Ramage's Prize (32 page)

“It would be a pity to ignore the delights of Lisbon, but until your new Act of Parliament is passed, I think you'd better be my guests!”

Chamberlain said hurriedly: “Please make use of my carriage. Keep it for the day, if you wish to see the sights of Lisbon …”

Back in his cabin on board the
Lady Arabella
Ramage sat on the bunk and finally opened the letter from the Admiralty. All through dinner, and for an hour's drive round the city, he was so conscious of the unopened letter in his pocket that it might have been a piece of red-hot shot, but he had been determined not to read it until he was on board again. A childish test of will-power, he told himself, but whether he read it then or a week later it would still say the same thing. As far as the ship and their freedom was concerned, the Postmaster-General's letter to the Agent was the only one that mattered.

As he read he found he had denied himself very little. The letter was, of course, signed by the Secretary to the Board of Admiralty, Evan Nepean, who began with the customary phrases and then said, “I am commanded by my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty to inform you that they give qualified approval of your actions concerning negotiations with the French prize-master as described in your report to them of the tenth ultimo.”

Nepean went on to describe how a recent Act of Parliament made it a criminal offence to transfer funds to someone owing allegiance to an enemy country, but added, “In view of all the special circumstances, which had not been visualized when the present Act was drafted, Their Lordships have recommended to His Majesty's Government that a special Act be passed authorizing the transfer in this particular instance …

“Their Lordships further command me to express their displeasure that your report is written in such general terms and contains no specific details enabling them to advise the Post Office what course to take to avoid further losses of packets, nor recommend specific legal action, if any, against any of its employees alleged by you to be guilty of unspecified crimes or misdemeanours.

“You are hereby directed to forward by the quickest means available a second report giving these details, regardless of the risk of such report falling into unauthorized or enemy hands. Their Lordships further direct me to acquaint you that the reasons for not giving such details in your first report are sufficiently vague as to warrant a further expression of their displeasure.”

Ramage folded the letter and put it back in his pocket. A single expression of Their Lordships' displeasure was often sufficient to blast the career of a post-captain, let alone a lieutenant. Maybe, he thought wryly, the “qualified approval” cancelled out the first “displeasure,” so he would be debited with only the second.

Still, to be fair to the Admiralty, sitting back on his bunk here in the Tagus, the ship rolling slightly at anchor, the ebbing tide sluicing past the hull like a running tap, the whole capture of the
Lady Arabella
now seemed remote; something that had happened to other people. He thought of Lord Spencer reading his report and then pictured himself sitting in the First Lord's quiet, remote office in Whitehall, trying to persuade him that it was all real: that the frauds had happened, were still going on, and would continue …

Lord Spencer would listen attentively—he always did. And then—judging by the tone of this letter—he would probably shake his head politely, without saying anything. Yet it would be clear that he thought Ramage was being melodramatic, imagining much of it and guessing the rest.

Much of it! Much, the mate, would corroborate everything. But His Lordship would probably say—or think, anyway—that Much was a man with a grudge and consider that he had hoodwinked Ramage. The bosun's attack with a cutlass? The poor fellow was overwrought … The packetsmen slashing the rigging? Captain Stevens' way of making sure the French could not get the ship under way … There was no way of describing the dozens of little episodes, each one trifling and apparently meaningless, but which taken all together, like thousands of strokes of an artist's brush, made a clear picture. A look on Stevens' face, a remark of Our Ned's, items of information passed on by Jackson. Probably none of it was evidence acceptable in a court of law—or acceptable to the First Lord either.

Yet how
could
it be proved in a way that would satisfy a judge and a jury? A judge would ask if the packetsmen insured their ventures and deliberately found a French privateer and surrendered to her. If the answer was no, he would dismiss everything as the chance of war. Would a judge accept that meeting a privateer was simply a bonus; something that happened perhaps once a year? Would a judge—the First Lord, anyway—accept that for men being paid £12 a year, the chance of a profit of £400 was enough for them to surrender their ship—commit treason, in fact?

