Ramage and the drum beat

CHAPTER ONE

The heat and humidity of a Mediterranean summer made the watermark in the paper stand out like a fading scar, and traces of mildew left a tarnished gilt outline round the edges. The orders, in a clerk's careful handwriting that was sufficiently faint to indicate he was short of powder to make the ink, were dated 21st October, 1796, headed 'By Commodore Horatio Nelson, Commander of His Majesty's ship Diadem and senior officer of His Majesty's ships and vessels at Bastia,' and addressed to 'Lieutenant Lord Ramage, Commander of His Majesty's ship Kathleen'. They said, with a directness reflecting the Commodore's manner:

'You are hereby required and directed to receive on board His Majesty's ship under your command the persons of the Marchesa di Volterra and Count Pitti, and to proceed with all possible despatch to Gibraltar, being careful to follow a southerly route to avoid interception by enemy ships of war ... On arrival at Gibraltar you will report forthwith to the Admiral commanding to receive orders for your further proceedings.'

And be told, Ramage guessed, that the Marchesa and Pitti would go to England in a much bigger ship. The Kathleen would then almost certainly be ordered to rejoin the Commodore's squadron, which should have finished evacuating the British troops from Bastia (leaving the whole of Corsica in rebel and French hands) and have sailed back to the island of Elba to salvage what it could as General Bonaparte's troops swept southward down the Italian mainland like a river in full flood.

Genoa, Pisa, Milan, Florence, Leghorn and by now perhaps even Civitavecchia and Rome ... Each city and port that was beautiful and useful to the French would have a Tricolour and a wrought iron Tree of Liberty (with the absurd Red Cap of Liberty perched on top) set up in its main piazza, with a guillotine near by for those unable to stomach the Tree's bitter fruit.

Yet, he thought ironically, it's an ill wind ... Thanks to Bonaparte's invasion, His Majesty's cutter Kathleen was now the first command of Lieutenant Ramage; and thanks to Bonaparte - an unlikely enough Cupid - one of those who had fled before his troops was on board the Kathleen and the said Lieutenant Ramage had fallen in love with her....

He scratched his face with the feather of his quill pen and thought of another set of orders, the secret orders which had, like a fuse leading to a row of powder kegs, set off a series of explosions which had rocked his career for the past couple of months.

On 1st September, the date those orders were issued to the captain of the Sibella frigate, he had been the junior of three lieutenants on board. The orders, known only to the captain, had been to take the Sibella to a point off the Italian coast and rescue several Italian nobles who had fled from the French and were hiding near the beach.

But a chance evening meeting with a French line of battle ship had left the Sibella a shattered wreck, with himself the only surviving officer, and as night came down he'd been able to escape in the remaining boats with the unwounded men. And before quitting the Sibella he'd grabbed the dead captain's secret orders.

Supposing he had thrown them over the side in the special weighted box kept for the purpose? That's what he should have done, since there was a considerable risk that the French would capture him.

Well he hadn't; instead he'd read them in the open boat - and found that only a few miles away the Marchesa di Volterra and two cousins, Counts Pitti and Pisano, with several other nobles, were waiting to be rescued. The fact that the Volterras were old friends of his parents hadn't influenced his decision (no, he was sure it hadn't) to take one of the boats and carry out the rescue.

And everything had gone wrong. Only the Marchesa and her two cousins had finally risked escaping in the boat, and he'd bungled the whole business. Surprised by French cavalry, Pitti had apparently been killed by a shot which destroyed his face, and Ramage had been lucky to get the Marchesa and Pisano away safely.

Lucky ... it was an odd word for him to choose; the Marchesa had been wounded and Pisano, who'd behaved in a cowardly fashion - so much so that the seamen in the boat were shocked by what they saw - had suddenly accused him of cowardice. And when he'd got them safely to Corsica, Pisano had repeated the accusations in writing.

He shivered as he thought of the resulting court martial. It was bad luck that the senior officer ordering the trial had been an enemy of his father's; it was almost unbelievable how the Marchesa had suddenly thrown aside all loyalty to her cousin and given evidence on Ramage's behalf, not only denying that he'd been a coward but declaring that, on the contrary, he'd been a hero....

