by Dudley Pope
As the days passed, Kerguelen made a habit of visiting Ramage’s cabin in the late afternoon and staying for an hour or more. Sometimes the five men had an animated discussion about a diversity of subjects; sometimes the Frenchman sat watching Bowen playing chess with one or other of them.
Ramage noticed that the Frenchman followed every move without ever making a comment. Occasionally, after some move by Bowen, Ramage saw Kerguelen’s eyes move across the board and invariably it showed he had spotted a trap being set by the Surgeon: sometimes a trap that would not be sprung until a few moves later.
Slowly they came to know him. He was a curious mixture, and at heart probably a royalist. He was contemptuous of many aspects of the Revolution and also contemptuous of his men, and he cared little for their welfare. To him each seemed simply a machine, like the lock of a gun. You offered them money, and they fought. Money, Kerguelen had once commented bitterly, was their fuel: with enough fuel, they gave you heat or light; without fuel, they were nothing.
Although he did not say it, Kerguelen’s attitude provided a corollary: without money, there was no loyalty. It was obvious that, as the Lady Arabella swung at anchor in the Tagus, Kerguelen was more concerned with the possibility of treachery among his own men than the prisoners. Ramage realized that the Frenchman’s contempt for his men was based on a cold assessment of their worth, rather than a lack of leadership.
It was equally obvious that Kerguelen and his brother came from an old family: one that might well have had trouble keeping the guillotine at a distance during the early days of the Revolution. That might explain how a cultured man—and Ramage assumed the brother was the same—was involved in privateering.
Bowen had finally provided a key to the visits. After Kerguelen left the cabin one day, the Surgeon commented, “It’s ironic to think a man can be so desperately lonely that he seeks the company of his enemies.”
“Enemies?” Yorke echoed.
“We’re hardly his allies,” Bowen said ironically. “You forget we’re his prisoners.”
“I fancy he forgets it, too.”
“He does: he’s becoming more and more worried about his own men.”
Ramage nodded. “I’ve noticed that; as if he’s their prisoner in a way—at least until the money arrives.”
“He’s their prisoner,” Yorke said, “and we’re his guests.”
Southwick grunted and ruffled his hair. “I still don’t trust any of ‘em,” he said stolidly. “No good ever came out of trusting a foreigner.”
Bowen laughed, moving one of the pawns on the chessboard. “I don’t entirely agree, but the idea of this ship anchored in the Tagus with the captors as captive as the captives intrigues me!”
Southwick asked Ramage, “Any more news from Jackson, sir?”
“Nothing. There’s still a sort of armed truce between the Tritons and the packetsmen. Apparently Rossi’s knives continue to scare the packetsmen.”
“Those knives! Well, I’m glad to have my watch back,” Southwick said.
“Just be sure these damned privateersmen don’t see it,” Ramage said. “They’ll search again and strip us of everything.”
“Aye, Kerguelen has no control.”
“He wouldn’t do anything, even if he had,” Ramage said soberly. “He’s a privateersman, not a philanthropist. Don’t forget his men signed on for ‘share of the profits.’ He has a duty to them.”
Yorke yawned noisily. “Oh for the delights of Lisbon … I’d welcome an evening on shore, even if I had to spend it listening to those miserable fado singers and watching an elegant lady drive her cicisbeo to distraction by staring at a handsome fellow like me!”
Fado, Ramage thought to himself; the Portuguese were a far from sad people, but those sad, sad songs … always about the broken-hearted woman left at home while her loved one departed, whether for some distant shore or the gates of Heaven. If one judged the country by the song, the nation comprised only women who’d been spurned, jilted, widowed or whose lover had disappeared over the horizon, and every dam’ one of them wailing about it to the accompaniment of musical instruments obviously invented by gloomy men for use at funerals.
Was Gianna singing fado as she walked or drove around St Kew? Ramage almost laughed at the idea. She might slash at nettles with a stick, she might get angry with her horse, she might lose her temper with her maid, and all because her Nicholas was away at sea (was he being conceited? He thought not), but wailing fado in any language: no, Gianna was pure Tuscan in that respect!
