Ramage's Devil (5 page)

“There—now, my lady, hurry up or—”

He stopped and listened to the gentle but persistent tapping at the door. Tap, tap, tap—and then a hissed “Milord … milord …”

He recognized the voice: Jean-Jacques' valet Gilbert, a tiny, almost wizened Breton who had gone to England to share his master's exile and then returned after the Treaty of Amiens.

Ramage hurried to the door and the moment he had opened it the valet slipped through and shut it again.

“Ah, milord—and milady, of course—you are dressed.” Gilbert glanced round the room, noted the trunks and the lack of clothing and toilet articles lying about. “You are prepared, then: this suite looks deserted—they will say the English have flown, if indeed they know you are supposed to be here. Quickly, please follow—I take you to a small room where you must hide.”

“But what—”

“I explain in a few minutes, milord: first, to safety!”

The valet shut the window (“No Frenchman would have a window open,” he explained) and they followed him out of the room, along the corridor away from the main part of the château, down a staircase where it was so dark they had to grip the rail and feel for the next step before moving, until finally the valet opened a door.

“An old storeroom, milord,” he explained. “No one would seek you here, and there's a side door leading into one of the gardens.”

He extended a hand to Sarah. “There is a small step up, milady. I am afraid there are simply these old packing cases, but we hope you will only have to wait an hour or two before returning to your suite.”

Ramage felt like a piece of flotsam swirling round rocks at the mercy of random waves, but before he had time to ask, the valet said: “I have a message from the Count, milord, and some information I—er, well, I happened to hear. I took the liberty of listening beyond the door.

“The message from the Count is that he thinks France is again at war with Britain and you must escape. That was all he could say before the cavalry officer and his men came in to arrest him.”

“But you heard more?”

“Yes, sir, it is indeed war. The most important thing the cavalry officer said as he arrested the Count—on direct orders from Paris—was that Lord Whitworth, your ambassador in Paris, had left the capital on the twelfth of this month. He said this was close to a declaration of war. Then on the seventeenth the British authorities had detained all French and Dutch ships in their ports and issued commissions to privateers.”

He paused a moment, pulling at his nose as though that would stimulate his memory. “Yes, then on the next day, the eighteenth, the British declared war on France and on the nineteenth ships of the Royal Navy captured some French coasting vessels off Audierne—almost in sight of Brest and, of course, in French waters.

“Then, according to the cavalry officer, on the 23rd Bonaparte issued an order to detain British men between the ages of eighteen and sixty who are liable to serve in the British army or navy.”

Ramage glanced at Sarah. It was now the 25th of May. Britain and France had been at war for exactly a week. Yet yesterday when the two of them spent much of the day out on Pointe St Mathieu there had been no sign of police guarding the roads, no sign of a blockade; not a frigate on the horizon.

The valet seemed to have more to say, but whatever it was, he was not enjoying the prospect.

“Well, Gilbert, is that all?”

“No, milord, I regret it is not. You appreciate that my purpose in listening at the door was to obtain information to pass to you …”

“I am sure you were doing exactly what the Count would wish you to do, Gilbert, and we are grateful.”

“Well, milord, the cavalry officer stressed that the Count was being arrested on the orders of Bonaparte but as the result of information laid by the Countess—the former Countess, I mean. And she had told the authorities that he was likely to have English guests staying with him. That was why I wanted you to leave your suite quickly.”

“But they'll look in the trunks …”

Gilbert shook his head. “I doubt it, sir: the suite looked unoccupied when I came to you. Not only that, it is hardly where you would
expect
to find guests …” There was no mistaking Gilbert's horror at the choice of rooms forced on the Count by the Revolution. “The Count's own suite has even less furniture. Anyway, the soldiers will start their search in the kitchen—”

“The
kitchen?
”

“Oh yes, milord, straight to the kitchen—to look for wine. I sent Edouard there at once to make sure there was plenty readily available. Once the officer has taken the Count away and the soldiers start searching, they will be half drunk. I do not think it will be a careful search.”

