by Dudley Pope
“Why is it called a guillotine?” Ramage found himself asking, fascinated by Louis’s narrative. “Did a M. Guillotine invent it?”
“Not exactly. A few years before the Revolution a member of the Assembly called Dr Guillotin (there was no final ‘e’) proposed a resolution that a way of executing people should be found which was swift and avoided the risk of mistakes by an executioner. His motives were of the highest. The College of Surgeons were consulted about the swiftest and most painless method, and the decapitating machine with a falling blade was designed. When it was adopted for executions it was named after Dr Guillotin, who still lives in Paris. I heard he had a quarrel with Citizen Robespierre and was imprisoned during the Revolution, though I believe he has been set free by now.”
“‘Ow does it work?” Stafford asked, and Ramage knew he shared the Cockney’s fascination, although it was unlikely Stafford shared his fears.
“Well, you saw how it looks: a vertical frame in which the blade falls is built at the end of a bench on which the victim lies, his head protruding over the end so that the neck is exactly below the blade.
“The neck rests in a shaped piece like the lower half of a pair of stocks, and there’s an upper piece that is clamped down when the victim is in position. Some guillotines have a fixed bench so that the condemned person—who of course is bound—has to be lifted on to it. The newest ones have a bascule which pivots on an axle like a seesaw between vertical and horizontal.
“The guillotine blade (which is very heavy) has a diagonal cutting edge and is hoisted up by the bourreau—the executioner—who hauls on a rope. The rope is attached to the upper side of the blade, goes up through a pulley at the top of the frame, and comes down to a cleat at the side. There’s a basket to catch the head, and a long basket to one side of the bascule for the body.
“Now, this is what happens at an execution: the bourreau’s assistants—they are called valets—seize the man. His wrists are tied behind his back, and his ankles are secured. The bascule is swung up vertically and the man is pushed against it. It is just the right length, so that he is looking over the top edge at the frame and blade.
“The valets push his shoulders so that he swings over with the bascule like someone lying on a seesaw, and is now horizontal, his neck resting in the shaped piece. The upper piece is clamped in position as though he has his head in the stocks, and the valets jump back out of the way in case they get their fingers nipped by the blade.
“The bourreau, who has already hoisted up the blade, flips the rope off the cleat and the blade falls so quickly the eye can hardly follow it. There is a thud, the head falls in the basket, and it is all over. The body is pushed sideways into the other basket and the bourreau hoists the blade again. It is kept well honed, although towards the end of a busy day it gets blunt and—”
“That’s enough, Louis,” Ramage interrupted. “My neck feels sore already, and if Stafford can’t picture it by now he never will.”
“You must admit it’s interesting, sir,” Stafford said. “You ever seen anyone get turned orf at Newgate?”
“No. I know it is regarded as great entertainment, but somehow I …”
“Oh, it’s not too bad,” Stafford said enthusiastically. “It’s worse when you know the condemned man. Saw a cousin o’ mine turned orf, once. Stood there a couple o’ hours I did, waiting. Then as they fetched him out, St Sepulchre’s church bell began tolling, the parson began saying the funeral service, an’ that was that. Born to be cropped, my cousin was.”
“Cropped?” Louis asked, puzzled at the word.
“Yus, ‘Knocked down fer a crop.’ That’s when the judge says the cramp words.”
The Frenchman shook his head, mystified, and Ramage looked puzzled. “It’s slang, yes, but what does it mean?”
“Mean yer don’t know, sir?” Stafford said disbelievingly. “Well, the cramp words is what the judge says when he knocks—when he sentences yer ter death. An’ sentencing a man to death is—well, it’s putting the noose round the neck and cropping ‘im on collar day.”
“Collar day?” Louis exclaimed. “Mon Dieu, what English is this?”
“The noose fits like a collar,” Stafford explained crossly. “Honest, Louis, yer don’t speak English very good, really.”
“I do my best,” the Frenchman said wryly.
