Ramage At Trafalgar Page 13

  Of course the west wind, he reflected, was the wind in which the French and Spanish seamen (even if not Villeneuve, who might well be impatient to carry out whatever orders he had received) could relax: they could not sail out in a west wind, and the English had to keep well out in case a sudden gale made the whole coast a dangerous lee shore.

  An east wind…that was what Lord Nelson (and probably the French Admiral Villeneuve) dreamed about: an east wind (or, if they were determined enough, any wind with a bit of east in it) was the wind that would let the Combined Fleet of France and Spain, thirty-three ships of the line, sail from Cadiz.

  At the same time, it put Lord Nelson and the English fleet fifty miles to leeward… The west wind that could bring Nelson to Cadiz at the rush was the very wind that prevented the enemy sailing: the east wind that let them out put the British fleet to leeward. English, British…it was difficult to be consistent when the French, Spanish and Italian always referred to “les Anglais”, “los Ingles” and “gli Inglesi”, and the English themselves (quite fairly, of course, because of the Scots, Welsh and Irish) referred to “the British”.

  Anyway, once having got out of Cadiz on an east wind, where would the Combined Fleet go? If north-westward for the English Channel, then (if they managed to evade Nelson) they had a soldier’s wind and a calm sea. If they were bound for the Mediterranean, though, the Gut was only fifty miles down the coast to the south – five hours’ sailing in a brisk breeze. But if the Combined Fleet was bound for the Mediterranean – for Malta, to try to intercept General Craig’s convoy, or for some operation against Italy – as soon as they turned into the Strait that east wind would be foul for them…

  Neither the cat (Lord Nelson) nor the mouse (Villeneuve) had an easy task – unless Villeneuve was bound for the English Channel. But there was usually some warning of an east wind, and sails had to be bent on… It would take the Combined Fleet many hours to get sails hoisted and anchors weighed, but using flag signals and Popham’s new code, His Lordship should have the news in half an hour…

  Cadiz and this coast, Ramage mused, was scattered with history: that mountain to the south-east, as Southwick had told Orsini, was named after the family one of whose dukes led the Spanish Armada; fifteen miles northwards from Cadiz was the mouth of the Guadalquivir and Sanlúcar de Barrameda, from where Magellan sailed in 1519 to go round the world. Thirty-five miles north of there, from Palos on the Rio Tinto, Columbus sailed in 1492 to discover the New World… Columbus’ discovery, Magellan’s circumnavigation and the Spanish Armada sailing from Cadiz just about covered all that mattered at sea in the last few centuries, and it all began along fifty or sixty miles of this coast…

  The forthcoming battle (if it was forthcoming) might add a footnote, since if Nelson lost it (or the Combined Fleet evaded him) then there would be nothing to stop Bonaparte invading England (and Scotland and Wales!).

  And whether or not the Combined Fleet evaded Lord Nelson or was brought to battle by him might well depend on the intelligence to be passed tonight by this Spaniard, who lived in the lee of the San José church.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of Jackson and the boat’s crew. Jackson was an American, Rossi an Italian, Louis, Albert, Auguste and Gilbert were French, Orsini was Italian, but could pass for Spanish, and he himself could pass for Spanish. A cosmopolitan crew.

  So an inquisitive sentry answered in the dark in perfect Spanish or French might be satisfied…

  Quickly Ramage explained to the men what their task for that night was to be. The thole pins of the cutter, as well as the looms of the oars, were to be bound with cloth to cut down the creaking and squeaking; the sail was to be painted black; they were to check that there were a couple of grapnels on board, each with at least ten fathoms of line; they were to have a cutlass each and tomahawks if they wished, but no pistols or muskets. They were to wear dark clothes – if any of them owned only light shirts, they were to draw dark cloth from the purser – there was plenty of time to stitch up another shirt.

  “Might we ask where we’re going sir?” Jackson asked.

  Ramage pointed towards Cadiz city. “I have to meet a man over there, and I’ll be taking Mr Orsini on shore with me.”

