Ramage's Devil (29 page)

“If we've overtaken
L'Espoir,
then we are the western-most ship in existence.”

Ramage nodded agreement. “We can be thankful Bonaparte didn't send out a dozen frigates from Brest the moment our ambassador left Paris: in areas off Madeira and the Canaries they could have captured dozens of John Company and other ships all bound to and from England. But he didn't because he's a soldier and not a sailor, and anyway they're very short of seamen in Brest.”

“Aye,” Aitken agreed. “That Bonaparte seems to be a bonny soldier and we can be thankful he didn't take to the sea. Anyway,
L'Espoir
will have no reason to think the
Calypso
knows there's a war.”

“Wouldn't she be suspicious at seeing a British frigate so far south on this coast? About eight hundred miles south of the nearest British naval headquarters, Barbados?” Ramage continued testing Aitken.

“Sir, the
Calypso
's French-built, and apart from the fact that she's a little smarter than the usual French national ship, there's no way she'd know we're British unless we're flying our own colours.”

Now Aitken was straying from the point Ramage wanted him to discover and consider.

“Yes, I agree with all that but—and it's a big ‘but'—Bonaparte never forgives anyone who makes a mistake. In France there's a very complicated secret police system under which everyone is supposed to report on everyone else. One effect is that anyone failing to carry out his orders is likely to be accused of treason. Failure is frequently labelled treachery to the Revolution. And that usually means the guillotine—few brought before the courts in France are ever found not guilty.”

“So you think that the captain of
L'Espoir
will have considered that among the possible risks and dangers, sir? That he won't regard this voyage as a cruise, even though he is certain to be sailing ahead of the news of war?”

“Look at it another way, Aitken: forget the naval aspect. The captain of
L'Espoir
is carrying out the orders of the admiral at Brest, but he is a realist:
he
knows that the orders really come from the Ministry of Police, from that man Fouché, in fact. His written orders may have said that he was to carry fifty
déportés
from Brest to Devil's Island and hand them over to the
préfet,
but he knows very well that those fifty men (and their women) are regarded by Bonaparte at the moment as being the fifty greatest traitors who can be transported instead of guillotined. Now do you follow?”

Aitken shook his head. “I don't think so, sir. It seems quite straightforward to me, but from the tone of your voice obviously it isn't!”

“Well, if somehow the captain does not deliver those fifty prisoners to the
préfet
in Cayenne, but instead they escape or are rescued by a British ship, so that Bonaparte and his police can't get at them, then—”

“Ah, I see!” Aitken exclaimed, his voice a mixture of triumph and disbelief. “He would be accused of treachery—of deliberately allowing those fifty to escape.”

“Exactly. Ministers in power and Bonaparte himself always need scapegoats. The captain of
L'Espoir
knows that. No one commands a French national ship of war today solely because of his seamanship. Remember, in the first six months of the Revolution, France destroyed many of her best officers, so today most of her captains are former boatswains; men who've survived all those earlier régimes. The captain of
L'Espoir
has survived—for nine years. He knows how to do it; he's an expert. So you can be sure he hasn't ruled out the chance of interception.”

“How does that affect us, sir? He must still be sure he is sailing ahead of the news of war.”

“Come now, forget that aspect. He has fifty valuable prisoners on board—valuable particularly because they could lead him to the guillotine. Surely he must have at least one overwhelming advantage …”

“Well—oh yes!” Aitken exclaimed. “Fifty hostages! No one attempting a rescue would dare risk harming them! Yes, he knows no one dare fire a broadside into him. By God, he's as immune from harm as a pirate holding a nun in front of him.”

“Exactly, immune from broadsides, and he doesn't have to give a damn about arriving disabled on a lee shore. If he hands over the prisoners to the
préfet
safely at the cost of losing his ship the Minister of Marine might be lenient as long as he gets a favourable report from the
préfet.
Mind you, the captain and ship's company will be marooned in Cayenne and half might die from the black vomit and the survivors be captured on their way back to France in another ship …”

Aitken said suddenly: “What do we do if we sight
L'Espoir
this afternoon, sir?”

