Ramage's Challenge (9 page)

On the quarterdeck he looked at the group of men in front of him. “I have a job for volunteers,” he said. “You won't be risking broadsides, musket balls, boarding-pikes, or tomahawks. No, if things go wrong, you'll end up with your back to a wall and facing a French firing squad, aiming muskets at your gizzards. I've picked your names more or less at random—” (would that I had, he told himself) “—so any man who reckons serving in the navy should not make him risk being shot as a spy is free to go about his duties on board, and no one will think any the worse of him.”

Not a man moved, and Ramage heard Jackson mutter, “You're stuck with us, sir.” Agreement came in a variety of English regional accents, and Ramage also heard Rossi's Italian and Gilbert's French.

Ramage looked round at the men. “Thank you. Belay that last pipe about me choosing your names at random, and now I'm going to tell you what we have to do.

“Then Jackson will tell you how he and I and some other men once landed at night on the coast just south of here. This is Tuscany, not England or France. Different bird calls, different smells, different dam' nearly everything. The point is, I don't want you firing at friendly owls or thinking that a charcoal burner's banked fire is a volcano about to erupt.

“Then you'll go down to the waist of the ship where your shipmates will be waiting with cloth and thread to fit your new clothes. I want you to think of yourselves as a strolling band of actors, because if you don't put on a good performance, the audience won't jeer at you, they'll shoot.”

I
T WAS STILL too damned light. Although the new moon had already set, the clouds were small and slow moving, obscuring only a few stars, and pushed along the coast by a light north wind, which might at any moment turn west into a land breeze.

Argentario was a bulky, dark mass on the starboard beam; ahead was the northern causeway, a long thin crescent like the new moon, narrow and little more than a sandy beach backed by a scattering of pine trees and, with the lake formed by the two causeways, a silver sheet of water beyond. Over on the larboard bow was Cape d'Uomo (with a tower on top), then Monte dell' Uccellina (little bird—a splendid name!) which sloped down gradually to the sea at Talamone and formed the corner of the cliffs on which Talamone was built. Yes, with the night-glass, even allowing for the irritation that it showed everything upside-down, Ramage could see the walled village with the square tower in the middle. At that moment a break in the clouds let the starlight display the tower clearly with its battlements—at a guess, four guns a side. He turned to Southwick. “We're about right?”

The master waved his quadrant; he had been using it to measure the horizontal angles made by the peak of Monte Argentario to starboard, Torre Saline, and the tower at Talamone to larboard, so that he could work out the
Calypso
's exact position inside the great bay.

“Time for me to go to the fo'c's'le, sir,” he said. “As soon as we get nine fathoms on the lead, we can anchor.”

The
Calypso
was gliding: the sea was smooth, and the north wind meant that the land beyond Talamone gave the bay a lee.

He listened to the singsong reports of the leadsman and pictured the man standing in the chains, the thick board jutting out from the ship's side and down to which the shrouds were led. The man would be wearing a thick leather apron to keep off the streaming water as he hauled in and coiled the lead-line after each cast, feeling with his fingers for the twists of leather and cloth which let him distinguish the depth of water in which they were sailing.

Ten fathoms. He swung the night-glass forward so that he could search along the coast midway between Talamone and where the causeway met the mainland. Starting from the tower at Talamone, he looked to the right. A few houses—that will be the hamlet of Bengodi, and those dark objects, like spearheads planted point upwards in the ground, are a cluster of cypress, probably planted a century ago as a windbreak. Then the occasional sparkle when the starlight catches a wavelet as it breaks on the beach. Pine trees behind but between them and the sand a low, grey line of what must be flat clumps of
fico dei Ottentotti,
growing long fingers across and under the sand above sea level and always ready to trip the unwary. Then a few more small houses—and a faint, red glow, a
carbonaio
's banked fire. More cypress—they sound better in Italian:
cipressi.
The beach, a few more pines—ah, there is the Torre Saline, squat, the largest tower for miles, and its square shape throwing shadows round it like a cloak. And there the Fiume Albinia and—yes, he could just distinguish the bridge for the Via Aurelia, so the turning to Pitigliano would be easy to find.

