Ramage's Trial (25 page)

“That's the problem, sir. I could take you to Moorfields and we could walk through the wards of Bethlehem Royal Hospital – better known perhaps as Bedlam – and men and women would come up to you and I defy you to distinguish whether they are inmates or visitors like yourself. Oh yes, there are many palpably insane – screaming, making faces, claiming to be Genghis Khan, and so on.”

“They are the dangerous ones!” Ramage said.

“Not always, sir. A screaming man who wants to take an axe to all piebald horses is probably less dangerous – because one sees at once that he is deranged. But those only rarely insane are usually not violent.”

“You mean, they don't get screaming mad?” Ramage asked. “They just go mad in a quiet way?”

Bowen smiled and acknowledged: “Yes, sir, I admit I may have been simplifying a little too much!”

“Anyway, you learned nothing about Captain Shirley. Very well, then what happened?”

“I then held a sick parade, beginning in the gunroom. The gunner and the third lieutenant were both sick. I noticed that all of them were drunk, in varying degrees. And all of them seemed to be frightened of something. Apprehensive, in the way men would be if they'd been told the day the world would end, and it's next Thursday but they have to keep it secret.”

“Did you find out anything from the gunroom?”

“Nothing, except that they're all frightened and drunk. Then I saw about twenty of the rest of the ship's company. Nothing serious: just the ‘illnesses' you find in an unhappy ship.”

Ramage realized that Bowen had made a shrewd observation that applied to just about every ship in the Navy. Unless there was something about the station (the West Indies and the black vomit, for example) then a glance at the surgeon's journal, more formidably known officially as the
Journal
of Physical Transactions
of the particular ship, probably told you all you needed to know about her captain – and her officers, too. In a well ordered ship there was no need to sham sickness. But the
Jason
's copy was missing: Bowen had just confirmed that…

Which did not get over the fact that Bowen had also confirmed that Shirley's form of madness was easy to hide, and dam' nearly impossible for anyone else to prove. And there was no clue to how (or why) Shirley was holding a whole ship's company in silent terror.

Looking on the bright side, he had another frigate to help escort the convoy. In fact by normal standards the convoy now had a strong escort – four frigates for just over seventy ships: almost unheard-of these days. Providing, of course, that the
Jason
was not entirely useless as a fighting ship: a mad captain and drunken officers did not inspire confidence, but it meant–

“He's senior to you on the Post List, but you command the convoy,” Southwick said.

“I've been thinking about that.”

Southwick nodded because finding himself and his captain thinking alike was nothing very new. “Mind you, sir, that's not to say he has to
obey
any orders you give if he doesn't want to.”

“No, but it does mean he can't use his seniority to take the command away from Mr Ramage,” Aitken interjected. “Mr Ramage has his orders in writing from Admiral Tewtin.”

“Let's not get too involved in that,” Ramage said. “All that concerns us is that if I give the
Jason
an order concerning the safety of the convoy it's up to Shirley whether or not he obeys it. I think he will. He's obeyed my orders up to now – that's why the
Jason
is on our larboard beam.”

“I dream of the day the Lizard comes in sight,” Southwick said.

“I alternate,” Ramage admitted. “Sometimes I dream about the day we anchor at Plymouth; at other times I have nightmares about it.”

“Have pleasant dreams,” Southwick advised. “There's not a damned thing we can do until we get there, and you know my advice – don't fret about something you can't do anything about.”

