The Ramage Touch (19 page)

He glared at the major and clearly expected an answer.

‘Well, sir, not really, but–’

‘Heh, then you have a treat in store. Slings under the bellies of the horses, and the first ones hoisted make such a squealing that the rest of them try to bolt. Guns the same. They try to lift them off the carriages and forget to undo the cap squares so that, instead of the gun being lifted, the whole damned carriage goes up like a rocket, and the sailors panic and drop it again, smashing the carriage, killing a couple of people, and making more horses bolt, probably with men on their backs. Oh, major, embarking a battery of field guns, with men and horses, is an experience. When you add to it our destination,’ he added balefully, ‘you realize why I wish those fools in Paris had never heard of me or my battery. I tell you,’ he snarled, his voice dropping, ‘if you think trying to shift those guns across the sands of that causeway to Porto Ercole is hard work, then you can think again: that sand is only a few inches thick, spread on rock. Where we are going, my man, the sand just goes down and down, bottomless like the ocean. When the wheels of a gun carriage sink into it; your heart sinks with them…’

The rest of the sentence was drowned by the officers clapping as Martin finished a tune and Ramage turned, gave a dramatic wave and pointed upwards, signalling to the young lieutenant to go on playing. He just had time to hear the colonel continuing.

‘…so you talk too much, major, and I can’t hear the music. Sand! In your mouth, in your food, in your wine, in your boots, in your eyes…It makes the axles of the gun carriages run hot, blocks the barrels of muskets and the touchholes, even gets into the scabbard of your sword so that you can’t draw in a hurry…And you want
me
to hurry towards it! No, major, I just want you to be silent now so that I can hear the music!’

With that the colonel’s head slowly drooped forward and he began to snore as the outraged major, so far unable to say a word in his own defence, drained his glass and filled it again with a savage movement that slopped wine across the table.

Ramage saw the innkeeper and two waiters coming out of the kitchen with a large plate heaped with steaming spaghetti. ‘Food for the
tziganes
!’ he shouted as he zigzagged between the tables.

Martin had just come to the end of another tune and two of the cheering officers repeated the innkeeper’s words in a drunken chorus, pulling at Martin’s arm to attract his attention. The lieutenant, grasping his flute, looked down at them, not understanding what they were shouting and feeling the table beginning to rock as they pulled him. A moment later he toppled over as a leg of the table gave way and in falling he grabbed one of the officers in a futile attempt to keep his balance. He and the other man hit the floor together, there was a metallic thud, and Ramage just caught sight of a shiny object sliding across the floor and coming to rest almost at the major’s feet.

The major bent down and picked it up. It was a pistol, the brass polished and the wood newly-oiled. He examined it curiously, noting that it was loaded. Suddenly he cocked it and pointed it at Ramage as he stood up.

‘Who are you?’ he demanded in French. ‘This is a British pistol!’

Orbetello’s jail was next to the town hall, on the other side from the inn, and was simply a large room at one end of the cellar. Because the town was built out on the peninsula the defensive walls were on the water’s edge. Indeed, Ramage thought, it was too much like Venice to be comfortable; the foundations of most of the town were below the water level so that the walls of the cellar were sodden with damp. The cellars of most of the houses must have a foot or two of water in them and the cell was either pumped out regularly or the floor had been raised.

The major was a remarkably patient man, even though he was almost cross-eyed from weariness. He had Ramage, Martin and Orsini tied securely to three chairs placed side by side in front of him with two sentries behind them. He had a chair and table brought down and he sat there, a lantern on the table so turned that the light from its window lit the three prisoners, leaving him in shadow.

With only a rudimentary knowledge of English, the major was trying to interrogate Martin and Orsini. He had established that Ramage spoke a little Italian. Ramage had had to admit to that, having been heard speaking to the innkeeper. The other two had been quick enough to insist that they spoke only English – a statement of fact in the case of Martin. Ramage was thankful that the major either disliked the colonel’s aide or did not know he spoke Italian.

