Ramage's Challenge Read online

  At that moment the sails began to flap, and as Ramage swung round to glare at the quartermaster, he saw that the telltales were hanging down: the thin lines on which were threaded corks into which feathers had been stuck, showed that the wind was dying. Damnation, this wasn’t the pleasantest of places to be becalmed.

  By dawn the fitful wind was just beginning to freshen, and the Calypso, like every one of the King’s ships at sea in wartime, greeted the first light of the new day with her ship’s company at general quarters: guns loaded and run out, and marines, with their muskets, ready for any enemy emerging from the night.

  Ramage stood alone in the darkness at the forward end of the quarterdeck beside the rail, almost overwhelmed with memories.

  Entering the Strait (particularly at daybreak) was an exciting experience. It beat the first sighting of the flat eastern coast of Barbados after crossing the Atlantic. It even beat seeing the Lizard again after a couple of years away from England. It was hard to know why the Strait of Gibraltar was different except that there was always the air of mystery. Yes, even now he could hear the distant bray of a donkey away over on the larboard bow—probably its protest at being whacked into activity by its peasant owner. And the smell of pines and woodsmoke and spices borne out to sea by the whiffles of chilly wind tumbling down the mountains and cliffs.

  As the sun rose slowly, ready to peer over the mountainous eastern horizon, he could just make out the dark bulk of Spain. There were many more towers along this coast, black fingers jutting up from rocky hilltops. Were the Spanish sentries asleep? Would they soon be passing the word that a British frigate was passing southwards into The Gut? Did they care?

  He seemed to have spent all his life in the Mediterranean or the West Indies. He recalled those years ago when he had been the junior lieutenant in a frigate and had ended up, after a disastrous brush with a French ship of the line, as senior surviving officer. He had gone on to rescue Gianna—then known to him as just a name on a list, the Marchesa di Volterra—from (quite literally) under the hooves of Bonaparte’s cavalry.

  He shook his head, as if trying to rid himself of the idea that in the end it had all proved a waste of time and the wheel had turned a circle: Gianna was even now either dead, a victim of Bonaparte’s secret police, or a prisoner. Young Paolo, her nephew, who was now standing down there beside his division of guns, was the only sign that Gianna had ever been part of Ramage’s life, and there were even times when his memory refused to summon up her face.

  The junior lieutenant had rescued her; the junior post captain commanding a frigate had lost her. Was she dead? If so, then Paolo inherited Volterra, the tiny kingdom in Tuscany which she had ruled and which had been invaded by Bonaparte’s Army of Italy.

  The Marchesa di Volterra had been (is, he corrected himself hurriedly) tiny, beautiful, imperious, tender, hot-tempered, autocratic, and a dozen other contradictory things. He had loved her (and, he knew, she had loved him), and the years she had lived as a refugee with his mother and father, either down in Cornwall on the St Kew estate or in London, had been happy, except for the powerful sense of duty and obligation she had always felt for her people in Volterra.

  No, the two of them could never have married, since she was a Catholic, and always, noblesse oblige, there was the pull of Volterra. So he had failed her in the end: as soon as the Treaty of Amiens had brought peace between Britain and France, she had decided to return to Volterra and her people, even though Ramage and his father had tried to persuade her that the peace would be brief—that it was another of Bonaparte’s tricks, and as the ruler of Volterra returning from exile she would be seized or assassinated by the Corsican’s men the moment war started again.

  Nevertheless, in the company of the British government of the day, she decided that Bonaparte genuinely wanted peace (it was as though she dared not think otherwise) and set out for Volterra while the Admiralty sent Ramage and the Calypso thousands of miles away across the equator on a voyage of exploration.

  Yet, as if to compound misery with happiness, Ramage had then met, fallen in love with, and married Sarah, the daughter of the Marquis of Rockley, and the two of them had been on their honeymoon in France when the war began again. After a narrow escape they had reached the Channel Fleet as it arrived to resume the blockade off Brest. Was it so fortunate, though? The Admiral had sent Ramage across the Atlantic and Sarah back to England in a small brig, which had vanished. No one knew to this day whether Sarah and the brig’s men had perished in a gale, been killed in a French attack, or captured, so that now they were prisoners.

