Ramage's Devil r-13

by Dudley Pope

  As he helped Sarah up into the gig and heard a disapproving grunt from Gilbert (husbands might give wives a perfunctory push up, but they did not help them), he thought bitterly that their luck had been unbelievably bad. First, that the war had begun again while they were on their honeymoon - after all, the peace had held for a year and a half. Then that they should be staying with Jean-Jacques. Admittedly they would have been arrested if they had been staying at an inn, but the point was that they were now involved with L'Espoir and trying to think of a way of rescuing the Count of Rennes. Noblesse oblige. He was becoming tired of that phrase - his first love, the Marchesa di Volterra, was back in Italy because of it, and possibly already one of Bonaparte's otages, too. An otage if she had not yet been assassinated.

  So, heavily involved with keeping himself and Sarah out of the hands of the local Committee of Public Safety, trying to rescue Jean-Jacques, and getting all of them (including the faithful and enterprising Gilbert) back to England, it was not just bad luck, it was damnable luck which brought the Murex through the Chenal du Four and into Brest with a mutinous crew on board.

  Or, he allowed himself the thought and at once felt almost dizzy with guilt, why did the mutineers not put the officers and loyal seamen in a boat and let them sail back to England? Why keep them on board and bring them into Brest, where the French had anchored the ship, landed the mutineers and left the officers and loyal men on board the brig with an apparently small French guard? Now every gendarme in the port would be on the alert in case one of the loyal men escaped from the Murex; every fishing boat would be guarded - perhaps by soldiers - so that the chance of stealing one and getting back to England would probably be nil. Damn and blast the mutineers - and her captain, for not preventing the mutiny! He was not being fair and he found he had no wish to be fair: he wanted only to find someone to blame for this mess.

  Lord St Vincent! The name slid into his thoughts as Gilbert flipped the reins so that they slapped across the horse's flanks and started it moving. Yes, if Lord St Vincent had not given him, as his first peacetime orders, the task of finding a tiny island off the Brazilian coast and surveying it, he would never have met Sarah. If they had never met they would never have fallen in love and from that it followed they would never have married or be here on a prolonged honeymoon through France. Which, he admitted, was as disgraceful a thought as any man should have so near breakfast.

  The country round the château was bleak. Or, rather, it was wild: it had the harsh wildness of parts of Cornwall, the thin layer of soil sprinkled on rock, rugged boulders jutting up as though scattered by an untidy giant. The small houses built of tightly-locked grey stone, some long ago whitewashed, roofed by slates, a small shelter for a horse or donkey, a low wall containing the midden. Life here was a struggle against nature: crops grew not with the wild profusion and vigour of the Tropics - to which he had become accustomed over the past few years - but because men and women hoed and dug and ploughed and weeded from dawn to dusk.

  Gilbert became impatient with the horse, a chestnut which looked as though it was not exercised enough and heartily resented being between shafts. Perhaps, Ramage thought sourly, it was a Republican and resented having to work (if jogging along this lane rated the description 'work') for Monarchists.

  'Pretend to be asleep - or sleepy, anyway,' Gilbert said as they approached the first village. Ramage inspected it through half-closed eyes, and for a moment was startled how different it was from all the villages he had seen up to now. A few moments later he realized that the village was the same but his attitude had just changed. He had been a free visitor when he had seen all the other villages on the roads from Calais to Paris, south across Orléans and the Bourbonnais, among the hills of Auvergne, and to the northwest up towards Finisterre through Poitou and Anjou ... Towns and villages, Limoges with its superb porcelain and enamels, the fourth-century baptistry of the church near Poitiers which is France's earliest Christian building ... Clermont-Ferrand, where Pope Urban (the second?) sent off the first Crusade in 1095 (why did he remember that date?), the châteaux and palaces along the Loire Valley ... Angers with the château of seventeen towers belonging formerly to the Dukes of Anjou, and no one now willing to discuss the whereabouts of the tapestries, particularly the fourteenth-century one which was more than 430 feet long. And Chinon, on the banks of the Vienne, where Joan of Arc prodded the Dauphin into war. No, all these towns had been impressive and the villages on the long roads between them for the most part interesting (or different, anyway), but they had been at peace - with England, at least.

