Ramage's Devil

by Dudley Pope

  Ramage had been momentarily startled by Gilbert’s use of the word “previous,” but of course he was right: that war had begun in February 1793 and ended officially with the signing of the Treaty in April last year, 1801. After eighteen months’ peace Britain had now declared war, obviously alarmed by French preparations, but it was another war. What would it be called? The last one had gone on long enough, but with Bonaparte in possession of a huge army—it was said that he could mobilize a million men—how the devil could Britain alone (she had fought most of the last war alone) defeat him? The Royal Navy could only fight where there was water enough to float ships.

  He cursed his daydreaming; once again Gilbert, Louis and Sarah were watching him and waiting, as though expecting brilliant ideas to spout from his mouth like water from a firehose the moment men started working the pump handles. He shook his head in a meaningless gesture and, taking Sarah’s hand, led the way to their rooms. As soon as he had shut the door she poured water from the big jug into the porcelain basin on the washstand.

  “I feel dirty from the top of my head to the tips of my toes,” she said, hanging her coat on a hook and beginning to unbutton her dress.

  Ramage sank back on the bed, wishing there was an armchair. “I am weary too. So I shall sit here and watch you undress and then watch you wash yourself from the top of your head to the tip of your toes. It is one of the greatest joys of being your husband. I’m sorry I’m too weary to undress you.”

  She slid the dress down and stepped out of it as once again Ramage marvelled at how natural and beautiful she looked in the coarse underwear lent her by Louis’ wife. Next she undid the white ribbon—carefully-sewn strips of linen, in fact—of the shift, which was like a long apron, and unwound it.

  She smiled at him and watched his eyes as she unbuttoned the bodice and slowly took it off, revealing her breasts in a movement which stopped Ramage’s breath for several moments. The breasts seemed to have a life of their own; the nipples, high and large, were dark, like seductive eyes.

  Still looking at him, she slid down the frilled knickers and stood naked without embarrassment. Standing naked before your husband for his inspection, she seemed to be saying, was the natural end to a day’s journey into the enemy’s camp.

  “You approve?”

  She knew he did but wanted reassuring.

  “The left breast … is it not a fraction lower than the right?”

  A look of alarm spread across her face as she hurried to the dressing-table. The large looking glass originally fitting into the frame was missing and the only one available was the small handheld glass from her travelling bag.

  She held it at arm’s length, twisting and turning, peering first at one breast and then the other. Then she held the glass to the side, trying to line up the nipples. Finally she put the mirror down in exasperation.

  “I can’t see them properly!”

  Hard put to keep a straight face, Ramage said: “As you walked, it seemed to me it is actually the right one that’s lower. Come over here and let me take a look.”

  Then she realized he was teasing. “Are you too tired to undress yourself?” she whispered.

  Ramage nodded. “I shall have to rely on my wife.”

  Gilbert went into Brest the next day to make arrangements with Auguste and returned to say that both the fisherman and his brother would be ready and had begun collecting weapons. So far they had six pistols and shot, two blunderbusses, three heavy daggers, a cavalry sabre and two cutlasses. When Ramage marvelled at such a collection, Gilbert had grinned. The authorities in Paris lacked popularity in Brittany, he said, so that when a drunken soldier flopped asleep into a ditch or a cavalryman riding alone was thrown from his horse and found unconscious, they were usually returned to their barracks alive but always unarmed. Occasional raids on armouries, sudden and unexpected affairs, meant that many of those not entirely in favour of the First Consul’s régime had weapons hidden among the beams of old barns or concealed in sacks of grain.

  On the second day, while Ramage and Sarah roamed through the great house admiring the architecture and feeling guilty at envying Jean-Jacques because of his present situation, Louis went into Brest. There was no need to take unnecessary risks and arouse suspicions, Ramage had decided, and Louis and his wife passing through the barrières once a week would seem normal enough while Gilbert passing along the road alone in the gig once a day might start a gendarme asking questions.