  As for Gianna—she had reached Paris. Beyond that, there was no news. Had she reached Volterra and been assassinated? Or imprisoned in France by Bonaparte’s hirelings? He sensed that she was no longer alive.

  Two women, and both dead or prisoners. But for knowing him, both might still be alive. Gianna would probably be a prisoner in Tuscany, but Sarah would be living with her father and mother, or perhaps married to some young sprig who rode well to hounds, dressed elegantly, drank and gambled in moderation, and never put anyone’s life at risk—least of all, Ramage added bitterly, his own.

  And there, showing as dawn crept up from the east, was the low black line on the southern horizon, which would very soon reveal itself as the Atlas mountains: the northern shoulder of Africa and the southern shore of the Strait. Over there to the west, thrusting itself westward into the Atlantic, was Cape Espartel, still hidden in the darkness.

  Southwick broke the night-induced gloom. “Looks as if this wind’ll veer to the north-west as we turn east into The Gut, sir.”

  “Yes, it’ll probably follow the mountains round and funnel past Gibraltar. Anything so long as we don’t have to fight a levanter!”

  The strong easterly wind that often blew out of the Mediterranean and into the Atlantic kicked up vicious seas in the Strait, with violent squalls, so that beating against it with a strong current (usually flowing eastward) could make the last few miles through The Gut very unpleasant.

  It was soon light enough “to see a grey goose at a mile” and then the men stood down from general quarters with the lookouts going aloft. A few men then waited on deck, looking across at the mountains of Spain, less than three miles off, and speculating about the Admiralty orders for the Calypso.

  “Blackstrapped again—who’d have guessed that a couple o’ weeks ago?” one of them commented. “Still, a drop o’ red wine, as long as it ain’t Spanish, ‘ll make a nice change from rum and small beer.”

  “Ah, Stafford, you start to learn about the wine, eh?” said a plump, black-haired man whose accent revealed he was Italian. Alberto Rossi was (as he proudly told anyone who cared to listen) from Genova: the birthplace of Cristoforo Colombo, the man the English obstinately persisted in calling Christopher Columbus and the Spanish unforgivably, Cristóbal Colón—”As though,” Rossi protested, “he was a Spaniard! Accidente! He never went to Spain until he had thirty years.”

  “Still, the Spanish paid his fare to America,” Jackson said. The only American on board, he was the captain’s coxswain, having served with Ramage for several years. He owned a properly executed Protection, recognized by the American government and issued and attested by an American Customs collector, which certified that Jackson was an American citizen and born in Charleston, South Carolina. This meant he could not be impressed into the Royal Navy (or, if he was, an appeal to an American consul would get his release).

  However, Jackson was happy enough serving—was it George III or Captain Lord Ramage? People like Southwick often wondered; men like Stafford were certain: Jackson served the captain, even if the King paid his wages. Not that Jackson needed the money. Stafford knew only too well that, like all the men who had been serving with Mr Ramage for a few years, he had done well from prize-money. They could all look forward to a comfortable old age—if they lived long enough! Death or prize-money—that was the choice if you served under Mr Ramage, Stafford knew, and if you lived long enough y
ou would end up a rich man.

  “Whatcher reckon, Jacko?” Stafford asked.

  “Well, we won’t be joining a fleet, that’s for certain, because there ain’t one out here. I reckon Mr Ramage doesn’t know himself, yet. Probably got sealed orders. Something special, anyway.”

  “Why special?” Rossi asked.

  “Obvious, ain’t it? There are only a few (if any) of our frigates in the Mediterranean, and the Admiralty’s very short of them at home. Why not send a cutter with orders for anyone out here? Why send a frigate specially?”

  “Is sense,” Rossi said grudgingly. “The Admiralty knows Mr Ramage understands Italian and Spanish, and knows the Mediterranean well. Hasn’t brought him the happiness, though.”

  Stafford glanced up at Rossi. “How so?”

  “The Marchesa. He rescue her, he love her, she go back to Volterra—though by now this Bonaparte probably has her locked up in a jail. Or in a grave.”

  “But Mr Ramage is now married to Lady Sarah,” Jackson reminded him. “Happily, too, and she’s a fine lady.”

