by Dudley Pope
Ramage vowed he would try to be less irritable in the future. The arrival of the Lieutenant-de-vaisseau from Paris would ease some of the strain; his return from Boulogne on Saturday would see an end to it. On Saturday! The wait from Wednesday to Saturday would be twice as bad as this; what really mattered was Bruix’s report. He found himself wondering for the hundredth time whether making the attempt on the satchel this time was worth the risk of wrecking everything for the attempt on Saturday.
Louis had reckoned it was; Stafford was indignant—or as indignant as he dared be—when Ramage had mentioned that a mistake with the wax seal of the Paris despatch would endanger the whole operation. On Saturday, once they had read Bruix’s despatch, it would not matter if they jumped on the seal: by the time the satchel reached Paris and was opened at the Ministry of Marine on Monday, all three of them should be back on board the Marie and heading for Folkestone …
Once again Ramage went back to reading Le Moniteur: Louis regularly brought in old copies that he found in various places: it had taken only fifteen minutes to read the latest issue, which was about as interesting as the London Gazette, although the bombast of some of the official statements was amusing enough.
He had decided a hundred times to abandon tonight’s attempt; he had changed his mind a hundred and one times. So—and he was ashamed to admit it even to himself—they would make the attempt, providing he did not change his mind yet again. Judging by the increasing rate, he had time for half a hundred more changes of mind before the Lieutenant-de-vaisseau flopped into his bed tonight, secure in the knowledge that his satchel was safely hidden …
Supposing that Forfait did not bother to answer Bruix’s questions about the 413 guns and the money for the workmen—or could not answer for a few days, until someone made a tally of the guns available and checked the money in the Treasury kitty … ? The Admiralty in London would not give a tinker’s cuss that there was a shortage of money—that was something faced every day by every ministry in every government in the whole world; but guns for the Invasion Flotilla’s gunboats—that was different. Knowing that Bruix would get no more guns suitable for the gunboat was more important than knowing the rate at which new gunboats were being sent down slipways. Without guns, they were useless, since they were unsuitable for carrying troops, provisions or ammunition. On the other hand if Forfait said that no more guns would be available for, say, six months (until the foundries produced them, or the Army could be persuaded to hand some over and ship carriages could be made for them), then the Admiralty knew that for the next six months Bruix’s only effective gunboats were those he had been able to commission.
You could go a stage further: Bruix would, left to his own devices (but of course the Minister or the First Consul might overrule him), probably finish the construction of those gunboats already on the stocks simply to get them out of the way, and then use all available extra carpenters and shipwrights (and sawyers and smiths, for that matter) to concentrate on building more barges—or if not more, then speeding up construction of those already started.
In fact you could very easily start getting quite sorry for Admiral Bruix’s plight! The poor man was in the silly situation where he could build more transports for the Invasion Flotilla and carry an even larger Army of England across the Channel but, because he could not get the guns, he would have many fewer gunboats to escort them: the more transports he built, the less able he was to defend them.
It was some consolation that Lieutenant Ramage was not the only naval officer within fifty miles of the Channel who had problems, he reflected gloomily, but at least Bruix would not be strapped down on the guillotine if he failed.
Ramage was worried about Louis: from six o’clock he had been expected back to describe what plans he had made to ensure that the Lieutenant once again had supper in the dining-room downstairs, but he had not arrived by seven o’clock. Ramage and Stafford had to return to their roles of invalids, undressed and in bed, waiting for supper. Both had to appear suitably ill, although the daily bulletin given to the landlord when he brought up their breakfast showed that Stafford was on the mend while Signor di Stefano made only slow progress. Fortunately the landlord himself had scorned the idea of calling a doctor: once Ramage had described the symptoms the landlord had clapped his hands and announced that the café where they had lunched was infamous for serving food that was bad, and that his wife had a family recipe for the medicine that would clear it all up tout de suite. He apologized that the Signor and his foreman should be taken ill in Amiens in this unfortunate way, but there was no need to worry. With every meal since then two small mugs of the medicine had appeared, a piping hot and evil brew of mint, rosemary and chicory for certain, and many other things that Ramage could not define but previously thought had their origins in drains. At every meal the two men had taken appreciative sips but, the moment the landlord was gone, poured the rest into old wine bottles which Louis had found for the purpose and took out of the hotel in his coat pocket to empty.
