Ramage's Challenge r-15

by Dudley Pope

  That is how we should arrive in Pitigliano, he decided: swift and unexpected. They must leave the French guards content and unsuspecting, because no one should raise the alarm for the couple of days it was going to take to shepherd the freed hostages back to the beach and on board the Calypso. They would need more than two days if an alarm was raised.

  An alarm would mean they could not risk using the roads (even at night they might walk into ambushes), and leading the hostages across this rough country would be difficult. For a start, few would be wearing suitable footwear. And, he realized wearily, there was bound to be some damned admiral or general who would try to take command of the party. Well, Ramage had made up his mind about that right from the start: the Admiralty orders put him in command, and anyone, of whatever rank, who disagreed would be given the time and position of a rendezvous near Orbetello and told to make his own way. Orbetello would be near enough - Ramage had to take into account that such hostages, not speaking Italian, would almost certainly be captured, and the French would not take long to extract the rendezvous from them. Men who had faced broadsides and barrages without flinching would quickly discover it took a different type of courage to withstand torture, although, come to think of it... yes, give two rendezvous, the second a false one which would sound plausible when "revealed" to the French.

  When he woke, a glance at his watch showed he had slept for nearly two hours, and already Hill was sitting up, pulling on his boots.

  Before the three groups of men fell in on the road - which was no more than a layer of white dust settled on the rock, distinguishable as a road only because no trees or bushes grew on it, and mule and donkey droppings marked the way like pencilled dots on a map - Ramage looked round carefully. The contadini still dozed; there was no sign of a French cavalry patrol.

  As soon as they were formed up, Ramage inspected his men: not with the eye of a Rennick, but with the eyes of Frenchmen and Italians. Starting at the rear, he looked at Hill. His chin and cheeks were covered in black stubble; his hair was tousled beneath the cap. His coat was creased and dusty with a grease mark round the collar where the hair touched. The trousers needed a hitch, but there was no dust on his musket. Ramage nodded. "Napoleon the First, Emperor of the French, is proud of you: beneath your feet -" Ramage glanced down at the dusty boots, "- Italian states have crumbled into white dust. Austria cringes. The English tremble with fear."

  "Yes, sir," Hill agreed. "It's because these feet throb so much they must sound like five armies marching . . ."

  He spoke in French and the other men laughed. "Auguste," Ramage said, "wearing that uniform, do you feel any nostalgia?"

  "For Brittany, yes, mon capitaine. But -" he waved a hand towards the fields, "- when I think of what my people are doing to these poor people I am ashamed."

  Ramage nodded but said: "Don't feel too guilty: not 'your people', just a few men who seized power. Meanwhile try to think of yourself as one of the Emperor's soldiers - just in case we are challenged!"

  He looked at Louis. He would put him among a thousand French soldiers and defy anyone to be suspicious. His chin was greasy from the salami: crumbs lodged among the bristles; his musket was slung over his shoulder with all the nonchalance of an old soldier who had marched across many hills and plains and fought many campaigns.

  Ramage grinned at him. "Marengo with Bonaparte," he said, naming the famous victory. "Then he reorganized Italy, and made the Grand Duke of Tuscany the King of Etruria, and you've been here ever since . . ."

  "Indeed, citizen captain. Pay months in arrears, eating only what we can forage, welcome nowhere, hated everywhere - but nevertheless a soldier of the Republic, One and Indivisible!"

  Ramage laughed drily. "Well spoken; the Emperor is proud of you.

  "And as for you," he said turning to Gilbert, "you have the harried look of a veteran of Osterach, Cassano and Jovi." In all three battles the French had been beaten by the Austrians.

  "That's true, sir," Gilbert said sorrowfully. "I intend to learn German: none of these Austrians speak French."

  "Very wise of you," Ramage commented and walked on to inspect the prisoners. He looked them over and said: "You hostages are supposed to be aristocrats and naval officers of flag rank and army officers of field rank, but to me you look like pimps and panders and unlucky gamblers on the run from creditors, cuckolded husbands and cast-off mistresses!"

