"Ramage's Devil" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pope Dudley)

CHAPTER TWO

She was lying on her side with her back to him, and for a moment hemarvelled that the female body had been so shaped that in this position it fitted the male so perfectly. But sleeping alone in a swinging cot at sea - for him that would from now on be an almost unbearable loneliness. Quite why horses should now be galloping with harness jingling he did not know, and he opened his eyes to find the first hint of dawn had turned the room a faint grey.

Horses? Harness? Now, as he shook the sleep cobwebbing his head, he heard shouted commands coming from the centre of the ch#226;teau; from the wide steps leading up to the front door.

He slid out of bed and walked to the window, cursing the coldness of the marble floor although too impatient to find slippers.

A dozen men on horseback, blurred figures in the first light. Perhaps more. Now he could just distinguish that they were dismounting. Some were hurrying up the steps, sword scabbards clinking on the stone, while a single man held all the reins.

One man was making violent gestures at the great double door - presumably pounding on it with his fist. Then he heard more horses and another five or six men cantered past the window towards the others. Soldiers. Even in the faint light it was possible to distinguish them - and only cavalry would have so many horses.

She was standing behind him now; he could feel her breasts pressing into his shoulder blades. 'What is it?' she whispered. 'It's so cold. Why aren't you wearing a robe? You'll get a chill.'

'French cavalry,' he said briefly. 'Quickly, dress in riding clothes. Don't try and light a lamp.'

He hurried across the room and pushed their two trunks so that, from the door, they were hidden by the armoire and commode. He then bundled up the clothes they had been wearing the previous evening and which they had been too tired to do more than drape over the chairs, and pushed them under the bed.

'What are you doing?'

'Hurry, darling. Something's happened and these soldiers aren't here on a search for Army deserters. They look more like an escort for Jean-Jacques or me. The second group was leading a riderless horse.' 'You don't think ... ?'

'The mayor of Landerneau may be trying to keep his furniture by telling the pr#233;fet some tale. Don't forget Jean-Jacques is very vulnerable - he's only recently returned from exile.'

She shivered as she sorted out underwear. 'And he has the notorious Captain Lord Ramage staying in his house.'

'That can't be a crime,' Ramage said as he pulled up his trousers, but his voice was doubtful, so that what was intended as a statement sounded like a question. 'Anyway, whatever they're up to I can't think the soldiers know anything about us. One spare horse ... that's for Jean-Jacques.'

'The officer in charge can easily leave two of his troopers behind, or have two of Jean-Jacques' horses saddled up for us. Or make us walk.'

'Let's rely on them not knowing we're here!'

'The servants,' Sarah said, ignoring her husband's attempts to reassure her, 'can they be trusted? Will they tell the soldiers we are here?'

'If you hurry up, we won't be here, darling,' Ramage said, reaching for his jacket. 'We'll be hiding in another room, so if the French soldiers search our suite they won't find us.'

'Dearest,' she whispered, 'do up my buttons.' She turned her back to him so that he could secure her coat. By now, he noticed, it was getting appreciably lighter. He had been thinking that the first cavalry had passed only a couple of minutes ago, but he realized it was now nearer five.

'There - now, my lady, hurry up or -'

He stopped and listened to the gentle but persistent tapping at the door. Tap, tap, tap - and then a hissed 'Milord ... milord...'

He recognized the voice: Jean-Jacques' valet Gilbert, a tiny, almost wizened Breton who had gone to England to share his master's exile and then returned after the Treaty of Amiens.

Ramage hurried to the door and the moment he had opened it the valet slipped through and shut it again.

'Ah, milord - and milady, of course - you are dressed.' Gilbert glanced round the room, noted the trunks and the lack of clothing and toilet articles lying about. 'You are prepared, then: this suite looks deserted - they will say the English have flown, if indeed they know you are supposed to be here. Quickly, please follow - I take you to a small room where you must hide.'

'But what -'

'I explain in a few minutes, milord: first, to safety!'

