting started.
He unrolled the first rough draft chart of the bay. There was the outline of the shore, from the headland forming the southern side to the other peninsula forming the northern. From each of the two rocks being used as starting points, a series
of straight lines radiated out to seaward; they represented the compass courses steered by the soundings boat, and along the lines, at ten yard intervals, were written numbers, some with a large figure followed by a small one. The larger figure represented fathoms, the smaller feet. Also marked in were the positions of the five prizes, the Lynx and the Calypso. The nearest sounding to the Lynx was four fathoms and three feet, or twenty-seven feet. The inner bay itself, Ramage noted, was quite shallow; none of the soundings showed more than forty feet, although many more runs were needed before the boat had got out as far as a line joining the two headlands.
The big reef to larboard was a long and slightly crescent shaped sausage, lying east-west and almost cutting the bay in two, with all the ships anchored in the southern half. The reef, made up of rock and staghorn coral - so named because it grew up from the bottom like the horns of a stag, flattening out near the surface - varied from a couple of feet over the coral to two fathoms over the rock. Martin had marked each end with a dan buoy, and once the sun was up it was easy to see the brown patches formed by the staghorn.
Ramage then unrolled the rough map showing the small section of the island surveyed so far. Williams and White had, at his suggestion, begun by concentrating on a broad band between the landing beach and signal hill. This included the approaches to the amphitheatre, where the crews of the prizes were kept prisoner, and the two sources of fresh water.
Finally there was Wagstaffe's report on the 'forum' and on the Lynx. Jebediah Hart and the small grey-haired Frenchman had been on shore once in the only boat to leave the Lynx in four days. Their boat had been pulled up on the beach and the two men had climbed up to the 'forum', stayed half an hour and then gone back to the ship. A routine visit, it seemed to Wagstaffe; they did not take provisions or water, so presumably the camp was adequately supplied.
He tidied the papers and rolled up the chart and the map. There, reduced to words and lines on paper, were all the facts he needed to carry out his next task, yet nothing there provided an answer to the most important question of all, one that was screaming in his brain like a descant sung by a mad chorus in an empty cathedral: how to keep the hostages out of harm's way when the fighting started.