Louis arrived only a minute or two before the landlord and his wife came in with the supper trays. He had no time to report on his afternoon’s work before the first course of his meal was served at the table, while the landlord’s wife bustled back and forth between Ramage’s and Stafford’s beds, first with the mugs of medicine and then with bowls of broth.
Unfortunately for both men, part and parcel of the family remedy was a menu that went with the medicine: one which ensured that the patient received “nourishing food.” This meant broth and bread, followed by boiled fish, for every meal, starting with breakfast.
Luckily Louis was treated as a trencherman, and the moment the landlord and his wife left the room after serving an enormous course he hurriedly shared it with Ramage and Stafford, making sure he was back at the table with a clean plate, and looking hungry, by the time they returned with the next offering. Only once, on the previous evening, had the plan gone adrift: they had forgotten to dispose of the medicine before the landlord’s wife come back to clear the table. Amidst much clucking she stood by while Stafford and Ramage finished their mugs and, fighting to avoid vomiting, screwed up their face muscles into the nearest they could muster to appreciative smiles. Louis flattered her medical skill and incautiously—or so he claimed, though Ramage suspected an impish sense of humour—said they looked as though they could have drunk more.
As soon as supper was finished and the landlord and his wife had bidden them all good night, Louis looked quizzically up at Ramage. The tension throughout the meal had made it obvious that they were alarmed at his late appearance. Neither man had said anything during the brief periods when the landlord and his wife were out of the room between courses, Ramage from stubbornness and Louis for fear a man already under strain would lose his temper.
“It’s all arranged,” Louis said. “The Lieutenant is here but hasn’t gone up to his room yet. He—”
“How the devil is Stafford going to get the satchel?” Ramage snapped.
“—the Lieutenant met an old friend and they are drinking together. He’ll be going up to his room for a wash, and then go down to supper. After he has eaten, the friend and I join him for an hour or two playing cards …”
“All right,” Ramage said, giving a thin smile of relief, “but you had me worrying because you were late back.”
“I was drinking with the Lieutenant,” Louis explained hurriedly, before Ramage’s bad temper had a chance of returning. “He saw me as he came in and greeted me like a brother. A comfortable ride from Paris, he tells me; a little tired but pleased to see me and his old friend. He has given the landlord strict instructions to have some good Calvados ready and the card table set up.”
He rubbed his hand across his chin and the bristles rasped: Louis never had more than 24 hours’ growth of beard but, as far as Ramage could see, never less. It was impossible to guess when he actually shaved, unless he always used a blunt razor. Yet the Frenchman looked worried and Ramage waited patiently. Fina
lly Louis said: “We need to cut down the risks even more: we don’t want anything to stop us getting a sight of Admiral Bruix’s despatch on Saturday, and we don’t want to lose any time getting a copy of the despatch to England …”
Ramage thought for several moments, puzzled that the Frenchman should be so emphatic about something so obvious. “Have you any suggestions?”
“Yes. To begin with, we should get your copy of the letter—or your notes—from the Minister out of this room as soon as possible. If you keep it here through the night until I can get it to Boulogne, you are holding on to evidence which can incriminate you. No one would search my room or suspect me; but you are different; a foreigner is always suspect …”
“But if the gendarmes became suspicious of me, it wouldn’t take—”
“Even if they were, they are still only suspicious of an Italian shipbuilder,” Louis said impatiently. “It would probably take two or three weeks to check on you. Your papers aren’t forged—they are genuine, with an imaginary name written in. But if your room was searched and they found notes written in a foreign language, it wouldn’t take long to get them translated. And then it would be so obvious what they were—and what you were! They would have no need to check. The only thing that could get you guillotined for certain within the week are those notes.”