When Jobert and his wife brought up their supper promptly at seven o’clock there was still no sign of the Lieutenant-de-vaisseau. Louis came in while the food was being served and as he sat down he said casually to the landlord: “I hope the Lieutenant won’t be too late tonight; we have a card tournament arranged.”
“Ah, we do not know what has delayed him. His other friend—the one you were playing cards with on Monday night—called in a few minutes ago. He said he did not want to miss another exciting evening.”
His wife made a disapproving noise and Louis raised his eyebrows questioningly. “Gambling,” she sniffed. “Such a waste of good time!”
“The citizens must choose how they divert themselves,” the landlord said reprovingly. “They work hard for the Republic, and they deserve some relaxation.”
The woman muttered something Ramage and Louis couldn’t catch, but her husband turned to them apologetically. “My daughter—she is upset. She has not seen much of the Lieutenant on his last two visits. I keep telling them that it is not often we have citizens in the hotel with whom the Lieutenant can relax, but …”
Louis was quick to make profuse apologies to the woman. “This is our last night here,” he concluded sadly.
She sniffed. “You have not settled your account yet, Citizen,” she said acidly.
“Mon Dieu!” Louis muttered, and helped himself to more soup.
As soon as they had finished eating and Jobert had cleared the table, Louis followed him downstairs to settle the bill. He returned fifteen minutes later, cursing the landlord for a thief.
“There is a special charge for the ‘medicine,’” he said angrily. “And they’ve charged for a full meal every time you and Stafford had a plate of broth. The ‘medicine’ is …”
“But you paid?” Ramage interrupted anxiously. “We don’t want—”
“Don’t worry, I made just the amount of fuss a French landlord would expect another Frenchman to make, and I made him reduce the bill by twenty per cent. He would have been suspicious if I’d paid the full amount!”
“No sign of the Lieutenant?”
“No, the landlord is quite worried and his daughter in tears. He has never been as late as this. The girl is sure he has been thrown from his horse and is lying dead in a ditch.”
Ramage took out his watch. “Just before nine o’clock. I hope she’s not right!”
“Tonight of all nights,” Louis said grimly. “I thought everything had been going too well.” He rubbed his bristly chin in a characteristic gesture. “Of course it could be the fault of Admiral Bruix …”
Ramage said nothing. From the time they had told the landlord that they would be returning to Boulogne on Sunday morning, he had known that the one thing that could wreck all their plans was the Admiral being late with the report. He might not finish it until late Saturday evening, and the Lieutenant would get orders to ride direct to Paris without stopping—a hard ride but not impossible. The Admiral might not finish it until Sunday, and even then the Lieutenant could still arrive in Paris in time to deliver it to the Minister on Monday.
Come to think of it—and he cursed himself for not paying more attention to the point—there was really nothing in Bruix’s earlier letter that promised the Minister that the report would be sent off from Boulogne on Saturday. It was all his own assumption—that because the weekly despatch to the Minister was always sent off on a Saturday, the special report would be treated in the same way. Yet the fact that it was a special report could mean that it would be dealt with specially: sent off to Paris as soon as it was ready, rather than have it despatched in the regular way.
All this
damned waiting, being cooped up in this room for a week, that damnable medicine, too, most likely for nothing. The more he thought about it, the more certain he became. He glanced up at Louis and knew the same thoughts were crossing the Frenchman’s mind.
“If we can think of a reason to tell the landlord for staying longer, are those travel papers all right?”
“Yes, only the date that they were issued is written down, and they are for a single journey from Amiens to Boulogne. There is no final date, but they are valid for one month.”
“I’ll have to have a relapse. Hmm, no,” he finally decided, this was an occasion when he would take advantage of being an officer. “I think Stafford will have a relapse. With a couple more blankets on his bed, he’ll pass for feverish.”
The Cockney looked up at hearing his name, a puzzled grin on his face.
“I was telling Louis that if the Lieutenant doesn’t come tonight, we’ll have to stay here until he does. We’ll need a reason—and you look a bit feverish.”
