Ramage's Trial (22 page)

“Have you and the other officers been threatened?”

“I'm sure the captain can tell you all you need to know, sir. I'm only the first lieutenant,” Ridley said doggedly.

“Which means you are the second-in-command and take command if anything happens to the captain.”

Ridley stared at the deck and said, almost absently: “But nothing
has
happened to the captain…”

“Listen,” Ramage said quietly, “tell me in confidence what has happened. I'll tell these two officers to move out of earshot so there will be no witnesses to whatever you say.”

“It's no good,” Ridley said miserably, “there's nothing to say, witnesses or no witnesses.”

Very well, Ramage decided, persuasion will not work so it has to be a threat. “You realize there will be courts of inquiry and courts-martial when we reach England. You are going to be asked about the
Jason
's guns firing. You are going to have to give your evidence on oath. Your word against mine. Your word against that of all my officers and men. Can you guess which the court will accept?”

“You must ask Captain Shirley, sir,” Ridley said woodenly. “I know nothing about courts and oaths.” He looked at Wagstaffe as he asked Ramage: “If you have no further questions, it's my watch in a few minutes.”

“Run along,” Ramage said sarcastically, “you don't realize the depth of the water you're standing in. Send up Mr Price.”

As Ridley went down the ladder, Ramage shook his head wonderingly. “I've got it!” he exclaimed. “There was something about these men that seemed familiar, and I've just realized what it is. Two things, in fact. One concerns the officers, warrant officers and men; the other Captain Shirley.”

Aitken and Wagstaffe waited expectantly but after a minute or two Aitken realized his captain's thoughts were miles away.

“What's familiar, sir?”

“Voodoo! I last saw this sort of thing in Grenada. The witch doctor had a spell put on the local people. He threatened terrible things if they didn't keep a secret, so when they were questioned they denied everything in the same way, as though their minds were not in their bodies. And the witch doctor (of course he denied he was one or that he had anything to do with Voodoo) was just like Captain Shirley: friendly, polite, apparently willing to answer questions – yet for all that remote, as though the real man was hidden behind a pane of glass.”

“I've a slight idea of what you mean, sir,” Aitken said. “Not from having had anything to do with Voodoo, but in the Highlands there are some very odd happenings: people with strange gifts and strange powers…”

He broke off as the
Jason
's master, Price, came up to Ramage and saluted.

“You wanted to see me, sir?”

“Yes, and you can guess what it is about because Southwick mentioned it yesterday.”

Price shook his head and glanced aft at the quarterdeck.

“The captain is down in his cabin,” Ramage said. “You can talk in absolute safety.”

“What's there to talk about?” the man said insolently. “I'm sure Captain Shirley or the first lieutenant can answer all your questions.”

“Different men give different answers,” Ramage said carefully, deciding to accept the man's insolence for a few more minutes in the hope that his attitude would change. “There are just a few questions.”

Price shrugged his narrow shoulders indifferently.

“Tell me Price, why do you think the
Jason
fired at the
Calypso
yesterday? Was it an accident?”

The
Jason
's master ignored the suggested excuse. “I never heard tell of ships firing at each other yesterday,” he said. “Leastways, nothing until Southwick asked me, and you too.”

“Sir.”

“You too, sir,” Price amended. “You'd better ask the captain.”

“Price,” Ramage said slowly, “Southwick speaks highly of you, and you know as well as I do that when we reach England there'll be a court of inquiry and courts-martial. Obviously if you help us now, I will speak up for you.”

“You want me to turn King's evidence, eh?” Price sneered.

“Don't be absurd. Just look at it from my point of view: my ship comes up to greet another of the King's ships, and gets raked. I could have had masts sent by the board and dozens of men killed.”

“But you didn't, though,” Price said slyly and for a moment Ramage thought the man would reveal more, but he simply waved an arm towards the
Calypso
. “I see she has a full complement of masts…”

“Price, I'm giving you a last chance. I'm not threatening you. But you know the danger you're in. You know my offer to speak on your behalf is your only chance–”

“No one's got a chance,” Price interrupted angrily. “We had one chance but we lost, and that's that.”