The valet shut the window ('No Frenchman would have a window open,' he explained) and they followed him out of the room, along the corridor away from the main part of the ch#226;teau, down a staircase where it was so dark they had to grip the rail and feel for the next step before moving, until finally the valet opened a door.

'An old storeroom, milord,' he explained. 'No one would seek you here, and there's a side door leading into one of the gardens.'

He extended a hand to Sarah. 'There is a small step up, milady. I am afraid there are simply these old packing cases, but we hope you will only have to wait an hour or two before returning to your suite.'

Ramage felt like a piece of flotsam swirling round rocks at the mercy of random waves, but before he had time to ask, the valet said: 'I have a message from the Count, milord, and some information I - er, well, I happened to hear. I took the liberty of listening beyond the door.

'The message from the Count is that he thinks France is again at war with Britain and you must escape. That was all he could say before the cavalry officer and his men came in to arrest him.'

'But you heard more?'

'Yes, sir, it is indeed war. The most important thing the cavalry officer said as he arrested the Count - on direct orders from Paris - was that Lord Whitworth, your ambassador in Paris, had left the capital on the twelfth of this month. He said this was close to a declaration of war. Then on the seventeenth the British authorities had detained all French and Dutch ships in their ports and issued commissions to privateers.'

He paused a moment, pulling at his nose as though that would stimulate his memory. 'Yes, then on the next day, the eighteenth, the British declared war on France and on the nineteenth ships of the Royal Navy captured some French coasting vessels off Audierne - almost in sight of Brest and, of course, in French waters.

'Then, according to the cavalry officer, on the twenty-third Bonaparte issued an order to detain British men between the ages of eighteen and sixty who are liable to serve in the British Army or Navy.'

Ramage glanced at Sarah. It was now the twenty-fifth of May. Britain and France had been at war for exactly a week. Yet yesterday when the two of them spent much of the day out on Pointe St Mathieu there had been no sign of police guarding the roads, no sign of a blockade; not a frigate on the horizon.

The valet seemed to have more to say, but whatever it was, he was not enjoying the prospect.

'Well, Gilbert, is that all?'

'No, milord, I regret it is not. You appreciate that my purpose in listening at the door was to obtain information to pass to you...'

'I am sure you were doing exactly what the Count would wish you to do, Gilbert, and we are grateful.'

'Well, milord, the cavalry officer stressed that the Count was being arrested on the orders of Bonaparte but as the result of information laid by the Countess - the former Countess, I mean. And she had told the authorities that he was likely to have English guests staying with him. That was why I wanted you to leave your suite quickly.'

'But they'll look in the trunks...'

Gilbert shook his head. 'I doubt it, sir: the suite looked unoccupied when I came to you. Not only that, it is hardly where you would expect to find guests...' There was no mistaking Gilbert's horror at the choice of rooms forced on the Count by the Revolution. 'The Count's own suite has even less furniture. Anyway, the soldiers will start their search in the kitchen -'

'The kitchen?'

'Oh yes, milord, straight to the kitchen - to look for wine. I sent Edouard there at once to make sure there was plenty readily available. Once the officer has taken the Count away and the soldiers start searching, they will be half drunk. I do not think it will be a careful search.'

'They were taking the Count away at once?' Sarah asked.

'The officer gave him ten minutes to dress and pack a small bag, milady.'

Ramage was conscious that what he did from now on would govern whether or not he was marched off to a French prison as a d#233;tenu, but he was much more frightened of Sarah's possible fate. A selfish thought slid in before he had time to parry it: being married did indeed mean you had given a hostage to fortune. Now he could understand Lord St Vincent's dictum, that an officer who married was lost to the Service. Quite apart from Sarah's own safety in a case like this (which was admittedly unusual), would a happily married officer risk his own life in battle with the same recklessness as a bachelor, knowing that he now had something very special to lose? And if he had children...

He looked up at Gilbert. 'What will they do to the Count? Guillotine him?'

