Ramage's Challenge r-15 Read online

  He had finally included Rennick. It was simply cowardice, in a way, but it would be unfair to leave the Marine officer behind. There was not much that Rennick could do, but on the other hand it could easily be misinterpreted in a despatch to the Admiralty if anyone wondered why the Marine officer was left behind. And Rennick, with his red face and jovial manner, was one of the bravest men in the ship. The Marines remaining would be under the command of Sergeant Ferris - who would also be indignant at being left behind, but the safety of the ship was the prime consideration, whatever the Admiralty's orders about hostages.

  Southwick was already grumbling, refusing to admit that a sixty-mile march would be too much for him - and Ramage could guess the reason: the old master was hoping there would be a good fight somewhere along the way, not realizing that the moment a shot was fired or a sword drawn in anger the whole expedition would be doomed.

  He went down to his cabin, sat at his desk, and pulled out of the overhead rack the chart which Southwick had made some years ago of the coast between the little fishing village of Talamone and the deep bay sweeping south round to the causeway which curved in a half moon out to Santa Liberata, on Argentario itself.

  The Via Aurelia passed two or three miles inland of Talamone itself but because of the sudden curve of the land it soon met the sea at the hamlet of Fonteblanda. The road then hugged the coast just behind the sandy beach although the sea was often obscured by small woods of pines. Near the northernmost causeway the Fiume Albinia ran into the sea close by a big square tower, Torre Saline. Just a wide-mouthed stream, in fact, which spent the summer dried up and in the winter prevented nearby fields flooding. More important now, however, was the fact that it met the coast (and, with Torre Saline, would be as good as a signpost in the dark) only a hundred yards or so from the turning on the Via Aurelia for Marsiliana and Pitigliano.

  Ah, the nostalgia that a map created. Up to the north was Punta Ala; then Scarlino, Massa Marittima, Castelnuovo - all places on the road to Volterra. That was the wonderful thing about Italy - many of the place names sounded like musical notes. And many of the derivations of the names were now hidden in the shadows cast by time. Did the silver in the name "Argentario" come from a Roman banker who once owned a villa there (argentum being Latin for silver) or from the thousands of olive trees growing on its slopes? The underside of an olive leaf was silvery; a breeze sweeping the olive groves turned the leaves so that from a distance all the grove - indeed the whole island - seemed coated in silver.

  Talamone, too, was an odd name unless you knew it was named after Telamon, the King of Salamis who landed there after returning from the Argonaut expedition. The Calypsos, some of them anyway, would be landing tonight very close to where Telamon went on shore . . . Now Telamon's monument here was a small walled fishing port with a square tower rising up from the middle of it. And Santo Stefano had been a small but powerful place in medieval days: important enough for Philip II to build the Fortezza which was named after him, and had not the Santo Stefanesi sent a dozen ships to fight the Saracens in the Battle of Lepanto?

  Port' Ercole, at the other end of Argentario, was the Port of Hercules of Roman times, and important enough for the Spaniards to build Forte della Stella (star-shaped and strongly built) and the Forte di Monte Filippo . . . both reminded him once again of sailing into Port' Ercole with the bomb ketches ... Tuscany, what an area! One's own memories (yesterday's history) spilled over into ancient history: here Philip II had built forts even before sailing the Armada against England, and Captain Ramage had attacked some of the forts two and a half centuries later. Tonight he would be landing where Telamon landed (in legend, anyway) after sailing with Jason and the other heroes to fetch the Golden Fleece, and once you went back to the Argonauts, Spain's activities only two and a half centuries ago became stale news.

  Two and a half centuries hence (around 2050) would some young Royal Navy officer land there in the darkness? What would the map of the world (Europe, anyway) look like then? At this moment, Ramage mused, with Bonaparte holding everything from the Baltic to the Levant, it is hard to think of the Mediterranean as anything but a French lake - until you remember that it has at various times been a Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Carthaginian and Saracen lake, not to mention the periods much later when the Spaniards and Austrians claimed it.

  For the moment, though, he reminded himself, it was enough to know that the turning to the left along the Via Aurelia which went to Pitigliano was just past the mouth of the Fiume Albinia. Within a few hundred yards was the massive square tower, Torre Saline. And a mile further along the coast was Orbetello, whose history started before the Etruscans ... So the Calypsos needed to find the Torre Saline.