“A chance to do what?”

“Forget I ever said that,” Price said, suddenly nervous. “I said too much. S'more than a man can stand being up here on the fo'c'sle and 'terrogated like this by strangers. If you've got questions, ask Captain Shirley, don't pick on us – sir. And don't go telling Captain Shirley we said anything, 'cos we didn't.” With that Price quickly saluted, turned and bolted down the ladder, hurrying along the main deck back to the gunroom.

“They ‘had one chance, but we lost',” Ramage murmured to himself. “Who are ‘we'? The gunroom officers? Everyone on board the
Jason
? Is Captain Shirley included or excluded?”

“I think we'd be better off if Price hadn't said that,” Aitken said bitterly. “It's just tantalizing, and no one is going to tell us any more.”

Ramage nodded in agreement. “I had the impression that ‘we' probably referred to the gunroom officers. I don't think the men were involved.”

Both Aitken and Wagstaffe reminded Ramage that the guns' crews denied the guns had been fired, but Ramage said: “No, I'm not talking about the whole business. I think the ‘chance' is one thing and the attack on the
Calypso
is another.”

Aitken agreed. “I'm thinking about the way everybody seems…”

He paused, and Ramage finished his sentence: “Wrapped in fear and apprehension.”

“That's it, sir; like schoolboys who have been told to see the headmaster in the morning, and not sure whether they're going to get a good beating or not.”

“Well, we're only getting ourselves more puzzled by staying on board here. Keep an eye open,” he told Wagstaffe, “and sleep with a pistol to hand.”

“Sir,” Wagstaffe began tentatively, “supposing Captain Shirley starts doing something that is, well…sort of…”

“You'll have to decide whether or not what he's doing (or proposing to do) is prejudicial to the King's Service. If it is, you have to do whatever you think fit. I can't give you orders to cover everything, but I'll back whatever you do.”

“Supposing one of the officers refuses to carry out an order…”

“Look, Wagstaffe, what we're doing is by way of being a bluff: I am trying to get the
Jason
back to England without Captain Shirley attacking some other ship. Unless Bowen gives me a report tomorrow showing that Captain Shirley is mad, there's nothing I can do about him, officially. Putting you on board, sending Bowen to examine him, questioning the officers, questioning Shirley himself – all this lays me open to various charges, I expect, if we can't prove that Shirley attacked us without cause and that he's crazy.”

Ramage warned both men: “Don't forget that at the moment we're safe as long as we can prove that the
Jason
raked us, and we have all our own people as witnesses. Shirley, on the other hand, can produce witness for witness to deny everything. So it depends who the members of a court want to believe. However, I think Shirley's missed his most plausible defence.”

“I'm glad to hear that, sir,” Aitken muttered. “What would that be?”

“Shirley would have had a good defence for raking us if he'd sworn he never saw the convoy in the distance. Then he could claim that because the
Calypso
has French lines, he assumed she was French, flying British colours as a
ruse de guerre
.”

Wagstaffe said: “He could have claimed he thought we were about to attack the convoy and that he arrived just in time to save it.”

“That's true, but keep the thought to yourself,” Ramage said dryly. “I haven't even thought of it in Shirley's company in case he has the same powers as some of those old biddies in the Highlands, and reads my mind.”

“He's got some weeks to think of it,” Aitken pointed out. “They say there's nothing like a sea voyage to clear the mind.”

“No,” Ramage agreed, “but he denies firing a gun, so he'd have to change everything to use that defence.”

“You'll have to tell Bowen to think of some vile disease that Shirley has, sir,” Wagstaffe said. “Something that'll keep his mind occupied, worrying!”

“They get damned ethical, these medical men,” Aitken grumbled. “At least, ones like Bowen do. He'd faint if you suggested he prescribe a dram of brandy on a cold night ‘for medicinal purposes'.”