The Frenchman was right. The first set of notes had been burned after he had written a report to Lord Nelson on Bruix’s despatch, and Jackson should now be on his way to Folkestone to deliver it. All he had to do tonight was make notes as soon as Stafford got hold of the Minister’s reply, write out another report to Lord Nelson, and hide it somewhere until Louis could send it off to Boulogne to meet Jackson, who should be back by Thursday. The notes could be burned like the first set, and the same procedure followed on Saturday night. Providing Jackson could get over and back each time, the operation could not fail: the Admiralty would have all the information it required, even if Ramage and Stafford were arrested on Sunday morning.
Louis agreed when Ramage outlined his intentions. “As soon as you’ve finished writing your letter to Lord Nelson tonight and burned your notes, take the letter to my room. You’ll find a loaf of fresh bread in the top drawer of the chest—I’ve just put it there with cheese and a bottle of wine: anyone finding it would assume I keep it in case I get hungry. Now, if you press the bottom of the loaf you’ll find a slit in it that is deep enough to take your despatch. Push it in and put the loaf back. It’s the loaf,” Louis explained with a grin, “that will take the despatch to Boulogne. It will sit in a basket with a bottle of wine and some cheese—the courier’s lunch.”
“Supposing he eats the loaf?” Ramage asked.
“He’ll have three loaves—one for himself, one in case another traveller wants some, and a third which he is taking to his widowed mother in Boulogne. That’s the one with the despatch. The courier leaves for Boulogne tomorrow morning and again Sunday morning,” Louis reminded Ramage. “That’s all arranged.”
“But we’ll be leaving on Sunday,” Ramage said, and then he remembered. “But we are supposed to be going on to Paris …”
Again Louis grinned and shook an admonitory finger. “You see, you haven’t got into the habit of life in France! You English—if you want to go from Dover to London, you just climb into a carriage or mount a horse. Or board a wagon. No travel documents, no passports—all you need is the money to pay the fare. Of course, Bonaparte would tell you that you haven’t ‘Liberté, Egalité, et Fraternité’ …”
“I’ve no doubt he would,” Ramage said impatiently, “but how do we get back to Boulogne on Sunday morning?”
“You ask Louis if he has arranged for new travel documents and a carriage.”
“And what does Louis tell me,” Ramage asked sarcastically. “That he has also forgotten all about them?”
“No, Louis would tell you that they’ll all be here by Friday, along with a letter from the Port Captain at Boulogne asking the Signor to return urgently for more discussions—a request that makes you very angry, as the landlord will notice.”
“How did the Port Captain know I was still in Amiens and not in Paris?”
Louis thumped his hand against his forehead, then shook his head with exasperation. “Remember, this is France! Any Frenchman could tell you. The police headquarters in Amiens know where you are staying. Any messenger trying to find you and knowing your route would simply inquire at the police headquarters in every big town.”
Ramage began to feel a chill creeping over him that had nothing to do with the fact that the sun had long since set: he pictured the police of France as a great octopus bestriding the country, a tentacle reaching into every town, with the suckers representing villages and police posts along the roads, and although unseen, touching the lives of every man and woman in the country.
Louis was watching him closely. “I think at last you understand, mon ami,” he said quietly, and Ramage nodded.
Stafford’s grin was infectious. As he held out the letter after opening the seal on the cover, Ramage saw that the Cockney was completely unworried: there was not a trace of perspiration on his brow, his hand was steady, and he had worked quickly but without hurrying. Deftly, Ramage thought; that was the word. As he took the letter, Ramage made sure he did not have to hold out his own hand too far for too long: he knew it was trembling slightly. He knew he would laugh a little too loudly if Stafford made a joke—in fact a laugh might well sneak out as a giggle.
