As he stood up again it seemed he had suddenly gone deaf: the dune behind deadened all sound of the waves on the beach, and for the first time for many months he could hear nothing connected with the sea: he might be a hundred miles inland.
From the top of the next dune Ramage could see a little more of the Tower, and he walked down the side and up to the top of the third and last dune. Several feet below, to his right as he stood with his back to the sea, the river came straight inland for about fifty yards and then turned left to pass in front of him, rushes growing in thick clumps along the banks. It went on for two hundred yards, parallel with the sea, passing within a few yards of the seaward side of the Tower before turning sharply inland again, close against the north wall.
The Tower had been built in a good place, Ramage realized: with the river guarding it on the north and west sides, and the lake beyond covering it to the east, any attackers could approach only along the beaches.
And it was a solid construction, designed like a chessman castle, only square instead of round. From the ground the walls sloped gently inward until just below the embrasures, then sloped outward again for the last few feet, like the nipped-in waist of a woman’s dress.
Ramage had seen enough for the moment. How deep was the river? He climbed down the steep bank to the rushes. The fact they grew there at all indicated the water was at worst brackish and ran from the fresh-water lake to the sea. For a second he froze with fear, then realized the sudden movement was a coot or moorhen which streaked out from almost underfoot, flying so low its wings beat the water. Gingerly he walked through the rushes, the water pouring over the tops of his boots, and turned right to follow the river round to its mouth and meet the men with the gig.
Rounding the corner, he found the men had pulled the boat over the bar. Jackson splashed over towards him.
‘Where do you want it, sir?’
‘Here,’ Ramage said, indicating the northern bank. ‘Snug it in close among the reeds.’
There was no point trying to hide it under branches of bushes: a pile of juniper among the reeds would be more conspicuous than the boat itself.
Well, there was no time to waste: the charcoal burner’s hut mentioned in the Admiral’s orders was half a mile southward down the coast and five hundred yards inland, and the sooner they found it the better, although a nagging question kept popping up in his mind.
Ramage splashed over to the men and glanced at the boat.
‘That’s fine. I want one of you to act as a sentry up there. The rest can sleep in the boat or very near it.’ He indicated the sloping side of the dune. ‘Hand me out a couple of cutlasses… Thank you. Now, come on Jackson.’
‘Good luck, sir,’ one of the seamen said, and the rest echoed his words.
Ramage walked along the river’s edge to the sea, followed by Jackson, wading out thigh-deep until he felt the sand bar under his feet. He then walked across it to the far bank.
‘We’ll walk along here just in the water to avoid making footprints,’ he said. ‘Anyway, it’ll take too long if we climb up and down the dunes.’
Ramage strolled along a path of silver foam: the wavelets lazed their way up to the beach and gently rolled over in orderly rows, shattering into myriads of droplets, each sparkling in the moonlight. The droplets then joined together and gurgled back in little cascades.
The sand along the water’s edge was littered with branches of trees which must have been washed out to sea when a sudden storm flooded a river, and months later thrown up on the beach again, stripped of their bark, bleached by the sun, and polished by the sand, so they looked like the bones of a seamonster. Twigs which had suffered the same fate were like twisted slivers of ivory, and occasionally he passed scatterings of sea shells which crunched beneath his feet.
The seamen should be all right: they had food and water, but no money or liquor, so with wine and women eliminated the only risk was discovery by French patrols or peasants. That was unlikely: this
macchia
would not attract many peasants, and as for French patrols – well, the town of Orbetello, between the two causeways leading to Argentario, was near by. But the main road to the south, the Via Aurelia, along which Caesar had marched back to Rome, was four or five miles inland, and he doubted if the French would bother to patrol the swamps and sand dunes between the Via Aurelia and the sea.
Ramage was thankful he had brought Jackson along, because the dangerous part was just about to begin, and there was no point in pushing the nagging question out of his mind any longer.