The major had also been so absorbed with Martin’s Sea Service pistol, with its belt hook and the word ‘Tower’ and a crown engraved on the lock, that it never occurred to him that Martin might have more weapons hidden under his layers of shirts. Other officers had seized Ramage and Orsini and quickly searched them but found no weapons. Obviously Martin was the only man carrying a pistol, and they had not noticed the canvas belt round his chest even when they stuck the flute down the front of his clothing, a chivalrous gesture which none of the British had expected.

Ramage felt a curious sympathy for the major: his colonel had eventually slid to the floor, dislodged in the struggle and blissfully unconscious from too much wine. The battery was due to move off to Porto Ercole next morning – this morning, Ramage corrected himself; it was now well past midnight – and suddenly he had discovered three British spies in his midst. Spies who came from nowhere, apparently, because they had not been recognized as naval officers. His commanding officer was beyond reach, thanks to the wine, and he did not know how much of the colonel’s diatribe the Englishman had heard and understood.

Indeed, as he questioned the three men, the major tried to remember exactly what the colonel
had
said. The old man had insisted that the battery’s departure be delayed by two hours, to allow him to get sober. Then he had gone on about the sandy track to Porto Ercole. Then he had grumbled about sand getting into everything – but had he mentioned the name of their final destination? The major finally decided that the colonel had not; the diatribe was against sand and its problems; there had been no reason to mention the country’s name.

If he had mentioned the name, would this damned Englishman have understood? He admitted to speaking some Italian (with an atrocious accent), but apparently no French. The major had tried to trap him, suddenly giving orders or asking questions in French, but there had been no indication that the man understood. So the colonel was unlikely to have given away any secrets, although the major had no idea what had been said before the colonel called him to the table, except that the colonel’s aide, a fop if there ever was one, had sworn that nothing had been said, apart from the innkeeper’s remarks about the so-called
tziganes
coming down from the hills to play for the French soldiers.

It was cunningly contrived, the major admitted. A
flûtiste
pretending to be a gipsy and acting like a half-wit, his brother, and his nephew leading him on a piece of string…And they were only caught by a plate of spaghetti: the major felt himself grow cold at the thought of what might have happened had not the two drunken ensigns from ‘B’ battery tugged the
flûtiste
so that he toppled from the table and dislodged the pistol.

In fact it did not matter what the British had heard and understood, because they could not now pass any information on to anyone else: they were locked in here, and in a few hours they would be slung in the baggage train, securely bound and heavily guarded, and taken on board the frigates. There the colonel could bring them to trial as spies, and then they could be shot, or hanged, if the Navy preferred.

The major sighed with relief. He should have thought of that earlier: the three men could have all the secrets in the world and it would not matter because they could not pass them on to their own people. Quite a problem for a spy, he realized: information was only of use, of value if one was spying for money, when it was passed to a person or country that could take advantage of it.

But what were British spies doing here in Orbetello? By adopting the disguise of
tziganes
they could, of course, travel easily; no one expected
tziganes
to have travel documents – indeed, you locked up the house and the poultry when you saw them, but that was all.
Tziganes
with the
flûtiste
– that was clever; diabolically clever. Yet…perhaps it was just a coincidence. Who sent them? Had they come up from Naples? Were they just looking round for what scraps they could discover about the French in Italy, or were they seeking specific information – like the great operation planned for this autumn? No one could have any inkling of that – no Englishman, anyway – because the operation existed only on paper at the moment; he doubted whether any ships at all had begun to arrive in Crete. The frigates now in Porto Ercole and the two vessels supposed to join them (what were they called – bomb ketches?) were probably the first to start moving eastwards towards the assembly point, or whatever the Navy called it.