'It is possible, milord, but - if I may speak freely -1 think the Countess, the former Countess rather, will probably make sure his life is saved. I thought they were happily married - until the Revolution, when she became caught up in the fever. Transportation is likely -1 believe many Royalists who were not executed were sent to Cayenne, which I'm sure you know is a tiny island in the Tropics off the coast of French Guinea, in South America. Priests, masons, monarchists, indeed anyone out of favour with the Republic, are sent to Cayenne.'

'What do you suggest we do now? Obviously we want to get back to England.'

Gilbert nodded cautiously. 'The first priority is to avoid you falling into the Republic's hands. The second is to get you back to England. If you will excuse me, I will go to see what news Edouard has. The soldiers will have been talking freely to him, I am sure; a good revolutionary always assumes a servant is downtrodden and sympathizes with him.'

With that Gilbert seemed to vanish through the door, but Ramage realized the man was so deft and light-footed he could open a door, go through and close it again, with less fuss than most people reach for the knob.

Once they were alone, Sarah smiled affectionately and took his hand. 'We should have been married a month or so earlier, then we would have been back home by now,' she said. 'Or had a shorter honeymoon. Anyway, now you don't have to worry about convincing Lord St Vincent not to pay off any more ships.'

'No, it looks as though the Cabinet at last became suspicious of Bonaparte. Withdrawing our ambassador from Paris must have startled Bonaparte, who will have been full of his own cleverness in getting us to sign that absurd treaty last year. Now we've suddenly slapped his hand. No more than that, though, considering the size of his Army.'

'You'll have to fight him at sea, then!' Sarah said cheerfully, and then could have bitten her tongue for the second time in less than twelve hours.

'I'm hiding here,' Ramage said bitterly, 'and someone else is commissioning the Calypso in Chatham. He's the luckiest captain in the Navy if the men haven't been paid off yet, because he gets the finest ship's company.'

Suddenly she had an inspiration. 'That means you are lucky. He will keep the men together, all ready for you to resume command when you escape.'

'Providing I escape and providing the Admiralty are prepared to turn out a captain for me,' he protested. 'Neither seems very likely at the moment.'

'If you are captured - I'm sure we won't be - they'll release you on parole. Then you can make for the coast and steal a boat, or something.'

He laughed sourly. 'My love, you have a simple approach to it all but the Admiralty don't share it. Parole, for instance.'

'What is difficult about that?'

'Well, giving your parole means giving your word of honour not to escape, and you are freed to live outside the prison. You pay for your board and lodging, of course.'

'There's bound to be a "but", though,' she said gloomily.

'There certainly is. If you break your parole and escape to England, the Admiralty don't welcome you. In fact they might send you back. They certainly won't employ you.'

'Why ever not?'

'Because you gave the French your word of honour and you broke it.'

'But there is a war on! The French killed their king. They guillotined thousands of innocent people.'

'True, and probably will go on executing more, but the Admiralty's view is that you don't have to give your parole. If you do, then you must keep your word.'

'So what on earth can a captured officer do?'

'Refuse parole. That means he stays in prison, but it also means that if he can escape and get to England, he really is free and can expect to be employed again.'

'Do the Admiralty actually check?'

'I presume so. There's a French commissioner in London, you know.'

'Not when we're at war, though.'

'Oh yes. He's a fellow called M. Otto, Commissioner for the Exchange of Prisoners. Every now and again we exchange Frenchmen we've captured for an equal number of Britons that the French have taken.'

'Let's not talk about prisoners,' Sarah said. 'We'll get out of this somehow. Gilbert - we can trust Gilbert. I fear for Jean-Jacques, though.'

He shook his head. 'No, I think Gilbert is right: that damned wife, or whatever she is, won't want him executed: it wouldn't do her reputation any good. The widow of a traitor. Transportation - yes, he could be sent to Cayenne, and that's one of the unhealthiest places in the world. But death there is not certain. Not as certain as being strapped down to the guillotine here.'