  With England: that, he suddenly realized, was significant, and he wished he could discuss it with Sarah but it had to be talked about in English, not French, and it was too risky talking in English when they could be overheard by a hidden hedger and ditcher.

  The French had been at peace with England but not yet with themselves. He had been surprised to see that the enemy for the people of all the villages, towns and cities of France was now their own people: the members of the Committees of Public Safety at the top of a pyramid which spread out to gendarmes enforcing the curfew and standing at the barrières demanding passeports, the old enemies denouncing each other in secret, the banging on doors in the darkness, when no neighbour dared to look to see who the gendarmes were bundling away.

  Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité - fine words. They had stretched France's frontiers many miles to the north, east and south, but what had they done for the French people? Now every able-bodied young man would have to serve again in the Army or Navy, and there was no harm in that if they were needed to defend France. But France would be attacking other countries: earlier France was everywhere the aggressor, even across the sands of Egypt.

  That was looking at the phrase in its broadest sense, yet the picture those three words summoned up for him was simple and one that fitted every place in every city, town and large village in France.

  The picture was stark and simple: two weathered baulks of timber arranged as a vertical and parallel frame, and a heavy and angled metal blade, sharpened on the underside, sliding down two grooves. A bench on which the victim was placed so that his or her neck was squarely under the blade, a wicker basket beyond to catch the severed head. Weeping relatives and wildly cheering onlookers - that dreadful melange of blood and hysteria. Of the three words, the guillotine must stand for fraternité and égalité because liberté was represented by the other part of the picture. This was the rusted metal representation of the Tree of Liberty. Usually it was little more than an example of the work of a hasty blacksmith and always it was rusty. And sometimes on the top was placed a red cap of liberty, faded and rotting, rarely recognizable as a copy of the old Phrygian cap.

  And the gig had stopped and Gilbert was getting out and saying something in a surly voice, using a tone Ramage had never heard before. Yes, they had arrived at the barrière. It was in fact simply three chairs and a table in the shade of a plane tree on one side of the road. Three gendarmes sat in the chairs and one had called to Gilbert to bring over the documents. Gilbert was carrying not just the canvas wallet but a bottle of wine.

  Pretending to be asleep, hat tilted over his face, Ramage watched. Gilbert took out the papers - leaving the bottle on his side of the table, as though putting it there to leave his hands free - and handed them to the gendarme, who still sat back in his chair and gestured crossly when Gilbert first placed the papers on the table. To pick them up the gendarme would have to lean forward, and this he was reluctant to do. Gilbert put the documents in the man's hand, and the gendarme glanced through them, obviously counting. He then looked across at the gig and handed the papers back, holding his hand out for the bottle.

  Gilbert walked back to the gig, resumed his seat, slapped the reins across the horse's rump and the gig continued its slow journey towards Brest. The other two gendarmes, Ramage noticed, had never opened their eyes.

  Beyond the village, Gilbert turned. 'You saw all that - obviously they are not loo
king for any escapers. That is the routine, though: two sleep while the other reaches out a hand.'

  'So our papers are not -'

  The thud of horses' hooves behind them brought the sudden command from Gilbert: 'Don't look round - mounted gendarmes. Pretend to be asleep!'

  A moment later two horsemen cut in from the left side, then two more passed on the right and reined their horses to a stop, blocking the narrow road.

  'Papers!' one of the men demanded, holding out his hand.

  'Papers, papers, papers,' Gilbert grumbled. 'We have only just showed them back there, now the four horsemen of the Apocalypse want to look at them again...'

