Ramage At Trafalgar Read online

  Ramage looked at the packet resting in the middle of the salver. It was too thick to be just a newsy letter from his father. He recognized the griffin seal and the handwriting, but it was obviously a packet which also contained other letters.

  “This has just arrived, sir,” Raven said, and when Ramage had taken the packet he turned to Sarah. “Is there anything your ladyship requires?”

  Sarah smiled and held up the embroidery. “I’m almost out of silks,” she said.

  Raven nodded understandingly. “I’ll talk to my friends, madam. A selection of colours?”

  Sarah frowned, looking at her work, and then nodded.

  “A day or two, milady,” Raven said.

  By then Ramage had broken the seal of the packet and found that it contained a brief letter from his father and another letter whose cover was closed by a large seal showing a slim woman wearing a crown and standing with an anchor at her feet.

  “Who on earth is that from?” Sarah asked as Raven left the room as silently as he had arrived.

  “The gentlemen at Lloyd’s, from the look of it,” Ramage said, breaking the seal. “Don’t say some damned shipowner is complaining about that convoy I brought home from Barbados… No, the Committee of Lloyd’s would have written to Their Lordships, and then the Admiralty would write to me…”

  “Open it!” Sarah urged. “Why speculate when you’re holding the answer in your hand?”

  How did he explain? “You’ve no idea how peaceful it is just sitting here in front of the fire, watching you sewing, and knowing no first lieutenant or master is going to come to me with a problem. And knowing that there are no orders from Their Lordships in the top drawer of my desk which I have to carry out or “answer to the contrary at my peril”. You want some smuggled silks, Raven wants to take the bay mare down to the farrier, cows have knocked down about four yards of a spile fence on the south side of the beechwood meadow, and the housekeeper wants to know if she should tell Raven to bring up another case of sherry from the cellar. That’s all. No strange sail on the horizon, no ship’s company to send to general quarters just before dawn, no orders in the drawer…”

  “And a loving wife to share your bed,” Sarah said unexpectedly.

  “Especially that,” Ramage said, breaking the seal of the letter and then deliberately putting it to one side while he read the letter from his father.

  “Father and mother send their love…Hanson spilled soup over Lady Cardington’s dress…oh yes, and the dear lady was so enraged that father sacked Hanson on the spot and re-engaged him as soon as Her Ladyship had left!”

  “It sounds to me as though Hanson and your father have an arrangement!”

  “Oh, they have,” Ramage said. “He’s been with us about forty years, and you know how his spectacles keep sliding down his nose? Well, without the spectacles he can’t see a thing, and probably as he served the soup his spectacles slipped, so while one hand reached up for the spectacles, the other tilted the soup tureen! Means Lady Cardington never gets invited to dinner again!”

  Sarah looked puzzled until Ramage explained. “If she came and found Hanson still in the house, she’d be most upset. As far as father is concerned, Hanson is worth any dozen guests like Lady Cardington!”

  “Isn’t she the woman with a very deep voice, married to that extraordinary fat Welshman?”

  “Yes – he was created about five years ago and she has never got over suddenly becoming a lady without any effort on herpart. A bass voice and a falsetto brain – my mother’s opinion!”

  “And Lloyd’s?” Sarah asked as Ramage put down his father’s letter. “I think you’re scared of it!”

  “No, just savouring it. After all, one doesn’t want to eat the tastiest thing first.”

  “I always do,” Sarah said firmly “I can’t bear the suspense.”

  Ramage put the letter down, stood up and walked over to select a thick log before putting it on the fire.

  “You’ve never seen me in a temper yet,” Sarah said, “but when I let myself go…”

  Ramage glanced at her and stared at an ankle showing below the hem of her dress. “I’ll wager ten guineas to an empty bottle you stamp your foot!”

  “Oh, you are a beast! Read the letter!”

  “I know what it says, so there’s no hurry.”

  “What does it say, then?”

  “The Master and Committee of Lloyd’s request the pleasure of our company at a dinner being given to some visiting bashaw, and we are not going all the way to London for that!”

