The Ramage Touch r-10

by Dudley Pope

  Ramage turned away and saw the unwounded French officer standing at a gunport abreast the mainmast, a Marine behind him. Obviously Renwick had allowed him to watch his ship die while the other one was being treated by Bowen.

  While the rest of the survivors were being picked up he had work to do, Ramage realized, and the first task was to see what was in that weighted box. Renwick had, as instructed, left it on Ramage's desk, watched by the sentry. It was the usual type in which most ships carried the secret papers unless their captains preferred a canvas bag. It would sink quickly when thrown overboard, but in the case of the Furet the man responsible for making sure it was thrown over the side when the colours were struck had, fortunately, failed in his duty. Perhaps, in the excitement, his first lieutenant had forgotten it or been killed. Unless there were two boxes? That might well be the case, Ramage thought. The second box, with the secret papers, orders, signal book, challenge and private signals for the next three months might have been put down beside the binnacle and, as the colours came down, thrown over the side. Or, he realized with dismay, it might still have been there as he stood talking to the French officers; it might just this moment have sunk with the Furet.

  He shook the box but the weight of the lead prevented him from guessing if it was empty. He looked around for the Marine sentry at his door and said: "Use your bayonet to open this box, please."

  When he saw the impatient look on Ramage's face the man put his foot on the box, pinning it to the deck as he inserted the bayonet point into the tiny gap between lid and box just above the lock.

  Suddenly the box sprang open and a bar of lead, which had been inside it, slid across the deck and startled the Marine who, never having seen such a thing before, made a leap for it as Ramage hurriedly grabbed the box and looked inside, seeing that there were several papers.

  He sat at the desk and put the battered box in front of him. All at once he felt so weary that he would have liked to sleep for the rest of the day. One French frigate blown to pieces in Porto Ercole by a mortar shell, another sunk alongside the Calypso, a third looking badly damaged in the fleeting glance he had given her as they passed the harbour entrance. Two out of three accounted for. Considering that they were formerly sister ships of the Calypso, a superstitious man might feel a chill. Yet perhaps not... the fourth, the Calypso, flew different colours and had a different loyalty . . .

  What was it about the cabin in the Furet that had looked odd? The memory nagged him. The cabin was the same shape as this one, although the furniture was better. The lid had come off the wine cooler. The left-hand drawers were full of the bits and pieces that a man tended to accumulate in extra drawers.

  A jacket had been slung down on the settee. Not a captain's coat because the epaulettes were wrong. He knew very little about French naval uniforms but could recognize the coat of a French captain, and that was not one. Based on that one glance, when he was thinking of something else, and his present memory of it, that frock coat belonged to someone senior, probably a rear-admiral.

  That would make sense, he thought sleepily: the senior officer of a squadron of three 36-gun frigates could be a senior captain; but three frigates which were going to transport a regiment of artillery, cavalry and infantry, and escort two bomb ketches to a distant port might well be carrying a rear-admiral to a new command.

  A rear-admiral would of course occupy the captain's cabin, and in turn the captain would move down a deck and take over the first lieutenant's cabin in the gunroom, the first lieutenant displacing the second, and so on ... The captain's secret papers would have been in his temporary cabin, leading off the gunroom, one deck down . . . which meant, Ramage realized as he stared at the box in front of him, the shock bringing him wide awake, that these might well be the rear-admiral's papers. But where was the rear-admiral?

  There had been only two officers left alive on board the Furet, the oldish fellow with the wounded leg and a pimply youth; the rest had been killed. Both were wearing trousers and shirts, as though disturbed before dressing in uniform for the day. Yet the wounded man was well shaven; Ramage had particularly noticed that because usually French officers seemed to favour shaving the night before, so that one never saw them just shaven; always shaven twelve hours earlier, like innkeepers and ostlers.

