Ramage Read online

  By now the Barras was not more than fifty yards away: the bow wave was sharply defined and he could pick out the delicate tracery of her rigging against the night sky, whereas a few moments ago it had been an indistinct blur.

  This is the moment: once again he lifted the speaking trumpet to his lips. Now, he thought, let us commend ourselves unto the XVth Article of War and still take as long as we can about it, and he yelled in English: ‘Mister Frenchman – the ship is sinking.’

  The same voice answered: ‘Vot say you?’

  ‘I said, “The ship is sinking”.’

  He sensed Jackson anxiously shifting from one foot to another. There was a strange hush in the Sibella and he realized the wounded were not making a sound. The Sibella was a phantom ship, sailing along with no one at the helm, and manned by tense and silent men.

  Then through the speaking trumpet he heard someone say in French, ‘It’s a trick.’ It was the voice of a man who held authority and who’d reached a difficult decision. He guessed the next thing he’d hear would be that voice giving the order to open fire.

  ‘You surrender?’ came back the question, in English this time.

  Hurriedly Ramage turned his head towards the Bosun and called softly: ‘Bosun – start chopping.’

  He had to avoid a direct reply: if he surrendered the ship and then escaped the Admiralty would be just as angry as the French at a breach of the accepted code.

  Putting the speaking trumpet back to his lips he shouted: ‘Surrender? Who? Our wheel is destroyed – we cannot steer – we have many wounded…’

  He heard the thud of the axes and hoped the noise would not travel across to the Barras: he must drown it with his own voice, or at least distract the Frenchmen’s attention.

  ‘–We cannot steer and we have most of our men killed or wounded – we are sinking fast – we’ve lost our captain–’

  Damn, he couldn’t think of anything else to say. Jackson suddenly whispered, ‘Livestock’s killed, guns dismounted, burgoo’s spoiled…’

  ‘Yes, Mister,’ Ramage yelled, ‘all our pigs and the cow have been killed – all the guns are dismounted–’

  ‘Comment?’

  ‘Pigs – you’ve killed our pigs!’

  ‘Je ne comprend pas! You surrender?’

  ‘You’ve killed our pigs–’

  The devil take it, would that foremast never go by the board?

  ‘–The cow has been dismounted – the guns don’t give any more milk – the pig’s making water at the rate of a foot every fifteen minutes!’

  He heard Jackson chuckling and at that moment there was a crackling from forward and a whiplash noise as several ropes parted under strain. Then there was a fearful groan, like a giant in pain, and against the night sky he could see the foremast beginning to topple. It went slowly at first; then crashed over the side, taking the yards with it.

  ‘Wilson! the topsail and spanker!’

  He saw the spanker being sheeted home to the boom end as the topsail was let fall from the yard. A few moments later, when he looked back at the Barras, she had vanished. He realized the Sibella was swinging round to larboard faster than he expected, and he glanced aft. The Barras had been caught unawares – she was still sailing on her original course and had gone too far for her guns to be able to rake the Sibella’s completely unprotected stern.

  He felt shaky with relief and his clothes were soaked with perspiration. He scrambled down from the bulwark, and as he jumped to the deck his knees gave way slightly and Jackson caught him. ‘Pity about that cow, sir,’ he said dryly, ‘I just fancy a mug o’ milk.’

  Chapter Three

  For more than half an hour Lieutenant Nicholas Ramage’s little world had been limited to the boat, the sea and the great blue–black dome of the night sky, which was cloudless and glittering with so many stars and planets it seemed to hold every spark that had ever fallen from a blacksmith’s anvil.

  The launch was heavy, but the men sitting on the thwarts facing him were rowing with a will: as they leaned back in unison, pulling with all their strength, the oars creaked against the wooden sides of the rowlocks. Who was it who said in ancient times, ‘Give me a fulcrum and I’ll move the Earth’?