'And what about us? I don't want to sound selfish but we are foreigners in the middle of the enemy camp!' Her smile was wry; he was pleased to see that his new wife neither showed fear nor attempted to blame him for the fact they were caught in a trap.

'When Gilbert comes back we'll hear if the French authorities know we're here and if they're looking for us. I don't think Jean-Jacques registered us anywhere or reported to the authorities that we were staying with him. I think he should have done - at the pr#233;fet's office, perhaps - but he wouldn't bother because he thought it was not the pr#233;fet's business whom he chose to entertain.'

'That attitude is all right in England, but I can't see Bonaparte and his merry men agreeing.'

'No, but although the French know the names of every foreigner who has entered the country, unless they have their present addresses, it doesn't help. Remember,' he said bitterly, 'if the French are arresting all the visitors, it means they are breaking their word.'

'In what way?'

'Well, everyone visiting France has to get a passeport from the French. That's a guarantee, a document permitting the foreigner to pass through the ports of France and travel about the country. Now, having granted these passeports, it seems Bonaparte is breaking his word.'

Sarah nodded but said with casual sincerity: 'Yes, that's true, but anyone - and that includes us - who trusts a man like Bonaparte or the government of France cannot complain if he is cheated. "Honour" is a word that the French deleted from their vocabulary when they executed the king. Any nation that cheerfully executes a whole class of its people for just being born into that class is wicked and mentally sick. A Frenchman could be born an aristocrat but be poorer than the local gravedigger, yet the aristocrat was dragged off to the guillotine, and the gravedigger went along to cheer the executioner.'

'We shouldn't have come here on our honeymoon,' Ramage said wryly.

'Where else? Prussia isn't very appealing. The Netherlands and Italy - Bonaparte will be arresting all foreigners there. Spain - who knows. Anyway, we are really learning something about the French.'

She sat down on one of the packing cases. 'What happens if the French soldiers find our trunks in the suite?'

' Well, they won't find us. Don't forget they came at dawn, so they'll assume we've escaped.'

'That seems too good to be true,' she warned.

'No, it's obvious when you think about it.'

'Where do we go now? This storeroom is rather bare!'

'Back to our suite eventually, because it'll probably be the safest hiding place in France.'

'Our suite? But...'

'"It's been searched by the cavalry, so the rosbif and his wife can't be there",' he said, imitating the precise speech of an officer reporting to a senior. 'They'll be searching everywhere eIse for miles around.'

There was a faint tapping at the door and Ramage opened it. Gilbert slid in, a reassuring smile on his face. He bowed to Sarah.

'You must find that box uncomfortable, milady.' As soon as Sarah reassured him, he turned to Ramage and took a deep breath.

'Edouard used his ears and eyes carefully, milord, and he acted as a simpleton so that he could ask silly questions - and sprinkled some shrewd questions among them.

'Anyway, it means this. As far as the Count is concerned, because France is now at war with England again and the Count spent all those years in England, he is regarded as an enemy of the state. He was denounced and the authorities in Paris sent orders to the chef d'administration in Rennes to arrest him.'

'Where is he being confined?'

'Ah, that's my next piece of information. He will be confined in the Ch#226;teau in Brest, the naval headquarters. He and many others not yet brought in.'

'What others?'

'Landowners like the Count who returned from exile, people who in the past year or so have fallen out of favour with Bonaparte or the local pr#233;fet or even a local chief of police. Priests who have spoken out too boldly. People to whom some of those in authority owe money...'

'Why the Ch#226;teau at Brest - to be near a convenient ship?'

Gilbert nodded. 'They will be transported to Cayenne as soon as a ship (a frigate, the cavalry captain said) can be prepared.'

'So the Count had how long - a year? - back in his home...'

'Eleven months, sir. Now, concerning you. The officer knew you had been staying here but Edouard was naturally a great supporter of the Republic and told the officer that you had received a warning yesterday evening and fled, leaving your trunks behind. This was confirmed by the Count, who was still in the room.

