Ramage's Trial r-14

by Dudley Pope

  "My oath," Stafford said despairingly, "I dunno, s'just a place darn the uvver end o' Blackfriars Road. Why's everybody suddenly interested in it?"

  "Because of you," Gilbert said mildly. "You started to tell us a joke about it."

  Stafford ran a hand through his hair and sat up straight, a look of desperation about him. "Chapel," he said slowly, as though feeling his way through a fog. "Church or chapel Gilbert asked, and I said some of my friends went to chapel in St George's Fields ..."

  He rubbed his head, trying to restore the train of thought, but he had drunk his own rum issue and Gilbert had passed over his, and Jackson had paid him a tot for a favour done yesterday. Finally, he remembered. "Yus, well, I was really tellin' Gilbert that my friends were - well, young ladies who had to make their own living, if you get my meaning."

  "Whores?" Gilbert asked.

  "Well, yes, but that's a strong word."

  "St George's Fields," Rossi said relentlessly. "Accidente, San Giorgio mi aiutaP'

  "Wotchew rattling on abart, then?" Stafford demanded suspiciously. "Speak English!"

  "I was asking St George to help me," Rossi said, "but you need his help more. Now come on, start again. First, we have the chapel in St George's Fields."

  "Well, the chapel belongs to Magdalen Hospital," Stafford said, as though that explained everything.

  "And . . ." Jackson said encouragingly, "what sort of hospital is it? Like Greenwich Hospital, for seamen?"

  "Nah, nah, nan!" Stafford exclaimed. "That's the whole joke - it's for 'The Reformation and Relief of Penitent Prostitutes'!"

  "A sort of Stafford family home, like Mr Ramage has St Kew, eh?" Jackson asked drily.

  "You don't believe me," Stafford complained, "but it's run by dukes and earls and rich merchants. Has a surgeon, several apotharies -"

  "Apothecaries," Jackson corrected out of habit.

  "- yes, s'what I said, and parsons. One's the chaplain and two more take it in turns to preach each evenin'. And the matron - she's a hard old biddy, I can tell you."

  "How can you tell us?" Rossi inquired innocently. "Surely you've never been 'penitent'?"

  Stafford realized he had talked too much, but as Jackson and Rossi (and Mr Ramage) knew that his job before the war, after an apprenticeship to a locksmith, was hard to describe, there was no need for secrets.

  "One of my sisters," he said, offhandedly. "She got mixed up with that bad lot around Blackfriars and before we knew what had happened this pimp was threatening to cut her wiv a knife."

  "Then what?" Jackson asked, realizing that there were still aspects of Stafford's past life he knew nothing about.

  "Well, when Neilley (that's what we call her 'cos she don't like plain 'Nell') when Neilley got the word back to us, me and some mates went darn to Blackfriars and called on this pimp."

  "And murdered him?" Rossi asked. Having spent a childhood in the Genoa slums, he was genuinely interested how the day-to-day problems of life in London were solved.

  "Nah, that's 'gainst the law," Stafford said airily. "We just took Neilley and left 'im for dead."

  "There is a difference?" Gilbert asked, who had been trying to translate for Louis, Auguste and Albert.

  "Oh yus, indeed. Murder's a capital offence in England, you know that. Get topped if you're caught. You know," he explained, seeing the blank look on Gilbert's face, "'topped' - hanged. So we just cut him up a bit, like he'd threatened to do Neilley, and if 'e died later 'cos he 'adn't the sense to stop bleedin', that's 'is affair."

  "What about Neilley?" Jackson asked, puzzled by the connection with Magdalen Hospital and the dukes, earls and parsons who ran it.

  "Oh, at first she took on a bit. She'd got a bit o' a taste for the life, if you get my meaning, but I persuaded her a stay at the Magdalen would put her right. Prayers and poultices, that's what she needed for a few weeks. She didn't agree, but she went all the same, and I used to go darn there a couple of times a week, just to make sure Neilley was paying attention to what all those dukes and earls and parsons and apotherums were telling 'er."

  "Was she? Many peoples is talking," Rossi observed.

  "She was listening an' prayin' an' taking her medicine," Stafford said. "The matron was watching her, special."

