Ramage's Prize

by Dudley Pope

  “Hyde Park Corner,” Yorke announced for Much’s benefit. “More than 250 miles from Falmouth—according to the coachman’s tariff.”

  Much was impressed: he had sailed from Falmouth for the West Indies more than a couple of dozen times in his life, and each time had left on a voyage of thousands of miles with less excitement than setting off for London from Plymouth.

  The coach swung right at Hyde Park and then along the edge of St James’s Park, and Yorke told the coachman to stop for a moment as they arrived in Parliament Square. He motioned to Much to get out and followed him to point out the Houses of Parliament. But this time Much was unimpressed, and Ramage guessed he did not appreciate the power that Members of Parliament wielded over his life—and over the whole country. He could see no connection between decisions made in that grey-stone building and, say, a fleet carrying a small army to capture Martinique.

  Much climbed back into the carriage with Yorke, and the coachman whipped up the horses, which were still fresh since they had come only from Turnham Green. The carriage turned into Whitehall. “Downing Street,” Yorke said unenthusiastically, pointing to the narrow, short road to their left. “The Prime Minister lives there.”

  “Doesn’t pay any rent, I’ll be bound,” Much commented.

  A little farther on Yorke said, “That’s the Horse Guards—the headquarters of the Army.”

  “Does the Duke of York live there?” Much asked.

  “No, he works there,” Yorke said, wearying of his role as guide.

  Ramage said, “The Admiralty is just ahead.”

  Because the Admiralty building stood back from the street behind a high screen wall, the carriage swung into the middle of the road to make the sharp turn through the archway in the centre, and a moment later the clatter of the horses’ hooves echoed across the cobbled courtyard. As the carriage stopped in front of the four thick columns at the entrance door, two porters hurried out. They opened the door and swung down the hinged steps, already warned by the carriage’s travel-stained appearance that it had come a long way.

  He climbed out, careful that his sword did not catch in the steps, and the look of interest in the porters’ faces faded: they were expecting an admiral and found a lieutenant accompanied by someone who was not even a naval officer and a person who was clearly the mate of some merchantman. Without a word they retreated up the steps and into the large entrance hall.

  After telling the coachman where to deliver their luggage, Ramage strode into the hall. Even though it was only late autumn, there was a big fire burning in the large fireplace on his left; the great six-sided glass lantern hanging from the ceiling had not been cleaned after its night’s work and the glass was sooty. A messenger—the term used to describe the attendants—was lounging in one of the big, black-leather armchairs which had a canopy over the top, like a poke bonnet. Another messenger was standing at the table, glancing at a newspaper, while the two porters gossiped in a comer.

  Ramage knew that, clasping the crudely sewn canvas bag containing his reports, he looked an unprepossessing figure as far as the messengers were concerned. And he had no appointment. Dozens of naval officers came into this hall in the course of a week, all trying to see one of the Board members or someone else who might have sufficient interest or influence to get them appointments. Admirals were kept waiting in this hall, and Ramage knew only too well that mere lieutenants without appointments might well die of old age in the waiting-room on his left.

  He knew from past experience that if the messenger tried the usual blackmail of knowing nothing and doing nothing until a guinea had changed hands he would get angry, and he knew equally well that he was likely to need all the patience he could muster if the First Lord did not believe his report.

  It was time, he decided, to make use of his title.

  “Lieutenant Lord Ramage to see the First Lord. I have no appointment for a particular time but His Lordship ordered me to come to London and report to him as soon as possible.”

  The messenger—probably out of habit—picked up a list and read it. “Your name isn’t on the list of appointments, my Lord.”

  “I said I had no appointment. I’ve posted from Plymouth. I am under orders from the First Lord.”

  The messenger, without his guinea, was unimpressed: he had obviously waved away too many impoverished captains and outmanoeuvred too many junior admirals to be intimidated by mere lieutenants, however urgent they might proclaim their business to be.