There was the leadsman again. Ten fathoms. Bottom, soft mud. “Arming the lead”—that was a curious use of the word “arming.” A landman would think it warlike, even though it must be the most peaceful activity in the ship. It meant putting a handful of tallow in the cavity at the bottom of the lead (itself looking like a weight from a grandfather clock) so that when the lead hit the seabed a sample of whatever composed it— sand, mud, coral, fine shell, and so on—stuck to the tallow. A good chart gave not only the depths of water, but the nature of the bottom, and often experienced fishermen navigated without charts merely by knowing the pattern of the seabed. Many claimed they could tell where they were by the smell of the mud.

Once again he looked round. The
Calypso
was making under a knot now. The headland at Talamone and the mountains behind were stealing the wind, but there was no hurry. The frigate's cutter and gig had long since been hoisted out and were towing astern; the Pitigliano party of men waited in the waist of the ship with Aitken and Hill; now Southwick stood on the fo'c's'le and Kenton was at the quarterdeck rail.

Ramage handed Kenton the night-glass, noting that the clouds were becoming more scattered. “That's Talamone—you can see the tower. Start there and work your way south, telling me what you see, and I'll identify it for you.”

Carefully Kenton described what he saw, and finally reached the Torre Saline. “Carry on to the south. You see where this causeway from Argentario joins the mainland? Now follow the causeway round—it's called Giannella—and you'll see where it joins Argentario itself.”

At that moment the leadsman reported nine fathoms. “Carry on,” Ramage told Kenton, “you're officer of the deck—and you'll be in command of the ship very soon.”

Kenton told the quartermaster to bring the ship head to wind while ordering the topmen aloft to furl sails. Only the fore-topsail would be left drawing, so that as the
Calypso
turned north the wind would press against the forward side of the sail. Like a hand pushing against a man's chest, it would bring the ship first to a stop and then slowly move her astern, giving her sternway, which would help dig the anchor in once it had been let go.

Kenton went to the ship's side to watch the water. He reported as soon as the ship stopped, and then as she gathered sternway Ramage picked up the speaking-trumpet and gave the order “Let go!” to Southwick. He heard the answering hail and, a moment later, the heavy splash of the anchor hitting the water, followed by the rumble of the thick cable running through the hawse.

With the fore-topsail aback and the anchor dug home, Southwick came up to the quarterdeck to report how much cable had been let out and that the anchor was holding well. Then he corrected himself by saying to Kenton, “I should be reporting to you.”

“Thank you, Mr Southwick,” the youth said gravely, and gave the order to furl the fore-topsail. Then, turning to Ramage, he said, “I'd be glad if you'd repeat my instructions in front of Mr Southwick, sir, because if I have to carry them out, I know they might not sit well with him.”

Southwick gave one of his sniffs, one which Ramage interpreted to mean: the orders of my superiors always sit well with me. However, Ramage could well see why Kenton was taking the precaution.

“As the senior lieutenant left on board, you will, of course, have command of the ship,” Ramage said. “You know we have sailed in here without any show of secrecy, so that French lookouts will assume we're a French national ship just anchoring in a quiet bay for a couple of days.”

“But if a French boat comes off and questions us, sir?” Kenton prompted.

“I can't spare you a Frenchman to answer any hails, so do your best to fool them. But if it seems the boat will raise an alarm, sink it, sail with the
Calypso,
wait out of sight, and then return here in four days, anchoring in the same position. At the same time you'll send three boats to pick us up at the mouth of the river Albinia.

“If we're not there, you'll return two nights later, same time, and send boats to the same place. If we're still not there, you'll go to Gibraltar, report to the port admiral, and give him my secret orders. You'll also report that my men and I have probably been captured.”

“That gives you only six days to get to Pitigliano and back, sir,” Southwick protested. “Supposing some of the hostages are crippled, or so ill they have to be carried on litters? Let's come back a third time. That'd give you eight days.”

“No,” Ramage said patiently. “If there's any delay, I'll send someone—it'll probably be Midshipman Orsini—to bring you fresh instructions. So, after six days, no Orsini means no anyone else.”

