by Dudley Pope
'And the political situation?'
'The Grand Duke of Tuscany - well, he's a weak man, and you probably know he allowed this Bonaparte to occupy Leghorn on June 27. There's talk of certain Corsicans starting a revolution against the British in Corsica: Bonaparte is calling for volunteers. Since Corsica placed herself under British protection, I suppose this Bonaparte is embarrassed to find he could be called a British subject,' she added dryly. 'He risks being hanged as a traitor - if you can catch him.'
He was amused at the contemptuous way she referred to 'this Bonaparte'. Still, 'this Bonaparte' had achieved the impossible by crossing the Alps with his armies and capturing, one after another, the Italian states, like a farmer striding through his orchards plucking ripe fruit.
'For the rest,' she said, ' - well, there is talk of the Austrians defeating the French in two battles: at Lonato, and somewhere else - I cannot remember the name. And the Pope has suspended the armistice he signed with this Bonaparte.'
'What about Elba?'
'I do not know: there were French plans to capture it after Leghorn: it is very near the coast. Oh yes, I forgot: the Spanish have signed an alliance with France.'
'Declared war on the British, you mean?' exclaimed Ramage.
She shrugged her shoulders. 'I do not know: I imagine so.'
Ramage envied her unconcern - if Spain joined the French, then the Royal Navy would be overwhelmed in the Mediterranean: the Admiral was fighting against heavy odds even now ... And a full-scale revolution in Corsica could mean the British would have to clear out because they had very few troops there. The capture of Elba would deprive them of yet another base. And the Spanish Fleet joining the French ... Well, there'll be enough battles and casualties to make every junior lieutenant a post captain before the war ends, he thought viciously.
He found himself tapping the palm of his left hand with his throwing knife: quite unconsciously he must have taken it out while listening to the Marchesa.
'Do you usually have such a knife up your sleeve?' she asked.
'Yes,' he answered sourly. 'Invariably. Like all good card players.'
'You mean you like to cheat.'
He imagined her outlined against the little door: and before he realized what he was doing, his right hand swung up over his head, then suddenly chopped down. The knife blade flashed for a moment before thudding into the door, the hilt vibrating for a few moments.
'No,' he replied, walking over to pull it out of the wood. 'Not to cheat: just to win. Too many kings, courtiers, courtesans and politicians think war's just a game of cards and realize their mistake only when they find an uncouth Corsican artilleryman has strolled across the Alps and trumped all their aces.'
'So we in Tuscany have been playing cards?'
'Madam, could we continue this discussion another time?'
'Certainly: I was really only interested to know if you cheated. Now,' she said, picking up her pistol and standing, 'shall we meet here this evening?'
"No - it will save time if you all come to the boat. Nino can guide you. Bring water, if you can, and food. But no possessions and no servants.'
‘Why?'
'Because servants take no risk by staying - they and possessions take up space in the boat. We have no spare space.'
'But jewellery, money?'
"Yes, within reason. So, Madam, will you be at the boat at nine o'clock: that should give you half an hour of darkness to get here. Are you hiding far away?'
'At—'
'No, don't tell me exactly where: the less we know, the less we could be forced to tell if we were captured. Just the direction and the time to get here.'
'Towards Monte Capalbio. Half an hour at the most.'
'Excellent: nine o'clock at the boat, then.'
'Yes. I will send Nino during the day to tell you what the others have decided. One of the party, Count Pitti, has yet to arrive: we expect him hourly.'
Ramage suddenly realized she already intended to come, whatever her companions decided.
'You anticipate difficulties?'
Chapter 8
LYING IN THE SAND later that day, shaded from the fierce heat of the sun by a juniper bush, Ramage alternately dozed and woke, relieved that for the moment there were no decisions to make and no particular risks to run. All that bothered him for the time being were the flies and mosquitoes which attacked him with a determination quite alien to the country.