  The messenger snapped his fingers at one of the porters. “Tell the First Lord’s secretary there is a Lieutenant Lord Damage asking to see him.”

  Ramage tapped the table with his fingers. “‘Ramage,’ and to see the First Lord, not his secretary.”

  “If you’d care to state your business, sir, I might be able …”

  “Pass the word to the First Lord’s secretary,” Ramage said icily, “otherwise I’ll go up to Lord Spencer’s office unannounced.”

  The man gestured to the porter, who went out of the hall along the corridor leading off to the left.

  Yorke looked round the hall nonchalantly and said to Ramage in a bored voice, “Damned poor class of servants they have here, what?”

  “It’s the war,” Ramage said, with equal nonchalance. “All the men with any brains or ability are sent to sea. Just the dregs left. You notice it in the seaports, too; the only fellows lounging around are those even the press-gangs turn down.”

  The messenger in the chair straightened himself up; his colleague at the desk was now standing stiffly, his face a bright red. The porter left in the corner sniggered with embarrassment.

  The porter came scurrying back to say that Lord Spencer would see Lord Ramage at once.

  “Show these two gentlemen to the waiting-room,” Ramage told the messenger at the desk, and followed the porter along the corridor and up two flights of narrow stairs. The porter knocked on the door of the Board Room, walked in and announced Ramage.

  Lord Spencer was at the far end of the long table, sitting in the only chair with arms: the other four chairs down each side and the single one at the other end, occupied by Their Lordships when the full Board was meeting, were straight-backed and uncomfortable.

  Ramage knew that the First Lord’s habit of using the Board Room as his own office reflected the way the Admiralty functioned. Most people thought of the Lords Commissioners meeting formally, seated at this table, and listening solemnly to matters raised by Nepean, the Secretary—who usually sat on Lord Spencer’s right, at the corner of the table—and then, even more solemnly, discussing and deciding what was to be done. Then orders or instructions would be sent out by Nepean, duly recording that “I am directed …” (or required or commanded—the theme had several variations) “… by my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty …”

  More usually, though, Nepean would come into the Board Room, with his pile of papers and letters just received, and sit comfortably at the table instead of being crowded in the corner. Next to him would be the second secretary, William Marsden, who would keep the rough minutes recording what questions had been raised and what had been decided. The First Lord would be present and perhaps one other. Much of the Board’s business was dealt with by a single member, although as far as the recipient of an order was concerned it seemed that at least three or more of Their Lordships were involved. Ramage knew that Nepean’s routine with letters was quite simple: the bottom left-hand corner of the letter was folded over and up, and the gist of the intended reply scribbled on the blank triangle.

  Three long windows overlooking a stable lit the room on the south side; beside the door on the north side was a large fireplace which still bore the arms of Charles II.

  “A moment, Ramage,” the First Lord said without glancing up. He dipped his pen into a heavy silver inkwell, scribbled a signature on the document he had been reading, and put down the pen carefully before looking up.

  “I was expecting you tomorrow,” he said, making it obvious his usu
al greeting, shaking hands, was going to be omitted.

  “I posted, sir,” Ramage explained.

  “Don’t expect the Admiralty to pay for it,” Spencer said abruptly, waving Ramage to a chair on his left. It meant Ramage had to walk right round the long table, and seemed a piece of petty irritation suited to the First Lord’s icy manner.

  “Well, what more have you to tell me that justifies you posting to London?”

  Lord Spencer’s hostility was an anticlimax for Ramage. Up to that moment the information contained in the long and carefully written report in his canvas bag, with the corroboration of Yorke and Much, had seemed of great significance; worth risking his life to ensure its safe delivery. His discoveries were to put the Government, the Horse Guards, the Admiralty and Downing Street back in communication with the rest of the world.

  Certainly he had anticipated some trouble over his first guarded report to Lord Spencer from Lisbon, but His Lordship was not just chilly but downright frigid; not only uninterested in hearing more details but apparently anxious to get back to signing his letters.

