Ramage's Devil (23 page)

Yet why were they all standing there? It was a curious scene, unreal, yet he thought he would never forget it. Bullivant, cocked hat now awry, breeches and white silk stockings stained—from urine rather than brandy, it seemed—and face streaming with perspiration. The eyes closed now, even when he lowered the tankard and took a few breaths … Bowen quite calm, looking as if he was just waiting for a patient to don an overcoat; Jackson with his sandy and thinning hair tidy as usual, shaven yesterday if not today, and wearing a blue jersey and white duck trousers; Southwick like a jovial bishop unable to avoid listening to a stream of blasphemy; Aitken with colour back in his face and watching Ramage like a hawk, waiting for orders; Paolo the same—in fact, Ramage realized the boy was holding a long and narrow dagger which he must have drawn while Bullivant was fumbling with the pistol: Paolo's complexion was once again sallow, and although the boy was still balanced on the balls of his feet ready to move quickly, it was clear from his expression he knew he would not now be using the dagger and Ramage knew him well enough to gauge the boy's disappointment. Wagstaffe, Kenton, Martin … and the seamen, Stafford and Rossi, who were closer than he realized, and he guessed that somehow they had closed in stealthily once they recognized their old captain.

Then nearly two hundred men groaned. No, not a groan, it was a sigh, everyone breathing out after holding their breath, and a startled Ramage looked back at Bullivant in time to see him sitting on the deck and then slowly bending backwards, like a carpet unrolling, until he was sprawled flat, his cocked hat lying to one side, the tankard still clasped in one hand and the remains of the brandy spreading a slow stain across the planks of the deck.

Bowen gestured to the Marines, but before he could say anything Ramage had stepped forward. It would matter at a trial who gave the next orders, and although Ramage knew he did not give a damn for himself, the future of the officers could be damaged unless he was careful.

“Bowen, Captain Bullivant seems to have lost consciousness …”

The surgeon knelt beside the man, rolled back an eyelid, loosened the badly-tied stock and stood up again. “He is unconscious, sir,” he said formally, “and in my opinion—”

“In your opinion,” Ramage interrupted, “is he capable of carrying out his duties as captain of this ship?”

“No, sir, under no circumstances. Nor will he be for several—”

“Days?”

“—for several days, sir.”

“Have him taken below to his cabin for treatment,” Ramage said.

Now the formalities were over and, while Bowen called over some Marines, Ramage turned first to Southwick. As a warrant officer, the master was junior to the lieutenants, but he was old enough to be the father, even the grandfather, of any of them, and the bond between him and Ramage could not be measured by normal standards.

As Ramage reached out to shake the old man's hand he was startled to see tears running down the weathered cheeks, although the kindly mouth was smiling. “Sir … sir … when your head came up the ladder I thought I was dreaming … where were—”

“We'll exchange news later; now we have work to do!” He shook hands with the lieutenants, Paolo and several of the seamen who rushed up, still hard put to believe their own eyes and anxious to touch him, as though that would make everything a reality. Then he beckoned to Swan, and together they walked aft.

“What a five minutes, sir!” Swan exclaimed. “You look down the muzzle of a pistol like a man looking in a window. My blood ran cold even though he wasn't aiming at me!”

“He saw five or six of me and wasn't sure which to shoot at.”

“Even so,” Swan said, “five to one are not good odds!”

“Well; it's over now. If I hand over the
Murex
to you and give you orders to rejoin the flagship, can you manage? No one will ever know if you don't feel up to it, so don't be afraid to say.”

“No, sir, thanks but I'll be all right. If you'll just give me the latitude and longitude of the rendezvous.”

“You can sail in company with us. I have to take this ship to the admiral. Do you want some more men?”

Swan shook his head. “No, sir, so I'll get back to the
Murex.
What about her Ladyship? Shall I send the cutter back with her?”

“No, we can't spare the time, but as long as you make sure no one else overhears, you can tell her what you saw.”

“Any other message for her Ladyship, sir?”