  "If I'd known it was goin' ter be like this," Stafford said contritely, "I'd never 'ave cast 'er orf. . ."

  "It's those French guards," Aitken said haughtily, "they bully us. They don't treat us with the respect due to our station in society. They all seem infected with a most noxious revolutionary fervour. Most disturbing. I'd complain to our ambassador, but I can't find him."

  "One can never find an ambassador or a consul when he's needed," Ramage said sympathetically. "It's their training. They must avoid responsibility, never take sides, never give an opinion, always smile and employ a good chef."

  Ramage inspected the rest of the "prisoners" and then had a hard look at Paolo and Rossi. They were Italian all right, combining raffishness with an easy-going stance and a realistic approach to war. To a casual onlooker, the sound of a distant pistol shot would seem enough to send them scurrying into the hills for cover. Which, Ramage thought, just shows how clothes and a few days' growth of whiskers can be deceptive.

  The march continued and the road twisted and turned but generally trended to the south-east along a valley. Finally, at nightfall, they reached a river, the Fiora, which started life somewhere up near Santa Fiora, among the mountains near Amiata, and snaked its way across Tuscany, crossing the road a few miles short of Pitigliano and going on to meet the sea near the Torre Montalto. But as spring had turned into scorching summer, so the Fiora had now shrunk to little more than a stream. But at least there was some water, and Ramage gave permission for the men to bathe. As soon as they were dry again and dressed, the remaining rations were issued and all the men, with the exception of a sentry, hid hands and faces under their jackets and, still able to hear the whine of hungry mosquitoes, went to sleep.

  Just before the sentry was posted, Ramage spoke to Orsini, Hill, Aitken and, to make sure the Frenchman understood that he would be in command of his section if anything happened to Hill, Gilbert.

  "We start tomorrow as soon after dawn as we can. Apart from what's left in our haversacks from the Calypso, we've no more food. But it's only five or six miles to Pitigliano, and you all know what to do when we get there. Don't forget, Gilbert - your men answer any friendly shouts from other French troops. We've got to march through the Porta della Cittadella as though we own the place. It is a big gateway, but leave Hill and me to argue if we are challenged: the rest of you keep marching (as smartly as you can) towards the Palazzo degli Orsini, which is large and obvious. What we do after that depends on whether we've been recognized or not. You know the plan if we are accepted as genuine; you know the plan if we are discovered. I hope we shan't need to make up a new plan . . ."

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Both Rossi and Ramage sniffed at the same moment, like hunting dogs, as they marched up the hill and Ramage held up his arm to halt the column. In fact there was an odd, almost contradictory mixture of smells - bread baking, thyme, rotting cabbage, rosemary, donkey stables (caves more likely) that should have been cleaned out months ago.

  "Pitigliano must be just round this next corner," Ramage said, pointing to windward.

  On the left of the road as it climbed a small hill there was a valley of scoured rock on which a few bushes clung, out of reach of goats. Orsini commented that it was obviously the bed of an old river - a river which many centuries ago had run deep and fast.

  "I remember now," Orsini said. "Pitigliano is in the middle of the valley, built on an old rocky, mountainous island, which looks like a back tooth. The river must once have divided, swept on round each side of the island like a moat, and then joined up again. That was probably why the Etruscans cam
e here originally: they paddled across to the island and dug caves in which they could live safely. It's all soft tufa. Easy to cut, and then it hardens when the air gets to it and becomes like rock."

  "Come with me," Ramage said, telling the rest of the column to stand fast and the "prisoners" to be ready with their arm irons. The two of them walked to the top of the hill, rounded a corner and saw Pitigliano across the valley like a huge painting on a distant wall. "You were right," Ramage muttered to Paolo. "An enormous tooth. Yes, and a river used to sluice along both sides... itwould have joined just there, below where we left the men . . . There's the town gate . . . yes, and the Orsini Palace with the battlements."

