The Ramage Touch

by Dudley Pope

  ‘Of course, of course.’ The innkeeper saw one of the officers beckoning and pointing at Ramage. ‘Quick, the colonel wants us. Your name?’

  ‘My name?’ Ramage repeated stupidly. ‘Why, we all have the same name!’

  ‘I know, I know! But what is it?’

  ‘Buffarelli. From Saturnia.’

  ‘I thought as much,’ the innkeeper growled, pushing Ramage forward towards the portly colonel sitting at the table, his chubby face streaming with perspiration reflecting in the lantern. ‘I can smell the sulphur.’

  The innkeeper has a vivid imagination, Ramage thought. Saturnia, several miles inland and halfway to Monte Amiata, was now just a small village beside a great stone wall, built round the hot sulphur springs which had made it a favourite spot for the Romans, who celebrated the feast of Saturnalia there. A swim in the hot springs with the water so thick that it was impossible to sink, left you reeking of sulphur for days. Obviously the word Saturnalia came from the place, or was the place named after the rites? Ramage was far from sure.

  ‘Sulphur!’ he said petulantly, then repeated it several times with a whimper in his voice as he followed the innkeeper among the tables. The innkeeper glanced over his shoulder and Ramage seized the opportunity of almost shouting, ‘Sulphur, eh? I’ll give you sulphur! Just because we are zingari you insult us, but be careful, we are Buffarelli, too!’

  Ramage managed to time it so that his outburst ended just as they arrived at the colonel’s table, leaving the innkeeper at a disadvantage and needing to translate an explanation to the colonel. This allowed Ramage to be sulky, so that both the colonel and the innkeeper would have to try to make amends if they wanted any more music. Ramage hoped it would lead the colonel to invite this wild-looking gipsy to sit down at his table, if only to emphasize that the last two of the three words of the Republic’s slogan really were Fraternité and Egalité.

  In contrast to Ramage, who was trying to look both furtive and indignant, the innkeeper was ingratiating. He spoke good French and interspersed almost every word with ‘mon colonel’ while he explained that the tziganes had just arrived in Orbetello from Saturnia, a village many miles inland, and that the unfortunate flûtiste, who was dumb and not quite possessed of all his senses, had been practising French patriotic tunes for many days in the hope that he would be allowed to play them to the officers of the 156th Artillery Regiment as a farewell to Italy and a token of Tuscany’s best wishes for their long voyage.

  The colonel nodded, as though accepting on behalf of the regiment, if not the commanding general, these routine greetings.

  ‘The flûtiste is this man’s son?’

  The innkeeper looked questioningly at Ramage, who just managed to avoid answering in French and said instead: ‘I do not understand?’

  When the innkeeper translated, Ramage shook his head.

  ‘Brother. The other one is my son. Everybody is dead,’ he added vaguely. ‘I feed them both. Very hungry we are, too; it has been a long walk.’

  The innkeeper understood his customer better than Ramage, and in translating Ramage’s explanation into French made it such a heart-rending story that the colonel first began to sit upright, instead of lolling back in the chair, then topped his glass from a carafe, and then held up a hand to silence the innkeeper.

  ‘A meal!’ he said in a voice which would have carried well down the aisle of a great cathedral. ‘For the three of them. Here, at my table – I have never before spoken to Italian tziganes. But until the meal is ready, the flûtiste shall give us his music – music to pay for their supper, eh?’

  Several officers applauded their colonel as the innkeeper gave Ramage a rapid translation before disappearing in the direction of the kitchen. Ramage gave a brief whistle to Paolo, indicating Martin as well, and the midshipman gave the line a tug and the two of them came over to the colonel’s table. Ramage went through the ritual of introducing them and, although the Frenchman obviously did not understand a word of Italian, he smiled benevolently at Paolo’s carefully ill-contrived salute and at Martin’s vacant grin as he placed his flute on his shoulder as though it was a musket.

  The other officers clapped and one of them cleared a nearby table, with a sweep of his arm that sent the bottles and glasses crashing to the ground, then indicated that Martin should stand up on the table and play. The young lieutenant gave an idiotic grin and climbed up, immediately beginning a popular French tune that Paolo had taught him.