  Many of the rooms of the château were completely bare, stripped by looters of all their furniture, carpets, hangings, curtains and occasionally complete doors. Damaged ceilings showed where chandeliers had been torn down; some staircases lacked banisters.

  Yet the house, although almost empty, maintained its dignity. It had none of the delicacy and fine tracery, carefully balanced winds and imposing approaches of many of the châteaux of the Loire and Dordogne. It was four-square, and not concealing its origins—a defended home of the Counts of Rennes. The battlements of thick stone were crenellated so that men with crossbows and later muskets could hide behind them and fire down on attackers; the enormous (and original) front door, studded with iron bolts that would blunt and deflect an attacker’s axe, was so massive that a much smaller door had been built more recently to one side.

  Ramage was staring out of a window, one of scores and now grimy, with paint lifting from the frame in a discreet warning that rot was at work beneath, when Sarah took his arm and said quietly: “Where are you now?”

  He gave a start, and then smiled without turning. “I was thinking that it’s the top of the springs tonight.”

  She sighed and shook her head. “Springs and neaps—I know they’re something to do with the moon and the tide, but …”

  “A sailor’s wife and you don’t understand the tides!”

  “A sailor’s wife who admits she doesn’t understand, and expects her all-wise and adoring husband to explain.”

  “The sun and the moon both pull the sea. When they are in line, both on one side of the earth or on opposite sides, they pull most and that’s when we get the highest high tides, and the lowest low. They are called spring tides. They coincide with the new moon (the moon on the same side of the earth as the sun) and the full (when on the opposite side). When the sun or moon are at right-angles to each other in relation to the earth their pull is weakest and we get the smaller tides which are weaker and called neaps. So the springs are the highest and strongest around new and full moon, and the neaps are the smallest and weakest at first and third quarters.”

  “Nothing to do with the seasons then—spring, summer and so on?”

  “Nothing at all. It is a full moon tonight so there are spring tides. The highest in terms of sea level but also the strongest in terms of current. When the tide starts to ebb, it will flow out very strongly through the Gullet.”

  “And that is important?”

  “It would be if you were fishing from a small boat. Why, if you lost an oar you could drift to America!”

  “Make sure you take plenty of bait,” she said. “Am I such a stupid woman that I can’t be told what you are planning?”

  “I’d tell you if I knew. I’d talk it over if I thought you could help me get an idea. The fact is that L’Espoir sails for Cayenne with Jean-Jacques today or tomorrow and here I am, walking through his empty house, helpless and hopeless.”

  “My dear, how can you expect to rescue one man from a frigate?”

  Ramage shrugged. “My men in the Kathleen, the Triton, and the Calypso in the past did what people reckoned impossible, and we did it only because to others it was impossible.”

  “But your men—the splendid Southwick, and Aitken, Jackson and Stafford: dozens of them—are all in Chatham on board the Calypso. You are”—she gave a wry smile—”in France on your honeymoon, hunted by the French.”

  “Not all the French; only Bonaparte’s men.”

  “About one in ten thousand are not Bonaparte’s men. You won’t collect a ver
y big army in Brittany to overthrow him.”

  “No,” he admitted. “But I need very few. I agree we can’t save Jean-Jacques, so we have to save ourselves: you and me, Gilbert and Louis (and his wife if she wants to come) and now Auguste and his brother. Five men and one, perhaps two women.”

  “We are a long way from England. There always seems to be bad weather in the entrance to the Channel. Why don’t we travel overland towards Calais? We’d have only twenty miles or so to row or sail to England, compared with—what, a hundred and fifty to Plymouth?”

  Ramage turned and pulled her towards him, and kissed her gently. “My dear, you are right in one respect: it is a much shorter sea crossing from Calais. But that’s what makes it dangerous. The French expect escapers to try to cross there. Every rowing boat is chained up at night. There are big rewards offered—big enough to overcome most scruples. Brest is so far away from England that the French are more casual in the way they guard boats.”