With great deliberation he put the letter to one side without glancing at it, drew the sheets of notepaper in front of him, placed the inkwell near his right hand and inspected the tip of the quill pen. Unhurriedly—although he knew the whole performance was for himself, because Stafford was completely absorbed with the watermarks in the paper used as an envelope —he unfolded the letter and began reading, almost skimming through it the first time. He found this was the best way of getting the “atmosphere” of a letter written in a foreign language, relying on a second or third reading to yield the precise details.
One thing was immediately so clear as to be startling: Citoyen Pierre-Alexandre-Laurent Forfait, Minister of the Marine and Colonies, was writing an extremely chilly reply to Admiral Bruix; far colder and more formal than Ramage would have expected, having read the Admiral’s despatch to the Minister. It might be Forfait’s manner—in which case would the Admiral (who obviously knew him well) have written what was by comparison a friendly despatch?
He read the Minister’s letter again more slowly, lingering over some of the phrases and examining them. Hmm … there was no doubt about it; the letter was intended to be cold. Ramage had the feeling that someone (presumably Bonaparte himself) was very angry with Bruix’s request—repeated request—for money, while the Minister was alarmed at Bruix’s warning that the full report on the Invasion Flotilla would prove disappointing to the First Consul when it arrived in Paris.
Citoyen Forfait was more than alarmed; he was obviously a very frightened man. Ramage saw him as a nervous individual who understood the danger of standing between the First Consul and one of his admirals. When things were going well, it was a splendid position for an ambitious politician, since he received the praise and could hold on to as much as he wished before passing on the remainder to the Admiral concerned. When things were going badly, Bonaparte’s wrath—and from what Louis said, the Corsican had more than his share of his island’s hot temper—landed fairly and squarely on the Minister’s unprotected head. From the tone of Bruix’s despatch Ramage guessed that the First Consul’s original orders for the construction and commissioning of the Invasion Flotilla had been impossible from the outset. He pictured an anxious Minister nodding his head, bowing his way out of the First Consul’s presence, and rushing off to give the orders to Bruix …
Ramage glanced at his watch and realized that he was wasting time.
Hurriedly he began making notes. Admiral Bruix’s request for 54 guns at once for the gunboats already completed
, and 359 more for the remaining gunboats that were ordered, “had been noted.” However, Citoyen Bruix would have observed, the Minister wrote icily, that there was a general shortage of all sizes of naval guns, particularly 24-pounders, and the foundries were, at the First Consul’s express order, working overtime. However, there were seventeen 24-pounder guns and carriages at Antwerp, and orders had been sent for them to be taken by sea to Boulogne. Since most of the coast between Antwerp and Boulogne fell within Citoyen Bruix’s command, the Minister hoped that the British would not be allowed to intercept the vessels carrying them.
The request for money was ill-timed, Forfait wrote, and the First Consul, when told of it by the Controller-General (since the request had to be made to the Treasury, “there being no funds available at the Ministry”), had given instructions that Citoyen Bruix would be responsible for ensuring that the shipyards continued to give of their best “even though accounts were outstanding,” and that the workmen did not leave their jobs. Any man that did—or threatened to—would be conscripted immediately. Citoyen Bruix was to issue a warning to that effect. In the meantime the First Consul waited “with unconcealed impatience” for the complete report he had requested.
Ramage handed the letter back to Stafford as he scribbled the last of his notes. He had been careful to copy whole sentences where necessary—he knew that although Lord Nelson might accept his word that as a precaution Citizen Forfait was putting out an anchor to windward, their Lordships at the Admiralty most certainly would not. Nor could he blame them, he thought, as he watched Stafford carefully folding the paper and beginning to heat the spatula again; their Lordships would also find it impossible to picture Lieutenant Ramage and Ordinary Seaman Stafford juggling with candle, spatula and sealing-wax and reading the correspondence between Vice-Admiral Bruix and Bonaparte’s Minister of Marine—in fact even Lieutenant Ramage was finding it hard to believe, though Will Stafford, Ordinary Seaman, seemed to take it in his stride.