Ramage was thankful the Consul, unlike Spanish and Italian officials, did not find it necessary to keep them waiting half an hour to demonstrate his importance. Instead, as they entered the hall a quiet voice called them into a large room. Ramage made a conscious effort to appear as nervous as Stafford and Fuller, hoping to leave the talking to Jackson.
The Consul was a tall, grey-haired man with twinkling blue eyes, and as the four men came through the door he was collecting up some playing cards which had been laid out on the desk at which he sat.
‘Good afternoon,’ he said cheerfully, ‘you’ve interrupted my game of patience, but fortunately I’d reached the point where I could only win if I cheated. Now, what can I do for you?’
‘Seamen we are,’ said Jackson. ‘We…’
‘We thought,’ Ramage said equally as nervously, ‘that…’
The Consul shuffled the cards and began setting them out for a new game. Ramage, guessing he did it to lessen their embarrassment, continued in a hesitant and uncertain voice, ‘The Spanish rescued us from a British ship of war, sir. We were all pressed a long time ago. The Spanish – well, we showed them our Protections, sir, and they – well, as soon as we got here they set us free.’
The Consul picked up a sheet of paper. ‘Nicholas Gilray, Thomas Jackson, Will Stafford and Henry Fuller?’
‘Why, yes, sir!’
‘Yes, the admiral wrote to me about you. He even had you paid up to date, I believe.’
‘Yes, sir – well, more or less.’
‘How much less by the time the money reached you?’ the Consul asked shrewdly.
‘Only about a third, sir.’
‘You were lucky. They’re a sticky-fingered nation.’
A curious expression, Ramage thought. Did the Consul dislike the Spaniards? If he did – and it was a distinct possibility if he had been in Cartagena for a long time – he might be of some use.
‘So we gathered, sir. Tried to make us serve in the Spanish Navy, they did; but we insisted on our rights.’
‘Yes, of course,’ the Consul said drily. ‘Perhaps I could see your Protections?’
The four men fumbled in their pockets. Jackson was the first to find his and, after unfolding it and smoothing out the creases, put it in front of the Consul, who read aloud from it, half to himself. ‘Thomas Jackson… Charleston, South Carolina…about five feet ten inches high…’ He held the paper up to the light to see the watermark, then folded it and gave it back to Jackson and picked up the other three, reading out the details. ‘You are Stafford?’
When Stafford replied the Consul’s eyebrows lifted. ‘You were born in America?’
‘No, sir. Taken there when I was a baby.’
‘Indeed? And you must be Fuller?’ he said, turning to the Suffolk man, who nodded. ‘No doubt you, too, went to America as a baby?’
‘Aye, sir!’ Fuller said eagerly. ‘Just a tiddler.’
Ramage almost laughed aloud at both the accent and the inevitable allusion to fish.
‘And you, then, are Gilray.’
For a moment Ramage looked at the Consul blankly then said hurriedly, keeping his voice as flat as possible, ‘Yes, sir: Nicholas Gilray.’
The Consul handed them back the Protections and asked: ‘What do you want me to do for you?’
‘If you could help us get a berth in a ship going to America, sir?’
‘Not too difficult, but you might have a long wait, though.’
‘Oh,’ said Jackson sadly. ‘Haven’t seen my home for three years.’
‘Have you enough money to live on while you wait?’
‘Depends how long we wait, sir.’
‘Of course, of course. But anyway, for the time being you have enough Spanish money. By the way. Stafford, how much did you pay for that Protection?’
‘Two pounds!’ exclaimed Stafford and then looked down at the floor, realizing he had fallen into a trap.
‘Don’t sound so indignant,’ the Consul said, smiling, ‘five pounds was the current price when I sailed from New York two years ago. I imagine Gilray and Fuller probably paid more.’
Ramage knew that with the exception of Jackson, the only genuine American, they were now at the Consul’s mercy. He also knew, since the man was at least fifty years old and American Independence had been declared little more than twenty-five years ago, and the accent sounded familiar, he might well help them. Clearly this was no time for evasion.
‘I don’t know what Fuller paid, sir, but mine cost more. This doesn’t mean that you’ll…?’
‘No, don’t worry, you’re not the only Englishmen with American Protections. And I was born an Englishman too, only I took the precaution of becoming an American citizen by lawful means.’
Ramage couldn’t resist the impulse. ‘Cornish, sir?’
‘Yes, Cornish,’ the Consul said, almost wistfully. ‘Cornwall…the finest county of them all. I want to walk again on Bodmin Moor…and yet here I sit playing patience in an odd corner of an alien land.’
