Ramage & the Guillotine

by Dudley Pope

  “Three? So you are coming back with us?”

  Louis nodded. “I would like to stay behind, but my friends in Boulogne think it would be a good idea if I went on a holiday until they are absolutely sure that I was not identified at Amiens or at the inn you used at Boulogne. They can deal with the Corporal at the Chapeau Rouge—no, not kill him!” Louis said hastily when he saw Ramage’s expression. “They’ll just explain what he has to gain by having a bad memory for names and faces—but he may have gossiped already …”

  “You’ll have nothing to fear from the British authorities,” Ramage said. “I will make sure you are given—well, whatever you need.”

  Louis held up a hand and grinned. “You don’t have to reassure me! But I have friends over there, you know …”

  Ramage thought a moment, and then said: “Louis, I want to help you with papers because—no, wait a moment, let me explain—if you rely on your friends, you are relying on men who are outside the law. Oh yes, I know some of the smugglers’ leaders are important men, but there is no need for you to enter the country as a smuggler on the run. With me, you enter the country as someone who has helped a British naval officer. I shall write a report for Lord St Vincent, and you’ll be given any papers you need to live in England legally, so that—”

  “No, please no,” Louis interrupted. “I am grateful, and I know there would be no problems. I’ll go further—you have already thought what you would do if the Admiralty will not pay a reward, haven’t you … ?”

  Once again Ramage was startled how easily the Frenchman read his thoughts, for he had been thinking that his father would be only too anxious to reward any man who saved his son’s life: a lump sum, an allowance, a house on the estate, work if he wished for it … “Yes,” he said, “I’ve learned not to place too much reliance on the official mind!”

  “Well, it does not matter. You see, I want to stay only until I hear from Boulogne that it is all right for me to come back. Although I am a man without an allegiance, I am not a man without a country. I am a true Norman—although I seem to spend a lot of my time in Picardy!”

  “Very well,” Ramage said, “but if you ever need a hand, get in touch with Dyson: I’ll leave my father’s address with him. My father would know what to do.”

  “Thank you,” Louis said, “and I will if necessary. Now,” he looked round at the rest of the men and said in French, “if everyone has had enough to eat, it is time we marched on again.”

  The man who had been tending the bonfire when they arrived kicked the charred embers until he was sure all were extinguished. The rest of them picked up their muskets, and the march began again.

  They left their escort beyond Abbéville and the night ride to Mers was alternately alarming and hilarious: Stafford, who had never ridden before but did not bother to mention the fact, mounted the horse in the wood where they had been hidden and immediately jerked the reins and shouted, “Giddyyup!” No one was quite sure whether the horse objected to Stafford’s accent or the jerk on the bit, but it promptly cantered off the track and among the trees, passing under a branch sticking out at the height of Stafford’s chest. The startled seaman, as he related it afterwards, suddenly found himself shoved aft along the horse’s back “and dropped over ‘is transom on to me ‘ead!” In the half an hour it took to retrieve the horse, Stafford had recovered from his fall and been shown the rudiments of riding. Ramage and Louis decided the horse originally given to Stafford was too skittish, so Ramage took it and a chastened Stafford agreed to let Louis lead on his horse, holding the reins of Stafford’s.

  It seemed almost impossible to ride cross-country at night without causing a lot of noise: startled birds flew out of hedges and trees, squawking in alarm, while the thud of the horses’ hooves seemed to echo across the fields and were punctuated by the jingle of harness. Occasionally an owl glided past, while bats darted overhead. A heavy dew gradually made their clothes damp.

  They had left Abbéville behind and were just skirting the village of Cambron, with a moon in its first quarter giving enough light for them to distinguish hedges and ditches, when suddenly the yell of a frightened man right in front of them, followed by the excited barking of a dog, made Ramage’s horse rear in alarm and Louis’s horse back a few steps so that Stafford ran into it, pitching the Cockney over its head. Stafford managed to roll clear of the hooves and Ramage, seeing Louis slipping from the saddle and running towards the noise, grabbed both sets of reins.

  Expecting any moment to hear the sound of shots, Ramage had calmed his own horse and seen Stafford remounted by the time Louis returned. “A poacher,” he said contemptuously. “He thought we were gendarmes deliberately riding him down.”