  At the end of each stroke the men involuntarily gasped for breath, at the same time pushing downward on the looms of the oars to bring the blades clear of the water. Then, leaning forward like rows of seated tenants bowing to the landlord, they thrust the looms in front of them, and at the end of the movement dipped the blades into the water to haul back and begin the new stroke.

  Lean back, creak, gasp, lean forward; lean back, creak, gasp, lean forward… Ramage, his arm resting along the top of the tiller as he steered, could feel the boat spurting forward under the thrust of each stroke. Occasionally he glanced astern, where the Bosun’s cutter and the other two boats followed, each linked by a line to the next ahead.

  ‘Sir!’ exclaimed Jackson, gesturing astern: there was a small red glow in the distance but, even while Ramage watched, tongues of flame spurted up, as if a blacksmith’s bellows suddenly fanned new life into a forge fire.

  Half an hour: the French would have taken off the wounded. God knows they must have suffered as they were carried across to the Barras. Still, the sea was calm enough for the two ships to lie alongside each other, which would save them being ferried in boats. Ramage could picture the French officers leading the boarding party having the well sounded and reporting back the depth of water in the ship and the damage.

  Now, with the magazine flooded, they’ve set fire to the ship… He turned away and saw some of the men wiping their eyes. It was ridiculous how a ship’s company became fond of a few hundred tons of wood, rope and canvas which had for months been their home, and for the last hour and all eternity a tomb for many of them.

  The men were rowing unevenly as they watched the Sibella burn. A sudden tug on the line to the cutter, followed by a string of curses from the Bosun, told him that he might as well let the men watch the Sibella’s funeral pyre and have a rest at the same time, and he shouted the order into the darkness.

  At last he could read the orders to the Sibella’s late captain: he had been burning with curiosity from the time the oarsmen had settled into a steady rhythm and given him time to think.

  ‘The lantern, Jackson, and keep it shielded with the canvas, I want to read something.’

  Pulling the linen envelope from his pocket, Ramage took out the sheet of paper and smoothed it. The letter had been written on board the Victory on September 1, a week earlier, and was an order from Admiral Sir John Jervis, KB, telling the Sibella’s late captain, in neat and flowing script:

  ‘Whereas I have received information that following the French occupation of Leghorn and other towns inland, several leading members of influential families in Tuscany sympathetic to our cause have succeeded in escaping and made their way southward to the coast off Capalbio, from whence they have requested assistance, you are, therefore, hereby required and directed to proceed with all possible despatch in His Majesty’s ship Sibella under your command, off Capalbio, taking care that your intentions should not become known to anyone on shore.’

  So that was what brought them down here… Ramage turned over the page and continued reading.

  ‘You will then under the cover of night send a party on shore to the fortified tower situated between Lake Burano and the shore and commonly known as “Torre Buranaccio”, and take off the party of refugees, believed to be six in number, and who are named in the margin.

  ‘From the information I have received, the Tower is not in use by the Neapolitan troops, nor occupied by the French (who are known to have passed through the area); and the refugees have arranged that a charcoal burner, whose name they have omitted to communicate to me but whose hut is one half a mile southward along the beach from the tower and five hundred yards inland, shall be kept informed of their whereabouts.

  ‘Since negotiations will have to be carried on in the nativ
e language, the landing party should be under the command of Lieutenant Nicholas Ramage in virtue of his knowledge of the Italian language.

  ‘Great importance is attached to the safety and well-being of these refugees in view of the influence they can command on the Italian mainland; and as soon as they and any others with them are safely embarked in His Majesty’s frigate under your command, you are to make the best of your way to Rendezvous Number Seven, where you will find one of His Majesty’s ships whose commanding officer will give you further orders for your subsequent proceedings.’

  Hmm, thought Ramage, considering the length of the letter and details, ‘Old Jarvie’ really means what he says about the importance of these people: he was notorious for the brevity of his orders.

