by Dudley Pope
The question itself was simple enough: how to ask peasants where the refugees were without revealing that he was looking for them? If the French were in the neighbourhood they would certainly reward anyone bringing in important information or prisoners.
'Jackson - there might be more than one charcoal burner’s hut—'
'I was just thinking that, sir.'
'—and we daren't risk giving ourselves away. Or why we're here.'
'No, sir.'
'So we're going to pretend we're French.'
'French, sir?'
Jackson could not disguise the note of surprise — or doubt - in his voice.
'French, French troops hunting the same refugees.'
'But - well, sir,' Jackson said hurriedly rephrasing his question more politely, 'the local folk will hardly help us if they think we are Frogs.'
'No, but it'll be fairly easy to see if they're lying. But more important, if they think we're French, obviously they won't take it into their heads to report us.'
'There's something in that, sir.'
'But we don't look much like a search party, so when I knock on a door, you keep out of sight and make a noise like a whole patrol!'
'Aye aye, sir. But your uniform, sir?'
'They won't know the difference.'
As they trudged along the beach, Ramage began to feel weary. He'd been at sea so long that he felt unbalanced when walking on land, as though he was drunk; and the hours in the open boat had exaggerated the effect so that, although the beach was flat, he felt he was walking uphill. It would wear off in a few hours; but combined with the weariness, it left him dazed and drained of strength. Nor did the thought of having to wake up and threaten simple peasants arouse any enthusiasm for the task ahead.
He ran his hand through his hair and cursed as his fingers caught in a tangle at the back of his scalp: the wound must have opened again and bled a little.
How far had they walked? He glanced back and just glimpsed the top of the Tower. Less than half a mile. This was a damned unlikely area to find a charcoal burner's hut: only a few larch, pine, cork oak and ilex stuck up out of the undergrowth ... Still, the poor beggars living here had little choice: this side of the lake there were no fields to cultivate, no land fit for olives or vines. That left only fishing - and the beach was too exposed for that - or collecting wood and making charcoal.
Thirty yards ahead the dunes came closer to the water's edge and the juniper bushes grew almost down to the sea: a good place to strike inland without leaving conspicuous footprints in the sand.
Inland, beyond the dunes, the ground in many places was marshy underfoot, and they had to make several detours to avoid stagnant ponds sprawling across their path. Soon they were threading their way among bushes eight or ten feet high, with a scattering of cork oak. Even in the moonlight Ramage could distinguish the bare and smooth, reddish-brown boles where the cork bark had been stripped off.
Suddenly Ramage felt Jackson tugging his coat. 'Smoke, sir: can you smell it? Wood smoke.'
Ramage sniffed: yes, it was faint, but unmistakable. They must be very close to the igloo-shaped oven of turf used by a charcoal burner, because there was not a breath of wind to spread the smoke: not even the usual inshore breeze.
Reaching down to his boot, Ramage eased the heavy-bladed throwing knife in its sheath, and drew his cutlass. Then the two men cautiously continued walking.
Three or four minutes later they found themselves on the edge of a small, flat clearing. In the centre Ramage saw a dull red glow where the oven had been left damped down for the night, completely covered in thick turf except for a tiny hole in one side.
Jackson nudged him and pointed. Beyond the furnace, on the far side of the clearing, Ramage could just make out the outline of a small stone hut.
'Can you see any others?’
'No, sir. That's likely to be the only one: downwind of the furnace.'
It certainly was to leeward of the night's offshore winds, but the certainty in Jackson's voice made Ramage curious, since there was no prevailing wind in this area.
'Why so sure?'
'Downwind of the furnace means the smoke is nearly always drifting round the hut at night. Drives the mosquitoes away.'
'Where did you learn that?'
'Ah,' whispered Jackson, 'I spent my boyhood in the woods.'
'This way,' said Ramage, pointing to the right. 'The moon won't give us away. As soon as I get to the door you go round the back of the hut and sound like a platoon of Marines.'
