Ramage's Devil (41 page)

He paused for breath. Yes, now he had silence down here except for the blood pounding in his ears, but right aft and on the deck above there was more shouting, screaming and clanging of cutlasses than he had ever heard before.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” he said, to consolidate the silence he had brought to this part of the ship. Then he could think of nothing to say. Fifty or more white faces stared up at him; a hundred or so eyes glinted in the candlelight as Auguste brought up another lantern.
Mama mia,
what would the captain say to these people if he was standing here!

“Ladies and gentlemen, I must apologize for the noise.” A woman started laughing, a laugh which rose higher up the scale and ended suddenly as someone reached across and slapped her to stop the hysteria.

“I am from the
Calypso,
one of His Britannic Majesty's frigates and commanded by Captain Ramage, and—”

“Count Orsini, I think!” The voice came from the back.

“At your service,” Paolo said carefully, an Italian count suspecting he was addressing a French one but determined not to give too much ground. “You have me at a disadvantage,
m'sieu.
”

“I am Rennes, and Captain Ramage told me about you.”

Then Paolo remembered the rest of his orders. “Forgive me for a moment. Now, ladies and gentlemen, we shall try to release you, once we have found the keys, but please stay here until Captain Ramage comes and tells you to move: unless you are wearing one of these white headbands, you might be killed!”

At the other end of the lower deck Ramage was cursing fluently in Italian, with Jackson and Stafford providing a descant of obscene English. There was a small doorway at the after side of the gunroom and the five Frenchmen (Ramage was unsure if they were officers or seamen who had been trying to escape from the mess-deck) had managed to get through it, slashing and parrying with swords, and vanished into the darkness beyond. It was the tiller flat, a space the width of the ship across which the great wooden arm of the tiller moved in response to the wheel turning above. And now anyone going through that black hole was asking to be cut down by the men who could remain hidden behind the bulkhead.

Five men: of no consequence. With the captain dead they would soon surrender.

“You men”—he pointed to five of his group—”stay here and stop those fellows coming out. More important”—he pointed down at the thick wooden hatch cover—”that's the magazine scuttle, so guard it!”

With that he was running up the companion-way to the main deck and was just in time to see twenty or so Frenchmen retreating before Southwick, Ferris and Martin, but fighting back-to-back with twenty more who were slowly driving Aitken and fewer than a dozen men aft, trapping them against the capstan.

Aitken was still slashing with his cutlass and turned away shouting incomprehensible encouragement to his men when Ramage saw one of the Frenchmen break from the group and run towards Aitken, holding his cutlass like a pike.

There was no time to shout a warning—Aitken would never hear it—and Ramage hurled his cutlass, leaping after the spinning blade. The hilt caught the side of the Frenchman's head, he staggered, and a moment later Ramage had an arm round the man's neck and they both swayed, a shouting Aitken flicking away the cutlass of another attacker but still unaware that he had nearly been cut down.

The Frenchman was burly, two or three inches taller than Ramage, and he wore no shirt. His body was slippery from perspiration, but now, no longer stunned, he wrenched away from Ramage's grasp after punching him in the face, took a step back, and lifted his cutlass for the slash that Ramage knew would split his head in two, and for the moment he was too dizzy to do anything but stand there.

The Frenchman's blade swung up, only the sharp edge shiny; Ramage registered dully that the blade must be rusty and only the cutting edge clean. Up, up the blade went and the Frenchman's eyes held his: the head was the target and the Frenchman was not going to be distracted.

The Frenchman's face contracted slightly, the body flexed and the right shoulder twisted an inch or two as the muscles drew at the arm. Ramage sensed rather than saw that not one of his own men was within ten feet and no one had noticed this lonely and one-sided duel.

The Frenchman was grinning: two teeth missing in front at the bottom. Unshaven. The arm coming down now. Sarah. Jean-Jacques. Such a waste, but no pain—

But the arm was still upraised and the Frenchman was looking up and tugging. In an instant Ramage realized that the man had held the cutlass too vertically as he raised it for the final blow and the point had caught in the deckhead above. As he struggled to free it, Ramage moved two paces closer, kicked the man in the groin and then picked up his own cutlass. That made seven.