  “Is he likely to raise—”

  “No, he still thinks we are gendarmes. I told him to go home to his wife and stop poaching …”

  A few miles farther on Louis slowed down and then stopped. “This is the road between Beauchamps and St Valery—we’re near a village called Woincourt. How are you getting on, Stafford?”

  The Cockney groaned. “Must ‘ave worn the seat out o’ these trousers and it’s chafing ‘ard on wot was in ‘em. Much farver ter go, Louis?”

  “Five or six miles. Can you manage it?”

  “Not much choice, eh mate?”

  Ramage smiled to himself in the darkness: the expression was typically Stafford; cheerfully grumbling yet remarkably stoical.

  They reached the village of Mers at three o’clock in the morning, lucky not to have had a horse break a fetlock, but they seemed to see better in the darkness than their riders. Ramage could hear the dull swish of the waves as they rode slowly towards half a dozen houses scattered along a mile of road only fifty yards back from the beach. The last house—which was also the nearest to Le Tréport—had a dim light at a window, and Louis rode towards it, making no attempt to hide his appearance from anyone who might be watching from the other houses.

  They reached the door and Louis dismounted, walked up to it and knocked loudly. For several moments nothing happened, and then a voice to the right—was there a man standing at the entrance to the outhouse?—said “Picardy,” to which Louis promptly replied “Normandy.” Ramage recognized it as a challenge and reply, and at once the man went to the door of the house, opened it and invited them in.

  The atmosphere in the large room was typical of a fisherman’s home: the clean, sharp smell of tarred nets and ropes hanging from the rafters fought with the stench of fish; the sooty smell of a badly-trimmed oil-lamp standing on the table mingled with that of boiled vegetables. A kettle was humming on the stove, and while the man tied up the horses, his wife bustled round making room for them to sit down.

  “Were you responsible for the challenge?” Ramage asked Louis, and the Frenchman gave a dry laugh.

  “I was responsible for it, but I didn’t think of it. These people know I am a Norman, and the River Bresle—which is only a few hundred yards down the road from here—marks the boundary. This side is Picardy, the other side Normandy.”

  As they talked, the woman was placing mugs on the table, and when the man came in to report that the horses were tethered, she handed him a bottle. He poured and gave mugs to Ramage and Stafford.

  “Calvados—the blood of the true Norman,” he said with a wink, and pushed a third mug across to Louis while Ramage translated for Stafford.

  “What we call applejack, ain’t it, sir?”

  “It is, and very potent,” Ramage said pointedly.

  “Aye aye, sir,” the Cockney said. “I’ll go carefully. When do we start lookin’ fer Slushy an’ the Marie?”

  “You have a whole day’s rest ahead of you. We go out after dark tonight.” Ramage looked across at Louis and said in French, “Does our friend here have any news of the Marie?”

  The two men spoke for a few minutes and the fisherman’s report was noncommittal: he had received instructions from Boulogne to expect Louis and two friends by road, been told the password, and warned that
he would have to dispose of three horses: all that he had arranged. But no one had mentioned the Marie by name and he had not been to Le Tréport for several days, so he did not know if she was in the harbour. The Marie had not been fishing within sight of Mers the previous day, he said, because he could recognize her—he grinned as he said that, and Ramage guessed that Mers was one of the places used for landing contraband.

  “She won’t be here before tonight, anyway,” Louis said. “Dyson won’t waste a day hanging about out there—that would be taking an unnecessary risk. It wouldn’t surprise me if you see a Royal Navy cutter come close in and have a look; even a frigate. They keep a sharp watch along this coast!”

  “We ought to stand by and row out,” Ramage joked.

  “Wait until one comes in sight!” Louis said. “You’ll see a patrol of cavalry galloping along the road, keeping abreast of her. The soldiers seem worried that one day a cutter is going to land an army to march on Paris!”

  The fisherman had been whispering with his wife, and as soon as Louis stopped talking he said: “Supper is ready, and mattresses and blankets are prepared. After you’ve eaten I suggest you have a good sleep. I’ll deal with the horses and then go into Le Tréport to see if the Marie is there. Is there a message for Dyson?”