“I've no idea,” Ramage admitted. “We might send their masts by the board or tear their sails to shreds with langrage, but we'd still have to carry the ship by boarding and if the captain uses the prisoners as hostages and threatens their lives, we're still no nearer rescuing anyone.”

“It's a worry, sir,” Aitken commented, and Ramage was irritated by the Scotsman's tone: he spoke in the “Yes, well, the captain's bound to think of something” voice. However, as Aitken now knew well, this time there was no way.

Admiral Clinton was lucky, Ramage thought sourly as he turned yet again at the taffrail: if the Count of Rennes and his fellow prisoners were not rescued, or were killed, the commander-in-chief would certainly incur the disfavour of the Prince of Wales, but that was all, because his orders (as far as they went) were quite correct. But Captain Ramage, whatever the verdict of a court martial, could be sure that at best he would spend the rest of his life on the beach, drawing half-pay. No one would say anything out loud, but at the Green Room in Portsmouth, at Brooks's, White's and such places, there had been too many of his
Gazettes
published by the Admiralty for there not to be jealousy of “that fellow Ramage.”

Nor would half-pay now be so boring and frustrating; in fact, with Sarah beside him it could be very lively. They would live at St Kew and running the estate would keep them busy. Yet he knew that while the war against France lasted and there were ships of the Royal Navy at sea, only half his heart would be in Cornwall. That, Sarah would know, might prove the most difficult thing to deal with.

He shook his head to dispel the thoughts: what on earth was he getting so depressed about, putting himself on half-pay when they had not even sighted
L'Espoir?

Five minutes later, as Aitken wrote on the slate and Ramage continued pacing the windward side of the quarterdeck, there was a hail from aloft.

“Deck there—foretopmast lookout here!”

M
ESS number eight was the rather grandiose official description of one of the well-scrubbed tables and two forms flanking it on the
Calypso
's lower deck. It was on the larboard side abreast the forehatch, which ensured a bitterly cold draught in winter in northern latitudes, but as the
Calypso
under Captain Ramage's command had spent most of her time in the Tropics or the Mediterranean, the members of the mess were content.

The outboard end of the narrow side of the table fitted into the ship's side and the other was suspended from the deckhead by two ropes. Each of the forms on the long sides of the table seated four men, so that each mess in the ship comprised no more than eight men.

The mess had its own equipment. There was the bread barge, a wooden container in which the bread for the mess was kept. The bread was ship's biscuit, made in the great naval bakeries, and at the moment it was fresh, a word used to describe a square of hard baked dough which was still hard, not soft and crumbling, the happy home of the black-headed and white-bodied weevils which felt cold to the tongue but had no taste.

The bread barge was in some ways a symbol of the mess. The number eight was carefully painted on the tub-shaped receptacle and beside it was the mess kid, a tiny barrel open at one end with what looked like two wooden ears through which was threaded a rope handle. Also marked with the mess number, it was used to carry hot food from the copper boilers in the galley to the table.

The carefully scrubbed net bag folded neatly on the bread barge and with a metal tally stamped “8” fixed to it was the “kettle mess,” the improbably named object in which all hot food was cooked, because boiling in the galley's copper kettles was the only way it could be done. The
Calypso
's cook, like those in each of the King's ships, was the man responsible for the galley in general, the cleanliness of the copper kettles and the fire that heated the water in them, but that was the limit of his cooking.

Each mess had its own cook, a man who had the job for a week. Number eight mess' cook this week was Alberto Rossi, a cheerful man who was nicknamed “Rosey” and usually corrected anyone who called him Italian by pointing out that he came from Genoa, which in Italian was spelled Genova, so that he was a Genovese. If number eight mess decided in its collective wisdom that it would use its ration of flour, suet and raisins (or currants) to make a duff, Rossi's culinary skill would extend itself to mixing the ingredients with enough water to hold them together, put them in the kettle mess and make sure (with tally safely affixed) that it was delivered to the ship's cook by 4 A.M. and collected at 11.30 A.M., in time for the noon meal.

