Ramage (28 page)

To hell with you, Ramage thought: it’s vital to remember that intonation and emphasis are not important; what matters is how the words will be read by Sir John Jervis and the Admiralty in the minutes of the trial.

Poor Barrow – his pen was trying to keep pace with the rapid dialogue; any minute now, just as soon as he dared, the perspiring little purser would ask for a pause to give him time to catch up.

‘Very well,’ said Croucher. ‘The Deputy Judge Advocate will now read out a second report to Captain Lord Probus.’

A second report? Ramage glanced at Barrow. Was this another gambit?

‘This report is dated September 12th, addressed to Lord Probus, and signed by Count Pisano,’ said Barrow. ‘It begins–’

Just as Ramage was going to protest, Captain Ferris interrupted.

‘Is this relevant to the case? The court has no official knowledge of Count Pisano’s existence, nor his connection with the loss of the
Sibella
.’

Captain Croucher put his hands palms downwards on the table and, looking at a point in space about two feet in front of his nose, said silkily, ‘It
is
perhaps relevant that I am President of this court and you are its junior member…’

Ramage sensed Croucher was not really bothered by Ferris’ protests; he had another trick ready.

‘…However, before introducing the document the court will wait until later in the proceedings, when its relevance will be made clear.’

He looked across at Barrow and said: ‘Call the first witness.’

While the word was being passed for the Bosun, Barrow hurriedly scribbled away, darting his pen into the ink pot from time to time with the rapidity of a snake striking.

Ramage could guess what he was writing: the page would be headed ‘Minutes of Proceedings at a Court Martial held on board His Majesty’s ship
Trumpeter
in Bastia on Thursday the 15th day of September, 1796.’ Then would come, under the heading ‘Present’, the names of the six captains, beginning with Croucher as president, ‘being all the captains of post ships according to seniority except Captain Lord Probus who certified the President his inability to attend through ill health.’

He would then scribble ‘Insert order for trial’ – the wording would be written into the fair copy of the minutes, as well as a record of his own appointment and the administration of oaths. Then there would be a discreet outline of the earlier exchanges with Captain Croucher, and now he would be scribbling a new heading ‘Evidence in support of the charge’.

The
Sibella’
s Bosun came into the cabin, pausing just inside the door, obviously bewildered by the array of senior officers looking up at him, and dazzled by the sunlight.

Barrow looked up, motioned him to the table and gave him the Bible. The Bosun straightened his shoulders – he usually walked with a slight stoop – and repeated the Oath.

Captain Croucher told him: ‘Don’t answer a question until the Deputy Judge Advocate has had time to write it down, and don’t speak too quickly.’

‘Aye aye, sir.’

For several seconds Ramage had been listening to several men having a violent argument outside the cabin door and, just as Captain Croucher glanced up, thought he could distinguish a woman’s voice speaking rapid Italian. Surely – no, he must be day-dreaming. Barrow, busy with his papers, had not noticed anything and began the questioning.

‘You are Edward Brown, and were Boatswain of–’

The door was flung open with a violent crash that made everyone jump, and Gianna, her face white and drawn, emphasizing the fine chiselling of her high cheekbones, swept into the cabin. Her eyes blazed with anger and her whole bearing was that of a proud, impulsive young woman accustomed to being obeyed. Her dress, pale blue embroid-ered in gold, was partly hidden by a black silk cape which had been flung back carelessly over her shoulders.

A Marine sentry stumbled into the cabin after her, musket in his hands, crying out, ‘Come back, ye crazy bitch!’ and then one of the
Trumpeter
’s lieutenants, pushing the sentry out of the way, grasped her arm.

‘Madam, please! I’ve told you the court is in session!’

But her beauty, her magnificent anger, was too much for him: he dare not hold her tightly and she waved off his restraining hand as if a fly had settled on her fan. Ramage saw Pisano follow them into the cabin flushed and angry.