“They were taking the Count away at once?” Sarah asked.

“The officer gave him ten minutes to dress and pack a small bag, milady.”

Ramage was conscious that what he did from now on would govern whether or not he was marched off to a French prison as a
détenu,
but he was much more frightened of Sarah's possible fate. A selfish thought slid in before he had time to parry it: being married did indeed mean you had given a hostage to fortune. Now he could understand Lord St Vincent's dictum, that an officer who married was lost to the Service. Quite apart from Sarah's own safety in a case like this (which was admittedly unusual), would a happily married officer risk his own life in battle with the same recklessness as a bachelor, knowing that he now had something very special to lose? And if he had children …

He looked up at Gilbert. “What will they do to the Count? Guillotine him?”

“It is possible, milord, but—if I may speak freely—I think the Countess, the former Countess rather, will probably make sure his life is saved. I thought they were happily married—until the Revolution, when she became caught up in the fever. Transportation is likely—I believe many Royalists who were not executed were sent to Cayenne, which I'm sure you know is a tiny island in the Tropics off the coast of French Guinea, in South America. Priests, masons, monarchists, indeed anyone out of favour with the Republic, are sent to Cayenne.”

“What do you suggest we do now? Obviously we want to get back to England.”

Gilbert nodded cautiously. “The first priority is to avoid you falling into the Republic's hands. The second is to get you back to England. If you will excuse me, I will go to see what news Edouard has. The soldiers will have been talking freely to him, I am sure; a good revolutionary always assumes a servant is downtrodden and sympathizes with him.”

With that Gilbert seemed to vanish through the door, but Ramage realized the man was so deft and light-footed he could open a door, go through and close it again, with less fuss than most people reach for the knob.

Once they were alone, Sarah smiled affectionately and took his hand. “We should have been married a month or so earlier, then we would have been back home by now,” she said. “Or had a shorter honeymoon. Anyway, now you don't have to worry about convincing Lord St Vincent not to pay off any more ships.”

“No, it looks as though the Cabinet at last became suspicious of Bonaparte. Withdrawing our ambassador from Paris must have startled Bonaparte, who will have been full of his own cleverness in getting us to sign that absurd treaty last year. Now we've suddenly slapped his hand. No more than that, though, considering the size of his army.”

“You'll have to fight him at sea, then!” Sarah said cheerfully, and then could have bitten her tongue for the second time in less than twelve hours.

“I'm hiding here,” Ramage said bitterly, “and someone else is commissioning the
Calypso
in Chatham. He's the luckiest captain in the navy if the men haven't been paid off yet, because he gets the finest ship's company.”

Suddenly she had an inspiration. “That means you are lucky. He will keep the men together, all ready for you to resume command when you escape.”

“Providing I escape and providing the Admiralty are prepared to turn out a captain for me,” he protested. “Neither seems very likely at the moment.”

“If you are captured—I'm sure we won't be—they'll release you on parole. Then you can make for the coast and steal a boat, or something.”

He laughed sourly. “My love, you have a simple approach to it all but the Admiralty doesn't share it. Parole, for instance.”

“What is difficult about that?”

“Well, giving your parole means giving your word of honour not to escape, and you are freed to live outside the prison. You pay for your board and lodging, of course.”

“There's bound to be a ‘but,' though,” she said gloomily.

“There certainly is. If you break your parole and escape to England, the Admiralty doesn't welcome you. In fact they might send you back. They certainly won't employ you.”

“Why ever not?”

“Because you gave the French your word of honour and you broke it.”

“But there is a war on! The French killed their king. They guillotined thousands of innocent people.”

“True, and probably will go on executing more, but the Admiralty's view is that you don't have to give your parole. If you do, then you must keep your word.”

“So what on earth can a captured officer do?”

“Refuse parole. That means he stays in prison, but it also means that if he
can
escape and get to England, he really is free and can expect to be employed again.”

