Ramage Read online

  Suddenly from the top of the dunes above and just ahead of the horsemen a dark shape appeared: a strange figure uttering weird cries which made Ramage’s blood run cold.

  The leading horse promptly reared up on its hind legs, sending the rider crashing backwards to the ground: the second horse, unable to stop in time, cannoned into it, and the rider slid over its head. The third horse shied and then bolted back the way it had come, hitting the fourth horse a glancing blow and apparently unseating the rider, who fell off but, with one foot tangled in the stirrup, was dragged along the ground as all four horses galloped back along the beach, leaving three men lying on the sand.

  It had taken perhaps ten seconds and it was Jackson again – waving branches he’d wrenched off the bushes. The American ran down to the three men, cutlass in hand. Ramage shuddered, but it had to be done.

  ‘Quick!’ Ramage grabbed the girl’s arm, and ran towards the boat. A few moments later he could see the break in the line of the beach where the river met the sea: there was the gig.

  ‘Not far now!’

  But she was staggering from side to side, swaying as if about to faint. He hurriedly stuck the knife in his boot, picked her up, and ran to the boat where eager hands waited to lift her on board.

  ‘We’ve got one Italian here already, sir,’ called Smith. ‘Another couple of chaps came and went away again.’

  ‘Right – I’ll be back in a moment.’

  Jackson and one refugee to come. But what about Nino and his brother? He could not leave them here – they’d never escape.

  He ran up the side of the dune. A few hours earlier he’d been lying there in the shade of a juniper, day-dreaming…

  ‘Nino! Nino!’

  ‘Here, Commandante!’

  The Italian was by the river bank, thirty yards away, towards the Tower.

  Ramage ran towards him.

  ‘Commandante – Count Pitti is lost!’

  ‘What happened?’

  Shots rang out farther back along the dunes as Nino explained.

  ‘He was with us as we ran to the boat. But when we got there he was missing. Count Pisano is on board.’

  ‘So is the Marchesa. Nino – do you and your brother want to come with us?’

  ‘No, thank you, Commandante: we can escape.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Over there.’ He gestured across the river.

  ‘Go now, then, and hurry!’

  He held out his hand and each man shook it.

  ‘But Count Pitti, Commandante!’

  ‘I’ll find him – now go, quickly!’

  More shots, closer now. ‘You can do no more: now go, and God be with you.’

  ‘And you, Commandante. Farewell then, and buon viaggio.’

  With that they ran down the bank and plunged across the river.

  Ramage could hear harness rattling to his left, the seaward side of the dunes. He ran along the ridge but a flash only twenty yards away made him fling himself sideways into the shelter of some bushes. The Frenchman must be a poor shot to miss at that range.

  As Ramage broke through the other side of the bushes he heard more shots and suddenly five yards ahead of him saw a body sprawled face downwards in the sand. He ran over and found it was a man wearing a long cape. He knelt down, pulling the man over onto his back.

  The shock made his head spin: in the moonlight he could see there was no face, just pulp: a shot through the back of the head…

  So that was the remains of Count Pitti. Now there was only Jackson to account for.

  He ran to the top of the ridge and yelled:

  ‘Jackson – boat! Jackson – boat!’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  The American was still back there among the dunes.

  Ramage knew his responsibility was now with the boat and its precious passengers, and ran down the river bank. A few moments later Smith was hauling him on board.

  ‘Just Jackson to come. Haul her off the bar – ship the tiller. Now, inboard you men,’ he said to the seamen in the water as soon as he felt the boat floating free of the bottom.

  When they had scrambled over the gunwale and reached their places on the thwarts he snapped, ‘Oars ready! Oars out! When I say “Give way”, give way smartly: our lives depend on it.’

  Where the hell was Jackson? He spotted a group of men fifty yards away along the beach: they were kneeling – French soldiers taking aim! Choose, man: Jackson’s life or the lives of six seamen and two Italian aristocrats highly valued by Admiral Jervis? What a bloody choice.

  Wait, though: the soldiers had been galloping hard: they won’t be able to take a steady aim.