Well, one thing was certain: lying here fretting would achieve nothing: they just had to wait for the money to arrive …

I
T WAS a fortnight before the next packet arrived from Falmouth: fourteen days spent mostly on shore in Lisbon. Kerguelen, intrigued with the city after their excursion in the Agent's carriage, insisted that Ramage, Yorke, Bowen and Southwick accompany him on visits to various towns near by, where he showed a lively interest and a surprising knowledge of Manueline Gothic architecture.

On the fourteenth day after the arrival of the last packet—a fortnight of settled weather with a stiff breeze between north and west, just the wind to give the packet a fast passage—Kerguelen joined Ramage and Yorke on deck shortly after dawn, and carrying his telescope.

After greeting them he used the glass to search the river to seaward. Finally he shut it with a snap. “What is it you say in England? ‘Watch a pot and it never boils!'”

“Something like that,” Yorke said. “No sign of her, eh?”

Kerguelen shook his head. “Give her a day or two.” Then he added with a grin, “Perhaps your Government is having trouble finding the money.”

“They'll just increase the taxes,” Yorke said cheerfully.

Up to that moment Ramage had tried to keep the whole question of the Act of Parliament at the back of his mind. Now, standing on the
Lady Arabella
's foredeck and watching the fregatas drifting down the Tagus on the ebb tide and finding no sign of the packet's sails on the horizon, the doubts began to flood in. Supposing Opposition Members of Parliament had seized the opportunity to embarrass the Government by opposing the bill?

Any defeat of a Government bill, however unimportant the actual subject, was regarded as a major triumph for the Opposition. Party politics were supreme; each party was a veritable Moloch frequently demanding the sacrifice of honour and decency—and certainly the fate of a Post Office packet and a miserable lieutenant—if it brought votes.

He turned from watching the skyline of Lisbon. Just along the coast was Cape St Vincent, where he'd lost the
Kathleen
cutter in the battle that took its name from the Cape. Farther south the coast swung eastward in to a great bight round to the Spanish border and Cadiz, where the Spanish fleet was blockaded. And then Gibraltar, and across the Gut the shore of Africa, lined by the great mass of the Atlas Mountains.

Sailing into the Strait from the Atlantic as dawn broke never ceased to fascinate him. The dark mountains of Spain to larboard would be heavily shadowed, and because a ship usually kept close in to avoid the current, the distant land sounds carried across the water. The insane, agonized braying of donkeys; the occasional heavy thud of a mason chipping stone; the tinny clangour of a village church's tiny bell … The heavy smell of herbs borne seaward by a gentle offshore breeze, and always the mountains of Africa, powder blue in the early light and mysterious like veiled Arab women watching from curtained windows in the narrow streets of Tangier.

How remote London seemed. Whitehall running northward from the Houses of Parliament, with a short turning off it called Downing Street, where the Prime Minister lived in a nondescript house. Five minutes' walk along Whitehall to the Admiralty building set back from the road behind a high screen wall, with a cobbled courtyard in between. And a mile away, in the City itself, the Post Office headquarters at Lombard Street. In four buildings—Parliament itself, the house in Downing Street, the Admiralty building and the one in Lombard Street—men had discussed the
Lady Arabella.

By now Government lawyers and Parliament's legal draftsmen would have drawn up a short Act, dipping deep into their enormous store of clichés and redundant phrases. The Act would have been printed and gone through various stages in the House of Commons and the House of Lords. There would have been divisions, with the Members faithfully trooping into the “Ayes” and “Noes” lobbies like flocks of sheep driven into pens to be sheared of their votes. The sheepdogs would be the party whippersin and the shepherds the party leaders. Should one sheep stray by accident or design into the wrong lobby to cast a vote against his party, then his fleece would be nailed up in one of the whips' offices, a warning to all others.

