Ramage's Devil r-13

by Dudley Pope

  They walked forward again and Aitken picked up the speaking trumpet. Ramage realized that since he last stood here a couple of months or so ago, as they tacked up the Medway to Chatham, he had married, been to France, escaped capture when the war broke out again, recaptured the Murex brig, and relieved the new captain of the Calypso of his command. What he had not done was try to rescue Jean-Jacques.

  'I'm going below to see Bowen and his patient,' he told Aitken. He gave him a folded piece of paper. 'Here is the rendezvous, and you'll sight the fleet before nightfall. Ignore the Blackthorne if she starts making signals - there's no signal in the book to describe what we're doing.'

  Below in the great cabin he found Bowen sitting in the chair at the desk while in the sleeping cabin Bullivant, undressed and now in his nightshirt, was breathing heavily in a drunken stupor, his lips flapping like wet laundry each time he exhaled.

  Bowen hurriedly stood up as the Marine sentry announced Ramage, who gestured to him to remain seated.

  'I'll take the armchair. It's good to see you, Bowen. I wish it was under happier circumstances...'

  'Oh, I hope everything will turn out all right, sir,' Bowen said vaguely. 'For the moment we have about an hour before Captain Bullivant recovers consciousness and descends into the hell of delirium tremens.'

  'Hell seems the right word: he seems obsessed, with it. He recognized me as the Devil when I came on board.'

  'Oh yes, Satan is very real to him. For the past five or six days this ship has reeked of brimstone. The captain had all the lieutenants sprinkling the quarterdeck with holy water laced with brandy in an attempt to exorcize it, but without success.'

  'This conversation never took place,' Ramage remarked, 'so tell me the story from the beginning.'

  'Well, you know a good deal of the circumstances if you remember how I came to serve with you in the Triton brig,' Bowen said with disconcerting frankness.

  'There are two kinds of heavy drinkers: those who drink secretly until they are stupefied, and those who don't give a damn and get drunk openly. Captain Buliivant is a secret drinker, so no one - except perhaps his family and his wife if he is married - knows. But from my own experience I can tell you he has been drinking hard for years. Four or five years, anyway: look at the veins under the skin of his face, at his nose, at his eyes when they are open. And he looks ten or twenty years older than he is.'

  'But when he joined the ship,' Ramage prompted.

  'Ah, yes. We had fallen behind in paying off the ship because of difficulties with the dockyard, and just as well. We (that is, Mr Aitken, because of course you were on leave) suddenly received orders to commission the ship at once, and the dockyard commissioner warned us war was likely again any moment. He also said that if you did not return from France in time, the First Lord would appoint a new captain.

  'We had the ship ready in what must be record time and Captain Bullivant appeared and read himself in as the new commanding officer. Very brisk, he was, and delighted with everything Aitken and Southwick had done. He made a very good impression on every person who saw him, except one man.'

  'And that was you.' It was a comment, not a question.

  'Yes, I knew the symptoms which no one else ever recognizes. The constant sweating, the tiny tremor of the fingers when the hands are extended, the slightly glazed appearance of the eyes and the feeling they are never quite in focus, the smell of cashews on the breath ... the apparent temperance and lack of interest in wine and spirits. When his luggage was brought on board, I had a word with Jackson and he made sure each trunk was checked. One clinked - full of bottles, carefully packed and only two loose ones.'

  'And after he had read himself in?'

  'All went well the next day: orders arrived from the Admiralty to proceed to Plymouth and put ourselves under Admiral Clinton's command. We were off the Nore that night and we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of the Harwich fishing fleet. Aitken sent for the captain, who came up on deck so stupefied he could not stand without holding on to something. That was the first time we heard him see the Devil.'

  'What did he look like?' Ramage asked.

  'Well, we didn't see him since he only existed in the fumes affecting Captain Bullivant's brain, but we certainly heard where he was: about fifty yards on one bow and then on the other, preparing to rake us.'

  'With empty bottles, I suppose.'