  In the meantime a waiter set down more glasses and a bottle in front of the colonel, who indicated that he should fill all three. The colonel then snapped his fingers at Ramage and pointed to two of the glasses. Ramage picked up one with carefully assumed nervousness and sipped, and then signalled to Paolo, and clumsily raised his glass to the colonel.

  He wanted to avoid having to sit alone with the colonel. If he did there would be no conversation, because the colonel assumed he spoke no French. He dared not admit otherwise because a gipsy in Orbetello speaking French would arouse suspicions. He wanted a couple of other officers to come to the table; then they would gossip with the colonel and, with luck, reveal scraps of information.

  ‘The colonel enjoys the music,’ a voice said in French-accented Italian, and Ramage looked round to find a young officer standing there, smiling – at the colonel, rather than Ramage, and explaining to the colonel in French what he had just said. He was obviously the colonel’s aide, and he listened as the colonel explained that the tziganes had learned French tunes and come in from the hills to play a farewell.

  ‘Farewell, sir?’ the young captain asked sharply. ‘How did they know we were going anywhere?’

  ‘Ask him,’ the colonel said, obviously too tipsy to care very much.

  ‘You have come to say goodbye to us,’ the young captain said to Ramage amiably. ‘We appreciate it.’

  ‘Goodbye?’ Ramage repeated, trying to look owlish. ‘But we have come to say hello. We practise the French tunes. They tell us there are French officers in Orbetello, so we come here – a long way,’ he added plaintively. ‘Too far to come to say goodbye. Why? Are you going home?’

  ‘Not home,’ the captain said with a relieved grin, and turned to the colonel.

  ‘They had no idea we were going anywhere, sir,’ he said. ‘I expect that innkeeper added to the story to get them a bigger tip – you know how these Italians work together. They learned the French tunes to come to play – I have the impression that they think we’re stationed here, so they can play to us for a few weeks.’

  ‘We might wish we had them to cheer us up, considering where we are going,’ the colonel said bitterly. ‘Still, no need for alarm, eh? You’re always seeing spies under the bed, Jean-Paul. Sit down and have a drink. Where’s the major?’

  His voice was becoming querulous and obviously his aide recognized the symptoms. He called to a thin-faced officer sitting at the far side of the bar, a sad-looking man with inordinately long moustaches that hung down from his upper lip like curtains pulled away from a window. He picked up his shako and, with obvious reluctance, made his way over to the colonel’s table.

  ‘You wanted me, sir?’

  ‘Sit down,’ the colonel said in what obviously passed for his friendly manner. ‘Pour yourself a drink. This local wine is good. From Argentario, over there. Not really white and certainly not red. Deep gold…’ He held up the glass against the light of a candle in a lantern. ‘Just look at it. They say it turns to vinegar if you move it. Pity, I’d like to take a few casks with us. That Cretan wine – mon Dieu, they use resin to flavour it. They’ll try to persuade us to buy some casks when we get to Candia, but where we’re going to it is hot enough without having to soak up resin.’

  Ramage waited anxiously: one grunted word from the major would reveal the precise destination. But the major said nothing: he reached for the carafe, saw there was no glass and took the one that Ramage had just set down on the table.

  The colonel noticed immediately. ‘That is the glass o
f the tzigane,’ he snapped. ‘Get another one for yourself.’

  The major put the glass down, glowered at Ramage and walked to the next table, taking the glass from a young lieutenant, swilling the wine round and then emptying it on the floor, and returning to the table to refill it.

  ‘We leave for Porto Ercole in the morning two hours later than arranged,’ the colonel said suddenly, his voice slurred.

