Ramage's Prize (38 page)

At five o'clock he ordered the guns secured and the magazine locked. He glanced up at the sails, impatient for the next day, so that he could start exercising the packetsmen aloft.

B
Y early evening the
Lady Arabella
was making seven knots with a brisk quartering wind. The Os Farilhões islands, their sharp outline caught by the last of the sun's rays and giving the impression of several sails on the eastern horizon, were eight miles away on the starboard beam.

Southwick, responsible for navigation, was already grumbling about the French charts. “These packets,” he muttered to Ramage. “They carry just enough charts to get them through to their usual destination. Fancy Stevens not carrying a chart for anywhere south of Brest! Supposing he ran into a week of bad weather on the way home and found himself driven on to the Spanish peninsula, or into the Bay of Biscay? Not that these damned French charts are much better than having nothing. Don't trust ‘em.”

“Kerguelen was going to—in fact he took us down to Lisbon with them without running ashore!” Ramage said mildly. “He probably brought the French charts on board with him because he didn't trust British ones!”

“Or he guessed that packets don't carry a proper folio of charts. And this business of measuring the prime meridian from Paris,” Southwick snorted. “Why not Greenwich, like other civilized people!”

Ramage had forgotten that. “When do we come on to the British charts?”

“Just south of the latitude of Brest. Stevens has a copy made from some other chart. He's left the south-eastern section blank—probably too damned idle to finish the job.”

Ramage began pacing up and down the starboard side of the deck: the strange lassitude that had threatened to overcome him in Lisbon, and which had been given a sharp nudge by Gianna's arrival, had now vanished completely. The
Lady Arabella
was a strange command for him—strange in every sense, from the ship's company to her actual ownership—but at least a command. Sir Pilcher Skinner was the other side of the Western Ocean; the Admiralty and Lombard Street were still a few hundred miles to the north. It was going to be a problem convincing Their Lordships about the fate of the packets, but that was all sufficiently far over the horizon to be left for a day or two so he could enjoy Gianna's company. The devil take it, she'd gone below ten minutes ago to change before the evening meal, and he was already missing her …

He had to write a full report for Their Lordships before they reached Plymouth, and it would be worth having Much write one as well. In fact, Ramage thought, I'm damned if I won't take Much to London with me; Lord Spencer can hear the mate's story from the man's own lips if he wishes to. Yorke will probably travel to London at the same time, so he will be available too.

He looked slowly round the horizon as he walked. The wind was little more than fifteen knots, and there was the usual evening cloud to the westward, looking dark and menacing with the sun setting behind it.

As he watched several men washing down the deck to clear away the sand, he saw how easy it would be for the most unobservant landlubber to pick out the former Tritons. They were working with a will, not a sloppy eagerness as though trying to please. They had a brisk precision; their complete economy of movement made the least effort do the most work. He had noticed it before, when Stevens was in command, because that had been his first chance of comparing man-o'-war's men working side by side with packetsmen.

There had been scores of occasions when he had seen a crowd of lubberly volunteers or newly pressed men being shown how to do various tasks on board a man-o'-war, and it had taken weeks for them to get into the swing of it all. But here were packetsmen—trained seamen who had spent their life in merchant ships—who made a very poor showing when working alongside men who had spent only a few years in ships of war.

Of course, he had to make allowances for the fact that these packetsmen were sullen; there was no disguising that. They hated exercising at the guns; they would resent being roused out to go to quarters to meet the dawn; they already resented having to scrub the decks daily. Nor did they like the idea of four lookouts, one on each bow and each quarter: Stevens had been content with one at the bow. Well, Ramage thought grimly, they are going to dislike the drill I have planned for them tomorrow even more. They would probably hate him long before they sighted the English coast, but he was going to work the packetsmen until they were ready to drop. And if they did drop, he was going to be sure it was on to scrubbed decks.

Yorke sauntered over and fell into step beside him.

“Feels good, doesn't it?”