And at the end of it all, with the wretched Pisano discredited, Count Pitti had suddenly arrived in Bastia. Far from being shot in the face, he had twisted his ankle while running alone to the boat and, rather than delay his rescuers, hidden under a bush.

Although both the Marchesa and Antonio Pitti had subsequently been fulsome in their praise to Commodore Nelson (who'd arrived in Bastia while the court martial was in progress) Ramage admitted to himself the trial had been more of a blow to his pride than anyone (except perhaps Gianna) had guessed. The proof was that he kept on thinking about it.

He sat up impatiently: the devil take it, the whole business was over and done with now and this was no time for sitting here like an old hen brooding over it. He folded the Commodore's orders, which he now knew by heart, opened his log book, and dipped the pen in the ink.

Against the time of nine o'clock and under the columns headed courses and winds, he wrote with a petulant flourish of his pen 'Becalmed'. In the next column headed remarks he noted, 'Sunday, 30th October 1796. Ship's Company employed atsr. 10 o'clock Divisions. 10.30 Divine Service. 11.30 clear decks and up spirits. 12 dinner.'

He disliked the abbreviation atsr but it was customary: 'as the Service required' usually appeared at least twice a day in a log book.

Since it was still only half past nine he'd anticipated the rest of the morning's routine, but his temporary cabin was dark, hot and airless and he hated it. He wiped the pen impatiently, smearing ink on his thumb, locked up the log and his orders, and went up on deck, acknowledging the sentry's salute with a curt nod.

The discontented scowl on his face warned the men to keep clear as he strode off. He always detested Sundays at sea because of all the rigmarole it entailed for the commanding officer of one of His Majesty's ships of war, even if he was but a very junior lieutenant and the ship of war a very small cutter armed with only ten corranades.

But even more he detested being becalmed in the Mediterranean on a late autumn day when the long oily swell waves gave no hint of a breeze arriving in the next hour, or even the next week. Purgatory must be something like this, he thought wryly, though he had the advantage over everyone else on board since he could display his irritation and they could not.

Leaning over the taffrail he watched the crest of each swell wave coming up astern to see-saw the cutter, lifting first her buoyant counter and then sweeping forward to raise the bow and let the counter drop into the trough with a squelch like a foot in a sodden boot.

It was an irregular, unnatural and thoroughly uncomfortable motion, like dice in a shaker, and everything on board that could move did move: the slides of the heavy, squat carronades squeaked and the ropes of their side-tackles groaned under the jerky strain; the halyard blocks banged and the halyards themselves slatted against the mast. And - the last straw as far as Ramage was concerned - the headsails were lashed down to the foot of their stays, the big mainsail furled and the wind vane at the masthead spun round and round on its spindle as the mast gyrated, instead of indicating the wind's direction.

Because of light winds and brief thunderstorms the Kathleen had covered only four hundred miles in the past eight days - an average of a couple of knots, less than the pace of a child dawdling to school. It was more than eleven hundred miles from Bastia to Gibraltar, and he was only too conscious of the phrase 'with all possible despatch' in the Commodore's orders.

An occasionally outraged growl from behind him told Ramage that Henry Southwick, the elderly and usually almost offensively cheerful Master and his second-in-command, was making a last-minute search before reporting the ship and ship's company ready for inspection. With a Master like Southwick the Sunday inspection was merely a routine; Ramage knew not a speck of the brickdust used to polish brasswork, nor a grain of sand lurking in the scuppers after the deck had been holystoned and washed down with a head pump would escape his eye. The cook's coppers would be shining and each mess's bread barge, platters and mugs would be spotless and its pudding cloth scrubbed. Every man was already shaved and rigged out in clean shirt and trousers ... Yet for all that Southwick would soon ask permission to muster the ship's company. Then, after the inspection, all hands would be ordered aft for Divine Service, which Ramage would have to conduct himself.

