Ramage's Challenge (15 page)

Yet … yet … there was no point in having hostages unless your enemy knew about them. Their value was that the enemy knew you had them, and that something unpleasant would happen to them unless he did whatever was demanded as the price of their lives or liberty.

Dead or a prisoner? And the same went for Gianna: assassinated or a prisoner? Yes, he thought bitterly, fear is not knowing. He thought he would never sleep, but eventually he did, wakened as dawn broke by Jackson's insistent, “Sir … sir.”

Another day … another march … more decisions … hell fire and damnation, he was more tired than he realized. He wanted to sleep, free of those nightmares which were not nightmares because he was still awake.

Jackson passed him his boots and then waited to see if there were any orders. Ramage shook his head. His mind had never been so empty of ideas or, for that matter, so hostile to them. Ideas meant action, and every bone in his body seemed bruised from marching and sleeping on the hard ground, every muscle stretched beyond its limits.

There was a smell of burning, and he glanced round to see that the men had lit a small bonfire and over it swung a pot, suspended from a tripod of three tree branches.

Sailors always wanted something hot to drink for breakfast, and the fact that they were in the lee of a row of cypress, on the road from Manciano to the sea, apparently made no difference. Well, to the onlooker it was natural enough: soldiers were always lighting fires to cook their food.

An hour later the column was marching westwards. For once the sun was cool and at their backs, and by noon they expected to be resting in the shade of the cypress, only a mile short of the Via Aurelia, free to swim in the Albinia river. Wash in it, anyway, as long as oxen had not been sloshing about upstream. Ramage rubbed his chin, the bristles rasping. Within the first hour he was back on board the
Calypso,
he vowed, he would shave.

They had just come in sight of the cypress grove when Rossi laughed and pointed ahead. Coming towards them in the distance was a donkey, and on its back the same hunched figure they had first seen going the other way.

“He's sold his own wine,” Orsini said, “and from the look of it he spent some of the money sampling the wine of Orbetello.”

“Let's hope he's sober enough to talk sense,” Ramage growled, “otherwise you can dip him in the river a few times. Though, come to think of it, that won't put him in the right frame of mind to help us!”

The man turned out to be tired, not drunk, but he was extremely nervous, though there seemed to be no obvious reason. Ramage gestured to his men to fall out and rest along the side of the track, and then, with Orsini and Rossi, squatted down on the ground, offering the man some wine from a flask. He shook his head.

“You sold your wine for a good price?”

“Yes,” he said abruptly, as though he did not want to discuss it.

“Is Orbetello crowded?” Ramage asked casually.

“No more than usual.”

“You stayed longer than you expected?”

“Yes,” the man said, rubbing his head as though trying to erase an unpleasant memory. “
Mamma mia,
when my wife hears …”

“What happened?” Rossi asked sympathetically, responding at once to Ramage's wink.

“Gambling,” the man muttered. “I can't resist it. I used the wine money.”

“But you won!” Rossi said jovially.

“Yes—to begin with. The first night I doubled it.”

“Why are you so miserable, then?”

“You know
scopa.
I lost nearly all of it the next night.
Scopa
…
Mamma mia,
they swept me up.” The man still had a sense of humour.
Scopa,
the name of a card game, also meant broom.

“Anyway, you still have some
soldi
left, so cheer up!”

Again the man shook his head. “I felt so badly—I knew my wife would be angry. Miserable, I was, and so I started drinking …”

“And that's where the rest of the money went,” Rossi commented.

“No, only some of it. But I drank so much I went to sleep in the road outside the taverna, and when I woke up …”

“Your pockets were empty.”

“Yes, some thieving
stronzo
…”

Rossi looked at the man and rubbed the side of his nose with a forefinger. “Perhaps your wife would not be so angry if she thought that
ladrone
stole
all
the wine money.”

The man thought for a few moments and then shook his head. “No, I've been away too long for that. If I had come back the next day with that story, it would have been all right, but I stayed longer … she knows.”

