Ramage's Challenge (12 page)

Ramage held up his hand to halt the column, and with Orsini and Rossi, walked over to stand in front of the donkey, which seemed grateful for the opportunity to stop.

This woke the man, who rubbed his eyes but did not seem startled to find himself facing soldiers. “What have I done now?” His tone was surly but deferential; these were the enemy, he seemed to imply, and they made so many rules and regulations that it was impossible for a simple
contadino
to understand or remember.

“I do not know yet,” Ramage said evenly. “Where have you come from and where are you going?”

“From just this side of Manciano, and I'm going to Orbetello to sell wine.” He slapped the barrel with his hand.

“Have you seen any strangers in the fields, or along the road— people who are obviously enemies of the Republic?” That, Ramage hoped, would reveal the attitude of at least one
contadino
towards the French and anyone who might be their enemy.

“No one. Just Giuseppe, who is my neighbour. He was out at dawn. A wise man gets as much hoeing done as possible before the sun gets hot.”

Ramage nodded affably. “Can't you sell your wine in Manciano? It's a long ride to Orbetello.”

“Manciano?” The man sounded disgusted by the name. “In Manciano half the men press their own grapes, and the other half are too mean to pay a decent price.”

“They're thirstier in Orbetello, eh?”

The man shrugged his shoulders and finally slid off the donkey. He stretched one leg and then the other and, after apparently reassuring himself he could still walk, said, “Different people. In Orbetello many men fish in the lagoon, others make charcoal. Several shops there. Not many people grow grapes. Most of the land is used for olive trees, so they need to buy wine and sell oil.”

Again Ramage nodded. “And the French troops there—they buy your wine?”

The man looked him up and down and said nothing.

“What about the French in Manciano—where do they buy wine, eh?”

“French troops do not
buy
wine from anyone,” the man said finally, as though explaining something to a child. “They just commandeer what they need. Anyway, there are no French troops in Manciano.” He stopped and thought for a moment. “Are you going to Manciano? A garrison, perhaps?”

“We are just passing through—on our way to Orvieto.”

“Yes, you would be,” the man said. “Many French there.”

“And Pitigliano, too?”

The man looked at him warily and then agreed. “And Pitigliano, too. Now, Colonel, can I go on?”

Ramage nodded; there was little more that the man could tell him. Then, suddenly, he remembered a question. “Why don't you sell your wine in Pitigliano?”

“The same reason that I can't sell it in Manciano. Too many men grow their own grapes. Anyway, I don't like Pitigliano. My wife's family live there and they've never liked me. They think she married beneath her—and her father only a tailor! You'll see his house just inside the town gate. You can't miss his sign, a pair of wooden scissors hanging over the door. Between two
falegnami,
although I wouldn't recommend either of them if you wanted a table made with four legs the same length. Can I go now?”

Ramage nodded and watched the man step back a couple of paces and then run at the donkey, jumping on to its back like a boy playing leapfrog. The donkey did not move and the man reached down beside the barrel and found a stick half as thick as his wrist.

He whacked the donkey with it, but the animal took a deep breath, stretched its neck, and brayed, the noise, as always, reminding Ramage of a cow being strangled. The man whacked again, and reluctantly the donkey began to move. Ramage waved to his column and they continued their march.

“He didn't seem to know much, sir,” Orsini commented. “Obviously not a lot happens on the outskirts of Manciano,” Ramage said dryly. “But he knows there's something unusual at Pitigliano.”

“Yes, yes,” Rossi said excitedly, his Genoese accent strong, “you noticed it too, sir! That was a strange expression on his face after you mentioned French troops in Pitigliano—as though he thought you were trying to trap him.”

“Yes, but I decided more questions would only make him more suspicious. Those hills ahead of us are just the sort where partisan bands live. He saw we were escorting prisoners so he might get word to them …”

“You think there are still partisans, sir?” Orsini asked. “There were when I escaped from Volterra, but that was a long time ago.”

“I'm sure the French have done nothing to make the partisans change their minds about the French Republic, One and Indivisible.”

“But how can partisans survive?”

“I doubt if they live like a group of bandits on the Maremma. They're probably like the man we've just seen: tilling fields most of the time, and then, one night, joining up for a raid on a French garrison, or to ambush a convoy of carts carrying supplies for garrisons.”