  Bowen grinned as he shook his head. 'No, he was on the fo'c'sle of a three-decker which was "painted in orange stripes like a glorious sunset" - Captain Bullivant's exact words, though he didn't explain how he distinguished colour in the dark. All this took the lieutenants and Southwick by surprise, sir: I had kept my earlier observations to myself - I had not realized he had reached the stage of recurrent delirium tremens. I was mistaken: I should have warned Aitken.'

  'But the Calypso did not sink any of the fishing vessels?'

  'No, mercifully. Anyway, eventually I quieted down the captain and got him back to bed. Next morning he was - to the layman's eyes - perfectly normal, but in the secrecy of this cabin he drank himself into a stupor every night until we arrived in Plymouth ... There Aitken talked to me about reporting it all to Admiral Clinton.'

  'What was your advice?'

  'Well, sir, I thought of my own cunning when you and Southwick were trying to cure me and decided Captain Bullivant was a clever man, well aware of his weakness and with enough influence at the Navy Board through his contractor father to make useless anything we could do. Admiral Clinton was busy getting his fleet to sea, so if Aitken had appeared in the flagship with a story of Satan stalking the Calypso, I suspect we would have been sent a new first lieutenant, not a new captain.'

  'So the Fleet sailed. Then what happened?'

  'Well, that was all Captain Bullivant was waiting for: he left the entire running of the ship to Aitken. He gave orders that he was "not to be bothered with signals", and that Aitken was to execute all orders from the flagship "without troubling" him. From this we expected he would stay drinking down here in his cabin, but every now and again he would emerge raving about the Devil. He would chase him out of his cabin and up the companionway to the quarterdeck, and would then sight him behind the binnacle, behind a carronade, trying to climb the ratlines...'

  'Was there anything you could do?'

  'Frankly none of us had the courage. If we had bundled him below and he had later remembered it, any of us - Marine, seaman or officer - could be tried for striking a superior officer, or mutiny. So we all looked for Satan, exorcized the quarterdeck...'

  'That signal for the physician?'

  'That was when his delirium was reaching the crisis. Yesterday he had the ship's company mustered aft and inspected them.'

  'Well, there's nothing unusual about that,' Ramage commented, feeling he ought to say something, however mild, in Bullivant's defence.

  'No, sir, unless you are looking for the Devil himself - and find him hiding in the bodies of three men!'

  'Which three?' asked a flabbergasted Ramage.

  'The seaman Rossi, the Marchesa's young nephew Paolo Orsini - and Southwick!'

  'I can understand Rossi and Orsini - they have sallow complexions and black hair. But Southwick - I always think he looks like a bishop.'

  'That's exactly what Captain Bullivant said! He denounced Southwick because he said it was impossible for a bishop to be serving as the master in one of the King's ships, therefore he must be the Devil in disguise.'

  'But how did this cause a crisis?'

  'He swore he would hang a Devil a day until the ship was free of them. Southwick was the first and due to be executed at sunset today.'

  'But the men would never haul on the rope!' Ramage said. The whole thing was unthinkable.

  'Sir,' Bowen said very seriously, 'the minute he gives anyone an order and is disobeyed, that's a breach of enough Articles of War for a death sentence at a court-martial...'

  'So... ?'

  'So, I told Aitken that the only way out was t
o use "medical grounds" to get the admiral involved. I had a plan in case that failed (the signal for the physician of the fleet, I mean) but I couldn't then be sure it would work. Luckily it did when I used it...'

  'The tankard of brandy and the flask?'

  'Yes, sir. It's the timing that is difficult. To judge how much is needed to tip the man over the edge into oblivion - well, that depends on how much he has drunk in the previous few hours, and whether he has eaten.'

  'You timed it perfectly.'

  'I thought all was lost when he threw the tankard at your head. Thank goodness you realized what I had in mind.'

  'I was very slow. I was surprised to see you offering him more drink. Then, quite honestly, I remembered what used to happen when Southwick and I were curing you.'

  '"Completing my medical education" would be a more tactful word, sir, than "curing"!'

  'As you wish. Anyway, thank you. On my behalf and the three Devils'!'

  'Yes, well, Aitken and young Orsini thought of that signal. I told Aitken we should stake everything on medical grounds, and between them they thought of that signal. Aitken could only keep it hoisted for ten or fifteen minutes at a time.'