  Ramage folded the letter and put it back in his pocket. As orders for the Sibella’s late captain, they were simple enough; but for his successor they presented difficulties undreamed of when dictated by Sir John, who was the strictest disciplinarian on the flag list. Ramage realized he did not even know where Rendezvous Number Seven was…

  A sudden kick on the shin stopped his reverie.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ said Jackson, ‘I’m getting cramp in my leg.’

  Ramage knew the men were waiting expectantly. Well, let them wait.

  What must he do? What would the Admiral expect him to do? What would the Sibella’s late captain, cremated a few moments ago, have done if he were sitting here in the launch’s stern sheets?

  He could ask the opinions of the senior men, showing them the order: hold a council of war, in fact. But his pride prevented that and anyway his father had once said – ‘Nicholas, my boy: if you ever want to achieve anything in the Service, never call a council of war.’ Yet when the old boy had acted on his own advice, Ramage thought bitterly, look what had happened…

  Then in his imagination he saw, for a fleeting second, a group of thoroughly frightened civilians staring seaward through the narrow window of a peasant’s hut, plagued by mosquitoes, too frightened to light a lamp at night, and waiting for a ship of the Royal Navy to rescue them from – from France’s guillotines or possibly the unspeakable horrors of the Grand Duke of Tuscany’s dungeons, since the Grand Duke’s attempts to remain neutral had been feeble, and he had even entertained Napoleon to dinner, from all accounts.

  Who were they, anyway? He’d forgotten to look at the names in the margin.

  ‘Lantern, Jackson.’

  He unfolded the letter once more and read the names of five men and a woman listed one below the other in the margin: the Duke of Venturino, the Marquis of Sassofortino, Count Chiusi, Count Pisano, Count Pitti and the Marchioness of Volterra.

  It took him a moment or two to register the shock of reading the anglicized version of the Marchesa di Volterra’s name: he had a sudden picture in his mind of a tall, white-haired woman with a patrician face whom he had known, for much of his childhood, as ‘Aunt Lucia’. She was no relation, but as one of his mother’s closest friends she was a frequent visitor when his parents lived in Siena; and they in turn had often stayed at the Marchesa’s palace at Volterra. So now the little boy she used to bully because he could not (would not, too) quote yards of Dante, was back – almost back, anyway – in Italy, to haul her off the beach…

  Sir John Jervis’ determination that they should be rescued made sense now: the Marchesa, and the Duke of Venturino, were two of the most influential and powerful figures in Tuscany: it had been said for years that if they could agree with each other for long enough, they could probably overthrow the Grand Duke and rid Tuscany for ever of the dreary Hapsburgs.

  Ramage was glad he’d decided to attempt the rescue before reading the names. If he’d previously decided against it, he would have changed his mind later. There was some satisfaction in attempting what he hoped was the right thing for the right reason.

  Yet when it came to rescuing refugees, it shouldn’t matter who they are: when a head rolls into the wicker basket from the guillotine blade, a peasant’s head is a human head as much as the duke’s; which was what Shakespeare meant when he made Shylock say, ‘Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands?’

  Ramage could imagine the president of the court trying him for the loss of the Sibella asking, ‘Why did you decide to attempt to execute with an open boat the Admiral’s orders, which were intended to be carried out by a frigate?’

  ‘Well, sir, I was thinking about Shylock…’

  He could imagine the sneers; could hear, almost, the whispered ‘Yes, he’s his father’s son all right.’ And that’s the crux of it: he was his father’s son and so much more vulnerable than other lieutenants because he had many more potential enemies waiting to strike at him to wound his father. A Service vendetta was a long-drawn-out affair and when admirals were involved everyone was forced to take sides because promotion and patronage were involved. To become the protégé of a particular admiral was a good thing, as long as the admiral was in favour, because he would push opportunities your way. But if the admiral supported a political party, as several of them did, then the moment his party lost power, the fact you were one of his protégés was a millstone round your neck.

  Poor Father: a braver man never lived, and many still considered him the most brilliant strategist and tactician the Navy ever had. Which was, of course, the reason for his downfall. When you give the command of a fleet to a born leader with a keen brain, and provide him with a textbook containing a limited set of regulations telling him how to fight a battle, you’re asking for trouble.