“Not the first time, eh?” Ramage said understandingly. “Is this why your father-in-law speaks so badly of you?”

“You know about that, then?”

“At Pitigliano, at the sign of the scissors? Yes, of course. By the way, one of those
falegnami
has closed.”

“I'm not surprised,” the man said, shaking his head. “The one on the gate side? Yes, well, he drinks, you know.”

And now, Ramage thought, we are all friends together. Time to ask some more questions without arousing the man's suspicions. “You didn't play
scopa
with any of the French soldiers, then?”

The man looked up at him, his eyes bloodshot and squinting as though the light was too bright. “The French soldiers went two weeks ago. The ones that came from Pitigliano, that is. The usual garrison is still there, but they don't play
scopa.
Some French game they have, with different cards from ours.”

“So the taverns are quieter now,” Ramage commented. “Where have the French taken their money to now, I wonder?”

The man looked directly at Ramage. “
Signore,
I don't know what you are doing, but if you are on the side of the French, surely you would know the answers to all these questions?”

“The Army of Italy is a big one,” Ramage said vaguely. “Orders go astray, mistakes are made …”

“Permesso?”
Rossi asked.

Ramage nodded, giving the Genovese permission to say what he wanted. Rossi understood people instinctively; he had a knack, probably learned in the stews of Genoa, and it was a knack which would still work in the open fields of Tuscany.

“Amico mio,”
he said, “I think you have guessed.”

“I never make guesses, I'm always wrong. And just now—” he looked at the pistols tucked in Ramage's belt, “—making guesses could be dangerous.”

“All right, don't guess,” Rossi said. “All we ask is that you answer our questions if you wish, but if you want to remain silent, then please don't betray us the minute you get to Manciano.”

“You mean I
could
betray you? That you are not with the French? What about those men?” He gestured to where Gilbert was sitting.

“Yes, you could betray us, and they are not French. They are simply dressed in French uniforms.”

The man turned from Rossi and looked directly at Ramage, paused a moment as though reassessing him, and then said, “You are the leader, eh?”

Ramage nodded.

“You are Italian?”

Ramage shook his head. “I was not born an Italian, but these two were.”

“
That
I can tell. Once a Genovese, always a Genovese. And the youngster, he is Tuscan.
Allora,
I help you. You have my word. Not,” he added, “that that means much to you, but I am known as an honest man.”

“Yes,” Ramage said, “I see that. We are looking for the French soldiers who were in Pitigliano.”

“The French soldiers or the
Inglesi
prisoners?”

“If they are still together, does it matter?”

The man grinned and shook his head. “Two weeks ago—I know the date because I had to go to Orbetello to do some shopping—the French took their hostages to Santo Stefano. As I rode back along the road (along the Via Aurelia, before taking this turning), I saw a French ship sailing into the port. I think it took them all away.”

“You don't know the destination?”

The man shrugged his shoulders. “No. It was not a big ship, but there are many places. Giglio, Elba, Montecristo … even Corsica or Sardinia.”

“Thank you,” Ramage said. “I know you have told us this because we are
paesani,
but I wish we could help you with
soldi,
so that your wife is not so angry. Unfortunately we have neither French nor local money in our pockets.”

“I guessed that,” the man said, “and I would not have accepted it anyway. I am not a soldier or—” he winked at Ramage, “—a sailor, but I am a
proprio Toscano,
even if my father-in-law says bad things about me. Tell me, did all go well in Pitigliano?”

“Quiet. The few people we saw helped us. We were there only a few minutes.”

The peasant nodded. “When I first met you, I wondered but dare not risk saying anything. Even now, you could shoot me, saying I am a traitor.”

Ramage pulled one of the pistols from his belt, flicked open the pan so the man could see the powder, and shut it again. Then he cocked the gun and gave it butt-first to the man. “If you think you are going to be shot, you can take me with you.”

