Ramage & The Drum Beat

by Pope, Dudley

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The Convent was a five-minute walk from the Com-missioner’s office. Ramage raised a hand to hail a passing carriage, realized he had no money and began striding up the steep cobbled slope of Convent Lane. With an irritation verging on petulance he reviewed his meeting with the Commissioner. It had begun with almost effusive congratulations, but the old fool ended up being damned stuffy. After implying that delaying sailing for even half an hour to visit The Convent would certainly let Cordoba’s Fleet escape through the Strait, and probably allow Napoleon to cross the Channel as well, he’d even hinted that young officers only visited Gibraltar’s Convent ‘to keep up with the right people’.

  A mixture of excitement and nervousness made Ramage begin a laugh which he only managed to choke when he saw the frightened look on the hideously wrinkled face of an old woman in a doorway. She was offering him a penn’orth of sticky dates from a greasy wicker basket that looked like an asylum for every fly on the Barbary Coast, but snatched it away when she looked into his eyes and hurriedly crossed herself with her free hand.

  At the top of the lane Ramage turned left into Main Street and was promptly surrounded by a crowd of ragged higglers who with strident Spanish voices and clutching hands were peddling everything from corn cures and Crucifixes to demijohns of arrack, their fervour and glittering eyes reminding Ramage of what it must have been like to face the Inquisition.

  As he walked through the Convent’s big double doors the two sentries rattled their muskets in faultless salutes which nevertheless subtly conveyed that soldiers cared little for naval officers and hardly at all for young lieutenants.

  Inside the hall a wizened little man whose ancient wig had for years been a martyr to incipient moulting stood up and cautiously inquired the purpose of the young lieutenant’s visit. A lifetime at the job had obviously taught him to take nothing for granted: one elegantly dressed gentleman with languid voice and gold-topped cane might demand an audience with the Governor only to pass a forged letter of credit, while the next could be the Governor’s long-awaited cousin. The poor fellow had his carefully enunciated motto written all over him: You Cannot Be Too Careful.

  Reluctantly Ramage had to give his name while explaining his business but emphasized it did not matter since he was only a messenger. The old man kept nodding like a pigeon gleaning a newly cut cornfield then, after motioning Ramage to a chair, hurried off down an apparently endless corridor.

  Ramage deliberately made his thoughts wander to ease the tension. Why was the Governor’s residence called The Convent? He’d always intended to ask someone. The chapel next door was originally a Franciscan friary… In Spanish a monastery usually meant the home of a religious order whose members never went outside, while those free to travel – like the Francisans – lived in a convent. How many governors had bored their guests at dinner with weary jokes about nuns and–

  The little man was beckoning him from the far end of the corridor with the nearest he dare get to a show of impatience and Ramage managed to stop himself leaping up like an eager schoolboy. Instead he rose with carefully controlled movements, composed his face in a frown he knew would make his cheek muscles ache within a couple of minutes and walked along the corridor, hat tucked under the left arm, his hand holding the scabbard of his sword. Plonk, plonk, plonk: he walked heavily, hoping the jarring of his heels on the mosaic floor would stifle the inane giggle lurking just under his Adam’s Apple.

  From the moment the Commissioner had told him, Ramage had deliberately shut the picture from his mind; all the way up Convent Lane he’d forced himself to think of something else. Even waiting there in the chair he’d conjectured about The Convent. And now… The little man scurrying along ahead stopped every few paces and peered back to make sure he was following as though scared he’d bolt through a door. Ramage wanted to give him a hearty pat on the back but instead mustered an even fiercer frown and snarled: ‘Don’t walk so damned fast, I’ve only got two legs.’

  ‘Oh, quite, quite sir, I’m very sorry,’ the little man said sympathetically as if it was the result of battle wounds.

  Up a pair of stairs and the corridor was narrower, the closely spaced doors indicating the rooms were smaller, and he guessed they were now in the private part of the residence.

