by Dudley Pope
'The lady's all wet,' Jackson said.
'I've no doubt she is,' Ramage replied acidly. "We all are.'
To hell with it: why should he concern himself about the damp petticoats of a woman who considered him a coward. Then she sighed, slowly pitched forward against Jackson, and slid into the bottom of the boat.
Ramage was too shocked for a moment to do anything: even as she sighed, he suddenly remembered she was wounded: he was the only one in the boat who knew - except Pisano.
'Perhaps.' The flat tone indicated she did not propose to discuss it.
"Until this evening, then.'
She held out her hand and he lifted it to his lips. She was trembling very slightly, but so little that she must have thought allowing him to kiss her hand would not reveal it.
Chapter 9
BY PUTTING floor boards fore and aft across thwarts, Jackson managed to rig up a rough cot for the Marchesa; but before they could lift her on to it, the seamen stopped rowing of their own accord and stripped off their shirts, handing them to the American to make a pillow.
The men began rowing again - a slight onshore breeze was raising a short lop which made the boat roll violently when stopped - and Ramage and Jackson lifted the girl on to the rudimentary cot. Ramage dare not let himself think how much blood she had lost; he did not even know exactly where she was wounded.
The two men wrapped the lower part of the girl's body in her cape and Ramage's jacket. While lifting her they saw the right shoulder of her dress was soaked with blood and Ramage decided it was worth risking using the lantern to examine the wound. If only he had a surgeon's mate on board....
He told Jackson to pass the compass to Smith who was rowing stroke and sitting nearest to them in the boat, only a foot or two away from the girl's head.
'Put the compass where you can set it, Smith: line up some stars and try to keep the boat heading west.'
He reached out and unshipped the tiller. Smith would have to keep the boat on course with the oars.
Now - to cut away the clothing and look at the wound. He pulled his throwing knife from his boot: ironic that it was still stained with the French cavalryman's blood. He held it over the side, washing the steel clean with sea water.
A ripping of cloth made him glance across at Jackson: the American was busy tearing a shirt into strips to use as bandages.
'Ready, sir?'
‘Yes.'
He leaned over the girl - God, her face was pale, a paleness emphasized by the cold moonlight. Lying on her back, eyes closed, she might have been a corpse on an altar ready for a ritual burial. Didn't the Saxons put a warrior's body in a boat with a dead dog at the feet and then set fire to the boat?
Gripping the knife in his right hand, he took the neck of her dress with his left. Difficult - oh, to the devil with modesty: he was so shaky with worry for the girl's very life that the chance of seamen seeing a bared breast in the moonlight didn't matter. As he began carefully to cut the material he saw her eyes flicker open.
'Dove sono Io?' she whispered.
'Sta tranquilla: Lei e con amici'
Jackson was looking at him anxiously.
'She asked where she is.'
He knelt on the bottom boards so that by bending slightly his head was level with hers, and said: 'Don't worry: we are going to attend to your wound.'
‘Thank you.'
'The light, Jackson.'
The American held up the lantern while Ramage slit the shoulder and sleeve seams of her dress, then the lace and silk of her petticoat and shift. They were stiff, and the bloodstains appeared black in the lantern light. With the last stitch cut he slipped the knife back in his boot and gently pulled away the layers of material. Each piece had an identical hole torn in it. The top of her shoulder showed white, almost like part of an alabaster statue, but just below, beneath the outer end of the collarbone, the skin was dark and swollen from an enormous bruise. Jackson moved the lantern slightly, so the light showed at a better angle, and Ramage saw the wound itself, in the centre of the bruise.
'Other side, sir...' whispered Jackson.
In other words, Ramage thought, did the shot go right through?
He stood up and bent over, tucking his left hand behind her and gently raising her left side until he could slide his right hand down the back of her dress, running his fingers softly over the shoulder blade and left side of her back. There was no corresponding wound: the skin was smooth - and cold, a cold which seemed to run up his arm into his body. He wanted to clasp her; to give her some of his own warmth; to comfort her. The shot, an alien, powder-scorched lump of lead, was still in her body, and the thought made him feel sick.