  ‘But, sir, all the movement orders are…’

  The colonel glowered at the major, his podgy face growing even redder, as though he was holding his breath. ‘I ride at the head of the regiment, and I shall not be ready in time,’ he announced. ‘I intend to listen to this flûtiste for at least another hour, and by that time I shall be drunk and sad, and when I go to bed drunk and sad,’ he said with the honesty of someone already drunk, ‘I wake up next morning with a bad liver, a bad head and a bad temper. With me in that state you expect me to sit on a damnable horse and be shaken up violently for an hour while we drag those thrice-damned guns over cart tracks to Porto Ercole. And then – then,’ he half-shouted, the thought of it clearly making him lose his temper, ‘we have to get the guns and the horses on board those ships! Have you ever seen the way the Navy goes about its business?’

  He glared at the major and clearly expected an answer.

  ‘Well, sir, not really, but–’

  ‘Heh, then you have a treat in store. Slings under the bellies of the horses, and the first ones hoisted make such a squealing that the rest of them try to bolt. Guns the same. They try to lift them off the carriages and forget to undo the cap squares so that, instead of the gun being lifted, the whole damned carriage goes up like a rocket, and the sailors panic and drop it again, smashing the carriage, killing a couple of people, and making more horses bolt, probably with men on their backs. Oh, major, embarking a battery of field guns, with men and horses, is an experience. When you add to it our destination,’ he added balefully, ‘you realize why I wish those fools in Paris had never heard of me or my battery. I tell you,’ he snarled, his voice dropping, ‘if you think trying to shift those guns across the sands of that causeway to Porto Ercole is hard work, then you can think again: that sand is only a few inches thick, spread on rock. Where we are going, my man, the sand just goes down and down, bottomless like the ocean. When the wheels of a gun carriage sink into it; your heart sinks with them…’

  The rest of the sentence was drowned by the officers clapping as Martin finished a tune and Ramage turned, gave a dramatic wave and pointed upwards, signalling to the young lieutenant to go on playing. He just had time to hear the colonel continuing.

  ‘…so you talk too much, major, and I can’t hear the music. Sand! In your mouth, in your food, in your wine, in your boots, in your eyes…It makes the axles of the gun carriages run hot, blocks the barrels of muskets and the touchholes, even gets into the scabbard of your sword so that you can’t draw in a hurry…And you want me to hurry towards it! No, major, I just want you to be silent now so that I can hear the music!’

  With that the colonel’s head slowly drooped forward and he began to snore as the outraged major, so far unable to say a word in his own defence, drained his glass and filled it again with a savage movement that slopped wine across the table.

  Ramage saw the innkeeper and two waiters coming out of the kitchen with a large plate heaped with steaming spaghetti. ‘Food for the tziganes!’ he shouted as he zigzagged between the tables.

  Martin had just come to the end of another tune and two of the cheering officers repeated the innkeeper’s words in a drunken chorus, pulling at Martin’s arm to attract his attention. The lieutenant, grasping his flute, looked down at them, not understanding what they were shouting and feeling the table beginning to rock as they pulled him. A moment later he toppled over as a leg of the table gave way and in falling he grabbed one of the officers in a futile attempt to keep his balance. He and the other man hit the floor together, there was a metallic thud, and Ramage just caught sight of a shiny object sliding across the floor and coming to rest almost at the major’s feet.

  The major bent down and picked it up. It was a pistol, the brass polished and the wood newly-oiled. He examined it curiously, noting that it was loaded. Suddenly he cocked it and pointed it at Ramage as he stood up.

  ‘Who are you?’ he demanded in French. ‘This is a British pistol!’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Orbetello’s jail was next to the town hall, on the other side from the inn, and was simply a large room at one end of the cellar. Because the town was built out on the peninsula the defensive walls were on the water’s edge. Indeed, Ramage thought, it was too much like Venice to be comfortable; the foundations of most of the town were below the water level so that the walls of the cellar were sodden with damp. The cellars of most of the houses must have a foot or two of water in them and the cell was either pumped out regularly or the floor had been raised.

  The major was a remarkably patient man, even though he was almost cross-eyed from weariness. He had Ramage, Martin and Orsini tied securely to three chairs placed side by side in front of him with two sentries behind them. He had a chair and table brought down and he sat there, a lantern on the table so turned that the light from its window lit the three prisoners, leaving him in shadow.