Here at anchor in the Tagus, with the hills rolling beyond the city of Lisbon, it was easy to think of Tuscany: of Gianna’s Tuscany, and her little hilltop kingdom of Volterra, now overrun by the French. Would she ever be able to go back there to resume her rule? Would this war ever end? He found it hard to remember peacetime. Had he been fifteen or sixteen when the war began? It didn’t matter; he could only remember war. Naval service in peacetime must be very boring: going into foreign ports to fire salutes to governors and leave visiting cards, instead of sending in armed boats to cut out prizes from under the nose of the batteries.
Yorke broke into his thoughts. “You look wistful, my friend: your mind was over the hills and far away!”
Ramage nodded. “In Tuscany!”
“Ah—the fair Gianna; I look forward to meeting her.”
“You will,” Ramage said. “If we ever get to London I’ll give an enormous ball and you’ll be allowed one dance with her.”
“You’re not very generous.”
“She’s very beautiful!”
Southwick slapped his knee. “She is that, Mr Yorke, and I know Mr Ramage won’t mind me saying she’s a little wild, too. Headstrong, really.”
“Uses a pistol instead of a bell to summon a servant, eh?” Yorke said banteringly.
Southwick and Ramage looked at each other and burst out laughing. Yorke said, “Come on, what have I said?”
“Nothing,” Ramage said. “It’s just that the first time I met her, she was aiming a pistol at me. It was like staring into the muzzle of a 32-pounder!”
“She wouldn’t be flattered at the comparison,” Yorke said, deliberately misunderstanding Ramage. “I know you can be irritating, but what drove her to such extremes? I mean, a pistol at your first meeting!”
“I was supposed to be rescuing her. She and her family bolted from Volterra as the French troops arrived. I was picking them up at dead of night from a small lookout tower along the coast. It was all very mysterious—or romantic, or obvious, depending on how much romance you have in your soul—and she feared a trap because the French were close. So she suddenly arrived in a black cloak that hid her face and kept her pistol aimed at my stomach until she was sure I wasn’t a Frenchman.”
“Mysterious perhaps,” Yorke said, “but hardly romantic as far as I’m concerned.”
Bowen, sitting at the table with a chess problem set out in front of him, began clearing the pieces from the board. “What do you propose doing if the Government won’t allow us to pay Kerguelen the money, sir?” he asked.
Ramage had been expecting one of them to ask the question eventually. “There’s not much choice: withdraw our parole and brush up our French. If the packetsmen come to their senses, we’d stand a chance of retaking the ship. Or we might meet a British frigate …”
“Those two frigates anchored here,” Yorke said. “They’ve done nothing …”
“Nor will they,” Ramage said. “The French Government is probably just waiting for a chance to invade Portugal. The British seizing a French ship—for that’s what the Arabella is now as far as the French are concerned—right in front of Lisbon might be just the excuse they need.”
Yorke shrugged his shoulders. “Surely you’d have expected some word from them, though?”
“No. Chamberlain might have told one of the captains that we’re prisoners, but he hasn’t told them what I’m doing because he doesn’t know himself. You can’t expect a frigate captain to get exc
ited over some lieutenant held prisoner on board an enemy ship in a neutral port.”
“I can,” Yorke said, “but it wouldn’t be justified! Let’s hope the Government pays up!”
From the time his report to the First Lord had been taken on shore to the Agent, Ramage had tried—without much success—to shut his mind to the question. It was easy enough during the day, but at night it always sneaked in, nagging and probing and swirling like spasms of toothache. He would deliberately contrive erotic thoughts of Gianna, but they would be jostled out …
To pay or not to pay … The answers he gave himself never varied. Having just passed an Act of Parliament, the Government certainly would not allow the bargain to be carried out … Yet, knowing what was at stake the First Lord and the Joint Postmasters-General would persuade the Cabinet … No, because the First Lord will not be persuaded that Lieutenant Ramage has really discovered what happens to the packets … Yes, because the First Lord will guess from the bizarre situation outlined in his report that Lieutenant Ramage has been forced to take unusual steps … No, because the First Lord is away in Dorset, confined to bed with gout and a high fever, and another one of Their Lordships dealt with his report (a dam’ dull dog)—and refused the request without bothering to refer to either of the Postmasters-General.