  The little man paused at a door, knocked and before Ramage could stop him walked into the room and announced in a neutral voice that showed he had not bothered to mention the name earlier:

  ‘Lieutenant Ramage.’

  After the gloomy corridors the room was almost dazzlingly bright and for a moment Ramage stood blinking as the door closed softly behind him.

  ‘You look like an owl who’s just woken up,’ she said and ran over to fling herself into his arms. His hat went flying, the scabbard dropped with a clang, and they clung to each other with that desperate urgency reserved for lovers and those who are drowning.

  It seemed hours later – hours during which he wanted to tear off the clothes separating their bodies, hours after scores of kisses on her eyes, mouth and brow, hours after he’d wiped tears surreptitiously from his eyes and openly from hers, hours after the waves of exhilarating dizziness had gone, that she looked up at him and whispered.

  ‘My dearest, I thought you were dead – and then that silly man…’ she sobbed but there were no tears or sadness now, only wonder, almost unbelief, ‘…that silly man tells me there’s a naval officer to see me and I…’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘I had a terrible premonition he was going to tell me they’d heard you were dead.’

  ‘And when you saw it was me, all you could say was I looked like an owl!’

  ‘An owl?’

  He pushed her away and held her at arm’s length. There was no mistaking the puzzled expression. Could it…?

  ‘What did you say when I came in?’ he asked gently.

  ‘I said nothing. I was so shocked, so – well, I couldn’t believe–’

  ‘You don’t remember saying, “You look like an owl who’s just woken up”?’

  ‘Of course I didn’t say that!’

  Again the picture came back to him: a picture of battle when a Marine was spun round by a shot which slashed off his hand at the wrist, and as he staggered across the deck holding the stump from which the blood spurted he said to Ramage in a conversational tone, ‘I was born out of wedlock, you see, sir; they never knew for certain who me father was…’

  The irrelevant remarks of someone experiencing a severe shock. At this revelation of the intensity of her love for him he suddenly felt frightened and inadequate and unworthy, forgetting it equalled his own for her.

  ‘But you look like an owl now!’

  He looked down at her smile which was also an impudent grin: happiness sparkled in the large brown eyes and showed in the delicate flush over the high cheekbones. The impudence was in the arch of the eyebrows and the curve of her lips. He held her tightly and at that instant there was a harsh metallic boom above and a ripping noise at his back. Giving her a violent push out of danger’s way he spun round, his hand going instinctively to the hilt of his sword. But even before he could draw it she was standing four paces away clapping her hands and laughing until tears ran down her cheeks. ‘It’s one o’clock, my love!’ she gasped. ‘The chapel bell!’

  ‘And I think I’ve split my new coat,’ he said ruefully.

  She danced round behind him, ‘And you have! The stitching of the seam!’

  Even as he joined in her laughter he realized within an hour he must sail. Within ten minutes he must say goodbye.

  ‘My lovely little Tuscan czarina, when you’ve stopped examining the proof of my passion, can you get someone to mend it?’

  She eyed him with feigned doubt, hand to her chin, and secretly marvelling that every time she looked at him – a man she loved so desperately and pictured almost every waking moment – his face or body revealed something new – often startling, always thrilling and sometimes frightening. His e
yes, set deep under the brow, sometimes let her see into his soul; at other times they were a barrier which shut her out. The scar on his brow was a weathercock to his mood – anger tautened the skin, driving out the blood, making it a hard white line. His mouth – did he realize a slight movement of his lips made him as remote and forbidding as the moon – or so close she felt they were one? A thin face – yes, but the jawbone, like the scar, became a hard, bloodless line when anger tightened the muscles and sharpened the angles so it seemed cast in steel. It was a face a woman could only love or hate with a great passion; the face of a man to whom no one could be indifferent.

  She saw he was puzzled, waiting for an answer.

  ‘No, I like your passion as it is, even if it tears easily. But when it does want mending, I’ll do it.’

  ‘Gianna–’

  ‘Nee-co-lass,’ she mimicked the serious note, ‘let’s join the Governor: he insists on punctuality at meals. I’ll be your seamstress this afternoon. Oh, don’t look so worried – it’s only the stitching!’

