Ramage & the Guillotine (11 page)

“But such reports appear every week,” Simpson interrupted scornfully. “We've been reading them for more than a year.”

“Quite, but there are reports which have just arrived and which you will
not
be reading in the newspapers. My orders are based on those.”

One could hardly tell a smuggler, even a wealthy smuggler who was one of the biggest landowners in Kent, that the First Lord of the Admiralty himself, and Lord Nelson, had decided to send him to France: that might start the fellow thinking that if the operation was as important as all that, then someone ought to be paying a lot of passage money. That in turn would mean that Lieutenant Ramage paid since the Admiralty would—officially, since such money had to be paid officially—refuse to have anything to do with smugglers.

Simpson shook his head and smiled; a disarming smile, Ramage felt, of the type he would use when gently refusing a parson's plea that he should pay for putting a new roof on the church in the next village.

“I'm sorry, Mr Ramage …”

“Very well,” Ramage said bitterly, “I must admit I'm not surprised: my uncle was unduly optimistic.”

“Come now, Nicholas,” Treffry said gruffly, “don't be hasty!”

“Hasty!” Ramage exclaimed angrily. “With respect to Mr Simpson, we aren't asking much. If Bonaparte invades, there'll be no more smuggling: no more Mr Simpson, in fact, since he'll be one of the first strapped to the guillotine. What”—he held Simpson's eyes, his voice harsh but quiet—”exactly what have you ever done for the country in this war, except make a fantastic profit? Yet you were born in the country. Two of the three men I'm taking with me to France, and whom you object to, are foreigners.” His tone now became contemptuous. “One is American and the other Italian. Each of them has done more for Britain in the war than all the men that you employ!” He turned to Treffry: “Come, Uncle, it seems there's little honour among—smugglers.”

As Treffry stood up, his face flushed but obviously angry with Simpson rather than his nephew, Simpson gestured to the two of them. His face had suddenly gone white and strained; the nonchalant attitude had vanished. Ramage suddenly saw in his expression the face of a man with a bad conscience.

“Please sit down again, both of you. Mr Ramage, you put into words the thoughts that sometimes come to me in the sleepless hours before dawn. But”—he looked up, half-defiant and half-apologetic—”I'm not apologizing for anything except my decision not to help you. I was wrong. All my resources—and they are not inconsiderable, as you have probably guessed—are at your disposal. You will be landed in France tonight. Where are your men?”

“At Dover. They will arrive—” he looked at his watch, “in half an hour.”

“Very well. There's an inn close to the west quay at Folkestone called the Kentish Knock—named after the shoal in the Thames Estuary, I suppose,” he said with an attempt to lighten the tense atmosphere. “Will you be there with your men by nightfall? A man will introduce himself to you. What should he say so you'll know he is not an impostor?”

“Have him say, ‘Do you remember me? I served with you in the
Triton.'”

“There's just one thing,” Simpson said, almost apologetically. “Getting you to France is no problem, but you want to be able to escape again. I presume you won't know when you'll have either the opportunity—or the need. So I will arrange—no,” he said hastily, “don't tell me anything about
your
plans; just tell me if mine don't fit in with them. So, I'm arranging for you to get to France, and for a fishing-smack to be waiting for you in Boulogne for as long as you want. It can pass from Boulogne to Folkestone without difficulty. That will make your escape less of a problem.”

“It will make it no problem at all,” Ramage said cheerfully, anxious to restore a better atmosphere.

“Good, but you must understand that the smack can wait because of—er, certain arrangements—made long ago, before the war, in connection with—er, certain contraband business … and, er …”

Simpson was having such difficulty that Ramage said helpfully, “You want to be sure you can continue the operations long after I am back here.”

“Yes, exactly! I would appreciate it if you forgot all the details, should you have to write any reports for the Admiralty.”

“Agreed,” Ramage said. “I shall be as anxious as your men to keep out of the hands of Revenue officers!”

Simpson stood up and held out his hand. “Yes, our greatest danger—and I say ‘our' advisedly—is from our own cruisers. The French will be no problem. By the way, until you arrive in France, I must ask you to do exactly what the smacksman says, even though he may give you strange instructions. Their significance will become clear to you by the time you reach Boulogne.”

