Governor Ramage R. N. (5 page)

“Come and inspect the cargo,” he said to Ramage, who nodded politely but then exclaimed: “But they're
all
brass!”

“Every single one,” Yorke said, as Ramage looked along the line of guns, and then at the small swivels mounted every few feet along the top of the bulwarks. “I had them recast a year or so ago. They were seventy years old, if a day.”

“Any problems at the foundry?”

“No, they just add a little more tin—which is damnably expensive—because apparently it gets lost over the years and weakens the metal. But brass guns are an economy in the end—no rust, no constant chipping and lacquering.”

“And you have good gunners?”

“No—hopeless!”

“But why?” Ramage asked in surprise. “What's the point of brass guns if … ? “

“My gunners are hopeless, my seamen are landsmen, my petty officers are nincompoops … until I know whether you're going to press any of them!”

“Then you can sleep in peace. I'm short but I haven't pressed a man out of this convoy.”

“You must be one of the few King's ships that hasn't.”

“I know, but I prefer quality to quantity.”

“I wish some of your fellow captains felt the same way.”

“Perhaps they do.”

“True—but can they create quality?”

Ramage avoided answering—this was tender ground. He didn't intend telling the master of a merchantman of his contempt for the lack of leadership shown by some of his brother officers, however hospitable Yorke might be.

“Come along,” Yorke said, “you must inspect the cargo.”

Noticing Ramage's lack of enthusiasm and tendency to dawdle as he inspected the ship he added, “The female section of it are probably eaten up with impatience, and they won't be very flattered to find you were more interested in brass guns.”

“Female section?” Ramage exclaimed. “Women? Hey, you showed me a false manifest! Since when have ladies rated as cargo?”

“Well, these do!”

Ramage was completely unprepared for the four people waiting in the airy saloon of the
Topaz.
He had expected a portly planter and his wife, a colonel or two and perhaps a general and his strident spouse, all with complexions matching the highly polished mahogany panelling and figures in keeping with the well-padded chairs and settees.

With easy grace Yorke bowed to the two men and two women.

“May I present Lord Ramage?”

Ramage had time only to glance at the men and notice that one of the women was young before Yorke completed the introductions: “M'sieur and Madame St Brieuc, their daughter Madame de Dinan, and M'sieur St Cast.”

“We are honoured,” St Brieuc said as they shook hands and Ramage kissed the ladies' hands. “Surely you are the young man who captured the privateers near here? Mr Yorke has been telling us about it.”

As he spoke, in almost perfect English with an accent that only hinted at his French nationality, Ramage tried to think why the names had a curious—even spurious—ring about them.

Yorke answered St Brieuc's question. “The very man.”

To Ramage he said gaily, “You might as well know you're going to have to sing for your supper!”

“Sing for your supper?”

The daughter looked puzzled as she repeated the words to herself, lowering the fan which had been hiding most of her face since her eyes had first met Ramage's a few moments earlier.

Her voice was little more than a deep murmur with a heavy French accent; to Ramage it seemed he sensed her words rather than heard them; an intimate voice that brought a tightening in his thighs.

He was brought back to the reality of the saloon by Yorke. “An expression, ma'am—it means …”

“That instead of paying for my dinner with money, I perform some service instead,” Ramage completed the sentence, embarrassed that his brief reverie might have been noticed. “Entertain you with a song, for instance.”

“Or stand on his head, or juggle with a dozen wine glasses,” Yorke added.

Ramage saw the joking had misfired because the girl was now looking embarrassed and said: “The juggling—I do not understand why …”

“My dear,” her father said, “Mr Yorke was simply telling his lordship that we hope he'll tell us of his adventures. A warning, as it were!”