  “You received my preliminary report from Lisbon, sir?” That was a damned silly remark, he realized, since the ransom had been paid.

  Lord Spencer nodded casually and gestured to a closed folder to his right. “Mr Nepean brought it in to refresh my memory.”

  “Was there confirmation from the underwriters about insuring the ventures, sir?”

  “They have not been asked,” Spencer said shortly.

  Ramage was too slow to hide his surprise, and the First Lord added sharply, “The Cabinet were not very pleased with your attempt to blame the Post Office men, Ramage.”

  “I imagine not, sir,” Ramage said bleakly.

  So they did not believe him. They had paid to have the packet released, and that was all. A good bargain, no doubt: they would have had to pay out £4,000 to Stevens if the ship was lost to the enemy; but by paying the ransom they had got it back with the ship’s company for £2,500 …

  “Am I to take it that my first report is not believed, sir?”

  Spencer nodded, glancing down impatiently at the papers awaiting his signature.

  Ramage looked at the wall to his left on which was something like an enormous clock with a circular map of Europe on its face and the points of the compass round the edge. A pointer with its axis where London was on the map was oscillating slightly, showing the wind direction and moved by a cunning system of rods and cams which linked it to a windvane on the Admiralty roof.

  “I have a second and very full report here, sir, giving all the details of insurance frauds and so on,” Ramage said, indicating the canvas bag on the chair beside him.

  “You’d better leave it,” Spencer said, picking up his pen, his voice still distant. “I take it the report doesn’t indicate any change of mind on your part about what happened?”

  “No, sir.”

  “All you lacked in your first report was proof, my dear Ramage—as Lord Auckland was quick to point out at a Cabinet meeting. And the only thing you aren’t likely to get—as the Prime Minister was equally quick to point out—is proof.”

  Ramage thought of the dead sentry, the kidnapping of Gianna, the Bosun pointing the pistol in the darkness, the boom of his own pistol going off in the Arabella’s tiny cabin. And the mutineers in irons …

  The Port Admiral’s report from Plymouth must have merely reported that Lieutenant Ramage was coming to London, and not mentioned that the Lady Arabella had arrived with a dozen packetsmen in irons … The Port Admiral had wisely decided to keep his nose out of something he did not understand.

  Tiredness from the long journey up from Plymouth—and perhaps the strain of the past weeks—was fast catching up with Ramage. The few hours’ rest snatched at the Star and Garter at Turnham Green had not been enough. It was not just physical tiredness either: he was tired of men who tried to dodge responsibility, starting with Sir Pilcher Skinner in Jamaica and including the Post Office Agent in Lisbon. He was tired, too, of cynical, worldly, yet utterly naive politicians who thought the world’s axis was between the Ayes and Noes lobbies of Parliament, and regarded service to the country solely in terms of service to the party. They genuinely rewarded someone who manoeuvred a successful Parliamentary vote of confidence on a critical issue because they could recognize it as a valuable service which deserved recognition, but they were always puzzled about what to do with a general or admiral who won a great victory in battle: that was something beyond their real comprehension. They had to fall back on precedent—so and so received an earldom fifty years ago for a similar sort of thing … no mention of hundreds or thousands of men who had lost limbs, eyes or life, who were buried in unmarked graves in some distant land or put over the side of ships, sewn up in hammocks with a shot at their feet, or condemned to spend the rest of their lives begging in the streets with sightless eyes or standing on crutches, their futures lost under piles of fruitless applications for pensions …

  Ramage lifted the canvas bag on to the table and, rather perversely, wished it had dried fish scales on it, or even white crusted salt from dried seawater: anything that would leave a temporary mark on this highly polished mahogany table to remind Their Lordships of the broad oceans and fighting ships, and take their minds from the stuffy, almost incestuous, atmosphere of the Houses of Parliament.