  “But they are putting soldiers on board the fishing-boats here at night!” she protested.

  “Yes, but they are the large ones with fish holds, those large enough to make the voyage to England safely in almost any weather.”

  “Are you proposing we all go in a rowing boat?” She was not frightened at the idea but obviously surprised and dismayed.

  “No. I’m not proposing anything at the moment, beyond a couple of hours’ fishing at night in the Gullet. Auguste is providing a boat for us.”

  “Why fishing? You hate fish and fishing. Why the sudden interest?” she asked suspiciously.

  “A romantic row in the moonlight so that you can see all the pretty ships at anchor.”

  “Most romantic,” she said with a rueful smile. “We’ll have four men as chaperones. Can we hire an orchestra, and perhaps a troupe of wandering minstrels?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  AUGUSTE sighed in the darkness and admitted: “The price is good at the moment, but in truth I hate the smell of potatoes.” He pulled fretfully at a couple of sacks, trying to find himself a more comfortable position in the little hut. “And madame, you must be very uncomfortable?”

  “I had not realized potatoes could be so hard,” Sarah admitted, “but if my husband is to be believed, we’ll soon be sitting on the hard wooden seats of a boat and probably thinking of potatoes with nostalgia …”

  And how long would Nicholas be? He had talked for half an hour with Gilbert, Louis, Auguste and his brother Albert, and now he had gone for a walk along the quay. She saw now that he had been very clever. Although he had told her back at the château that he had no plans for their escape, in fact he had an idea. Certainly as he had explained it to the men, speaking softly in the darkness of Auguste’s hut in the fruit and vegetable market, he had sounded diffident. Not nervous, but almost shy, so much so that first Auguste and then Gilbert had tried to reassure him. Then, as he explained his idea piece by piece, like stripping an artichoke, they had discussed it among themselves, exclaiming from time to time at its soundness, like antiquarians examining old china or an early edition of a book and agreeing on its authenticity.

  The more they had exclaimed, the more diffident Nicholas had become, putting up reasons why his idea would never work and declaring he did not want anyone to risk his life in such a stupid venture. “Stupid venture,” a phrase which translated well into French, was the one that definitely turned the tide, though whether a neap or a spring, she did not care. At that point, the four Frenchmen rallied together to persuade Nicholas that the plan—by now it had graduated from an idea—was not only possible but certain of success and Sarah sensed that in their own minds it had become their plan: one of which Captain Ramage had now to be convinced.

  Then she realized that as far as Nicholas was concerned it had been a plan all the time but was such a gamble that its only chance of success was to have it carried out by men who were convinced it would succeed. What was that phrase Nicholas had once used? “Better one volunteer than three pressed men.” So with four volunteers he had the equivalent of a dozen. And, of course, his wife! Louis seemed to be bearing up bravely, she thought, to the fact that his wife had decided not to come. Louis said she would go to her parents as soon as she was sure he had escaped. Between them they had prepared a likely story of Louis throwing her out of the house—of the servants’ quarters of Jean-Jacques’ house, rather.

  Sarah sensed that both Louis and his wife had reached the stage where they bored each other. In another year it would be followed by dislike and that would turn to hatred. The wife missed life on the farm where she had been brought up, obviously preferring feeding the pigs and mucking out the cattle to feeding humans and making beds, and as she was the only child, she would inherit the farm on the death of her parents. Clearly, Sarah realized, each thought the parting had come amicably and at the right time. And, not surprisingly, the other servants had decided to stay behind.

  Where was Nicholas? This was worse than being a young girl waiting to grow up, or a pregnant woman waiting for her hour to come. Or, she thought bitterly, a sailor’s wife waiting for her man to return …

  Ramage looked in the darkness across the Brest Roads. “Roads”—a strange name but one usually given to the anchorage in front of the port. Well, even though it was dark but cloudless, giving the stars a chance to prove themselves before the moon rose, there was plenty of traffic in the Roads; it seemed as busy as Piccadilly after the Newmarket Races, when winners wanted to celebrate and losers wanted to drown their sorrows, and the Duchess of Manston always gave a ball at which it was forbidden to talk about racehorses.