“Very well, sir,” said Kenton. “But …”

“But they're not the sort of orders you like getting,” Ramage said sympathetically. “Well, young man, they're not the orders I like giving, because if you have to carry them out, it probably means I've gone over the standing part of the foresheet, and taken all my party—and probably the hostages—with me. But that's what promotion and responsibility entail.”

“We'll see you on the fourth night, sir,” Southwick said, “and if you've room in your knapsack, a bottle of that Orvieto wouldn't come amiss.”

Ramage chuckled. “Marching thirty miles carrying a bottle of Chianti just to satisfy a whim of a mutinous master …”

“I wouldn't mutiny if you brought the wine,” Southwick said. The two men shook hands and, after he had shaken hands with Kenton and was walking down the quarterdeck ladder to join the men waiting in the waist, Ramage could not remember ever having shaken hands with Southwick before starting off on an expedition. He shrugged; Southwick heartily distrusted anything “foreign,” and this expedition involved more things “foreign” than Southwick had ever dreamed. The master was still puzzled by Ramage's wish to spend his honeymoon in France and, Ramage was quite sure, still reckoned that dabbling with foreigners was the reason why Lady Sarah might well be dead.

He reached the main-deck and paused for a moment. Just over there, on the mainland, more than twenty centuries of recorded history had unfolded. Invasions by men speaking many languages, from the Phoenicians and Carthaginians to the Romans, from the Goths to the Vandals—and, the latest, the French. Battles, political plots, religious quarrels—and all had ended up with men (and women, for that matter) being buried in the rich Tuscan soil. Devil take it, he told himself sharply, you cannot lead men with that attitude. Yet he was neither scared nor sad. One never set foot on Italian soil—or, indeed, arrived in Italian waters—without thinking of the past centuries. The galleys of Santo Stefano sent to help fight the Saracens in the Battle of Lepanto (nearly five centuries ago) must have been rowed out of this bay, turning southward to round the foot of Italy to join the Spanish and Austrian fleets whose admirals' orders were simple: to prevent the Saracens from conquering Europe—which would be easy enough if they defeated the combined fleets of Spain, Italy, and Austria.

You think of great fleets of galleys when you are giving orders to your men on board the cutter, gig and jolly-boat …

Ramage followed the last man down the ladder and found himself in the gig with Jackson at the tiller and Orsini and Rossi crouched in the sternsheets, ready to help him on board.

He gave the order to cast off and then looked round. From down here the
Calypso
seemed enormous, but curiously enough, the dark shapes of Argentario, the mountains behind Talamone, and the Torre Saline seemed to have shrunk. Ramage pointed to the tower. “Very well, Jackson, we lead the way and that's where the mouth of the river lies …” Oars slid into the water. Jackson's commands came crisp, pitched so that the men in the other boats could hear.

Even in the darkness Ramage could see that both Orsini and Rossi looked impressive in their new uniforms, sewn up earlier that day. So that was how an officer in the Grand Duke of Tuscany's army looked!

“I trust you'll lose that Genovese accent,” Ramage told Rossi. “The accent of Siena—that's what we need for a good Tuscan.”

“Si, siamo paesani, signore,”
Rossi said, and the accent in which he had said “Yes, we are countrymen” was almost perfect.

“Careful, you'll find yourself giving big tips,” Orsini said, teasing Rossi over the Genoese reputation for meanness.

“Tuscany has no great reputation for generosity,
signore,
” Rossi said respectfully. “In fact, under the Grand Duke …”

“Don't confuse politics with people,” Ramage said firmly. “And don't spoil legends. Legend has it that the Scots and the Genovesi are mean, and nothing you can do will change it. The Cockneys are like the Neapolitans.”

“What are the other comparisons, sir?” Orsini asked.

“Blessed if I know,” Ramage confessed. “Veneto—that'd be Norfolk, Suffolk, and Lincolnshire, I suppose. Flat land and wary people. Mestre, Padua, and Ravenna … well, that land round the Po Valley always puts me in mind of Romney Marsh, though the Italians aren't so secretive as the Marsh folk. Not so much smuggling! Rome—well, Romans compare directly with Londoners. Welsh? They vary so much it's hard to say … I'm certain of one thing, though: there's no such thing as a typical Englishman, and since Italy is such a collection of different states, there isn't a typical Italian.