  "What, you paid the matron for special attention?" Jackson asked doubtfully. It did not sound like Stafford who, he thought, had always taken what he wanted, providing the lock could be picked.

  "Well, not exactly paid 'er," Stafford admitted, for the first time looking uneasy. "Just sort of 'inted to 'er that if Neilley wasn't right as rain by St Swithin's Day, an' penitent too, matron might find 'erself in need o' a lot of prayin' and medicalatin' too."

  "Medicating," Jackson said. "You're a rough lot. What happened to Neilley? Was she the 'penten' you were telling us about?"

  "Yus. Well, all that was going on abart the time the press took me up. My fault, 'cos I knew the word was out for a hot press, but one night I was drinking heavy down Fetter Lane an' reckoned I knew me way back 'ome without any of the gangers spottin' me, even though I couldn't see straight."

  "And?"

  "An' I was wrong. I sobered up in the 'old of a receiving ship anchored off the Tower with 'alf an 'undred other rascals that the pressgang had just rounded up, an' there we all were, screamin' at the top of our lungs that we'd fight the French wivart swords or pay."

  Wide-eyed, Gilbert exclaimed: "You were all shouting that?"

  "Well, not 'xactly shouting if you get my meaning, but we thought it. We was all recovering from too much drink, an' if anyone 'ad actually shouted, the noise would've done us an injury."

  Jackson explained: "Staff sometimes exaggerates a little."

  Gilbert nodded and turned to translate for the other Frenchmen, but if anything Stafford's story grew in the translation: like Stafford himself, Gilbert was not one to let facts spoil a good tale.

  The Frenchmen listened wide-eyed, glancing at Stafford from time to time. Between them they had lived as fishermen or on the Count of Rennes' estate. Brest was small, built round its port, the river and the naval dockyard. A city like London, with its capacity for sin and which offered such scope for lively fellows like Stafford, was more than they could imagine.

  Stafford, his ten minutes of glory at an end, leaned against the ship's side and went to sleep with the Atlantic swirling past his head, separated by only a few inches of oak.

  "What a man," Louis commented in French, but Auguste winked. "What a woman, eh? Can you imagine life with the sister of a man like this?"

  "I could, but I'm not going to: most of the time it would be like war! In England are all the women like that?"

  "No, most certainly not," Gilbert said, shaking his head with the air of a connoisseur. "I met several I would like to have married."

  Jackson said: "You are going about it backwards. I followed what you just said. Under English law if a foreigner marries an Englishwoman he can be pressed, because marrying makes him the same as an Englishman - leastways, as far as the pressgangs are concerned."

  "You mean that foreigners are not pressganged?"

  "Well, they are sometimes, but they can apply to their consul and be freed."

  "So as Frenchmen ... ?"

  Jackson frowned, suddenly realizing that of the seven men making up Mess Number Eight in His Majesty's frigate the Calypso, Stafford was the only Englishman.

  "As Frenchmen, I suppose you rate as 'enemy' unless you're serving in one of the King's ships. Still, there's one thing about it, when we arrive in England you can marry an Englishwoman without fear of the press because you're already serving!"

  "What about you? You're American, aren't you?"

  "Yes, but our government gives us things called 'Protections'. These certify that we're American citizens, so we can't be pressed. But if we are, we apply to an American consul, and the Protection should get us freed."

  "Why don't you have a Protection, then?" Gilbert asked.

  "I've had one for ye
ars," Jackson said.

  "Then why don't... ?"

  Jackson shrugged his shoulders. "I'm too old to change my habits and I like serving with Mr Ramage."

  "But supposing you were transferred to another ship, what then?"

  "We'll see. Mr Ramage and I have managed to keep together - and Rossi and Staff too - for several years now. And Mr Southwick."

  "And Mr Orsini?" Gilbert asked.

  "Yes, he's been with Mr Ramage for a couple of years or so. "

  "So when we get to England we can all stay together in the Calypso?"

  Jackson shrugged again. "It'll depend how the Jason affair turns out. If this Captain Shirley has friends in high places, there's going to be trouble."

  "But hasn't Mr Ramage friends in high places too?"