The thought made him self-conscious; he would be taking it for only the sixth time in his life, since he'd commanded the Kathleen for precisely forty-two days and still found it hard to believe that almost the last entry in the cutter's muster book said, 'Lieutenant Nicholas Ramage ... as per commission dated 19th September 1796 ...' The sixth Sunday - and he remembered that under the Regulations and instructions, the captain had to read the thirty-six Articles of War to the ship's company once a month. Since it could replace a sermon he might as well read them today because the sun was shining, and next Sunday it might be pouring with rain and blowing a gale of wind.

After three years of war all but the most stupid seamen knew by heart the Articles' forthright exhortations warning everyone in the Fleet, from admirals to boys, of the perils and punishment for the sins of treason, mutiny, blasphemy, cowardice and drunkenness; and they knew in particular the thirty-sixth, nicknamed 'The Captain's Cloak', which was so phrased that it enabled a captain to word a charge to cover any other villainy that the wit and ingenuity of errant seamen might devise. Still, as long as they could then bellow a few hymns to the fearful tunes John Smith the Second scraped on his fiddle, the men would listen patiently enough. After that they'd be piped to dinner and those off watch would spend the rest of the afternoon skylarking, dancing, mending clothes and, Ramage thought gloomily, before sundown - unless they were an exemplary ship's company - one or two who had hoarded their grog or won extra tots from their messmates, would be brought before him blind drunk...

The Marchesa di Volterra stood under the skylight of the captain's cabin, which was hers for the voyage, twisting the looking glass in her hand first one way and then the other to make sure no stray locks of hair had escaped from the chignon that she had spent the last ten minutes trying to tie. Her arms ached. She was hot, and for the first time since the Royal Navy, in the shape of Ramage, had rescued her and her cousin from the mainland as they fled before Bonaparte's cavalry, she wished herself back in her palace at Volterra, where her merest frown would bring a dozen maids running.

For the first time in her seventeen years of life (nearly eighteen, she remembered proudly) she really wanted to make herself look beautiful to please a particular man, and she was having to do it in a tiny cabin without a maid, a wardrobe, or jewellery. How did Nicholas ever manage to live in such a cabin? She was much smaller - his chin rested on her head when she stood close - yet the ceiling, or whatever Nicholas called it, was so low that even now she had to stoop to hold the looking glass high enough. Impatiently she flung the glass into the swinging cot and sat down in the single chair in front of the desk which served as a dressing table. Accidente! What was the use? If only her hair was blonde! Everyone had black hair, and she wanted to look different. Did he like high cheekbones? Hers were much too high. And the mouth - hers was too big, and she wished the lips were thinner. And her eyes were too large and brown when she preferred blue or grey-green, like a cat's. And why was her nose small and slightly hooked, when she wanted a straight one? And her complexion was shaming - the sun had tanned it gold so that she looked like a peasant girl instead of the woman who ruled a city and a kingdom (even if the kingdom was small the city was big). She ruled twenty thousand people, she thought bitterly, and not one of them was here now to help her dress her hair - except her cousin, Antonio, and he'd only laugh and tease.

Well, Antonio could laugh, but he must help. When she called, a heavily built man with a short, squarely trimmed black beard came into the cabin, shoulders hunched to avoid bumping his head on the low beams.

'Well, well! And whose garden party is my beautiful cousin gracing with her presence today?'

'There's only one, my dear Antonio. Hasn't Lieutenant Ramage invited the elegant Count Pitti? Everyone will be there - Nicholas makes them put on their best clothes and sing hymns. Perhaps he'll flog some of them with a cat of seven tails just to amuse you.'

'Cat o' nine tails,' Count Pitti corrected in English.

'Nine then. Antonio, help me tidy my hair.'

'It doesn't need it. You're beautiful and you know it and if you want compliments...'

'Will you help me tidy my hair?'

'You love him very deeply, don't you?'

The question was sudden and unexpected but she neither blushed nor glanced away. Instead she looked directly at him, and said with awe, almost fear, in her voice, 'I didn't know it was possible. I was a child before I met him; he's made me feel a woman. And he - he's a man, Antonio; everything a man should be. I know only one other man like him.'

'And he is?'

'You, my dear cousin. One day a woman will feel for you as I do for him.'

