Ramage & the Guillotine (5 page)

“But surely preparing ourselves at each new moon is a logical reaction?” Hawkesbury asked.

“Yes—but we would rather that Bonaparte does not discover what our precise plans are.”

“But,” Hawkesbury protested, “if he knows the Fleet is ready, he's less likely to sail!”

Now Ramage saw Nelson in a fresh light: he was a new man, his single good eye shining, his face flushed, the fingers of his hand drumming on the table.

“We can't smash Bonaparte's invasion plan if he keeps his ships and men safe in harbour, sir. We want his Army out on the open sea, so that we can sink or burn every ship. it takes a great army—and heavy losses—to destroy another army of 150,000 men on land: an army we can't muster. But our fleet can destroy such an army at sea—can and
will,
providing it sails.”

Hawkesbury was worried. “it's a deuced risk: something the Cabinet ought to consider. Better keep the devils bottled, up in Boulogne and Calais, I say.”

“Not while I occupy the office of First Lord,” St Vincent interrupted. “i have a great respect for Mr Addison, but I only joined his government on the clear understanding that I was given a free hand.”

“Oh, I agree,” Hawkesbury said hastily, realizing he had stepped beyond his professional responsibility, which was foreign affairs. “I was expressing a personal view, you understand; my colleagues probably would not agree with me.”

“Be that as it may,” St Vincent said uncompromisingly, “I assure you the Admiralty want the French to sail because it is confident that they can't land in England, so—”

“Very well,” Lord Hawkesbury interrupted. “Now, why can't we rely on our agents—especially this man in Paris—to warn us in time enough if and when Bonaparte decides to sail his flotilla?”

Nelson glanced at St Vincent before replying: “It is not the kind of information our agents in Boulogne—such as they are—will discover. That throws the responsibility on to the man in Paris. Unfortunately he never travels with Bonaparte. It seems that Bonaparte has a special staff that travels with him, and his regular staff remains in Paris.”

“How does that affect this situation?”

“I think we can assume that Bonaparte will leave Paris and travel to Boulogne fairly frequently from now on. We have no way of knowing—unless our man gets some hint—if he is simply going to review the troops and cheer ‘em up, or get ‘em to sea.”

Lord Hawkesbury turned to the First Lord. “Well, what are you going to do about this report?” He pointed to the paper on the table. “Mr Addison will be asking me.”

“I'm sending a man to Boulogne,” St Vincent said. “This man,” he added, pointing at Ramage.

“Are you, by Jove?” Hawkesbury said. “What do you think about that, young fellow? You look a bit startled. What are you going to do when you get there, eh?”

Ramage swallowed hard, hoping one of the admirals would come to the rescue, but when they remained silent he said, in a wild guess, “Find the answers to his Lordship's questions, sir, and send back a report.”

“Speak much French? Spying is a dangerous job.”

“Enough, sir. I—” suddenly the idea came. “I can pass for an Italian, sir; it lessens the risk.”

He was aware that both the admirals were looking at him, and Lord St Vincent said gruffly, “No need to worry about Ramage; he's used to this sort of thing.”

Ramage knew the remark was made to reassure Lord Hawkes-bury and divert him, but the Secretary of State persisted. “What is he going to find out?”

“Just how many vessels of the Invasion Flotilla are ready to put to sea—and give us some better estimates than we have at the moment of how many soldiers the various types can carry.”

“I fail to see how that information helps us much,” Hawkes-bury said.

St Vincent managed to cut off a sigh. “If he sees five hundred vessels are ready, and estimates that each can carry a hundred men, then we know Bonaparte can embark an army of 50,000.”

“Quite so,” Hawkesbury said.

“In other words, sir,” Nelson said, “the fact that Bonaparte has sent another 50,000 soldiers to Boulogne need not worry us if we can be sure he has no ships to carry them across the Channel.”

“But what makes you think Bonaparte would send 50,000 men to Boulogne if he hadn't the ships to carry them?”