  He reached for the box, flipped open the lid and took out the contents. The first few papers were addressed to a Rear-Admiral Jean-Paul Poitier. A more reliable source of information, Ramage thought sourly, than a drunken artillery colonel boasting in an Orbetello inn.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Twenty or thirty documents of varying sizes, and most of them bearing the now-familiar oval symbol with the anchor in the middle and the words Fraternité and Egalité printed at the sides. What happened to Liberté, Ramage wondered. They were arranged in date order, the earliest on top.

  The first was addressed to Jean-Paul Poitier, "capitaine de vaisseau" and telling him, in bureaucratic French so complicated that Whitehall clerks would have envied the prolixity, platitudes, irrelevances and redundancies, that the Minister of Marine and the Colonies had been pleased to advance him to the rank of "contre-amiral". The letter gave the date when the promotion would take place and added that further orders would be sent to him "in due course".

  Poitier was in Toulon at the time, Ramage noted, commanding a ship of the line; probably one of the fleet that spent most of its time at anchor, yards sent down, sails stored on shore in rat-proofed buildings, cordage hanging in coils, and, he suspected, always fearing that Nelson would return.

  He had to wait three months - "due course" seemed to be as long in Revolutionary France as it was in Royalist England - before being told he was to command a squadron "to be employed upon a special service". There was no indication of which ships would form the squadron, nor any hint of the nature of the "special service".

  Three successive letters concerned pay and allowances for his new rank; a fourth instructed him to report to the prefect of the province to swear a new oath of allegiance upon his promotion. The government of France must be uncertain of itself if its officers had to swear oaths of allegiance at various stages of promotion, Ramage thought. British officers had to take the Test Act oath, but that was more a question of religion than of allegiance. Britain was lucky, he realized; the nation was not split, so that brother could find himself fighting brother. One tended to forget after all these years that the French war had started with Frenchmen revolting against Frenchmen.

  The next letter acknowledged notification that "Citizen Jean-Paul Poitier, rear-admiral", had taken the oath and was to command a squadron comprising two frigates which would later join another frigate and two bomb vessels and form part of a fleet "now being assembled" and which was "intended for a special service".

  Poitier's natural hope for an independent command must have suffered an unpleasant shock when he received that letter, Ramage thought. He was to be the third or fourth junior admiral in a fleet; at best he would be commanding a small squadron attached to the fleet. But what was the "special service"?

  Poitier was then told to take two frigates under his command, hoist his flag in the Furet after she was commissioned, and as soon as both ships were provisioned for three months, to report the fact to the minister. Further orders arrived telling him that the frigates would be transporting cavalry, infantry and artillery, and although they were not to be armed en flûte, he was to draw extra hammocks and blankets from the army depot in Toulon, and take on an extra month's provisions, which the army would also supply.

  Ramage read that with a smile; the chances of Poitier getting even one blanket out of the army depot in Toulon were nil, and only a bureaucrat in Paris could imagine that any army depot would have a supply of hammocks.

  That was obviously a point made by Poitier in a letter to Paris, because a reply, signed by the minister himself, brushed aside "these minor supply problems" and said that a third frigate would be added to his squadron.

  The minister to
ld him to put to sea as soon as the third frigate was commissioned. He was to sail for Porto Ercole, in Tuscany, and there embark the 156th Regiment of Artillery, the 47th and 67th squadrons of cavalry and the 19th and 75th regiments of foot. Two bomb ketches, the Brutus and the Fructidor, which were also intended for the "special service", would join his squadron there, having previously watered and provisioned. They would be under his command and could embark any troops for whom there was no room in the frigates.

  The letter gave Poitier the day by which his frigates should arrive in Porto Ercole and the date when the whole squadron, including the bomb ketches, should sail, but there was no mention of the destination. However, Poitier was assured that the bomb ketches had received relevant orders and been warned that they must not be late arriving in Porto Ercole. The commanding officers of the various army units involved, the minister added, were being informed "by the other Ministry". This phrase led Ramage to guess that the navy was having a quarrel with the war ministry. Events in Paris probably ran parallel to those in London, where at times a serving officer could be forgiven for thinking that the enemy was another ministry, rather than the French.