A
LTHOUGH the new Army barracks at Shorncliffe were nearby, so few Scottish or Irish régiments marched through the streets of Folkestone that bagpipes were rarely heard in the town. Yet the deep-throated skirl of the Scottish and Irish pipes had a little in common with the thin and reedy yet lilting music coming from the Kentish Knock's bar parlour, in Piecrust Lane, one street inland from the harbour, so that passers-by paused to look in.

The young man standing by one of the tables and playing the pipes was plump and stocky with wavy black hair which fell over eyes now glazed from the effort of blowing and keeping the small bag full of air.

The tune, a strange one to English ears, was nevertheless haunting, and the dozen or so seamen in the bar had fallen silent, watching the piper, whose expression showed that the melody he was playing had momentarily carried his thoughts to a distant country.

Finally the tune ended and he snatched the bag from under his arm, cutting the notes off sharply. He sat down at the table, grinning at the three men already seated, and waving to other seamen who called their appreciation.

One of the three, a lean-faced, raggedly-dressed individual with thinning sandy hair, who was apparently more than a lit-tie drunk, pushed a mug in front of the piper. “Have a pint of Kentish ale, Rosey, and play some more. Those Italian bagpipes kick up a nice tune.”

“You like, eh?
Sono doloroso …
Iso sad now; is a long time …”

“You'll go back one day; Genoa has been there a long time—no one will steal it.”

“You don't know Rosey's mates,” a Cockney said. “Like pursers, they are; steal it bit by bit, so's no one really notices ‘til it's all gorn!”

“Is true, Staff,” the Italian said. “This Bonaparte steal it all now, but one day we chase him out and go back, eh Nick?”

There was a slight hesitation as the Italian (who until a few hours earlier had been noted down in the Muster Book of a ship of the line in Portsmouth as Alberto Rossi, born in Genoa, and rated ordinary seaman) used the name Nick—he was finding it hard to be familiar with Lieutenant Nicholas Ramage, the man who had for so long been his commanding officer.

Now, in common with the other two men who, when sudden orders had been received from the Admiralty by the new telegraph linking Portsmouth and London, had travelled to Dover with him from the same ship in Portsmouth, he was doing his best to carry out Mr Ramage's orders. These were simple enough: they were all—including Mr Ramage—to behave like fishermen or seamen from a merchantman while in England. Once they reached France they would receive fresh orders.

France! He was hot and nearly winded from playing the pipes, but the thought of landing in Bonaparte's own country chilled him. Not because the prospect of a fight with a bunch of Frenchmen was frightening: no, it was more the idea that Bonaparte's armies now strutted like peacocks over most of Europe—the Low Countries, Spain, most of the states in Italy, Austria, maybe even Switzerland. In fact it was easier to remember that they were not in Britain and Portugal. Perhaps some of those places round the Baltic—Sweden, for example—had not been invaded, but Rossi knew that the only possible reason was that they were too insignificant for Bonaparte to be bothered with. Russia? Probably too big …

Will Stafford, born in Bridewell Lane, within the sound of Bow Bells, and apprenticed to a locksmith before going to sea, had a wide-eyed naivete about some aspects of life which contrasted with a remarkable knowledge of other aspects, most of the latter picked up while working as a locksmith at dead of night and usually without the owner of the lock knowing or being charged. Yet Stafford had an instinctive understanding of people; he usually sensed moods in his shipmates and recognized the sudden stab of nostalgia in time to murmur a comforting phrase or divert the mood with a quick joke.

As he watched Rossi fold the pipes before putting them down on the table, he saw that the Italian was brooding and knew he had to be brought back from the past of the hills of Piedmont and Tuscany to the present of the bar parlour of the Kentish Knock, with its low ceiling blackened round the fireplace from years of wintry evenings and smokey chimneys.

“Them pipes is more musical than the Scotch ones,” Stafford commented. “Ain't got so much body, though.”

“Accidente,”
Rossi said, “I never hear the Scotch, but pipes
sono Romani!
The Romans have the bagpipes first. These Scotch—” he waved, dismissed kings and clans contemptuously, “they copy them. They eat the porridge and drink the whisky and blow hard.”

“Scots,” said the lean-faced man sitting on the form next to Ramage. “‘Scots' if it's people, ‘Scotch' if it's things.”

