Ramage & the Guillotine (17 page)

“All we need is some skill with wood; it looks as if you can provide everything else!”

Louis shrugged his shoulders. “You and your men know enough about the way ships are built to bluff questioners—and that is all it would be, questions. I doubt if a gendarme would give you a plank of wood to make you demonstrate! And if you want to work in the shipyards for a day or two—well, there is so much chaos there that if each of you carries a piece of timber and some tools and you look busy, you could walk for many hours without anyone asking questions—long enough for you to find out whatever you need to know.”

Ramage looked at his hands. Despite the last few hours spent in the
Marie
's grubby cuddy, his hands were still soft and well-manicured.

“Don't worry,” Louis said cheerfully, “you are the foreman, and anyway it has taken you a month to get to Boulogne from Italy: time enough for any man's hands to get soft. Your men's hands are harder, I noticed. Well, you all had to stop from time to time to do some carpentry to pay for food. You found the business, since you speak some French—not very good French,” he warned, “in fact only just sufficient to make yourself under-stood—and you made the men do the work, as all good foremen should.” He chuckled at his own joke and added: “If I wasn't so well known here I would act as the entrepreneur!”

He stood up. “I will go and arrange the papers and hide some tools where we can pick them up later. We must make up names for all of you, and you must practise signing them. If gendarmes stop you and are suspicious, the first thing they do is make you sign your name. Then they compare it with the signature in the passport.”

“Tell Rossi to choose short and easy names then,” Ramage said, visualizing Stafford stumbling over something like “Giuseppe di Montefiore.” “In fact let me look at the list. But—how can they practise the signatures before they see what names are written on the passports?”

Louis grinned and shook his head slowly. “You underestimate us, Lieutenant,” he said. “I shall bring passports complete in all but three details—the owner's name, trade and address. And official paper so that we can draw up a travel document for the four of you. Something impressive to introduce you to the master shipwright at Boulogne.”

“He's the man we must keep away from,” Ramage said cautiously.

“Don't worry, the introduction is only for you to show an inquiring gendarme.” Louis thought for a moment. “Money—you have money?”

Ramage nodded. “Sufficient, I think, but if not … ?”

“If not, a draft on London …”

B
Y eleven o'clock that night Ramage and his three men were comfortably installed at a small inn midway between the quay where the
Marie
was alongside and the eastern side of the harbour, where barges and gunboats were secured several deep, waiting to be fitted out with sails and guns.

Louis had warned them that the innkeeper was a Revolutionary: a former corporal who had lost a leg in Spain, though it was generally believed among his customers that it happened during a fracas in a brothel rather than in a desperate affray with the enemy. But the smuggler had also explained that quite apart from the fact that it was cheap, clean and known for its good plain food, it was also just the place that Italian carpenters working at either of the shipyards would choose. More important still, no one would ever dream that a British naval officer and three of his men—spies, no less—would dare to stay under his roof. The regular twice-weekly inspections of inns carried out by gendarmes all over the country were cursory; at the sign of Le Chapeau Rouge, merely an excuse for a glass of wine.

Rossi had startled Louis by declaring, with a straight face, that a man owning an inn with that name must be an agent of the Vatican, not a Revolutionary, and Louis had begun a vociferous denial before Ramage, worried that their English might be overheard, explained Rossi's play on the fact that a Catholic cleric wore the
biretta,
“the red hat,” and someone with a warped sense of humour could claim the inn's name referred to that, not the Phrygian, or red cap that was as much part of the Revolution as the Tree of Liberty—and the guillotine.

Ramage had negotiated the ritual of getting a room with no trouble. He had led his three men into the smoky and smelly bar, waved cheerfully to the half a dozen men sitting round the table and made a face in the direction of a customer stretched out across three chairs, his head hanging down in the total surrender achieved only by the dead or the drunk.

The innkeeper had been surly until Ramage, in halting French heavily larded with fluent Italian, explained that he and his men wanted accommodation “for the many weeks” they would be working at the shipyard. As he spread passports and travel documents on the wine-stained counter in a gesture half-triumphant and half servile, as befitted the subject of a conquered state, he commented that Boulogne was indeed a long march from Genoa.

