The Ramage Touch

by Dudley Pope

  Southwick climbed up the side of the frigate to be met by Aitken, who immediately asked: ‘They landed safely?’

  Anyone would think it was ten miles to the beach and they were under heavy fire. ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Very well, tell Jackson to make up the cutter astern; we might need it in a hurry.’

  Southwick turned to call down to the boat, and at that moment he remembered that the man at the tiller coming back had not been Jackson, who as coxswain had steered the boat to the beach.

  ‘Jackson – ahoy there, Jackson!’

  There was a curious silence. Men who had been stowing the oars along the edges of the thwarts seemed to redouble their efforts and make more noise.

  ‘Stafford?’

  ‘Aye aye, sir?’

  ‘Where’s Jackson?’

  ‘Dunno, sir; ’e ain’t ’ere.’

  ‘When did you see him last?’

  ‘Well, sir, it’s dark and…’

  ‘He was at the tiller when we landed at the beach, wasn’t he?’

  ‘I think so, sir.’

  ‘But not when we shoved off?’

  ‘I couldn’t rightly say, sir,’ the Cockney seaman answered, obviously being evasive.

  Southwick thought for a moment and then snapped: ‘Is Rossi down there?’

  For a few moments half a dozen voices enquired: ‘Is Rossi here?’, all of them with the assumed innocence of choirboys.

  Aitken tugged Southwick’s sleeve, pulling him away from the bulwarks.

  ‘Jackson and Rossi must have gone after the Captain. I saw them talking this afternoon. What the devil they think they can do, just the two of them, I don’t know. I can only hope they don’t do anything silly and get the Captain caught.’

  Southwick sniffed his disapproval of the whole thing. ‘I proposed to the Captain this afternoon that he took Rossi with him. Rossi is not only Italian but he has his wits about him: Mr Ramage refused. He said that Martin and Orsini were just right. He’ll be furious when he knows he has Jackson and Rossi as well.’

  ‘Well, there’s nothing we can do about it now,’ Aitken said. ‘If the Captain had wanted them with him he’d have told them. He’ll probably make them sit among the juniper bushes until he’s ready to come back. The mosquitoes will make them look like prickly pears…’

  After leaping from the bow of the cutter, Ramage, Martin and Paolo ran up the thirty yards of sloping sand until they reached the first of the juniper bushes and then threaded their way towards the pines, their feet slipping and sliding, their balance uncertain after more than a year at sea without going on shore for more than an hour at a time.

  The pine forest which ran the length of the causeway, from the mainland to Argentario, suddenly loomed up, a black wall of sound, ticking and buzzing with the noise of insects and punctuated by the occasional grunts of wild pigs snuffling among the pine cones. All we need now, Ramage thought to himself, is to be charged by a wild boar and get cut to pieces by those sharp tusks.

  The keen smell of the pine leaves, the way the pine needles thick on the ground were holding the sand together and stopping it squeaking underfoot, the spreading carpet of long green fingers of the fico degli Ottentoti plant, trying to hook round ankles and bring a running man sprawling on his face…Ramage remembered it all. The damp heat, the feeling that heat from the day’s sun was being stored for the night among the pines, making the air seem almost solid, whereas out at the ship it was fresh, with even a slight chill…

  Once they were inside the first of the pines, as though they had penetrated the outer wall of a maze, Ramage called: ‘Right, stop here.’ The three stood panting, all of them surprised at the way the muscles in their shins pulled, showing how little actual walking they did in the Calypso.

  ‘From what I could see from the cutter, the mainland is only fifty yards or so along this way,’ Ramage said, pointing to the north-east. ‘Then we have a few hundred yards to walk along the via Aurelia and we should find Orbetello on our right. The causeway to Porto Ercole will be farther along, also on the right.’

  Martin said: ‘Where do you expect to find the French army officers, sir?’

  Ramage felt a sudden irritation that the fourth-lieutenant should now casually ask a question which he had himself been trying to answer for most of the afternoon and all the evening. Paolo had obviously considered it too. ‘Boh!’ he said, in that Italian expression which has a thousand meanings. Ramage was interested to hear what young Paolo had to say: he was Italian and he was shrewd and far more likely to understand the Latin mind than Ramage.