  The war ministry in Paris had done its job, however, and its orders had been obeyed, because the troops had arrived in Porto Ercole on time.

  There were a dozen documents left in the box, but it was obvious that none was going to mention the objective. The destination of the squadron and the fleet, and the nature of this "special service" were obviously closely guarded secrets. The French were wary enough not to commit anything to paper, never sure that ministry officials or others who might see written orders were not secret royalists, or British spies. Ramage finished reading through the remaining papers but they covered only routine matters.

  It was getting hot and stuffy in the cabin, and Ramage remembered that the Calypso was still hove-to. Although he had gone through the papers in less than half an hour, there had not been enough time yet to complete the rescue of all the French survivors.

  He locked the documents in a drawer of his desk and put the broken box in another, which he left unlocked. He picked up his hat. The sentry came to attention as he walked through the door, and halfway up the companionway he began to squint in the bright sunlight. The ladder was canted to starboard and the rays of the afternoon sun heated the woodwork, so that he could smell the paint as he went up.

  The carpenter and his mates were repairing the damaged gun carriage while the gunner made checks with his callipers to ensure that the gun itself had not been damaged. Aitken was on the quarterdeck and pointed to the xebec, which was barely a mile off. Southwick was scanning the wavetops with a telescope and moving across to the other side of the quarterdeck when he saw Ramage.

  "Just making sure we aren't missing any survivors, sir," he explained, and Ramage saw that the wreckage now covered a large area. "The boats are going to everything that's floating. One silly fellow clinging to a yard hid himself under a piece of the sail - apparently thought we were cutting everyone's throat, until some of his mates shouted to him. He bobbed out quick enough then!"

  Ramage nodded and left Southwick to his search as he walked forward to where all the French prisoners were herded together on the fo'c'sle. They would soon be taken below and a gun loaded with canister shot trained on the hatch, but for the moment it was easier to guard them up in the bow.

  They were a classic cross-section of seamen serving in a man o' war, whatever their allegiance, but Ramage thought that among the pinched faces, sea-soaked and bedraggled hair, and torn clothing, he could hear various regional accents. One man grumbled in the deep, slow accents of the Camargue; another, excited, angry, and frightened, came from the north, probably Artois, among the flat fields of Flanders. A third, from his behaviour a petty officer trying to restore discipline, was almost certainly from Alsace or Lorraine.

  Ramage knew he was deliberately wasting time: there was only one Frenchman he needed to talk to and he would be down below, being patched up by Bowen, who had so few wounded to attend to that he had turned the gunroom into a surgery, with a piece of canvas stretched across the table with short lengths of rope ready, if necessary, to strap down a patient if the pain became too bad: there was no rum yet distilled that could deaden the rasp of a saw if a limb was being amputated.

  As Ramage walked into the gunroom he saw that the tub, conveniently placed to hold "wings and limbs", was empty. There were perhaps two dozen wounded Frenchmen waiting outside the gunroom door, but they were patiently sitting on the deck.

  The sheet of canvas was soaked with blood; Bowen, the man who had been one of Wimpole Street's finest surgeons until his practice was ruined when he became a drunkard and was forced into the navy - to be cured of drinking by a ruthless Ramage - looked up, apron stained red, as Ramage spoke to him.

  "Ah, sir; a most successful action: my congratulations. A frigate sunk and hardly any work for me. One funeral for you, and there's a young Frenchman I'm worried about."

  Ramage nodded, already experiencing the familiar nausea that always made him feel faint at the sight of all the medical instruments laid out on another piece of canvas stretched on the deck, with a loblolly man kneeling beside it, ready to pass in a moment whatever Bowen called for.

  "Let me have your report when you've finished treating everyone. Now, that French officer . . ."

