Ramage's Challenge (37 page)

As he reached the top of the vertical cliff face and found Jackson only just behind him, Ramage sat down on a rock and watched the American unwind a light line coiled round his chest and shoulders, and drop one end over the edge. There was a call from below and then, two minutes later, another, and Jackson started hauling on the line. It was obviously heavier than he had expected, and both Ramage and Orsini helped him. Finally the top step of the rope ladder appeared; then the second and third.

“Charge them a shilling a time,” Ramage said as he left Jackson securing the heavier ropes of the ladder round the rock Orsini had pointed out. Ramage wiped the perspiration from his brow before it ran into his eyes. It was a damnably hot night, apart from all this climbing, and there was little enough breeze. But was it dying? The thought suddenly alarmed him more than anything in the last 48 hours. He muttered to Orsini and both wetted a finger and held it up.

The breeze was steady, which was a good sign because a fitful breeze, coming in puffs, was usually a warning that it would die within half an hour. If only it was blowing at double the strength! Yet perhaps a gentle breeze would serve his purpose better: doubling the strength might halve the time available.

“Seems steady enough, sir,” Orsini agreed, and led on when Ramage grunted. Orsini now knew how much depended on that breeze. Originally Captain Ramage had simply asked him whether he thought it possible to attack the fort, and he had answered that he thought it was. That was all, really. There was no mention of the size of the attacking force.

Orsini admitted to himself that the thought of attacking Forte delta Stella (even using every man on board the
Calypso
) was frightening: only two hundred men to storm a fortress built to withstand an army. Then later he had discovered that Mr Ramage was going to use only two parties of men, ten in one, twenty in the other.

For a time (and Orsini freely admitted it) he was in such a panic that he debated whether or not to go to Mr Ramage and confess he had been stupidly over-optimistic in his report. Then,
Mamma mia,
he had heard Mr Ramage's plan and was thankful he had done nothing. Audacious! That was a splendid English word, so near the Latin and Italian, but just different enough to convey that extra something that Mr Ramage so often provided from out of nowhere, it seemed.

Every piece of audacity was so well tailored, be it attacking Porto Ercole with the bomb ketches a couple of years ago (more, actually), or dealing with the pirates at Trinidade (where Mr Ramage had met his future wife), or escaping from France when war broke out again and while he was on his honeymoon. Orsini stopped his memory working: Lady Sarah had vanished while Mr Ramage was crossing the Atlantic to Devil's Island. Yet Lady Sarah was, Orsini knew, just the sort of woman he would himself like to have as a wife. Now she was missing, probably drowned.

“So at last we reach the top, eh?” Ramage commented. “Thank goodness it will be downhill going back!”

“Do you think the ladies will be able to climb down?”

“You're looking a long way ahead,” Ramage said banteringly, “but if we manage to get ‘em this far, I think they'll get down all right.”

Ramage looked across at the fort. As its name indicated, it was star-shaped, and with the moon lighting some parts and casting deep shadow over the rest, he was reminded of a starfish tossed up on a sandy beach: apparently it had no eyes, no mouth, and no way of moving—yet put back in the sea, it walked, ate, and seemed to know where it was going. Momentarily Ramage had the uncomfortable thought that perhaps hidden eyes
were
watching from the fort, that there was more life there than he gave credit.

He sat down amid the coarse grass on the cliff top and waited for the men to get up the rockface. His watch showed it was just an hour past midnight. Plenty of time before dawn. In fact, a chilling thought, some of his own men and those of the French garrison might be living the rest of their lives between now and dawn. Not the hostages, though, he told himself. He remembered the arguments he had had with the husbands.

Sir Henry was hard put not to overrule Ramage and insist on coming, and so were the two other admirals, until Ramage had been forced to tell them, brutally, that they were out of condition, would be hopeless shooting with muskets and probably with pistols as well, were completely untrained for this kind of fighting (in which the Calypsos excelled) and—this had been the final argument—for every one of the admirals he took, he would have to leave a trained Calypso behind.