'Oh sir!' whispered Jackson, giving a mock groan. Ramage smiled to himself; seamen had a friendly contempt for Marines and soldiers.
After smoothing his hair, adjusting his stock and brushing sand from his breeches, Ramage walked up to the door, gripping the cutlass in his right hand. Jackson had disappeared round the back.
Well, he thought, we might as well get on with it, and banged on the door several times with the cutlass blade. He waited a couple of moments and then yelled in French: 'Open the door: open the door this minute.'
A sleepily spoken stream of blasphemy came from inside.
‘Who is it?' demanded a hoarse voice in Italian.
'Open the door!' he repeated in a bullying voice.
A few moments later the door rattled and then squeaked open.
'Who is it?' growled the Italian from the darkness inside the hut.
Now was the time to start speaking Italian.
'Come out into the moonlight, you pig: exhibit the respect for a French officer. Let's see what you look like.'
The man shuffled out while a woman's voice from inside the hut hissed, 'Be careful, Nino!' At that moment Ramage heard a din from behind the hut. Jackson was doing his job well: from the shouted orders and crackling of undergrowth he sounded like a platoon of men.
Nino stood in the moonlight, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand.
'Well?' demanded Ramage.
'Yes, yes, your Grace,' he said hastily, using the most formal method of address he could think of. 'What does your Grace wish?'
Ramage prodded him in the stomach with the point of his cutlass. 'Where,’ he demanded sternly, 'are these pigs of aristocrats hidden?'
He watched Nino closely.
Yes, there was a reaction: a movement of the shoulders, as if bracing himself slightly against an unexpected gust of wind.
'Aristocrats, your Grace? We have no aristocrats here.'
'That I know, fool; but you know where they are hiding.'
'No, no, your Grace: I swear by the Madonna we have no aristocrats here.'
Inside the hut a woman alternately prayed and wept with long, dry sobs; but Ramage realized the man was denying only that anyone was hidden in the hut, apparently avoiding a direct denial that he knew where they were.
‘How many have you in your family?' he demanded.
'Seven, your Grace: my widowed mother, my wife, my four children and my brother.'
'Do you want them all to starve, ungrateful pig?'
'No - no, your Grace. Why should they?' he asked in surprise.
'Because in ten seconds, if you don't tell me where the aristocrats are, you'll join your dead father and the Madonna and all those saints your stupid priests tell you about!'
It would do no harm to give these peasants perhaps their first warning that Bonaparte's men, despite their Red Cap of Liberty and bold talk of freedom, were atheists.
But the effect on the peasant was extraordinary: he straightened himself up and faced Ramage squarely. As the woman continued sobbing inside the hut, he said with calm simplicity: 'Kill me, then: I tell you nothing.' He stood waiting for Ramage's cutlass to drive into his belly.
This fellow, thought Ramage, had a sense of honour: if some of those damned effete Italian aristocrati, mincing and dancing and gossiping their lives away in Siena and Florence - at least until Bonaparte arrived - could see the courage shown on their behalf by one of the contadini they might not despise them so much.
The peasant was still waiting for the cutlass to plunge into his stomach, so Ramage stepped back a pace, as if to gain more room to strike the fatal blow, then suddenly thrust the blade down vertically into the ground. Before the startled peasant realized what was happening Ramage seized him by the arm, leaving the cutlass in the ground, pushed him back into the hut - remembering to duck under the low doorway - and said gaily:
'Allora, Nino, siamo amici!’
'Dio! Perche? Chi siete voi?'
Why? We are friends because I am an English naval officer and I have come to help these people. Now, Nino, before we join them, what about some wine and bread; we have come a long way and we are hungry.'
‘”We”, signor?
It was working: the suddenly friendly voice, the request for wine...
'Jackson, come in here,' he called in English, 'and say something to me in English; anything man!'
Damn, it was dark in the hut: they could easily stick a knife in his ribs...