  The sentry's knock warned of Aitken coming down to report that the men on the list were waiting at the after end of the quarterdeck. "So you are taking Rennick, sir?"

  "Yes, it'd look bad in the despatch if I left him behind."

  "But you're not taking me, sir." The first lieutenant's voice was neutral: a comment rather than a protest.

  "No I'm not!" Ramage exclaimed crossly. "I'm leaving you in sole command of His Majesty's frigate Calypso. If I don't come back you'll have the responsibility of sailing her back to England."

  Aitken decided to brave the asperity in Ramage's voice. "Kenton and Southwick could sail her back, sir."

  "Damnation, Aitken! You don't speak Italian, your French is rudimentary - what good will you be on the road to Pitigliano, compared to being on board, able to deal with any emergency that arises?"

  "You need prisoners, sir. Only the guards have to speak French."

  "You don't possess -" Ramage was going to say "an admiral's uniform" but realized in time that no admiral or general would be wearing uniform while on a peacetime visit to France or Italy. "Look Aitken, I seem to be commanding a ship full of fighting cocks. I want just a handful of men who can march, and a few that can speak French."

  "Aye, sir, I know that; but Hill will be with your disguised Frenchmen, you'll be with the Italians, so who'll be in charge o' the prisoners?"

  "You will," growled an exasperated Ramage taking the easiest way. "If anyone asks you, you're the Earl of Dunkeld and when the Treaty of Amiens was signed you came to Italy hoping to shoot boar in the Abruzzi. Or bores in Florence."

  "The third earl, I'm thinking, sir," Aitken said grinning.

  "You make just one mistake on this jaunt and you'll be the last and the title becomes extinct. . . Mine, too."

  "I'll mind m' step, sir," Aitken said, picturing the expression on Southwick's face. So command of the Calypso would be left in the hands of young Kenton, the second lieutenant. Quite a responsibility, and for a few moments Aitken had misgivings about his request. Then he remembered what Mr Ramage had done before he was anywhere near as old as Kenton. Responsibility matures and advances the competent and ages and breaks fools. That was one of his father's favourite pronouncements and in Aitken's experience it was true.

  Ramage followed Aitken up the steps of the companionway. Muffled oars, he told himself; I must remember to have Jackson supervise the work. The landing had to be silent - the barking of a carbonaio's dog could raise the alarm before they had even started.

  On the quarterdeck he looked at the group of men in front of him. "I have a job for volunteers," he said. "You won't be risking broadsides, musket balls, boarding pikes or tomahawks. No, if things go wrong you'll end up with your back to a wall and facing a French firing squad aiming muskets at your gizzards. I've picked your names more or less at random -" (would that I had, he told himself) "- so any man who reckons serving in the Navy should not make him risk being shot as a spy is free to go about his duties on board and no one will think any the worse of him."

  Not a man moved, and Ramage heard Jackson mutter: "You're stuck with us, sir." Agreement came in a variety of English regional accents and Ramage also heard Rossi's Italian and Gilbert's French.

  Ramage looked round at the men. "Thank you. Belay that last pipe
about me choosing your names at random, and now I'm going to tell you what we have to do.

  "Then Jackson will tell you how he and I and some other men once landed at night on the coast just south of here. This is Tuscany, not England or France. Different bird calls, different smells, different dam' nearly everything. The point is I don't want you firing at friendly owls or thinking that a charcoal's burner's banked fire is a volcano about to erupt.

  "Then you'll go down to the waist of the ship where your shipmates will be waiting with cloth and thread to fit your new clothes. I want you to think of yourselves as a strolling band of actors, because if you don't put on a good performance the audience won't jeer at you, they'll shoot."

  CHAPTER SIX

  It was still too damned light: although the new moon had already set the clouds were small and slow-moving, obscuring only a few stars, and pushed along the coast by a light north wind which might at any moment turn west into a land breeze.