He turned to join Aitken and found that in the few moments of the strange duel, which had seemed at the time to be lasting ages, his own party had combined with the first lieutenant's and driven the Frenchmen forward again, squeezing them against Southwick's party.

Ramage jumped up on to the capstan head and crouched to avoid the deck beams. It was easier to look across the main deck from here. Two, four, eight … twelve … thirteen … sixteen … All the rest wore white bands round their heads. And here were Southwick, Ferris and Martin coming along the starboard side, grinning.

“Just going to give Aitken a hand!” Southwick said and led his men in a scramble over the cranked pump handle.

So apart from a few unwounded but surrendering Frenchmen, the main deck was suddenly secure. But the
déportés?
For a moment he had a clear picture of fifty people in irons at the fore end of the lower deck, their throats cut by some rabid Revolutionary.

Jackson was beside him now, with Stafford and Rossi. “Lost you for a moment, sir,” the American said.

“It was a long moment,” Ramage said, “but come on!”

He jumped off the capstan and snatched up a lantern lying on its side, flipped open the door and straightened the wick. Fortunately it could only just have been knocked over because the wax had not run. He shut the door and clattered down the companion-way to find himself outside the gunroom again. What the devil had made him go up on the main deck after leaving those five men on guard? The whole reason for the voyage and this attack was waiting at the forward end of the lower deck, and he remembered with sick fear that Paolo had not reported, nor Gilbert, nor Auguste.

He was past the after hatch; there, like a vast tree trunk, was the mainmast. Now the main hatch and past these forms lying over the deck, an indication of the way the Frenchmen had been surprised.

Candles alight on the tables. There was a lantern, two lanterns, moving about right up forward, and now he could see a mass of bodies lying on the deck. And two or three men moving among them—murderous Republicans cutting the throats of the
déportés?

He was concentrating so carefully on not tripping in the half-darkness that he was almost among the slaughtered
déportés
before he realized it, and he looked up with his cutlass raised to find that the nearest rabid Republican killer with the lantern was in fact Paolo.

“Your friend is in the last row, sir,” Paolo said calmly, not realizing how close to death he had been. “I understand that the key to unlock these irons is in the captain's possession. A Captain Magon, I believe.”

Ramage stepped over the prone people to where Gilbert was kneeling. There, his ankle held by a leg iron, was Jean-Jacques, who looked up and grinned and said: “I hardly expected to see you here. Is Sarah with you?”

R
AMAGE stepped out on to the jetty where the group of Frenchmen stood with a white flag on a staff, and the wind tugged at the similar white flag being held up in the cutter's bow. Gilbert and Paolo followed and as Jackson stood a French officer held up a hand and said in French: “Only one man, the captain.”

Ramage stopped. “Where is the island governor?”

“At the fortress, waiting for you.”

“My letter suggesting a truce said we meet and negotiate on this jetty.”

The French officer shrugged his shoulders. “It is not my concern. My orders are to escort you to the fort.”

Ramage turned to his men. “We go back to the ship.” He then said to the French officer: “I shall return in half an hour. If the governor is not here,
L'Espoir
will then be blown up.”

“But her crew!”

Ramage raised his eyebrows in what he hoped was a cold and callous glare. “
What
about them?”

“They will all be killed!”

“The survivors, yes. Many were killed last night. The rest … well, that depends on the governor. Half an hour then. If he is not here, we shall sail at once, and
L'Espoir
will vanish a few minutes later.” He looked across the anchorage and laughed. “Perhaps not vanish: you will see plenty of smoke and an abundance of wreckage!”

“A moment,” the French officer said hurriedly, “we can reach an accommodation.”