The repulsive Cargill, not consulted since he was a bachelor, had started off by insisting that he should be in command, proclaiming that this was an attack for which soldiers were trained, and so on. Again Ramage had been brutal. No, he corrected himself, his contempt for Cargill had made him almost vicious, and when Cargill had tried to assert his authority in front of all the other hostages, Ramage had asked him where he had seen active service. When the general evaded the question, Ramage had dismissed the whole question with a curt, “It is no secret, sir, that you had neither seen a shot fired in anger nor heard one until the
Calypso
fired at that French frigate.”

Yes, it was nasty, it was probably unfair, and it was many other things, but it was necessary, and, Sir Henry had said to him privately afterwards, Cargill had asked for it. Had he kept his mouth shut, everything would have gone off smoothly, but once again Cargill had wanted to play soldiers, and this time the result could be not only disastrous for the Calypsos, but lethal for the hostages up in the fort.

Aitken scrambled over the edge of the cliff and joined his captain. Ramage was secretly pleased to note that the first lieutenant was also panting.

“That rope ladder was a good idea of Orsini's, sir,” he gasped. “It'd be a devil of a climb without it.” He paused. “But you came up without it, sir.”

“Yes,” Ramage said, adding teasingly, “a question of seniority.”

“Aye, there's many advantages in being a poor lieutenant if that cliff face is the price o' being on the Post List!”

Several seamen followed and squatted down in the grass behind the officers. Then Hill came up, leading several men who very carefully lifted wooden buckets over the edge and equally carefully set them down again. Rennick was next, followed by Sergeant Ferris and five marines. Rennick had wanted to bring all the marines, but Ramage had pointed out that Kenton, left in command of the ship, needed a force in case the French arrived from Porto Ercole.

Finally Southwick, puffing and blowing but cheerful, arrived and announced, “There! If I can haul myself up this cliff, then a convoy of rheumaticky grandmothers can let themselves down! The boats have returned to the ship, sir,” he reported to Ramage.

“Very well. Now, Mr Aitken, fall in the two parties and then we can move on and finish tonight's business.”

Ramage again tested the breeze while Aitken sorted out the seamen, and then he inspected the buckets. They were doing their job, and the men responsible for them knew what they were expected to do. Ramage walked with Hill until they were out of earshot of the men.

“Hill, I don't want to make you nervous, but I must make sure you realize the success of the whole attack depends on your positioning. Almost more important, you and your men mustn't be seen by the sentry—or the people roused out when he raises the alarm. Until you hear shots—
if
you hear shots—you keep out of sight. If there's shooting, and if you've finished your job, then you can join in.”

“Yes, sir, I understand. Seems a long way from the great cabin of the
Salvador del Mundo!
”

“If it all goes wrong, we may yet find ourselves back there!” Ramage said grimly and recalled the strange court martial, where a captain's insanity had put his life in danger and Hill, a bored young lieutenant on the port admiral's staff, had asked Ramage to be allowed to sail with him.

Aitken joined them. “The two parties are ready, sir.” Then he asked Hill, “You're sure you have enough men? Ten, and five buckets?”

“They'll be enough,” Hill said confidently and excused himself.

“He doesn't seem nervous,” Aitken commented. “Bit o' luck getting him when Wagstaffe was promoted. Now, sir, about our party. I've put the seamen in the lead, with Rennick's marines following. Rennick's not very pleased, but I pointed out that he would insist on his men wearing those clodhopping boots!”

“You're quite right,” Ramage said. “The most important part of this is going to be done crawling on our bellies, and seamen with just pistols and cutlasses are less likely to make a noise. Rennick will get his chance if any real fighting starts. Right, we're ready so—” he took out his watch and turned it so the moon lit the face, “—as it's almost half past one we can move off. We'll give Hill's party a couple of minutes' start along the edge of the cliff, then Orsini and Rossi can lead us to the fort.”

The track (now used only by goats and sheep and the lone
contadino
) dipped and climbed and twisted as it led to Forte della Stella, which, as the patchy cloud drifted across the moon, alternately disappeared in the darkness and then reappeared, almost ghostly and unreal, its grey stone walls fleetingly silvered, but stark, remote, and menacing. As the track took a final turn, which brought them in sight of the main gate—the only gate, Ramage corrected himself—he decided that it was time for the final approach on hands and knees.