The man was talking to himself now, reviving old memories and longing to see once again his birthplace. ‘Yes, to get away from this heat and stink and walk across Bodmin as the sun comes up and melts the mist. To hear the church bell of St Teath ringing out again…’
The name of the village startled Ramage into a sudden movement which broke the Consul’s reverie and made him look up inquiringly. St Teath – the next village to St Kew, where his father and mother lived at the Hall: St Teath, every square inch of which had been owned by the Ramages since the days of Henry VIII, and father was also the patron of the very church the Consul remembered, and probably paid for the very bell he longed to hear ring again. Why did the Consul leave England? Had he been a debtor – perhaps to father even? What would be his reaction if he knew that the son and heir of the Lord of the Manors of St Kew and St Teath stood before him, at his mercy?
Because Ramage’s first impulse was to tell him at once, he deliberately said nothing: it could wait until tomorrow, by which time he would have slept on it.
‘Well,’ the Consul said, ‘I’ll do what I can to find you a ship. Don’t spend all your money on wine and women, because I’ve no funds to help you, and there’s not enough work round here for the Spaniards, let alone Americans who don’t speak the language. Which inn are you staying at?’
Jackson told him, and the four men saluted and left the room after thanking him profusely.
Back at the inn Jackson waited until they were alone, then said to Ramage, the concern showing in his voice: ‘Was there anything wrong, sir? You went white as a sheet when the Consul mentioned that village – St Teath, wasn’t it?’
‘My family owns it,’ Ramage said sourly. ‘My home is in the next village. Obviously he left there before I was born. But why did he leave? Most people leave in a hurry for America because they’re in debt or wanted for some crime. Debt usually means rent. Rent may well mean my father. But–’ No, rent wouldn’t mean his father; the low rents on the Ramage estates were a sore point with neighbouring landowners. But the Ramages were rich and the old admiral saw no reason to charge his tenants more than was required for the upkeep of the cottages. He always maintained there was no such thing as a bad crew, only a bad captain; and as a landowner he lived by the same principle, that there were no bad tenants, only bad landlords.
Jackson realized Ramage was not going to finish the sentence and said, ‘He seemed to have happy memories of the place, sir: the church clock and the walks and the morning mist. Doesn’t seem at all bitter. If I’d left because of some landlord, or because I was wanted for some crime, I think I’d be bitter about a place, not sentimental.’
And Ramage knew that Jackson was right. But since the American Consul in Cartagena was the personification of neutrality, was he likely to do anything more than give the statutory assistance to four men claiming to be United States citizens and wishing to return home? They could be fairly certain he’d do nothing to harm them. Should he reveal himself as the Earl’s son in a gamble to get more help, at the risk of getting none?
Next day, while Ramage walked out along the hills forming the bay and examined the batteries protecting it, the six seamen sat chatting with their backs to the Muralla del Mar and, without the Spaniards realizing it, studied the zebec La Providencia until they knew they could board her – or any other zebec – in the dark and set all sail without a moment’s delay.
‘It ain’t a seamanlike rig,’ concluded Stafford. ‘Might do fer a lot o’ ’eathen Moors, but wot, I hask yer, ’appens to those yards in a gale o’ wind? I’ll tell yer: they whip like a master-at-arms’ rattan.’
‘But each one’s got a vang at the lower end and another near the top,’ Jackson interjected mildly.
‘Yers,’ jeered Stafford, ‘they’ll be useful when you want to ’aul ’em back in again after they’ve gorn overboard.’
‘But very fast ships,’ Rossi interjected. ‘The fastest. That’s why the Moorish pirates use them.’
‘And that’s why Mr Ramage is interested in them, Rosey,’ said Jackson. ‘When we leave here for Gibraltar we’ll be in a hurry.’
‘Like as not there’ll be a Spanish three-decker chasin’ us,’ Fuller added gloomily.
Stafford laughed. ‘If they get close, yer can ’ave a boat and row over to the Spanish admiral wiv a big plate o’ fish and tell ’im we was really only ’avin’ a nice day’s exercise wiv rod an’ line.’
Fuller grunted contemptuously: he couldn’t be bothered wasting his breath on a man who talked like that about fishing.
‘She’s fast enough,’ said the Dane. ‘And she’s not too big for us to handle.’
‘That’s the point, Sixer,’ said Jackson. ‘Four of us could, if necessary.’
‘When do we sail Jacko? Tonight?’