Aye,” Ramage said, motioning Yorke to follow him down to the cabin, “I was never a good passenger.”

“Nor me,” Yorke said ruefully.

“Sorry, I didn't mean it like that!”

“I know you didn't; it just reminded me. Anyway, you've already got her looking more like a ship.”

Ramage led the way into the cabin, acknowledging the salute of the seaman on guard at the door, and waved Yorke to a seat. “By sunset tomorrow these packetsmen are going to wish they'd never been born!”

“Oho! What other little treats have you got in store?”

“Four hours' drill at the guns, for a start. And an hour's sail drill. More if they don't look lively!”

“Is it worth it? I mean,” Yorke said hurriedly, “you gave them a good run at the guns today and we'll be in Plymouth before you can get a polish on them. If we sight any ships with designs on our virtue, presumably we'll make a bolt for it.”

“We most certainly will. No, I'm going to work these packetsmen until they nearly drop simply because it's the only way to punish them.”

“Why not leave it to the courts?” Yorke said mildly.

“Courts?” Ramage snorted. “These scoundrels will never be hauled before a court! And if they were, how can we prove what we've seen with our own eyes? Their word against ours, and a smart lawyer would probably convince a judge that we never saw anything; that we are just nasty troublemakers perjuring ourselves.”

“But they'll certainly be arrested, won't they?”

Ramage shook his head. “I can't see it. The Post Office—the Government, rather—are going to handle everything very discreetly, and to a politician ‘discreetly' is a polite word for ‘secretly.'”

“Oh come now!” Yorke chided. “I know you've said all this before. But …”

“All right, m'lad. Who
has
the power in the City of London? Who
really
has their hands on the purse strings?”

“The merchants and the bankers, I suppose.”

“Exactly. And of all the merchants, the ones with the loudest voices are the—”

“The West India merchants,” Yorke interrupted. “All right I take the point.”

“Very well, they're the most powerful—and they've lost the most because the West Indies packets were vanishing. In fact I'm damned certain it's only their pressure that eventually forced the Government to do something drastic.

“You see, it'd be one thing for the Post Office to report in vague terms in about three months' time that losses have stopped. But it'd be something quite different if the Postmaster-General suddenly announced in Parliament that he'd just discovered the heavy loss of packets had been caused by the treachery and greed of their commanders and crews.

“I can just imagine the overwhelming vote of confidence the Government would fail to get in Parliament! And I can see the Lord Mayor of London leading his cronies in a brisk trot to Downing Street armed with nasty threats. Consols would come down with a crash—and from what I've always heard, the moment they drop ten points or so the ministers start emptying their desk drawers, ready to hand over to their successors.”

“So you think these jokers”—Yorke waved a hand to indicate the packetsmen on deck above with scrubbing brushes and buckets of water—”won't be popped on the scales of Justice?”

“No—but by the time I've finished with ‘em I hope they'd sooner have taken their chance in a court. In my crude way I don't see why they should escape
any
sort of punishment.”

“Bit hard on your fellows, though.”

Ramage shook his head. “Oh no—they'd be doing it anyway in a ship o' war. You saw them just now; they simply show how fast a thing can be done, then they watch the packetsmen working at it until they can do it as quickly.”

“That seems fair,” Yorke conceded.

“It's not intended to be fair,” Ramage said sourly. “Don't labour the point or I might keep them at it for ten hours a day. Anyway, weary men are less likely to cause trouble!”

The sentry's voice interrupted. “The Marchesa's coming, sir!”

Ramage grinned at Yorke. “The Marines would go mad if they heard that. Still, the poor fellow has been told he's to guard us—from each other, too!”

There was a knock at the door and Gianna walked in. “It's so dark in here, Nicholas. Oh, Mr Yorke—am I interrupting an important conversation?”

“No,” Yorke said quickly, “but I have a very important and urgent job.”

When he saw Ramage's eyebrows raised questioningly he pointed to the lantern clipped to the bulkhead over the desk. “I was going to get that lit—we can't let such beauty blossom in darkness.”