  He saw a man silhouetted for a moment against the top of the nearest dune, but the glimpse was enough for him to recognize Jackson’s thin, loose-limbed figure.

  ‘Hurry, blast you!’

  He unshipped the tiller again, put it on the thwart, and swivelled round, leaning over the transom ready to grab him. The American reached the water’s edge and ran with the high step of a trotting horse as the water deepened.

  Ramage was conscious of a stream of oaths babbled almost hysterically in Italian behind him just as he realized the French troops farther along the beach were firing. Someone was tugging his coat and pummelling him. Jackson had four yards to go.

  The tugging and pummelling was more insistent: then he noticed a relationship between the Italian curses and the tugs. Now the man was pleading in high-pitched Italian, ‘For God’s sake let us get away: hurry for the love of God.’

  Three yards, two yards, one – he grabbed Jackson’s wrists and yelled, ‘Right men, give way together – handsomely now!’

  He gave an enormous heave which brought Jackson sprawling inboard over the transom, and from the grunt the American gave it was obvious the rudder head had caught him in the groin.

  ‘Come on, out of the way!’

  Ramage helped him with a shove and hurriedly shipped the tiller: the men had been rowing straight out to sea, which would keep them in range of the French that much longer. He put the tiller over, steering directly away from the soldiers, so the boat presented a smaller target. Just as he glanced back there were three flashes at the water’s edge and one of the seamen groaned and fell forward, letting go of his oar.

  Jackson leapt across just in time to grab the oar before it went over the side.

  ‘Fix him up, Jackson, then take his place.’

  By the time the French had reloaded, the boat would be almost out of sight, down-moon and against the darker western horizon.

  The Italian was now squatting down on the floorboards, almost at his feet: Ramage realized he was there only after hearing a low, monotonous, gabbling of prayers in Latin and noticing some of the seamen muttering uneasily, not understanding what was going on. Prayers are all right in their place, he thought, but if gabbling them like a panic-stricken priest upsets the seamen, then the boat isn’t the right place – fear spreads like fire.

  He prodded the man with his foot and snapped in Italian, ‘Basta! Enough of that: pray later, or in silence.’

  The moaning stopped. The soldiers would have reloaded by now. Ramage looked back and could still distinguish the beach.

  He sensed the men were jumpy and it was hardly surprising, since they’d been sitting in the boat, or standing beside it up to their waists in water, while a good deal of shooting was going on near by.

  ‘Jackson,’ he said conversationally, to reassure the men, ‘that was a frightful noise you made on the beach. Where did you pick up the trick of charging cavalry single-handed?’

  ‘Well, sir,’ Jackson replied, an apologetic note in his voice, ‘I was with Colonel Pickens at Cowpens in the last war, sir, and it was mighty effective in the woods against your dragoons: they hadn’t met that sort of thing before.’

  ‘I imagine not,’ Ramage said politely, turning the boat half a point to starboard.

  ‘No, sir,’ Jackson said emphatically. ‘Only the last time I did it, ’twas agai
nst a whole troop of ’em in a narrow lane. They were chasing me, you see.’

  ‘Is that so? Did it work?’ he asked, conscious the men were listening to the conversation as they rowed.

  ‘Most effective, sir: I had ’em all off, except one or two at the rear.’

  ‘How did you learn this sort of – er, business?’

  ‘Woodsman, sir; I was brought up in South Carolina.’

  ‘Madonna!’ exclaimed a voice in heavy-accented English from under the thwarts. ‘Madonna! They talk of horses and cow pens at a time like this.’

  Ramage looked round at the girl, conscious he had not given her a thought since he climbed on board the boat.

  ‘Would you please tell your friend to hold his tongue.’

  She leant down to the man, who was almost at her feet; but he already understood.

  ‘Hold my tongue?’ he exclaimed in Italian. ‘How can I hold my tongue? And why should I?’

  Ramage said coldly in Italian: ‘I did not mean “hold your tongue” literally. I was telling you to stop talking.’

  ‘Stop talking! When you run away and leave my cousin lying wounded on the beach! When you desert him! When you bolt like a rabbit and your friend screams with fright like a woman! Madonna, so I am to stop talking, eh?’

