The Ramage Touch (20 page)

The Admiralty…the devil take Their Lordships. Gianna was about to lose the man she loved, and the nephew who was her heir. Of course she could fall in love again, and would, too, and produce her own heir. He shrugged his shoulders, feeling slightly silly at making such an obvious gesture while lashed to a chair in Orbetello’s jail, and told himself that as far as the kingdom of Volterra was concerned, all that had happened was that the clock had stopped for a while. And for Britain? That was more serious. Their Lordships, and therefore the British government, would have no warning that the French were not only planning a new attack by land, but were busy assembling an army and a fleet, and that the target for the new attack was in the eastern Mediterranean. Ramage realized that it would be many weeks after the attack had been made that the British would learn about it, because they had effectively evacuated their ships from the Mediterranean.

Egypt or the Levant – that was where the attack was to be made. He was sure of that because of the drunken colonel’s diatribe against sand. It would be another attack on Egypt, to make up for Bonaparte’s defeat at the hands of Nelson and General Abercromby, or it could be an attack in the Acre area, for example, because it was the British defence of Acre that prevented Bonaparte’s move northward. In either case, Egypt or the Levant, the French were using Crete as a base, and that plus the impending attack was all that the Admiralty needed to know.

Ironically, he had found the probable answers, Egypt or the Levant, within a very short time – but as the French major must have realized, information is useless to a spy if he cannot pass it on to those who can use it. Nevertheless, he had been criminally stupid in bringing Paolo along; Rossi would have been just as useful…and it was doubtful if he had really needed Martin.

He should have no sympathy for Rossi and Jackson, but he was grateful for their misguided attempt to help and worried about them. It seemed inevitable that they too should be captured. Well, Aitken had his orders, so he knew what to do if the Captain had not returned by midnight. He would be in command of quite a little squadron, and he would behave in the same way and have the same responsibilities as if Ramage had died on board from wounds or illness. The Royal Navy was organized on the axiom that no man was indispensable…

Someone hammered on the door and a moment later a key turned from the outside. As it was flung open, Ramage saw several soldiers waiting in the passage. One of them said to the guards: ‘Take the prisoners out: we are about to march.’

‘Are we to shoot them here in the square?’ a guard asked in a matter-of-fact voice.

‘No, the Navy will do that in Porto Ercole, so the sergeant says. They are to go ahead of the baggage train.’ As he spoke, Ramage could hear the clippety-clop of a horse’s hooves and the heavy rumble of wheels rolling over cobbles as a cart approached the town hall.

‘Do we keep them tied up?’ the guard asked.

‘Leave them as they are; we’ll load them on to the cart secured to the chairs. We don’t have time to waste undoing these ropes and then tying them up again, and the mayor won’t mind us taking three of his chairs.’

The other guards sniggered and the rest of the soldiers crowded into the room, Ramage felt himself tilting backwards as three men picked up the chair to which he was bound and carried him out through the door. They hurried along the corridor, up the short flight of steps and along to the front door of the town hall, cursing as they banged elbows on the walls in the near-darkness and barked shins on the legs of the chair. Finally they had the chair tilted back so that Ramage was lying almost horizontally and was able to see another group of men behind carrying Martin and his chair, while more sturdy curses in English from beyond showed that Paolo had not been left behind. Ramage hoped that the French soldiers would not suddenly drop Paolo’s chair, or bump him so painfully that he let fly a broadside of French or Italian oaths…

Outside, a chilly greyness over the far end of the square showed that dawn was approaching. Two unshaven soldiers with battered and sooty lanterns lit up a baggage wagon; about eighteen feet long with four wheels, the front pair smaller than the rear, it had a single horse pulling it, a wretched-looking animal whose ribs showed up as black stripes of shadow, its back a steep valley between neck and rump. A canvas hood protected the wagon from rain, a grotesque and tattered bonnet in the dim lantern light.

The wagon was stowed with crates and kitbags but a space the width of the wagon and about three feet long had been left at the rear end. The soldiers heaved the chair up and another man waiting inside helped them tilt it over the tailboard. A moment later Ramage found himself sitting upright in the back while more soldiers lifted Martin’s chair. Finally, when the three chairs were in the wagon, the waiting soldier checked the ropes binding them and then climbed up on top of the casks and kitbags so that he could watch his prisoners. A lantern was handed up to him and, at a shout from the sergeant, the driver cracked his whip and the horse lurched forward, its harness rattling.