  “No chance of any of us having a run on shore to keep you company, sir?”

  “Not this time,” Ramage said. “And by the way, if anyone has to speak it must be in Spanish or French or Italian. That means you and Stafford keep your mouths shut. So you can all get busy and prepare the boat. Oh yes, Jackson: you’ll need to keep a check on the time. Arrange to borrow a watch from one of the lieutenants, and keep a lanthorn under a piece of canvas. Make sure you pick a good candle and trim the wick…”

  “Lentement, lentement,” Louis hissed as Gilbert eased away on the halyard and the black-painted dipping lug of the cutter was lowered into the boat, the men stifling the thick canvas. As soon as it was bundled up with a couple of gaskets tied round it, the men at the oars resumed rowing.

  Ramage, at the tiller, could distinguish the beach: a darker band of black with a thin white moustache where the small waves curled and broke on the sand. If they had sailed a good compass course from the ship and there had been no unexpected current running parallel with the shore, then the cemetery should be just at the back of the beach.

  He listened, trying to cut out the muffled groan of the oars as the looms strained against the padded thole pins. There was the monotonous “quark” of a nightjar and now the buzzing of mosquitoes, showing just how close they were to the beach. No voices. In the distance he heard the thud of a galloping horse, but going away, down towards the fort and the town gate. Very few towns had a single gate, but being built on the end of a spit (like Port Royal, Jamaica, he realized) it was the only entrance by land.

  And now came the smells as they approached the line of wavelets and he eased over the metal tiller under his right arm. Was that eucalyptus? Did cork oak have a smell, because he could not identify it. And the cemetery, the curious musty smell of stonework mottled with lichen. And of course rotting seaweed. Or seaweed, anyway, whether or not it was rotting; thrown up on the beach by the waves; it provided a home for flying and jumping insects, all of which seemed to bite with an irritating sting.

  No challenge: no shout of alarm in Spanish or French. No shadowy figures running down the sloping beach towards them, shouting or shooting. Which meant that his gamble might work: he had guessed that the commander of the Cadiz garrison, or whoever was responsible for posting sentries, would never expect the English would dare send a party to land in the middle of the town. Beyond the fort or among the salt-pans, yes; but beside the cemetery, a short stroll from the cathedral, no!

  “Stand by,” Ramage whispered to Jackson, who hissed at the oarsmen. In a second the oars were tossed up, ready to be stowed flat along the thwarts, and Ramage had pushed the tiller hard over, turning the boat broadside-on to the small wavelets. While Jackson pulled up the rudder to avoid it being damaged, the boat grounded with a gentle scrubbing of the keel scraping on the sand. In a moment Ramage and Orsini had leapt over the gunwale, landed on the sand, and run forward to get their shoulders under the cutter’s bow, to shove it seaward while the boat still had some buoyancy. As soon as the boat was clear of the beach, helped by oars pushing into the sand, Ramage and Orsini sat down and undid the laces securing their boots round their necks.

  “The sand sticks to the skin like glue,” Orsini commented in Spanish, brushing it off his feet. “And the mosquitoes!”

  The high-pitched whining of the insects reminded Ramage that they had little time: trying to persuade an unsuspecting Spaniard of one’s credentials while he had been in a room burning citronella candles and one’s own face was puffy and gross-looking from stings, was making the job harder than necessary.

  The two men walked to the back of the beach, stepped across a line of what Ramage knew only by their Italian name of Fico dei Ottentotti, and then found themselves walking on coarse grass. A
lmost immediately Ramage spotted the elaborate marble angels, Virgins and crucifixes surmounting the tombs of the cemetery about twenty yards away on their right.

  Together they struck out for the far side, where they had to climb a low wall and almost immediately sighted a house.

  Ramage touched Orsini as a warning and then said in a conversational tone, his accent rough Castilian: “San José should be just the other side.”

  A dog gave a disheartened bark and was promptly sworn at by someone in the house.

  Ramage stopped. “Might as well ask here,” he said. “There’s the door.”

  As they walked along a short path the dog started barking despite the threats, and then yelped as it was obviously kicked. Ramage knocked on the door.