  He sat down and picked up the letter. A couple of minutes later, after he was obviously beginning to read it a third time, Sarah said ominously: “Well?”

  “Well, it’s not for some bashaw after all.” Ramage said lamely. “It’s a dinner, though.”

  “For whom?”

  “Me, actually,” Ramage said, his voice a mixture of puzzlement and modesty.

  “Nicholas!” Sarah, now completely intrigued, was also impatient and on the verge of losing her temper. “Nicholas, what’s it all about?”

  “I’ll read it out, darling. It’s addressed from the ‘Merchant Seaman’s Office’ and is dated the beginning of last week – the same day we left London to come down here. A Monday, wasn’t it?”

  “Darling, what does it matter?” Sarah demanded.

  “It was Tuesday, actually, but as you say, it doesn’t matter. Well, it’s headed, ‘At a meeting of the Committee for Encouraging the Capture of French privateers, armed vessels & c, Rawson Aislabie esquire in the Chair’… Then there’s a break and a sort of heading before it goes on with the point of it all.”

  “You’re teasing me,” Sarah said crossly. “You wait until tonight; I’ll pay you back!”

  “No,” Ramage protested, “it’s damned difficult reading this sort of thing; it’s not a continuous paragraph. Anyway, ‘Resolved’ – that’s the Committee resolving, you realize–”

  “Oh, I thought it would be the French privateer captains: oh, do go on, Nicholas!”

  “Yes, well, they resolved ‘That Captain the Lord Ramage of His Majesty’s ship Calypso be requested by this Committee toaccept a sword, value one hundred guineas, in acknowledgement of his very gallant behaviour in the destruction of two French frigates and the capture of two more, along with seven merchant ships, in the action off Diamond Rock; and in testimony of the high sense this Committee entertains of the protection he has thereby afforded to the commerce of Great Britain.’

  “There’s a covering letter explaining about the resolution and asking me to suggest a date,” he added. “And it says I can also bring any of my officers present at the action as my guests.”

  Sarah was puzzled. She accepted the reference to the sword as though her husband deserved a dozen, but when had it happened?

  “That was before – why, before you came down to Isla Trinidade and we first met. Two French frigates taken? And you destroyed two more? Is that when you captured the Calypso?”

  A bewildered Ramage nodded. “Southwick and the rest of them usually refer to it as ‘The Diamond Rock Affair’. It’s taken Lloyd’s long enough to make up their minds!”

  “You’re hardly ever in England,” Sarah pointed out. “No sooner are you home than you sail again. Then you spent that brief peace marrying me and honeymooning. Then we were captured and you escaped and went to Devil’s Island when war broke out again… Then you went off to the Mediterranean, and we’ve only just returned from there, with all those unlikely people you rescued, including me so the Committee of Lloyd’s haven’t had much time…”

  She stared at the log on the fire which was now beginning to sizzle and flare. “You’ll wear uniform. I have that white dress. I wonder if your mother would lend me the pearls?”

  Ramage laughed. “And the tiara too! She hates wearing it.”

  Sarah suddenly looked embarrassed. “I forgot! Of course, she’ll want to wear the pearls. I’ll wear my emeralds.”

  “What about me?” Ra
mage grumbled. “I have an enormous problem, and all you think of is pearls and tiaras.”

  Sarah, distressed, said quickly: “What problem, darling? What’s the matter?”

  “Do I wear a sword to the dinner? – it is correct uniform. But what do I do with the old sword while they present me with the new one, ‘Value one hundred guineas’? I can’t stand up there wearing one sword and holding another in my hand: I’ll look like a sword cutler plying for business!”

  “Your father will know,” Sarah said. “Anyway, I can always hold your regular one while you march up to collect the new one.”

  “It’s all such a fuss,” Ramage grumbled. “Pity I can’t ask them to send me a hundred guineas, and I’ll use it to buy you some new jewellery!”