“This track curves round to the left on its way to Porto Ercole and leaves the fort on the right,” Orsini explained quietly. “About two hundred yards farther ahead there's a fork to the right, a smaller track which goes off to the fort, but Rossi and I took a shortcut through the
macchia,
starting here. It's about one hundred and fifty yards to the gate.”

Ramage again pulled out his watch, waited for a cloud to drift clear of the moon, and saw they had taken only ten minutes. Hill's men would not be in position yet, and the
Calypso
's third lieutenant knew he was not to start until at least half an hour after leaving Ramage's party. Twenty minutes to go … more than enough time, Ramage decided.

Even after letting Rossi and Orsini get three or four yards ahead, so that the sage and juniper bushes they pushed aside did not spring back in his face, Ramage felt his cheeks and forehead smarting with many scratches from unexpected long twigs. The dam' pistols chafed the skin at his waist and seemed to have stove in his lower ribs. The cutlass lashed on his back thudded monotonously against his spine, despite the canvas covering and marline lashing, and every sage and thyme bush and juniper must be the home of a hundred hungry mosquitoes.

The smell of thyme and sage (and rosemary—”That's for remembrance”) brought back memories of the desperate affair several years ago, not far from here (in fact, he could see the Torre di Buranaccio on the mainland from the cliff top) when he and Jackson had rescued Gianna. Another lifetime. Now, crawling on his belly towards the fort, it was hard to believe he had ever been there, and that for years he had thought he loved Gianna and cursed the differing nationalities and religions that prevented them marrying.

Then, some years later, he had met Sarah and married her. Now Sarah was probably drowned, and Gianna murdered by Bonaparte's men, and here was Captain Ramage back again, a few miles from where the first part of the story began. Only now he was alone. Alone, probably a widower, though his thirtieth birthday was distant, and crawling on his belly, with Jackson once again close behind him.

One day this thrice-blasted war would end, and he would go on half-pay and return to St Kew to live on the family estate. Cornwall attracted him, and there would be a job for Jackson, who did not want to return to America, and the widower and bachelor would gently slide into old age, nodding knowingly about a newly born foal, cursing a late frost which caught blossom on the apple trees, and making sure the men doing muckspreading had plenty to drink. Rheumatism would set in, and he and Jackson would creak and reminisce over old times. About rescuing Gianna, capturing the
Calypso,
raiding Curaçao, sailing into Trinidade off the Brazilian coast (no, they'd both keep off that because it would remind them of Sarah), and they'd reminisce, too, about this affair.

Already his knees felt almost raw: there was as much rock here as hardened earth—indeed, it was the sort of ground on which sage and juniper thrived. Yes, in the quiet of St Kew they would sit and reminisce of an autumn evening—
as long as they survived the next hour.
And the nearer they crawled to the fort, which seemed to double in size every twenty yards, the remoter seemed the chance of this gamble succeeding.

It
was
a gamble, and Ramage recalled how pompously he had told Sir Henry a day or so ago that he was contemptuous of gamblers, because the element of chance could usually be removed by careful planning. Sir Henry had nodded politely, although most likely he wanted to laugh aloud. Anyway, his stake was down; the dice were rolling. And now Orsini was whispering urgently that they were about thirty yards from the end of the
macchia
and the beginning of the gravel square in front of the fort. Ramage turned and passed the order back for the column to halt.

Giving enough time for the word to pass from man to man in a whisper, Ramage then told Aitken, who had been following him, that everyone should unwrap his cutlass (but keep it down low so that the moon did not glint on the blade), load pistols, and put them on half-cock.

Ramage did not pass orders for the marines; Rennick knew exactly what he was doing. Ramage pictured Southwick unwinding the long strip of canvas from his great two-handed sword, which could take off a man's head with a couple of blows. One blow, probably, if rage put extra strength in Southwick's arms.