‘No – at least, I don’t expect so.’
‘Why not? No point in ’angin’ about. Two weeks in that inn’ll cost us two years’ pay.’
‘What are you worrying about? You’re sitting here chatting, you’re not standing watches, you’ll sleep soundly tonight in a bed with no chance of being roused out to take in a reef, and there’s no deck to holystone tomorrow morning. And Mr Ramage is paying you all the time.’
‘Mr Ramage? Oh, yer mean for and on be’alf of ’Is Royal Majesty King George, an’ all that.’
‘No – Mr Ramage is paying out of his own pocket.’
‘But–’
‘You asked him about pay, didn’t you,’ Jackson continued. ‘You said you’d heard our pay stopped the day we were captured. Well, he waited a moment before answering. ‘I saw he’d heard the same thing and didn’t know for sure. But straight away he said, “You’ll get every penny owing to you: I’ll see to that.” Well, I know your pay does stop. So in fact what you got was a guarantee from Mr Ramage that he’ll pay you.’
‘Cor,’ exclaimed Stafford. ‘Why didn’t yer tell ’im?’
‘No point,’ Jackson said impatiently. ‘He’d still have paid you out of his own pocket.’
‘’Ow d’yer know?’
Before Jackson could answer Fuller said flatly, ‘Because he’s Mr Ramage, that’s why.’
‘That’s right,’ said Rossi. ‘If he say he pay, he pay.’
Jackson suddenly asked Stafford, ‘Why did you stay with him? You didn’t intend to when the Spaniards sorted out the foreigners, did you? You reckoned this was your chance to say goodbye to His Royal Majesty King George, didn’t you?’
‘Not “Royal” Majesty,’ said Fuller. ‘Just “His Majesty”.’
‘Yers,’ Stafford ignored Fuller and admitted, ‘Yers, to begin with I intended to be quit of His Royal Majestic Highness King George.’
‘But why–’
‘Well, later on it didn’t seem right to leave Mr Ramage,’ Stafford said almost defiantly. ‘What about all of you? You intended to quit too – not you Jacko,’ he added hastily, ‘but the rest of you.’
‘Not me!’ Rossi said sharply. ‘After how he rescue the Marchesa when she is a stranger, and after he is a good captain to us – no! At first I do not know why the Spanish pick me out, but when I see Mr Ramage comes with us, I am not frightened.’
‘And that goes for me too, you miserable little pick-lock,’ Fuller growled at Stafford.
‘I wasn’t a pick-lock, you fathom o’ fish bait.’
‘Steady now,’ said Jackson, running his hand through his sandy hair, ‘the only thing that matters is we’re still with him. And all that matters to him is that those ships out there–’ he nodded towards the Spanish Fleet at anchor across the harbour, ‘–can do a terrible lot of damage when they sail, unless Old Jarvie knows they’re at sea.’
Jensen glanced at Jackson. ‘Do you mean that we’ll…?’
‘I don’t mean anything, Sixer; I’m just telling you what I think matters to Mr Ramage.’
* * *
The long, many-arched balcony on the first floor of the American Consul’s house was large and overlooked the Plaza del Rey. The apex of each arch was high, which added to the feeling of coolness. Ramage sat in a comfortable cane chair which had a small oleander plant growing in a tub beside it, and reflected that his impulsive evening visit to the Consul was proving interesting, if nothing else.
The Consul was in an expansive mood. He had loosened his silk stock, apologized for discarding buckled shoes in favour of embroidered Moorish slippers and now that four glasses of brandy had followed a good dinner eaten amid a gentle flow of sentimental reminiscences, he viewed most of the world with favour. The exception, Ramage was surprised to learn, was France.
‘I think you’ll agree, Mr Gilray,’ he said, holding up his brandy glass against the light from the chandelier, ‘that although in general the Italian people have a certain shallowness, a certain insincerity, they make up for it by their artistic nature and gaiety. The Spanish, in my experience, are also rather an insincere people, yet in compensation they have a natural dignity, and a personal sense of honour – although not a national one – and this reflects in their fighting ability. But the French…’
The Consul drained his glass, saw that Ramage’s was also empty, and rang a little silver bell on the table beside him.
‘The French – well, their present behaviour frightens me. They’ve grown greedy. It’s only seven years since the Bastille was stormed, and when they executed their King four years ago last January they made fine speeches about liberty and equality. Then, already at war with Austria, they declared war on Britain, Holland and Spain. They’ve butchered their own people by the thousands, and Spain has since changed sides.