Rossi nodded his agreement. “That's what happened round Genoa when the French first came,” he said. “
Accidente,
I wish we had some
somaro
to ride on. That man did not look comfortable, but his feet weren't sore.”

“Not his feet,” Paolo said.

Rossi thought for several moments. “I see what you mean. He could harm himself, too.”

They reached Manciano shortly after noon, and as soon as Ramage had commandeered bread, all the cheese he could find (some extremely strong
pecorino fresco,
made of goat's milk and, according to Stafford, likely to make your hair fall out) along with several salami sausages and
fiaschi
of red wine, the column continued along the road to Pitigliano. Ramage soon halted them where they could sit in the narrow shade made by a row of cypress trees. The sun was high—but Ramage remembered the Tropics where, at certain times in the year, the sun was directly overhead and a man made no shadow.

“Take your boots off, and as soon as you've eaten, rest with your feet up. You have two hours to sleep.”

Hearing Stafford's startled but delighted exclamation, Ramage explained to the men: “No Italians or French would be marching at this time. Any movement during siesta time would make people suspicious.”

The bread was fresh, obviously baked early that morning. The salami was good, the slightly smoky taste almost overpowered by garlic, and the
pecorino fresco
was as strong as Stafford anticipated but cleaned the mouth of the greasiness left by the salami. Ramage had a sip of wine, curious about the taste of the product of Manciano's vineyards.

He pulled off his boots, rolled up his coat as a pillow, and lay back on the parched ground, his sword and two pistols beside him. The dark-green cypress were like jutting spearheads, he thought sleepily. Cicadas buzzed monotonously and Ramage realized how much the countryside was part of him because he had not paid them any attention until now, although they were loud enough. A single lark, in line with the sun, sang as if to welcome them. Five minutes later a sparrowhawk (or was it a kestrel—difficult to tell in this bright sun) poised over a small sugarloaf hill; then it dropped like a stone on its prey.

That is how we should arrive in Pitigliano, he decided: swift and unexpected. We must leave the French guards content and unsuspecting, because no one should raise the alarm for the couple of days it was going to take to shepherd the freed hostages back to the beach and on board the
Calypso.
They would need more than two days if an alarm was raised.

An alarm would mean they could not risk using the roads (even at night they might walk into ambushes), and leading the hostages across this rough country would be difficult. For a start, few would be wearing suitable footwear. And, he realized wearily, there was bound to be some damned admiral or general who would try to take command of the party. Well Ramage had made up his mind about that right from the start: the Admiralty orders put him in command, and anyone, of whatever rank, who disagreed would be given the time and position of a rendezvous near Orbetello and told to make his own way. Orbetello would be near enough—Ramage had to take into account that such hostages, not speaking Italian, would almost certainly be captured, and the French would not take long to extract the rendezvous from them. Men who had faced broadsides and barrages without flinching would quickly discover it took a different type of courage to withstand torture, although, come to think of it … yes, give two rendezvous, the second a false one which would sound plausible when “revealed” to the French.

When he woke, a glance at his watch showed he had slept for nearly two hours, and already Hill was sitting up, pulling on his boots.

Before the three groups of men fell in on the road—which was no more than a layer of white dust settled on the rock, distinguishable as a road only because no trees or bushes grew on it, and mule and donkey droppings marked the way like pencilled dots on a map—Ramage looked round carefully. The
contadini
still dozed; there was no sign of a French cavalry patrol.

As soon as they were formed up, Ramage inspected his men: not with the eye of a Rennick, but with the eyes of Frenchmen and Italians. Starting at the rear, he looked at Hill. His chin and cheeks were covered in black stubble; his hair was tousled beneath the cap. His coat was creased and dusty with a grease mark round the collar where the hair touched. The trousers needed a hitch, but there was no dust on his musket. Ramage nodded. “Napoleon the First, Emperor of the French, is proud of you. Beneath your feet—” Ramage glanced down at the dusty boots, “—Italian states have crumbled into white dust. Austria cringes. The English tremble with fear.”