The question itself was simple enough: how to ask peasants where the refugees were without revealing that he was looking for them? If the French were in the neighbourhood they would certainly reward anyone bringing in important information or prisoners.
‘Jackson – there might be more than one charcoal burner’s hut–’
‘I was just thinking that, sir.’
‘–and we daren’t risk giving ourselves away. Or why we’re here.’
‘No, sir.’
‘So we’re going to pretend we’re French.’
‘French, sir?’
Jackson could not disguise the note of surprise – or doubt – in his voice.
‘French, French troops hunting the same refugees.’
‘But – well, sir,’ Jackson said, hurriedly rephrasing his question more politely, ‘the local folk will hardly help us if they think we are Frogs.’
‘No, but it’ll be fairly easy to see if they’re lying. But more important, if they think we’re French, obviously they won’t take it into their heads to report us.’
‘There’s something in that, sir.’
‘But we don’t look much like a search party, so when I knock on a door, you keep out of sight and make a noise like a whole patrol!’
‘Aye aye, sir. But your uniform, sir?’
‘They won’t know the difference.’
As they trudged along the beach, Ramage began to feel weary. He’d been at sea so long that he felt unbalanced when walking on land, as though he was drunk; and the hours in the open boat had exaggerated the effect so that, although the beach was flat, he felt he was walking uphill. It would wear off in a few hours; but combined with the weariness, it left him dazed and drained of strength. Nor did the thought of having to wake up and threaten simple peasants arouse any enthusiasm for the task ahead.
He ran his hand through his hair and cursed as his fingers caught in a tangle at the back of his scalp: the wound must have opened again and bled a little.
How far had they walked? He glanced back and just glimpsed the top of the Tower. Less than half a mile. This was a damned unlikely area to find a charcoal burner’s hut: only a few larch, pine, cork oak and ilex stuck up out of the undergrowth… Still, the poor beggars living here had little choice: this side of the lake there were no fields to cultivate, no land fit for olives or vines. That left only fishing – and the beach was too exposed for that – or collecting wood and making charcoal.
Thirty yards ahead the dunes came closer to the water’s edge and the juniper bushes grew almost down to the sea: a good place to strike inland without leaving conspicuous footprints in the sand.
Inland, beyond the dunes, the ground in many places was marshy underfoot, and they had to make several detours to avoid stagnant ponds sprawling across their path. Soon they were threading their way among bushes eight or ten feet high, with a scattering of cork oak. Even in the moonlight Ramage could distinguish the bare and smooth, reddish-brown boles where the cork bark had been stripped off.
Suddenly Ramage felt Jackson tugging his coat. ‘Smoke, sir: can you smell it? Wood smoke.’
Ramage sniffed: yes, it was faint, but unmistakable. They must be very close to the igloo-shaped oven of turf used by a charcoal burner, because there was not a breath of wind to spread the smoke: not even the usual inshore breeze.
Reaching down to his boot, Ramage eased the heavy-bladed throwing knife in its sheath, and drew his cutlass. Then the two men cautiously continued walking.
Three or four minutes later they found themselves on the edge of a small, flat clearing. In the centre Ramage saw a dull red glow where the oven had been left damped down for the night, completely covered in thick turf except for a tiny hole in one side.
Jackson nudged him and pointed. Beyond the furnace, on the far side of the clearing, Ramage could just make out the outline of a small stone hut.
‘Can you see any others?’
‘No, sir. That’s likely to be the only one: downwind of the furnace.’
It certainly was to leeward of the night’s offshore winds, but the certainty in Jackson’s voice made Ramage curious, since there was no prevailing wind in this area.
‘Why so sure?’
‘Downwind of the furnace means the smoke is nearly always drifting round the hut at night. Drives the mosquitoes away.’
‘Where did you learn that?’
‘Ah,’ whispered Jackson, ‘I spent my boyhood in the woods.’