  “I know, I know,” Rossi said impatiently, waving a dismissive hand. “But you know for a long time it was always the Marchesa, and we all thought he would marry her …”

  “You did, but I always said no: she’s a Catholic, and that matters in a Protestant country. Anyway, Lady Sarah is much more suitable as a wife, even if—” he hesitated, unwilling to say it aloud. “Even if the ship she was in is missing.”

  “Accidente! Don’t say anything against the Marchesa!”

  “Don’t be so damned Italian,” Jackson said. “You forget Mr Ramage and I rescued her. Who carried her wounded down the beach and got her into the boat, eh? That was Mr Ramage and me, and you were still skulking in Genoa at the time, slitting a throat here and there if anyone paid you the right price.”

  Rossi grinned contentedly: he liked the reputation of having been a dangerous man in Genova, although glad enough to exchange it all for service in the Royal Navy after escaping from the Genovesi authorities, who had a narrow-minded outlook about life, sudden death, and the ownership of property.

  “Yer know,” Stafford said sadly, “seems a shame, dunnit, that a man like Mr Ramage, him been wounded a dozen times and the best frigate captain in the navy, can’t marry the first woman he falls in love with ‘cos of a lot o’ religious nonsense, and then loses the second one at the end of ‘is ‘oneymoon.

  “I wonder what did ‘appen to Lady Sarah. A real lady, she was. I’m not saying nothing against the Marcheezer, Rosey, but you must admit she was a bit of an ‘andful at times. Very Italian, when she got angry.” He looked round warily at Rossi. “Nothing wrong with that, o’ course—after all, she was used to being the ruler of Volterra, with a palace an’ all. ‘Ad to laugh when she used to come the empress with the captain!”

  “He had the measure of her,” Jackson nodded understandingly. “He could handle her. She never did realize that however much she stamped her foot and rolled her eyes and demanded this and that, she usually ended up doing just what the captain intended all the time. But he always left her thinking she’d won the day—that was the secret of his success.”

  “Ho yes, the captain was smart enough,” Stafford agreed. “But Lady Sarah was always calm. A proper English lady. They’re different from foreigners, you know.” He nodded confidently, as if remembering the lessons learned during a long string of amorous and cosmopolitan conquests. “They don’t yell and wave their arms about an’ put on airs and graces.”

  “Is very dull, though, married to the calm sort. Like having sunshine everyday. You need a gale occasionally for comparing,” Rossi said emphatically.

  “Don’t you believe it,” Jackson said firmly. “That’s why I like the Tropics. Always warm and most of the time sunny. I don’t want to be forever wondering if tomorrow we’re going to have snow or rain or a minute’s glimpse of pale sun. An English summer is like getting a sample of the year’s weather all in one week!”

  Stafford patted his stomach. “Breakfast … and it’s Louis’s week as mess cook.”

  Louis was one of the Frenchmen who had escaped with Ramage and Sarah to join the fleet off Brest, and because the tiny group were Royalists, they had accepted the bounty and now served in the Royal Navy. They had joined the trio of Jackson, Stafford, and Rossi, and as a result, they now spoke with the sharp vowels of a Genoese accent mingling with its English equivalent, the slang of the Cockney.

  CHAPTER TWO

  RAMAGE stood at the taffrail looking astern. The sun had lifted clear of the eastern horizon and as the Calypso stretched into the Mediterranean, keeping to the middle of the Strait to avoid being becalmed under the Spanish cliffs, he stared at the African coast. With Gibraltar and Spain on one side and the mountains of Africa on the other, the Strait was known to the ancients as the Pillars of Hercules—and the pillars were perpetuated in the Spanish dollar sign: the Spaniards drew two vertical lines for the two pillars, and then entwined them with an “S”-shaped garland.

  In the distance Ramage could now see the Ras el Xakkar of the Arabs, the north-western tip of Africa and known to British seamen as Cape Espartel, the southern gateway to the Strait and unmistakable because of a long ridge of rounded mountains, which ended just behind it in a great, black hummock, Jebel Quebir. Two or three miles beyond as the coast trended south, out of sight just now, was Yibila, only 450 feet high but a perfectly-shaped breast with a dark-coloured cairn on top—the reason for its Arab name, “The Nipple.”