  He grinned nervously as he sought a way to explain and then blurted out: ‘No, it’s not that. I can’t stay.’

  ‘Never mind, we’ll do it this evening then.’

  ‘I’ll be away sometime…’

  She took his hand, made him sit in an armchair and curled up at his feet, her head resting against his knees.

  ‘Tell me what happened,’ she said quietly, ‘and why you have to leave so soon.’

  He traced with his finger the line of her eyebrows, the tiny Roman nose, the soft and moist lips and the high cheek-bones, and then she reached up to take his hand and press it to her breast, as if to comfort him.

  ‘Was it too awful, caro mio?’

  ‘No,’ he said quickly, realizing she’d misunderstood his silence. ‘No, it was perfectly simple.’ Briefly he described the Kathleen’s capture, the way Jackson had helped him pose as an American, and their release in Cartagena. He omitted the raid on Cordoba’s house and the information he discovered, and told her how they had stolen La Providencia and sailed to Gibraltar.

  ‘But why stay so long in Cartagena? Weeks and weeks! Surely you could have stolen a ship earlier?’

  ‘The Spanish Fleet was there: I wanted to find out when they’d sail and where they were bound?’

  She spotted the flaw before he did.

  ‘But how could you do that without waiting for them to sail and see which way they went? They haven’t sailed, have they?’

  Ramage cursed his wayward tongue which was talking him into a dangerous situation: the only other person in Gibraltar who knew of Cordoba’s orders was the Commissioner, who’d been emphatic that the knowledge must be kept absolutely secret. The whole of Gibraltar, he’d said bitterly, was swarming with spies and the Governor’s circle of friends talked too freely.

  ‘Well,’ he said lamely, ‘I found out something which will interest Sir John, but you mustn’t mention it. Now – and this is absolutely secret too – I must find Sir John and tell him.’

  ‘But, my love,’ she said with quiet irony, ‘all you’ve told me so far is that I’ve got to keep secret the fact you know a secret!’

  ‘And that’s quite enough for now!’

  She looked up with eyes unnaturally bright with tears, but in them he saw anger as well as unhappiness.

  ‘So even though I am the ruler of a state which has joined England as an ally, I can’t be trusted with some silly little secret?’

  Anger, bitterness, hurt – yes, and a touch of patrician arrogance. A few moments ago they had been as one person; now a stranger sat at his feet.

  ‘I – well, the Commissioner gave me strict orders. Not even the Governor knows.’

  ‘Very well,’ she said coldly. ‘You found out this information, so let’s not talk any more of that. But why are you the messenger boy running off to find Sir John? Make the Commissioner send someone else. You deserve a rest: for months you’ve been risking your life – first rescuing me, then capturing La Sabina, then playing the spy at Cartagena. Why,’ she added with a shiver, ‘if the Spaniards had discovered you weren’t an American–’

  ‘I’d have been shot, but I wasn’t. And I arrive here to find you waiting for me! Incidentally, young lady’ – he snatched the chance of changing the subject – ‘why are you here and not in England?’

  She shrugged her shoulders gracefully – and coldly and remotely. Her voice was flat and neutral. She was a stranger, the ruler of Volterra and, he thought, no longer a woman.

  ‘Very well, you may change the subject When the Apollo arrived here she had to wait two weeks. By then we heard the Kathleen had been captured. I wasn’t in a hurry to go to England so I decided to stay – I was curious to know whether you were alive or dead.’

  ‘Curious’. The word stabbed where he had no protection. Now did it help that he knew she was deeply hurt; unable to understand the demands of the service. And her pose of indifference was truly regal: even though she was sitting at his feet he felt for a moment as though their positions were reversed and he was a humble (and errant) subject kneeling before the ruler of the state of Volterra.

  ‘And Antonio?’ he asked, numbed and hardly thinking what he was saying.

  ‘He went in the Apollo. He wanted to stay but I told him to go to London as my Minister Plenipotentiary to your King, so that he can draw up the draft for the alliance.’