  With only a rudimentary knowledge of English, the major was trying to interrogate Martin and Orsini. He had established that Ramage spoke a little Italian. Ramage had had to admit to that, having been heard speaking to the innkeeper. The other two had been quick enough to insist that they spoke only English – a statement of fact in the case of Martin. Ramage was thankful that the major either disliked the colonel’s aide or did not know he spoke Italian.

  The major had also been so absorbed with Martin’s Sea Service pistol, with its belt hook and the word ‘Tower’ and a crown engraved on the lock, that it never occurred to him that Martin might have more weapons hidden under his layers of shirts. Other officers had seized Ramage and Orsini and quickly searched them but found no weapons. Obviously Martin was the only man carrying a pistol, and they had not noticed the canvas belt round his chest even when they stuck the flute down the front of his clothing, a chivalrous gesture which none of the British had expected.

  Ramage felt a curious sympathy for the major: his colonel had eventually slid to the floor, dislodged in the struggle and blissfully unconscious from too much wine. The battery was due to move off to Porto Ercole next morning – this morning, Ramage corrected himself; it was now well past midnight – and suddenly he had discovered three British spies in his midst. Spies who came from nowhere, apparently, because they had not been recognized as naval officers. His commanding officer was beyond reach, thanks to the wine, and he did not know how much of the colonel’s diatribe the Englishman had heard and understood.

  Indeed, as he questioned the three men, the major tried to remember exactly what the colonel had said. The old man had insisted that the battery’s departure be delayed by two hours, to allow him to get sober. Then he had gone on about the sandy track to Porto Ercole. Then he had grumbled about sand getting into everything – but had he mentioned the name of their final destination? The major finally decided that the colonel had not; the diatribe was against sand and its problems; there had been no reason to mention the country’s name.

  If he had mentioned the name, would this damned Englishman have understood? He admitted to speaking some Italian (with an atrocious accent), but apparently no French. The major had tried to trap him, suddenly giving orders or asking questions in French, but there had been no indication that the man understood. So the colonel was unlikely to have given away any secrets, although the major had no idea what had been said before the colonel called him to the table, except that the colonel’s aide, a fop if there ever was one, had sworn that nothing had been said, apart from the innkeeper’s remarks about the so-called tziganes coming down from the hills to play for the French soldiers.

  It was cunningly contrived, the maj
or admitted. A flûtiste pretending to be a gipsy and acting like a half-wit, his brother, and his nephew leading him on a piece of string…And they were only caught by a plate of spaghetti: the major felt himself grow cold at the thought of what might have happened had not the two drunken ensigns from ‘B’ battery tugged the flûtiste so that he toppled from the table and dislodged the pistol.

  In fact it did not matter what the British had heard and understood, because they could not now pass any information on to anyone else: they were locked in here, and in a few hours they would be slung in the baggage train, securely bound and heavily guarded, and taken on board the frigates. There the colonel could bring them to trial as spies, and then they could be shot, or hanged, if the Navy preferred.

  The major sighed with relief. He should have thought of that earlier: the three men could have all the secrets in the world and it would not matter because they could not pass them on to their own people. Quite a problem for a spy, he realized: information was only of use, of value if one was spying for money, when it was passed to a person or country that could take advantage of it.

  But what were British spies doing here in Orbetello? By adopting the disguise of tziganes they could, of course, travel easily; no one expected tziganes to have travel documents – indeed, you locked up the house and the poultry when you saw them, but that was all. Tziganes with the flûtiste – that was clever; diabolically clever. Yet…perhaps it was just a coincidence. Who sent them? Had they come up from Naples? Were they just looking round for what scraps they could discover about the French in Italy, or were they seeking specific information – like the great operation planned for this autumn? No one could have any inkling of that – no Englishman, anyway – because the operation existed only on paper at the moment; he doubted whether any ships at all had begun to arrive in Crete. The frigates now in Porto Ercole and the two vessels supposed to join them (what were they called – bomb ketches?) were probably the first to start moving eastwards towards the assembly point, or whatever the Navy called it.