The senior of these Englishmen was obviously the eldest, the fellow with the black hair and penetrating eyes and slightly hooked nose. He looked like an aristo and now that he was not acting as a gipsy he had the bearing of one. He could not hide it. With those high cheekbones, too, he was a handsome fellow; the women would have fallen for him if he had been going to live past tomorrow, or the next day. He imagined a Navy hangman’s noose round the fellow’s neck, taking the whole weight of the body. Not as spectacular as a guillotine because you did not get that satisfying hiss and thud of the heavy blade running down the slide and lopping off the head, with the explosive spurt of blood and the thump of the head falling into the basket. Still, hanging from the yardarm was probably slower…

‘You – where you come from?’

‘England.’

‘
Oui
, I know, but now, before…before you here?’

The damned man just shrugged his shoulders and repeated what he had answered twenty times before. ‘From the hills.’

‘You are spy.’

‘I am not.’ He said it very firmly. ‘What is there to spy on?’

‘Troops, the defences of Italy, the ships in the ports…’

‘So, now I know that French officers are living at an inn in Orbetello. There are some rowing boats with fishing nets in the lagoon. It looks as though there will be a good crop of grapes. Last year’s wine should be good, too. To whom could I sell that intelligence,
m’sieur
?’

‘You may find other information.’

‘What is there to discover? That the French have invaded Italy? That is old information – several
years
old. That they hold Corsica or Elba? All that is old. That there are French soldiers in Orbetello?’ Ramage shrugged his shoulders as best he could with the ropes holding him tightly to the chair. ‘I think anyone sitting in London with a map of Italy could guess where French troops were stationed.’

‘Ships then.’

Again the Englishman shrugged his shoulders. ‘There are only a certain number of ports,
m’sieur
. I can tell you there are French warships in Genoa, Leghorn, Civita Vecchia, Bastia and Ajaccio. You can tell me that there are British warships in Plymouth, Portsmouth, Dover, Sheerness and Harwich. You can also tell me there are British troops in those places. It is obvious. Ports have ships – and they have to be protected by garrisons. I can go on – Toulon, Barcelona, Cartagena, Cadiz, Ferrol, Rochefort, Brest…all contain French warships, and troops. I haven’t been to any of them – but it is obvious.’

The devil of it is, the major thought, the thrice-damned Englishman is right. Spies were bound to be trying to find out information for their masters, and what information could they find along this coast that would be of the slightest interest to the English? Obviously there were garrisons at various towns and, as the Englishman had pointed out, any fool with a map would know where they would be. Any port of a decent size would hold warships. So…

Nevertheless, here were three spies. What the devil could he do with them? There was no point in getting the two sentries to knock them about – these men were not clods; any information they had would be extracted only by trapping them with words.

He took out his watch. In five hours the regiment was due to move to Porto Ercole. By then the colonel would probably still be in a drunken stupor, but it was no good starting two hours late because, faced with the wrath of a senior officer for arriving late, the colonel would have no scruple in denying he had given the order the previous night. To be fair, the old fellow often said things when he was drunk that he did not remember next morning when he was what passed for sober. Most of the time this was just as well.

Obviously there was nothing more that needed to be done at once: the spies had been caught, and they could be taken out to the frigates, interrogated again, then tried and executed. In the meantime he could get some sleep and this jail could hold the three men until they were transferred to the baggage train. They could spend the rest of the night in those chairs, securely tied up – there was no point in risking them escaping. He gave orders to the guards and said to Ramage: ‘I leave you for the night. Do not try to escape – the guards have orders to shoot. Later we find out what you are doing.’

The guards changed hourly and noisily, each couple bringing a new candle with them so that they could change the one in the lantern. Ramage talked to Martin and Orsini, after making as sure as he could that neither guard spoke English. There was little to talk about and neither youngster seemed very worried because, Ramage realized just as he was feeling sick with despair, they endowed him with magic powers which would ensure their escape.

What a brief and inglorious sally into enemy territory it had all been! He had left his ship and her two prizes; he had landed on French-occupied soil for what had seemed at the time the best of reasons – to find out the destination of a possible French army and fleet; he had been captured within three or four hours; he and two of his officers were to be executed within a few hours more.