The man handed back the gun. “
Grazie, signore,
but let us both try to stay alive—me, to face my wife, you, to find the prisoners …”

B
ACK on board the
Calypso,
once more dressed in breeches and stockings, shirt, stock, and uniform coat, Ramage again reflected wryly that, as far as he was concerned, the one benefit brought about by the French Revolution was substituting trousers for knee-breeches.

The
sans culotte,
the “without breeches,” could kneel or sit in comfort. Breeches were one of the most uncomfortable, confining garments yet devised for men, and the revolutionaries were sensible to dispose of them, thus ensuring a liberty not envisaged in their windy rhetoric. And from what he and Sarah had seen during their honeymoon, French women had achieved a similar freedom in refusing to wear corsets. However, this often gave men an unfair advantage: a fellow with skinny shanks or bow legs looked much better in trousers since the tubes of cloth hid the defects. Women, in abandoning corsets, all too often looked— well, abandoned! Those lucky enough to have slim figures looked very beautiful in the new Grecian style now popular, but the plump women looked like barrels draped in sheets of muslin.

Looking around his cabin at Aitken, Southwick, and Hill, all of whom were watching him attentively, waiting to hear his plan for their next move in finding the missing hostages, he wondered what their reaction would be if they knew he had been thinking of
sans culottes,
and how he hated having to wear breeches, and how plump Frenchwomen fared badly in the Revolution.

“They might be kept prisoner in Santo Stefano despite what our gambling friend said,” he commented, “but I doubt it. The Fortezza is the only place big enough to hold them and the guards—and the obvious question to ask ourselves is: ‘Why there?' The Orsini Palace in Pitigliano is large, much more comfortable, and in every way more suitable. This makes me certain that Santo Stefano was being used simply as a port and that, by now, a ship has called and taken them somewhere else.”

“Dare we risk sailing off to look for them somewhere else when they might still be at the Fortezza, sir?” Southwick asked, adding one of his you-might-be-mistaken sniffs.

Ramage recognized the sniff and smiled. “No, we daren't. I was just coming to that. Because I know Santo Stefano quite well, the cutter will land me tonight on a stretch of beach about a mile east of the port and I'll go in and find out.”

“Sir!” Aitken exclaimed. “Surely that's too big a risk compared with what we could possibly gain. Rossi could easily find out. Or young Orsini—it's just the sort of job he'd be good at.”

“You'd sooner risk the probable ruler of Volterra than me?”

“Most certainly, sir,” Aitken said flatly. “We've Admiralty orders to carry out, and losing you means risking that we can't complete them. It's unfortunate that Orsini might have inherited Volterra at this particular time, but he's simply a midshipman in the King's service. And,” he added as an afterthought, “we've never worried before about risking his life.”

That was true enough, and Ramage imagined Orsini's reaction if he thought he was deliberately being kept out of danger. “Very well, we'll send him in tonight with Rossi.”

“May I command the cutter, sir?” Hill asked quickly. “I've a lot to learn about this sort of work. I'm afraid being a lieutenant on board the
Salvador del Mundo
didn't help much.”

“Made you a very good escort for accused officers,” Ramage said teasingly.

Hill sighed and then grinned, “With respect, sir, your court martial changed my life. If I hadn't been your escort and asked if I could serve with you, I'd still be in Plymouth Sound, chasing after the admiral and worrying that my stock wasn't properly ironed.”

“You're more likely to reach a ripe old age serving in a guard-ship and waiting on an admiral, than serving as the second lieutenant in a frigate,” Ramage said ironically.

Hill shook his head. “No sir, guard-ships are
much
more dangerous than frigates.”

Ramage raised a questioning eyebrow.

“Yes, sir: every day in a guard-ship you risk dying of boredom!”

“At least that's painless,” Ramage said. “Now, tell the sentry to pass the word for Orsini and Rossi. In the meantime, Hill, let's look at our rough chart of Santo Stefano. I'll show you where the beach is. You have to land there because there are rocks and cliffs everywhere else.”

“Jackson, sir,” Southwick said.