Ramage & the Renegades (43 page)

“Which you are now doing,” Ramage said encouragingly. Whatever it was, Gianna had clearly threatened Paolo with the
mal occhio
if he failed, and no matter how intelligent, Godfearing and sophisticated an Italian, he was always wary of the evil eye.

“Which I now do, sir,” Paolo said, pulling the letter from the wallet and taking three steps to place it in Ramage's outstretched hand.

“If you will examine the seals and make sure they are intact, sir?”

Ramage looked up at the youth. “Paolo!”

Orsini flushed and almost stuttered as he explained: “Sir, my aunt said I was to say that as soon as I delivered the letter.”

Ramage turned over the letter, recognized the seals of Volterra and saw they were intact, and said solemnly: “I have received the letter safely on the due day and the seals are unbroken.”

He looked up and saw tears forming in Paolo's eyes. In a few moments the poor boy would
fa un brutta figura.

“You may go!” Ramage said quickly and the boy almost ran from the cabin. He had held back the tears long enough to avoid “making a bad figure,” but too late not to reveal that he knew something of the contents of the letter, and what he knew had upset him.

Deliver six months after the ship sailed … which was also six months after she left England for Paris on her way to Volterra. Ramage turned the letter over and over, strangely unwilling to prise open the seals and unfold the page. The paper was thick and he recognized it as her own, not the notepaper used in Palace Street. Was it a letter telling him …

Suddenly he slid his finger under the seals, opened the four folds and smoothed back the flaps. He read it through hurriedly to get the general sense and by the time his eye reached her signature he was angry, relieved and confused, all in the same instant, and his hands were trembling. He then began to read it again, slowly and carefully.

My dearest,

I am writing this while you prepare to leave England in the
Calypso,
and I pack to leave with the Herveys for Paris and then Volterra, but there will be one great difference; you will return to England, but I never shall.

Paolo will give you this letter in six months' time. By then I hope I shall be blurred in your memory, just as I pray you will be blurred in mine.

The reason is one we have talked over so frequently. My love and duty lies with my little kingdom. Your love and duty lies in England, the Navy, and the Blazey estate.

You must accept that we can never marry, because our religions are different and the people of Volterra would never accept a
straniero
after the years of French occupation. They will need reassuring by a ruler they know and trust—a role I hope to fill. They will expect heirs to be born—and you and I can never give them any because we cannot marry.

But please, Nico, look into your heart. You have known all this for years, but you have fought the knowledge, denied it, and tried to devise ways round it. You have failed because there is no way, and slowly this has affected us: slowly you have fallen out of love with me. Small things I say and do irritate you; the prospect of me going to Volterra makes you angry, but I think that without you realizing it the reason is that, inside you, you know this is the only answer; that we can never really be together. I mean as lovers.

For myself, yes, I have loved you deeply and perhaps I always shall (who can promise the future?), but now I go to Volterra in the certain knowledge that I shall marry another man and bear his children, and the succession will be secure for the future in my little kingdom.

I am weeping now, of course, and my memory goes back to a young woman in a cloak pointing a pistol at you in the Torre di Buranaccio at Capalbio. It was a strange meeting and since then we have loved each other, but for both of us that page in the story of our lives must turn.

By the time you receive this I shall either be in Volterra and perhaps already married to another man, or Bonaparte will have had his agents dispose of me. Either way, I have left your life and, my dearest Nico, I hope you will find a woman you love and who will love you as deeply as I did, and whom you can marry.

Think of me occasionally, as I shall think of you occasionally, if Bonaparte spares me, but only occasionally. If Paolo can serve with you, I shall be happy, but I suppose he will become a lieutenant and go to another ship. He worships you and you have become the father—uncle, anyway—that he never knew. He has never forgiven me because he thinks I should have broken our relationship long ago, since we could never marry. At his age, solutions are so simple.

So farewell, my Nico.
Your Gianna.