 

Ramage stood at the quarterdeck rail wishing he could ignore his own rule, that no one was allowed to lean on it with his arms. Evening was the pleasantest part of the day with the sun sinking on the larboard beam and taking with it the heat and glare of the Tropics that eventually seemed to bake and dazzle you into impatience sabotaged by listlessness. Each day the wind had veered a little more. As they left Barbados the Trade winds had blown briskly from the east, with never a touch of north in them, as though to emphasize what many sailors had long suspected, that the old geographers had been teasing when they called them the “North East” trades. Anyway, they had left the islands behind, islands which for the Yorkes and for Ramage had been or become part of life – Grenada, St Vincent, St Lucia and the Pitons, the almost unbelievable matching pair of sugarloaf hills which Nature had dumped on the southwestern corner…Martinique, Dominica with its cloak of thick cloud and heavy rain which made it a favourite island for the Spanish plate fleets to make a landfall if they were short of water…Guadeloupe which looked on the chart like the two wings of a butterfly, Antigua, parched and mosquito-ridden, then the tiny island of St Barts, and St Martin, the island split between the Dutch who owned the southern half (and called it Sint Maarten, reminding Ramage of a lamb bleating) and the French. Then low-lying Anguilla and beyond Sombrero, a barren rock which seemed to guard the entrance to this wide channel joining the Atlantic to the Caribbean.

From there the convoy had really started its long voyage across the Atlantic and Ramage was thankful their luck had held: the wind had veered to the southeast a day past Sombrero and then held steady for a week so that they were able to steer for Bermuda.

Within a hundred miles of the collection of reefs, wrecks and legends of what used to be called Somers' Island, after its former owner, Sir George Somers, but now more generally known as Bermuda (after the Spaniard who discovered it, Bermudez), the wind had begun to haul round to the southwest and was now starting them off on the great sweep which should carry them into the Chops of the Channel.

Please, Ramage said in silent prayer, do not let it head us; the prospect of much beating to windward with these mules, tacking the whole convoy even once a day, made the patient Southwick blench. But now, as the latitude increased, they were abeam of Madeira away to the east across the Atlantic, while Savannah and Charleston were on the American coast to the west.

Already the real heat had gone: there was a nip in the air at night. Those hating the heat as the sapper of energy and father to a long list of vile diseases, almost all fatal, and those hating the cold northern latitudes with their rheumatism, colds and consumptions, generally reckoned the temperature dropped one degree for every degree of latitude made good towards Bermuda.

Yesterday the big awning which kept the sun from beating down on to the quarterdeck, making the caulking runny so that if one was not careful the pitch stuck to the soles of one's shoes and made black marks on the scrubbed planking, had been taken down and this morning the sailmaker and his mates had been checking it over, putting in some patches and restitching along the roping where the constant fluttering in the wind and the rays of the sun had rotted the thread. The last job today had been to roll it all up and lower it below to be stowed until the
Calypso
next slipped back into the Tropics or Mediterranean.

The
Calypso
was, Ramage reckoned, a hot-weather ship: he had captured her from the French in the Tropics, and she had fought most of her actions in the Tropics or Mediterranean. Her guns would probably warp or miss fire in the cold of the North Sea!

During a near-tropical evening, an hour before darkness and as the last of the cottonball clouds vanished for the night, there was no finer sight created by man than a well-ordered convoy. However patched the sails of the ships, they were brushed a reddish-gold by the setting sun, the heavy shadow on the eastern side of each hull and the light playing on the western making pleasing patterns. Because it was a falling wind, none of the ships was going fast enough to leave a turbulent wake to disturb the pattern of waves and all the ships seemed to be uncut gems set down on deep-blue velvet.

Standing here admiring the convoy as an object of beauty was almost dangerous because he nearly forgot that seventy-two ships were his responsibility: ships laden with valuable cargoes for a country at war and heavily insured, and with probably a couple of thousand men on board. And many women, of course: most of the larger ships carried passengers – plantation owners, tradesmen and soldiers and their wives returning to England. And Alexis, too, who might well at this moment be looking astern from that ship leading the starboard column – although it was unlikely that she could distinguish the
Calypso
from all the rest of the ships, even if she wanted to.

The quartermaster spoke quietly to the two men at the wheel as the ship wandered a few degrees to windward, and they hove down on the spokes, hoping the bow would swing back before the captain glanced round with a scowl. He never actually said anything but somehow, the quartermaster thought, that was worse: as though Mr Ramage had made an entry in some great ledger and one day he would bring them all to account.

