Ramage's Devil (12 page)

Ramage thanked Louis for the information. Since they could do nothing about
L'Espoir
and her sad human cargo, he could only note that the frigate's captain was intending to do what he would have done in the same situation. In fact,
L'Espoir
stood little risk of being intercepted because Cayenne was so far to the south round the bulge of South America that British ships of war and privateers bound for the West Indian islands would be crossing the Atlantic well to the north of her course. By staying far to the south,
L'Espoir
might risk getting beyond the belt of Trade winds and run into strong ocean currents, but she was embarking extra provisions and water, probably as an insurance against a long passage. From memory, the Île du Diable, better known to the English as Devil's Island and referred to by the French as “Cayenne,” the name of the nearest town on the mainland, sat precisely on the fifth parallel of latitude, only three hundred miles from the Equator, a hot and humid hell on earth.

Louis added, almost as an afterthought, that two
gendarmes
had called to ask if there had been any sign of the Englishman, but they had been told the agreed story: he had stayed a few days before the Count had been arrested and left, as far as anyone knew, to visit friends somewhere in Provence. Why had the Count not reported that he had strangers staying in the house, as required by State Ordinance number 532, dated 1st
Vendémiaire
year VI? Louis had shaken his head sadly and told the men that the Count, although a very law-abiding man, had not been living in France at the time of the Ordinance and probably knew nothing about it. But Louis had almost been trapped by his own inventiveness: had the Count had other visitors—not necessarily foreigners, but people “not normally inhabiting the place of habitation”—staying and whom he had not reported to the
préfecture?
Louis said he did not know what the Count reported. The
gendarmes
themselves had said he had not reported the Englishman but for all Louis knew the Count
had
reported them and the
gendarmes
had lost the record. At this, Louis related gleefully, the police had been so embarrassed that it was clear that losing papers was not unknown.

Gilbert's comment had been brief and acute: clearly the authorities were not too concerned about the Englishman and accepted that he had moved on. Much more important, they did not realize that he was the Captain Ramage who had played such havoc with their ships in the previous war; if they thought he had been a guest of the Count, then strict precautions would be taken at Brest. This had not been the case, he said with a grin, at the
barrières.

Ramage had been momentarily startled by Gilbert's use of the word “previous,” but of course he was right: that war had begun in February 1793 and ended officially with the signing of the Treaty in April last year, 1801. After eighteen months' peace Britain had now declared war, obviously alarmed by French preparations, but it was another war. What would it be called? The last one had gone on long enough, but with Bonaparte in possession of a huge army—it was said that he could mobilize a million men—how the devil could Britain alone (she had fought most of the last war alone) defeat him? The Royal Navy could only fight where there was water enough to float ships.

He cursed his daydreaming; once again Gilbert, Louis and Sarah were watching him and waiting, as though expecting brilliant ideas to spout from his mouth like water from a firehose the moment men started working the pump handles. He shook his head in a meaningless gesture and, taking Sarah's hand, led the way to their rooms. As soon as he had shut the door she poured water from the big jug into the porcelain basin on the washstand.

“I feel dirty from the top of my head to the tips of my toes,” she said, hanging her coat on a hook and beginning to unbutton her dress.

Ramage sank back on the bed, wishing there was an armchair. “I am weary too. So I shall sit here and watch you undress and then watch you wash yourself from the top of your head to the tip of your toes. It is one of the greatest joys of being your husband. I'm sorry I'm too weary to undress you.”

She slid the dress down and stepped out of it as once again Ramage marvelled at how natural and beautiful she looked in the coarse underwear lent her by Louis' wife. Next she undid the white ribbon—carefully-sewn strips of linen, in fact—of the shift, which was like a long apron, and unwound it.

She smiled at him and watched his eyes as she unbuttoned the bodice and slowly took it off, revealing her breasts in a movement which stopped Ramage's breath for several moments. The breasts seemed to have a life of their own; the nipples, high and large, were dark, like seductive eyes.

