Ramage & the Guillotine (28 page)

“It's all arranged,” Louis said. “The Lieutenant is here but hasn't gone up to his room yet. He—”

“How the devil is Stafford going to get the satchel?” Ramage snapped.

“—the Lieutenant met an old friend and they are drinking together. He'll be going up to his room for a wash, and then go down to supper. After he has eaten, the friend and I join him for an hour or two playing cards …”

“All right,” Ramage said, giving a thin smile of relief, “but you had me worrying because you were late back.”

“I was drinking with the Lieutenant,” Louis explained hurriedly, before Ramage's bad temper had a chance of returning. “He saw me as he came in and greeted me like a brother. A comfortable ride from Paris, he tells me; a little tired but pleased to see me and his old friend. He has given the landlord strict instructions to have some good Calvados ready and the card table set up.”

He rubbed his hand across his chin and the bristles rasped: Louis never had more than 24 hours' growth of beard but, as far as Ramage could see, never less. It was impossible to guess when he actually shaved, unless he always used a blunt razor. Yet the Frenchman looked worried and Ramage waited patiently. Finally Louis said: “We need to cut down the risks even more: we don't want anything to stop us getting a sight of Admiral Bruix's despatch on Saturday, and we don't want to lose any time getting a copy of the despatch to England …”

Ramage thought for several moments, puzzled that the Frenchman should be so emphatic about something so obvious. “Have you any suggestions?”

“Yes. To begin with, we should get your copy of the letter—or your notes—from the Minister out of this room as soon as possible. If you keep it here through the night until I can get it to Boulogne, you are holding on to evidence which can incriminate you. No one would search my room or suspect me; but you are different; a foreigner is always suspect …”

“But if the gendarmes became suspicious of me, it wouldn't take—”

“Even if they were, they are still only suspicious of an Italian shipbuilder,” Louis said impatiently. “It would probably take two or three weeks to check on you. Your papers aren't forged—they are genuine, with an imaginary name written in. But if your room was searched and they found notes written in a foreign language, it wouldn't take long to get them translated. And then it would be so obvious what they were—and what
you
were! They would have no need to check. The only thing that could get you guillotined for certain within the week are those notes.”

The Frenchman was right. The first set of notes had been burned after he had written a report to Lord Nelson on Bruix's despatch, and Jackson should now be on his way to Folkestone to deliver it. All he had to do tonight was make notes as soon as Stafford got hold of the Minister's reply, write out another report to Lord Nelson, and hide it somewhere until Louis could send it off to Boulogne to meet Jackson, who should be back by Thursday. The notes could be burned like the first set, and the same procedure followed on Saturday night. Providing Jackson could get over and back each time, the operation could not fail: the Admiralty would have all the information it required, even if Ramage and Stafford were arrested on Sunday morning.

Louis agreed when Ramage outlined his intentions. “As soon as you've finished writing your letter to Lord Nelson tonight and burned your notes, take the letter to my room. You'll find a loaf of fresh bread in the top drawer of the chest—I've just put it there with cheese and a bottle of wine: anyone finding it would assume I keep it in case I get hungry. Now, if you press the bottom of the loaf you'll find a slit in it that is deep enough to take your despatch. Push it in and put the loaf back. It's the loaf,” Louis explained with a grin, “that will take the despatch to Boulogne. It will sit in a basket with a bottle of wine and some cheese—the courier's lunch.”

“Supposing he eats the loaf?” Ramage asked.

“He'll have three loaves—one for himself, one in case another traveller wants some, and a third which he is taking to his widowed mother in Boulogne. That's the one with the despatch. The courier leaves for Boulogne tomorrow morning and again Sunday morning,” Louis reminded Ramage. “That's all arranged.”

