Ramage (33 page)

‘Yes.’

‘Probably Commodore Nelson is in a hurry to send a message to the Viceroy.’

‘Does that mean he is not staying?’ she asked anxiously.

‘I don’t know.’

A few moments later the boat was in the water and pulling for the harbour entrance. Suddenly there was a flurry of activity on board the
Diadem
: all three topsail yards were hauled round and lowered as topmen raced aloft to furl the sails, and the ship began to drift to leeward. An anchor splashed into the sea, and her sails were neatly furled by the time she came head to wind and settled back on the scope of her anchor cable, like a dog on a leash.

Already Croucher’s barge had left the
Trumpeter
, carrying all the captains.

Gianna asked: ‘Are you–’

He turned to look at her: she seemed embarrassed.

‘Are you free?’

‘Yes – why?’

‘Can we go on land now?’

He thought for a moment and noticed that a boat had put off from the
Lively
– Probus had recovered from his illness quickly enough with the Commodore’s arrival. Well, no one would want him for an hour or two.

Ramage stood on the slimy steps at the quay and turned round to help Gianna out of the boat. She paused because the shoulder wound prevented her using her right hand and she needed the left to lift her skirt slightly.

‘Wait a moment,’ he said and, bracing himself, picked her up by the waist and swung her out of the boat and on to the step. She was so light that he wanted to carry her up the steps in his arms, but the
Lively
’s boat was waiting. He said to the midshipman in the sternsheets, ‘Thank you: return to the ship.’

At the top of the steps she said: ‘It’s a long walk to the Viceroy’s house.’

‘Are you sure you are feeling strong enough?’

‘Yes, of course,’ she said quickly, and he realized – or was it that he hoped? – she wanted to be alone with him.

As they walked along the Quai de la Santé Ramage glanced across the narrow harbour at the great Citadel, its sharply angled walls merging into sheer rock, and noted that like most harbour defences it was useless: completely vulnerable to attack from the landward side.

The hills and houses shielded the quays from the Libeccio and the heat rose up from the stone blocks, solid and invisible.

Fishermen wearing leather aprons and canvas smocks were pulling nets and lines up on to the quay from their gaudily painted boats. Here and there, sitting on the cobbles, backs against the wall, were their wives, nets across their legs, and each with a bare foot protruding from her skirts, using a big toe to hold the mesh taut as her hands looped and dived with the flat wooden needle, repairing holes. The women had fixed expressions on their faces which, despite the cowl-like hoods over their heads, were tanned deep brown by the sun and heavily wrinkled. None looked up; for each one there was no horizon, no existence beyond the torn nets.

Ramage and Gianna reached the end of the quay and turned right into the narrow street leading to the Viceroy’s residence. The houses on each side were so high that it was like entering a chasm and the street was packed with groups of people gathered, gossiping vociferously: no one listened – each waited impatiently for the other to pause in order to take over the conversation.

Most of the men here were obviously shepherds: they wore thick woollen stocking caps or broad-brimmed, round-topped hats that shaded their faces. Some argued, bartered or quarrelled while still astride their tiny donkeys, feet almost touching the ground on each side, and sitting on angular wooden saddles shaped like the sawing horse used in England for cutting up firewood, and which chafed bare patches on the animals’ backs. Ramage noticed that every man – fisherman, shepherd or idler – had a musket and cartouche box slung over his shoulder, and a pistol or knife in his belt.

There were several old women in the groups, some sitting side-saddle on donkeys, their long hair black from the smoke of fires in their huts and covered with a black scarf. Black, black, black – everyone seemed to be in perpetual mourning. Black hair, black hats and headscarves, black breeches on the men, black skirts and blouses on the women…

Everywhere there was an all-pervading stench: a nauseating blend of
brocciu
, the harsh goat’s milk cheese hanging in every house, of stagnant sewage, excrement and urine, garlic-laden breath, the sweat of people unused to washing, and rotting vegetables. Ramage, thinking of the island’s beauty from seaward, and then looking up the street, recalled a remark of Lady Elliot’s – ‘All that Nature has done for the island is lovely, and all that man has added filthy.’

Unlike the fishermen’s wives on the quay, who were completely engrossed in their work, the women and men stared at the two of them as they walked up the street, stepping round large piles of refuse, across small ones. They stared as they approached and Ramage could feel their stares even after they had passed. As always in a Latin country it was impossible to guess whether the glittering eyes showed curiosity or hatred.

Occasionally they passed a few British soldiers, smart but perspiring in red coats and pipeclayed cross-belts, gravely saluting Ramage while careful not to step into one of the heaps of rotting rubbish.

Once clear of the houses the street became wider and tree lined.

‘How did you know about the trial?’ he asked suddenly.

‘Boh!’ she said with a grimace: the Italian way of saying ‘Who knows?’

‘But someone must have told you?’

‘Of course they did!’

‘But who? Who have you been speaking to?’

‘Speaking to no one!’

‘Then someone wrote to you.’

‘Yes, but I promised never to say who it was.’

‘You don’t have to,’ he said, suddenly remembering Lord Probus’ remark the previous evening, ‘I’ve another letter to write.’

‘But this person,’ he continued, ‘told you your cousin would be giving evidence at the trial?’

‘Yes.’

And, he thought to himself, better leave it at that: she was content, almost matter-of-fact, about what she had done. God knows, even for an impulsive girl of her age it was a brave thing to do; on the other hand, few girls were the head of such a powerful family. Yet there was something else he had to know.

‘Gianna–’

‘Nee-cho-lass,’ she mimicked.

She was smiling, but it was not a smiling question.

‘–Did you do this – I mean, why did…’ Cursing himself, he tried to phrase the question carefully. She gave him no help: they just walked on, side by side, towards the Residency, neither looking at the other.