Jackson came in, stopping just inside the door, uncertain where Ramage was standing. 'Do you think this chap knows where they are, sir?'
'Yes, he does,' said Ramage, also speaking slowly. 'But I've got to convince him we are English.' He turned to the Italian. 'Nino, let us have some light with the wine, then you can look at me well.'
He heard the rustling of straw: it sounded as though a man - not Nino, whose arm he was still holding - was moving.
"Who is that?'
‘My brother.'
The woman stopped sobbing: that was a good sign: some reassurance was spreading through the hut, which stank of sweat, urine, cheese and sour, spilled wine.
The wine, only a few days old, would still be soaking into the casks and seeping out between the staves, so that it had to be topped up each day to expel the air which would otherwise turn it into vinegar.
The brother began striking a flint to light a candle, but Nino told him impatiently to use embers from the charcoal furnace outside. In a few moments he returned, one hand cupping the flame of a rush candle. The light was dim, but enough to illuminate the tiny hut. The wife, a black-eyed dumpling, was sitting up on a straw mattress in a corner, hands clasped across her breasts, as if she was naked, instead of being dressed in a flannel nightdress reaching up to her chin. An old woman, presumably the mother, with a face brown and wrinkled like a walnut, was crouching beside her, clearly terrified and plucking at the well-worn beads of a rosary with claw-like fingers. In another corner a goat munched contentedly and began to urinate with odorous unconcern.
Ramage saw that Nino was a stocky, black-haired man. Several days' growth of beard sprouted out from a smoke-grimed but open face, and his eyes were bloodshot. He wore black corduroy trousers and, despite the heat, a thick woollen vest - he 'turned in all standing’, as a seaman would say, except for his corduroy jacket, which was slung across the only chair in the room. Black corduroy - the uniform of the carbonaio, the charcoal burner.
‘Where are the children, Nino?'
'I sent them to stay with my sister in Orbetello.'
‘Yes, they would be safer there at a time like this.'
Nino fell into the trap. 'Yes, we thought so.'
'Some wine, Nino, eh?'
'I am sorry, Commandante, of course,' said Nino, 'we are not used to having visitors in the night.'
'But in the daytime?'
The Italian did not answer as he took his coat from the chair and flung it towards his wife.
'Will you be seated, Commandante? We are poor people. There is no chair for your attendant.'
Ramage sat down, and while Nino collected some bottles from the far corner of the room, his brother reached up into the rafters and brought down a round cheese and the remains of a long sausage. 'We have no bread,' he apologized.
The brother took a clasp knife from his pocket, opened out the curved blade, and wiped it on his trouser leg before cutting two segments of cheese and several slices of sausage. In the meantime Nino retrieved his jacket and used it to wipe the neck of two bottles.
'My uncle's wine, from near Port’ Ercole,' said Nino, proffering a bottle to each of them.
Suddenly there was a raucous bellow outside and Jackson sprang to the door, cutlass in hand, shouting, ‘What the hell's that?'
Nino roared with laughter and, guessing Jackson's question, said: 'At least I know you are not French soldiers: that's my donkey.'
Ramage laughed too: although for a moment alarmed, he recognized the noise almost at once. Presumably Jackson's seafaring life had prevented him recognizing the hoarse and agonized, starved-of-air bellowing of a peasant's most valued possession, his somaro.
'It's all right, Jackson, it's only a donkey.'
'My God, I thought someone was being strangled!'
'It's done the trick, though; he's realized a French soldier would recognize it immediately.'
Then Ramage remembered a remark Jackson had made earlier.
'If you were a woodsman, why didn't you recognize it?'
Jackson snorted indignantly, 'Sir! We used horses, not bloody mules!'
Ramage sipped the wine and Nino watched him carefully, for the moment more concerned about the stranger's verdict on the wine than the reason for the midnight visit.
'It's good, Nino: very good. It’s a long time since I tasted such as this. A very long time,' he repeated, hoping Nino would start questioning him.