“Italy, eh? I know Spain well enough,” the Corporal had growled, as though doubtful of Italy's existence, “in fact I fought there, and lost a leg, too.” To underline the loss he banged the floor with his wooden stump. “Corporal Alfonse Jobert, once of the 14th RÉGiment. You served in the Army of Italy,” he said, as though the fact that a man came from Italy made it obvious, and when Ramage shook his head apologetically he began glancing at the passports and said more sympathetically, “Well, not everyone could have the honour of serving in the Army of Italy under General Bonaparte …”

He leafed through the papers with the uncertainty of an illiterate, and then reached under the bar for a pencil and a scrap of paper. “Write all your names down there—for the gendarmes. Four of you share one room, eh? Two francs a night for the room and use of linen. Breakfast one franc and supper two—each that is. Good plain nourishing fare, and wine is extra. No going to bed with your boots on, mind you, and no women in the room—I know what you foreigners are like. Anyway,” he added in a man-to-man voice, “there are plenty of ‘houses' round by the town hall.”

Ramage began writing, meekly assuring M. Jobert that they never slept with their boots on, not in a bed anyway, and that poor carpenters could not afford to entertain women in their room, even if they wanted to—not that they did, he said hastily, although the effect was almost spoiled by Rossi who, understanding enough French to follow the more interesting part of the conversation, muttered in Italian: “This capon wants
castrati,
not carpenters …”

Ramage managed to turn a laugh into a snarl: the innkeeper bullied him, and he, as leader of the band of carpenters, was expected to bully them. “Understand that, you miserable knots of wood,” he said in Italian, “no boots in bed, no women, and two francs for supper!”

Jackson and Stafford looked suitably impressed although they did not understand a word, and Rossi was quick-witted enough to mumble a stream of Italian signifying grateful acceptance of the terms.

Finding that his new lodgers were docile, the innkeeper picked up a candle and stumped across to the stairs, beckoning to them to follow, and as he led the way he told Ramage confidentially: “You can call me ‘the Corporal,' like the rest of my patrons do. They like the idea of a military man on the premises, you understand.”

Ramage thanked him, and agreed that it was indeed a comfort to have someone of his military experience in the house; particularly with the damned English so close.

The Corporal stopped as suddenly as if he had walked into a sword blade and turned towards Ramage so quickly he almost overbalanced, the candle tilting and dripping wax on the bare boards.
“Merde!
You've nothing to fear from
them.
Why, with the Army that the First Consul is preparing here, the Tricolour will be flying over the—” he paused for a moment, obviously at a loss, and then the memory of the Bastille helped him, “the Tower of London before we harvest this year's apples. Believe me,” he added, lowering one eyelid conspiratorially, “I know what I'm talking about. My brother—” he dropped his voice and spoke slowly, to make sure the foreigner understood every word, “my brother owns the inn which is patronized by Admiral Bruix's messenger; how about that, eh?”

Ramage looked unimpressed, anxious to learn more about the brother.

“Citizen Bruix,” the Corporal said heavily, “is the Admiral who commands the invasion flotilla—all the barges and gunboats and sloops and frigates that will carry the Army of England to—well, to England, of course. And he is stationed here in Boulogne, where he can keep an eye on things, and hurry your fellows along with your saws and adzes and planes—yes, and your hammers and nails, too.”

He paused dramatically, like an actor reaching the really dramatic speech in his act. “Well, once a week Citizen Bruix reports to the First Consul on the progress being made at Boulogne in building the invasion flotilla—yes, and at the other ports along this coast that are privileged to build the ships for the Great Invasion. Every Friday night, as soon as all the returns are in from the shipyards, Citizen Bruix sits down in his house—it is the great white house at Pont-de-Briques, just before you enter the town, you must have passed it—and draws up his report with great care. Then can you guess what happens?”

Ramage shook his head dumbly, hoping that the Corporal would not get tired of perching on the stairs on his one good leg before he had finished his revealing story.