  Argentario was a bulky dark mass on the starboard beam; ahead was the northern causeway, a long thin crescent like the new moon, narrow and little more than a sandy beach backed by a scattering of pine trees and with the lake formed by the two causeways a silver sheet of water beyond. Over on the larboard bow was Capo d'Uomo (with a tower on top), then Monte dell' Uccellina (little bird: a splendid name!) which sloped down gradually to the sea at Talamone and formed the corner of the cliffs on which Talamone was built. Yes, with the nightglass, even allowing for the irritation that it showed everything upside-down, Ramage could see the walled village with the square tower in the middle. At that moment a break in the clouds let the starlight display the tower clearly with its battlements - at a guess four guns a side. He turned to Southwick. "We're about right?"

  The master waved his quadrant: he had been using it to measure the horizontal angles made by the peak of Monte Argentario to starboard, Torre Saline and the tower at Talamone to larboard, so that he could work out the Calypso's exact position inside the great bay.

  "Time for me to go to the fo'c'sle, sir," he said. "As soon as we get nine fathoms on the lead, we can anchor."

  The Calypso was gliding: the sea was smooth and the north wind meant that the land beyond Talamone gave the bay a lee.

  He listened to the singsong reports of the leadsman and pictured the man standing in the chains, the thick board jutting out from the ship's side and down to which the shrouds were led. The man would be wearing a thick leather apron to keep off the streaming water as he hauled in and coiled the leadline after each cast, feeling with his fingers for the twists of leather and cloth which let him distinguish the depth of water in which they were sailing.

  Ten fathoms. He swung the nightglass forward so that he could search along the coast midway between Talamone and where the causeway met the mainland. Starting from the tower at Talamone, he looked to the right. A few houses - that will be the hamlet of Bengodi and those dark objects like spearheads planted point upwards in the ground are a cluster of cypress, probably planted a century ago as a windbreak. Then the occasional sparkle when the starlight catches a wavelet as it breaks on the beach. Pine trees behind but between them and the sand a low grey line of what must be flat clumps offico dei Ottentotti, growing long fingers across and under the sand above sea level and always ready to trip the unwary. Then a few more small houses - and a faint red glow, a carbonaio's banked fire. More cypress - they sound better in Italian, cipressi. The beach, a few more pines - ah, there is the Torre Saline, squat, the largest tower for miles and its square shape throwing shadows round it like a cloak. And there the Fiume Albinia and - yes, he could just distinguish the bridge for the Via Aurelia, so the turning to Pitigliano would be easy to find.

  There was the leadsman again. Ten fathoms. Bottom soft mud. "Arming the lead" - that was a curious use of the word "arming". A landman would think it warlike, even though it must be the most peaceful activity in the ship. It meant putting a handful of tallow in the cavity at the bottom of the lead (itself looking like a weight from a grandfather clock) so that when the lead hit the sea bed a sample of whatever composed it - sand, mud, coral, fine shell, and so on - stuck to the tallow. A good chart gave not only the depths of water but the nature of the bottom, and often experienced fishermen navigated without charts merely by knowing the pattern of the sea bed. Many claimed they knew where they were by the smell of the mud ...

  Once again he looked round. The Calypso was making under a knot now: the headland at Talamone and the mountains behind were stealing the wind, but there was no hurry. The frigate's cutter and gig had long since been hoisted out and were towing astern; the Pitigliano party of men waited in the waist of the ship with Aitken and Hill; now Southwick stood on the fo'c'sle and Kenton was at the quarterdeck rail.

  Ramage handed Kenton the nightglass, noting that the clouds were becoming more scattered. "That's Talamone - you can see the tower. Start there and work your way south, telling me what you see, and I'll identify it for you."

  Carefully Kenton described what he saw, and finally reached the Torre Saline. "Carry on to the south. You see where this causeway from Argentario joins the mainland? Now follow the causeway round - it's called Giannella - and you'll see where it joins Argentario itself."

  At that moment the leadsman reported nine fathoms. "Carry on," Ramage told Kenton, "you're officer of the deck - and you'll be in command of the ship very soon."

  Kenton told the quartermaster to bring the ship head to wind while ordering the topmen aloft to furl sails. Only the foretopsail would be left drawing, so that as the Calypso turned north the wind would press against the forward side of the sail and, like a hand pushing against a man's chest, bring the ship first to a stop and then slowly move her astern, giving her sternway which would help dig the anchor in once it had been let go.