Gianna walked straight up to the big table and looked coolly at the six captains, who were so startled and overawed that to Ramage it seemed they shrank in size, ceasing to exist as flesh and blood and becoming six figures painted on canvas, transfixed at a certain moment in time by an artist’s brush.

‘Who,’ demanded Gianna, ‘is in charge here?’

Oh, how he loved that voice when it became imperious! He didn’t know whether to watch Pisano, the six captains, Gianna, the lieutenant who stood uncertainly a yard or so behind her, Barrow, whose spectacles had slid so far down his nose that it was difficult to know why they did not fall off altogether, or the Marine sentry, who clearly thought the cabin had been invaded by some bumboat woman.

Croucher reacted first but, completely under her magnetic spell, stood and bowed. ‘I – er… I am the President of the court, Madam.’

‘I am the Marchesa di Volterra.’

Her voice and compelling, patrician beauty combined to silence everyone except the Marine sentry, who gasped, ‘Gawd- orlmighty!’

Ramage doubted if Croucher had ever waited for an admiral to speak with more apprehension than he waited for the girl.

‘I have no legal right to appear in a court martial trying Lieutenant Ramage for the loss of his ship,’ she said in a tone indicating quite clearly she regarded this as a trifling matter, ‘but I have a moral right to appear in a court trying him for cowardice if it is based upon the accusations of my cousin.’

Several people gasped, and Ramage glanced at the white-faced Pisano who made no reaction: he’d obviously already heard all this a minute or two earlier, outside the cabin door.

‘I believe my cousin has in writing accused Lieutenant Ramage of cowardice; I believe my cousin accuses Lieutenant Ramage of abandoning my cousin Count Pitti; I believe–’

‘How can you possibly know of this, Madam?’ exclaimed Croucher.

‘But it is true, is it not?’

The sharp and authoritative note in her voice flashed the question at Croucher like the swift, clean
riposte
of an expert fencer, and he was slow to parry.

‘Well – er, yes, in a way: Count Pisano has made certain charges–’

‘Accusations, not charges,’ she corrected him. ‘These accusations are without basis. I cannot let loyalty to my family prevent me from making certain that justice is done, so this court must know firstly that Count Pisano does not know Count Pitti was wounded: it was dark and although he says he heard him call out, he has admitted to me he does not know what it was he said.

‘Secondly, Lieutenant Ramage carried me to the boat because I was wounded, and put me in it. Count Pisano – who came to the boat by a different route – was already sitting in it. So if he had heard Count Pitti call out, he should have gone back himself.

‘Thirdly, after Count Pisano and I were safely in the boat, Lieutenant Ramage went up to the dunes again – I saw him – and called for Mr Jackson. Several minutes passed before he returned, and during that time Count Pisano was impatient because he wanted the boat to leave.

‘Fourthly, when Lieutenant Ramage finally returned to the boat and we waited a few seconds for Mr Jackson to arrive – we could see him coming towards us – Count Pisano was urging the Lieutenant to leave: in other words, he was urging the Lieutenant to abandon Mr Jackson, who had a few minutes earlier attacked four French cavalrymen and saved my life and that of Lieutenant–’

At that moment Pisano ran forward screaming, ‘
Tu sei una squaldrina!
’ and hit her across the face; then there was a heavy, dull thud and a rattle, and Pisano collapsed to the deck at the girl’s feet. The stolid Marine sentry, who had lunged forward and hit Pisano on the side of the head with the butt of his musket, took a pace backwards and stood stiffly to attention, a look of doubt beginning to grow on his face.

Ramage leapt forward, realizing the Marine’s musket blow had been the unthinking reaction of a person horrified that anyone should strike a woman.

‘Good man!’ Ramage exclaimed and in a moment Gianna was in his arms. ‘Are you all right?’ he whispered.

‘Yes – yes.’ She lapsed into Italian. ‘Have I done the correct thing? Have I made a terrible mistake?’

‘No! You were magnificent. I–’

‘Is the Marchesa all right?’

Ramage realized that Croucher, trapped behind the table and unable to understand what they were saying, was now so agitated that he was shouting the question, probably for the third or fourth time.