‘This way,’ said Ramage, pointing to the right. ‘The moon won’t give us away. As soon as I get to the door you go round the back of the hut and sound like a platoon of Marines.’
‘Oh sir!’ whispered Jackson, giving a mock groan. Ramage smiled to himself; seamen had a friendly contempt for Marines and soldiers.
After smoothing his hair, adjusting his stock and brushing sand from his breeches, Ramage walked up to the door, gripping the cutlass in his right hand. Jackson had disappeared round the back.
Well, he thought, we might as well get on with it, and banged on the door several times with the cutlass blade. He waited a couple of moments and then yelled in French: ‘Open the door: open the door this minute.’
A sleepily spoken stream of blasphemy came from inside.
‘Who is it?’ demanded a hoarse voice in Italian.
‘Open the door!’ he repeated in a bullying voice.
A few moments later the door rattled and then squeaked open.
‘Who is it?’ growled the Italian from the darkness inside the hut.
Now was the time to start speaking Italian.
‘Come out into the moonlight, you pig: exhibit the respect for a French officer. Let’s see what you look like.’
The man shuffled out while a woman’s voice from inside the hut hissed, ‘Be careful, Nino!’ At that moment Ramage heard a din from behind the hut. Jackson was doing his job well: from the shouted orders and crackling of undergrowth he sounded like a platoon of men.
Nino stood in the moonlight, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand.
‘Well?’ demanded Ramage.
‘Yes, yes, your Grace,’ he said hastily, using the most formal method of address he could think of. ‘What does your Grace wish?’
Ramage prodded him in the stomach with the point of his cutlass. ‘Where,’ he demanded sternly, ‘are these pigs of aristocrats hidden?’
He watched Nino closely.
Yes, there was a reaction: a movement of the shoulders, as if bracing himself slightly against an unexpected gust of wind.
‘Aristocrats, your Grace? We have no aristocrats here.’
‘That I know, fool; but you know where they are hiding.’
‘No, no, your Grace: I swear by the Madonna we have no aristocrats here.’
Inside the hut a woman alternately prayed and wept with long, dry sobs; but Ramage realized the man was denying only that anyone was hidden in the hut, apparently avoiding a direct denial that he knew where they were.
‘How many have you in your family?’ he demanded.
‘Seven, your Grace: my widowed mother, my wife, my four children and my brother.’
‘Do you want them all to starve, ungrateful pig?’
‘No – no, your Grace. Why should they?’ he asked in surprise.
‘Because in ten seconds, if you don’t tell me where the aristocrats are, you’ll join your dead father and the Madonna and all those saints your stupid priests tell you about!’
It would do no harm to give these peasants perhaps their first warning that Bonaparte’s men, despite their Red Cap of Liberty and bold talk of freedom, were atheists.
But the effect on the peasant was extraordinary: he straightened himself up and faced Ramage squarely. As the woman continued sobbing inside the hut, he said with calm simplicity: ‘Kill me, then: I tell you nothing.’ He stood waiting for Ramage’s cutlass to drive into his belly.
This fellow, thought Ramage, had a sense of honour: if some of those damned effete Italian
aristocrati
, mincing and dancing and gossiping their lives away in Siena and Florence – at least until Bonaparte arrived – could see the courage shown on their behalf by one of the
contadini
they might not despise them so much.
The man was simple, brave and honourable; but the last two virtues also revealed he knew where the refugees were. The Admiral’s orders had mentioned ‘the charcoal burner’s hut’, which implied there was only one; so surely this must be the charcoal burner in question… Ramage decided to take the chance.
The peasant was still waiting for the cutlass to plunge into his stomach, so Ramage stepped back a pace, as if to gain more room to strike the fatal blow, then suddenly thrust the blade down vertically into the ground. Before the startled peasant realized what was happening Ramage seized him by the arm, leaving the cutlass in the ground, pushed him back into the hut remembering to duck under the low doorway – and said gaily: ‘
Allora, Nina, siamo amici
!’