“Do the Admiralty actually check?”

“I presume so. There's a French commissioner in London, you know.”

“Not when we're at war, though.”

“Oh yes. He's a fellow called M. Otto, Commissioner for the Exchange of Prisoners. Every now and again we exchange Frenchmen we've captured for an equal number of Britons that the French have taken.”

“Let's not talk about prisoners,” Sarah said. “We'll get out of this somehow. Gilbert—we can trust Gilbert. I fear for Jean-Jacques, though.”

He shook his head. “No, I think Gilbert is right: that damned wife, or whatever she is, won't want him executed: it wouldn't do her reputation any good. The widow of a traitor. Transportation—yes, he could be sent to Cayenne, and that's one of the unhealthiest places in the world. But death there is not certain. Not as certain as being strapped down to the guillotine here.”

“And what about us? I don't want to sound selfish but we are foreigners in the middle of the enemy camp!” Her smile was wry; he was pleased to see that his new wife neither showed fear nor attempted to blame him for the fact they were caught in a trap.

“When Gilbert comes back we'll hear if the French authorities know we're here and if they're looking for us. I don't think Jean-Jacques registered us anywhere or reported to the authorities that we were staying with him. I think he should have done—at the
préfet
's office, perhaps—but he wouldn't bother because he thought it was not the
préfet
's business whom he chose to entertain.”

“That attitude is all right in England, but I can't see Bonaparte and his merry men agreeing.”

“No, but although the French know the names of every foreigner who has entered the country, unless they have their present addresses, it doesn't help. Remember,” he said bitterly, “if the French are arresting all the visitors, it means they are breaking their word.”

“In what way?”

“Well, everyone visiting France has to get a
passeport
from the French. That's a guarantee, a document permitting the foreigner to pass through the ports of France and travel about the country. Now, having granted these
passeports,
it seems Bonaparte is breaking his word.”

Sarah nodded but said with casual sincerity: “Yes, that's true, but anyone—and that includes us—who trusts a man like Bonaparte or the government of France cannot complain if he is cheated. ‘Honour' is a word that the French deleted from their vocabulary when they executed the king. Any nation that cheerfully executes a whole class of its people for just being born into that class is wicked and mentally sick. A Frenchman could be born an aristocrat but be poorer than the local gravedigger, yet the aristocrat was dragged off to the guillotine, and the gravedigger went along to cheer the executioner.”

“We shouldn't have come here on our honeymoon,” Ramage said wryly.

“Where else? Prussia isn't very appealing. The Netherlands and Italy—Bonaparte will be arresting all foreigners there. Spain—who knows. Anyway, we are really learning something about the French.”

She sat down on one of the packing cases. “What happens if the French soldiers find our trunks in the suite?”

“Well, they won't find us. Don't forget they came at dawn, so they'll assume we've escaped.”

“That seems too good to be true,” she warned.

“No, it's obvious when you think about it.”

“Where do we go now? This storeroom is rather bare!”

“Back to our suite eventually, because it'll probably be the safest hiding place in France.”

“Our suite? But …”

“‘It's been searched by the cavalry, so the
rosbif
and his wife
can't
be there,'” he said, imitating the precise speech of an officer reporting to a senior. “They'll be searching everywhere else for miles around.”

There was a faint tapping at the door and Ramage opened it. Gilbert slid in, a reassuring smile on his face. He bowed to Sarah.

“You must find that box uncomfortable, milady.” As soon as Sarah reassured him, he turned to Ramage and took a deep breath.

“Edouard used his ears and eyes carefully, milord, and he acted as a simpleton so that he could ask silly questions—and sprinkled some shrewd questions among them.

“Anyway, it means this. As far as the Count is concerned, because France is now at war with England again and the Count spent all those years in England, he is regarded as an enemy of the state. He was denounced and the authorities in Paris sent orders to the
chef d'administration
in Rennes to arrest him.”