  A man’s querulous voice answered: “Who’s there?”

  “Visitors for Señor Perez.”

  “Not here,” the voice said abruptly, without opening the door. “The house on the north side of the church.”

  “Thank-you,” Ramage said politely.

  “I wish I had a pistol,” Orsini muttered as soon as they had gone on a few yards.

  “Oh yes,” Ramage said sarcastically. “We need a few pistol shots to rouse out all the dogs in the neighbourhood, not to mention soldiery. What about a set of handbells?”

  Orsini was still trying to think of an answer which combined wit and brevity without being insubordinate when they reached the church.

  Ramage groaned, because the main square was on the north side of the church, with half a dozen large houses built round it.

  “Our fellow is probably one of the leading citizens of Cadiz if he owns one of those houses,” Orsini muttered.

  Ramage stepped out towards the square making no attempt to keep quiet. If there was a curfew – which he was beginning to doubt: the man in the house did not seem surprised, nor had he assumed that they were soldiers – then any patrol was probably on horseback.

  Now there were town smells. Horse and donkey droppings ripened by hot sun, rotting cabbage, stale urine…a scurry told of rats interrupted at supper…and which house to choose first?

  He picked the third of the five forming the north side of the square. The house itself stood back behind a high-walled garden, and when he paused to see if another would be more convenient, he saw in the darkness that they all had walls and gates.

  He rattled the wrought iron a few times. A dog in the house started barking and a moment later a woman’s voice demanded: “Who is that at the gate?”

  “Visitors for Señor Perez.”

  “Who are you?”

  Was this – by an extraordinary piece of luck – the right house?

  “Is this the house of Señor Perez?” Orsini inquired.

  “It is,” a man’s voice answered, and Ramage guessed from his accent that he was a manservant.

  “Tell Señor Perez he has visitors.”

  “What name shall I give, señor?”

  “Lieutenant Leblond,” Ramage said on the spur of the moment, giving both words a pronounced French accent.

  “Please wait, Lieutenant,” the voice said politely, “I will inform Señor Perez.”

  Did custom demand that one stamped a foot and demanded the gate be opened at once, in the name of the Emperor, and was this the way to treat the representative of Spain’s ally – or did one wait quietly?

  Ramage decided to wait quietly: he wanted to be face to face with Perez as soon as possible.

  He saw a lantern at the door and then in its light a man walked along the path towards the gate. In one hand he held the lantern, in the other a large key.

  The man – yes, he was dressed as a manservant: that much was clear in the light of the lantern – turned the key and pushed back the gate with his shoulder. “This way, if you please.”

  Galicia? Yes, Ramage was sure of the accent: thick, as though spoken through cloth. He followed the man, with Orsini strolling along beside him.

  What would the man be thinking? Neither visitor was wearing a uniform – which ruled out an official call. While both men were young, and spoke perfect Spanish, at least one of them was French, from the way he spoke his name. French officers out of uniform, obviously.

  They reached the front door up half a dozen steps, and entered the house. Yes, the bittersweet smell of citronella, and Ramage felt his face beginning to itch: the mosquitoes had not wasted their time but with luck the swelling would be delayed.

  Marble floors, plenty of furniture in the hall (unusual in a Latin house), a dog growling from the room in which he had been shut, two open doors…the room to which they were going was at the far end of the corridor, and the thump, thump of his and Orsini’s boots contrasted with the shuffle of the manservant’s slippers.

  They reached a door which the manservant opened, standing back and saying in slightly more than a conversational tone: “Lieutenant Leblond and companion, sir.” He gestured them to go into the room.

  It was a large, high-ceilinged room with a tiled floor. On the far side a white-haired man sat at a table, a quill in his hand and obviously interrupted while writing, and a woman perhaps ten years younger but well dressed sat at a stool, embroidering. Two lamps in the room showed a man and wife spending a quiet evening, even if the harbour was filled with the ships of the Combined Fleet of France and Spain, and the British fleet was just over the horizon.