He ran over in his mind the plan he had already outlined to Jackson and the men. Just before nine o'clock - providing the wind did not come up and bring a bit of a sea with it - the gig would be hauled out to the sand bar, where it could be held by a couple of seamen so that the party could wade out to it. That was the easiest way of making a hurried departure in case of an emergency. But if there was no urgency, the boat could be hauled up the river again so the refugees could embark without getting wet.
Now all that remained was for Nino to arrive with a message from the Marchesa telling him how many of the men were coming.
How he hated these men he had never seen: these names, these (probably) scented fops, whose very existence had sunk the Sibella and decimated her crew. The violence of the spasm of hatred made him sit up, as if to shake it off, and when he lay back again he despised himself for being so irrational: they might well be brave men anxious to carry on the fight against the French.
'A drink of water, sir?'
The ever-wakeful Jackson: he'd miss that Yankee twang and cadaverous face when they reached Bastia and Jackson was sent off to some other ship.
He took the dipper and drank. It was warm and brackish; like all water stored in a ship it stank, but years of practice taught a seaman to drink with the back of his nose blocked, so the smell was delayed until after the water was down his throat, past regret or recall.
Maybe it was unfair to blame these refugees; but with their money and influence, surely they could have chartered - stolen, even - a fishing boat and made their way to Corsica, instead of requesting a British warship? Did they want a warship for comfort or security? If comfort, because they found the idea of a fishing boat too disgusting, then the devil take them. If security: well, they had lost their lands, their homes, and probably their wealth - temporarily anyway - so perhaps one could not blame them. But he had a suspicion it was for luxury; for pride; so that they should not make a brutta figura, cut a figure, the cheap vanity that was - and presumably always would be - the curse of Italy.
He thought, many Italians - but by no means all - are like Van der Dekken, the Flying Dutchman; only the curse on them is that they're doomed to roam the world, their vanity raw and exposed to every chill wind, open to every slight, until they find something to give them confidence and the natural dignity that goes with it.
Yet, apart from the brutta figura, if he was honest he was blaming them for his own forebodings: that much he admitted. He stared up at the deep blue of the sky. Foreboding... apprehension ... fear: the same commodity, but with different names stencilled on the casks. The fear was of - well, not so much when he thought about it: only the consequences of surrendering the Sibella. There were plenty of his father's enemies still carrying on the vendetta. He only hoped Captain Nelson would be at Bastia when he arrived; but if it was Admiral Goddard or one of his followers, which was quite possible - well...
He heard a man puffing and grunting, and as Jackson leapt to his feet, cutlass in hand, Nino came into the clearing.
'Ah, Commandante,' he said, 'this heat!' He rubbed his face vigorously with a piece of cloth, smearing the soot which always begrimed a carbonaio's face across the areas of skin which had been washed clean by streams of perspiration. 'Your sentry was not asleep this time!'
'What news, Nino? Sit down - we have no wine, only water.'
Nino grinned. 'In the name of my uncle at Port' Ercole, Commandante, I took the liberty of bringing you something.'
He untied the neck of a small sack and took out three bottles of the deep golden white wine f
or which the district was famous, followed by several cheeses and half a dozen long, thin loaves of bread.
'Those biscuits,' he said. 'The Marchesa told me of your ship's biscuits, and so I found you some bread.'
'It was kind of you, Nino.'
'Prego, Commandante; it was nothing, you are welcome. The bread is made from my uncle's grain.'
Drinking wine in the heat of the sun always gave Ramage a headache; but he knew Nino would be hurt if he did not. 'We'll have a little now and keep the rest for the voyage.'
'Drink it all now, Commandante; the two gentlemen will be bringing supplies for the voyage.'
Ramage glanced up at the peasant. 'The two gentlemen, Nino?'
'I have a message from the Marchesa, Commandante. She said to tell you that three of the gentlemen have decided their duty keeps them here.'
Nino's voice was polite, but there was no mistaking his views on the reluctant trio.
'The two.gentlemen: who are they?'