  One of the gendarmes grinned and winked at Sarah. 'We like to check up on pretty girls on a sunny morning - where are you going, mademoiselle?'

  'Madame,' Sarah said sleepily. 'To Brest with my husband.'

  Her accent and the tone of voice was perfect, Ramage realized. The gendarme was flirting; she was the virtuous wife.

  The gendarme looked through the papers. 'Ah, Citizeness Ribère, born twenty-two years ago in Falaise. You look younger - marriage must suit you.' He looked at Ramage. 'Citizen Ribère? Off to Brest to buy your wife some pretty ribbons, eh?'

  'Potatoes and cabbages, and rice if there is any,' Ramage said with glum seriousness. 'No ribbons.'

  The gendarme laughed, looked at Gilbert's passeport and handed the papers back to him. 'You buy her a ribbon, then,' he said, and spurred his horse forward, the other three following him.

  'Was that normal?' Ramage asked.

  'Yes - but for, er Janine, I doubt if they would have bothered to stop us.'

  They passed the next couple of barrières without incident, although at the second two of the gendarmes were more concerned with their colleague who was already incoherently drunk but unwilling to sleep it off out of sight under the hedge. He had spotted the bottle that an unsuspecting Gilbert had been clutching as he alighted from the gig and probably saw a dozen. Finally, while Gilbert waited patiently at the table, the other two dragged the man away, returning five minutes later without apology or explanation to inspect the papers.

  As they jogged along the Paris road into Brest, Ramage spotted the masts of ships in the port. Some were obviously ships of the line and most, he commented to Sarah, had their yards crossed with sails bent on. The French seamen had been busy since the two of them had spent the afternoon at Pointe St Mathieu.

  Five gendarmes lounged at the Porte de Landerneau, the gate to the port, but they were too concerned with baiting a gaunt priest perched on an ancient donkey to pay much attention to three respectable citizens in a gig, obviously bound for the market.

  The road ahead was straight but the buildings on each side were neglected. No door or window had seen a paintbrush for years; the few buildings that years ago had been whitewashed bow seemed to be suffering from a curious leprosy.

  'This leads straight down to the Place de la Liberté and the town hall,' Gilbert had explained in French. 'Just beyond that is the Hôtel du Commandant de la Marine. Then we carry on past it along the Rue de Siam to the river. While we jog along the Boulevard de la Marine you'll have a good view of the river as it meets Le Goulet, with the arsenal opposite. Then to the Esplanade du Château. There we'll stop for a glass of wine under the trees and you can inspect the Château.'

  He laughed to himself and then added: 'From the Esplanade it is only two minutes' walk to the Rue du Bois d'Amour ... in the evenings the young folk dawdle under the trees there and look down Le Goulet at the ships and perhaps dream of visiting the mysterious East.'

  'But now, the young men have to be careful the press gangs don't take them off to the men o' war,' Ramage said dryly.

  'Yes, I keep forgetting the war. Look,' he said absently, 'we are just passing the cemetery. The largest I've ever seen.'

  'I'll keep it in mind,' Ramage said in a mock serious voice. 'For the moment I have no plans to visit it.'

  Gilbert finally turned the gig into the open market place, a paved square, and told Ramage and Sarah to alight. Sarah looked at the stalls while Gilbert secured the horse and groaned. 'Potatoes ... a few cabbages ... more potatoes ... a few dozen parsnips ... Louis may be right about the soil at Finisterre!'

  There were about twenty stalls, wooden shacks with tables in front of which the sellers spread their wares and gossiped.

  Gilbert said: 'We'll walk to the end stall; I have a friend there.'

  Despite the lack of variety, the sellers were cheerful, shouting to each other and haggling noisily with the dozen or so buyers walking along the line of tables. The man at the end stall proved to be one Ramage would normally have avoided without a moment's thought. His face was thin and a wide scar led across his left cheek, a white slash against suntanned skin. His hair was unfashionably long and tied behind in a queue. He wore a fisherman's smock which seemed almost rigid from frequent coatings of red ochre, which certainly made it waterproof and, Ramage thought ironically, probably bulletproof too.

