by Dudley Pope
It was a still night. The current kept the ships heading west of north as though they were half a dozen compass needles, but each one’s heading was slightly different, so it was easy to see how the current came round the northern headland and curved into the bay with a scouring movement before meeting the southern headland and running out again.
That faint scent, crushed nettles and yet containing the muskiness he associated with the East he had never seen, and then the rustle of silk and the voice he knew he would never forget. “You sit there with head bent like Atlas carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders,” she murmured.
He reached out and took her hand in a movement which seemed quite natural. “The weight of my world, and that’s quite enough!”
“We haven’t made it any lighter—people like Mrs Donaldson and me. ‘You must do something at once.’” She mimicked Mrs Donaldson. “I shudder every time I think about this morning.” She gave a curious start, like a suppressed hiccough.
“You’ve been crying, too. Not about that, surely?”
He felt her fingers let go of his hand but he held on. “Answer me, ‘Miss for now.’”
“Yes, I’ve been weeping like a silly young woman, but not over that.”
Ramage suddenly remembered the military uniform he was wearing. Had the sight of someone about the same size as its owner provoked sad memories? Of a distant husband, a dead lover—or what? Was she a widow mourning her husband or had she gone to India with her parents to marry a fiancé who had died of one of the East’s many diseases?
He twisted round on the breech of the gun so that he could look at the dark shadow which was Sarah, and he held her hand in both of his. In a few hours he would say goodbye and probably never see her again, but he needed to know.
“Over what then? It’s not vulgar curiosity that makes me ask.”
She gave a muted, unhappy laugh. “Captain Ramage,” she said, with almost mocking formality, “I met you only eighteen hours ago. We have not even been formally introduced. My mother would have a fit if she knew I was up here alone with you …”
“Would your father?”
“I … well, I doubt it. He has a wider understanding of … problems.”
“We have known each other eighteen hours; in three more we shall say goodbye—if you stay up that long. So you can answer my question without worrying about blushing when you meet me at breakfast tomorrow, because for us there is no tomorrow.”
She lowered her head and gave another dry sob which she tried to disguise with a laugh. “It was a silly reason and of no possible interest to you.”
“You could say possibly no concern of mine, but certainly I am interested, or I wouldn’t have asked.”
“Please, Captain Ramage, forget it.”
“My name is Nicholas.”
“I’ve been thinking of you as Nicholas; I suppose because you finally called me Sarah.”
“Finally … it took long enough. We wasted so many of those eighteen hours, ‘Miss for now.’ But tell me the reason.” He could not prevent himself from returning to the question but she shook her head.
He let her hand go and said, without trying to hide the sudden bitterness he felt: “It must be important if you wish to keep it secret. Anyway, I can guess it, I think.”
She looked up suddenly and he thought he had shocked her.
“What have you guessed?”
“This uniform you lent me—it belongs to someone of whom you are fond and it brought back memories.”
“It brought back memories,” she said, “but the trunks are in my cabin only because the purser was afraid that if they were stowed below the rats might damage the clothing.”
He thought for a moment. Had she answered his question? He shook his head, as much to try to make his brain work more clearly as a sign of disbelief, but she said in a small voice: “The uniform has no significance; I would never have given it to you if it had.”
“We met under unusual circumstances …”
“Yes, I was naked and we were not formally introduced,” she said unexpectedly. “And for that matter you were almost naked, too.”
“I’ve thought about it many times since.”
“You are trying to embarrass me.”
“It was dark. I didn’t see your face for hours. Anyway, why were you crying?”
“Oh, don’t keep harping on that. I was unhappy. Now I am going to say goodbye and leave you here thinking of the beautiful Marchesa. My father has already thanked you again for having saved us. I can only repeat his words. Thank you, Nicholas.”
With that she was gone: she was barefooted, he realized, and in a moment she was hidden in the shadows cast by the masts and rigging.
So she thought he was sitting here alone in the dark “thinking of the beautiful Marchesa.” He began to feel guilty when it came to him that in the last hour he had not thought of Gianna at all. He cursed the boastings of Jackson, Rossi and Stafford. They had told a romantic story of a young naval officer rescuing the beautiful Marchesa from under the feet of Bonaparte’s cavalry, but they had not mentioned—because they did not realize, or never knew—the other side of it. A man and a woman could fall in love—no one could stop that. But there was much that could prevent them from even thinking of living happily ever after.
At some point in the voyage to Trinidade, Ramage now saw as he sat on the gun, hoping that Sarah would return as quickly and silently as she had vanished, he had finally made up his mind about Gianna and the future. Without thinking about it openly, he had made the decision that mattered: he was not prepared to do something which made the twelfth Earl of Blazey, his son, as yet unborn, into a Roman Catholic, and forcing all the subsequent earls into a dual loyalty, to the British monarch and the Vatican.
His own father, the tenth Earl, had never mentioned the question of religion to him, even though he knew that at one time there was a question of marriage. The old Earl was very fond of Gianna: for the past few years, while Gianna was living with his parents, they had considered her more as a daughter than a refugee.