  He unlaced the bag, removed his report and Much’s, and put them both down on the table, then glanced over at the Langley Bradley clock in the corner by the door. A quarter past ten. That clock, he remembered Spencer telling him during a happier visit to the Board Room more than a year ago, had told Their Lordships the time for nearly three-quarters of a century, while the windvane had told Their Lordships if the wind would serve to let the French Fleet escape from Brest. The mirror on the front of the clock had reflected Board meetings that had sent Vernon to Cartagena, and Anson on his great voyage round the world. And given Byng a tiny squadron and sent him too late to save the Balearic Islands from the Duc de Richelieu and Admiral Galisonniere. Port Mahon had fallen, Byng had been blamed for what was the Government’s slowness and stupidity and unpreparedness, and as their scapegoat he had been shot.

  And out of that shameful episode had come a delight for gluttons—the new sauce the Duc de Richelieu’s chef had created to celebrate the fall of Mahon and named mahonnaise, and which was becoming very popular these days …

  Suddenly Ramage noticed that His Lordship had made no move to pick up the reports; in fact he had returned to reading and signing his letters. Was he indicating that the report was politically unacceptable? Was he telling Ramage not only that he had failed, but that he had earned everyone’s contempt by trying to blame the poor defenceless packetsmen?

  It was one or the other, and Ramage no longer cared which, even though the mutiny in the Arabella had been the final proof he needed. He wanted to be with Gianna again: he wanted to see his mother and father and wander through Blazey Hall, see the portraits of his forebears watching him from the walls. Perhaps they would approve of what he had done. He would walk through the gardens and the fields and forget the Navy, the Post Office and politicians. He wanted to walk through the fields holding Gianna’s hand like some rustic with a milkmaid.

  “This is my final report, sir: it contains all the proof you could want.”

  Lord Spencer nodded without looking up. “I’ll look at it when I have the time.”

  “May I have leave, sir?”

  “You have no ship,” Lord Spencer said, “so you’re on half pay. Your time is your own …”

  It was true, of course; but the voice was still as friendly as cold steel. It said, without uttering the actual words, you are on half pay now, and that is how you will end your days, because you were given a splendid chance and your first report went all the way up to the Cabinet, and all along the way it was disbelieved.

  One grunt of disapproval from the Prime Minister over a lieutenant’s activities, and the lieutenant might wish he ha
d died nobly as an enemy shot knocked his head off. The alternative was rotting on the beach on half pay …

  “Thank you, sir,” Ramage said and stood up. He moved the report so the bottoms of the two packets were parallel with the edge of the table.

  Spencer nodded curtly, still without looking up or saying any more, and Ramage, his now empty canvas bag tucked under his arm, left the Board Room and made his way down to the entrance hall. Yorke and Much sprang from their chairs in the waiting-room as he entered, but Ramage shook his head, indicating that he wanted to say nothing within hearing of the messengers, and gestured towards Whitehall.

  The two men followed him out of the waiting-room, across the entrance hall and out through the doors. They strode down the wide steps and across the cobbled courtyard. The two stone beasts over the top of the archway that Ramage had never been able to identify—they comprised the head, shoulders and wings of an eagle grafted to the tail of a sea serpent—seemed to ignore them, as usual, as they emerged into Whitehall.

  Ramage looked up and down the street for a carriage. On the opposite side a tinker was busy hammering at the bottom of a pot, while next to him an upholsterer patiently mended the padding of a chair. There were the usual carts and wagons—one laden high with cords of firewood was passing a brewer’s dray loaded with a pyramid of puncheons, more than enough weight for a pair of horses to haul.

  “What happened?” Yorke finally asked.

  “He didn’t believe the first report from Lisbon, and the Cabinet agreed with him. They all criticize me for putting the blame on the Post Office men. I gather it doesn’t fit in with Government policy as laid down in Downing Street.”

  “But what about the last report—the one you’ve just delivered?” Yorke asked incredulously.

  “I was told to leave it,” Ramage said flatly.

  “He didn’t read it?”

  “No.”

  “But you told him—”