“Tell her that Southwick, Stafford, Jackson and Aitken—no, just tell her that all the officers and ship's company of the
Calypso
send her their regards.”

Swan looked puzzled. Ramage could see that the lieutenant was wondering how on earth a captain's new wife could know all the men in his previous ship. “They saved her life once, Swan. If you have time and if she's agreeable, get her to tell you about it: it'll help you pass the time as we beat back to the Fleet.”

Ramage stood on the fore side of the quarterdeck with Aitken as they watched the
Murex
brace up the foretopsail yard and then bear away to the rendezvous, the clewed-up courses soon set and drawing.

“Handsome little ships, those brigs,” Aitken said. “Any nostalgia, sir?” he asked, knowing Ramage had commanded the
Triton.

“Yes and no. ‘Yes' because they are handy—we tacked that one out of the Gullet with only a dozen men, and looking back on it we could probably have made do with eight. ‘No' because I found it strange being in that particular one, where most of the men had mutinied and handed over the ship (and their loyal shipmates) to the enemy. It's as though treachery rubs off like soot, marking everything and leaving a distinctive smell.”

“Aye, evil has a distinct smell, and all of us can recognize it. In our case it's the smell of brandy.”

“It has been bad, eh?”

“Almost beyond belief, sir. We could see no end to it. There's nothing in the Articles of War or the
Regulations and Instructions
about it. Bowen reckoned medical reasons were the only safe way, but for the first day or so, when the drink wasn't in him, he was bright enough. Cunning and fawning, but shrewd. It seemed to me, sir, that if we took away his command and then he was cunning enough to keep off the liquor for a few weeks before the court martial, at the trial he could make it all look very different …”

“Yes, that's the danger. When you look at something from different directions, you get different views.”

“And Bowen knew all about the effects of drink. That's how we came—”

Ramage held up a hand to stop him. “I'm sure the ship's officers didn't conspire against the captain, Aitken, because that's forbidden. As you know, Article XX specifies death as the only punishment for anyone ‘concealing any traitorous or mutinous practice or design.' So don't mention anything resembling conspiracy—the listener immediately becomes guilty as well.”

Aitken grinned. “I understand that, sir. Well, it's wonderful to have you on board again.”

Ramage nodded and looked across at the
Murex,
now a couple of miles away. “I think we can get under way now and rejoin the admiral with the brig. Admiral Clinton is a very puzzled man.”

They walked forward again and Aitken picked up the speaking-trumpet. Ramage realized that since he last stood here a couple of months or so ago, as they tacked up the Medway to Chatham, he had married, been to France, escaped capture when the war broke out again, recaptured the
Murex
brig, and relieved the new captain of the
Calypso
of his command. What he had not done was try to rescue Jean-Jacques.

“I'm going below to see Bowen and his patient,” he told Aitken. He gave him a folded piece of paper. “Here is the rendezvous, and you'll sight the fleet before nightfall. Ignore the
Blackthorne
if she starts making signals—there's no signal in the book to describe what we're doing.”

Below in the great cabin he found Bowen sitting in the chair at the desk while in the sleeping cabin Bullivant, undressed and now in his nightshirt, was breathing heavily in a drunken stupor, his lips flapping like wet laundry each time he exhaled.

Bowen hurriedly stood up as the Marine sentry announced Ramage, who gestured to him to remain seated.

“I'll take the armchair. It's good to see you, Bowen. I wish it was under happier circumstances …”

“Oh, I hope everything will turn out all right, sir,” Bowen said vaguely. “For the moment we have about an hour before Captain Bullivant recovers consciousness and descends into the hell of
delirium tremens.
”

“Hell seems the right word: he seems obsessed with it. He recognized me as the Devil when I came on board.”

“Oh yes, Satan is very real to him. For the past five or six days this ship has reeked of brimstone. The captain had all the lieutenants sprinkling the quarterdeck with holy water laced with brandy in an attempt to exorcize it, but without success.”

“This conversation never took place,” Ramage remarked, “so tell me the story from the beginning.”