“But we'll be leaving on Sunday,” Ramage said, and then he remembered. “But we are supposed to be going on to Paris …”

Again Louis grinned and shook an admonitory finger. “You see, you haven't got into the habit of life in France! You English—if you want to go from Dover to London, you just climb into a carriage or mount a horse. Or board a wagon. No travel documents, no passports—all you need is the money to pay the fare. Of course, Bonaparte would tell you that you haven't
‘Liberté, Egalité, et Fraternité'
…”

“I've no doubt he would,” Ramage said impatiently, “but how do we get back to Boulogne on Sunday morning?”

“You ask Louis if he has arranged for new travel documents and a carriage.”

“And what does Louis tell me,” Ramage asked sarcastically. “That he has also forgotten all about them?”

“No, Louis would tell you that they'll all be here by Friday, along with a letter from the Port Captain at Boulogne asking the Signor to return urgently for more discussions—a request that makes you very angry, as the landlord will notice.”

“How did the Port Captain know I was still in Amiens and not in Paris?”

Louis thumped his hand against his forehead, then shook his head with exasperation. “Remember, this is France! Any Frenchman could tell you. The police headquarters in Amiens know where you are staying. Any messenger trying to find you and knowing your route would simply inquire at the police headquarters in every big town.”

Ramage began to feel a chill creeping over him that had nothing to do with the fact that the sun had long since set: he pictured the police of France as a great octopus bestriding the country, a tentacle reaching into every town, with the suckers representing villages and police posts along the roads, and although unseen, touching the lives of every man and woman in the country.

Louis was watching him closely. “I think at last you understand,
mon ami,”
he said quietly, and Ramage nodded.

Stafford's grin was infectious. As he held out the letter after opening the seal on the cover, Ramage saw that the Cockney was completely unworried: there was not a trace of perspiration on his brow, his hand was steady, and he had worked quickly but without hurrying. Deftly, Ramage thought; that was the word. As he took the letter, Ramage made sure he did not have to hold out his own hand too far for too long: he knew it was trembling slightly. He knew he would laugh a little too loudly if Stafford made a joke—in fact a laugh might well sneak out as a giggle.

With great deliberation he put the letter to one side without glancing at it, drew the sheets of notepaper in front of him, placed the inkwell near his right hand and inspected the tip of the quill pen. Unhurriedly—although he knew the whole performance was for himself, because Stafford was completely absorbed with the watermarks in the paper used as an envelope —he unfolded the letter and began reading, almost skimming through it the first time. He found this was the best way of getting the “atmosphere” of a letter written in a foreign language, relying on a second or third reading to yield the precise details.

One thing was immediately so clear as to be startling:
Citoyen
Pierre-Alexandre-Laurent Forfait, Minister of the Marine and Colonies, was writing an extremely chilly reply to Admiral Bruix; far colder and more formal than Ramage would have expected, having read the Admiral's despatch to the Minister. It
might
be Forfait's manner—in which case would the Admiral (who obviously knew him well) have written what was by comparison a friendly despatch?

He read the Minister's letter again more slowly, lingering over some of the phrases and examining them. Hmm … there was no doubt about it; the letter was
intended
to be cold. Ramage had the feeling that someone (presumably Bonaparte himself) was very angry with Bruix's request—repeated request—for money, while the Minister was alarmed at Bruix's warning that the full report on the Invasion Flotilla would prove disappointing to the First Consul when it arrived in Paris.

Citoyen
Forfait was more than alarmed; he was obviously a very frightened man. Ramage saw him as a nervous individual who understood the danger of standing between the First Consul and one of his admirals. When things were going well, it was a splendid position for an ambitious politician, since he received the praise and could hold on to as much as he wished before passing on the remainder to the Admiral concerned. When things were going badly, Bonaparte's wrath—and from what Louis said, the Corsican had more than his share of his island's hot temper—landed fairly and squarely on the Minister's unprotected head. From the tone of Bruix's despatch Ramage guessed that the First Consul's original orders for the construction and commissioning of the Invasion Flotilla had been impossible from the outset. He pictured an anxious Minister nodding his head, bowing his way out of the First Consul's presence, and rushing off to give the orders to Bruix …

Ramage glanced at his watch and realized that he was wasting time.

