Ramage's Challenge (20 page)

Three dark-eyed, black-haired children watched from a doorway; a woman appeared at a window, moving aside the sacking that covered it. She was holding a baby, and she spat before pulling the sacking back. A black and white cat streaked across the road, chased by the same four dogs. The cat made for the nets and the old woman turned and picked up a stone, but the dogs had obviously played this game before and suffered from the woman's marksmanship, because they bolted back behind the houses.

“They are poor, these people,” Rossi said, as if to himself. “I've never seen a thin cat in a fishing village before.”

The track led out of the little port and then passed half a dozen more small stone houses and an equal number of tiny buildings with half-doors.

“
Mamma mia,
even the donkeys live as well as the
cristiani,
” Rossi said. “The donkey huts are as well built and roofed as the houses.”

“You've lived in a city too long,” Ramage said. “If you had been a
contadino,
instead of a
ladrone,
in Genova, you'd know that in the country a man values his donkey as much as his wife.”

“In Volterra,
more
than his wife,” Orsini said.

Rossi, although not disputing Ramage's taunt, thought for a few moments. “It makes sense,” he said matter-of-factly. “A wife can't carry a couple of barrels of wine, or a load of firewood.”

“No,” Orsini said. “Just one barrel, or half a load of wood. And the baby slung over her shoulder, and two more clutching her skirt.”

The track started to lead up over the first hill. Castello, Ramage thought, seemed to be floating above them on great, petrified waves, the rock lightly dusted with red soil. Grapevines and olive trees planted in well-kept terraces grew in even lines, the olive leaves already silvery in the early sunlight. Suddenly (although the noise must have been there since daylight) he became conscious of the fast, high-pitched buzzing rattle of the cicadas, and perhaps because he always associated them with the sun, he began to feel the heat through his coat.

Who would be a soldier, with all this marching? One could join a cavalry regiment (given the choice) but horses meant aching thighs, tight breeches, and fellow officers with hearty, back-slapping manners. And anyway, a horse tended to break wind at awkward moments, such as when the colonel's lady was patting it. That sort of thing, he was sure, could blight a young subaltern's career.

So, heigh-ho for the life of a sailor. Flogging to windward through heavy seas, sheets of spray and curtains of rain, clothes never dry for a month, always eating salt tack, and the knowledge that foreign climes, so often written about ecstatically by poets, could mean the black vomit, ague, typhoid, and the plague; that the thunder of broadsides, also written about by poets, could take your head off or part you from a beloved and trusty leg. Or you could drown. There was, he reflected, a lot to be said for living the life of a landowner, riding to the hounds once a week— and having a horse refuse a hedge, so that you made the jump alone, headfirst, and broke your neck. I must write about it in my journal, Ramage thought: the happy thoughts of a post captain marching up to Castello …

“It's quiet here, sir,” Gilbert said unexpectedly, his French voice jerking at Ramage like a leash. “If there was a large garrison up there,” he nodded towards Castello, now going out of sight behind yet another hill, “I'd expect to see a soldier coming down to buy fresh fish for the commandant, or one of the bad girls of the village returning home after a night … well, after visiting a friend up there.”

“A bit early for the trollops,” Ramage commented, “and there wasn't much sign of a fish for sale back there. The fishermen did not go out last night.”

“Just as well, sir,” Orsini commented. “We'd probably have run down some of those boats in the darkness!”

“I think I preferred marching to Pitigliano,” Rossi muttered to himself. “This is like climbing up the side of a mountain.”

“This
is
climbing up the side of a mountain,” Orsini said, “but have you forgotten all those hills in Genova?”

“I thought I had, but this is bringing back the memory.”

“Your arm—is it hurting?” Orsini asked.

“No, it's the muscles in my legs,” Rossi grumbled. “It's never like this in the
Calypso
…”

Castello came into sight once again, but after they had marched another hundred yards along the track, winding over a ridge, it vanished as they dipped into a small valley. Now they could see the rocks and cliffs on the west side of the island, and the sea seemed a long way below them. Not as far down as Castello was up, Rossi pointed out in a complicated joke which relied more on a Genovese accent than a sense of humour.