They were having dinner later the same day when Kerguelen came into the saloon to report that the packet had been sighted running up the Tagus with the flood tide under her. Half an hour later she passed the
Lady Arabella,
heading for the packet berth a mile farther up the river. The name
Princess Louise
was picked out in gilt across her transom, and beneath it her port of registry, Falmouth.

“Are you going to see Chamberlain this evening?” Yorke asked.

Ramage shook his head. “We'll wait to hear from him. By the time they've cleared Customs it'll be nearly dark, and I doubt if he'll get the mails off tonight.”

“But surely the commander will have the things we're interested in under lock and key in his cabin, won't he?”

Ramage grinned. “Yes, but I don't see any need to give Chamberlain the chance to play ‘I'm King of the Castle.' If we go along to his house tonight he can tell us to come back in the morning.”

“Hadn't thought of that,” Yorke admitted. “You seem to read the minds of these people like a book!”

“Bitter experience. When you're in the Navy you learn quickly enough that the sailors' worst enemies are not the French but the quill-pushers in Government offices like the Navy Board and the Sick and Hurt Board … It's straightforward dealing with the French—they're only trying to kill you. But the clerks are trying to cheat you or make your life a misery by abusing their authority. Great fun for the clerks, who never think of wives and mothers and children starving because seamen can't send them money. Have you ever seen a man who lost a leg in action hobbling round trying to get the pension to which he's entitled? Sent from one office to another, from Plymouth to London and on to Portsmouth. Ninety per cent of the clerks are stupid or corrupt or lazy. Some are all three.”

“And the remaining ten per cent?”

“They run the Navy. To be fair you'll find the percentage is the same elsewhere, at the Horse Guards, the Post Office, the Treasury—in every damned office listed in the
Royal Kalendar!
”

“Faro,” Yorke said, opening a drawer and taking out a pack of cards. “At this point let's drag Bowen and Southwick from the chessboard and play faro.”

As Bowen dealt the cards, he said idly, “I wonder what happened to Stevens?”

“Still a prisoner in the
Rossignol,
I suppose,” Yorke said.

“And that damned Surgeon,” Southwick growled. “I hope he has the gravel, or something just as painful.”

“Ah, an interesting man,” Bowen said. “But in no need of medical attention.”

“Pity,” Southwick commented.

“He's a man with an appointment, eh, Mr Ramage?”

“An appointment?” Ramage echoed. “With whom?”

“With what,” Bowen corrected. “The hangman's noose at Tyburn, I was thinking.”

“Aye, and Stevens, too.”

“Stevens is a weak man,” Bowen said quietly, as though giving a diagnosis to a relative. “I had the impression he was completely under the Surgeon's influence.”

Yorke nodded his head in agreement. “That was the impression Much gave.”

“They'll both escape the rope,” Ramage said sourly, picking up his cards.

“How so?” asked Yorke. “Surely there's enough evidence against them?”

“Plenty of evidence, most of which we can provide. But how much admissible in a court of law? Even if all of it is, I think the Government will keep it quiet. Can you imagine the uproar in Parliament if it was revealed that most of the packets lost for the last year or two were captured because of the treachery of their officers and men?”

“Can't see how they can keep it quiet,” Southwick said complacently.

“The only way the news could get out,” Ramage said, “would be if you or I told an Opposition Member of Parliament. And that would mean a quick end to our naval careers. But you”—he waved his cards at Yorke and grinned—”could earn yourself the undying gratitude of the Opposition by telling them. You'd get the next safe Parliamentary seat that fell vacant and a baronetcy if they won the next election. Why, it could be the making of you!”

“If you call that being made! But are you serious in saying the pair of them will get away with it?”

“Well, the chances of my report being believed in detail are slender enough—though the broad terms might be accepted. But they'll dodge Tyburn all right. Assuming I'm believed, Stevens will be sacked. He'll get his ship back, of course, since he's the owner, but his Post Office contract will be cancelled. He'll have to pay for a new stern to replace the present rotten one. The Surgeon—he'll set up in practice in Falmouth, no doubt, and the old ladies will be thrilled when they hear his stirring tales of adventure on the high seas …”