Ramage's Challenge (18 page)

“Then what happened?” Ramage prompted.

“I kicked the man with the lantern. He dropped it but fired his pistol at the same time—accidentally, I think. That was the bullet that ricocheted round the room and hit me. I bolted for the door in the darkness, and someone else fired another shot— I don't know where that went. As I ran out of the gateway I heard Mr Orsini call my name, to show where he was, and I was very grateful because my arm was useless, and I was beginning to feel dizzy. After that, Mr Orsini did everything.”

“That's not what Mr Orsini says,” Ramage remarked.

“Well, sir, he helped me down the hill, and there was a
contadino
's hut with a lantern. We went in and the women told us that a French ship had taken away the hostages, confirming the unlucky gambler's story completely.”

“Did you threaten these women?”

Rossi glanced quickly at Orsini, obviously puzzled. “No, sir. There was no need. The man was completely drunk, and he fell asleep while we talked to him.”

Ramage laughed and reassured the seaman. “I asked only because Mr Orsini said that, although you were swaying and he thought you'd faint any moment, you charmed the old woman and the mother with her baby.”

Rossi's face went red. He was not a man to blush, but he was pleased at the midshipman's compliment. “Well, sir, the women were
proprie Toscane.
They wanted to help once they discovered we were Italian. I know I was nearly fainting,” he said with a grin, “but I remember Mr Orsini suggesting a name for the little baby, who hadn't been christened yet.”

Ramage looked round at Orsini with eyebrows raised.

“Just polite talk, sir; I wanted to make sure she would not gossip. That reminds me, they thought we—the
Calypso,
that is— were the ship that took the hostages away, and that we had returned to anchor out here.”

“Both of you are sure there was no hint of where the hostages were being taken?”

Rossi and Orsini shook their heads, Rossi wincing as the quick movement jarred his arm.

“Very well, my thanks to the pair of you. I gather that Mr Hill was about to shoot you both when you rowed round to Cala Pozzarello in that fisherman's boat. That wasn't the time to forget the nightjar call and start shouting, Mr Orsini.”

Orsini looked embarrassed. “I've always dreaded something like that, sir, and finally it happened …”

“You were lucky Mr Hill recognized your voice.”

Ramage stood up. “Pass the word for Mr Aitken and Mr Southwick as you go out, please,” he told Hill, “and hoist in the boats.”

When Southwick and Aitken arrived, he pulled the Tyrrhenian Sea chart from the rack above, opened it, and held it down with paperweights.

“Very well, Mr Southwick, so Bonaparte's villains have decamped with our birds. Where do you think we should start looking?”

“The islands, sir; that's about all I have to offer. I can't see the French using a ship to move them up or down the mainland coast. They marched them to Pitigliano from somewhere up north.”

“From Florence, sir?” Aitken asked. “Isn't that the most likely place to find a crowd of wealthy English enjoying themselves when the war started again?”

Ramage nodded. “I'd
expect
to find them in Rome or Florence. A few in Naples, perhaps. But most of them visiting the artistic treasures of Florence.”

He thought for a minute or two, his imagination spreading a map of northern Italy in front of him. Yes, Florence was most likely. All the English visitors (and Scots, Welsh, and Irish) might have been rounded up there, like so many cattle, and then the French would have sorted out the important ones and selected their hostages … Hmmm …
hostages
meant people both special and different, and the French would separate them from the others. And intend to keep them separate? Yes, but where? Well, the obvious needs were reasonable accommodation and good security. The Palazzo degli Orsini at Pitigliano had been perfect in every respect.

He opened a pair of dividers and measured the distance between Florence and Pitigliano. About one hundred miles, more by the twisting roads. So … that told him the French did not hesitate to march the hostages one hundred miles. That, in turn, probably meant they would not hesitate to march them two or three hundred miles: there was no hurry, and there was precious little else to occupy the Army of Italy at the moment.

The conclusion to be drawn from all that? Well, the fact that the hostages had been put on board a ship (on board a frigate that, by chance, looked like the
Calypso;
a sister-ship, probably, because it was a very successful design) must mean that they were being moved to somewhere not accessible by land.

