Ramage & the Renegades (10 page)

Hawkesbury mentioned these figures to justify the advice he gave Gianna. When I pointed out that although one third of the House of Lords, and their women, were visiting France, all were British subjects and not one of them was the ruler of a nation which Bonaparte still occupied and obviously intended to keep.

He told me I worried unnecessarily, but when he said Lord St Vincent held the same views as himself and was already preparing proposals to place before the Cabinet for paying off two-thirds of the Navy's strength, quite apart from a comprehensive plan for scrapping many older ships of the line and frigates, I must confess I lost my temper.

I pointed out that the newspapers carried reports that French transport ships were busy at places like Brest and Rochefort embarking troops, and ships-of-war were commissioning, and the same was true for Dutch and Spanish ports. He protested that Otto had already explained that French troops were intended to subdue a rising among the blacks in St Domingo.

I pointed out that such a powerful force could be used for recapturing Trinidad; that now we had just returned all his sugar islands except Guadeloupe, Bonaparte would be sending out large garrisons as soon as possible, and may plan attacks on our own islands. This wretched man Jenks—I can think of him only by that name—then produced the excuse used by all political scoundrels: it was Cabinet policy, he said. I took my leave; it was as much as I could do to stop myself rapping him across the shins with my cane. When I think of all our seamen and soldiers who died in the drunken projects of Dundas, and the risk at which sober idiots like Jenks put people like Gianna, I find myself ashamed of my country. Are we so impoverished of talented men that we are reduced to ministers like Addington and Jenks?

Ramage locked his father's letter away in a drawer and slid Nepean's among the pages of a book labelled “Captain's Orders—Received.” With its companion volume, “Captain's Orders—Issued,” it was also kept under lock and key. All the years he had been at sea, such volumes were stored in a canvas bag secured by a drawstring and weighted with a bar of lead in the bottom. Now there was peace, a locked drawer in his desk was enough. That, and the use of lights when under way at night, would be the most obvious signs that Britain was at peace.

Quite deliberately Ramage had hurried over the last few paragraphs of his father's letter. They described the violent arguments Gianna had had with Paolo. Or, rather, the violent arguments Paolo had had with her. Ramage had said nothing to the boy when giving him leave to go to London. According to the Earl, Gianna had not mentioned her plans to her nephew for a couple of days. She had then chosen an afternoon when the Earl and Countess were out paying a social call. They had returned to find an outraged Paolo waiting for them, almost distraught and appealing to them to forbid his aunt to leave England. Paolo had immediately seen the dangers, though he thought they came mostly from certain members of his family who had remained in Volterra and, by fawning on Bonaparte, gained power they certainly would not give up to the Marchesa arriving back in Volterra on her own. And Paolo knew enough of the realities of Italian politics, where a dagger was more commonly used than a speech in the senate, to realize that nothing short of a few battalions would suffice to protect her. Traitors, he had told his aunt, especially related by blood, were not fish that willingly swam into the net.

The sentry outside the cabin door reported that Mr Southwick had arrived, and Ramage called for him to be sent in. The old Master sat down as Ramage waved him to the only armchair, and skimmed his hat on to the settee.

“The dockyard chippies,” he said crossly. “They work more slowly and make more mess than a band of monkeys. These extra cabins will never be finished. Their foreman as good as said five guineas would see them all completed by Friday, otherwise it would take a couple of weeks.”

Ramage stared at Southwick. “‘As good as said?' Was he openly asking for money?”

“Yes, I was being polite, sir. His actual words were, ‘Tell your Captain that five guineas will see it all finished by Friday: otherwise we'll still be here a week on Friday.'”

Ramage sighed and picked up the papers still on his desk. “The First Lord knows there's corruption in dockyards and throughout the Navy Board,” he said as he locked the papers in a drawer. “The trouble is I can hardly bother him with the case of a corrupt foreman carpenter. Still, by next Monday I intend to be at sea. The extra people join the ship this Thursday—in three days' time.”

“Perhaps if you saw the Dockyard Commissioner, sir …” Southwick's tone showed he was simply being polite.

“I can tell you exactly what the Commissioner would say,” Ramage said bitterly. He thought for a minute or two, saw and understood the glint in Southwick's eye, and nodded at the Master.