  "Yes, but years ago his father - an admiral - was made the scapegoat for some government mistake, and people might attack our Mr Ramage to get at the father."

  Gilbert sighed. "Politicians. . . they should all be made to go to that hospital Stafford was talking about."

  "I've never heard of a penitent politician," Jackson said. "Anyway, I'll be damned glad when we get a sight of the Lizard and then anchor at Spithead, or Plymouth, or wherever we're sent, so we get the trial or inquiry over quick."

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Ramage wiped the tip of the quill with the cloth, put the cork back in the inkwell, and started to read through his letter to Their Lordships. The report that would accompany it, seven pages in draft form, waited in the drawer. He had spent a couple of weeks on it: not two weeks of solid writing, but every day he had taken it out and read it through, at first changing whole paragraphs and then towards the end just substituting sentences or changing individual words.

  The final draft, which his clerk would write out in a fair hand, did not bear much relationship to the first, in which he had let his anger with Shirley distort the narrative (surprisingly, Alexis had been the first to draw his attention to it), so that it read as though Ramage had expected trouble from the moment he sighted theJason, whereas he had hauled his wind and gone up towards her expecting to find a friend and exchange news.

  And that had been the problem in writing the report: to explain to Their Lordships the shock of the sudden attack and, much more difficult, to describe Shirley's behaviour without using phrases which, in condemning Shirley, would put Their Lordships immediately on the side of the senior captain.

  Also (and perhaps more important) he had to bear in mind that the Board might be reading his report after receiving one from Shirley. Yorke and Aitken reckoned the advantage would rest with the man whose report was read first, but Ramage was not sure. Viewed from the Boardroom of the Admiralty it was a bizarre and utterly unimportant episode; to Their Lordships, discipline was probably the main question. For one British frigate to have fired on another could be an accident - that would be their first reaction. Then from both Shirley and himself they would read stories which (he assumed) flatly contradicted each other. Bowen had already reported, after his visit to the Jason, that Shirley regarded the Calypso's captain as mad, and no one in the Calypso had any doubt about Shirley. But what about all those silent men in the Jason: officers and men who did and saw nothing . . . How would the Board regard them?

  The whole story, whether from the point of view of the Jason or the Calypso, sounded mad: that was Alexis's view, and she had argued that Their Lordships would naturally tend to disbelieve the first report they read. So, she said, Ramage must make sure that Shirley's was the first to arrive. Then, with Their Lordships completely puzzled by Shirley's description, along would come Ramage's report which would supply the answer (without saying it in as many words) - that Shirley was mad.

  Alexis's argument (with which Southwick agreed) was a good one until one started thinking about other letters that Shirley might be writing: what friends he had who, to be fair to them, might not have any idea of Shirley's lapses into madness.

  Well, it would not be long now. With the Lizard in sight and the Liverpool, Dublin and Glasgow ships, eighteen of them, formed up as a small convoy and sent off yesterday for the St George's Channel with L'Espoir, and the ten Bristol ships separated this morning with La Robuste, the Calypso was left with forty-four ships, most of which were bound for London, Hull and Leith, after first anchoring in Plymouth to see if there were any last-minute orders from their owners. Often the shippers of a cargo originally consigned for, say, London had a better offer by the time the ship arrived in England, involving delivery to another port, and Plymouth was well placed if a ship then had to go to, say, Liverpool.

  Ramage had quite expected the Jason to leave the convoy and go on ahead to Plymouth or Spithead, and she did so long before the Lizard was in sight. So far (with only a few score more miles to go) it had been a successful voyage for the convoy. Most of the slow ships had responded well to being hurried; only two gales had hit the convoy and although both had scattered the ships, in each case the convoy had re-formed within a day. Then, in a final gesture, as the St George's Channel ships formed up into a small convoy to leave and the Calypso had sailed among them, helping L'Espoir, first one and then the remaining seventeen ships had fired an eleven-gun salute to the Calypso with their men lining the rails and cheering.

  This gesture, combining their farewell with a genuine thank you, was not lost on the Bristol ships which this morning had also fired a salute as they were led off by La Robuste.