  The girl bent down and hissed something at him, keeping her voice low. Ramage, tensed with cold rage, was thankful the seamen did not understand: then suddenly the Italian scrambled out from under the thwarts and stood up in the boat, making one of the oarsmen lose his balance and miss a stroke.

  ‘Sit down!’ Ramage said sharply in Italian.

  The man ignored him and began swearing.

  Ramage said curtly: ‘I order you to sit down. If you do not obey, one of the men will force you.’

  Ramage looked at the girl and asked in Italian: ‘Who is he? Why is he behaving like this?’

  ‘He is Count Pisano. He blames you for leaving his cousin behind.’

  ‘His cousin is dead.’

  ‘But he called out: he shouted for help.’

  ‘He couldn’t have done.’

  ‘Count Pisano said he did.’

  Did she believe Pisano? She turned away from him, so that once again the hood of her cape hid her face. Clearly she did. He remembered the Tower: did she think he cheated at cards, too?

  ‘Well, he didn’t go back to help his cousin,’ Ramage said defensively.

  She turned and faced him. ‘Why should he? You are supposed to be rescuing us.’

  How could one argue against that sort of attitude? He felt too sick at heart even to try, shrugged his shoulders, and then remembered to say: ‘Any further conversation about that episode will also be in Italian: tell Pisano that. I don’t want the discipline in this boat upset.’

  ‘How can it upset discipline?’

  ‘You must take my word for it. Apart from anything else, if these men understood what he was saying, they’d throw him over the side.’

  ‘How barbarous!’

  ‘Possibly,’ he said bitterly. ‘You forget what they’ve been through to rescue you.’

  He lapsed into gloomy silence, then said: ‘Jackson – the compass: how are we heading? Don’t use the lantern.’

  The American leaned over the bowl of the boat compass for several seconds, twisting his head one way and then the other, trying to see the compass needle in the moonlight.

  ‘About south-west by west, sir.’

  ‘Tell me when I’m on west.’

  Ramage slowly put the tiller over.

  ‘Now!’

  ‘Right.’ He noted a few stars to steer by. They had ten miles to go before passing a couple of miles off the south-western tip of Argentario. The wounded oarsman argued with Jackson, who finally let him row again and climbed aft to sit on the sternsheets opposite the Marchesa.

  The girl suddenly said quietly, as if to herself, ‘Count Pitti was my cousin, too,’ and wrapped the cape round her more closely.

  ‘The lady’s all wet,’ Jackson said.

  ‘I’ve no doubt she is,’ Ramage replied acidly. ‘We all are.’

  To hell with it: why should he concern himself about the damp petticoats of a woman who considered him a coward. Then she sighed, slowly pitched forward against Jackson, and slid into the bottom of the boat.

  Ramage was too shocked for a moment to do anything: even as she sighed, he suddenly remembered she was wounded: he was the only one in the boat who knew – except Pisano.

  Chapter Nine

  By putting floor boards fore and aft across thwarts, Jackson managed to rig up a rough cot for the Marchesa; but before they could lift her on to it, the seamen stopped rowing of their own accord and stripped off their shirts, handing them to the American to make a pillow.

  The men began rowing again – a slight onshore breeze was raising a short lop which made the boat roll violently when stopped – and Ramage and Jackson lifted the girl on to the rudimentary cot. Ramage dare not let himself think how much blood she had lost; he did not even know exactly where she was wounded.

  The two men wrapped the lower part of the girl’s body in her cape and Ramage’s jacket. While lifting her they saw the right shoulder of her dress was soaked with blood and Ramage decided it was worth risking using the lantern to examine the wound. If only he had a surgeon’s mate on board…

  He told Jackson to pass the compass to Smith who was rowing stroke and sitting nearest to them in the boat, only a foot or two away from the girl’s head.

  ‘Put the compass where you can set it, Smith: line up some stars and try to keep the boat heading west.’

  He reached out and unshipped the tiller. Smith would have to keep the boat on course with the oars.