Perhaps the Lisbon packet had been captured before it reached Falmouth and sank the bags of mail. Or failed to sink them, so that the French, having slowly read their way through the captured mail, had found his secret report and knew that the meddling Lieutenant Ramage was prisoner on board a French prize in Lisbon … Word would soon reach the French Consul, or the French agents in Lisbon—the city must be teeming with them—that a throat needed cutting. Perhaps even Kerguelen’s as well, if he had a royalist background …
Yorke was repeating the question: “Do you think they will?”
And Southwick and Bowen were staring at him as if he was a stranger. Why? What had happened? Were they …
“You need a rest, sir,” Bowen said, getting up and walking over to him. Ramage suddenly felt unutterably weary; a weariness no sleep could ever satisfy. Weary and full of a sense of futility, that even if something was worth doing—which was so unlikely—he hadn’t the energy to do it anyway. Neither the energy nor the wish. The three men seemed to be floating … Bowen’s face was enormous and peering down at him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE days passed slowly. Much usually stayed in his cabin, reading his Bible, while Wilson sat with him studying military manuals. Bowen and Southwick played chess steadily with quiet desperation and Ramage and Yorke, who spent hours pacing the deck, were now so familiar with Lisbon’s skyline that they rarely looked at it. They had invented various games—betting against each other how many tacks one of the gaudily painted and heavily laden fregatas would take to reach them; how many times gulls would dive into the water between the Arabella and the shore in the next ten minutes. They bet on how many butts there were in the Arabella’s deck planking, and halfway through counting them found a startled Kerguelen watching them. He was so intrigued that they persuaded him to join a lottery on how many knots there were in the king plank. When he won, he was quick to think of more objects about which they could bet.
Finally it was the day before the packet was due and Yorke, walking on deck with Ramage, said, “Shall we ask Kerguelen if we can go and see that Agent fellow, Chamberlain?”
Ramage grimaced and shrugged his shoulders. “No point, unless you want a run on shore.” He thought about it again, conscious that for the past few days he had had little energy and initiative.
Yorke was obviously thinking the same thing, and said, “You’re sure of that?”
“Yes, he can’t have any news yet. Anyway, if the Government agrees to pay up, Chamberlain will be so impressed he’ll rush to let us know. If it refuses, he’ll be so damned pleased he’ll still rush to tell us.”
Yorke walked over to the bulwark and looked over at the city. When Ramage joined him, he tapped his arm. “When this is over, you must take a rest. You’ve had a bad time in the Caribbean, and now this. Everything has to have a rest, you know. Like my razors.”
“Your razors?” Ramage exclaimed.
“Haven’t you seen them? How many do you have?”
“A set of two.”
“And you use them alternate days?”
“Of course,” Ramage said.
“But you don’t get a good shave.”
“Oh yes I do!”
“By your standards! Try having seven razors, like me. Each has a day of the week engraved on the back.”
“But what’s the point? Just more razors to strop!”
“Yes—but each has six days’ rest. I don’t know why, but good steel honed really sharp needs a regular rest to keep a fine cutting edge.”
“You’re a good man lost to the Church,” Ramage said sourly. “Or maybe you should have been a barber.”
“Church or barber, eh?” Yorke said amiably. “You’re the one with the sharp tongue!”
Suddenly he pointed westward, towards the broad entrance of the Tagus. Running in before a fresh westerly wind was a small brig similar to the Lady Arabella.
“Not only the Lisbon packet safe and sound, but a day early!” he exclaimed. “Did she find good weather, or did they send her out a day early to bring the glad news?”
If Ramage was honest with himself, Yorke’s matter-of-fact acceptance that the Post Office might have sailed the packet a day early because of his efforts was the first time he had thought of the possibility, yet it was an obvious one, given the Government’s position.