“As you know, I have secret orders I can't yet open. The general orders I have, though, mean that we must sail as soon as possible. The ship's company are back from leave, we have the miners and bricklayers, and we are provisioned and watered. If the cabins were completed, we could even sail on Friday; we'd be clear of the Nore by Friday night …”

“But it'd cost us five guineas,” Southwick said.

“You know, Southwick, I don't see why I should pay an Englishman five guineas to be allowed to go about the King's business

… These fellows have grown rich by blackmailing captains anxious to get to sea again to fight the King's enemies. Now the King
has
no enemies, except these wretched crooks. Perhaps we should have a look at this particular scoundrel. Tell the sentry to send for him.”

Southwick went to the door and passed the order, but he looked worried when he sat down again. “Corrupt they may be, sir, but if we make an enemy of Commissioner Wedge we'll never get anything done. It's not this refit nor even the next one I'm thinking about; it's the one after that. A commissioner can keep a ship and her captain locked up in a drydock for months—he has only to keep finding defects which, he says, he's anxious to make good for the ship's safety.”

“I know that,” Ramage said shortly. “We are concerned now with a carpenter, not a commissioner. If you feel squeamish, you'd better take a walk in the fresh air.”

“Squeamish?” Southwick grinned. “No, I think I shall enjoy this.”

A knock on the door and the sentry's hail announced the foreman's arrival. When he came in Ramage saw he was a big hulking man who had to crouch to walk into the cabin, with its headroom of five feet four inches.

The man was at least six feet tall and almost handsome, the narrow face and greasy black hair seeming not to belong to the broad shoulders and large hands.

“You are the foreman carpenter?” Ramage asked politely.

“Yes, sir.” Now he had an ingratiating smile. Already he had noted Southwick's presence and (Ramage sensed) had probably guessed that the message about the five guineas had been passed.

“Your name?”

“Porter, sir. Albert Porter.”

“You live nearby; I can tell from your accent.” Ramage's voice was friendly, and from the way the man's eyes were sweeping the desk he was looking to see where the pile of coins was waiting.

“Ah yes, sir. Born in the Hundred of Hoo, I was, and served my apprenticeship at a shipyard that side of the river before starting in the dockyard. Twelve years ago, that was.”

“Three or four years before the war began,” Ramage commented.

“S'right, sir. Kept us busy, the war. Still, now peace is here and I got my little house and four children. Big expense, a wife, a house and children.”

“So I believe,” Ramage said dryly. “I've been at sea all the time, so they are three problems I don't have.”

“Ah, you're a lucky man, sir, a lucky man.”

“However, I've been wounded four times, and with Mr Southwick here I've lost a couple of ships. I've read the funeral service over more of my men than I care to remember …” Ramage let his voice die away, as though stifled by memories. He had the memories, but far from stifling him they were making him hot with anger, although this lout was too greedy to realize it.

“You must have saved hard to pay for a house—or do you rent it?”

“No, sir, all paid for it is; I don't owe any man a penny piece.” Ramage nodded understandingly. “Your children marry, you spoil your grandchildren, and enjoy a happy old age, eh?”

“S'right, sir,” the man grinned. Here was an understanding captain who was in a hurry to sail. Five guineas had been pitching it much too low. Some said he was a lord, and ten guineas should have been the price. Perhaps he'd get the chance of saying that the Master, Southwick or some such name, had misheard him.

“I wonder how many of the
Calypso
's officers and men will live to become grandfathers …”

The foreman looked puzzled. The Captain seemed to be talking to himself, and he was still almost mumbling. “… All the officers of the
Sibella
were killed except me … A lot of men killed when we lost the
Kathleen
cutter … Several died in the
Triton
brig … We lost Baker in Curaçao, when I had a bullet in the arm and this bang on the head …” He tapped a small patch of white hair. “No, they won't ever be grandfathers.”