Hurriedly he began making notes. Admiral Bruix's request for 54 guns at once for the gunboats already completed, and 359 more for the remaining gunboats that were ordered, “had been noted.” However,
Citoyen
Bruix would have observed, the Minister wrote icily, that there was a general shortage of all sizes of naval guns, particularly 24-pounders, and the foundries were, at the First Consul's express order, working overtime. However, there were seventeen 24-pounder guns and carriages at Antwerp, and orders had been sent for them to be taken by sea to Boulogne. Since most of the coast between Antwerp and Boulogne fell within
Citoyen
Bruix's command, the Minister hoped that the British would not be allowed to intercept the vessels carrying them.

The request for money was ill-timed, Forfait wrote, and the First Consul, when told of it by the Controller-General (since the request had to be made to the Treasury, “there being no funds available at the Ministry”), had given instructions that
Citoyen
Bruix would be responsible for ensuring that the shipyards continued to give of their best “even though accounts were outstanding,” and that the workmen did not leave their jobs. Any man that did—or threatened to—would be conscripted immediately.
Citoyen
Bruix was to issue a warning to that effect. In the meantime the First Consul waited “with unconcealed impatience” for the complete report he had requested.

Ramage handed the letter back to Stafford as he scribbled the last of his notes. He had been careful to copy whole sentences where necessary—he knew that although Lord Nelson might accept his word that as a precaution Citizen Forfait was putting out an anchor to windward, their Lordships at the Admiralty most certainly would not. Nor could he blame them, he thought, as he watched Stafford carefully folding the paper and beginning to heat the spatula again; their Lordships would also find it impossible to picture Lieutenant Ramage and Ordinary Seaman Stafford juggling with candle, spatula and sealing-wax and reading the correspondence between Vice-Admiral Bruix and Bonaparte's Minister of Marine—in fact even Lieutenant Ramage was finding it hard to believe, though Will Stafford, Ordinary Seaman, seemed to take it in his stride.

As soon as the letter to Bruix was sealed, Stafford put it back in the satchel and vanished from the room to return it to its resting place under the
Lieutenant-de-vaisseau's
bed. Ramage took another sheet of paper and began his report to Lord Nelson. He had already decided that he must write it on the assumption that he might not get back to England to make a personal report: a euphemistic way of avoiding having to admit that the French might catch him and put his neck under the guillotine blade. He must also write it in such a way that if it was intercepted it would not reveal how the Minister's mail had been read.

“An opportunity presented itself to read the reply made to the sender of the despatch referred to in my first letter,” he wrote carefully. From that, Lord Nelson would know it was Forfait's reply to Bruix, since he had given both names in his previous report, which had already reached Jackson safely. He glanced up as Stafford slid back into the room, and then continued writing.

Stafford sat down on his bed, wondering if he would ever stop feeling hungry. He stifled a belch, but tasted the medicine yet again. The damned Frogs: he had not trusted them the moment the
Marie
arrived in Boulogne, and nothing had happened since to make him change his mind.

Marvellous how the Captain gabbled away in the lingo: he sounded as French as Louis, except when he was talking Italian, of course. To hear him and the Marchesa rattling on was an education—they talked so fast they certainly got their money's worth for every breath they took! It was funny how being shut up in this room was getting the Captain rattled. Unlike him—he was usually … Stafford cudgelled his memory for a phrase he had heard one of the Captain's friends use: “My deah Remmedge, y're disgustin'ly cheerful!” He usually was, too. In fact, when they went into action, the more dangerous it got the more cheerful he became. Jacko once said that if the Captain ever died in battle, he would probably be laughing his head off.

Stafford glanced across to see him writing, his face in profile against the flickering candle. He looked very strained these days. Dark patches under his eyes—squinting, too, so the two vertical creases between the inboard ends of his eyebrows looked like the fairleads for heavy rope. And blinking, as he did when he was thinking hard, and rubbing the upper of those two scars over his brow. If only he knew how well his ship's company knew all his little habits!