“Well, you know a good deal of the circumstances if you remember how I came to serve with you in the
Triton
brig,” Bowen said with disconcerting frankness.

“There are two kinds of heavy drinkers: those who drink secretly until they are stupefied, and those who don't give a damn and get drunk openly. Captain Bullivant is a secret drinker, so no one—except perhaps his family and his wife if he is married—knows. But from my own experience I can tell you he has been drinking hard for years. Four or five years, anyway: look at the veins under the skin of his face, at his nose, at his eyes when they are open. And he looks ten or twenty years older than he is.”

“But when he joined the ship,” Ramage prompted.

“Ah, yes. We had fallen behind in paying off the ship because of difficulties with the dockyard, and just as well. We (that is, Mr Aitken, because of course you were on leave) suddenly received orders to commission the ship at once, and the dockyard commissioner warned us war was likely again any moment. He also said that if you did not return from France in time, the First Lord would appoint a new captain.

“We had the ship ready in what must be record time and Captain Bullivant appeared and read himself in as the new commanding officer. Very brisk, he was, and delighted with everything Aitken and Southwick had done. He made a very good impression on every person who saw him, except one man.”

“And that was you.” It was a comment, not a question.

“Yes, I knew the symptoms which few ever recognize. The constant sweating, the tiny tremor of the fingers when the hands are extended, the slightly glazed appearance of the eyes and the feeling they are never quite in focus, the smell of cashews on the breath … the apparent temperance and lack of interest in wine and spirits. When his luggage was brought on board, I had a word with Jackson and he made sure each trunk was checked. One clinked—full of bottles, carefully packed and only two loose ones.”

“And after he had read himself in?”

“All went well the next day: orders arrived from the Admiralty to proceed to Plymouth and put ourselves under Admiral Clinton's command. We were off the Nore that night and we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of the Harwich fishing fleet. Aitken sent for the captain, who came up on deck so stupefied he could not stand without holding on to something. That was the first time we heard him see the Devil.”

“What did he look like?” Ramage asked.

“Well, we didn't see him since he only existed in the fumes affecting Captain Bullivant's brain, but we certainly heard
where
he was: about fifty yards on one bow and then on the other, preparing to rake us.”

“With empty bottles, I suppose.”

Bowen grinned as he shook his head. “No, he was on the fo'c's'le of a three-decker which was ‘painted in orange stripes like a glorious sunset'—Captain Bullivant's exact words, though he didn't explain how he distinguished colour in the dark. And this took the lieutenants and Southwick by surprise, sir: I had kept my earlier observations to myself—I had not realized he had reached the stage of recurrent
delirium tremens.
I was mistaken: I should have warned Aitken.”

“But the
Calypso
did not sink any of the fishing vessels?”

“No, mercifully. Anyway, eventually I quieted down the captain and got him back to bed. Next morning he was—to the layman's eyes—perfectly normal, but in the secrecy of this cabin he drank himself into a stupor every night until we arrived in Plymouth … There Aitken talked to me about reporting it all to Admiral Clinton.”

“What was your advice?”

“Well, sir, I thought of my own cunning when you and Southwick were trying to cure me and decided Captain Bullivant was a clever man, well aware of his weakness and with enough influence at the Navy Board through his contractor father to make useless anything we could do. Admiral Clinton was busy getting his fleet to sea, so if Aitken had appeared in the flagship with a story of Satan stalking the
Calypso,
I suspect we would have been sent a new first lieutenant, not a new captain.”

“So the fleet sailed. Then what happened?”

“Well, that was all Captain Bullivant was waiting for: he left the entire running of the ship to Aitken. He gave orders that he was ‘not to be bothered with signals,' and that Aitken was to execute all orders from the flagship ‘without troubling' him. From this we expected he would stay drinking down here in his cabin, but every now and again he would emerge raving about the Devil. He would chase him out of his cabin and up the companion-way to the quarterdeck, and would then sight him behind the binnacle, behind a carronade, trying to climb the ratlines …”

“Was there anything you could do?”