“I assure you that we cannot,” Ramage said stiffly. “I talk only to the governor. No one on Île Royale, the Île du Diable or the Île St Joseph—or for that matter down in Cayenne—is performing a favour for me. I am offering him the lives of 64 French seamen from
L'Espoir
. They treated the
déportés
so shamefully they will never be exchanged from England. The wounded certainly will not survive the voyage …” he paused and composed himself for another cold-blooded laugh. It came out quite satisfactorily judging from the look on Jackson's face. “… And I have grave doubts about the unwounded. My men have no sympathy …” He gave an expressive shrug and waved a hand towards the broad Atlantic on the other side of the island, a gesture which he saw achieved its purpose in conjuring up a picture of shark fins cutting through the water.

The Frenchman pointed towards the seaward end of the jetty. “
M'sieu,
you speak French like a Frenchman. Walk a few steps with me—”

“Tell your party to stay by the boat,” Ramage snapped as he saw a couple of lieutenants begin to follow.

The officer snapped out an order which froze the men. Lot's wife, Ramage thought, and looked curiously at the officer. He did not recognize the man's uniform, which was well cut in green cloth. It had black buttons with a design or initials on them. If his rank was a captain or major, one would have expected … His thoughts were interrupted as the man tried to smile, indicating that they should walk the few paces which would take them to the end of the jetty and out of earshot of everyone else.

When they stopped, Ramage turned to the man and guessed the answer before he said: “Well?”

“There is no need to go to the fort; we can negotiate here.”

“You command the garrison?”

“I command all three islands.”

“And you are?”

“General Beaupré.”

“Prove it.”

He was a solidly built man with a flowing black moustache and brown eyes that were friendly. Not at all what one expected of a jailer, Ramage decided.

“Lieutenant Miot!” Beaupré called.

“Oui, mon général?”

Ramage nodded. “All right—you are a general. We negotiate. I have three French frigates, not two—the two farthest from us I captured recently, one last night and the other last week. The nearest I captured a couple of years ago and she is now commissioned into the Royal Navy.”

“You want to exchange something for the two frigates?” General Beaupré was incredulous.

“No, I was simply introducing you to the situation.
L'Espoir,
the frigate that arrived last night, was bringing you more than fifty
déportés.
”

“Yes, I guessed that. They would be kept on the other island.” He pointed. “The Île du Diable is for
déportés,
who are of course political prisoners. The criminals are kept on Île St Joseph and here, on Île Royale.”

“I am not interested in the criminals,” Ramage said. “I will exchange my prisoners, the men from
L'Espoir
and
La Robuste,
for all the
déportés
you have on the Île du Diable.”

The general's face fell. “But I don't have any
déportés!
”

“Where are they?” Ramage demanded.

“With the treaty that ended the war, they were all sent back to France. Why should we detain them in peacetime? I have only criminals now. And what people they are. Every one of them, men and women, think nothing of murder! But
déportés
now, why that is absurd.”

“Because we are all at peace, eh?”

“Yes, of course,” the general said. “When you mentioned
déportés
in
L'Espoir
—that was a slip of the tongue, was it not? You meant ‘convicts.'”

Ramage shook his head slowly, angry with himself for not realizing. His note sent on shore earlier had merely said that the ships did not have
la peste
on board, that the shooting and shouting of the previous night had been caused by the capture of
L'Espoir
by men of the Royal Navy. Ramage had suggested a truce to discuss the disposal of French wounded and prisoners; he had forgotten the most important item of news.

“No,
déportés.
The war has started again.”

The general paled. “War,” he muttered. “I thought it was piracy. War … I suppose
L'Espoir
also brought despatches giving me the news.”

“I expect so,” Ramage said. “We have not gone through all the papers yet. However, what about the exchange?”

The general faced Ramage squarely. “I have no
déportés.
If you wish, we will visit the three islands and you can question any one you like. Convicts—yes, scores, and you are welcome to them. The
déportés
in
L'Espoir
would have been the first for a year, and the buildings for them on the Île du Diable are falling down—termites, white ants, the rain … Nothing lasts, be it buildings or men. Termites or the black vomit,” he said hopelessly. “We're all exiles here … the convicts are locked up at night. But are their jailers free?”