Ramage and the Freebooters (20 page)

That night Ramage sensed the chess victories had done something to Bowen and later heard him good-naturedly baiting Southwick, offering to play him with the Master using bishops as extra queens.

And now here Southwick was reporting – on a day when a succession of squalls had kept the watch on deck so busy furling and setting sail that there had been no time for chess – that not only had Bowen failed to demand his tots but apparently was not broaching a secret supply either…

‘I’d be glad of your company at supper, Mr Southwick, and Bowen, too. Perhaps you’d pass the invitation to him. Put your chess set in my cabin, and warn Appleby he might be relieved late tonight.’

Southwick grinned and walked forward to find Bowen, leaving a puzzled Ramage pacing the deck. It was too quick for a cure; but instinctively he felt that at least Bowen was getting the right treatment.

That night, as the steward Douglas took away the plates and removed the cloth he did not, as he would have otherwise done, put down fresh glasses and a decanter. Instead, Ramage glanced up at Bowen and said innocently, ‘I hear you have been giving Southwick a thrashing at chess.’

Bowen laughed and looked slightly embarrassed.

‘Southwick hasn’t had the practice I have.’

‘Is it simply practice?’

The surgeon was obviously torn between honesty and a wish to avoid hurting Southwick’s feelings.

‘Mostly, sir. There are certain basic situations you learn about and try to avoid – or create.’

‘Trouble is, I haven’t a good memory,’ Southwick growled.

‘Memory hasn’t a lot to do with it, unless you want to use some of the stylized opening gambits. That makes for a dull game anyway.’

Ramage was interested now, having always complacently blamed his poor play on a notoriously bad memory.

‘Come, Bowen! Surely a good memory is important.’

‘No, sir,’ the surgeon protested, ‘That’s a commonly held view but a wrong one, I’m afraid. I’d say the two most important factors are an eye to spot a trap, and the will to keep attacking.’

Southwick eyed Ramage. ‘You should be a champion, sir.’

‘Yes,’ Bowen said eagerly before an embarrassed Ramage could interrupt. ‘From what I’ve heard you should be a first-class player and I’m surprised you’re not.’

‘There’s not much time to play chess at sea…’

‘No,’ the surgeon admitted, ‘but–’

‘Yes, we’ve got time for a couple of games now. But I warn you, I’m hopeless. Southwick, you can act as a frigate – keep a weather eye open for enemy traps. You agree, Bowen?’

‘Certainly, but I’m sure it won’t be necessary.’

‘I haven’t played for a couple of years: I can barely remember the moves.’

Douglas, previously primed, moved forward with the chessboard and an inlaid box containing the chessmen. Bowen opened the box, took out two pieces, juggled them in his hands beneath the table, then held them both up for Ramage to choose.

It was white, and they set up the board. Ramage remembered vaguely that advancing a king pawn two places was regarded as a good safe opening move and made it. After that, it was like trying to repel dozens of boarders single-handed in thick smoke. Despite Southwick watching every move, pointing out possible threats, Bowen’s bishops, knights and rooks were everywhere and apparently doubled in numbers. Three of Ramage’s pawns, a bishop, then a rook were dropped in the box as they were taken. A knight and the other bishop followed; Bowen had lifted the queen off the board and dropped it in the box and it was only when he moved his knight into her place that Ramage saw what had happened. Bowen had merely said ‘Check’ and, as Ramage went to move the king out of danger, added politely, ‘I really do think it’s checkmate, sir.’

‘And it is, by God!’ exclaimed Southwick. ‘Well I…’

‘Me too,’ Ramage said ruefully. ‘I’m glad we didn’t have a guinea on that game.’

‘I prefer not to play cards or chess for money, sir,’ Bowen said. ‘Makes for bad feeling if someone gets excited and turns what’s supposed to be a game into something approaching a duel, with cash if not honour at stake. It doesn’t improve the game, either.’

‘Quite right,’ Southwick rumbled. ‘Quite right – hate to see it myself. What about another game – and you leave the queen and both bishops in the box.’

Bowen hesitated and looked up at Ramage, who guessed he was thinking it was perhaps unwise to beat his captain too often.

‘And a knight and a rook too!’

