Ramage's Trial (6 page)

As Yorke accepted the invitation, the woman laughed: the charming and tinkling laugh of a happy person who had just heard something amusing.

“Answering the last question first, yes. We came out in the
Emerald
. We planned a nice quiet voyage to celebrate the peace, and who knows, I might have found out here what I can't find in England!”

“And what is that?”

“
Who
is that,” Yorke corrected, grinning.

“Very well, who. And have you succeeded?”

“A wife, and no, I haven't succeeded.”

A dumbfounded Ramage turned to the woman, who burst out laughing. “I
thought
you heard Sidney introduce me as ‘Mrs', but he said ‘
Miss
' Alexis Yorke. I am (thank goodness) his sister, not his wife. In fact I have been sorting out the widows, fortune-hunters and desperate mothers among the islands and–”

“–and she has rejected the whole lot of them,” Yorke said.

“Out of hand,” Alexis said firmly. She looked up at Ramage, who realized she had large eyes which seemed in the shade of the cabin to be black, and she gave what could only be described as an impish grin. “You see, it isn't just a question of a wife for Sidney, but a sister-in-law for me.”

“Quite,” Ramage said carefully. “It could be a problem.”

“Not ‘could', but ‘will'. Sidney will expect his bride to be immune from seasickness and as fond of going to sea in his ships as he is. She won't, of course; she'll hate the sea and will get sick even in a well-sprung carriage going down the Mall, so she will stay at home when he goes off on his voyages and every day she will come round and weep on my shoulder.”

“You have no sense of family loyalty,” Yorke chided. “You should be only too glad to console a grieving sister-in-law.”

“I'll console a
grieving
sister-in-law,” Alexis said, “but not a moping one, and if I don't keep an eye on you we'll end up with a moper.”

“You could get married and live at the other end of the country,” Ramage commented, but she shook her head.

“Don't suggest that,” Yorke said. “She's already inspected all the eligible men and found them wanting. If she lives at the other end of the country, I'll have my house forever cluttered up with a brother-in-law complaining that his wife has just gone off on a sea voyage…”

“I love sea voyages,” Alexis said, and her laugh seemed to make the
Calypso
come alive. “But not every man does.”

“What she means is that when the suitors come knocking on the door, the first question she asks is whether or not they like sea voyages. If they say no, they don't cross the threshold.”

Ramage excused himself for a moment: he had to give instructions to his steward for the meal. Silkin, sensing that with two guests the captain would at last allow him to fetch out all the silver and cut glass that stayed so long in drawers amid green baize, and napery that yellowed with disuse, listened carefully. The courses he and the captain would like to serve were limited by the frigate's cooking facilities and the fact that he could not get on shore and buy a prime cut of meat in time to roast it. Roasting food was a time-consuming job in a frigate's galley.

“Lobsters,” Ramage said. “You can do much with lobsters. The wardroom bought a lamb yesterday. See if they will sell me enough to make up a plate of cold cuts.”

“The prizes,” Silkin reminded him. “All those salami sausages, or whatever the French call them. There are those what likes that sort o' thing, sliced thin. And we've a couple of hams left that go ten pounds each.”

The midday meal, traditionally eaten by the captain about two o'clock and called dinner, was going to be a pleasant one. At that moment, Ramage realized that he had never enjoyed a meal he had to eat alone: it was as if guests were needed to give food any piquancy.

He went up on deck into the dazzling sunlight to find Aitken and explain why Southwick and not he was being invited to dinner, but the Scotsman understood only too well: the master had already told him how Mr Yorke was with them in the Post Office packet.

Ramage turned to go back down the companionway and found that Alexis had come up the steps and was now looking through one of the gunports. She turned and smiled as he approached.

“Are visitors allowed on deck?” she asked.

“Visitors such as yourself are
encouraged
to be on deck,” Ramage said lightly. “The sun seems brighter.”

Again that impish smile. “You are very gallant, Captain.”

“The opportunities are very rare,” he said dryly.

“Who is ‘Daphne'?” she asked quietly.