  “Clothes perhaps,” Sarah said laughing, “but not jewellery. I inherit a quantity from my mother and I expect your mother will…”

  “So in a few years’ time you’ll be tottering under the weight of Rockley and Ramage jewellery. Me? I’ll just have a hundred guinea sword to hang on the wall…”

  “At least you won’t have to spend your prize money buying me shiny baubles. You’ll be able to pay a cutler to keep your sword sharp! Anyway, you must write and tell the Committee when you can go to London. And your officers,” she reminded him. “Southwick will enjoy this as much as you. He thinks of you as a son.”

  “Grandson,” Ramage corrected. “but in fact if anyone deserves a sword from Lloyd’s, it’s Southwick.”

  “I seem to remember he has a sword of his own the size of an oar. It’s big enough for Father Time to use as a scythe!”

  “And that’s just how he uses it. He whirls it round his head, bellows like a bull, and charges along a French ship’s deck. The bellow paralyses ’em with fear and the blade slices ’em in half.”

  Sarah shuddered and then said: “Yet he always puts me in mind of an old bishop: the kindly round face and all that flowing white hair.”

  “Like a mop drying in the wind!”

  “Yes, but it looks very distinguished. Think of his sword as a crozier, and he has a very rich voice: I can just imagine him in a pulpit preaching to his flock.”

  “Tell that to Paolo Orsini! The poor boy still makes silly mistakes working out sights, and Southwick still hollers at him. I’m sure Paolo would reckon that by comparison a bull’s bellow would sound like music!”

  “Apart from Southwick, which of your present officers were with you at Diamond Rock?”

  Ramage’s brow furrowed. Diamond Rock…so much had happened since. Sarah, for instance. Diamond Rock was long before they had met and were married. Yet already he found it hard to remember a time when he was not married to this tawny-haired woman whose body made those Greek statues seem clumsy, whose sense of humour kept them both laughing, and who understood his moods almost better than he did himself.

  “There’s Southwick, and young Paolo,” she reminded him.

  “Yes, and Aitken. Wagstaffe was there, but he’s gone to another ship. Rennick, of course: one can’t forget the Marines! And Bowen, the surgeon. Two of the lieutenants were Baker and Lacy: good youngsters, but neither with me now.”

  Sarah was keeping a check as Ramage did little more than reminisce. “So you must write to Aitken, Southwick, Rennick and Bowen and Orsini. Well, I know all of them well enough. Any others?”

  Ramage shook his head. “No, my present three other lieutenants all joined the Calypso long after the Diamond business…”

  “Very well, that’s five of them you have to write to. And the Committee of Lloyd’s. And your parents – they’ll be excited. Do you think I could bring my parents? They’d be so proud.”

  “Proud? I’m sure the Committee of Lloyd’s would be proud to have the Marquis of Rockley and his wife present at their dinner. He must be one of the most powerful men in Parliament, and I’m sure Lloyd’s always likes to have friends there!”

  “Well, they’re getting good value with your father,” Sarah pointed out. “He may not have the Admiralty in his pocket, but the new First Lord listens very attentively when he speaks, and that would be a help to Lloyd’s.”

  “The Committee of Lloyd’s are only concerned with getting even more frigates to escort even more convoys,” Ramage commented. “Still, a hint over a glass of sherry often does more than an official letter.”

  “Your officers and your parents and my parents – so much for the guests. Do we post up to London? Which is the post road?” Sarah asked.

  “From memory that starts at Folkestone, and you get fresh horses at Hythe, Ashford – where we’d join – and then Lenham, Maidstone, West Malling, Wrotham Heath (you need fresh horses as well as an extra pair to climb that dam’ long hill), and then Farningham, Swanley and after that I get mixed up. The most important thing, according to Raven is that there are no turnpikes on that road! There are plenty on the Dover, Canterbury, Faversham, Sittingbourne, Rochester and Gravesend road, though.”

  “I hope that doesn’t mean the Ashford road will be in poor condition. We haven’t had much rain lately. Does that mean we breathe dust the whole way?”