When they reached the top of the next ridge, from which they could see the track entering Castello in the distance, as though it was a fuse leading to a powder keg, Ramage called a halt. To a casual onlooker it was a logical place for a rest. For the column, as Ramage walked back to tell them, it was their chance to have a good look at what they faced at Castello, whether the hostages were on the island or not.

Aitken, after making sure that no French soldiers or
contadini
were watching, joined Ramage and sat down beside him.

“Supposing the hostages aren't up there, sir?” he asked. “What do we do?”

The eternal question. Ramage laughed and with his finger pushed a small twig in front of the black beetle, which also seemed intent on going up to Castello. “I could hand you over to the garrison and make Kenton the first lieutenant! However, if the hostages aren't there, then we get angry with the garrison, blame the commandant of the fort at Santo Stefano for giving us wrong information, and hope the commandant here at Castello actually knows where they are. That way we'll save ourselves having to search any more. I don't particularly want to march up to every fort in the Tyrrhenian Sea. With the exception of Pianosa, which is very flat, the rest are very mountainous. Gorgona, Montecristo … more climbing.”

“Do you think we'll get away with it, sir? Just going up to the commandant and asking?”

“We're not ‘just asking,'” Ramage said impatiently. “As far as we
and
the commandant are concerned, we have more hostages we were ordered to deliver to Giglio. Very well, the others are not here, and there's been the sort of mix-up made in anyone's army.” Ramage held his arms out, palms uppermost, and looked despairing. “So we march back to the port. If the hostages
are
there, we keep quiet about our ‘prisoners,' and relieve the commandant …”

Aitken added two more twigs to the barrier in front of the beetle. “I haven't seen a scorpion yet. What size are they, sir?”

“About twice as long as that beetle, but not nearly as fat. You won't mistake one—long, thin tail, which it arches up over its back like a dog's tail and points forward if it meets an enemy, and jaws like this—” He held up his hand, the thumb and forefinger making a half-circle. “The jaws don't hurt you—they just get a firm grip so that he can give you a jab with his tail, which looks like a bent fishing rod and has the sting in the end. Probably a couple of them under that rock—just the sort of place they like.”

“I'll leave them in peace. The gate of Castello seems to be open. And look, just a few wisps of smoke: cooking.”

“Cooking and baking,” Ramage said. “Don't forget, that's more of a small walled town than a fortress. Many more local people live up there than down at the port, where we landed.”

“They have a quiet life!”

Ramage shook his head and gestured down into the valley separating them from the high peak on which Castello was built. “Look down there carefully. Wherever it slopes, it's terraced with vines—see? And the groves of olive trees to the right of those big rocks. The
contadini
are already working. Weeding, pruning— and see, those two men at the foot of the terraces are sorting out the right size rocks—they're making another terrace.”

“Plenty of rocks, not much soil. Reminds me of parts of the Highlands in summer.”

Ramage nodded and stood up. “We must be on the move. The next time we speak English, we'll know—I hope—where the hostages are.”

“Better still,” Aitken said, “we will have them with us. But—” he stopped as the thought struck him, “—how are you going … ?”

“I've no idea,” Ramage said with a grin. “You draw me a plan of Castello and where the garrison is and where the hostages are held, and I'll tell you. Until then, let's keep an open mind. Or, to be honest, let's see what opportunities present themselves.”

In the last valley a surly
contadino
jogged past on his donkey, whacking it with a monotony indicating it was a habit rather than a spur to the animal, which ignored everything with a raffish unconcern.

“I wish I could talk with that donkey,” Paolo said. “I think he could tell me much about life.”

“I'm sure he could,” Ramage commented, and Rossi laughed.