  Now the Calypso frequently sighted other ships. One sloop coming down Channel had reported that a small convoy from the Cape of Good Hope and a larger one from the East Indies were already in the Channel bound for Spithead, and Ramage breathed a sigh of relief that the convoys had not met off the Lizard. There would have been collisions and confusion, Southwick commented, and Aitken added that a gale would probably have arrived as well to act as the spoon that stirred the brew.

  They were now for all intents and purposes home: when the Calypso had been hove-to for a cast of the deep sea lead, they had found sixty-eight fathoms and a sandy bottom. Nearly two months had passed from weighing anchor in Carlisle Bay, Barbados, to finding soundings near the Chops of the Channel. He had dined on board the Emerald, either alone or with various of his officers as fellow guests, nine times. Sidney Yorke and Alexis had been his guests on board the Calypso five times and on three other occasions the Calypso's officers had (with his permission) invited them to dine in the gunroom and asked their captain to join them. He had dined on five other of the merchant ships and in each case returned the hospitality, though eating a heavy meal in the middle of the day with wine and having two or three hours' conversation with the master of the ship left him weary and bored, annoyed at wasting an afternoon that could have been spent with the Yorkes.

  He put the draft of the letter in the drawer on top of the report. At the most a day or night and they would be anchored in Plymouth. Then he would have to face what he had been driving from his mind for the past couple of months - where was Sarah? Thank goodness there had been plenty to keep him occupied. Commanding a convoy of more than seventy ships meant that all day and every day and often much of the night there was some problem or other with any one of half a dozen of the mules. Someone would furl sails without a signal and the ships astern in the column would be hard put not to collide; another would suddenly sail diagonally out of the convoy (done thrice by the same ship and each time it transpired the master, the man at the wheel and the lookout had drunk themselves into a stupor . . .). Then there was Shirley and the Jason. On the brighter side, the Yorkes had done so much to make the voyage pleasant.

  Sidney could be lively and charming but he could also be sober and wise. Alexis was much the same, a woman's instinct leading to conclusions men would never have found by logic.

  Soon after dawn when the Calypso led the rest of the convoy into Plymouth Sound, one of the lookouts reported that the Jason was at anchor.

  Once the merchant ships had anchored and the Calypso too had an anchor down
, with the salute fired for the port admiral, the frigate's cutter was hoisted out. After rowing once round the ship to make sure the yards were square, Southwick went on shore to inquire what time would be most convenient for the port admiral to have the convoy commander call and make his report.

  The old master, considerably agitated, returned to the Calypso with news and a large packet from the port admiral. The news was that the rear-admiral in Plymouth - the second-in-command, whose main function was to preside at court-martials - was Rear-Admiral Goddard, a man whose hatred of the Ramage family was longstanding.

  The news of Goddard left Ramage strangely cold: for the moment he was more concerned with Sarah and getting the rest of the convoy round to London. He went down to his cabin. The packet obviously contained two or three letters, all inside a single sheet of thick paper folded and sealed with wax: the port admiral would not risk using a wafer, relying on gum. As he sat at his desk holding the packet, Ramage felt it was hardly necessary to break the seal and start reading: he could guess what they would say. This was the moment he stepped on the merry-go-round which was going to revolve for days, if not weeks.

  He picked up the paper-knife, slid it under the seal, and opened the outer page which formed the envelope. He had been wrong in one respect: the first letter was a copy of one from the Admiralty to the port admiral, and after the usual opening, "By the Commissioners for executing the office of Lord High Admiral", it went on:

  Whereas Sir James Bustard, Vice Admiral of the white and commander-in-chief of His Majesty's ships and vessels at Plymouth, hath transmitted to us a letter of the third of September last, from Captain William Shirley, commander of His Majesty's ship Jason, requesting that you, commander of His Majesty's ship Calypso, might be tried by a court martial for various matters falling under certain of the Articles of War, namely numbers XV, XVII, XIX, XX, XXII, and XXIII.

  And whereas we think fit the said Captain Shirley's request should be complied with: we send you herewith his abovementioned letter, and do hereby require and direct you forthwith to assemble a court martial for the trial of the said Captain Lord Ramage, for the offences with which he stands charged, and to try him for the same accordingly.