  ‘Well, Orsini, where will I find ’em?’

  ‘Orbetello,’ Orsini said promptly. ‘The town is fortified and will have inns. French officers do not like tents. I doubt if Porto Ercole has more than a tavern. Probably only a cantina, where the soldiery can get drunk and buy wine in jugs. The officers will stay in Orbetello until it is time to board the frigates. With their women, no doubt,’ he added bitterly, knowing that the women were likely to be Italian and therefore, in his straightforward code of conduct, traitors. ‘The troops will be in tents near the main road.’

  Just as Ramage thought he heard the squeaking of sand, a twig snapped loudly. The three of them stood silently, Martin expecting French soldiers while Ramage and Orsini listened for the grunting and snuffling of a wild boar. Instead they heard Rossi whispering hoarsely: ‘Shall we give a hail, Jacko? Just a–’

  ‘No!’ Ramage’s voice cut through the darkness, and he almost laughed aloud as the sound of more breaking twigs showed that both Rossi and Jackson were startled enough to take at least one step backwards.

  He nearly laughed, but it would have been a humourless laugh. The night turned cold as he considered that, instead of three gipsies, of whom one was a dumb halfwit and the others spoke perfect Italian, he was now in effect at the head of a boarding party: five men would not be able to move where three gipsies could walk openly, drawing attention to themselves with a flute and collecting money and listening to gossip.

  ‘Jackson, Rossi, come over here. Quietly.’ He heard a few more twigs breaking, some muffled cursing from Rossi, and then silence. Then Jackson whispered, and Ramage could picture his shamefaced look.

  ‘Where are you, sir?’

  ‘Here,’ Ramage said quietly.

  A few more twigs snapped and Ramage thought he could hear the carpet of pine bristles creaking, but he was determined not to make it easy for two men who had not only disobeyed orders but simply ignored their duty, which was to return to the Calypso in the cutter.

  ‘Here,’ Ramage repeated sarcastically. ‘You sound like a herd of water buffalo.’

  Then the two men were facing him in the darkness and Ramage could just distinguish the plump Rossi from the lean Jackson. ‘Well?’ he said to Jackson with deliberate cruelty, ‘decided to “run” after all these years, eh? And you, Rossi?’

  The sudden accusation of desertion left Jackson speechless. There were only three ways of leaving one of the King’s ships in wartime, and they were marked down in the muster book with one of three abbreviations – ‘D’, for discharged to another ship which was usually named; ‘D.D.’, for discharged dead, normally noted down without any explanation although the cause of death could range from yellow fever to a fatal fall from one of the yards; or ‘R’, for ‘run’, or deserted, and the penalty for which was anything from several hundred lashes with a cat-o’-ninetails to being hanged. In wartime the Navy was always so short of men that deserters were rarely hanged if they were caught.

  Rossi, waiting impatiently for Jackson to explain but finding him staying silent, said hurriedly: ‘We came to help you, sir. You see, we–’

  ‘Help?’ Ramage interrupted angrily. ‘If I thought I needed you I’d have given you orders. What am I supposed to do now you’re here? Hold your hands as though you were two little boys caught stealing grapes?’

  ‘Well, sir,’ Jackson muttered, finally realizing that what had seemed a good idea on boa
rd Calypso was completely impractical now they had actually landed, ‘we thought you needed some protection, and with Rossi to do any talking…’

  ‘Protection!’ Ramage exclaimed. ‘You come blundering through the trees making enough noise to rouse the whole French army, and then have the infernal impudence to suggest that you are going to protect me?’

  Even as he spoke he could feel the mosquitoes whining round his ears and settling on his face and neck. He shook his head and realized that his hair, hanging loose, acted as an effective fly whisk – for a few moments, anyway. What was he to do with these two idiots? The whole gipsy business, which was by far the best role for him, would be endangered if these two were within hailing distance. Since he could not send them back to the ship – the Calypso and the two bombs were anchored much too far out to hear a hail – they must stay somewhere out of the way.

