Ramage's Challenge (19 page)

“And because I don't speak French or Italian, and because I'm a bit broad in the beam these days, sir, I suppose—”

“You suppose correctly, my dear Southwick: you and Kenton and Martin are going to be left behind to look after the
Calypso.
”

“And if you don't come marching back again,” Southwick grumbled, “I suppose those of us left behind will have to come storming up the hill to rescue you all.”

Ramage nodded. “Yes, we'd appreciate that. But if you see bodies hanging by their necks from the battlements, don't bother; just sail away again. I'm sure any survivors would prefer to remain prisoners in Castello, than corpses hanging outside it.”

“When do you intend starting off, sir?” Aitken asked.

How one's choice of words changed with promotion. A lieutenant making a suggestion to a senior officer (his captain, for example) would “propose” doing something, leaving the captain free to say no. But when the captain was telling the lieutenant, or the lieutenant was asking for the captain's orders, “intend” was the word.

Captains intend, lieutenants propose—that was a good rule of thumb. And of course captains “proposed” to admirals, while admirals “intended” (unless they in turn were writing to the Board of Admiralty). And the Board of Admiralty, of course, neither intended nor proposed; they disposed.

“We might as well start early and make a day of it,” Ramage said lightly. “Tell the French and Tuscan armies to get dressed in their appropriate rigs as soon as they've finished breakfast, and have the prisoners ready, looking suitably chastened. You, especially,” he said to Aitken. “You don't look as though you've been a hostage for very long!”

“I thought I was the laird of thousands of acres, sir, and just visiting Florence so that I could listen to the boring conversation of the English visitors who prefer Rubens to Raeburn.”

“Surely talk of Leonardo or Michelangelo—or even where you tasted the best Chianti—must come as a welcome change from all that mist covering the glens, or chasing a reluctant stag, only to have your musket flash in the pan.”

Aitken shook his head sadly. “All those foreign painters— why, any self-respecting Scot would have his portrait done by Raeburn. I remember that Captain Duff—he commands the
Mars
now, I think—used him. Fine Scottish family, the Duffs.”

“Raeburn's a painter? Damn me, I thought a raeburn was like a brae or a loch or a glen: somewhere a stream trickled or a stag lurked.”

Aitken grinned. “I also remember Captain Duff saying he reckoned one of Raeburn's finest works was a portrait of Admiral the Earl of Blazey.”

“Ah yes, I remember. It's hung where we hang the game …”

“That,” Aitken said solemnly, “might be more of a reflection on your father than on the artist, surely, sir?”

As soon as he heard that the selected men were dressing up in their uniforms, Rossi requested to see the captain. Aitken had told him he would not be going on this expedition and then listened patiently to the Italian's protests. Normally, he would have said that the first lieutenant's word was final, but because the Italian was so distressed at being left behind, he mentioned it to Ramage.

“But what good could he do if he came?” Ramage asked. “His arm is in a sling, and a mile or so's marching up a steep hill over a rocky track will just about finish him off. We'd end up carrying him.”

Aitken, however, was having second thoughts. “Perhaps it depends on what he's supposed to do, sir. Did you take him to Pitigliano because he's Italian and speaks the language, or because he's quick with a pistol and sword?”

“Obviously, because he speaks Italian; we have scores of men quick with guns and cutlasses.”

“In that case, sir, I suggest we take him. We only need his tongue. If the marching shakes him up too much, he can always wait beside the track until we come back; but if he endures to Castello, we can use him.”

“You're afraid that if you leave him on board, he's going to put the evil eye on you,” Ramage said amiably. “All right, he can come. But I've been thinking about Orsini, Rossi, and myself leading the column. When we went to Pitigliano, the chances were that we'd have to bluff our way past Italians first. Here we're more likely to bump into the French first. No Italian is likely to challenge us down here at the harbour or on the road up to Castello.”

Aitken agreed, knowing that in any case he was one of the “hostages” in the middle.

“I suggest two men, sir: Gilbert and Louis. Better to have two men answering questions—preferably at once—to create confusion?”