  Kenton went to the ship's side to watch the water. He reported as soon as the ship stopped, and then as she gathered sternway Ramage picked up the speaking trumpet and gave the order "Let go!" to Southwick, heard the answering hail, and a moment later the heavy splash of the anchor hitting the water, followed by the rumble of the thick cable running through the hawse.

  With the foretopsail aback and the anchor dug home, Southwick came up to the quarterdeck to report how much cable had been let out and that the anchor was holding well. Then he corrected himself by saying to Kenton: "I should be reporting to you."

  "Thank you, Mr Southwick," the youth said gravely, and gave the order to furl the foretopsail. Then, turning to Ramage, he said: "I'd be glad if you'd repeat my instructions in front of Mr Southwick, sir, because if I have to carry them out I know they might not sit well with him."

  Southwick gave one of his sniffs, one which Ramage interpreted to mean: the orders of my superiors always sit well with me. However, Ramage could well see why Kenton was taking the precaution.

  "As the senior lieutenant left on board you will of course have command of the ship," Ramage said. "You know we have sailed in here without any show of secrecy, so that French lookouts will assume we're a French national ship just anchoring in a quiet bay for a couple of days."

  "But if a French boat comes off and questions us sir?" Kenton prompted.

  "I can't spare you a Frenchman to answer any hails, so do your best to fool them, but if it seems the boat will raise an alarm, sink it, sail with the Calypso, wait out of sight and then return here in four days, anchoring in the same position. At the same time you'll send three boats to pick us up at the mouth of the river Albinia.

  "If we're not there, you'll return two nights later, same time, and send boats to the same place. If we're still not there you'll go to Gibraltar, report to the port admiral, and give him my secret orders. You'll also report that I and my men have probably been captured."

  "That gives you only six days to get to Pitigliano and back, sir," Southwick protested. "Supposing some of the hostages are crippled, or so ill they have to be carried on litters? Let's come back a third time. That'd give you eight days."
/>   "No," Ramage said patiently. "If there's any delay I'll send someone - it'll probably be Midshipman Orsini - to bring you fresh instructions. So, after six days no Orsini means no anyone else."

  "Very well, sir," said Kenton. "But -"

  "But they're not the sort of orders you like getting," Ramage said sympathetically. "Well, young man, they're not the orders I like giving, because if you have to carry them out it probably means I've gone over the standing part of the foresheet, and taken all my party - and probably the hostages - with me. But that's what promotion and responsibility entail."

  "We'll see you on the fourth night, sir," Southwick said, "and, if you've room in your knapsack, a bottle of that Orvieto wouldn't come amiss."

  Ramage chuckled. "Marching thirty miles carrying a bottle of Chianti just to satisfy a whim of a mutinous master . . ."

  "I wouldn't mutiny if you brought the wine," Southwick said. The two men shook hands and, after he had shaken hands with Kenton and was walking down the quarterdeck ladder to join the men waiting in the waist, Ramage could not remember ever having shaken hands with Southwick before starting off on an expedition. He shrugged: Southwick heartily distrusted anything "foreign", and this expedition involved more things "foreign" than Southwick had ever dreamed. The master was still puzzled by Ramage's wish to spend his honeymoon in France and, Ramage was quite sure, still reckoned that dabbling with foreigners was the reason why Lady Sarah might well be dead . . .

  He reached the maindeck and paused for a moment. Just over there, on the mainland, more than twenty centuries of recorded history had unfolded. Invasions by men speaking many languages, from the Phoenicians and Carthaginians to the Romans, from the Goths to the Vandals - and, the latest, the French. Battles, political plots, religious quarrels - and all had ended up with men (and women, for that matter) being buried in the rich Tuscan soil. Devil take it, he told himself sharply, you cannot lead men with that attitude. Yet he was neither scared nor sad. One never set foot on Italian soil - or, indeed, arrived in Italian waters - without thinking of the past centuries. The galleys of Santo Stefano sent to help fight the Saracens in the Battle of Lepanto (nearly five centuries ago) must have been rowed out of this bay, turning southward to round the foot of Italy to join the Spanish and Austrian fleets whose admirals' orders were simple: to prevent the Saracens from conquering Europe - which would be easy enough if they defeated the combined fleets of Spain, Italy and Austria.