  Now – to cut away the clothing and look at the wound. He pulled his throwing knife from his boot: ironic that it was still stained with the French cavalryman’s blood. He held it over the side, washing the steel clean with seawater.

  A ripping of cloth made him glance across at Jackson: the American was busy tearing a shirt into strips to use as bandages.

  ‘Ready, sir?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He leaned over the girl – God, her face was pale, a paleness emphasized by the cold moonlight. Lying on her back, eyes closed, she might have been a corpse on an altar ready for a ritual burial. Didn’t the Saxons put a warrior’s body in a boat with a dead dog at the feet and then set fire to the boat?

  Gripping the knife in his right hand, he took the neck of her dress with his left. Difficult – oh, to the devil with modesty: he was so shaky with worry for the girl’s very life that the chance of seamen seeing a bared breast in the moonlight didn’t matter.

  As he began carefully to cut the material he saw her eyes flicker open.

  ‘Dove sono Io?’ she whispered.

  ‘Sta tranquilla: Lei e con amici.’

  Jackson was looking at him anxiously.

  ‘She asked where she is.’

  He knelt on the bottom boards so that by bending slightly his head was level with hers, and said: ‘Don’t worry: we are going to attend to your wound.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘The light, Jackson.’

  The American held up the lantern while Ramage slit the shoulder and sleeve seams of her dress, then the lace and silk of her petticoat and shift. They were stiff, and the bloodstains appeared black in the lantern light. With the last stitch cut he slipped the knife back in his boot and gently pulled away the layers of material. Each piece had an identical hole torn in it. The top of her shoulder showed white, almost like part of an alabaster statue, but just below, beneath the outer end of the collarbone, the skin was dark and swollen from an enormous bruise. Jackson moved the lantern slightly, so the light showed at a better angle, and Ramage saw the wound itself, in the centre of the bruise.

  ‘Other side, sir…’ whispered Jackson.

  In other words, Ramage thought, did the shot go right through?

  He stood up and bent over, tucking his left hand b
ehind her and gently raising her left side until he could slide his right hand down the back of her dress, running his fingers softly over the shoulder blade and left side of her back. There was no corresponding wound: the skin was smooth – and cold, a cold which seemed to run up his arm into his body. He wanted to clasp her; to give her some of his own warmth; to comfort her. The shot, an alien, powder-scorched lump of lead, was still in her body, and the thought made him feel sick.

  ‘Ask her if she knows how far away the Frog was, sir,’ suggested Jackson.

  Ramage leaned over and said gently: ‘When the man fired, were you facing him?’

  ‘Yes…we didn’t know the horsemen were there until the peasant called out. One of them fired just as I turned round.’

  ‘How far away were they?’

  ‘A long way: it was a lucky shot.’

  Lucky! thought Ramage.

  When Ramage translated, Jackson said: ‘That’s good, sir: at that range the shot must have been almost spent. We might be able to get it out.’

  Might! thought Ramage: to save her life they had to, before gangrene set in.

  ‘You’ll have to help me.’

  Jackson put the lantern on the thwart, tore more pieces of shirt, and leaned over the side to soak them in seawater. Then, holding the lantern in one hand, he passed the wet cloths to Ramage.

  ‘Tell me if it hurts too much,’ Ramage whispered, and she nodded. He began bathing away the encrusted blood.

  For what seemed like hours, but must have been at the most fifteen minutes, he tried to find where the shot was lodged in her flesh, using the point of his knife as a probe. She never flinched, never groaned, never once whispered that he was hurting her. Occasionally she just shivered, as though she had ague; but Ramage did not know whether it was from cold, fear, fever or reaction – he’d often seen men shaking violently after receiving a bad wound.

  As he stood up, back aching and hands trembling, she seemed smaller, as if the intense pain made her shrink.

  ‘It’s no good,’ he said quietly to Jackson. ‘I daren’t probe any deeper.’

  The American gave him some dry cloth, which he folded into a pad and put on the wound. Finally, with the last strip of bandage tied in place, he rearranged her clothing as well as possible, and wrapped the coat round her.