  “Lieutenant Leblond?” the white-haired man inquired, and the woman looked up curiously.

  Ramage bowed and said: “May I introduce my assistant, Lieutenant Poulain?”

  Ramage listened for the door to close behind him as the white-haired man said politely, but obviously puzzled. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit, gentlemen? Do you come on the Emperor’s business?”

  Ramage heard the door shut behind him, and it was quite natural to continue walking into the room approaching the man sitting at the table.

  “Not the Emperor’s business.” Ramage said in a quiet voice. “Can we talk alone?”

  “I have no secrets from my wife,” the man said calmly. “If not from the Emperor then, pray, from whom?”

  Ramage gave him the message.

  At the mention – with an unmistakable English accent – of the name of His Britannic Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, the white-haired man sprang to his feet.

  “Should I know that name?” he asked in Spanish. “What makes you think that, Lieutenant Leblond?”

  “Forgive me,” Ramage said in English. “In fact my name is Ramage, Captain Ramage, and I command a frigate in Lord Nelson’s fleet. The Secretary of State saw Lord Nelson in London recently. As a result, Lord Nelson gave me orders to seek out a Señor Perez near the church of San José, and mention the name you know.”

  “Tell me more: mistakes could put the garotte round my neck,” Perez said, speaking quietly and in good English.

  “About the minister? I know little about him. His title is fairly new – a barony ten or fifteen years ago. A man of middle height – I’ve seen him a few times in the House of Lords. Hair grey now, bald on the top, does not wear a wig…that’s about all.”

  “What were you doing in the House of Lords, Captain?”

  “My father is Admiral the Earl of Blazey, and I bear one of his titles (although I do not use it in the service for obvious reasons).”

  “Obvious? Not to me, my dear sir.”

  “When I was a midshipman – and even now – it is not very tactful to have a title when your senior officers have none! As it is, I have a title senior to and much older than that of the minister!”

  The man held out his hand. “Yes, I think you are whom you claim to be.” They shook hands, and Perez said gracefully: “Please introduce your assistant.”

  Ramage introduced Orsini, and then Perez sat down, giving a quiet laugh. “Captain Ramage, indeed. Yes, I know that name well. It would not be true to say you are a popular figure among the French: Le Moniteur frequently refers to you as a cross between a
pirate and a sorcerer! You have had considerable success against the French Navy over the years.”

  Ramage shrugged. “Over the years one is bound to be in action many times…”

  “True, but you are more successful than most. Well, tell me what Lord Nelson wishes to know – I think I can guess.”

  Ramage smiled and said: “I imagine you can. First, he wants to know the size and condition of the Combined Fleet in Cadiz.”

  Perez made a face as though tasting something very sour. “The French – the condition of their ships fairly good but there is no spare canvas, cordage or spars available for them. They could get no replacements either when they visited Ferrol or Coruña.

  “The Spanish ships are in far worse condition. They have not been to sea for months (at least Villeneuve crossed the Atlantic twice with the French fleet). Sails and cordage have rotted on the masts; those ships that put their sails below have had much of the canvas eaten by rats. Thanks to your blockade no replacements are available. Many have rotted spars.”

  Perez, now sitting down, sighed. “This is not easy for me, Captain Ramage. I am describing my country, even if those in control are my enemies.”

  He sighed again, and then continued. “So much for the ships. Far worse is the condition of the captains and officers, particularly the Spanish. As far as the French are concerned, the problem is mainly with Admiral Villeneuve. My informant – and he is in a position to know, although obviously I dare not reveal who he is – tells me that Admiral Villeneuve is out of favour with Bonaparte and will probably be replaced very soon by Admiral Decrès.”

  “But Admiral Decrès is the Minister of Marine!” Ramage exclaimed.

  Perez nodded. “Yes, but presumably Bonaparte knows that everything depends on this fleet, and he must get it to sea. I don’t think he believes Villeneuve is the man to do the job.”

  “When is this change expected?”

  “I gather Villeneuve is afraid that Decrès will arrive any day, and he regards it as a dishonour.”