  The road in front of them turned sharply and went down steeply to the bottom of the valley - the old river bed - before turning at a sharp cliff and running beside several caves, now used to stable donkeys (Ramage could see two of them, both grey with a black stripe running along their backs from head to tail), and then climbing up the side of the great rock on which the town stood. And at the top, commanding the road and forcing it to take another sharp turn to the left to reach the town centre, was the town gate.

  "Well, sir, no chance of surprising 'em: pity we haven't a band!"

  "I'd settle for a bring-'em-near. I wonder how many sentries there are?"

  "The whole place seems to be asleep. Ah, there's a man coming through the gate on a donkey. And yes, his wife walking behind."

  "That's a familiar sight," Ramage commented. "But no sign of a sentry checking them."

  "No, sir, everyone else is still asleep!"

  "They're guarding the Emperor's hostages, don't forget," Ramage said sharply. "It's a great mistake to underestimate the enemy. That's how you get a pistol ball between the eyes."

  "I understand, sir," said a chastened Paolo. "Actually I'm not underestimating them. I'm not looking forward to going in. The walls round the town, that huge gate, the long drop from the walls into the valley ..."

  "We're lucky. We'll be marching in through the gate in broad daylight. But how would you like to cross that valley and then have to climb the walls in the dark ...?"

  "Mamma mia" muttered Paolo. "Even climbing in daylight with no French to greet us would be bad enough. Far too steep even for goats!"

  "Go back and bring up the column: the longer we wait here the more impossible it all seems."

  A few minutes later, as the column swung round the corner, Ramage resumed his place and, with Rossi and Orsini, led the way down the hill. A donkey, looking sleepily over the half-door closing off its cave, brayed at them and was answered by another up in the town. Half a dozen dogs came rushing out of the town gates, the first one yelping in terror and the rest barking as they chased it, and the old woman lashed at them with a long staff as they raced past. Neither her husband nor his donkey took any notice. The donkey had a small sack balanced on its wooden frame: the man, sitting astride the animal and, it seemed to Ramage, in grave danger of falling off, tugged at the brim of his big black hat. The wide brim flopped with the donkey's jerking, helping to keep off the flies. Then, adjusting the angle of the hat so that the brim kept the sun out of his eyes, the man whacked the donkey with a stick. The donkey took no notice; Ramage guessed that the man did it out of habit, and would repeat it every hundred yards until they reached their destination.

  Ramage half turned as he marched and called back: "Come on, now smarten yourselves up. Only the hostages may speak English. Gilbert - be ready to come up forward with those papers of yours. Remember, Aitken - you and the rest of the prisoners are foreigners and can talk and stare and point. Your men, Gilbert, just take it all in your stride: you've seen it all before so act as though you're hot, bored and tired."

  By then they were at the bottom of the hill and rounding the bend. At the top of the hill in front of them the town gate, la Porta della Cittadella, seemed to be growing bigger, but the shadow the archway cast and the dark line under the battlements made it seem as menacing as the gateway to an enemy city.

  They met the old couple with the donkey almost halfway up the hill and the man looked directly at the donkey's flopping ears. The woman, her face seamed like old leather left too long in the sun, dressed in black that had a rusty hue from too many summers and winters out in the open fields, looked up for a moment, spotted Ramage as the officer most likely in charge, and nodded her head nervously: to Ramage she seemed to be asking him to ignore her husband's snub - and, at the same time, fearful of what these extra soldiers might mean to their lives.

  Looking across the valley at the base of the great tooth of rock Ramage could now see dozens of caves cut into the tufa like a vast rabbit warren, and there were tracks in the valley floor where the contadini walked daily to and fro between the caves and their fields. They must keep their implements in them, and their donkeys - and perhaps for the unluckier people some of the higher caves were homes. Certainly a peasant coming home weary from working his land (because land was divided among all his children on the owner's death, a contadino might own a dozen small strips, each a mile from another) would be thankful to rest in a cool cave with a jug of wine and postpone the weary trudge up to the town.