Unknown to himself, he had reached his decision. In her own way, Gianna had made a definite choice in deciding to return to Volterra. Did those two facts combined mean that the courtship, if that was the word, was over? In returning to Volterra, Gianna had obeyed the dictate of noblesse oblige. In turn, that meant that for reasons of state she would marry an Italian, a Tuscan whose family would be powerful enough to be a strong reinforcement for her own.
What about Paolo? For months Ramage had had the feeling that, perhaps without realizing it, Paolo was building his life round England and the Royal Navy. Yet he was Gianna’s heir, and Ramage forced himself to think about it: if she was murdered by Bonaparte’s agents, or even traitors among her own people, he would be the new ruler of Volterra. Paolo might be the ruler already, he told himself with a shiver.
Traitors and treason … there would be enough of both round the court in Volterra: the pro-French group would hardly welcome Gianna back. But had he been disloyal to her? Somewhere on the way from Chatham to Trinidade he had fallen out of love with her. His feelings in recent weeks, he realized, when he had worried about her safety, pictured her in a French jail, imagined her threatened by a Tuscan assassin, had been the anxiety a man would have for a much-loved sister; it was not the freezing fear for the safety of a future wife.
Had Gianna undergone this same change? It was not so much a change of heart as a change of direction. Had she begun to change while she was in England, so that this made it easier for her to return to Volterra? The more he thought about it the more it seemed he was using that as an excuse for himself. Gianna had returned because it was—as she saw it—her duty. He had tried to persuade her not to because—as he saw it—the war was not over, despite the Treaty, and it was her duty to remain in England until she could return to rule her people in safety, knowing that her work for them could yield results.
All very convincing, he told himself, and now
you can think of very little else but a woman you have only known for eighteen hours and will never see again.
He slid down from the gun and, clasping his hands behind his back, walked towards the fo’c’s’le. Well, in at least one way Sarah had done him a good turn: she had, quite unwittingly, forced him to think clearly about Gianna, and the thinking about her had brought the knowledge that his feelings for her had changed. Not died, but changed. He now accepted, too, that since the walls of religion and their inheritances would keep them apart, there was no question of him going to his grave a bachelor because his love was forever out of reach. St Kew needed a landlord and his parents deserved a grandson.
Noblesse oblige again, of course! He had not thought of the phrase for years, but now Sarah had mentioned it in another context, did he want to be the eleventh and last Earl of Blazey, after his father died? It was one of the oldest earldoms in the kingdom. He was an only child and by not marrying and not having a son, did he want to see the end of it?
He turned and made his way aft. It would soon be time for him to start off alone for the Heliotrope, the rest of the men following later. They had prepared the raft, and Ramage pulled his stock from his pocket. It was dry now. Jackson was waiting with the cutlass and knife. The wind dropping had left a warm night, and as the excitement of the second stage of the operation began to seep through him, the uniform felt particularly hot and oppressive. He felt an irrational hatred for it—irrational because she had made it clear it had not belonged to anyone she loved. He stopped for a moment. Loved now, but could it have been someone she had loved?
The devil take it; he would never see her again. Jackson stepped forward and helped him out of the jacket, and then he sat on the breech of a gun to pull off the rest of his clothes.
Over in the Amethyst, Aitken would be preparing. The second stage … and if it was successful the third stage would be the last one. It was, he reflected, an odd way to survey an island.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
HE came out of the blackness as though swimming up from a great depth and heard Jackson and Rossi talking in a jumble of words before sinking back again. The next time he surfaced, quietly and smoothly like a dolphin, he knew that he was cold and wet, and he could hear Sarah’s voice. The third time, when he managed to stay with them longer, he realized that he was lying on the deck of a ship, soaking wet and with a dull, pounding pain in his left arm, close to where the scar was still white from the musket ball which hit him at Curaçao.
“Nicholas,” she was saying, her voice urgent. “Can you hear me? Nicholas … Nicholas!”
He thought he was answering but everything seemed so far away. He shouted and his voice came out as a whisper, and he wished the pain in his arm would stop. “Yes … yes.” That seemed about all he wanted to say. Quite why he was lying flat on his back, this awful pain in his arm, feeling that he was going to vomit any moment, and with something soft against his face, soft and warm, and moving slightly all the time, he did not know. Now someone was approaching with a lantern …
The light showed that he was lying by the mainmast of the Earl of Dodsworth and his head was cradled in a woman’s arms. But he had swum away from the East Indiaman hours ago and boarded the Heliotrope alone.
What was happening in the Heliotrope? All those passengers, two of them children. He had explained what they were to do in French, and then the Calypso’s boarding party had arrived. Yes, now he remembered that a privateersman had woken and roused the rest and there had been a desperate fight in that small cabin …
“Jackson! Jackson!” he shouted, and she heard him whispering, his teeth chattering with the violence of the shivering.
“He wants you,” she said to the American, the wetness of his hair soaking through her frock and chilling her breasts. While the American and the Italian continued tying the bandage round his arm, his face was as white as a sheet in the lanternlight: the cheekbones stuck out like elbows, the skin of his face stretched taut as though all the blood and much of the flesh had drained away in the sea while the men towed the raft with him lashed to it.