'I hope so,' he said soberly, 'though I won't deserve it. But you have known him - three weeks, a month?'

'Does that matter?'

'No - but never forget you met him in romantic circumstances. It's the stuff of story books - the dashing young naval officer sweeping in from the sea to rescue the beautiful Marchesa from beneath the feet of Napoleon's cavalry and ...’

'I know. I've thought all about that. But I've also seen him dirty and stinking and exhausted, seen him fighting Napoleon's cavalrymen with only a knife, seen him unjustly court-martialled on a trumped-up charge of cowardice ... Is this the stuff of story books as well?'

Pitti shook his head. 'No, but when you're parted? When he's at sea for months, perhaps years, what then? You've never had patience, Gianna. Since you inherited Volterra you've been able to have everything you wanted - at once.'

'That's true,' she admitted. 'But they were material things: jewels, gay balls, excitement. I think perhaps I wanted all that so urgently because I hadn't met him. When you've no one to love, to confide in - to live for, in fact - you get bored; you need entertaining. When there's no sun, you need many candles everywhere.'

'Tell me more about this English chandelier!'

Even as she smiled she realized she knew very little about him in the conventional sense; but in the past month when the two of them had together faced so much danger, adventure, death and intrigue she'd learned things about him that in normal times a woman might live with a man a lifetime without discovering. And apart from the times of immediate danger she'd seen him in the secret agony of making decisions on which his men's lives depended. She'd seen what probably none of his men ever saw, that command was desperately lonely, particularly for someone as young and sensitive as Nicholas. He'd been given command at an early age and it hadn't yet (nor, she knew, would it ever) brutalized him so he became callous about his men.

'He was twenty-one years old a few weeks ago and he's been at sea since he was thirteen; the scar on his forehead is a sword wound from when he was boarding a French frigate last year, and when he's nervous or under a strain he rubs it and blinks and has trouble pronouncing the letter "r". I don't really know why he never uses his title - as an earl's son he has one, and the Navy uses it in official letters - but I think it makes social difficulties with superior officers if he is called "Lord". His parents knew mine, Oh, Antonio, I sound like a catalogue. I can't describe him!'

'Wasn't there some trouble about his father?'

'Yes. Perhaps you can remember the famous trial of Admiral the Earl of Blazey? I was too young. No? Well, anyway, that was Nicholas's father. The French sailed a large fleet to the West Indies and the Earl was sent out much too late with a tiny British fleet. He fought them bravely but he didn't win; nor did the French. Then the English people, who didn't know how few ships the Earl had - and they were old and decrepit anyway - made a terrible fuss and the Government got frightened. Like all Governments it wouldn't admit its mistake, so it court-martialled the Earl because he didn't capture all the French ships.'

'And he was found guilty?'

'Yes - he had to be, to save the Ministers. He was the scapegoat. If he'd been found innocent then obviously the Government was guilty. Apparently the judges in a naval court martial are naval officers, and since many of them are mixed up in politics it was easy for the Government - the Admiralty, anyway, which is the same thing - to choose officers supporting its own party for the court martial. Commodore Nelson told me it often happens. He says politics are the curse of the Navy!'

'So the Earl must still have many enemies in the Navy, and this affects Nicholas. A sort of vendetta...

'Yes, very much so. That horrible man who had Nicholas court-martialled at Bastia after he had rescued me was the protege of one of them, but luckily Commodore Nelson knew all about that.'

'If the Earl still has enemies among the admirals, Nicholas will always be in danger,' reflected Antonio. 'You can always put someone in the wrong if you want to ... Nicholas realizes that?'

'Yes I'm sure he does, though he's never mentioned it to me. But I often sensed, when he was making some important decision, that - well, he knew that even if there were only two alternatives, his father's enemies would say whichever he chose was the wrong one. It never affected his decisions - just that I felt there was always something lurking in the shadows, threatening him. As if he knew he had the Evil Eye on him....'

'You've discovered a lot about Nicholas in a month!'

'Jackson told me some things, and so did the Commodore.'

'This seaman Jackson - isn't he an American?'