Ramage then saw men on horseback riding into the piazza, their plumed shakos showing that they were officers obviously waiting for the colonel and the major to appear so that they could start off for Porto Ercole. Where were the men and guns? Ramage guessed they must be camped along the via Aurelia and were yet to have their first taste of the sand on the causeway.

By the time the wagon reached the via Aurelia and turned right along it, Ramage could distinguish the features of the guard and Martin and Paolo.

‘It’s cold,’ the boy said, ‘but at least the mosquitoes haven’t woken up.’

‘Yet,’ Martin said, ‘and we’re still alive. I’ve even got my flute, but the damned thing has slipped down so the ropes are trying to shove it through my ribs.’

‘Is everything else all right under your shirt?’ Ramage recalled the sailmaker making the waistcoat with the vertical pockets, and cursed himself for not insisting on flaps being added which could be buttoned down.

‘Yes, sir. I’m sorry about…’

‘It wasn’t your fault. Never trust inn tables.’

A sudden noise like a bull being strangled startled them, and a few moments later a peasant jogged past on his braying donkey, sitting astride the animal with his feet nearly touching the ground. The trees recently planted at even spaces along each side of the road to provide shade for marching troops were growing well and proving useful for the landless owners of livestock: several dozen goats had been tethered to various trees and, as was always the way with goats, most of them had gone round and round until their ropes were wound up so short that they could hardly move. As it grew lighter the guard opened the door of the lantern and blew out the candle, and the smell of the smouldering wick caught the backs of their throats.

A pair of oxen pulling a wide-wheeled cart passed going the other way and Ramage saw how each animal leaned inwards, towards the single pole between them that acted as the shaft. It was said that from the time an animal first pulled a cart and was put, say, in the right-hand position it always had to be on that side because it became used to working with an inward list. The useless information one acquires, Ramage thought sourly just as the wagon swung round to the right, rattling and bumping as it left the via Aurelia and started down the track leading to the Pineta di Feniglia, the southern causeway which ended in Argentario just short of Porto Ercole.

Looking eastward, Ramage could see that the first rays of the sun, which was still below the eastern horizon, were just catching the top of Monte Amiata and, a few minutes later, Monte Labbro, lower and nearer. There was very little cloud; it was, as Martin remarked with irritating cheerfulness, going to be a scorching day.

The track dipped downhill for a few hundred yards and as the wheels went silent Ramage knew they had reached the sand. There was an occasional shudder as a wheel hit an old tree stump. Then, as the upper tip of the sun lifted above the distant mountains and a ray shone into the wagon, Ramage glanced across at the soldier sitting among the kitbags and guarding the three Britons. He had leaned back and slipped slightly so that he was cradled between the bags; his mouth was open, his unshaven face greasy with perspiration, and he was quite clearly sound asleep. Ramage was not sure when the man had dropped off, but had been expecting him to forbid them to talk. Then he remembered that the man had been both clumsy and silent when the prisoners were hoisted on board: he was still partly drunk from the night before.

The horse ambled on; there was no cracking of the whip or cursing, and it was obvious that the driver was in no hurry to arrive at Porto Ercole: being a good soldier he knew that it was better to travel than arrive: the arrival of the baggage wagon only meant that the baggage had to be unloaded, and although he might not have to hoist out crates or toss down kitbags, he would have to rub down the horse and feed and water it, and, judging by the squeaking, put some tallow on the axletrees.

Ramage thought it curious that the man in point had cracked that whip amid a shower of curses every fifty yards or so along the via Aurelia, and for the first few hundred yards along this track. Now, as they reached the sand, he had stopped. Perhaps he too had dropped off to sleep.

Jackson’s head suddenly appeared above the tailboard, the sandy hair soaked with perspiration. The American was holding a cocked pistol.

‘Morning, sir, where’s your guard?’ he asked quietly, loping along to keep up with the cart.