The quartermaster on watch was a Lincolnshire man named Aston, one of the most agile men in the ship but also one of the plumpest. Like a fat pigeon, his body carried extra flesh wherever there was room for it. Although less than thirty years of age, he had jowls and paunch more appropriate to a cleric, although he had a sharper wit and a better understanding of his fellow men. Now he was concerned that the swinging bow should not distract Mr Ramage because he could see that the captain, alone at the quarterdeck rail, was miles away in his thoughts. Aston knew that Mr Ramage had more to trouble him than was a fair load on a man. Commanding a convoy of merchant ships would make a saint run amok, but on top of that there was this strange business of the
Jason
. Why had she opened fire?

Jackson was with the captain when the
Calypso
boarded her, and he had been back again with him, but if Jacko was to be believed, Mr Ramage still did not know why it had happened. There was one thing about Jacko – if he could not reveal something out of loyalty to the captain, he always said so. When he just did not know, he usually said so. So Aston was inclined to believe him now – that if there was any explanation at all, it was that the captain of the
Jason
had gone daft.

That would account for Mr Wagstaffe going over there – it was said he was in command now, which meant Mr Ramage had taken on himself the responsibility of replacing the captain, and Aston knew the Articles of War were hot and strong against that.

But even worse than all that, and something that Aston, recently and happily married, could understand very well, there was the worry about her ladyship: Jacko had heard that the
Murex
, taking her ladyship back to England, had just vanished after leaving them off Brest. A short enough distance – must be about a hundred miles and the weather was not out of the way. The
Murex
could have sprung the butt end of a plank and sunk like a stone: she could have been sunk by a French man-o-war; or she could have been captured by a French privateer. It must be awful for Mr Ramage, just not knowing.

Aston was thankful that he knew his wife was at home in Lincolnshire, looking after his mother and tending the half-acre of land with occasional help from her young nephew. The boy was an idle youngster, but since Rebecca had cut off his meals for a day or two, then cuffed him once when he was insolent, he had mended his ways a bit. In fact Rebecca had been so provoked by him that once she turned him out of the house so that he had nowhere to sleep. He had gone off and told the parson a tall story and without even bothering to ask Rebecca, whom he had known since christening her twenty years before, the parson gave the boy a whack across the shins with his walking stick, made him sleep the night in the parsonage stables and sent him home again next morning with orders to beg Rebecca's pardon.

That sort of parson was good for a village, but all too many of them seemed to reckon that only the squire and his lady were likely to go to Heaven and the rest of the folk were not worth bothering about, damned because they were poor. Well, luckily the local parson was a good old chap because the fact of the matter was (and not even Rebecca knew much about it: she would go telling her mother, then it would be all over the village), thanks to Mr Ramage and the number of prizes they had taken, he had quite a bit of money now. And head money too, for all the prisoners taken. So when the war ended and he had all his prize money together, he was going to make old Swan an offer for Lower Farm. Eighty-four acres and good land. The tithe ran at seven pounds eleven shillings a year, but that field behind the wood was hard to get to and was just right to let out to grazing, leaving exactly seventy acres to farm and the rent would pay the tithe.

He had talked to Mr Ramage about it, and Mr Ramage reckoned Swan's price was about right and also reckoned letting that field for grazing would be a good idea. In fact he had suggested it. The captain said that one of the secrets of good farming was being able to get to all your land all the year round. Having a big field cut off by thick snow or thick mud meant you might as well not own it for many months.

Aston admitted he would never have seen it in that light, but it was true. Mr Ramage also said he would have his man of law go over all the papers with Swan when the time came and make sure everything was in order. That was Mr Ramage for you. Aston knew of other men that Mr Ramage had helped, and he never talked about it, or behaved any differently towards the men: he never expected more than a good day's work. What a landlord he would make!