His eyes blurred with tears. So she had known all along what he had for so long refused to admit to himself, that the hopelessness of it all had killed his love for her. Killed? No, not killed; changed its character. He had loved her as a woman, and as a mistress, to the exclusion of all other women. Then it had cooled until in the last year or two he had loved her as he would a favourite sister. And she was right about the irritations and the anger he had felt about her going to Volterra. Anger, yes; but much of it was guilt, too.

A guilt, he realized as he folded the letter carefully, that he need no longer feel. He stared at the polished top of his desk, his eyes following the sweep and curve and twists of the mahogany grain. So by now she could be married, and knowing Italian marriages and the demands of politics, perhaps already carrying another man's child.

He put the letter in a drawer and locked it. He could believe her wish that he would meet a woman he would love. The damnable irony, he reflected sourly, was that he never fell in love with women who were free to love him. Gianna held in the chains of religion and the heavy inheritance of a kingdom; Sarah held by—what? Something represented by a trunkful—two trunksful—of military uniform. Where was her heart? Probably buried in some grave in the plains and hills of Bengal.

If the peace held, he would send in his papers, find some good plain woman of respectable family, marry her and spend the rest of his days in St Kew. There was more pain attached to love than joy, and months at sea gave too much time for black thoughts; of unfaithfulness, of handsome Army officers dancing quadrilles, of—he stood up, grabbed his hat and went up to the quarterdeck, where the sun was bright.

It was particularly bright because the men were taking down the large harbour awning which almost completely shaded the quarterdeck. Soon it would be rolled up and stowed below and the smaller one, heavily roped, rigged in its place.

He looked at the island half encircling the bay. It was so peaceful that the events of the past weeks were impossible to believe—except that his left arm still pained him and his right leg ached, and he could see four or five Marines with cutlasses and pistols exercising some of the privateersmen who clanked across the deck in irons.

Wilkins Peak, Rockley Bay, Garret's, Aitken Bay, Wagstaffe Battery … They had all come to the Ilha da Trinidade and had (on paper) changed it. But Trinidade had changed all of them permanently: no one, privateersmen now in irons going to face trial or English aristocrat travelling home in a John Company ship, surveyor employed by the Admiralty Board or artist with a plentiful supply of paints, would ever be the same again. The memories would have changed them in some way.

After taking his noon sights five days later and working them out, Southwick walked over to Ramage, who had been pacing moodily up and down the weather side of the quarterdeck for an hour, and now stood at the rail staring forward at the horizon. Staring, Southwick knew, but not seeing.

“First five hundred miles, sir,” the Master said. “Only another four thousand or so to go and we'll be in the Chops of the Channel. Our latitude is 14° 39' South and the longitude is 29° 47' West.”

“That's an average of four knots,” Ramage said sourly. “At this rate it'll take us more than forty days. Six weeks. That's if we don't spend a couple of weeks slamming about in the Doldrums—”

“Deck there, foremast here … the East Indiaman's making a signal.”

Kenton, the officer of the deck, looked with his telescope and took the sheet listing the flag signals agreed between the
Calypso
and the
Earl of Dodsworth:
single flags which represented complete sentences.

“For you, sir,” he told Ramage.
“The captain of our ship invites the other captain to dinner.”

Ramage tried to appear casual. The sea was reasonably smooth, the Trade wind clouds marched in orderly procession, the
Calypso
was up to windward on the
Earl of Dodsworth
's larboard quarter. He looked at his watch—he would be expected on board about one o'clock for dinner at two. Usually he was not fond of large dinners: taking up a couple of hours and involving too much food and too much wine (and too much talking about extremely boring subjects), they left him with a headache and an uncomfortable feeling in his stomach.

All of which did not matter a damn now because here was his first chance of seeing Sarah since the day before both ships had left Trinidade. Five days, did Southwick say? It could have been five months.