‘I’m sure that won’t be necessary,’ the surgeon said, reassured. ‘After all, I’ve been playing the game for…’

He broke off, embarrassed, but Southwick grinned, ‘…more years than the captain’s been born…’

‘Well, yes, but I didn’t–’

Ramage said, ‘That gives me an excellent excuse for losing every game. Your first move, Bowen. Now, Southwick, keep a sharp lookout! If I ever become an admiral and command my own squadron, I’m getting more and more doubtful about letting you command a frigate!’

In nine moves Bowen looked up at Ramage, who said, ruefully, ‘Don’t bother to say it – checkmate!’

The third game lasted several more moves and Ramage was able to watch the surgeon. The hands still trembled but the eyes were clearer. The greyness of the skin had not quite gone but the face muscles had tightened up and the mouth did not hang open slackly. Clean linen, stock neatly tied… And Bowen was alert; in fact a new man. It sounded a cliché but Ramage could think of no other description. Alert, decisive, and completely in control of both himself and the situation. His eyes would move across the board three or four times, then his hand would reach out and without a moment’s hesitation move a piece with thumb and index finger (all too often lifting off one of Ramage’s pieces with the ring and little finger at the same time) and he’d wait without fidgeting while Ramage tried to think up a counter-move, often aided by Southwick. When the game ended, Bowen, at Ramage’s request, explained some of their worst mistakes. They seemed obvious enough – afterwards.

Finally the Master said: ‘I’d better go and relieve the master’s mate – he’s had his watch stretched out. If you’ll excuse me…’

Ramage nodded, but the surgeon made no move to leave.

Instead he put the chessmen back in the box and folded the board. For a moment Ramage wondered if he should make some remark, but Bowen, looking at the table top, said: ‘This is the first day for more than three years…’

Ramage still said nothing, deciding it was best for Bowen to unburden himself if he wished, or keep silent.

‘…I’ve wanted it, God knows – but perhaps God has also given me the strength not to go to Southwick’s cabin and beg…’

It took Ramage several moments to realize the significance of that single word ‘beg’. Bowen had at last fully recovered his pride: to him, getting a drink now meant ‘begging’ one from the Master, whom he’d roundly beaten at chess and who–

‘…Not just God, though… I think the last few days must have been just as bad for you and Southwick as for me…’

He was silent for a minute or two and Ramage said: ‘Perhaps not in the way you are thinking. We were only afraid we’d fail.’

‘You mean that I would fail,’ Bowen corrected gently.

‘No, I think the first three days were up to us. After that it was up to you.’

‘I only pray I can keep it up. But I’m not going to make you any promises, sir, and I hope you won’t ask for them.’

Ramage shook his head.

Southwick’s last sight put the
Triton
roughly three hundred miles north-north-east of Barbados and he was reporting the fact to Ramage when the lookout in the foremast hailed the quarter-deck to report a sail lifting up over the horizon fine on the starboard bow.

The young master’s mate, sent aloft with a telescope, was soon shouting excitedly that the ship had a strange rig and seemed to be steering to the north-west. Southwick growled his doubt – that would be the course of a ship bound from West Africa to round the northern Leeward Islands and then square away for America.

Then Appleby reported hesitantly, his voice revealing doubt, that she’d lost her mainmast, and a few moments later, this time with more certainty, that she was fore-and-aft rigged; probably a schooner which had lost her mainmast, because the only mast standing was too far forward for her to be a cutter.

Ramage had already ordered the quartermaster to steer a converging course, and as Southwick sent hands to sheets and braces, he called Jackson, ordering him aloft. Handing the American his telescope, he said: ‘She might be a “blackbirder”.’

‘Was thinking that m’self, sir: position’s about right if she’s staying outside the islands and bound for America.’

With that he ran forward and climbed the shrouds.

Southwick bent over the compass for the third time, grunting as he stood up.

‘If she’s making more than a couple of knots I’d be very surprised; her bearing’s hardly changed.’

Bowen, who was standing near Southwick, said almost to himself, ‘If she lost her mast some days ago she’ll be in trouble.’

‘Aye,’ Southwick said heavily. ‘Losing a mast is always trouble. Especially in these seas. She’ll be rolling like a barrel – wind on the beam.’

‘No, I meant provisions,’ Bowen said. ‘A few hundred slaves… I don’t imagine they carry more than the bare minimum of provisions based on a fast passage.’