“Nicholas is not as beautiful as all that,” she said with a straight face. “Come, sit down again; the captain's cabin in the twilight is so cosy. That saloon—horrible! Like some cheap inn! Now tell me what you two did in the West Indies.”

“Nothing much,” Yorke said warily. “Deuced hot, of course.”

“Too hot to flirt with beautiful women?”

“Oh, much too hot,” Yorke said emphatically.

“That is not what I hear,” Gianna said. “The rustling palm trees, the perfume of frangipani, an enormous moon … is that not romantic, Mr Yorke?”

“Indeed it is. But you can't hear the palms rustling for the buzz of mosquitoes, and you can't stand still long enough to look at the moon for the itching of their bites. Even if you could, you'd be eaten alive by sandflies—'No-see-'ems' they're called in some of the islands—and their bites are like red-hot needles jabbed in you.”

Yorke hoped she was convinced, and looking at her and listening to her talking in that delightfully accented voice that one heard with the loins rather than the ears, he suddenly remembered the many occasions back in the Caribbean when Ramage had not heard him say something. He would give a start and Yorke had guessed he'd suddenly come back from wherever his thoughts had been. For a moment he would look confused; then he'd seem embarrassed. Now Yorke realized what iron control Ramage had. In the isolation of the West Indies, it was a rare man who could have resisted the urge to ease the loneliness by talking of the woman he loved so desperately and who was nearly five thousand miles away. Yet until he met her, the only things Yorke knew about her had been the few admiring anecdotes which Southwick had related like an adoring grandfather describing his favourite grandchild.

Yorke had often heard men describing beautiful women, but when he'd eventually met the women he'd been disappointed. Sometimes a woman's beauty matched the words used to describe her, but usually she proved to be as characterless as a piece of statuary.

In a bitter way—just jealousy, if he was honest with himself—Yorke had pieced together Southwick's occasional descriptions and pictured a beautiful shrew: a young woman who used her beauty to mesmerize men and her power as the ruler of a small state to bully them. Wilful, making everyone rush round for the sake of a whim, sulky when thwarted … The moment he had heard she was coming back with them in the
Arabella,
Yorke admitted to himself he half thought of moving over to the
Princess Louise.

But how wrong he had been: she was all Southwick had said, and more. More because Southwick could not appreciate her love of music, the breadth of her reading, the subtlety of a patrician mind completely free of the restraints normally ingrained in women.

Would Ramage ever be able to marry her? Perhaps not. If she was ever to return to rule Volterra a foreign husband might be too much for those Tuscans to accept. Religion—would that be an obstacle? Ramage a Protestant, and Gianna presumably a Roman Catholic? Obviously they would be the main problems. Apart from that, everything was in his favour: heir to one of the oldest earldoms in the country, he spoke perfect Italian, and from all accounts understood the Italians as well as a non-Italian ever could.

Yet would she be allowed to marry the man she loved? Would she be forced—for political or dynastic reasons—to marry some dreary and corpulent ruler of a neighbouring state? If that ever happened Yorke pitied the poor fellow! How could he compete with the memories she would have of the handsome young Englishman who rescued her from Napoleon's cavalry and took her away in his ship …

“A penny for your thoughts, Mr Yorke …”

Now
he
was daydreaming about her!

“I was thinking about your secret admirers, ma'am.”

“And who are they?” she demanded.

“All the former Tritons on board this ship who served in the
Kathleen,
and the worthy Captain Wilson, Much and Bowen …”

“So few?” she teased.

“I'm not including myself because I don't—with the Captain's permission—have to keep it a secret.”

Ramage wagged a warning finger. “If you think flattery will get you an extra dance, you're wasting your time.”

“A dance?” Gianna asked. “With whom is Mr Yorke going to dance—and when?”

“In a weak moment, when the chances of us getting back to England seemed very remote,” Ramage explained, “I told him I would give a ball in your honour and let him have one dance.”