  Louis shook his head. “Don’t take any risks. If you can tell him that all is well, do so; but he has his instructions, and everything so far is going according to plan—for once!”

  As the setting sun balanced like a red-hot coin standing on the western horizon, Ramage rested his arms on the window ledge and looked seaward through the fisherman’s battered telescope. The horizon was clear except for a distant frigate whose hull was hidden below the curvature of the earth: only her sails were still in sight, tiny squares darkened by shadow. A routine patrol—one of Lord Nelson’s squadron, “on a Particular Service,” running up and down this end of the Channel, making sure the French Army of England had not put to sea. She had probably just looked into Havre de Grace, fifty miles away along the coast to the south. The Marie would have slipped past such frigates in the darkness, on her way with Ramage’s despatches which told Lord Nelson that no Army of England could sail for many months. “No sign of her?” Louis asked.

  “No, just that frigate we saw earlier. Still, with this west wind she’ll make a fast passage. But I must admit I’m getting nervous. Ah—” he looked round as the fisherman’s wife came in and began setting plates and cutlery on the table, “well, it makes me hungry too.”

  They ate a leisurely supper, the fisherman and Louis telling stories of smuggling and shipwreck along the Normandy coast. When they had finished Ramage looked at his watch. He was not particularly tired but several years at sea had taught him to take advantage of any opportunity for a nap. After a word to the fisherman, Ramage stretched out on a mattress.

  It seemed only a moment later that the fisherman was waking him, and as he rubbed his eyes he saw that Stafford and Louis were crouched over a bucket, washing their faces.

  “Midnight,” the man said, “and time for fishing …”

  The boat was heavily built, beamy with what seemed a low freeboard to anyone used to a ship of war’s boats. The fisherman put a small lantern and a bucket abaft the centre thwart. “There’s the bait,” he told Louis. “Look—lines here, and watch out for the hooks. And here is the grapnel with plenty of line, more than enough to anchor inside the three-fathom line. Don’t forget—”

  “Yes, yes,” Louis interrupted impatiently, “we’ve been over all that before and you’re coming with us anyway; let’s get her launched!”

  The boat was hauled up well above the high-water mark, and heavy wooden beams had been sunk into the beach down as far as the line of seaweed. Below that, planks had just been laid so that the boat could be slid down to the water’s edge.

  Ramage checked the oars: there were six in the boat, but they were large and heavy with balanced looms. Stafford was fitting the thole pins—the waves breaking on the beach were just large enough so that once the boat began to float it would need some vigorous rowing for a few minutes to prevent her broaching and tipping them all out.

  Both Stafford and Ramage were looking at the bulk of the boat and wondering how four of them were going to get her started—once she began sliding it would be easy—when the fisherman stuck a finger and thumb in his mouth and gave a piercing whistle. A minute or two later Ramage saw men coming from the nearby houses, shadowy figures in the moonlight.

  Without a word they positioned themselves round the boat and, joined by Ramage, Louis, Stafford and the fisherman, ran her down into the water, wading to hold her while the four men climbed in, dropped the oars into position and began rowing.

  The boat rowed well, and Ramage looked along the shore, watching the sea breaking on the rocky ledges which ran out for a couple of hundred yards from the beach to the north. Although the broken water sparkled and danced in the faint moonlight, the rocks themselves were grey and evil-looking, as though waiting patiently yet hungrily for a ship to be caught in a storm and driven on to them.

  Soon they were far enough out to see the saddle-like gap in the cliffs in which both Le Tréport and Mers nestled, and the fisherman grunted, shipping his oar. They had rowed perhaps a thousand yards, and already Ramage felt the muscles across his shoulders tightening uncomfortably and others in the lower part of his back giving a hint that they would soon start aching.

  The fisherman shifted the lantern and began coiling up a line along which pieces of cloth and twists of leather marked distances. Finally he had it coiled, and lifted up the small lead weight attached to the end and shaped like the weight in a grandfather clock. He leaned over the side and let the weight go, the line rushing out from the coil in his right hand. Suddenly it slowed down and stopped, and he seized it, dropping the coil and pulling in the weight end until he felt it just lifting off the bottom with the line taut. He felt the nearest marker on the line and muttered the depth. Three and a half fathoms.