Madame de Dinan had large brown eyes set in a small oval face. She was about five feet tall, and her almost classic French beauty was saved from the coldness of statuesque perfection by the warm brown eyes and the wide, sensual mouth. She's married, Ramage thought sadly; all that store of love and passion reserved for someone else …

Suddenly he remembered that St Cast and St Brieuc were tiny fishing villages tucked behind the rocks and reefs of the Breton coast, not far from St Malo and south of the Channel Islands. They were only a few miles from each other and he could picture that section of the chart, with Dinan a few miles inland. So these people were probably travelling under assumed names, which was hardly surprising since they were obviously Royalist refugees.

St Cast spoke for the first time. A large, florid man with white hair and heavy features which could be friendly or haughty with little change of expression, he had an unexpectedly high-pitched voice, but he enunciated every word precisely, not through pedantry but as though accustomed to giving instructions.

“Are you coming to Jamaica with us?”

When Ramage said he was, Yorke took the opportunity of asking: “What
was
all that nonsense with the Admiral?”

“I don't think I'm one of his favourites.”

“I'd guessed that much. Hope I did the right thing, dragging you from the cabin like that.”

“Not only was it the right thing to do, but you timed it perfectly!”

“They looked like two cats deprived of their mouse,” Yorke said. “A fat cat, a thin cat and a choice mouse.”

Ramage laughed and then, before he could stop himself, commented bitterly, “But only a temporary deprivation.”

Yorke turned to his guests and said, with what Ramage thought was unnecessary gaiety, “While I was on board the flagship I saw that the Lieutenant was also out of favour with Admiral Goddard. I'm not betraying naval secrets because about fifty other masters noticed the same thing!”

While Ramage puzzled over the “also,” St Brieuc—a small man with the profile of a thinner Julius Caesar—was inspecting his nails. “A temporary affair, I trust,” he said politely. “A temporary fall from grace … perhaps a passing cloud?”

Ramage saw that everyone was curious. Well, there was no need to keep secret something of which the whole Navy was aware.

“No, hardly a passing cloud; it's as permanent as—as the
Minquiers.”

St Cast's heavy features froze. He glanced at St Brieuc, as if asking a question, and received an almost imperceptible nod in reply.

“I see you have guessed that we are travelling incognito. I—”

Ramage flushed and held up his hand. “M'sieur—the allusion was quite accidental. Your names—the villages are familiar because I've served in a ship based on the Channel Islands. They must have been in the back of my mind when I tried to think of some—some symbol of permanence, like the
Minquiers
Shoal.”

“No harm is done,” St Cast assured him. “We simply—”

Again Ramage held up his hand to silence him, embarrassed but assured.

“If you are travelling incognito I am sure there's a good reason, and in wartime the less one knows the less one can be forced to reveal if captured …”

The girl shuddered and her mother reached out to touch her arm with a reassuring gesture. Ramage and Yorke tactfully glanced away but St Brieuc, standing more erect, said with quiet pride: “Maxine has reason to know what you mean: the men of the Revolutionary Tribunal tortured her for three days to force her to reveal where in Brittany we were hiding.”

Ramage said quickly, “Your presence here proves that they failed.”

“Yes,” her father said simply, “but she'll carry the scars of their handiwork to her grave.”

The girl suddenly glanced up with a smile, snapped her fan shut and, pointing it at Ramage, said gaily, “You have to sing for your supper!”

Grasping the chance to brighten the atmosphere, Ramage gave a sweeping bow. “Madame has only to name the song, and you'll hear singing that will make a frog envious!”

“The song of the
Triton.”

“I think, indeed I hope,” her father said slowly, “that that song is long and fascinating, and best sung later at dinner. For the moment I wonder—if I'm not being indiscreet, and Mr Yorke will warn me if I am—if we might hear something of your fall from Admiral Goddard's grace: I—we, rather—have a particular reason for being curious.”

“You certainly have!” Yorke exclaimed. “May I explain to the Lieutenant?”

St Brieuc smiled and nodded.

“My passengers—a clumsy word for such company—originally began their voyage from Portsmouth to Jamaica on board the
Lion,
with Admiral Goddard as their host,” Yorke told Ramage. “They count themselves fortunate that the
Lion
and the convoy had to call at Cork to collect the Irish and Scottish ships, because it gave them an opportunity to leave the
Lion …”

“A horrible man!” the daughter said with a shudder, and Ramage felt she had as much contempt as dislike for Goddard.