'Ask her if she knows how far away the Frog was, sir,' suggested Jackson.
Ramage leaned over and said gently: 'When the man fired, were you facing him?'
‘Yes ... we didn't know the horsemen were there until the peasant called out. One of them fired just as I turned round.'
‘How far away were they?'
'A long way: it was a lucky shot'
Lucky! thought Ramage.
When Ramage translated, Jackson said: 'That's good, sir: at that range the shot must have been almost spent. We might be able to get it out.'
Might! thought Ramage: to save her life they had to, before gangrene set in.
'You'll have to help me.'
Jackson put the lantern on the thwart, tore more pieces of shirt, and leaned over the side to soak them in sea water. Then, holding the lantern in one hand, he passed the wet cloths to Ramage.
'Tell me if it hurts too much,' Ramage whispered, and she nodded. He began bathing away the encrusted blood.
For what seemed like hours, but must have been at the most fifteen minutes, he tried to find where the shot was lodged in her flesh, using the point of his knife as a probe. She never flinched, never groaned, never once whispered that he was hurting her. Occasionally she just shivered, as though she had ague; but Ramage did not know whether it was from cold, fear, fever or reaction - he'd often seen men shaking violently after receiving a bad wound.
As he stood up, back aching and hands trembling, she seemed smaller, as if the intense pain made her shrink.
'It's no good,' he said quietly to Jackson. 'I daren't probe any deeper.'
The American gave him some dry cloth, which he folded into a pad and put on the wound. Finally, with the last strip of bandage tied in place, he re-arranged her clothing as well as possible, and wrapped the coat round her.
'That's as comfortable as I can manage,' he said apologetically.
'I am all right,' she said, ‘I think you have suffered much more than I.'
She reached up with her left hand and touched his brow, and he realized he was soaking wet with perspiration. She turned to Jackson, and said, 'Thank you, too.'
Now he needed time to think.
'Give me the charts and lantern, Jackson; then get the compass and take the tiller. Continue steering due west for the time being.'
Ramage leaned back against the gunwale, lantern in one hand and charts in the other. His body felt shaky; his mind was full of a great black bruise; in fact the sea, the land, his whole life, was one black bruise....
The essentials, he told himself; concentrate on the essentials. If he could not get the Marchesa to a doctor within a few hours, the wound would go gangrenous; and gangrene in the shoulder meant death.
He had brought death to her cousin, Pitti. Had he brought - or rather, was he bringing - death to this girl? It seemed a long time ago - although it was only a couple of nights - that he'd read Sir John's orders. If only he'd returned to Bastia and raised the alarm, so that another frigate could have gone to pick them up...
Anyway, what for the moment could be salvaged? The Marchesa's safety was now his immediate concern. That solved the problem of his next move, and he unrolled the chart.
He needed a place where he could find - temporarily kidnap, if necessary - a doctor; and it had to be somewhere with a sm
all bay or cove close by, so that he could hide the boat and get the girl on shore.
The neatly drawn chart stared up at him: the carefully inked outline of the islands stood out almost in relief, and the handwriting of the Sibella’s late master - for it was his chart - showed the ports available. Port' Ercole was the nearest - he could see roughly where it was, almost in line with the peak of Monte Argentario. But the chart showed it was too rock-bound to be sure of finding a suitable place for hiding.
But following the coast of Argentario as it trended round in an almost complete circle from Port' Ercole, he saw a large bay only two or three miles short of the port of Santo Stefano: a bay called Cala Grande, with several little inlets and, more important, the cliffs almost sheer on all three sides.
Cala Grande - the Large Bay. Behind it, he noticed, were two small mountain peaks, Spadino and Spaccabellezze. How did they get their names? 'Little Sword' and 'Beautiful Cleft'. Like the cleft between her breasts, perhaps.
My God, he thought to himself, why can't I ever concentrate? He measured the distance. The men would have to put their backs into rowing. He rolled up the chart and put down the lantern. The sudden movements made the seamen glance up from their oars.