“Acknowledge the signal and accept the invitation,” he told Kenton. “Then in half an hour I want the ship hove-to a mile ahead of the
Earl of Dodsworth
while you hoist out a boat to take me across. I'll keep the boat and make a signal when I'm ready to return. You'll see the
Earl of Dodsworth
heave-to.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Kenton said and saluted. Heaving-to and hoisting out a boat made a welcome break in the boredom of keeping station on a John Company ship day after day …

Half an hour later Ramage, in his second-best uniform and wearing the obligatory sword, climbed down into the jolly-boat, settled himself in the sternsheets as Jackson draped a light tarpaulin to keep the spray from spattering his uniform, and watched the
Calypso
with interest as she drew away, seeming huge and almost clumsy from what was little more than the height of the wave tops.

The East Indiaman was sailing down on to them and in a few minutes would luff up and back the fore-topsail. It would all make a diversion for the jaded passengers who, even now, would be exclaiming over the tiny boat …

Two hours, probably three, before he would return to the
Calypso.
Would he manage to speak to her privately—or, at least, with no one able to hear what was said—during that time? What a stupid position to be in. He wanted to ask the question because he wanted to know the answer. Yet the answer could bring such black misery that the rest of the voyage would be like being transported to a penal settlement in Australia. Some people preferred not to know the worst, but he was too impatient to be able to bear the suspense. Someone had once said to him: “Why be unhappy today when you can put it off until tomorrow?” That made sense if the unhappiness came unexpectedly, but waiting until tomorrow to be certain of something you half expected—no!

“Sir,” Jackson was saying and Ramage glanced up, startled to find the bowman about to hook on to the
Earl of Dodsworth,
whose sides reached up beside the jolly-boat like a black cliff.

Two ropes covered in green baize hung down almost to the water, one each side of the battens, and held out clear of the hull by boys. He flung off the tarpaulin, jammed his hat hard on his head, swung his sword behind him and stood up, grasping a rope in each hand as the jolly-boat lifted on a swell wave. A moment later he was climbing up the ship's side, conscious that the muscles in his right leg and left arm were still not completely knitted.

Hungerford and the Marquis were at the entry port to greet him. The master was soon apologizing for their slow progress; the Marquis regretting that Ramage had been unable to accept the two previous invitations to dinner.

“Paperwork, sir; I'm trying to get my reports written while things are fresh in my mind,” Ramage lied. It would hardly do to tell him that he had been so miserable he did not want to speak to anyone, least of all Sarah's parents.

A few minutes later he was among the East Indiaman's passengers, smiling, kissing the Marchioness's hand and then Sarah's; making small talk with the woman who had sat on his left at dinner when they presented the painting, reassuring Mrs Donaldson (already a little tipsy) that indeed, the
Calypso
's men were keeping a sharp lookout for pirates …

Then, as if by chance—but he realized the two of them had been circling like fighting cocks to arrange it—he found himself with Sarah, and no one else within a couple of yards.

She wore a pale turquoise dress which had a fine lace over-skirt. Her tawny hair caught by the wind and free of pins and clips had strands bleached blonde by the sun; her skin was gold and her eyes, green flecked with gold, were watching him, as though she knew he had something to say to her.

“Your leg and arm?” she asked quickly, as though to dispose of them at once, although to her they were important questions she was afraid he would brush aside.

“Still giving me twinges, but otherwise fine: you saw me climbing up the side.”

“Yes, and your leg gave way twice.”

“I didn't notice it. Sarah—”

Suddenly everything was quiet but for the drumming in his ears; drumming from the pumping of his heart. She moved slightly, so that she was standing with her back to the rest of the passengers and obscuring his face. She said nothing, her eyebrows slightly raised.

When he hesitated she said quietly: “You look as if you're seeking the answer to the riddle of the universe.”

“I am, to
my
universe.” This was not the way he had wanted the conversation to go: he wanted to ask the question casually, instead of making it a single issue of vast importance.

“Captain Ramage's universe must be enormous.” She was smiling, but he knew she was trying to lessen the tension which had suddenly sprung up between them.