‘You know what I am trying to ask?’

‘Yes, but why ask it?’

‘Because I want to know, of course!’

‘Nicholas, it is strange how you know so much – and yet so little: so much about ships and guns and battles and how to lead people…’ She seemed to be thinking aloud rather than talking to him. ‘…And yet so little about the people you lead.’

He was so taken aback that he said nothing.

Ramage recalled with a shock that barely three hours earlier Gianna had burst into the court on board the
Trumpeter
. Now he was a guest in a magnificent palace, sitting in a comfortable cane chair on this terrace, overlooking a garden flanked by myrtle hedges and ablaze with the last of the season’s oleander and roses, with small, pointed cypresses scattered about like sentries among the orange trees and arbutus.

From the terrace, looking across the blue Tyrrhenian Sea towards the distant mainland of Italy, he found it hard to believe there could be war in any part of the world, least of all just over the horizon: the line-of-battle ships, frigates and smaller craft at anchor in the Roads at the bottom of the garden were, in this sharp clear light, and against this background and atmosphere, things of grace and beauty, not specifically designed to kill, sink, burn and destroy.

The far horizon to the eastward was beginning to turn a faint mauve in the late afternoon while behind him the sun would soon dip behind Mount Pigno and draw a shadow over the town and port of Bastia. To his left the outline of the island of Capraia, dissolving in the haze, would soon be invisible like Elba directly in front of him and tiny Pianosa on the right. Out of sight over the horizon, British frigates were blockading Leghorn to prevent twenty or so privateers in the port from getting out. But to little purpose.

While Lady Elliot and Gianna sat close by him in the shade of parasols clipped to their chairs, Ramage was still trying to absorb the extraordinary news Sir Gilbert had given him ten minutes earlier: during the night the French had landed several hundred troops at the north end of Corsica, and they were marching southwards on Bastia. How they evaded patrolling frigates was a mystery; but they had at most nineteen miles – but more likely only fifteen – of extremely mountainous countryside to cover before they reached the town.

Over there, mused Ramage, behind that pearl-grey band along the horizon, is Italy, where Bonaparte’s troops are marching, his cavalry patrols out ahead scouring the Tuscan hillside. As they arrive in each town square, they give a few hearty cheers for the Red Cap of Liberty, plant a wrought-iron tree of liberty, and then, from all accounts, set up a guillotine or two near by to show the local people just how free they are to be under their French liberators: free to rest their heads above the basket and below the great blade; or free to watch the flash of the blade dropping to decapitate one of their friends.

Ramage noticed that a boat which had earlier left the
Diadem
and gone to the
Lively
was now heading for the harbour: he pitied the poor beggars at the oars – it was hot weather for rowing with such a lop on the sea.

By now Lady Elliot had finished describing Ramage’s father and mother to Gianna and launched off on a description of each of her own six children, the youngest of whom had been ordered to play at the front of the palace to leave them in peace.

The garden swept down to the water’s edge and Lady Elliot pointed out the children’s little sailing boat. What would happen to it, Ramage wondered, now the French were actually on Corsica: now that Bonaparte’s troops had at last landed on the island of his birth?

A steward came out through the glass doors and told Ramage the Viceroy wished to see him in the study.

The furnishings of the palace’s big, marble-floored study showed Sir Gilbert to be a cultured man who bought wisely and with taste during his extensive travels in Europe. A Roman amphora standing on a deep mahogany base in one corner still had the barnacles and thin white veins of coral sticking to its surface, showing it had been dragged up from the seabed by fishermen’s nets, the remains of the cargo of some Roman galley shipwrecked possibly a couple of thousand years ago.

The Viceroy saw Ramage looking at it and said, ‘Remove the stopper.’

Curious, Ramage walked across and, holding the narrow neck firmly, pulled out the wooden bong. The inside of the neck was stained, as if oil had darkened the red pottery. He bent down and sniffed: indeed it was oil – aromatic oil, probably intended to be rubbed into the body of a luxury-loving centurion stationed in a far-flung camp of the Roman empire.

‘Yes, myrrh,’ said Sir Gilbert, ‘Oil of the Sweet Cicely.’

The Scotsman’s voice brought Ramage back to the study with a jerk: in a sudden wild and erotic train of thought he had seen himself massaging myrrh into Gianna’s warm body.

‘Her Ladyship,’ the Viceroy added, ‘thought it was a delightful smell until I told her what it was. But to her the very words frankincense and myrrh are synonymous with unnamable debaucheries, so the innocent amphora has been relegated to my study.’

Sir Gilbert apologized for having to cut short their talk half an hour earlier: the news which Commodore Nelson had brought from the north was serious… But, he asked, how were his old friends, the Earl and Countess? Ramage could give little news of his parents: no letters had arrived for several weeks.

The Marchesa, Sir Gilbert said, seemed to be making a good recovery: did he not think so?

Ramage agreed.

‘We are grateful to you, my boy,’ the Viceroy said. ‘You had a difficult task: far more difficult,’ he added, obviously with intentional ambiguity, ‘than was anticipated, even allowing for the loss of your ship. In a way I regret ever having suggested to Sir John Jervis that he should send the
Sibella
, so that use could be made of your knowledge of Italian.’

‘Oh – that was why I was named in the orders!’

‘Yes – and of course you knew the Volterras.’

‘The mother – not the daughter: she’s grown up since then!’

‘Of course; but since the
Sibella
was available, it seemed a good idea at the time.’

Ramage suddenly realized Sir Gilbert was blaming himself for what had happened.

‘Indeed, sir, it was a good idea: we were just unlucky in being caught by the
Barras
.’

‘Well, I’m glad you think so. By the way, I gather that today’s – er proceedings – were somewhat interrupted, and not concluded.’