  He shook hands with Gilbert, who said: 'I am not introducing you to my friends because - to onlookers - we all know each other well.'

  The Frenchman immediately shook Ramage's hand in the casual form of greeting taking place all over the market as friends met each other for the first time in the day, and he gave a perfunctory bow to Sarah, saying softly: 'The Revolution does not allow me to kiss your hand, which is sad.'

  'Now,' Gilbert said, 'I shall inspect your potatoes, which are small and old and shrivelled and no one but a fool would buy, and ask you what is happening in the Roads.'

  'Ah, very busy. The potatoes I have here on display are small and old because I have already sold twenty sacks to the men from the Hôtel du Commandant de la Marine, who were here early. Paying cash, they are. They tried buying against notes de crédit on the Navy, but suddenly no one in the market had any potatoes, except what were on these tables.'

  'Why the Navy's sudden need for potatoes?'

  'You've heard about the English mutineers? Yes, well, you know the English exist on potatoes. All the mutineers are now billeted in the Château and demanding potatoes. On board their brig there are still prisoners and their guards, demanding potatoes - it seems the ones they have are mildewed. And that frigate over there, L'Espoir, is leaving for Cayenne with déportés, and they want more potatoes...'

  'Who had your sacks?' Ramage asked.

  'Nobody yet. They paid extra to have them delivered - it seems that with so many ships being prepared for sea, with the war starting, they're short of boats. So I pay a friend of mine a few livres to use his boat and the Navy pays me many livres!'

  Ramage thought a moment. 'Are you going to carry all the sacks on your own?'

  'I was hoping my nephew would help me when he's finished milking.'

  Ramage glanced at Gilbert then at the man. 'Two of us could help you now.'

  The Frenchman pulled at his nose. 'How much?'

  Ramage smiled as he said: 'Our services would be free.' He looked at Gilbert, seeking his approval. 'We could carry the potatoes down to the jetty in the gig.'

  Gilbert nodded enthusiastically. 'Then Janine can look after it while we go out to the Murex.'

  'The loyal men who are prisoners of war in the English ship do not speak French,' the man said pointedly.

  'If I needed to speak to them, it would be in whispers.'

  The man nodded. 'It would have to be,' he said. 'Much discretion is needed.'

  Gilbert walked away from the tiller and took a rope thrown down from the Murex's deck. As he turned it up on a kevil he shouted forward at Ramage in well simulated anger: 'Hurry up! Not so tight - you'll jam our bow into the Englishman. We want to lie alongside her, not butt her like a goat!'

  'Yes, citizen,' Ramage called aft in a remorse-laden voice. 'These ships, I am used to a cart with wheels...'

  Several French seamen lining the Murex's bulwarks roared with laughter and in a glance Ramage counted them. Seven, and the fellow at the end, probabl
y the bosun, had been giving orders. Was that all the French guard, seven men? It seemed likely, though he would soon know.

  'Here,' a voice called down in French and the tail of another rope curled down. 'Secure that somewhere there as a spring.'

  He saw that Gilbert was already making up another rope as a spring, so that the fishing boat was held securely against the brig. A glance aloft then showed that some British seamen, prisoners, were working slowly and obviously resentfully under the shouts and gesticulations of a French bosun, who was becoming more and more exasperated that he could not make himself understood as he tried to get them to rig a staytackle to hoist the sacks of potatoes on board.

  Again Ramage counted. More than a dozen prisoners, though some of the men reeving the rope through the blocks were officers. Obviously the French guards were practising égalité.

  Another shout from the Murex's deck brought a stream of curses from Gilbert and the vegetable seller (Ramage had established his name was Auguste), and something landed with a thump on the deck beside him. It was a heavy rope net.