Albert Porter, his head and shoulders bent below the beams, suddenly found he was staring into a pair of deep-set brown eyes that seemed to be looking right through him and seeing, across the river, his house built with the bribes he had managed to extract from impatient captains—men impatient to get to sea, the poor fools, where they stood a good chance of having their heads knocked off by round shot. Albert Porter just had time to realize he had made a mistake when a cold but quiet voice seemed to wrap itself round him and penetrate his clothes like a chill Medway fog.

“Porter, while you have been doing your job here in the dockyard, the officers and men in the King's ships have been at sea, fighting the weather and the French and the Dutch and the Spanish and the Danes. They've been collecting musket balls and round shot and yellow fever and scurvy; you've been collecting tainted guineas to buy yourself a house, a wife and four children. Do you understand the two different kinds of life?”

The eyes and the tone made Porter agree at once.

“Good, Porter, so we understand each other. Now, I am going to tell you a story. The companion-way down to the gunroom comprises ten steps. A man tripped at the top and fell down them once. He was picked up dead. The parish—he was a dockyard man—had to bury him. It's surprising how these sort of accidents happen. A chisel slips and cuts a vein and in a trice a man bleeds to death; someone else slips on one of the side battens and falls into the boat and breaks his neck across a thwart. A third has his skull split as he walks along the deck and a double block falls on him from an upper yard. Indeed, Porter, as the chaplains tell us, ‘In the midst of life, we are in death.'”

“Yes, sir,” Porter managed to whisper.

“I called you here to give you some information, Porter. We have seven extra people joining the ship on Thursday; we sail on Friday. We need seven extra cabins ready by Thursday.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You are a conscientious man, I know. Do I have your assurance that the seven cabins will be ready in time, doors hung and glazed with stone-ground glass, and everything painted?”

“Yes, sir,” Porter said, at last coming to life. “Oh, easily by Thursday, sir.”

“Very well, thank you. You may go.”

After the man shambled out, Southwick said: “You'd never have done it. Rossi, Stafford, Jackson—yes, any of them would have given him a push at a word from you. But I can't see you giving the word.”

Ramage grinned, his eyes now warm, the hard line gone from his lips. He looked at the man who was old enough to be his father and who had served as Master in every ship Ramage had commanded, from the earliest day when as a lieutenant he had commanded the little
Kathleen
cutter.

“It doesn't matter what
you
think, does it? Porter is convinced I can, so the cabins will be ready and we'll be off Black Stakes on Friday, taking on powder.”

All ships, naval and mercantile, coming to London or the Medway had to unload their gunpowder into barges moored at Black Stakes, at the entrance to the Thames. The risk of fire and a ship exploding in the London docks or close to one of the Medway towns was too great to allow any exceptions. It delayed a ship, but many an officer late back from leave was glad to hire a cutter at London Bridge and be put on board at Black Stakes.

“Is it true we're getting a chaplain, sir?”

Ramage had mentioned it to the First Lieutenant because Aitken, a Highlander, would not welcome what undoubtedly would be to him a High Church minister. The Low Church First Lieutenant and the free-thinking Master must have been discussing it.

“Yes. Someone has applied.” It was a convenient way of telling the officers (which meant the ship's company would know soon enough) that he had not asked for a chaplain; everyone knew the regulations.

“I've never met one yet that was worth the room to sling a hammock.”

“Perhaps not, but let's hope he plays chess.”

Southwick chuckled and reached for his hat. A long time ago, he and Mr Ramage had joined the
Triton
brig at Portsmouth to find that the ship's surgeon was a drunkard; a very skilful doctor who had practised in Wimpole Street until his heavy drinking drove his patients away, and the Navy had offered him the only way of earning a living from medicine. Mr Ramage had other ideas: no drunkard would be allowed to treat his men, but he had neither the time nor the influence to have the man changed. Being Mr Ramage, Southwick reflected, he found no difficulty in solving the problem: the drunkard must be cured. It had been a terrible time for Bowen, the surgeon, for Southwick, and for Mr Ramage, but they had cured Bowen. And once the drink no longer clouded his brain, left his eyes bloodshot slits and his face a sweat-stained mat of unshaven whiskers, they found the surgeon was a highly intelligent and amusing man. But part of the convalescence had involved preventing Bowen returning to the drink, and once Ramage found that he was a skilful chess player, Southwick had been made to play seemingly endless games of chess.