For this week when he was the mess cook, Rossi was also responsible for washing the bowls, plates, knives, forks and spoons of the other members of the mess, and stowing them safely. And, because bread, even if not appetizing, eased hunger, he had to make sure the bread barge was full—any emptying being ascribed to the south wind. Stafford, noting it was barely half-full, might comment: “There's a southerly wind in the bread barge.”

Nor were the points of the compass limited to the compass and the bread barge: tots of rum were also graded. Raw spirit was due north, while water was due west, so a mug of nor'wester was half rum and half water, while three quarters rum would become a nor'-nor'wester and a quarter of rum would be westnor'west and find itself nobody's friend.

The seven men now sitting at mess number eight's table piled up their plates and basins. Three used old pewter plates, but four, the latest to join the mess, used bowls and looked forward to the
Calypso
taking her next prize, Rossi having explained carefully that a French prize years ago had yielded the three pewter plates in defiance of the eighth Article of War, which forbade taking “money, plate or goods” from a captured ship before a court judged it a lawful prize. There was an exception which the three men interpreted in their own way—unless the object was “for the necessary use and service of any of His Majesty's ships and vessels of war.” Admittedly such objects were supposed to be declared later in the “full and entire account of the whole,” but as Stafford said at the time with righteous certainty in his Cockney voice: “S'welp us, we clean forgot.”

“Feels nice to be warm again,” Stafford remarked, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “England's never very warm but the Medway's enough ter perish yer. The wind blowin' acrorst those saltings … why, even the beaks of the curlews curl up with the cold.”

“Curlew? Is the bird? Is true, this curling?” Rossi asked, wide-eyed.

Jackson, the captain's coxswain, who owned a genuine American Protection issued to him several years earlier, shook his head. “It's just another of Staff's stories. All curlews have long curved beaks whether it's a hot day or cold.”

“Anyway, I'm glad we're back in the Tropics,” Stafford said cheerfully. “Don't cross the Equator, do we?”

Jackson shook his head. “Not even if we go all the way to Cayenne. What's its latitude, Gilbert?”

The Frenchman shook his head in turn. “I am ashamed,” he said, “but I do not know it.”

When another of the French asked a question in rapid French, Gilbert translated Jackson's question, and the Frenchman, Auguste, said succinctly:
“Cinq.”

“Auguste says five degrees North,” Gilbert said.

“Five, eh? When we're in the West Indies, up and down the islands, we're usually betwixt twelve and twenty,” Stafford announced, and turned to Jackson, “There, you didn't know I knowed that, didja!”

“Knew,” Jackson corrected automatically, and Stafford sighed.

“Oh, all right. You didn't knew I knowed that, then.”

“Mama mia,”
Rossi groaned, “even I know that's wrong. Say slowly, Staff: ‘You didn't know I knew that.' How are these
Francesi
going to learn to speak proper?”

“Don't sound right to me,” Stafford maintained. “And I come from London. You're an American, Jacko—Charlestown, ain't it? And you're from Genoa, Rosey. So I'm more likely to be right.”

Jackson ran his hand through his thinning sandy hair and turned to Gilbert. “You'd better warn Auguste, Albert and Louis that if they are going to speak decent English, they'd better not listen to this picklock!”

“Picklock? I do not know this word,” Gilbert said.

“Just as well, ‘cos I ain't one,” Stafford said amiably. “Locksmith, I was, set up in a nice way of business in Bridewell Lane. Wasn't my business if the owners of the locks wasn't always at ‘ome; the lock's gotta be opened.”

Gilbert nodded and smiled. “I understand.”

“Yer know, the four of you are all right for Frenchies. Tell yer mates wot I said.”

Gilbert translated and considered himself lucky. Just over a year ago he was living in Kent, serving the Count while they were all refugees in England. Then, with the peace, the Count had decided to return to France (and Gilbert admitted he wished now he had taken it upon himself to mention to the Count the doubts he had felt from the first). Then everything had happened at once—the Count had been taken away to Brest under arrest, Lord and Lady Ramage had managed to escape, they had all recaptured the mutinous English brig and now the four of them were serving in the Royal Navy!