Still looking at him, she slid down the frilled knickers and stood naked without embarrassment. Standing naked before your husband for his inspection, she seemed to be saying, was the natural end to a day's journey into the enemy's camp.

“You approve?”

She knew he did but wanted reassuring.

“The left breast … is it not a fraction lower than the right?”

A look of alarm spread across her face as she hurried to the dressing-table. The large looking glass originally fitting into the frame was missing and the only one available was the small handheld glass from her travelling bag.

She held it at arm's length, twisting and turning, peering first at one breast and then the other. Then she held the glass to the side, trying to line up the nipples. Finally she put the mirror down in exasperation.

“I can't see them properly!”

Hard put to keep a straight face, Ramage said: “As you walked, it seemed to me it is actually the right one that's lower. Come over here and let me take a look.”

Then she realized he was teasing. “Are you too tired to undress yourself?” she whispered.

Ramage nodded. “I shall have to rely on my wife.”

Gilbert went into Brest the next day to make arrangements with Auguste and returned to say that both the fisherman and his brother would be ready and had begun collecting weapons. So far they had six pistols and shot, two blunderbusses, three heavy daggers, a cavalry sabre and two cutlasses. When Ramage marvelled at such a collection, Gilbert had grinned. The authorities in Paris lacked popularity in Brittany, he said, so that when a drunken soldier flopped asleep into a ditch or a cavalryman riding alone was thrown from his horse and found unconscious, they were usually returned to their barracks alive but always unarmed. Occasional raids on armouries, sudden and unexpected affairs, meant that many of those not entirely in favour of the First Consul's régime had weapons hidden among the beams of old barns or concealed in sacks of grain.

On the second day, while Ramage and Sarah roamed through the great house admiring the architecture and feeling guilty at envying Jean-Jacques because of his present situation, Louis went into Brest. There was no need to take unnecessary risks and arouse suspicions, Ramage had decided, and Louis and his wife passing through the
barrières
once a week would seem normal enough while Gilbert passing along the road alone in the gig once a day might start a
gendarme
asking questions.

Many of the rooms of the château were completely bare, stripped by looters of all their furniture, carpets, hangings, curtains and occasionally complete doors. Damaged ceilings showed where chandeliers had been torn down; some staircases lacked banisters.

Yet the house, although almost empty, maintained its dignity. It had none of the delicacy and fine tracery, carefully balanced winds and imposing approaches of many of the châteaux of the Loire and Dordogne. It was four-square, and not concealing its origins—a defended home of the Counts of Rennes. The battlements of thick stone were crenellated so that men with crossbows and later muskets could hide behind them and fire down on attackers; the enormous (and original) front door, studded with iron bolts that would blunt and deflect an attacker's axe, was so massive that a much smaller door had been built more recently to one side.

Ramage was staring out of a window, one of scores and now grimy, with paint lifting from the frame in a discreet warning that rot was at work beneath, when Sarah took his arm and said quietly: “Where are you now?”

He gave a start, and then smiled without turning. “I was thinking that it's the top of the springs tonight.”

She sighed and shook her head. “Springs and neaps—I know they're something to do with the moon and the tide, but …”

“A sailor's wife and you don't understand the tides!”

“A sailor's wife who admits she doesn't understand, and expects her all-wise and adoring husband to explain.”

“The sun and the moon both pull the sea. When they are in line, both on one side of the earth or on opposite sides, they pull most and that's when we get the highest high tides, and the lowest low. They are called spring tides. They coincide with the new moon (the moon on the same side of the earth as the sun) and the full (when on the opposite side). When the sun or moon are at right-angles to each other in relation to the earth their pull is weakest and we get the smaller tides which are weaker and called neaps. So the springs are the highest and strongest around new and full moon, and the neaps are the smallest and weakest at first and third quarters.”

“Nothing to do with the seasons then—spring, summer and so on?”