An island, in other words. Sardinia, Corsica? No, he had ruled them out earlier because of bandits and guerrillas. The French were not popular in either island, and the hostages might be killed or freed—there was no certainty either way.

Which left the tiny islands just off the north coast of Sicily (which did not seem likely) or those in the Tyrrhenian Sea.

Which was what Southwick had just said, although, Ramage noted ruefully, that was Southwick's instinct; Ramage had reached the same conclusion by a more devious route.

“It won't take long to check them all, sir,” Aitken said.

“Providing we don't meet a French squadron—or even the French frigate that took them away from here.”

“Heh,” snorted Southwick, “it's been a long time since we had a decent action. The ship's company are getting soft.”

“Don't tell Rossi that,” Ramage said as he measured off a distance on the chart with the dividers. “We'll weigh at dusk—then no one keeping a watch from Argentario or Talamone will be sure where we are bound. Not,” he added, remembering Orsini's words earlier, “that anyone thinks we are anything but a French national ship.”

D
AYLIGHT showed they had anchored in the darkness at just the right position, with the island of Giglio half a mile away on the starboard hand as the
Calypso
's bow swung slightly to a southerly breeze.

Ramage stood with Aitken and Southwick while they examined the island with telescopes.

“You see,” Ramage said, “it's just a mountain put down haphazardly in the sea, like so many islands round here. Just look at that village on the top—you could mistake it for a castle. Castellated walls with a hundred or so houses inside, judging by the roofs we can see. I'll bet none of the people up there are fishermen! Imagine the long walk downhill to the port, and then the climb back up the hill again with the day's catch. Castello, that's the name of it. Strong enough as a refuge if the Saracens are sighted.”

Aitken nodded. “Yes, everyone would bolt up there from the port and from that village on the other side of the island— Campese, isn't it?—and slam the gates shut. Load the rusty muskets, boil up some olive oil—water, too, I expect—and be ready to pour it down on the heads of the Saracens as they try to batter the gate down and climb the walls. If I was inside the Castello with those heathens shouting and screaming for my blood and my wife's body, I think I'd sooner rely on boiling oil than damp gunpowder in rusty muskets.”

“The Saracens—the people here always call them
i Saraceni,
incidentally, not Barbary pirates—have been raiding this coast for hundreds of years. To these people, a Saracen raid is about like a severe storm to the Isle of Wight,” Ramage said. “When the Aragonese owned this part of the coast they did these people a service by building the lookout towers, forts, and places like Castello, though I doubt they received much thanks at the time because the local people had to quarry the stone and do the work.

“Just look at that terracing on those slopes: they must press a good deal of wine. Come to think of it, they produce a very good white, and it travels. The trouble with that Argentario wine is that it hardly reaches Orbetello before the shaking of the cart (or donkey, if they use small barrels) has turned it to vinegar.”

Ramage resumed examining the island. “That's a tiny harbour, just big enough for fishing boats. No one seems interested in us. But—that's odd. Very odd …”

Aitken and Southwick waited for an explanation, and when none came the master gave a sniff that Ramage recognized as “You don't have to tell us
but …
”

“Castello,” Ramage said. “They have a flagpole. Seems to be the only thing up there that's been erected in the last hundred years—and it's been painted. Once the sun is up, it'll stand out like a pencil.”

“And if they hoist a Tricolour …” Southwick said.

“If they hoist a Tricolour, it'll save you walking up the hill to see if the French are there,” Ramage said.

Aitken looked again with his telescope and then said, “But that doesn't actually prove the hostages are there, does it, sir?”

“No, only that there's a French garrison, which one would expect. A small garrison, anyway—probably less than fifty men.”

“Well,” Southwick observed, “no one over there in the port seems very excited that we've arrived. If the commander of the garrison thought we had anything for him, I'm sure he'd have sent out a boat by now.”