“Damnation take it!” Ramage swore. “The
Jason
's surgeon! We haven't questioned him.”

“Haven't
seen
him,” Aitken said. “And I remember that when we were down in the gunroom yesterday, winkling out the officers from their cabins, I noticed the only open door and empty cabin had ‘Surgeon' painted over it.”

Ramage was already hurrying down the ladder to the maindeck and a couple of minutes later the Marine sentry was announcing him at the door of Captain Shirley's cabin.

Shirley was sitting back on his settee with his feet up reading a book. He closed it and swung his feet down, but Ramage waved him to remain seated. “Please don't get up. I'm sorry to interrupt your reading.”

“My dear Ramage, you are always welcome, as I continually tell you. I am beginning to think you have a poor opinion of yourself!”

“Certainly you make me a welcome guest. There was just one question I forgot to ask you. Your surgeon. I have not seen him.”

Shirley shook his head sorrowfully, and Ramage thought that being the possessor of such a sad, long face would make Shirley an excellent professional mourner: all he needed was a tall hat with a thick ribbon of black silk round it, and a pair of black silk gloves: he already had the long black coat.

“Ah yes, a sad business. Died very suddenly – just off Barbados. We don't know what it was, since we have no medical knowledge–” he permitted himself a slight smile, “–but we all agreed that it was something in the nature of a stroke. Yes, a stroke; that's what we agreed to enter in the log and I put it in my journal. A moving funeral because he was a popular man. Not as well qualified medically as your fellow, I imagine, but widely experienced, especially in the diseases of the East. He had served in John Company ships as a surgeon's mate, I think.”

 

Ramage leaned forward over his desk, finding his chair hard, and he was tired of the sound of his own voice. He looked round at Aitken, Bowen and Southwick and said: “There you have it. That was all the information that a morning's work yielded us. I haven't forgotten anything, have I?” he asked the first lieutenant.

“No sir, except the strange feeling you had about Captain Shirley and the men.” When Ramage looked puzzled, Aitken reminded him: “You did mention about Voodoo, sir – some experience you had in Grenada?”

“Voodoo?” Southwick exclaimed, startled. “Don't say…”

“Mr Southwick was with me at the time in Grenada,” Ramage explained to Aitken. “And so was Mr Bowen.”

“Tell us about it, sir,” Bowen said anxiously. “Don't say that Captain Shirley is mixed up with Voodoo!”

“No, no, no!” Ramage said emphatically. “I was just describing its effect to explain to Aitken and Wagstaffe what the atmosphere reminded me of – there was no sign of Voodoo as such.”

Southwick looked at Bowen and nodded his head. “The captain is right. When we talked to them on board the
Jason
yesterday I couldn't put my finger on it then, but now I've got it. It's the same as going down into a crypt – no reason why you should feel uneasy, but you do. You know about the coffins, you know the stonework makes the atmosphere cold, you expect the air to be stuffy because the door has been shut…but you can still get a strange feeling: the hair on the back of your neck wants to stand up. There's no reason, but it just does.”

“And talking to the witch doctor and his victims,” Bowen added, “you feel they're hiding behind a pane of glass; you can see and hear them but if you reached out you'd never touch them.”

Ramage tapped the desk top. “Now then, let's not attach too much importance to that. I'm more interested in knowing how Captain Shirley makes his whole ship's company deny everything.”

“Well, they're not exactly
denying
everything, sir,” Aitken said. “I noticed that more often than not they told us to ask Captain Shirley about it. They shifted the responsibility for an answer on to him.”

Ramage shrugged his shoulders. “Yes – which is the same as them dodging the responsibility.”

“I'm more interested in the death of the surgeon,” Bowen said. “Most unfortunate that they don't have a surgeon on board. His views would have been very significant.”

Aitken waved a deprecating hand. “Don't you believe it. If he knew anything of the slightest use, he'd have bleated about medical ethics. But he wouldn't have noticed anything – he was one of those bleed-and-purge chaps. Started as a surgeon's mate in a John Company ship.”