A dumbfounded Ramage nodded with his head towards the sleeping man and a few moments later Jackson vaulted over the tailboard into the wagon, reached across the kitbags and gently removed a pistol from the Frenchman’s hand without waking him. He gave a sniff and showed Ramage the empty wine flask that had been in the guard’s other hand.

‘You must find that chair uncomfortable, sir,’ Jackson said conversationally as he took out a long-bladed knife and began cutting the rope.

‘A little,’ Ramage said. ‘We’re glad to see you: we’ve all been sitting like this for the last six or seven hours.’

As the last piece of rope dropped free and he tried to stand up, Ramage felt as though every bone in his body had been hammered with a caulker’s maul and every sinew overstret-ched by an inch. It must have felt like this when the Inquisition unwound the rack to give the heretic a chance to confess.

Ramage sat down on the chair again, afraid he would topple over, and tentatively wriggled his left arm. He moved it up and down until the worst of the pain had stopped and then tried the right arm. Then he moved his left ankle in a circular movement and gently bent down to massage his shin. Finally he was able to stand up without too much pain as Paolo copied him and Jackson cut through the last of Martin’s bonds. The three men thanked him through their groans.

‘Sorry we weren’t here sooner, sir,’ Jackson said apologeti-cally as he slipped his knife back into its sheath on his belt. We came as soon as we heard.’

‘Where’s Rossi, then?’

‘Driving the horse with one hand and propping up the driver with the other – he’s asleep too. Horse seems to know the way, which is just as well ’cos Rossi’s better with a tiller than reins.’

‘But how the devil did you know that–’

‘That innkeeper in Orbetello, sir. He saw what happened – accidentally caused it, so he said – and guessed you were British. He and his brother belong to a sort of partisan group that fights the French when it gets the chance. Anyway, his brother owns the cantina in Porto Ercole. Rossi had already made friends with him, so that when the other brother sent word from Orbetello, we were warned. His son, a young lad of eight or nine, paddled across the lagoon with a duck punt and then ran the rest of the way. We knew the troops were due to arrive in Porto Ercole today to board the frigates, and this is the only way from Orbetello, along the Feniglia, so we waited here as a sort of ambush, because we guessed they’d have to use a cart to move you.’

‘But just two of you – supposing the French had sent a platoon to guard us?’

Jackson grinned and pointed forward along the track. ‘There’s twenty or so of the cantina fellow’s cronies waiting up there, where the pine trees come in very close to the track, like the neck of a funnel. They’re armed with a weird collection of weapons – muskets that must have been intended for the Armada, billhooks, scythes, a butcher has the big knife he uses to cut up oxen…They’re all waiting. Rossi’ll give them a wave in time, so they’ll know everything’s all right. Now, if you’ll excuse me, sir, I think we’d better wake the driver and stow him in here with his mate. We can use these scraps of rope to tie them up.’

Ramage held up a hand. ‘Wait a moment. If the French find our guards tied up, they’ll know we were rescued, which means they’ll start searching for the partisans and probably taking hostages. Innocent people will get shot in reprisal. We must make it look as though we escaped on our own.’ He thought quickly for a few moments. ‘Here,’ he said to Jackson, ‘take Martin and lodge the driver so that he stays asleep without falling off the cart. Don’t wake him up. Paolo! Put that pistol back in the hand of that guard, but be careful with it.’

He realized that Paolo still had not understood the idea. ‘Here, give me the Frenchman’s pistol. Go with Mr Martin and Jackson and help settle the driver. When the sentry and driver wake up, they’re going to think we escaped without help.’

As the others scrambled over the tailboard and dropped to the ground, Ramage leaned over and put the pistol in a fold of a kitbag an inch or two from the sleeping sentry’s hand. Then he jumped down, found that his muscles were still bunched up, saw Martin, Paolo, Rossi and Jackson scrambling down from the front of the cart, and joined them as they ran towards the nearest pine trees. Once hidden by the trunks, they watched the wagon jogging along the track towards Argentario.

‘Those two soldiers are in for an unhappy week or two,’ Jackson said. ‘It’ll be bad enough for them when they wake up and find the empty chairs, but you can just imagine what the sergeant and then the major will say.’