“He is not a gentlemen,” St Cast said, his jowls quivering. “Despite—”

St Brieuc interrupted so smoothly that it took Ramage a few seconds to realize that the Frenchman was unsure what St Cast was going to say, and for reasons difficult yet to understand, St Brieuc was the one who made the decisions.

“Because of the Admiral's—ah, activities—I had no difficulty in persuading him that despite the Admiralty's orders making us his guests, we would prefer to travel in another ship.”

Tactfully put, Ramage acknowledged, and I'd back my guess as to what happened with guineas: the gallant Admiral made advances to Madame de Dinan … and in all fairness I can't blame him.

“I was able to offer them the hospitality of the
Topaz,”
Yorke said, and Ramage guessed that the original passengers had been given suitable compensation to postpone their voyage or travel in another ship.

These people must be influential enough for Goddard to be worried because they were not travelling in the
Lion.
The Admiralty would want explanations.
That
accounted for Goddard's anxiety about the convoy: these people were the “important cargo” and that explained why Yorke hadn't bothered to look round at the rest of the masters …

But who were they and why were they going to Jamaica? St Cast seemed to be an aide or major-domo of some description; the small and birdlike St Brieuc was the man that mattered. But where was his daughter's husband? Already Ramage disliked him because no one could deserve such a wife, and he was jealous—of a husband he had never seen of a woman he had met for the first time ten minutes before. It's been an unusual sort of morning, he thought sourly to himself.

“My own story goes back a little further,” Ramage said, “but it's a boring one of jealousy, vindictiveness and obsession.”

“We have some experience of all that … It's almost a relief to know we're not alone in our misery,” St Brieuc said quietly.

“Please,” the girl pleaded, “tell us, if you can.”

“Say the word and we drop the subject,” Yorke said, “but …”

Ramage laughed and reassured them, but they saw he was rubbing the older of the two scars above his right eyebrow. Yorke remembered seeing him do the same thing at the convoy conference when Goddard ignored him and introduced the other officers. It was obviously a habit when he was tense or concentrating. Yorke watched him snatch his hand away when he saw they had noticed.

“The story starts with my father. He's an admiral, but not serving now.”

“Not an old man, though, surely?” St Cast asked.

“No—simply out of favour.”

St Brieuc snorted with contempt. “Politics, always politics!”

Ramage nodded. “Politics, yes; but in a roundabout way because he isn't attached to any particular party. He was regarded as one of the most brilliant admirals of his day, but, he had—and still has—many faults. He is impatient, he doesn't suffer fools gladly and he is a very decisive sort of man. He hates indecisive people.”

“Hardly faults!” St Cast protested, almost to himself.

“No, but he also had strong and very advanced views on new tactics and signalling which would have revolutionized sea warfare—”

“No wonder he was unpopular,” Yorke said wryly. “Pity all those other admirals. After spending a lifetime learning and practising the old-style tactics, along comes a bright new admiral wanting to change everything. You can't teach an old dog new tricks—and the old dogs know it!”

“There is something in that,” Ramage admitted, “but then politics came into it.”

“Ah,” said St Brieuc, as if Ramage's story had reached a point he could fully understand.

“No, not what you think, M'sieur; just the opposite. My family are Cornish, but we have kept out of politics since Cromwell's time, or since the Restoration, anyway. We learned then not to put our trust in princes.”

“The Cornish—they are like we Bretons,” said the daughter, missing the significance of Ramage's last remark.

“Yes—even the place-names are similar.”

“We keep interrupting,” St Brieuc said. “Do please continue.”

“Halfway through the last war, word reached England that a French fleet had sailed from Brest for an attack on the West Indies. The government had been warned months earlier that it was being prepared, but did nothing about it.”

“I remember,” St Brieuc murmured.