“Very well,” Ramage said. “Tell Rossi to dress himself up. I see the boats are ready.” He pulled on the strange jacket, that of a captain in the Duke of Tuscany's army (the King of Etruria's, he corrected himself), and tugged at his sword-belt. “Let the men start boarding. The boats' crews know they are to return to the ship the moment we have landed?”

“Yes, sir,” Aitken said patiently, “everyone has had his instructions—I'm just going to tell Gilbert and Louis of the change.”

As the first lieutenant went down to the main-deck, Ramage sighed. There were a dozen possible islands to the north and south which
could
be used as a prison for the hostages, but really none seemed very likely. Giglio—well, it was a possibility, even if a remote one. He had pointed out the new flagpole to Southwick and Aitken because it was necessary to keep their spirits up. Now was not the time for them to realize the hopelessness of the search. That damned frigate could have taken the hostages anywhere; she could have gone round the foot of Italy and across to the Morea. There were hundreds of islands in the Ionian Sea that were suitable (if rather parched: many of them had little or no rain in the summer).

In fact (the most chilling thought of all), the frigate might have taken them up to Toulon. Even Bonaparte would not expect his hostages to march hundreds of miles back into France, but if a French frigate was also due to go to Toulon for, say, a refit, she could take the hostages with her. So at this moment, while the
Calypso
's motley force climbed down into the boats to assault Giglio—a tiny island which was less than a flyspeck on a chart of the Mediterranean—the hostages could be prisoners in the great citadel at Toulon. By now they could, for that matter, be sitting in carts (or even carriages, if Bonaparte acted on some whim) on their way from Toulon to Paris.

Paris? Yes, there Bonaparte could use them in some charade or other. Perhaps he might want to parade some of the English nobility as prisoners through the streets to show the sturdy French Republicans how right they had been to strap down their own aristocracy on Dr Guillotine's infernal machines.

That was almost ten years ago. The guillotine blades had not been used much in the past few years: indeed, most of the recent victims had been French revolutionaries disagreeing with Bonaparte. He shook his head to clear away the pictures flashing across his imagination, like those of the new magic lanterns being advertised in the
Morning Post
and
The Times.
Giglio, he told himself: we march up to the top of the hill, and we'll probably march down again, tired and no better informed about the hostages, but we've no choice.

“I'm sorry, gentlemen, I looked everywhere in the Mediterranean but couldn't find them …” His report to their Lordships would be written in more formal phrases, but that would be the sense of it. Sitting in the boardroom in Whitehall, even looking at the chart of the Mediterranean pulled open from one of the rollers over the fireplace, the inland sea would not seem so big. But it was nearly as far from the Levant to Gibraltar as it was from Plymouth in England to Plymouth Rock in America; Giglio (pronounced Jeelyo) would hardly show, and it was a name he was beginning to hate, along with Montecristo, Pianosa, and Capraia.

“I'm coming,” he called as he saw Southwick waving to him. Tradition—the senior officer was the last man to board a boat and the first to disembark. The King of Etruria's uniform, he thought, as he walked over to the break in the bulwark, hitching his sword round, is quite unsuitable for sea service.

There was the circular watchtower (almost obligatory along this coast) at the far end of the village, a score of houses lining a narrow stretch of sandy beach with a dozen or more small fishing boats hauled up on it, and a surprisingly large church a hundred yards inland. At the back of the beach a few posts, each as high as a man, were joined by fishing nets hanging in bulky loops. Drying—or waiting to be repaired. Yes, he saw two men and a woman (dressed in black, except for a once-white scarf over her grey hair) who, from the darting movements of their hands, were busy mending.

A third man stood at the doorway of the nearest house. Was he particularly interested in the two approaching boats? Ramage guessed not. Had he thought they might want to buy fish, he would have made the effort to walk the thirty yards to the water's edge. Nor did the net menders look round. They would have seen the boats leave the
Calypso,
so those swiftly moving hands made one thing quite clear: the French were not popular among Giglio's sturdy islanders. Perhaps the French pressed Italians into the navy. Did they hate the French or, like many other islanders, just hate (and fear) everyone not born within their shores?