  Ramage was seven when his father was brought to trial; but later, when he was old enough to understand, he had read the minutes of the trial of John Uglow Ramage, tenth Earl of Blazey and Admiral of the White many times. It was easy to see how the court had found Father guilty; indeed, since he had refused to be tied down by the Fighting Instructions and had used his own tactics instead, they had no alternative. But the King’s refusal to quash the verdict – which only he had the power to do – was naked politics: Father had an independent mind and had refused to pay court to either Whigs or Tories, so he expected help from no one.

  Ramage realized that since he had only four open boats to carry out orders intended for a frigate his own position was, in a microcosm, similar to the one facing his father fifteen years earlier. Then, the Government, ignoring all warnings about the size of the French forces, sent a small fleet to the West Indies under the Earl of Blazey. And when the Earl arrived to find himself attacked by a French Fleet which was twice as powerful and in circumstances not covered in the Fighting Instructions – which dealt only with a few eventualities – he had used brilliant and original tactics to extricate himself, losing only one line-of-battle ship.

  But, of course, he had lost the battle: against those odds no one could have won it. Any British admiral feeling himself bound by the Fighting Instructions – but unable to get any guidance from them – would have fought an orthodox battle and lost many more ships. In fact, considering he only lost one ship, Father had won a tactical victory. However, there was a fatal combination: first, as usual, the Government had sent too few ships, but when the mobs began to yell in protest over the defeat, it was determined to shift the blame on to someone else’s shoulders; secondly, the Admiral who fought and lost the battle had ignored the Fighting Instructions. That was enough for the politicians: they had a ready-made scapegoat.

  The mobs were never told the Fighting Instructions were not flexible enough to cover that kind of battle; instead a flow of pamphlets and newspaper articles led them to think that had he followed the Instructions he would have won. The fact that his own tactics were brilliant and avoided the heavy losses an attempt to follow the Fighting Instructions would have entailed was never brought out – except when Father made his defence at the trial. Even then the newspapers, which were in the Government’s pay anyway, distorted or omitted what he said.

  The old chap’s speech had been almost too clever; he presented such a well-reasoned argument that th
e layman’s suspicion of an expert – and the professional’s jealousy – were soon aroused.

  How had Father described the Fighting Instructions? Oh yes, he’d likened them to instructions for a coachman when a highwayman standing in his path orders him to halt. Ramage could almost see the actual print in the leather-bound copy of the minutes of the trial, which was kept in the library at home.

  ‘The Fighting Instructions in effect order the coachman,’ Father had said, ‘to aim his blunderbuss directly over his horses’ heads, and fire at the highwayman. But they do not tell him what to do if there are two or a dozen highwaymen standing to one side of the path or another. They assume it will never happen. But at the same time their orders contain a clause which ensures that, if it happens, whatever the coachman does is wrong: if he fires to the left, to the right, surrenders or runs away.’

  The court could have sentenced him to death; but since the affair of Admiral Byng the Articles of War had been amended to allow a lesser penalty. The court had ordered him to be dismissed from the Service. Ramage had often wondered whether this was, for his father, a lesser penalty than death.

  The man who had emerged from the trial as his father’s enemy had been a member of the Court, a captain low down on the post list but high up in the King’s esteem: Captain Goddard, now a rear-admiral, who was a man with little intelligence or ability but full of corrosive jealousy. Marriage into the outer fringe of the royal family had, so far as promotion was concerned, made up for his other deficiencies.

  Since Goddard had so much influence with the crazy King – indeed, it was said he was one of the few men who could get any sense at all out of His Majesty during his not infrequent bouts of insanity – he had attracted a large following in the Navy when he became a rear-admiral: many captains – and flag officers – were prepared to sink their pride in order to provide Goddard with the sycophantic circle of admirers his pride required, receiving preferment and promotion in return.