Certainly he had listened when Sir Pilcher Skinner had described how despatches from admirals, generals and governors were being lost along with the Government’s orders for new and secret operations. But with an almost frightening detachment he realized that it was not until this very moment, as he watched the distant packet coming in under all plain sail, that he fully appreciated how one continent was cut off from another by the packet losses.
Previously it was a fascinating problem in which he was closely involved. Now he seemed to be standing back aloof, looking at an invisible barrier, like a cheval de frise, running north and south down the centre of the Western Ocean and cutting it in half. A barrier with gaps here and there, since occasional packets got through, but still a massive barrier.
The Government in London was like an admiral on board a flagship unable to signal to his Fleet; a regimental sergeant major struck dumb on a parade ground. The Prime Minister in Downing Street, the War Minister at the Horse Guards, the First Lord at the Admiralty, the Foreign Secretary also in Downing Street—and not one of them certain he could pass even the most trifling order beyond the shores of Britain …
As the packet drew closer, the long days of waiting began to recede. Southwick, Bowen, Wilson and Much came up on deck and Kerguelen joined them. Soon the brig was near enough for them to see a crowd of people on her deck, but clearly her Captain was not going to get too close to the Arabella.
“Carrying a lot of passengers,” Southwick commented.
Ramage stared moodily at the packet. Locked up in a drawer on board that ship was the letter which was going to tell him if he was a free man with a future or a discredited lieutenant doomed to spend the next few years in a French prison. The next couple of hours were going to be worse than the past month …
Almost exactly two hours after the packet had gone alongside the quay, a boat came out to the Lady Arabella and Kerguelen sent for Ramage. In the boat was a messenger from the Post Office Agent who, after making sure it was indeed Lieutenant Ramage to whom he was speaking, handed over a heavily sealed letter. He would wait for the reply, he said.
As Ramage turned to go down to his cabin he saw that every privateersman was on deck watching him. Kerguelen glanced away to avoid Ramage’s eye. Every one of those men, Ramage realized, knew that the letter he was holding might represent a great deal of money; money to be handed
over to Kerguelen and shared out among them.
Yorke was sprawled on one of the bunks, ostentatiously reading a book; Bowen was demonstrating some complicated chess defence to an obviously bewildered Southwick. All three were making a great effort to avoid showing any curiosity about the letter.
He broke the brittle green wax of the seals and found it contained not a letter from Lord Spencer but a note from the Agent. “My Lord,” Chamberlain had written, “I have this moment received an urgent communication from Lord Auckland concerning the Lady Arabella packet, and with it is a letter from the Admiralty addressed to you which I dare not risk having delivered to you on board the prize. I shall be at my house if you can leave the ship; otherwise would you be kind enough to give written and sealed instructions which the messenger will bring to me without delay.”
Hmm … Mr Chamberlain’s attitude has undergone a lot of modification, Ramage thought wryly, but there is no mention of the ransom money. What did “concerning the Lady Arabella packet” mean? Was Chamberlain being discreet, afraid the letter might fall into the wrong hands?
“From Chamberlain,” he told them. “He wants me to go and see him.”
“Kerguelen will agree,” Yorke said. “May I come?”
Ramage nodded, and Yorke swung himself from the bunk and reached for his hat and cloak.
Southwick still looked worried, and Ramage said, “I’m afraid I don’t know what’s been decided; the Agent doesn’t give a hint.”
Yorke followed him up on deck, where Kerguelen was pacing up and down, head bowed, hands clasped behind his back. The Frenchman walked over to Ramage and asked abruptly, “The money—it is arranged?”
“The Post Office Agent wants me to go to his house: he has despatches from London.” Ramage held out the letter for him to read, but Kerguelen waved it aside with a gesture showing he accepted Ramage’s word. “You’d better use our boat—the messenger can dismiss his.” He shouted orders to a group of seamen.
“You think everything will be all right?” he asked, once he made sure the men were working quickly.