'I do not know their names: they are young and I think they are cousins. Now, Commandante, I must leave you: I have work to do before I meet you again at nine o'clock. Permesso, Commandante?'
'Yes, and thank you, Nino: my greetings to your brother and your mother and your wife, and my apologies for disturbing them last night.'
'It was nothing, Commandante'
With that he was gone. Ramage told Jackson to take some wine and food to the seamen and then lay back on the sand again, watching the insects zig-zagging among the spines of the junipers. The air was alive with the buzzing of the cicadas; the noise seemed to come from everywhere and yet nowhere; almost as though it was being produced inside one's head.
The sleep had done Ramage good: now he felt restless and full of energy. With the immediate problems solved, he found himself thinking of the girl: he re-created a dozen times the episode in the Tower, dwelling again and again on the quality of her voice. It was hard to define - soft, yet it had the ring of authority; precise in the way she spoke, but musical to the ear. Clear - and yet always on the verge of huskiness. He started to wonder how husky it would become when she made love, and hurriedly forced the idea out of his mind: the sun was hot enough without thinking of that: he'd already disturbed himself enough with memories of Ghiberti's naked Eve and speculations about the body beneath the black cape.
He felt a deep and powerful longing to roam free over the Tuscan hills once again: to ride the tracks and stir up the white dust; to see the lines of dark green cypress growing up the side of hills, stark against the hard blue sky. To watch a pair of creamy oxen plodding along, tails lazily flicking the flies from their flanks, and the owner asleep in the cart. To see a walled hill town, ride up the twisting path to the gate, his horse's hooves clattering on the cobbles of the narrow streets, and glance up at a window to see a pair of beautiful eyes watching him curiously. To go back in time, to his boyhood, when Gianaa was a little girl the Marchesa brought to the house....
The cicadas still buzzed in the darkness - did they never sleep? - as Ramage watched the moon rising over Mount Capalbio. Earlier in the day, looking at a flat stone set high in the south wall of the Tower, Ramage had just been able to distinguish some Latin words, a name and a date carved into it, recording that a certain Alfiero Nicolo Verdeco was 'the architect of this edifice' in AD 1606. Had Signor Verdeco stood on this spot nearly two centuries earlier and seen his 'edifice' bathed in the warm, oyster-pink glow of a full moon — a harvest moon?
Ramage heard some splashing near by and from the top of the dune looked down at the mouth of the river: the boat was being held by three seamen, up to their knees in water, so that the after end of the keel rested on the sand bar. The rest of the men were already in the boat, waiting to help the refugees on board.
He called down to Smith, asking the time.
He saw a faint glow as Smith lifted up the canvas shield over the lantern and held the watch close to the light. Thank God someone had brought a good supply of candles.
'Five minutes short o' nine o'clock, sir.'
Time to walk along the top of the dunes towards the Tower, to keep an eye open for the refugees. Let's hope they'll be punctual. Nine o'clock in Italy could mean anything between ten o'clock and midnight.
He guessed they had been hiding somewhere near the little hill town of Capalbio, inland on the far side of the lake. Their shortest route to the boat would be round the northern edge of the lake, where they would pick up the track running parallel with the beach, forty yards or so inland, and linking the Tower with the little village of Ansedonia, farther up the coast towards the causeways. Nino had said it was called the Strada di Cavalleggeri, the Road of the Horsemen, but no one used it now. The track was hard sand, built up with an underlay of rocks where it crossed patches of marshy ground, and it ended at the bridge of narrow planks over the river by the Tower. The refugees need only walk along it until they met the bridge, turn right and climb up on top of the dunes, then carry on beside the river until they reached its mouth, where the boat waited.
The moon was coming up fast, losing its pinkness the higher it rose, and seeming to shrink in size. Damn, thought Ramage it must be nearly half past nine.
Jackson seemed to sense his mounting annoyance and anxiety.
'Reckon they're all right, sir?'
'I imagine so: I've never yet met a punctual Italian.'
'Still, she said half an hour. If they left at dusk they've been nearly an hour, sir.'