“Yes, sir,” Hill agreed. “It's because these feet throb so much they must sound like five armies marching …”

He spoke in French and the other men laughed. “Auguste,” Ramage said, “wearing that uniform, do you feel any nostalgia?”

“For Brittany, yes,
mon capitaine.
But—” he waved a hand towards the fields, “—when I think of what my people are doing to these poor people, I am ashamed.”

Ramage nodded but said, “Don't feel too guilty; not ‘your people,' just a few men who seized power. Meanwhile, try to think of yourself as one of the emperor's soldiers—just in case we are challenged!”

He looked at Louis. He would put him among a thousand French soldiers and defy anyone to be suspicious. His chin was greasy from the salami and crumbs lodged among the bristles; his musket was slung over his shoulder with all the nonchalance of an old soldier who had marched across many hills and plains and fought many campaigns.

Ramage grinned at him. “Marengo with Bonaparte,” he said, naming the famous victory. “Then he reorganized Italy and made the Grand Duke of Tuscany the King of Etruria, and you've been here ever since …”

“Indeed, citizen captain. Pay months in arrears, eating only what we can forage, welcome nowhere, hated everywhere—but nevertheless a soldier of the Republic, One and Indivisible!”

Ramage laughed dryly. “Well spoken. The emperor is proud of you.

“And as for you,” he said turning to Gilbert, “you have the harried look of a veteran of Osterach, Cassano, and Jovi.” In all three battles, the French had been beaten by the Austrians.

“That's true, sir,” Gilbert said sorrowfully. “I intend to learn German. None of these Austrians speak French.”

“Very wise of you,” Ramage commented and walked on to inspect the prisoners. He looked them over and said: “You hostages are supposed to be aristocrats and naval officers of flag rank and army officers of field rank, but to me you look like pimps and panders and unlucky gamblers on the run from creditors, cuckolded husbands, and cast-off mistresses!”

“If I'd known it was goin' ter be like this,” Stafford said contritely, “I'd never ‘ave cast ‘er orf …”

“It's those French guards,” Aitken said haughtily, “they bully us. They don't treat us with the respect due to our station in society. They all seem infected with a most noxious revolutionary fervour. Most disturbing. I'd complain to our ambassador, but I can't find him.”

“One can
never
find an ambassador or a consul when he's needed,” Ramage said sympathetically. “It's their training. They must avoid responsibility, never take sides, never give an opinion, always smile and employ a good chef.”

Ramage inspected the rest of the “prisoners” and then had a hard look at Paolo and Rossi. They were Italian, all right, combining raffishness with an easy-going stance and a realistic approach to war. To a casual onlooker, the sound of a distant pistol shot would seem enough to send them scurrying into the hills for cover. Which, Ramage thought, just shows how clothes and a few days' growth of whiskers can be deceptive.

The march continued and the road twisted and turned but generally trended to the south-east along a valley. Finally, at nightfall, they reached a river, the Fiora, which started life somewhere up near Santa Fiora, among the mountains near Amiata, and snaked its way across Tuscany, crossing the road a few miles short of Pitigliano and going on to meet the sea near the Torre Montalto. But as spring had turned into scorching summer, so the Fiora had now shrunk to little more than a stream. But at least there was some water, and Ramage gave permission for the men to bathe. As soon as they were dry again and dressed, the remaining rations were issued and all the men, with the exception of a sentry, hid hands and faces under their jackets and, still able to hear the whine of hungry mosquitoes, went to sleep.

Just before the sentry was posted, Ramage spoke to Orsini, Hill, Aitken, and, to make sure the Frenchman understood that he would be in command of his section if anything happened to Hill, Gilbert.

“We start tomorrow as soon after dawn as we can. Apart from what's left in our haversacks from the
Calypso,
we've no more food. But it's only five or six miles to Pitigliano, and you all know what to do when we get there. Don't forget, Gilbert—your men answer any friendly shouts from other French troops. We've got to march through the Porta della Cittadella as though we own the place. It is a big gateway, but leave Hill and me to argue if we are challenged. The rest of you keep marching (as smartly as you can) towards the Palazzo degli Orsini, which is large and obvious. What we do after that depends on whether we've been recognized or not. You know the plan if we are accepted as genuine; you know the plan if we are discovered. I hope we shan't need to make up a new plan …”