  “We’ll start here,” he said, hauling in the leadline. “Louis, begin baiting the hooks.”

  Three hours later there was still no sign of the Marie although, the fisherman commented enthusiastically, the fishing was very good despite the moon. Ramage fervently wished the fish would stop biting but, knowing how the families at Mers depended on fish for their food, he thought it would be churlish to suggest they just sat there quietly without the lines over the side, either lying to the grapnel or rowing up to the west for half an hour and letting the wind and current carry them back parallel with the coast.

  As more fish were hauled into the boat, twisting and thumping, covering everything with scales and slime, Ramage looked wistfully at the grapnel and line. He remembered all the boats he had seen in various parts of the world, comfortably anchored, with the men in them fishing by dangling lines over bow and stern, occasionally hauling in a line to find the bait had been taken. Three hours of rowing and drifting seemed to have knotted most of his muscles. It was unlikely—though pride prevented him from inspecting them in the light of the lantern—that his palms had any skin left on them; the sharpness of the pain when a dollop of spray soaked them again indicated that blisters had burst.

  They were just rowing the boat round to get back to the westward again when Stafford said, almost as though it was of no consequence, “There she is.”

  Ramage glanced round and saw a darker shape: the Marie reaching down towards them, perhaps five hundred yards away and down moon. The fisherman hurriedly shipped his oar, tipped the bait out of the bucket and shook it to make sure no water was left inside, and put it over the lantern. The light had not been bright, but suddenly dousing it made Ramage realize just how much it had affected their night vision and allowed the Marie to get so close.

  “We hide the light now in case someone watches from the shore with night-glasses,” he explained to Ramage. “It is best, eh?” he asked, and Ramage suddenly realized how determined the man was to make a good impr
ession on the two Britons.

  Ramage rested on his oar and leaned over to the fisherman. “While there is time—” he held out his hand, and winced as the fisherman shook it enthusiastically, “thank you.” There was nothing more that could be put into words and the fisherman seemed to understand.

  “You will be all right with Dyson,” the fisherman said reassuringly, “he is a good man.”

  Ramage sat and watched the approaching fishing-boat. Dyson was bringing her along thirty yards or so to leeward of the rowing-boat, obviously intending to luff up and then heave-to, leaving them a few yards to row to get alongside.

  Ramage glanced towards the beach: the odd patches of cloud crossing the moon, combined with the fact the moon was now low in the sky, made it impossible to distinguish the cluster of houses at Mers, nor could he see the large tower of the church in Le Tréport, St Jacques tower, according to Louis. Even using a good night-glass it would be impossible to spot the rendezvous between the rowing-boat and the Marie.

  There was a sudden hiss of water and flapping of canvas and Ramage turned to see the Marie coming up into the wind, her jib flapping and the blocks squeaking as the mainsheet was hurriedly hauled in. The fishing-boat lost way as she turned north-west, the jib stopped flapping as the wind caught it aback, and a man was leaning on the tiller, keeping the helm over, so the rudder tried to push the bow round to larboard against the thrust of the backed jib trying to force it over to starboard.

  The fisherman snapped an order, they bent to the oars, and a couple of minutes later Louis was standing in the bow throwing a line to a man on the stern of the Marie. The nearness of the two boats emphasized the height of the waves: it was far safer to board the Marie over her stern rather than risk the two vessels crashing together if the rowing-boat went alongside.

  With the line secured, Ramage and Stafford stowed the oars neatly, despite the protests of the fisherman that he would do that later. Ramage told the Cockney to board first and Louis waited for a smooth patch, then hauled on the line to bring the bow close. Stafford leapt up, and a moment later Ramage followed him. The Marie’s stern began to lift as she seesawed over a crest and Louis waited a minute or two. By the time he had jumped on board, Ramage had recognized the dark figures on the Marie’s deck as Jackson and Rossi. A hurried question thrown at Jackson as they shouted goodbye to the fisherman and began to sheet in the backed jib brought the reply that all the despatches had been delivered to Lord Nelson, who was on board a frigate at anchor in the Downs.