  "Ah, leg wound. Nothing serious - lacerations of the gastrocnemius and the tibialis anticus muscles. Pieces of splinter - I've extracted them all. Plenty of blood at the time but he's been bandaged up and given a stiff tot of rum. Apart from changing the dressings in a day or two, he's quite all right. He can walk, but I've put him in Martin's cabin until I had time to get orders from you, sir."

  "Very well, Bowen, thank you. I'll take him away because I want to talk to him."

  "He's still weak from the loss of blood, sir," Bowen said cautioningly. "I must still consider him my patient."

  "I have a terrible reputation for torturing wounded prisoners," Ramage said dryly, and Bowen grinned. "I know, sir; you tortured me enough!"

  "But you can give a man a tot of rum now, and never feel the need . . ."

  "Oh yes, sir, the torture was effective enough!"

  "Right, now which is Martin's cabin?"

  He walked over to the tiny hutch Bowen pointed at as he called for an instrument and turned back to the seaman lashed down on the table. "Keep still, you oaf," he said in appalling French. "Because of my skill you will keep the arm. But not, certainly not, if you wriggle like an eel."

  The little cabin was lit only by the gunroom skylight, and Ramage saw the man lying in the cot, the lower part of his left leg swollen by the dressings and the trouser leg cut away almost to the crotch. The grey-haired man was lying almost at attention, but he looked defeated. Not defeated in battle, Ramage thought, but defeated by life. He had good, almost fine features, and Ramage wondered whether he was what the Revolutionaries would have called an aristo who, to save his life, land or because of a change of heart, had joined the Revolutionaries but had never become of the Revolution because someone who had not fought or shouted at the barricades or howled at the guillotine platforms was never fully accepted. What, apart from losing his ship, which was a risk any naval officer took, made his face sag and his body look, even recumbent on the cot, as though it had just received five hundred lashes?

  "Admiral Poitier," Ramage said quietly from the doorway, "can you walk up to my cabin or shall I get a couple of men to carry you?"

  The man had gone rigid for a moment, a movement which brought another stab of pain to his leg, but he slowly relaxed when he realized that there were many ways by which Ramage could have learned his name and rank.

  "I can walk slowly," Poitier said, sitting up in the swinging cot and putting his right leg on the deck as he looked round for something to grip. Ramage held out a hand and a moment later, with a deep grunt, Poitier was standing beside him. He was not as tall as Ramage remembered, and there was the smel
l of rum on his breath, but he was sober enough.

  "Your surgeon," he muttered, "he did a fine job. Just cuts, from splinters. No permanent damage - if I understood his French correctly."

  Ramage stood back as the man hobbled from the cabin, glanced at the seaman stretched on the table and murmured a few words of encouragement, and then made his way up the companionway, able to walk more easily than Ramage expected because the kneecap had not been damaged.

  Ramage led the way to his cabin, then stood back at the top of the companionway, noting Poitier's obvious familiarity with this type of ship: the duck of the head at the fifth step of the companionway to avoid a deck beam, sharp turn aft at the bottom to enter the captain's cabin, the nod to the Marine sentry who came to attention and was obviously about to challenge Poitier until he saw Ramage following.

  Inside the cabin, Ramage twisted the armchair round until it faced the desk, and gestured towards it. Poitier sat down carefully, as though expecting it to be some trick chair with arms that would seize him, and then he sighed as it gave him relief from the pain in his leg. Ramage tossed his hat on to the settee and sat in the straight-backed chair at the desk. He took a key from his pocket, opened the lower drawer and took out the documents, putting them squarely in front of him on the desk.

  "Admiral," he said quietly, "I must congratulate you on your recent promotion -"

  Poitier inclined his head in acknowledgement. This too was information the Englishman had obviously obtained from some of the men.

  "- which I imagine you never expected. You are a Breton, no?"

  Poitier nodded. "You speak very good French, Captain. Fluent, in fact. I would have -" he paused for a moment, his eyes searching Ramage's face warily. "Do you come from Paris? Are you a royalist?"