“Perhaps they don't get up early,” Aitken said. “If I spent much time here, I'd probably slip into these Frenchified habits— eating and drinking too much and sleeping late.”

“Hard life for the Italians, though,” Ramage said. “Ask the first hundred people you meet when they last tasted meat, and the answer will probably be months ago—and that was a tough, old goat, which had dried up and gave no more milk. Fish, artichokes, bread made from the flour they grind from the bit of wheat they manage to grow (as long as a
colpo di vento
didn't knock it flat just before harvesting time). But no flour means no
pasta
and no bread. Ask them about
dentice, polpo, mormora, triglia
and
seppia—
they're the fish they catch and live on—but don't look for meat.”

“I fancy some fresh fish,” Southwick said.

“We'll get you some
polpo,
” Ramage promised.

“What's that?” Southwick asked suspiciously.

“Octopus. A great favourite. Good if you're hungry—you can chew it for hours, like tanned leather.”

“Do we hoist a Tricolour, sir?” Aitken asked.

Ramage thought a moment and then shook his head. “If they look down at us from Castello, they won't even notice we're not flying any colours. They'll assume we're that other frigate, since we look alike. That is, if the first frigate ever came here.” He eyed Southwick. “You haven't convinced our first lieutenant yet that the French Navy aren't quite as fussy as the Royal Navy about day-to-day routine.”

“I don't want them setting him a bad example,” Southwick explained. “Anyway, now we're at Giglio what do you propose doing, sir?”

Thinking he wished he knew, Ramage closed his telescope with a snap and turned to look back eastward, where the sun was beginning to lift over the mainland, a golden orb in a clear sky. It was almost in line with the peak of Argentario, which, being less than a dozen miles away, stood out dark and almost menacing, its western sides streaked black and grey with shadow. To the right, in the distance, the land was flat—the Maremma marshes. To the left of Argentario was Talamone, distinguishable only because of the mountains behind it, and, fading northward into the distance, Punta Ala, with more mountains. But the peaks near the coast were small compared with those inland, the distant ones merging blue-grey into the horizon—the Apennines, which reached across into western Tuscany. Monte Amiata, Monte Labbro, and Monte Elmo, near Pitigliano, were high but mere anthills compared with those around Arezzo. And that, he told himself, is a useless survey of Tuscany's geography, and neither Aitken nor Southwick will have failed to notice that you do not have a plan waiting on the tip of your tongue.

“Giglio is like Pitigliano, except it's surrounded by water,” Ramage said casually, speaking in a deeper tone than usual, as though making a wise comment.

“Indeed it is, sir,” Southwick said, his politeness just skating round the edge of sarcasm. “Yes, indeed. To get to one, you march along dusty tracks; to get to the other you walk on the water.”

“Yes,” Ramage said, ignoring the sarcasm. “We won't have to walk on the water because we have boats, but the routine will be the same. We'll march our ‘prisoners' up to the top of the hill (to Castello) to help our bluff, and with luck we'll march ‘em down again, with the hostages.”

Both Aitken and Southwick looked up at Ramage, and the first lieutenant said, “But sir, if they have the hostages up there, surely they'll have a bigger garrison?”

Ramage walked to the taffrail and the other two men followed. “It doesn't really matter how many French there are if they have the hostages.”

When he saw the puzzled look on the faces of both Aitken and Southwick he explained evenly: “Just consider the word ‘hostage.' Supposing we had a squadron and could land five hundred seamen and marines and storm Castello. If you commanded the French garrison and guessed Bonaparte wouldn't listen to excuses if you let his hostages be rescued, what would
you
do?”

Aitken nodded slowly. “Yes, sir.
Hostages.
I'd tell the commander of the British force that if he didn't go back on board his ships and sail away again, I'd hang the hostages one at a time from the battlements.”

“Exactly,” Ramage said. “Which leaves us back with our only weapons: guile, cunning, and deception. We're in the same position as a married woman's lover: it's all right to cuckold the husband, but he must never find out—or at least not until long after the affair is over. I'm talking from the lover's point of view, of course.”