“Aye aye, sir,” Stafford said cheerfully, and then his face fell. “It don’t mean more of that medicine, do it?”
“I won’t hear a word against it—Louis says they’ve charged us three times the price of brandy for it.”
“Ah, ‘tis too expensive for the likes of me,” Stafford said quickly. “I’ll make do with broth.” He looked keenly at Ramage and recognized the worried look. “Is it dangerous, staying on ‘ere, sir? I mean, would you rarver go somewhere else and ‘ide? Louis is bound to know a safe house. I can ‘eave this case an’ bring you the satchel.”
“Heave this case?”
Had Stafford been a girl, Ramage would have said he suddenly looked coy as he said: “I always tell a clerk ter put down ‘locksmith,’ sir, but—well, a’fore the press-gang took me up I sort o’ worked in Bridewell Lane on me own account, like.”
“At night, you mean,” Ramage said helpfully.
“That’s right, sir.” He grinned when he realized that Ramage was pulling his leg. “We can keep a watch on the ‘Tenant’s window each night. When we see a light we know ‘e’s ‘ere. When the light goes out we know ‘e’s gorn fer ‘is grub, an’ our Will is up the drainpipe and darn again with the satchel a’fore you can say Jack Ketch.”
Ramage envied the Cockney’s nonchalance. “Heave the case,” he reminded him.
Stafford’s jaw dropped for a moment, and then he grinned again. “Our slang, sir, ‘Heave’ is—well, you’d call it burgle. A ‘case’ is—” he thought hard for a moment, “well, it’s the place wot gets burgled. Like the Italian word.”
“Casa? But that means ‘house.’”
“Exackly,” Stafford said triumphantly. “Yer see …”
His voice tailed off as all three men’s eyes went to the door.
There were heavy footsteps coming up the stairs. Two men … the landlord was speaking, although it was impossible to distinguish his words. They reached the corridor, and still the landlord was talking. He sounded anxious. Another guest who was doubtful about the quality of the rooms? Then the coarse laugh of the Lieutenant.
Louis sighed with relief and sat down at the table.
After Louis had gone downstairs to join the Lieutenant, Ramage decided to write the first part of his report to Lord Nelson, so wording it that he could then copy the facts and figures from Admiral Bruix’s letter without delay. Louis’s concern the previous Monday night about having incriminating papers in the room had been justified, though Ramage was more than worried that he was himself becoming obsessed about it.
As previously arranged, Louis came back into the room after an hour, ostensibly because he had forgotten his purse but actually to tell Ramage that supper was over and they were just settling down to play cards, and Ramage had to fight with his own impatience and nervousness to let five minutes pass before nodding to Stafford.
As the Cockney left the room Ramage’s heart began to thud. The game begins … like going into action and waiting for the first enemy gun to fire and drive away the fear. The long wait was nearly over: in the next few minutes he would know if he had the answers to every question the Admiralty could think of, not just those covered by his orders. If he succeeded, the First Lord got a bonus. If he failed—even thinking about it was making his breathing shallow and chilly perspiration was trickling down his spine. His stomach seemed full of a cold liquid churning round. It was not often he could sit quietly in a chair observing his own fear. It was far worse than being on his own quarterdeck while he was taking the ship into action. At sea there were tactics to decide (and sometimes hastily changed at the last moment), sails to be trimmed, orders to be given: with so much to do there was no time to think of fear as such; it crept in, like a misty rain which soaks clothes and chills bodies, unless he was busy. Fear did not get a chance to take a grip on him on a quarterdeck, and the busier he was the more likely it was that someone who did not understand fear would say he was brave. The real test—and one Ramage wouldn’t pass—was sitting in a chair and waiting for things to happen over which he had no control. Stafford had gone to get the satchel; he had orders to open it, and then open the seal of a despatch. The only trouble was that Ramage had no control over whether or not the despatch was in the satchel …
Ramage was watching the door so intently that when it swung open suddenly he gave such a start that he bit his tongue. Cursing to himself, he licked a finger to see if he had drawn blood and, after Stafford walked in and tossed the satchel on the table in a gesture which nearly blew out the candle, Ramage decided that he was too tense to watch him open the seal—providing the Admiral’s letter was there.