‘Yes sir, she says she is.’

‘Right. You–’ Croucher said to the Marine, ‘and you, you blithering idiot’ – (this to Lieutenant Blenkinsop, who was still standing beside his chair, open-mouthed and sword in hand) – ‘take that man down to the Surgeon.’

The Marine put his musket down on the deck, eagerly seized Pisano by the hair and dragged him a couple of yards across the deck before Blenkinsop hurriedly told him to hoist Pisano by the arms while he took the legs.

Ramage sat the girl in the witness’ chair. Barrow, whose spectacles had finally fallen on to the table, subsided into his seat. This was the signal for all the captains, except the President, to settle down again. Croucher obviously felt he had to do something to regain control of the situation.

‘Clear the court!’ he ordered. ‘But you stay,’ he said to Ramage, ‘and you too, Madam, if you please.’

The Bosun, and the few officers who had been sitting in the row of seats behind Ramage, filed out, while Croucher ordered the lieutenant who had followed Gianna into the cabin to put another sentry on the door.

Within two minutes the cabin was quiet again. Gianna quickly composed herself and, womanlike, turned slightly so that the captains saw her left profile, and not the right, which was red from Pisano’s blow.

Ramage sat down again in his own chair. Except for the sentry’s musket still lying diagonally across the white and black squares of the deck – from butt to muzzle it had made the knight’s move, he noticed – there was nothing to indicate what had happened. The chessboard had been swept clean of the pawns…who was going to make the next move?

‘Well,’ said Croucher lamely, ‘well…’

Ramage promptly put himself in Croucher’s position, ran through the courses open to him, and was ready when Croucher said: ‘…Frankly I don’t know how we should proceed now.’

‘I am still on trial, sir…’

The perplexity showed in Croucher’s thin, foxy face: Ramage sensed the man knew he was standing on a powder barrel and was afraid Ramage was lighting the fuse.

Five minutes ago, the trial was just going as Croucher had planned; but now the Marchesa di Volterra had been assaulted in his own court by his most important witness.

Ramage watched Croucher’s face closely and thought he could detect one unpleasant realization after another galloping through the man’s mind: the Marchesa must have a great deal of influence in high places… What would Rear-Admiral Goddard say and, more important, Sir John Jervis, the Commander-in-Chief… Did her influence spread to St James’ Palace…? Goddard would wash his hands of the whole affair – there might have to be a scapegoat…

And, thought Ramage wryly, his name might well turn out to be Captain Aloysius Croucher. The more he thought about it – and his brain seemed to be working at enormous speed – the angrier Ramage became: although all six captains and Barrow were soaking with perspiration, he began to feel cold – the icy coldness of rage.

He knew he was blinking rapidly and he guessed his face was white; but he felt a violent revulsion against the Pisanos, the Goddards, the Crouchers: he was sick of these men who would go to any lengths – or depths – to satisfy their pride or jealousy. None of them was any better than a Neapolitan hired assassin, who, for a few
centesimi
, would knife anyone in the back. In fact each was worse, because the assassin made no pretence at being any better than he was.

Suddenly Ramage understood something which had puzzled him for years: why, at the trial, his father had eventually refused to make any further defence. His enemies claimed he’d finally admitted his guilt; his friends, for the lack of any other explanation, assumed he was just worn out.

But now Ramage knew his father had decided his accusers were too despicable to warrant him continuing to defend himself against their charges; charges which were so gross that if he was to clear himself he would have to use the same crude and dishonourable weapons.

But why not use them? Why, Ramage thought, should the despicable always win against the honourable? Why should men like Goddard and Croucher, lurking in the shadows, using assassins – whether assassins destroying a man’s life with lies in a court of law or with a stiletto in a dark alley – why should such men always escape? They always did: the Duke of Newcastle, Fox, Anson, the Earl of Hardwicke for instance – they’d engineered Admiral Byng’s execution and escaped; and less than thirty years later their successors had ruined his own father, although mercifully they hadn’t stooped to judicial murder.