  The African coast lining the Strait was harsh: indented cliffs seemed to have been chewed by some great prehistoric monster, and were littered by many rocks, white-collared where the sea broke round them. The first port was Tangier, known to the Romans as Tingis and later called Tanjah by the Arabs. What a mixture of Spanish and Arab names there was along this coast. Both the Spanish and the Moorish sides of the Strait showed just how much the two peoples had been bound together in years past. Until, in fact, Ferdinand and Isabella drove the Moors out of Granada—their last stronghold in Spain—only a few months before Columbus sailed to discover the New World.

  The Moors had occupied Spain for seven hundred years. How much of their character, habits, and morals had spread to the Spaniards, Ramage wondered. More than the Dons cared to admit, he suspected.

  Looking down at the Calypso’s curling wake, Ramage was thankful that she had a fair wind and even more thankful that his preliminary orders from the Admiralty were to “proceed with all despatch” to the Mediterranean, opening his sealed orders only when Europa Point bore northwards.

  Their Lordships were not being overprecise: Europa Point is to Gibraltar what the white cliffs of the South Foreland are to Dover. Much more to the point, he was instructed not to call at Gibraltar. Why? Did the Admiralty know that port admirals delighted in sending off visiting frigates on wild goose chases of their own?

  Or were their Lordships afraid that the contents of their secret orders might be revealed? Yet what in the Mediterranean could be so secret that the port admiral in Gibraltar (or a commander-in-chief, if there happened to be a fleet at anchor there) did not know about it?

  He turned to look forward over the Calypso’s bow. The ship was making good time, despite a slack current. Sticking out from the Spanish shore (as though a pedlar was offering him an onion by its stalk) was Tarifa, a small island linked to the Spanish mainland by a causeway. Tarifa had, for centuries, been a sallyport for pirates and privateers who lurked behind its steep cliffs, waiting to pounce on passing merchant ships. It was the southernmost point of Europe, beating Europa Point by five or six miles.

  Well, Ramage admitted, the Pillars of Hercules held many memories for him; it had been the gateway through which, as a young midshipman, he had first passed to see and smell the black smoke of guns in battle and hear the calico-ripping noise of passing round shot. Promotion, fear, opportunity, boredom, excitement … the smell of pines on a hot summer day along the Tuscan coast … Gianna …
the excited chatter of Italians … a jumble of experiences … and what were those secret orders going to add to the pile?

  He saw the new officer of the deck come on watch. William Martin, lieutenant and son of the master shipwright at the Chatham yard, must be about 24 by now. What were his thoughts on returning to the Mediterranean? His last visit brought him plenty of excitement—and had given the ship’s company a good deal of pleasure, because Lieutenant Martin played a flute as though the instrument was part of his body, and its music, as the sun went down at the end of a clear Mediterranean day, brought cheers from the seamen who, expressing their pleasure rather than mocking, had nicknamed him “Blower.”

  Martin listened carefully as the small, red-haired and freckled lieutenant he was relieving passed on such details as the course to steer, the currents to be expected, and any of the captain’s orders which had not yet been executed. Lieutenant Kenton, who must be the same age as Martin, was the son of a half-pay captain in the navy and, like Martin, was a competent and well-liked officer who had also been in the Calypso when she was last in the Mediterranean. In fact, as the sun lit up the Strait, he and Ramage had been reminiscing about the time they had attacked Port’ Ercole with bomb ketches and, in another operation, captured several of Bonaparte’s signal towers dotted along the French coast.

  Now, as Kenton turned away to go below, Martin walked to the larboard side and stared at Gibraltar just coming into sight, and Ramage watched him pick up a telescope to examine the fortifications of Tarifa—a high wall with several towers.

  This was an impressive stretch of coast: the mountains rolled inland like giant, petrified waves and were given the resounding name of Sierra Nuestra Señora de la Luz (and, as if to carry on the Arab tradition of Yibila, one of the peaks just east of Tarifa was named Tetas de la Luz). The next peak, Ramage noticed from the chart, had an earthier name—Gitano.