I’ll watch him sort the letters, then I’ll take my jacket off slowly and hang it up, he told himself; anything to avoid watching the hot spatula sliding under the paper and knowing we’ve lost everything if Stafford heats the metal a fraction too much. Not everything, of course; with this last despatch it did not really matter so much. The melted seal would not be discovered until the satchel was opened in Paris on Monday morning: but it was still better if the French never discovered that the satchel had been opened …
Stafford selected the right picklock, gave a few wiggles and the flap of the satchel sprang open. Same satchel but someone had been polishing it: the deep scratch below the lock was still there but stained by the polish.
One thickish packet and—one, two … seven … nine … fourteen … fifteen other letters. Only the packet is addressed to the Minister; the rest are for various departments in the Ministry. Stafford is already heating the spatula with a cheery grin as he pulls the packet in front of him, seal uppermost, and runs a hand through his hair. In Stafford it was confidence; in others it might have been mistaken for bravado. The spatula blade was discolouring with the heat and collecting soot … Stafford testing it on the back of his hand and putting it back in the flame, leaving a smear of soot on the skin of his hand. A full minute passed before he tried it again. Then, after a quick movement to wipe the soot on his trousers, he slid the spatula under the packet.
Ramage looked away but he knew he could not stand up and take off his jacket with the nonchalance he had intended. He must stay sitting there; Stafford might want him to hold something. He kept his eyes off the seal and looked at the candle but that was no good—when he looked away there were candle flames all over the place. Back to the seal with the wax turning shiny as the heat gets to it. Is this how a rabbit feels when a ferret is staring at it? Now Stafford is flicking the spatula away and the packet is open, and the look on his face means that everything has gone well.
“There y’are, sir.”
Ramage unfolded it carefully and found five pages. Paragraphs of neat writing and many figures. He reached for the paper, unscrewed the top of the inkwell, but did not bother to check the tip of the quill because it had been all right half an hour ago.
Bruix’s report began with all the polite preliminaries: the French might have fought a Revolution but they still clung to the sort of
archaic phrases beloved by the Admiralty. And here, Citizen Minister, is the situation of the Invasion Flotilla at the time of writing … Ah, how nice of Bruix! “I have given first the type of vessel and, for convenience of reference, its capacity. Then I have listed the total number ordered by the First Consul, followed by the number actually launched, commissioned, awaiting commissioning or under construction, and finally the deficit at the time of writing.
“The vessels noted as ‘awaiting commissioning,’” Bruix continued, “are those which have been launched but which cannot be completed because we lack masts, sails, rigging and guns. You can see how many vessels are under construction, and although there has not been time to distinguish the precise stage each has reached, I have indicated how many are more than half completed.”
Ramage skimmed through and finally read the last few paragraphs of the despatch in which Bruix acknowledged the Minister’s last letter. The shipyards had been told that they would be paid as soon as funds arrived from Paris, but he regretted having to report that it had proved impossible to prevent a number of workmen (“especially skilled shipwrights and carpenters, who can command high wages by working in the cities making and repairing furniture”) from running away. Guards were on duty at the shipyards, but the men were billeted in private homes and it was impossible to keep a watch on them day and night. A proclamation had been read to all the men warning them that they risked conscription.
Bruix took this opportunity of listing once against the deficiency in guns so that the Minister should have, in one despatch, all the facts at his disposal. In view of the Minister’s reference to providing funds for the shipyards and wages, Bruix said, he fore-bore from repeating the actual requirements to settle all accounts and wages to date.
Ramage sighed. Now to copy the facts and figures. He turned back to the first page and began writing:
“Flotille de grande especé