  He thought for a few moments. Rossi was shrewd; there was little doubt that he had a criminal past, and this was his own country. Jackson was American, and if he had brought his Protection with him he could always try to persuade the French to release him because he was, strictly speaking, a neutral, and could claim he had been pressed by the British and forced to serve. Rossi might manage to find out something from the people drinking in the cantina in Porto Ercole.

  The alternative was to leave the pair of them hiding in the pine forest, trying to find fresh water to drink and something to eat. Given that they had landed at all, they would be more useful listening in a cantina – not that either of them spoke French – than cowering among the junipers.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, trying to keep the anger from his voice, ‘you both go to Porto Ercole as fast as you can. Pretend you’re seamen looking for a berth. Rossi, you do the talking. Think of a story in case French patrols stop the pair of you. Your ship arrived in Leghorn. The captain sent you both on shore to do some errands but while you were away the ship sailed. And you’re owed a year’s pay. Calculate how much. You’ve been making your way down to Civita Vecchia, hoping to find a ship there. You came over to Porto Ercole because you saw some French ships coming in and you hoped there was a convoy forming – something on those lines. Mind the French don’t press you into their service.

  ‘Now, listen closely. In Porto Ercole, go to one of the bars and listen. I know neither of you speak French but you, Rossi, must arrange something with an Italian who does. Jackson, you’d better pretend to be drunk. What I’m trying to find out is where the troops boarding these frigates are really heading for. They might be going to Crete for ordinary garrison duty; but they could be going there to join a much larger army which will go on to attack somewhere like Egypt, just as the French did recently.

  ‘Bear two things in mind,’ he emphasized. ‘I don’t want to hear a lot of barrack room gossip, so I want to know the rank of any man who says anything interesting, and you must not show undue interest so that the French get suspicious. Tease them and tell them Crete – if that’s where they say they are going – is full of poisonous snakes, or mermaids, or the wine tastes like twice-boiled pine needles.’

  Both men murmured that they understood, then Ramage remembered something. ‘Are you armed?’

  ‘Yes, sir, pistol and knife,’ Jackson said. ‘And Rossi has his knife, too.’

  ‘What are you wearing?’

  Ramage could just make out Jackson’s hands in the darkness pulling at his collar. ‘Usual seamen’s clothes, sir. Just the same as an Italian would wear. Rossi checked it all.’

  By now Ramage was beginning to relent. His initial apprehension that the pair might spoil his plan still remained, but he realized that they were not being deliberately reckless; they genuinely wanted to help protect him and Paolo. Still, he had to be ruthless with them because their presence would wreck the wandering gipsies’ act, and perhaps they might find out something in Porto Ercole.

  ‘Very well, off you go. Don’t stray far from the bars because we’ll be arriving there tomorrow evening. If we are not there by midnight, you’d better look around for a boat to steal to row yourself out to the bomb ketches – if they ever arrive.’

  With that the two men disappeared into the darkness, and as the sound of snapping twigs faded in the distance Paolo muttered, as though to himself but obviously intending Ramage to hear: ‘They were only trying to help.’

  ‘Yes, they were,’ Ramage snapped. ‘If they get us captured, it’ll be small consolation as the French strap you down on the guillotine that you were caught only because of the stupidity of two men who were trying to help.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  An hour later Ramage arrived in the piazza at Orbetello, walking with the smooth furtiveness that he always associated with Italian gipsies and followed by Paolo, who was holding the line which was tied round Martin’s waist, leading him like a performing bear.

  The town, jutting out into the lake formed by the causeways, was surrounded by a thick, defensive wall. The narrow road from the via Aurelia came in to one side of the roughly cobbled, rectangular piazza. The municipio, Orbetello’s town hall, was in the middle of a long side with a circular balcony, like a church pulpit, jutting out from one wall so that the mayor, or garrison commander, could woo or harangue his people when he felt the need, looking down on them as he gave them good news or bad.

  Ramage saw that just beyond, its tables lit by lanterns, was either an inn or a cantina crowded with customers: customers wearing bright clothes, the well-cut uniforms of officers. Occasionally there was glinting as the badge on a shako or a sword hilt or scabbard flashed in the lantern light where they were lying on the tables among bottles, carafes and glasses.