“Daphne? I don't know anyone of that name,” he said lamely. The name had sprung to mind the moment he saw her in the shadowed cabin; but surely he had not spoken it aloud?

“I heard you say it and I saw your lips forming it,” she said, “but I must not pry into your secret.”

“Secret? No secret, I assure you,” he said, trying to hide his embarrassment. He managed to muster a laugh. “Oh indeed, no secret!”

“Very well, then who
is
Daphne?”

She was wearing a long, close-fitting olive dress which was pleated below the knees, obviously intended to give her free movement in awkward places like ship's companionways. Her hair was long and the colour of honey except on the top and sides, where the sun had bleached it. She had left her hat below in the cabin, he noticed. Her face was heart-shaped but with high cheekbones, and her nose–

“I shan't allow myself to be inspected until you tell me about Daphne,” she said with feigned sternness.

“I really can't tell you,” Ramage found himself stammering.

“You are blushing,” she said. “Is she very beautiful?”

The devil take it, Ramage thought: she is a stranger who through Sidney has known of me for years; she is being persistent, and if I do not answer now I shall never hear the last of it.

“She's very beautiful, yes; but she's cold and lifeless and ignores me completely.”

“You set me a puzzle,” she said. “Now I have to guess who Daphne is! Could I have met her?”

“No, you could not possibly,” he said, now alarmed. “She doesn't exist. She's imaginary.”

She stood closer and murmured: “The Daphne I saw in your eyes existed: I was watching you. You looked round, saw me and said ‘Daphne'. Had it not been so quiet I might have thought you said ‘Damn me!' from surprise, but I was sure you said ‘Daphne' and you've just confirmed it.”

“Confirmed it?” Ramage exclaimed. “How? I said I didn't know anyone of that name!”

“There's some association, then. Ah – you
are
blushing under all that sun-tan. Tell me, or you'll never have a moment's peace.”

“Oh, very well,” Ramage said ungraciously. “A marble statue. Of Daphne. You've never seen it.”

“I hope I have,” she said. “As a very young girl when I felt clumsy and ugly, when I was making the Grand Tour and seeing what Italy had to offer. Let me see, Daphne is tall and slender, both arms are lifted in the air, and most of her is naked. Except for her left leg, which is turning into the bark of a tree trunk, and her hands too are changing into sprigs of laurel, and she is crying out to her father for help to stop this terrible metamorphosis – and close, holding her with one hand but helpless to do anything, is Apollo, from whom she is fleeing. You flatter me, Captain!” She moved back a pace, as if to let him see her more clearly. “Surely I am not really like the Daphne created by Bernini!”

His eyes dropped to her breasts, outlined perfectly beneath the dress, and he could imagine the flat belly on which, in the statue, Apollo's hand rested.

He looked up to find two grey eyes watching him. Daring him? Certainly far from offended. Yes, she understood: she knew that her warm body had just been compared with one of the most exquisite female bodies ever revealed in marble, and the comparison apparently neither offended nor embarrassed her. Those grey eyes, the calm look, the complete composure seemed to be saying: “Well, what is the verdict?”

And he heard her say, softly: “Well, what is the verdict?”

“You know already,” he said. “I recognized you at once.”

“I always thought,” she said conversationally, “that Bernini's Apollo was too young. In my imagination I had always thought him older – about your age, I suppose.”

“Daphne is as I always thought her,” he muttered, finding his breath reluctant to go down to his lungs.

“My brother will be wondering where we are,” she said. “Or what we are talking about, anyway.”

 

The meal was the most sparkling that Ramage could remember: the long and dangerous voyage that Yorke, Southwick and he had made (with Jackson, Stafford and Rossi) in the Post Office packet to discover why the ships were being captured now turned into a tale of teasing and hilarious episodes (hilarious when told now; terrifying at the time) which kept the three men glowing with reminiscence and many times brought protests from an almost incoherent Alexis, weakened by laughter and hiccoughs as the narrative began in Jamaica and proceeded to Portugal. The afternoon was finally brought to an end when Aitken passed the word that a lieutenant had arrived from the flagship with a pouch full of papers for Ramage.