St Vincent pulled his nose impatiently. “I don't think one way or the other. I learned only half an hour ago that another 50,000 men are marching there. I'm now taking steps to find out if Bonaparte has enough ships for them—and for the army he already has camped there. Until I get young Ramage's report I'm not thinking anything,” he added coldly.

“Excellent,” Lord Hawesbury said, as if at last convinced the Admiralty planned to do the right thing. “I'll report that to the Cabinet tomorrow morning. Most satisfactory—providing this young man can furnish you with the answers.”

“He'd better,” the First Lord said with a ghost of a smile.

“If he escapes Bonaparte's guillotine but comes back without the information he'll have me to contend with!”

The Secretary of State laughed as heartily as his normal cold and scholarly manner allowed. “I'm told that sailors face the greatest peril,” he said dryly to Ramage, “when they come on shore.”

“It seems so, sir,” Ramage said, and wished his laugh sounded more convincing.

St Vincent gave another of his wintry smiles and took out his watch. “Mr Ramage will be waiting on me in the Admiralty at seven o'clock tomorrow morning, sir, and I've no doubt he would like another dance or two before getting to bed, so …”

A
S he waited in the ante-room to the First Lord's office the next morning, Ramage reflected that although a woman's tongue was reputed to be her only weapon, it was often most effective when she did not use it. When he had rejoined Gianna on the ballroom floor last night and finally got rid of that damned post-captain—who seemed hypnotized by her—she had turned to him, her face expressionless and her eyes cold.

“Well,” she had said, “I trust Lord St Vincent and Lord Nelson have accepted your advice.”

He had shaken his head helplessly, scared that if she had even a hint of what was happening she would sail over to Lord St Vincent like a frigate hard on the wind and make a scene. He had taken the cowardly way out, merely telling her that he had to be at the Admiralty early next morning. She had then lapsed into silence: a noisy, echoing and hurt silence that left him punishing himself more harshly than she could have done with her tongue.

They had danced twice more, but they were stiff and distant. She had made excuses to four other men who had requested dances and whose names were noted on her card, and then asked to be taken home. Ramage was thankful his father and mother had been too preoccupied with their own circle of friends at the ball to come over to them for a chat: he was sure Gianna would have involved his father—who must have seen him going off to the library with the two admirals—in the iniquity of officers having their leave cut short.

Now, sitting in this cheerless and chilly room, the skin of his face sore from a razor whose edge was quite unresponsive to the strop, he found he was getting frightened.

Last night he had been too preoccupied with Gianna's behaviour to have second thoughts about what he had been told in the Duke's library, and he had climbed into bed so weary that the next thing he knew was Hanson walking him with the news that it was half past five and time to get up.

Hellfire and damnation, this room was cold—and why, like almost every other room in the Admiralty, was it painted in this ghastly dark green and buff? The one tiny window opened on to a nearby wall so the sun never managed to find its way in. He shivered and a moment later wondered whether it was the temperature or the thought that within the week he would be in France acting the part of a spy. Acting! He would
be
a spy, a man who once caught would be executed after ruthless questioning and, if he did not provide the required answers, would probably be subjected to imaginative torture.

Had Gianna somehow guessed that not only would he be under Lord Nelson's orders and therefore involved in the preparations concerning Bonaparte's invasion plans, but that he would have to go to France? It seemed impossible, yet surely she would have behaved differently if he was simply being given another ship. She would have complained loudly—that was it: the chilly silence was unlike her. It was as though there was a genuine fear for him, not just disappointment that he was going to sea again after such a long absence.

He shrugged his shoulders. She might have connected the arrival of the messenger with the sudden activity involving Lord Nelson as well as the First Lord: and she had read of Lord Nelson's new appointment in the newspapers that morning. That would have led her to think of the invasion threat, and she could have fitted the rest of the puzzle together. She, of all people, knew that three years ago both admirals were involved when he ended up leading the landing party that rescued her from the Tuscan beaches with the French cavalry hunting her down only a few yards away. Lord Nelson knew that he spoke good Italian and French. In other words Gianna had instinctively reached the conclusion that he had only just reached by disjointed thinking: Lord Nelson had suggested him because he was the only naval officer readily available at one minute's notice who had a chance of working successfully behind the enemy's lines.