  And, of course, the caves provided fine cool storage for the big casks in which the year's wine was kept until sold at the next pressing: huge casks lying on their sides with the bung higher than its owner was tall. Every day (if he was a careful man and the weather hot) the contadino would come to the casks, pour some wine into a jug from a small barrel, and then climb the short ladder and remove the bung from the cask to see if the level of wine had dropped because of seepage between the staves. He would then top up the wine from the jug and then replace the bung. Air getting at wine could turn it all to vinegar ...

  Topping up was usually done in the evening and the wine left in the jug disappeared down the owner's throat. The heavy drinkers, besotted men who every day stumbled through their work in a drunken daze, cursing their wives and cuffing their children, kicking their donkeys, topped up their casks first thing in the morning. The leavings in the jug (which was often topped up in its turn) was their breakfast.

  The door of the last cave on the right of the road swung back and a protesting donkey lurched out, its wooden saddle empty, and turned up the hill towards the gates. The owner, with black hat awry and wearing a faded blue woollen shirt with black trousers tied just below the knee, staggered after it, not seeing the marching column, and seized its tail, whacking it with a stick in his left hand and screaming a stream of blasphemy. The donkey plodded up the hill, apparently oblivious to the stick and ignoring the curses, dragging its master behind.

  "That's what you call getting a lift to windward," Ramagemuttered. "I hope that tail is firmly attached."

  Man and donkey proceeded up the hill thirty yards ahead of the column, and judging from the man's wavering course he was very drunk. "That's a bit of luck: we'll be able to see what the sentries at the gate do about him."

  "Do about the donkey," Rossi murmured. "The man's too spronzato to answer questions!"

  The donkey reached the gate but no uniformed man stepped from the shadows. The man was pulled through the gate and he neither looked round nor appeared likely to notice even if all the stonework suddenly fell on his head.

  "Twenty-five ... twenty ... fifteen ..." Ramage counted the remaining yards to himself as they marched towards the gate. They seemed to be moving faster, although their pace did not change. In fact, time was playing its usual tricks. Ten ... five... and then he was under the archway and in its shadow and, apart from the column, no one else moved, except that he just caught sight of the donkey as it hauled its owner round the corner into the piazza. He saw only an old man dozing in the shade on the steps of a house, a sleeping dog which had ignored the pack, two goats tied to a stone hitching post on the right. . .

  Through the archway ... no lounging soldiers . . . and there, towering over the town, was the Orsini Palace. The family, once powerful in Tuscany, had long since gone; t
his palace, one of many they must have built for themselves through the centuries (or did they inherit it from the Aldobrandeschi? He recalled a mention of it), had buttressed walls. And there were the wide stone steps leading up to the entrance. The heavy wooden door was shut; no soldiers lounged. There were no sentries, no carts that the army would use, no horses. One might have expected a carriage or two; the officers of such an egalitarian army were not expected to march.

  Then Ramage realized what must have happened: the hostages were not being held in the Orsini Palace. There would be enough rooms, surely, but perhaps hostages need not be so carefully guarded. A lieutenant or young post-captain might be expected to try to escape but rheumatic admirals, quirkish generals and bucolic landed gentry were unlikely to steal off across the Tuscan landscape, seeking their freedom. They were, in all fairness, equally unlikely to give their parole. There was a vast difference between not escaping and actually promising the enemy not to try.

  He held up his arm and the column halted outside the palace. Yes, he had seen the scissors sign hanging over the door of the Manciano peasant's father-in-law, but the man could not have been here for some time because only one of the two falegnami who were his father-in-law's neighbours was still in business: the door of the other one was boarded up.

  Now what? That was the splendid thing about Tuscany and the Tuscans - always expect a surprise to arrive at siesta time. Pitigliano slept just at the moment he expected to be using his wits (and those of Gilbert) to bamboozle French guards, or all of them would be fighting their way out, with the hostages. He expected to be outnumbered three or four to one. Instead, he could tell Orsini and Rossi to capture Pitigliano using only belaying pins as weapons.