'You speak Italian very well, Commandante.’
'Before I entered the Navy I lived for many years in Italy.'
'In Tuscany, no doubt'
'Yes - Siena, most of the time. And Volterra.'
‘With friends, perhaps?'
‘No, with my parents. But we had many friends there.'
‘Yes?' said Nino politely. Then as if satisfied with the information: 'The Commandante was asking about some nobles, I believe?'
Could one be sure of these peasants, even now? Yet Ramage had to take a risk, otherwise this polite talk would go on all night
'Nino, I think you are a man of honour. Allora, I will be honest with you because I trust you. If you cannot help, I ask only that you do not betray me. My Admiral has sent me not to kill people, not to destroy lives, but to save them.'
The two brothers were watching him, listening carefully and patiently. He found himself using his hands to emphasize words: strange how difficult it was to speak Italian without gesticulating.
The candle flickered because the sacking normally covering the tiny window had been drawn back to let some air in. Not sufficient, God knows, to get rid of the stench of goat, wine, urine, sweat and cheese, but enough to make the flame dance. The shadows it threw across the brothers' faces, and their natural peasant impassiveness, made it hard to guess their thoughts.
'My Admiral told me' (the exaggeration was permissible, Ramage thought) 'that at least five nobles escaped to here when the French entered Leghorn. My Admiral also told me there was a lady among them; a famous lady, a lady who would know about such things as alabaster...'
He paused, wondering if the two men knew of the alabaster mines at Volterra and would therefore guess he was referring to the Marchesa. If they did, then he'd soon gain their confidence.
Nino gave a nod which implied that although he agreed there might be a lady who knew about alabaster, it did not mean he knew her.
'Nino, I will be frank: there is no reason why you should trust me, so I won't ask you to take me to these people....'
‘Where is the Commandante's ship?'
'Out there,' said Ramage, pointing seaward, ‘beyond the reach of prying French eyes.'
"You landed by boat?'
‘Yes.'
'The Commandante’s hair i
s matted with dried blood, or something similar.'
'It is dried blood: we had a battle and I was wounded by the French.'
'Would you like my wife to make a poultice for it, Commandante?'
'No,' said Ramage rather too hastily for politeness. 'No, thank you: there is no need: it heals itself well. Now,' he said, indicating he assumed they were satisfied, 'as I said, I do not ask you to take me to these people; only that you take a message.'
'If it was possible that we could help the Commandante by taking a message to someone he wished to receive a message,' Nino said guardedly, speaking formally and still not admitting he knew anything, 'it would have need to be in Italian.'
'Of course,' Ramage replied, adopting Nino's roundabout manner. 'The message I have in mind would be to a lady who knew about alabaster, telling her the English have arrived to take her and her friends on a voyage. And to reassure this lady - so that she can identify the English officer - tell her that when he was a boy she made him recite Dante in Italian, and she was angry with him because of his bad accent. And she said to this boy, that of all Dante wrote, to remember specially one line: "L'amor che muove il sole e l’altre stelle" - 'The love that moves the sun and the other stars".'
Nino repeated the phrase. 'Did this man Dante write that?'
Ramage nodded.
'It is beautiful,' said the brother, speaking for the first time. 'But why was the lady angry because of your accent, Commandante? You pronounce it as if you were a real Tuscan.'
'Now I do, but then I was a small boy; still learning the language in fact'
'This message, Commandante. Supposing it could be delivered: where would you like to wait?'
'Where you wish. My sword - that is outside, and you may take it, and that of my attendant, and hide them where you wish.'
Nino stood up as if he had decided what he must do.
'Commandante, you and your attendant are tired. Perhaps you would care to sleep here—' he waved towards the mattresses. 'In the meantime, I have some work to do. My brother has no work, so he will stay here.'
Ramage and Jackson stretched out on one mattress. The old woman whimpered - her eyes were watery, and she had long since ceased to do anything with her life but eat and sleep. The wife whispered something reassuring.