“Ah—well, he seals it up and calls for his messenger. Not an ordinary messenger, though; this man is a highly trusted officer, a
lieutenant-de-vaisseau,
no less, attached to Citizen Bruix's staff. The officer produces his special leather bag, Citizen Bruix puts his report inside, and then he locks the bag with a special key—a key which never leaves Citizen Bruix's possession—and then the Lieutenant leaves for Paris before dawn next morning.”

“How do they open the bag in Paris?” Ramage asked innocently.

“With the duplicate,” the Corporal snorted contemptuously. “That's the point, the duplicate key is kept at the First Consul's headquarters. No matter where in the world he is,” the Corporal said grandly, “the duplicate key is always with him, ready to open the bag of despatches from Citizen Bruix's headquarters.”

Ramage nodded his head wonderingly. “The secret of success is careful preparation,” he said sententiously. “I always tell my men, measure the wood carefully before you begin to saw, and then you—”

“Quite, quite,” the Corporal interrupted impatiently. “Well, the Lieutenant leaves immediately for Paris on horseback—note that; no comfortable, slow coach, as in the days of the
ancien régime,
but a galloping horse. For speed, you understand; so that the First Consul shall always know exactly what is going on all over the Empire.

“Off he gallops, whatever the weather, and he rides like the wind until it is too dark to proceed—the First Consul expects the report to be waiting on his desk first thing on Monday morning,” the Corporal explained, oblivious to the contradiction of the timing implied. “In fact, the Lieutenant usually manages to reach Amiens, and that's where my brother has his inn. A very comfortable establishment, you understand; one well equipped to attend to the wants of Citizen Bruix's special messenger.

“The Lieutenant stays that night, dines well after such a ride, sleeps in his special room and at dawn he is off again. By nightfall he is in Paris with the report. So you can see why I know,” he added proudly. “About the Invasion, I mean.”

“Indeed I do,” Ramage said, awe in his voice.

“Ah well, you will be wanting to get to bed.” With that he stumped up the two remaining stairs, led the way along a short corridor and opened a door. He handed the candle to Ramage and stood back to let him pass. “I could tell some stories,” the Corporal said wistfully, “but you'll be tired.”

“Oh no,” Ramage said eagerly. “These men of mine are sleepy, and they can go to bed; but me—I would like the chance of talking with a man of affairs like yourself, and I have a few francs left to buy the wine.”

The Corporal winked and stumped back along the corridor. “I'll see you downstairs then,” he called back over his shoulder. “And tell your men not to worry about the English; they can sleep soundly in their beds. My brother already has plans to open an inn at Dover—how about that, eh?”

As soon as they were all in the room and the door was shut, Jackson whispered: “I couldn't follow any of that, sir, but from the way you was listening it sounded as though it was useful.”

“It was,” Ramage said cheerfully, “and there's more to come. I'm going downstairs to drink with him for an hour or two. You had better get some sleep, just in case we have to prowl around tomorrow night. Before you turn in just make sure you can hold the tools properly—” he gestured at the canvas bags Rossi and Stafford had just put down by the foot of one of the beds. “Try and look like professional carpenters—without cutting yourselves …”

He eyed the two large beds. “I seem to remember you snore, Rossi. What about you, Stafford?”

The Cockney shook his head sadly. “Me too, sir. Jacko does-n't—you'd best share a bed wiv ‘im, and I'll doss wiv Rossi.”

“Very well,” Ramage said, and took the passports and travel documents from his pocket. “You'd better look after these,” he said, handing them to Jackson. “Who knows, I might get as drunk as that fellow stretched out on the chairs.”

The American grinned. “That'll be the day, sir. You all right for money?”

Ramage took ten francs from the handful in his pocket and gave the rest to Jackson. “You might as well look after these, just in case.”

He sat down on the bed for a few minutes. A ghost of an idea had appeared while the Corporal was telling the story of the
Lieu-tenant-de-vaisseau's
overnight stay in Amiens. And “ghost,” he reflected, was the right description: the more he thought about it, the more he saw it had precious little shape or substance. Well, there was time enough for him to look closer …