“That's why it's called ‘Scotchland,' eh Jacko?” Stafford said sarcastically. “Anyway, I've heard the Irish had ‘em afore the Scots.”

Jackson gave an easy laugh. “Don't expect an American to explain that. Why—”

He broke off suddenly as he saw a man come through the door from the street and stop, peering round at everyone in the bar. The man saw Ramage and began sidling over towards him, but he had not moved six feet before Jackson, in one catlike movement, had left the table to intercept him.

“Hello, Jacko,” the man said nervously, half-expecting to see a knife, “it's all right, I'm expected!”

Ramage, equally startled, signalled reassuringly to the American and looked at the man, his face unsmiling and questioning.

“You remember me, sir?” the man said almost slyly, keeping his voice low so that only Ramage and his group could hear him. “I served with you in the
Triton.”

Ramage gestured to him to sit down and said icily, “You did too, by Jove. Dyson, isn't it?”

“Slushy Dyson, sir, an' I want ter say I'm sorry, an' thank you fer puttin' me on board the
Rover.”

“Two dozen lashes, I seem to remember,” Ramage said, his voice still cold. “I logged it as drunkenness, I believe, not mutiny.”

“Yes, sir; I deserved to ‘ave been ‘anged, an' I know it. Lucky you was the capting, sir; anyone else would've made sure I was strung up by the neck from the foreyardarm.”

Ramage began to realize that Dyson's appearance might not be a matter of chance: at first he had thought that the seaman's ‘You remember me, sir? I served with you in the
Triton,”
had been an extraordinary coincidence—the normal thing for the man to say, and not the password arranged with Simpson. Now Ramage remembered Dyson's reassuring comment to Jackson, “It's all right, I'm expected.” Had Dyson come from Simpson? One thing seemed certain: Dyson was no longer in the King's service!

“So when I transferred you to the
Rover,
I suppose you deserted. Are you marked ‘run' in her books?”

He watched Dyson shaking his head half-heartedly and noted that Jackson, Stafford and Rossi were staring at the man with curiosity: their wary suspicion had vanished. Yet but for these very men, Slushy Dyson, cook's mate, would have led a mutiny in the
Triton
within hours of her sailing from Portsmouth for the West Indies. Dyson was not exaggerating when he said he deserved to have been hanged, and his gratitude at being let off with a couple of dozen lashes and transferred to another ship was genuine enough. If the Admiralty ever found out all the details, Ramage himself would probably be court-martialled as well, for failing to bring Dyson to trial. But he was curious to know why Dyson, having been in the shadow of the noose very briefly on board the
Triton,
should have deserted so that he was now in it permanently. His life was in perpetual jeopardy if he was now a deserter; his liberty was in perpetual jeopardy if he was now a smuggler.

Ramage decided that this must be Simpson's emissary and said: “As I gather we are going to be—er, shipmates again, Dyson, you'd better tell us all about it, and clear the air.”

The bar was almost dark now and Dyson waited while the innkeeper put candles on the tables where customers were sitting. The innkeeper was used to sailors and did not try to press them into ordering more drinks: he knew they would shout loud enough when they were thirsty and were likely to turn truculent if they suspected they were being forced. The candle on Ramage's table flickered in the faint draught from the door, and Dyson's narrow, shifty face seemed even more haggard than Ramage remembered it nearly two years ago. Every wrinkle was shadowed by the weak flame, the eyes were still as shifty, and the ears oddly pointed, almost fox-like.

“‘Twas all right in the
Rover,
sir,” he said softly, his eyes dropped and yet apparently focused on a distant object, “an' I reckoned you had told her Captain all about it.”

“No,” Ramage interrupted, “he was told you'd been flogged for drunkenness.”

“Oh,” Dyson said, obviously absorbing the information. “Well, in Portsmouth I was sent to a ship of the line. “Me fellows saw the scars on m' back from the cat-o'-nine-tails, and one of the bosun's mates got it in fer me. Seemed to guess what really happened, but I don't know ‘ow ‘e could. Well, I couldn't move without gettin' a floggin'. Case o' give a dog a bad name, I reckon. That cat would ‘ave killed me if I ‘adn't run, sir, and that's the bleedin' truth.”