  It was a proud little speech but the ruler became a girl once again when he pictured Antonio as the Minister of an already enemy-occupied state of 20,000 people arguing the terms and wording of Volterra’s treaty with a Britain which was already fighting the combined strength of France and Spain and for whom Volterra was simply another debit entry in an already overloaded budget.

  ‘How could you persuade the Spanish you were an American when you were wearing that uniform?’

  She was holding out a very small and rapidly withering olive branch but he reached for it eagerly.

  ‘I was wearing a seaman’s rig. I’ve just bought this one. A lieutenant about my size – a bit narrower across the shoulders, rather! – just had it delivered from the tailor.’

  ‘He was kind to let you have it.’

  ‘He wasn’t really; in fact he refused, but the Commissioner ordered him to sell it to me.’

  ‘Your Commissioner is fond of giving unpleasant orders…’

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ Ramage said hypocritically. ‘But – well, when you had to give unpleasant orders to anyone in Volterra it didn’t occur to you they wouldn’t be obeyed, although probably you didn’t enjoy giving them…’

  ‘That’s true, I suppose it’s the same thing, really,’ she admitted.

  ‘Absolutely the same. The foundations of a navy or a state – or even a family – rests on discipline,’ he said pompously.

  ‘Except that I love you.’

  There was defiance in her voice and he knew that single fact meant she’d accept neither rules nor obstacles. Fearing she’d make the Governor use his influence to have another lieutenant sent to Sir John, Ramage kissed her and bruised both their lips as the clock struck again and made them jump.

  Nearly an hour gone: the Commissioner would be watching the anchorage. He stood up, helping her to her feet, and before she could say anything, kissed her hard again, then gripped her tightly so she could not look into his eyes and began talking quickly in a low, urgent voice, as though he had to compress a lifetime into the remaining minutes.

  As he walked down the worn and slimy steps of Ragged Staff Wharf Ramage felt the same emptiness that almost every man experienced when going back to sea in wartime: he was leaving someone he loved, drawn away by some inner compulsion towards – well, duty was a pompous sort of word and only a tenth of it. That there’d be weeks, perhaps months, of discomfort and monotony was so certain that brief moments of danger would come as a relief, like the sharp taste in the mouth after the long diet of dreary, barely eatable salt food that drove seamen to chew tobacco. But no man had
ever found anything to shew, drink, do or say that eased the ache of knowing the farewell might also be the final one. It was probably worse for the women who were left behind, never knowing whether, even as they sat with their memories, their men had been left unscathed by battle, disease or accident.

  So what was he really looking for out on the ocean? Honour and glory, the power over men that came with command, the almost erotic thrill of fear in battle? He was concentrating so hard on giving himself an honest answer that his heel slipped off the edge of a step and he nearly fell, yet even while regaining his balance he knew the answer was ‘No’ in each case.

  What stopped him from asking to go on to half pay (or resigning his commission) and returning to England, to the life of a gentleman, helping Father run the estates and perhaps dabbling in politics? There’d be no discredit in that (except dabbling in politics, and he rejected the idea) nor difficulty in arranging it. The Navy had far too many young lieutenants – at least a quarter of them were always unemployed, haunting the Admiralty or badgering friends with ‘interest’ to write to the First Lord to get them a berth. He shrugged his shoulders and felt a few more stitches splitting in his coat. Blast the fool who’d sold it him and triple blast his tailor, and whoever made the thread could rot in hell.

  He suddenly realized that for some seconds he’d been standing and staring at a dead cat floating in the water, and glanced up to see Maxton holding the boat alongside, his glistening brown face split with a grin of pleasure. Jackson, watching him curiously and probably trying to fathom his thoughts, was at the tiller and the rest of the men who had been with him at Cartagena were manning the oars. All of them were rigged out in new blue shirts and white duck trousers, and were freshly shaven. He climbed in, nodded, and a few moments later the boat was being rowed briskly across the anchorage.