'Men,' he said. 'We are putting in to a bay about a dozen miles ahead, so that I can get a doctor for the lady. We've got to get there by dawn so that we can hide the boat.'
'How is the lady, sir?'
The man with the shot wound in the wrist was asking. Ramage was annoyed with himself for not telling them: after all, they had given the shirts off their backs for her - apart from risking their lives in the rescue.
'The Marchesa is about as well as we can hope. She has a shot in her shoulder, but I can't get the ball out. That's why we need a doctor...'
There were murmurs of sympathy: they knew much better than she how an untreated shot wound could end.
A man suddenly stood up in the bow. He had no oar and Ramage almost groaned: Pisano again.
'I demand...'
'Parla Italiano'snapped Ramage, not wanting the seamen to know whatever it was that Pisano intended demanding.
The man lapsed into Italian. 'I demand we continue to the rendezvous.'
‘Why?'
'Because it is too dangerous to go to Santo Stefano: the French are in occupation.'
'We are not going to Santo Stefano.'
'But you just said—'
'I said we were going to a bay, and that I was going to get a doctor from Santo Stefano.'
'It is madness!' shouted Pisano. ‘We will all be captured.'
Ramage said icily: 'I must make your position clear. In this boat you are under my orders, so control yourself. If you have anything to say, say it in a conversational tone: you are alarming the sailors—'
'I—'
‘—and making a fool of yourself by squealing like a sow in farrow.'
'You! You—' Pisano was lost for words for a moment. '—You coward, you poltroon - how dare you talk to me like that! Assassin! It's your fault Gianna lies there wounded! And you deserted my cousin Pitti over there' - he gave a histrionic sweep with his arm and almost overbalanced - 'you, you who are supposed to rescue us!'
Ramage sat back. Perhaps if he let the man get it off his chest it would put an end to the tirade - for the time being at least.
'What's he on about, sir?' asked Jackson.
'Oh, he's upset about the Marchesa, and the other chap.'
'It's upsetting the men, sir,' Jackson said as Pisano continued shouting.
And it was: the man rowing just abaft where Pisano stood in the bow suddenly lost his stroke, so the blade of his oar struck that of the man in front of him.
'Pisanol' snapped Ramage, ‘be quiet! That's an order. Otherwise I'll have you bound and gagged.'
'You wouldn't dare!'
'If you don't sit down at once I shall order the two men nearest you to tie you to the seat.'
The hard note in Ramage's voice warned Pisano it was no idle threat. He sat down abruptly just as the Marchesa, in a weak voice, called out:
'Luigi - please!'
She was trying to sit up, but Ramage reached out in time to stop her, his hand in the darkness accidentally pressing down on one of her breasts. He said in Italian:
'Madam - don't distress yourself. I let him talk in the hope his tongue would tire. But we can't waste any more time.'
She did not answer; and Ramage leaned back against the gunwale. If he'd been in Florence when he told Pisano he was squealing like a sow having piglets, the man would plan swift revenge. For a shallow fop like Pisano, the only thing that mattered in life was that he shouldn't make a brutta figura. Pisano's type could never understand honour in the normal sense: he would break an oath without compunction; cheat, lie and deceive without giving it a thought. In fact these things were part of his code; the code by which he and his kind lived their lives, so that anyone doing the same to him would not upset him unduly, since he would have been expecting it. But let anyone laugh because he tripped over a loose carpet, let someone even hint that he was not a real man, not the finest horseman, the most courteous fellow that ever entered a drawing-room, the most accomplished lover in Tuscany: let anyone cast a slur on his vulgar virility: then that person had a mortal, albeit cowardly, enemy. Someone like Pisano would never make an open challenge unless he had an overwhelming advantage: no, it would be a case of a few whispered words to a man with a dagger. Pisano's honour would be satisfied the moment he paid cash to the hired assassin reporting that he had completed the task.