  Spanish Point over there, forming the south side of Le Goulet: the château black and menacing, its walls now sharp-edged shadows. Somewhere over there in the Roads, L’Espoir was at anchor, and by now Jean-Jacques would be on board, a prisoner, probably awake and thinking of his home or his future in the tropical heat and sickness of the Île du Diable. Boats were going out to the frigates and ships of the line, many more than would normally be taking officers to and fro. There was no doubt that the ships were being prepared for sea in great haste.

  He paused against the trunk of a huge plane tree, hidden from the sharp eyes of any patrolling gendarmes. The masts of the distant ships were like leafless shrubs lining twisting paths. The ships of the line were easy to distinguish, while one, two, three frigates and more were over to the right, towards Pointe des Espagnols. Further round to the left, partly hidden by the cliffs rising up at Presqu’île de Plougastel, were more frigates. Where was L’Espoir?

  Ah, there was the Murex brig, much easier to spot because she had only two masts and was much closer. And it was near the top of the tide; almost slack now, and the ebb would start in half an hour or so.

  Anchored ships were something like weathervanes on church steeples. If the wind was strong and the current weak, they indicated wind direction, but if the current was strong (as it would be at spring tides) and the wind weak they showed the direction from which the current was coming.

  On a calm night at slack water, when the current stopped flooding in and paused before ebbing like a bewildered man on a ballroom floor, ships headed in various directions, and those carelessly anchored and usually lying to single anchors would drift and foul neighbours.

  He cursed softly because at night distances were always hard to estimate, although by some good fortune the Murex brig had been anchored more than half a mile from the nearest ship, a frigate. And she was near enough to where he stood to see that only a single boat floated astern of her on its painter. Either the rest of her boats had been hoisted back on board or they were being kept in the dockyard. In other words, it was unlikely that the French guards had been reinforced and, more important, if they were not expecting visitors in the shape of senior officers, they would be keeping the rum jar tilted, with all the prisoners in irons.

  He shivered, but was not sure if the goosepimples came from the chill of the night or the knowledge that he could no longer delay going b
ack to the hut to start everyone moving. Sarah was the problem: she was his hostage unto fortune, although she must never realize it. When the Calypso went into action he had worried about Paolo, who was Gianna’s heir and nephew; now it was Sarah. Would he ever go into action having given no hostages, with nothing to bother him but the fight itself? There was always something to stop him concentrating all his thoughts on the action. He shrugged and then smiled at the stupidity of such a movement alone in the darkness.

  Probably most captains of the King’s ships were often in this same predicament—especially, he told himself, if they were married. Yet if you had a wife, and perhaps children, you thought of them whether they were in a house in the quiet countryside or if the wife was waiting nearby in a rowing boat: in one instance you were worrying about her being widowed and the children made fatherless; in the other you were worrying about her safety. Either way, you were worrying; either way you were preoccupied. So perhaps Earl St Vincent was right when he said that if an officer married, he was lost to the Service …

  Sarah and the four men waiting in the hut clearly expected to start off at once. He took out his watch. Yes, by now the French guards would have soaked up enough rum to ensure they were befuddled, if not in a stupefied sleep.

  He gestured towards the lantern and told Gilbert: “Bring it with you, otherwise all of us stumbling along in the dark will arouse suspicion. Now, have we the fishing lines? Ah,” he nodded as Auguste and his brother held up coils of thin line, “and bait?” Sarah rattled the bucket she was carrying.

  Two gendarmes passed them on their way to the jetty and one said cheerfully: “Good fishing. It’s a calm night!”

  “Too calm,” Auguste answered dourly. “The fish prefer some wind to ruffle the water.”

  Once the gendarmes had passed, Auguste explained: “Fishermen always grumble. I don’t think the fish care about the waves; they have enough sense to stay below them.”