“Nothing at all. It is a full moon tonight so there are spring tides. The highest in terms of sea level but also the strongest in terms of current. When the tide starts to ebb, it will flow out very strongly through the Gullet.”

“And that is important?”

“It would be if you were fishing from a small boat. Why, if you lost an oar you could drift to America!”

“Make sure you take plenty of bait,” she said. “Am I such a stupid woman that I can't be told what you are planning?”

“I'd tell you if I knew. I'd talk it over if I thought you could help me get an idea. The fact is that
L'Espoir
sails for Cayenne with Jean-Jacques today or tomorrow and here I am, walking through his empty house, helpless and hopeless.”

“My dear, how can you expect to rescue one man from a frigate?”

Ramage shrugged. “My men in the
Kathleen,
the
Triton,
and the
Calypso
in the past did what people reckoned impossible, and we did it
only
because to others it
was
impossible.”

“But your men—the splendid Southwick, and Aitken, Jackson and Stafford: dozens of them—are all in Chatham on board the
Calypso
. You are”—she gave a wry smile—”in France on your honeymoon, hunted by the French.”

“Not all the French; only Bonaparte's men.”

“About one in ten thousand are not Bonaparte's men. You won't collect a very big army in Brittany to overthrow him.”

“No,” he admitted. “But I need very few. I agree we can't save Jean-Jacques, so we have to save ourselves: you and me, Gilbert and Louis (and his wife if she wants to come) and now Auguste and his brother. Five men and one, perhaps two women.”

“We are a long way from England. There always seems to be bad weather in the entrance to the Channel. Why don't we travel overland towards Calais? We'd have only twenty miles or so to row or sail to England, compared with—what, a hundred and fifty to Plymouth?”

Ramage turned and pulled her towards him, and kissed her gently. “My dear, you are right in one respect: it is a much shorter sea crossing from Calais. But that's what makes it dangerous. The French
expect
escapers to try to cross there. Every rowing boat is chained up at night. There are big rewards offered—big enough to overcome most scruples. Brest is so far away from England that the French are more casual in the way they guard boats.”

“But they are putting soldiers on board the fishing-boats here at night!” she protested.

“Yes, but they are the large ones with fish holds, those large enough to make the voyage to England safely in almost any weather.”

“Are you proposing we all go in a rowing boat?” She was not frightened at the idea but obviously surprised and dismayed.

“No. I'm not proposing anything at the moment, beyond a couple of hours' fishing at night in the Gullet. Auguste is providing a boat for us.”

“Why fishing? You hate fish and fishing. Why the sudden interest?” she asked suspiciously.

“A romantic row in the moonlight so that you can see all the pretty ships at anchor.”

“Most romantic,” she said with a rueful smile. “We'll have four men as chaperones. Can we hire an orchestra, and perhaps a troupe of wandering minstrels?”

A
UGUSTE sighed in the darkness and admitted: “The price is good at the moment, but in truth I hate the smell of potatoes.” He pulled fretfully at a couple of sacks, trying to find himself a more comfortable position in the little hut. “And madame, you must be very uncomfortable?”

“I had not realized potatoes could be so hard,” Sarah admitted, “but if my husband is to be believed, we'll soon be sitting on the hard wooden seats of a boat and probably thinking of potatoes with nostalgia …”

And how long would Nicholas be? He had talked for half an hour with Gilbert, Louis, Auguste and his brother Albert, and now he had gone for a walk along the quay. She saw now that he had been very clever. Although he had told her back at the château that he had no plans for their escape, in fact he had an idea. Certainly as he had explained it to the men, speaking softly in the darkness of Auguste's hut in the fruit and vegetable market, he had sounded diffident. Not nervous, but almost shy, so much so that first Auguste and then Gilbert had tried to reassure him. Then, as he explained his idea piece by piece, like stripping an artichoke, they had discussed it among themselves, exclaiming from time to time at its soundness, like antiquarians examining old china or an early edition of a book and agreeing on its authenticity.