They comprised, as he complained sourly to Southwick, just about every paper an admiral's imaginative clerk could draw up. For the two prizes – a bundle of papers including the surveys of their hulls by the master carpenter of the Barbados yard and two carpenters from the fleet; on their sails by the
Queen
's master and the master attendant at the yard; on their guns by the flagship's gunner and two more from other ships; on their provisions by the flagship's purser and master, assisted by two other masters…and so it went on. In one of the French frigates, a cask of red wine with a loose bung had turned to vinegar – so the contents were valued as vinegar, not wine…

Yorke, Southwick and Alexis waited while he turned the pages – he had wanted to glance through all the papers, in case any were urgent, before saying goodbye to the Yorkes because at the moment he had no hint when the convoy was to sail.

Ah, there was the final valuation for one of the frigates: £11,384 11s 6d.

He skimmed through the second survey until he came to the valuation: £1,284 6s 2d less. That made a total of £21,484, which in turn meant that Admiral Clinton's eighth (which he did not have to share with a second-in-command because he had not joined Clinton off Brest at the time the
Calypso
sailed) was about £2,600, with £5,300 or so for himself, £2,600 for the
Calypso
's officers, master and surgeon, the same for the midshipmen, other warrant officers, Marine sergeant and so on, and the rest of the ship's company would share £5,300. Considering the pay of an ordinary seaman was 19 shillings a month, the wild hour it had taken to capture each of the frigates had been profitable.

He saw Southwick watching him and guessed the old master realized he had reached the valuations – which were in fact the prices at which Rear-Admiral Tewtin was prepared to buy in the prizes and put them into service with the Royal Navy. Fortunately these sort of purchases rarely led to disputes: the Admiralty and the Navy Board had long ago put a price on ships' tonnages with allowances for age and condition, and on just about every object to be found in a ship, so the various surveys carried out by men who did not stand to gain or lose a penny were usually very fair.

Ramage read out the total figures.

Alexis, who knew that the two frigates concerned were the prizes the
Calypso
had captured at Devil's Island, gave a contemptuous sniff. “That doesn't seem a very good price for two splendid frigates!”

“Please excuse my sister,” Yorke said jocularly.

“But no,” Alexis protested, “there's not a ship in
our
fleet whose hull is not insured for more than three times one of those frigates.”

“They carry more than three times the cargo!” Yorke said.

“I'm talking of the hull insurance only. Anyway, they're not so dangerous to capture,” Alexis protested, to be calmed by a smiling Southwick.

“If we captured such a French merchant ship laden with cargo, ma'am, we'd probably get three times the prize money.”

Ramage nodded in agreement and opened the next packet. His orders for the convoy. “Seventy-two ships,” he commented to no one in particular. “All the ships rendezvous here, thank goodness.”

“Why is that a good thing?” Alexis asked, collecting a frown from her brother. “Oh, pardon me: these are not matters concerning women!”

“They concern the
Emerald
, so they concern you,” Ramage said idly, his eyes skimming down the copperplate handwriting of Tewtin's clerk. “The advantage of sailing from here is that all seventy-two ships must assemble here by the set date, and then we all sail together. But if we started with, say, twenty-five from here, and then went on to pick up ten from St Vincent, and another fifteen from St Lucia, and the rest from Tortola, we'd be delayed a month…at St Vincent there'd be three ships still waiting for the last of their cargo, and they'd have a sorry story that if I did not wait they'd have to sail in the next convoy and they'd be ruined…and so it would go on. Here, if there are only sixty-five ships ready when the convoy is due to sail, Admiral Tewtin will send us on our way…”

“I love Barbados,” Alexis said. “Can Sidney and I persuade you to come to the races with us tomorrow afternoon – after a meal on board the
Emerald
?”

Ramage looked at Yorke for confirmation but he grinned. “You'll get used to it,” he said cheerfully. “I own the shares in the company but she runs it.”