  'That was long enough. The Blackthorne repeated it and it reached the admiral.'

  'And he sent you at once?'

  Ramage laughed dryly. 'No, if the majority of the Murexbrig's men had not mutinied and carried the ship into Brest... And had I not been near Brest on my honeymoon... And had not my wife and I had the help of four Frenchmen so we could retake the Murex... And had we not managed to sail out and accidentally meet Admiral Clinton and the Fleet... And had the Calypso not been my old ship ... No, but for all those circumstances, Mr Sawbones, I don't think your signal would have attracted the attention it deserved. Still, all's well...'

  'But will all this end well?' Bowen asked anxiously. 'We still have him' - he gestured to the door of the sleeping cabin - 'in there. Supposing the admiral doesn't...'

  'Oh, he'll do something about him, I am sure. Who you'll get in his place I do not know. Probably the first lieutenant of the flagship - that's usually the person who gets the first vacant frigate command.'

  'But the Calypso's still inside Channel limits.'

  'She won't be when the admiral makes the appointment: Brest is outside the limits. He wasn't born yesterday!'

  'And you, sir?'

  Ramage hesitated, thinking of L'Espoir, which, even while the Calypso and the brig rejoined the Fleet, was ploughing her way towards Cayenne, towards Devil's Island. Everything depended on Admiral Clinton. Would the Prince of Wales's friendship with a French refugee have any effect? Probably not. Almost certainly not. And even if it did, Clinton must have his own favourite frigate captains, and one of them would get orders which could bring him glory or, if he failed, square his yards for ever!

  'I expect I'll be taking the brig back to Plymouth and reporting what I know of the mutiny to the Admiralty.'

  'And your wife, sir? Is her Ladyship still in France? You mentioned her when you talked of retaking the brig.'

  'Yes, we escaped together and she is on board the Murex. She wanted to come with me to board the Calypso, but I was rather worried about what I might find.'

  'I hope her Ladyship submitted with good grace.'

  'Well, you know her Ladyship, Bowen. I doubt if anyone would call her submissive,' Ramage said.

  Bowen laughed and his memories of Lady Sarah Rockley, as she was before her marriage, were of a lively and high-spirited woman of grace and beauty who would captivate all the men in a drawing room and leave the women seeming as flat as ale drawn last week.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Admiral Clinton sat at his desk with the alert wariness of a stag lurking in a stand of low trees at the far end of a glen. He was trying to decide whether the five men in front of him were innocent visitors or a quintet likely to board him in a cloud of smoke.

  'Well now,' he said finally, his Scots accent broadening, and Ramage remembered Sarah's reference to the family, 'so here ye all are. Let me see ...

  'Yes, Dr Travis, the physician of my fleet, I know you well enough, and so I should since I see you every day. Are ye comfortable in that old armchair?'

  Travis, tall and gaunt, everyone's idea of a dour man of medicine, had obviously qualified in Edinburgh, and his brief 'Aye' was all he would allow himself for the moment.

  'And m'flag captain - are you comfortable, Bennett? I know ye prefer standing but with this headroom and you so tall, it worries me!'

  Except for Travis, the others laughed dutifully: Captain Bennett was only an inch or so over five feet; even his hair, wiry and sitting on his head like a bob major wig, did not come within five inches of the beams.

  'Then there's Captain Ramage. Lord Ramage, by rights, but he saves us any possible embarrassment by not using his title. You're a jealous man, otherwise you'd have brought that beautiful wife with you.'

  Ramage smiled, not at all certain whether or not the admiral was making a polite joke. 'She has only a fishwife's torn smock to wear, sir, so she decided to wait for a more appropriate occasion.'

  Clinton gestured at Ramage's trousers and shirt. 'You'd have made a good pair. I've been a sailor too long to judge a ship by the patches in her sails.'

  He looked round at the settee. 'Well, Mr Ramage, perhaps you'd introduce these gentlemen ...'

  'Sir, Lieutenant Aitken, the Calypso's first lieutenant. He has served with me in the Mediterranean and the West Indies.'

  'Aye,' Clinton told Aitken, 'he's been telling me all about you. What he doesn't know - nor do you - is that I knew all about you long ago.'