He was dying, of that she was sure, and her last words to him had been unpleasant; she had turned her back on him and walked away when all she wanted to do was kiss him and have him hold her. Now they had brought him back to die in her arms.
“Sir, it’s Jackson.” The American crouched over him, his ears close to Nicholas’s mouth. Sarah listened intently. Some last message for the Marchesa? No, he would give that to the young count. But she must not have these bitter thoughts now; if he died, two women would have loved him.
“Wha’ happened?”
Jackson knew what his Captain wanted to know. “We saved the hostages, sir. The guards in the cabin were roused. One caught you with a cutlass as you spitted a man going for Spurgeon with a knife.”
“Di’ we lose anyone?”
“Spurgeon, sir. The privateersman stabbed him the same moment the other one slashed you with his cutlass.”
“Wha’m I doing here?”
“Now, sir,” Jackson said soothingly, “you rest now. The Lynx heard nothing. Mr Martin’s in command in the Heliotrope and Mr Aitken’s taken the Friesland.”
The American straightened himself and shouted aft: “Look alive with those blankets! Sorry, ma’am,” he said to Sarah, “but the Captain’s mortal cold.”
It was no good her explaining to this seaman that the passengers were so bewildered as to be almost helpless; that being seized by privateersmen in the first place had been a great shock; being suddenly rescued in the middle of the night was a second one; and now, having the man they regarded as their saviour dragged bleeding and unconscious up the side of the ship must seem like the end of the world to them.
God, he was shivering so violently. Now he was whispering again, every word taking so much effort. He reached out and tugged Jackson’s shirt as he bent down to help Rossi with the bandage, which was a strip torn from a sheet.
“Calypso … I must get to the Calypso …”
“Yes, sir, as soon as we can. Three of the men have swum over to fetch Mr Bowen and a boat.”
“Jackson, why bring me here?”
She realized that the American knew it was pointless to give soothing answers. “You’d have bled to death a long time a’fore we reached her, sir. We started off for her but we couldn’t swim fast enough towing the raft, and when you kept on bleeding in spite of the bandages and tourniquet, we reckoned we needed somewhere quick with dry bandages and a lantern.”
“Nicholas,” she said, “they’re trying to make you a hot drink, but they’re frightened the glow of the galley stove might be seen from the Lynx. Will you sip this brandy?”
“Come on, sir,” Jackson said and uncapped a flat silver flask. Finally he said: “It’s no good, ma’am. I know what he’s like from other times. He hates spirits.”
“Other times?” she whispered.
“We really thought we’d lost him the last time, didn’t we, Rossi?”
“Mamma mia, when we blew up that Dutch frigate, I thought we were all loosed.”
“Lost,” Jackson corrected from habit, and said to Sarah, “He’ll be all right soon, ma’am; you wait until Mr Bowen arrives.”
“Who is he?”
“Our surgeon. Ah, about time!” he growled as two men arrived with blankets. “We only needed two or three! Here, take that end and we’ll slide one under him and use it to lift him.”
“Where are you going to take him?” she asked anxiously.
“Nowhere, ma’am. If you’ll fold those other blankets into a mattress. Keep out a couple to go over him. Then we can lift him on to it.”
Reluctantly, like a woman having a suckling child taken away from her, she lowered his head and helped Rossi cradle the wounded arm.
“He’s so cold,” she said to no one in particular.
“Ma’am,” Jackson said, “if you’d just walk away for a minute or two …”
“Why?” Her voice was harsh
.
“Oh … I just want to—well, remove his wet clothes!”
She leaned over, saw the pin shining in the lanternlight among the folds of silk, and pulled it out, and then unwrapped the stock. The triangle of curly black hair glistened and the men gently lifted the blanket. She held the stock for a moment. There was not a hint of warmth in the silk; it was as though it had been a corpse’s loincloth.
Once he was lowered on to the makeshift mattress she took one and then the other blanket and covered him, leaving the left arm outside so that they could keep an eye on it. Already blood was seeping through the bandage, a spreading black stain in the candlelight. His eyes were closed, his breathing shallow. She had earlier watched the rise and fall of his ribs and any moment expected it to stop, as if the effort was too much.
The loss of blood and the shadows thrown by the lantern emphasized his features. His nose was thin and slightly curved, like a beak, and the bone made a white ridge. The cheekbones frightened her; it was almost as if parchment covered a skull. Above his right eye there were two scars on the brow, thin, white bars on the skin, which itself seemed almost grey. The eyes, closed now, were sunk even deeper under heavy brows. His hair, wet and tangled, looked like a clump of seaweed tossed carelessly on a beach by a wave.
His right hand was plucking at the blanket and trying to reach across to his left arm. Before she could move, Rossi had leaned over and with surprising gentleness put the hand back under the blanket. The lips moved and Rossi bent down and listened.
“I think he wants you, ma’am, if you’re ‘Sarah.’”
She felt a surge of pleasure, then realized that this Italian seaman had probably misheard a murmured “Gianna” as “Sarah.” He was thinking of the Marchesa.
“Nicholas …”
“Sarah,” he whispered, and there was no mistaking it, “they shouldn’t have brought me here.”