  “My dear, don’t think that turnpike tolls mean good roads! The people who own the land and establish the toll gates put that story about.” He thought for a minute or two staring at the flames dancing in the fireplace. “You know, Raven hasn’t been to London for a long time – Uncle Rufus hated cities – and I don’t like having to borrow father’s carriage every time we want to go out. And we both hate posting…”

  “So why don’t we take Raven and our own carriage?” Sarah finished the sentence for him. “Yes, and let’s not hurry. I don’t know Kent, so why don’t we take a week or two, staying at whatever inn takes our fancy?”

  “You’ve had one honeymoon, you know,” Ramage said teasingly.

  “Yes, I vaguely recall it, but that was in France and, if you remember, it started the war going again…”

  Chapter Two

  The long and jolting journey to London by carriage in the lee of the Downs was enjoyable only because of the sunny weather, and because each night a brisk shower just before dawn laid the dust, although the two horses still kicked up enough at times to set them all coughing and make a cursing Raven slow down from a trot to a walk.

  Day by day they skirted the North Downs, the great ridge lying on their right hand and deeply scarred with the white of the chalk showing through grass closely cropped by flocks of sheep. Once past West Malling the Downs began to curve round to the south-west across their path, and just as their road met the steep hill Raven reined in at Wrotham Heath.

  “Better hire a couple of extra horses here than wait till we get to Wrotham village,” he explained. “Often as not they’ve none left, or they want an extra couple of guineas for ‘the last pair in the stable’.”

  The ride up the hill was spectacular: in climbing the side of the North Downs, with Raven stopping frequently to rest the horses, Ramage and Sarah would get out and look back over the rest of Kent spread out to the east and south of them, a green table with church towers and steeples sticking up like stubby pegs on a lawn, each surrounded by a huddle of houses and barns.

  But Sarah seemed preoccupied, and when Ramage pressed her admitted she was saddened by the tablet they had seen at the foot of the hill back in Wrotham village. “Near this place,” it said, “fell Lieut. Colonel Shadwell, who was shot to the heart by a deserter on the morning of the first day of June 1799.” Four lines carved below in italic added cryptically: “The Assassin with another deserter his companion were immediately secured and brought to justice.”

  “Three men dead,” Sarah said. “They all intended to fight the French – well, obviously the deserter and his companion changed their minds – but all three have ended up in graves here at the foot of the Downs. Colonel Shadwell – was he a young man eager to fight the French? Or did he buy his commission to get away from a nagging wife?”

  “Was he serving in one of the regular regiments of foot, or simply
a wealthy landowner here, soldiering on Sunday mornings in the local yeomanry?” Ramage murmured.

  “Oh, darling, you are spoiling the whole thing. Here I am thinking of a young colonel with a brilliant future ahead of him–”

  “And belonging to one of the fashionable regiments!”

  “–and you conjure up a portly farmer…”

  “Your imagination is running wild. Why did the soldier desert? Where did he get the pistol to fire a fatal shot – or was it a musket? Who was his mysterious companion – another soldier, or a trollop he’d picked up? Was it at night? Did the colonel call upon him to halt? Or was the colonel leading a column of men?”

  “If it wasn’t such a steep hill, I’d insist we go back to Wrotham and ask some local people,” Sarah said. “It happened only a few years ago, so they’ll remember the details.”

  “We’ll inquire on the way back,” Ramage promised. “Come along – Raven is sitting on his box, so the horses are rested enough.”

  As they approached the city the road gradually became busier. After reaching Farningham they went on to Swanley (by which time they were looking for an inn to spend the night), and carts, carriages and coaches were passing each way, either on their way to the coast or bound for London. Everyone, Ramage noted, seemed to be in a hurry; Raven’s leisurely progress, he realized, would probably be the only time until the war ended that Ramage would ever travel this road so slowly: every time he had previously left London for Dover, or had travelled the parallel road to the Medway towns to join a ship at Chatham, the horses had always been in a lather.

  Raven still remembered where the house was, having brought his late master there a few times, and, as he pulled up with a clatter and a loud “Whoa, there!” intended to warn the earl’s butler, Sarah sighed.

  “How nice to be back in Palace Street. I think I prefer travelling by ship, though: you don’t have to keep on packing and unpacking at post inns!”