  He gave a laugh at the look of dismay on the young lieutenant's face. 'Man, you look as though the parson's just accused you of deflowering all the young women in the village. Y'father was another Aitken, master, was he not, and he served with me in the Ramillies, Britannia and this ship, the Culloden, before I hoisted my flag. I owed a lot to y'father and I've kept an eye on you from the day y'went to sea, but you've made your own way without needing a dram of help so I've held m'peace.'

  Aitken was obviously startled at this news and stammered his thanks, to be cut short by Clinton. 'Ye've served Mr Ramage very well, and it looks to me as if Mr Ramage feels towards the Aitken family as I do. Still, we all have the rest of our lives to live and,' he added, his voice taking on a friendly warning note, 'a great deal of both good and bad can happen before we go to our graves.'

  A sombre silence had fallen over the great cabin and in Ramage's imagination the mahogany of the desk, wine cooler and table seemed to grow darker, but Clinton seemed not to realize the effect he had unwittingly made.

  'And you must be the Calypso's surgeon - Bowen, isn't it? You and Mr Aitken have had a worrying time, I imagine. Now, who starts? Perhaps we'd be better starting at the end, then Dr Travis can be about his business.'

  Which was another way of saying, Ramage reflected, that Travis would not have to listen to things that he could be questioned about later at a court-martial.

  'How did you find the patient?'

  'Mr Aitken was justified in signalling for the physician of the fleet, sir. This is no reflection on the medical capacity of Mr Bowen, who I truly believe understands a great deal more about this type of illness than I do.'

  'Don't stop man, you've only just started!' the admiral exclaimed impatiently.

  'Acting on your orders, I boarded the Calypso frigate as soon as she hove-to near the flagship,' Travis said in a monotonous voice, obviously nettled by the admiral's remarks, 'and I asked Captain Ramage why the ship had made the signal requesting the fleet's physician. He said that the captain of the frigate, a certain Captain William Bullivant, was confined to his cot unconscious and not in a fit condition to exercise command of the ship.'

  'Oh, go on, man!'

  'Captain Ramage commented to me,' Travis said heavily, 'that the nature of Captain Bullivant's illness was such that not only could he not exercise command, but it led him fo
r long periods to act in a manner prejudicial to the King's business.'

  Everyone in the cabin realized that Travis had spoken slowly and with great care a sentence which was carefully phrased, intended not just for the ears of the commander-in-chief but the five or more captains and flag officers who might be forming a court-martial or court of inquiry.

  'Did you examine the patient?'

  'I was introduced to the ship's first lieutenant and her surgeon, but before discussing the case any further I went below and examined the patient. I have my notes here,' he said, pulling a sheaf of papers from a leather case. The admiral watched for a moment as Travis began sorting them out, and then groaned.

  'No, no, Travis, don't start pouring Latin words all over me. I'm just a simple Highlander, not one of your brilliant Edinburgh scholars.'

  Travis glared at the admiral, sat up straight in the armchair and put the papers back in his case. 'In words of one syllable, sir, Captain Bullivant was in a drunken stupor. He has been having attacks of - if you'll permit me that Latin - delirium tremens, and he was proposing to have the master, a midshipman and a seaman hanged at sunset.'

  Clinton's face paled. It took him only a moment to connect the Bullivant family and the Navy Board, the besotted captain of a frigate and the dangers for junior officers, and another moment to realize that the whole problem had landed in his lap like a haggis sliding away from the carver's knife.

  'You can testify about the man's medical condition; you don't know about the hangings.'

  'I do, sir,' Travis contradicted, and he said with some precision: 'I confirmed the captain's intentions with each of the three men and my witnesses were Captain Ramage and Lieutenant Swan, the first lieutenant of the brig.'

  'Very well, doctor, and thank 'ee. I'm sure you have plenty of work waiting for you.'

  'I have that,' Travis said. 'You'll be wanting a written report?'

  'I'll talk to you about that later.'

  As soon as Travis had left the cabin, Clinton looked at Ramage. 'It was as bad as that?'

  'Worse, sir. Bullivant was going to shoot me when I came on board: he reckoned I was Satan, too.'