'Yes - a strange man. No one knows much about him, but he has a great respect for Nicholas - even though he's twice his age. It's curious - when they're in danger they seem to be able to read each other's thoughts.'

'Well, he saved my life,' said Antonio, 'and that's enough for me!'

Just then a shrill warbling note of a bosun's call echoed through the ship, followed by shouted orders. 'Time for church,' Antonio grinned. 'Your Nicholas makes a good priest!'

Southwick was glad the inspection and Divine Service was over, and watching a handful of men dancing on the fo'c'sle as John Smith the Second perched on the barrel of the windlass scratching at his fiddle, he was thankful the Kathleen had such a good ship's company. Out of the sixty-three men on board he'd like to change only a couple, whereas most ships he'd previously served in had only a couple of really good men out of five score.

But trust Mr. Ramage to spot something, he thought ruefully. Every captain he'd ever served under looked for brickdust, sand, dirty coppers or a bit of mildewed biscuit in a bread barge. But not Mr. Ramage. Out of nearly two hundred round shot in the racks beside the carronades he'd spotted two that had sufficient rust scale under the black paint to make them no longer completely spherical, so that they might stick in the barrel while being loaded and also wouldn't fly true. The man who noticed that without passing each one through a shot gauge could see through a four-inch plank. Yet Southwick readily admitted, although he was only a youngster, Mr. Ramage was the first captain he'd ever served under who was more concerned with the way a ship could fight than the way it could be scrubbed and polished, and that was a dam' good thing since there was a war on. And in twenty-six years at sea he never thought he'd ever daily see men actually enjoying three solid hours of gun drill in the hot sun of the forenoon followed by two more before hammocks were piped down. Still, a lot of it was due to the Marchesa. Southwick didn't know whether it was her idea or Mr. Ramage's, but having her standing there with Mr. Ramage's watch in her hand timing them certainly kept the men on their toes. And it rounded off the day nicely when she awarded the prize tots of Mr. Ramage's brandy to the crew of the gun that had been first to report 'Ready to Fire!' the most times.

But Southwick was certain the Kathleen was a happy and efficient ship simply because, young as he was, every man on board trusted Mr. Ramage as their captain. His twenty-six years at sea had taught the Master that that was the only thing that mattered. Certainly, under the regulations they had to salute the captain and call him 'Sir'; but they'd have done so anyway. Although he was quick enough to rub 'em down for slack sail handling or slowness in running out the guns, the ship’s company knew Mr. Ramage could do most things better than they and he had a happy knack of proving it when necessary with a matter-of-fact smile on his face, so that the men, far from being resentful, took it as, well, a sort of challenge.

Suddenly remembering he was still holding his quadrant, Southwick picked up the slate and went down to his cabin to work out the noon sight he had just taken. Mr. Ramage would soon be calling for the day's reckoning, since at sea the new day began at noon.

Ramage felt like singing. He'd watched a tiny wind shadow dancing over the sea to the north; then more appeared and closed with the Kathleen. Within a minute or two he had the men cheering as they heaved down on the halyards, hoisting the great mainsail, then the largest of the cutter's jibs and foresails. A few moments later the main-topsail was set, followed by the jib topsail, and while the men afted the sheets under Southwick's orders, Ramage looked at his watch and then at the luffs of the sails.

When the Master saw the last sail trimmed properly, he bawled 'Belay that' to the sheetmen and swung round to Ramage, an inquiring look on his face. Ramage, noticing the men had also stopped to look at him, put his watch back in his pocket with deliberate slowness and shook his head.

Southwick looked crestfallen and he sensed the men's genuine disappointment so that he was slightly ashamed of his deception and called with a grin, 'All right, all right, you've just beaten the record - by half a minute!'

Southwick slapped his knee with delight - he'd obviously been thinking of a few seconds - and the men were laughing as the Master dismissed them. Southwick and all except those on watch went below. Ramage, disappointed Gianna did not stay on deck now the Kathleen was under way once again, decided against sending for her to enjoy the breeze with him because she might be sleeping. Then for no apparent reason he suddenly felt uneasy, and he remembered how his mother sometimes shivered and said, 'Someone's walking over my grave!'