It does not matter why, Ramage told himself; it only matters that they do not like the French. If there is shooting, then these people will not help them. Nor will they spy for them. Perhaps there will be one man in a hundred, the usual informer and opportunist who curries favour with the French, but he will be the village outcast—safe enough while the French remain, but who knows his life will not be worth a
fiasco
of vinegar the day the French leave.

The seaman at the cutter's tiller ran the bow up on the beach within thirty yards of the net menders and unshipped the rudder. But even when they heard the stem scraping the sand and the oars splash as the men gave a last thrust, wedging the boat firmly to let the landing party jump on shore without getting wet (and in lightening the boat, make it easy for the oarsmen to get it afloat again), neither the two men nor the woman turned.

The jolly-boat arrived a few feet away and within five minutes the motley column was drawn up on the sand, with the two boats pulling back to the
Calypso.
Four yelping dogs, one chasing the other, came racing round the last house in the row, saw the column of men, turned and ran away again. A donkey tied outside a front door of the last house brayed impatiently and was answered by another in the hills above the village. Impatiently? Was a
somaro
ever impatient? Bored, perhaps, or hungry.

Orsini muttered to Ramage in Italian, “It's hard to believe the French are up there, isn't it, sir?”

“Don't judge by these people,” Ramage said grimly. “These poor beggars, and their fathers and grandfathers and the rest of them going back five centuries have seen many an enemy of one sort or another land on this beach.
Saraceni, Aragonesi, Francesi, Inglesi …
and none of them came to buy fish. Rape, rob, pillage, or just destroy … no wonder they hate the sight of a stranger.”

“Would it be worth it if I … ?” Orsini ventured.

Ramage stared at him. “From Castello (which Southwick tells me is fifteen hundred feet high) you can almost see Volterra, or the mountains round it, anyway. But just think: to these people you're just as much a
straniero
as any of the rest. You may speak Italian, but to them, you have a strange accent—strange enough, probably, to make them more suspicious of you than if you were a Frenchman …”

Orsini gave an involuntary shiver. “There's not much advantage in being an Italian these days.”

Ramage shrugged his shoulders and said with deliberate harshness, “It is no advantage—in the Mediterranean, anyway—being anything but French. We'll change that eventually, but it'll take time. Until then, people like these fishermen are going to snub you. Be thankful it's only a snub: it could be a pistol ball in the back.”

Ramage walked a few paces to one side and looked at the column, led by Gilbert and Louis in the sober uniform of the army of Revolutionary France, who were followed by Orsini and Rossi in their garish outfits. Then the hostages, with Aitken, Jackson, and Stafford in the front row. All the hostages were by now apparently chained to each other. A suspicious French guard would have to tug a chain to discover that the “prisoners” were holding their manacles.

And there, at the rear, muskets over their shoulders, pistols in their belts, and swords hanging from belts over their shoulders, were the other two Frenchmen, Auguste and Albert.

Ramage nodded. Yes, it all looked realistic enough: a few more hostages being delivered, to be added to those already (he hoped) in Castello—sign this receipt please …

Except it was all a waste of time; there were no hostages in Castello; Castello had a garrison of a few French soldiers, probably the scoundrels whom various company commanders had been wanting to be rid of since they first crossed the Alps.

The winding track began beside the last house, and Ramage could see how it twisted and turned as it snaked the fifteen hundred feet to the top of the mountain, where the gate of Castello, a town gate in fact, waited like a dark mouth to swallow them.

Over a hill, down into a small valley and up again; the men whose feet had worn the track in the rock over the centuries had been concerned with finding the easiest route for themselves and their donkeys, tired from an exhausting day's labour under a scorching sun.

A scorching sun … yes, the sun was already getting some heat in it. He raised his arm, saw that he had everyone's attention (so that he did not have to shout an order), and with an overhand motion started the column marching.