  Then Ramage saw two things that for a long time now had been familiar sights in most Italian towns occupied by the French. The first, standing just to the right of the big double doors of the municipio, was the Tree of Liberty, a metal skeleton that owed its likeness to a tree to the skill of a blacksmith who made it out of narrow iron strips. The second was across the piazza: a small platform with a wooden structure rising vertically at one end, like a tall and narrow but empty picture frame, with a low bench in front of it – the guillotine. The blade had been removed; that would be cared for by the executioner, who would keep it sharp and well-greased so that it did not rust.

  Curious that the French could see no contradiction in the two objects, Ramage thought; the dreadful irony that a Tree of Liberty stood in the shade of a guillotine.

  There were no horses tethered to the trees growing round the sides of the piazza, so the French officers had not ridden in for a night’s carousing: they must be staying at an inn close by; perhaps even this one, next to the municipio. Just as Paolo had forecast, they were not sleeping out under canvas, and he wondered idly where the troops were bivouacked.

  Most of the officers seemed to be drunk. Some were trying to sing and several were bellowing in French for waiters to bring more wine. Ramage muttered in Italian to Paolo, who gave a double tug on the line. Martin, putting on a good act as a half-wit (helped by the fact that he could understand nothing that was being said), scrabbled about among his ragged clothes and fetched out his flute.

  As Ramage bellowed ‘Viva!’, Martin began playing ‘Ça Ira!’

  It was sudden and it was unexpected at the inn, and the shape of the piazza meant the walls acted like a concert hall, giving more body to the reedy notes. The French officers were drunk enough to leap to their feet to cheer the three shadowy figures shambling towards them across the piazza, joining in the words of the most famous of the Revolutionary songs. Martin had not in fact heard it until that afternoon and had been practising, with a few other tunes, under Paolo’s watchful eye and ear until the cutter had been ready to leave the Calypso.

  Ramage stopped five yards from the tables and turned round to conduct Martin’s playing with all the flourishes of a maestro commanding a huge orchestra. Paolo stood at what a gipsy boy would regard as attention and saluted. The absurd sight of the motley trio made the officers sing even
louder, a few of them redoubling their shouts of wine for the tziganes and, as Martin rounded off the last notes, calling out the names of more tunes they wanted to hear.

  Ramage turned back to the tables, swept his hand down and outwards in an exaggerated bow, and noted that the arrival of a gipsy flautist was a welcome interlude for the officers and, judging from the way he was hurrying his waiters, no less welcome to the innkeeper. Every glass of wine he could get poured down a French throat meant good money poured into his own pocket.

  Ramage turned back to point at Martin, an offhand gesture that a conceited maestro would make to a nervous soloist, but also one that a flamboyant gipsy father would use to draw the attention of a half-witted son. Obediently Martin began to play a sentimental, languorous Italian tune, one from Naples, which Paolo and Ramage had decided would bring just the right amount of nostalgia to the officers. Then there came a lively tarantella, which quickly had the officers banging their hands on the table tops in time with the rhythm and demanding an encore.

  By the time Martin finished that and two more tunes, the French officers were shouting for the tziganes to come and drink, and Ramage and Paolo adopted a pose of nervous shyness so that the officers shouted even louder and the innkeeper, worried at losing trade if the zingari went to the tavern round the corner, overlooking the lagoon formed by the causeways, hurried across the cobbles to lead Ramage in by the arm, thanking him in Italian and congratulating him on the playing.

  Ramage paused for a moment, indicating that he wanted to whisper something to the innkeeper, and when the man stopped Ramage mumbled: ‘The boy – a cretin, you understand. The flute is all he knows. He cannot even talk – except with his flute.’

  ‘Mama mia,’ exclaimed the innkeeper, who had a normal Italian’s love of music, ‘he may not be able to talk, but he makes that flute sing.’

  ‘Any scraps from the kitchen,’ Ramage murmured as he let himself be led to the tables, ‘would be very welcome; we are very hungry and have walked a long way today.’