'I know, man,' Ramage said impatiently. 'But we don't know whether they left on time, or where they started from or how they're coming, so we can only wait.'
'Sorry, sir. Reckon those men with her ladyship have had a rough time today.'
'Why? How do you mean?'
'I wouldn't like admitting to her I was scared of doing something....'
‘No.'
Jackson was in a talkative mood, and obviously nothing short of a direct order would stop him.
‘... I guess she could make a man feel pretty small, sir.'
'Yes.'
'But there's another side to it, sir...'
Ramage guessed Jackson knew he was anxious and was deliberately making conversation to help him over the waiting.
'Is there?'
"Yes - if a man had a woman like that to encourage him, he could push the world over.'
'She'd push it for him, more likely.'
'No, sir. Although she's small and dainty, I reckon she's -well, tough like a man; not all "fetch my smelling salts, Willy" as you might say. But I reckon it's only because she's boss of the family and has to be like that. I guess that inside her she's all woman.'
He wanted Jackson to talk. The American was not being familiar: dammit, he was old enough to be his father, and his salty wisdom obviously came from experience. But more important, Ramage realized, that low-pitched nasal voice was helping beat off the waves of loneliness and despair that were threatening to drown him. He looked once again over the flat marshes of the Maremma to the distant mountains silhouetted by the moonlight; then he stared up at the moon itself, now looking with all its pockmarks like a polished silver coin; and the stars, so clear and so close together it'd be hard to jab the sky with the point of a sword without touching one of them. They all seemed to be saying 'You are very insignificant, very inexperienced, very frightened ... What little you know; and what a short time you have in which to learn ...'
A musket shot whiplashed over to his left, a thousand yards or more along the Strada di Cavalleggeri. And another - and a third.
'There!' exclaimed Jackson, pointing. 'Did you see the flash?'
'No.'
Damn, damn, damn! He was helpless: he'd left his cutlass in the boat.
Another flash and a moment later the sound of the shot.
'I saw that one: just near the track. Must be a French patrol chasing them.'
'Yes,' said Jackson, 'the flashes are scattered.'
Realizing he could not help from where he was, Ramage snapped: 'Co
me on, we'll make for the end of the track and pilot 'em in!'
They dashed along the top of the dunes but every dozen or so paces one or other of them toppled over as his feet sank into a patch of particularly soft sand. The juniper and sea holly tore at their legs and thighs, and they had to dodge round the bigger bushes.
Then, almost sobbing for breath, they were level with the Tower and running down the side of the dunes to follow the river's sudden curve inland towards the lake.
As the land flattened out they burst through a wall of bushes and found themselves at the edge of the hard track: to the right it ended abruptly at the little bridge; to the left it ran straight, disappearing into the darkness towards Ansedonia.
Three more shots rang out and Ramage saw the flashes - all inland of the track. Jackson suddenly dropped on all fours and for a moment Ramage thought he had been hit by a stray ball, then realized the American had an ear to the ground.
'Cavalry - a dozen horses, at a guess, but scattered," he said.
'Can you hear people running?'
'No, sir: sound don't travel well through this sandy stuff.'
Should they both run along the track and try to fight off the pursuers? No, they'd only add to the refugees' confusion: better wait here. No - make a diversion and draw the fire: that was the only hope.
'Jackson!' In his enthusiasm he seized the American by the shoulder. 'Listen - they can get to the boat either along this track or by crossing the dunes farther up there and then along the beach. I'll stay on the track and you go up on the dunes. As the Italians pass we make sure they're going in the right direction, then make a diversion as the cavalry reach us. When I shout "boat" bolt back and get on board: horses won't be able to gallop on the dunes. Understand?'
'Aye aye, sir!'
With that Jackson,was scrambling up the side of the dune. An American who, a few years ago, was fighting the British, was now serving in the British Navy risking his neck on Tuscan soil to save some Italians from the French, who were once his allies against the British. It didn't make sense.