The muscles along the front of Ramage's shins ached and he had a stitch like a knife in his side. Ramage had thought the march to and from Pitigliano would have put him in trim, but now he realized the difference between marching horizontally and (it seemed) almost vertically. Admittedly, the track twisted and that took out the worst of the steepness, but the fact was, as Southwick had announced with something like glee, Castello was fifteen hundred feet high.

T
HERE IT WAS! A sudden turn in the track brought them to the gateway and Ramage saw at once that the most fearsome thing about Castello was its name: the thick, turreted walls built round the village were crumbling. Obviously only a garrison from an occupying army was likely to do repairs—and then an enemy would have to be threatening.

Certainly the present garrison saw no threat, and the villagers clearly left it to the Church and the French to defend them against
i Saraceni.
So shrubs and cacti grew between the carved stones and the roots slowly but quite relentlessly levered many of them apart so that, helped by decades of winds, hot sun, and torrential rains, one stone after another tumbled down the slopes, making the steep hill look as though Castello had been through a siege.

Luckily for the future of Castello, the blocks of stone which had been cut by masons long since dead were too big for the villagers to carry off to build houses for newly wed sons. Obviously, since the French had arrived,
i Saraceni
had been forgotten; it was not in the people's character, Ramage reflected, to remember that they were still there, lurking along the distant coast of Africa with their galleys ready to raid as soon as the French had gone.

The Saracens, Moors, or Barbary pirates (the names changed, the people remained the same) had plagued the Mediterranean for a thousand years. Their strength was that they raided small towns, and their victims had short memories. They had short memories and were too preoccupied with their own quarrels to unite and crush the raiders.

Half a dozen children stood shyly at the gateway, not afraid because they recognized Gilbert's and Louis's uniforms. A pack of dogs led by a mongrel as big as a wolf, scarred along its back and one ear almost torn off, came rushing out, a mass of hysterical yelping until a couple of the children set about them with sticks and cries of abuse.

The noise brought a French soldier to the gateway, bleary-eyed and unshaven for a week. He stared at the column of men outside, and Gilbert stepped forward, pointing at him and snapping, “Report at once to your commandant that the special party has arrived.”

The soldier stood there obviously befuddled with sleep and a numbing headache from last night's wine. “He won't like that. He's never called before roll call at noon.”

“Noon!” Gilbert exclaimed and pointed dramatically down at the harbour. “By noon we shall have sailed again!”

“I'll tell the corporal,” the soldier muttered. “Let him have the responsibility.”

As the man lurched away Gilbert muttered to Ramage, “Soldiers are the same, whatever uniform they wear—”

“Snarl at the corporal,” Ramage advised, “otherwise we'll be standing here all day!”

When he arrived the corporal could have been the other man's older brother, except that he squinted at the column as though he had a bright light shining in his eyes.

“You!” snapped Gilbert. “Fetch the Commandant at once. I have orders from the general. Are we to be left standing here all day with the dogs pissing all over us and the children throwing stones?”

“At once, Major, at once,” the corporal stammered and disappeared, leaving only the wide-eyed children, who had not understood a word. A breeze started blowing through the gateway and Ramage cursed: it brought them the smell of the village —rotting cabbage, stinking fish, donkey dung, the sewage of centuries ripened and refreshed by hot sun and warm showers.

“I'll have the first tilt at the commandant when he arrives,” Ramage said. “Anger and outrage sounds better in Italian than French. He probably won't understand a word, but he'll guess the meaning. Then you can take over for the
coup de grâce!
”

Gilbert chuckled. His original dislike of wearing this version of the uniform of Bonaparte's Army of Italy was disappearing rapidly at the prospect of abusing the commandant of Castello.

A good five minutes passed before the commandant appeared, still buttoning up his coat, the corporal carrying his sword and hat. He was a plump little man, swarthy, with perfect teeth beneath sagging black moustaches, which had not been combed after a night's sleep.

“Good morning, Major,” the commandant said, obviously having taken the corporal's word for Gilbert's assumed rank. “No one told me you were coming …”