Spies must be either unimaginative people, or able to shut off their imaginations at will. He wished he had the knack, because his imagination would almost certainly be too nimble to allow him to sleep comfortably when French soldiers roamed the streets outside. He shut his eyes and pictured himself listening to a church clock striking three o'clock in the morning, and hearing the tramp of a French patrol and the orders and oaths shouted in French. It was bad enough in battle; up to now he had been able to fight off fear that made him want to run below when he saw the guns of an enemy ship's broadsides winking their red eyes …

The door opened and Lord Nelson beckoned him into the next room.

The First Lord, sitting at the table which was bare except for an inkwell, penholder, sandbox and two single candlesticks, looked up and nodded. “From today you are under Lord Nelson's orders. I should warn you that secrecy is vital, so don't gossip.” He looked up and smiled, as if to take the edge off his harsh words. “Don't look so hurt; you'll be the one that Bonaparte guillotines, not me.”

Lord Nelson ran a hand through his wavy and greying hair. “It is too early in the morning to talk of guillotines, eh Ramage? Come along, the First Lord has given me my orders concerning you, so let us leave him with the rest of his day's business.”

The Admiral led him to a room along the corridor and sat down at a small table, reaching for a leather portfolio. As he fumbled with the straps Ramage reached forward to help but Nelson shook his head. “I've been without a second arm so long now that I'm used to it. This is the only thing that bothers me.” He pointed to his sightless eye. “I think I'd sacrifice the other arm to have the sight back.”

He tipped the contents of the portfolio on to the table, and Ramage saw that much of it comprised pages cut from French newspapers and journals. The Admiral selected several sheets of notepaper, pushing the rest towards Ramage. “Glance through those,” he said, “then you'll know as much about Bonaparte's intentions as the regular readers of
Le Moniteur.”

The pages, covering nearly a year, contained dozens of newspaper reports of Bonaparte's invasion plans or rather, as much of them as he wanted revealed by allowing them to be published. Some of the reports referred to orders that Bonaparte had given to his admirals and generals—these were in suitably flowery language and gave nothing away. Others showed how the Army of England, as it was hopefully called, had been assembled along the Channel coast over the past few months. But the most remarkable described how France's inventors were helping in the task of transporting the great Army to England.

Here were the original reports from which the British newspapers drew their accounts and people like Gillray drew their cartoons: huge, hot-air balloons which could carry a hundred men in gondolas slung beneath for the
“Descente en Angleterre;”
great rafts propelled by sails, oars and huge windmills with their blades somehow geared to paddlewheels mounted on the side of the rafts. The actual invasion barges were described in enough detail for Ramage to guess they were designed by men used to Mediterranean galleys and who over-rated the choppiness of the Channel in anything of a breeze. Little more than great boxes, they must be so heavy that they would need half a gale o' wind to move them under sail. Likewise the gunboats intended to protect the barges seemed more suitable for operation on a large lake than in the Channel, with its treacherous weather and strong currents.

Lord Nelson glanced up as he put down the last page. “Well, what do you make of it?”

Ramage hesitated: what comment could a mere lieutenant make to the Navy's most successful fighting admiral that would not sound stupid, impertinent, banal—or all three?

“Tell me,” Nelson said sharply, “if you commanded three hundred of those barges laden with troops and artillery, and two hundred gunboats fully armed, how would you rate your chances of making a successful landing on the Kent or Sussex coast?”

“If I had a brisk easterly wind and a dark night, sir,” Ramage said diffidently, “and the Royal Navy was not around, I'd hope to get fifty, perhaps a hundred, of the barges ashore in England. But they'd probably be scattered along miles of the beaches: it would be impossible to keep them concentrated.”

“Why?” Nelson demanded querulously. “Doesn't say much for your skill as a commander, does it? Unless you kept the barges together you wouldn't stand a chance: a hundred seasick Frenchmen landing from a single barge in one place, and another hundred getting ashore a mile away—why, even the local Sea Fencible companies could mop them up!”