And Ramage found himself nodding as he listened: he’d been thinking that as he warned Jackson. The schooners in the West African slave trade usually made a fast passage from the Gulf of Guinea across the Atlantic to the West Indies and America. An extra week meant tons of extra food and water.

‘Deck there!’

‘Well, Jackson?’

‘She’s a “blackbirder” all right, sir. Lost her mainmast all right, but the foremast’s standing and she’s carrying a foresail, topsail and headsails.’

Bowen was enjoying himself for the first time in his two years at sea: previously he’d been too besotted to care that each successive ship to which he’d been transferred had been smaller; to him the
Triton
had been just another small cabin in which he could stretch himself out with a bottle and glass. Rarely in those two years had he ever gone on deck, and then only if he had to make a report to the captain.

Now, beginning with the enforced walks on deck with Southwick, he was taking an interest in the handling of a ship. Most of it was still strange – such a mass of ropes, and he didn’t understand many of the shouted orders or the reasons for them. But he saw now that what always seemed confusion was in fact highly organized movement by the men.

And with his mind now clear for the first time in years – he’d been four days without touching liquor – Bowen tried to analyse why the
Triton’s
captain was such a remarkable young man.

Watching him talking to Southwick, Bowen realized for the first time that they were an oddly assorted pair. Apart from anything else the Master was more than old enough to be his captain’s father yet was clearly devoted to him. And Bowen saw that such devotion came as much from a professional respect as a personal regard.

The lieutenant wasn’t as tall as he looked – it was the wide shoulders set on a slim body, and the narrow face, that gave the impression of height. Yet there was something more – was it poise? Bowen knew it was an odd word to use about a naval officer standing on the quarterdeck of one of the King’s ships rolling along in the Trades, but it was the right one, because he both belonged there and commanded it. Uniforms apart, anyone suddenly arriving on board would never have to ask who was the captain.

Nor was it just his physical appearance. No, more that one sensed his power rather than saw it. Like a clock! Bowen grinned happily at the aptness of the simile. Yes, a clock in an elegant case. It looked well whether in a drawing-room or the cabin of a ship; and it regulated all their lives without fuss and without them realizing it. And since the clock kept accurate time and was so perfectly controlled one forgot there was more to it than the face and the case; forgot that inside was a powerful mainspring controlling a complicated mechanism, and from that mainspring everything else about it derived. True, there were escapements and other pieces of finely engineered machinery to control the mainspring, but without it all the rest was useless.

And so many men, Bowen reflected, were born without the equivalent of that mainspring. Perhaps only one in a thousand had it; less than one in ten thousand had one that never faltered.

Curious the way he occasionally rubs the older scar over his right brow – never the newer one. Even more curious how he snatches away his hand the moment he realizes he’s doing it, as though ashamed of the habit. There, he did it again – and Bowen saw it was instinctive: he rubbed it when he was thinking hard, and probably when nervous, though the youngster seemed to have nerves of steel. And now he’s snatched the hand away again and clasped both hands behind his back.

A fine profile. Face on the thin side, half-starved aristocratic, and it made the jawline seem harder than it was. But the eyes – Bowen almost shivered. Dark brown, deep-set beneath thick black eyebrows, they mirrored his moods. They’d laughed when he’d checkmated him for the fifth time, Bowen recalled, but by God a few days earlier they’d bored into him like a pair of augers when Ramage tried to discover what had started the drinking. And they’d been cold and hard when giving the order to stop the drink.

And Bowen realized that until this moment he’d never fully accepted that the captain was barely twenty-one. Yes, he’d hated the probing questions; he’d hated the order depriving him of his liquor. He’d hated Ramage, too, but the hatred had been aimed against his authority, against a person with the power to stop the liquor. Never for a moment had he even resented that the man giving the orders was only a youth.

Bowen then thought carefully
why
he’d just accepted it. Well, it seemed appropriate: the man had a natural air of authority – and it
was
natural, not just because Ramage had a legal authority backed up by the Articles of War. This much Bowen had learned only in the last few days, because for the first weeks after Ramage had taken over command Bowen had been too drunk to realize there was even a risk of mutiny, let alone that the ship’s company had refused to weigh anchor at Spithead.