Ramage noticed the outline of the boat and men was getting clearer. The oarsmen in the darkness looked like tombstones constantly bowing to him; but now their silhouettes were turning from black to dark grey, and the stars were growing dimmer. The false dawn, Nature's daily deceit. They had been rowing without rest for nearly three hours.
Once they reached Cala Grande, the port of Santo Stefano would be separated from them overland by the short and thick peninsula of Punta Lividonia. With luck, he'd be able to find a track from the cliffs above Cala Grande leading across the high ridge of rock forming the neck of the peninsula direct to the town - probably between the twin peaks of Spaccabellezze and Spadino.
Grey, grey, grey... the men were grey; the girl on her altar of bottom boards was grey; the waves surging past the boat in small toppling pyramids were grey and steely, cold and menacing to the eye. The wind was increasing slightly from the south and the boat was pitching gently like a see-saw as each wave coming up behind lifted for a few moments first the stern and then the bow as it swept forward.
Chapter 10
THE SEAMEN hauled the gig up the narrow beach at Cala Grande. Without waiting for orders from Ramage, two of them found a way to the top of the cliff and were soon hurling down bundles of light brushwood and dry grass which the others hurriedly made into a rough bed, using the grass as a mattress.
At a signal from Ramage, they lifted the Marchesa from the boat, using the bottom boards as a stretcher. They handled her with a gentleness which a stranger would not have credited: Ramage saw that each man showed a curious mixture of a proud but timid father holding his baby for the first time, and a well-trained seaman picking up a smoking grenade that might explode any moment.
Ramage had purposely not interfered, realizing their genuine concern for her. He also sensed there was no hint of lewd curiosity - although that would have been natural enough since most of them had not seen a woman for many months. Nor did it enter his head that they might be doing it for his sake as much as hers.
The seamen completely ignored Pisano as they went about their work; in fact they avoided him as though he was a leper. The Italian, unused to such treatment, reacted curiously, since in his estimation seamen were on the same level as peasants. He tried to start a conversation with Smith, no doubt realizing he was in effect third in command of the party. Although Pisano's English had a heavy accent, he spoke clearly; but Smith merely shook his head politely and said, 'N
on savvy, Mr Jaw-me-down,' and Pisano had nodded, not realizing he was being answered in a mixture of sailors pidgin English and slang, as though he was a Negro who was also loudmouthed. When he asked another sailor for a drink of water, the man just looked him up and down and continued his work.
'Why do they not answer me?' Pisano asked Ramage.
'They are not obliged to do so.'
Looking at his watch, Ramage saw it was 8.30 am: high time he and Jackson were on their way to the town. He glanced along the beach, where two of the seamen were sweeping the sand, using the branch of a bush to smooth out footprints and the deep furrow left by the keel of the boat.
Already the air was hot, warning of a scorching day. Seaward he could see the island of Giglio a dozen miles away, a low, triple hump. The sun sparkled off the sea, and haze hung low on the horizon, faintly purple, blurring the line where sea and sky joined.
The rest of the men were sitting on the sand near the boat munching the bread and sipping the water that Jackson had just issued to them. Ramage called to Jackson and Smith. As soon as they stood before him he said:
'Listen carefully, you two: Jackson, you'll come with me to the village, and Smith, you'll be in charge here. If the Italian gentleman wishes to stay with the boat he'll be under your care' - he chose his words carefully - 'just as if he's one of the crew. You understand me, Smith?'
'Aye aye, sir.'
'The lady, Smith, is to be protected at all costs. I expect we'll be away two or three hours; but if we aren't back by sunset we shan't be back at all. In that case you'll launch the boat as soon as it is dark and take the lady to the rendezvous off Giglio. Report what's happened as soon as you get on board the frigate. You know the urgency ... Can you read a chart?'
'Sort of, sir.'
"Well, here it is: study it while I'm gone. If you don't meet the frigate, go on to Bastia. You understand? Carry on, then.'
As soon as Smith had gone back to the boat, out of earshot, Jackson said, 'Sir, would you like me to make absolutely sure that he...'