'The Count pretended anger - he said you were under the protection of passeports issued by Bonaparte. The cavalry officer just laughed and produced a handful of papers and read them to the Count - I think because he had some idea that the authorities could blame him for your escape.

'Anyway, the first was a letter from the pr#233;fet at Rennes addressed to you by name, milord, telling you of a decree dated a few days ago. It enclosed a copy of the decree that made you a prisoner of war, from the second Prairial in the eleventh year of the Republic, which is a few days ago. The decree was signed by the First Consul, and with Bonaparte's signature was that of M. Marot, the Secretary of State.'

'And her ladyship?'

'No mention of wives, milord. Edouard had the impression that the letter was simply a copy of one being sent to all foreign males. He thought that women and children were not affected.'

Ramage looked squarely at the little man. 'What it means now, Gilbert, is that you and Edouard and the rest of the staff are harbouring enemies of the Republic. You could be guillotined. We must go.'

'I assure you Edouard and I are true patriots, milord; we are not harbouring enemies of the state because this house has already been searched carefully by a company of cavalry which had ridden specially from Rennes.'

Ramage held the man's shoulders. 'Gilbert, thank you. But there is too much risk for you.'

'Sir, please stay. The Count would wish it. England gave me a home, as well as the Count, when we were refugees. And there is no risk now for you or us: the house has been searched. And we are already making inquiries about their intentions for the Count and to see if it is possible to hire a fishing boat to get you to England, or even the Channel Islands.'

'Who is making inquiries?' Ramage asked.

"The second cook and her husband, Louis, a gardener, always take a cabriolet, how do you call it -?'

'A gig.'

'- ah yes, a gig. Well, they go into Brest each week to buy fish and other things. The gendarmes at the Landerneau Gate - that's where everyone has to show papers when entering or leaving Brest -'

Ramage was curious and interrupted: 'Is it possible to get into Brest without papers? No one asked us.'

'But of course, milord. You rode across the fields without knowing. Otherwise you simply leave the road half a mile before the town gates and go round them through the fields. There are gates on the road but no wall round the town. The risk now the war has begun is being stopped later somewhere in the town by a patrol of gendarmes.'

Ramage nodded and glanced at Sarah, a glance noticed, by Gilbert. 'Ah yes, when it comes to getting you to the fishing boat, you dress as a French married couple going to market - or travelling to visit relatives or looking for work. You will have documents -'

'What documents?' Ramage asked.

'Genuine documents, I assure you, milord. You will have French names of course, and your French accent, of Paris, will need modifying. Thickening, to that of the Roussillon or Languedoc, for instance: you know both areas. We need to choose somewhere specific, a long distance from here - where if the pr#233;fet in Brest wants to check, he knows it would take three or four weeks, so he is unlikely to bother. But if it was Paris' - he shrugged his shoulders expressively - 'a courier leaves for there daily.'

'You have been giving it all careful thought!'

'When we returned from England,' the valet admitted, 'I did not share the Count's optimism for the future in France. The Count thought we would have many years of peace. For myself, I thought the Treaty was like two prize fighters having a rest during a bout. I advised the Count not to leave England, but alas, the nostalgia for this ch#226;teau overcame the love he had developed for the house in Kent. Now I fear the Count will travel the road to Cayenne...'

'And you - what will happen to you?' Sarah asked anxiously.

'I took the precaution of supplying myself with papers - and of course, like Edouard and Louis and the rest of the Count's staff, it is well known how deeply we hate the aristos!We work for them in order to eat!'

'And your stay in England - how will you explain that?'

'Oh yes, the Count threatened me so I had to go with him. The gendarmes are always most sympathetic with those who have suffered at the hands of the aristos... They even congratulated me on persuading the Count to return to France at the peace...I think even then the pr#233;fet knew the Count (with many scores of other exiles) was walking into Bonaparte's trap.'

Gilbert then struck the palms of his hands together like a pastry-cook dusting off flour. 'We must cheer ourselves. I think it is safe for you to return to your suite and I will serve you breakfast. It will be safer if you eat there - not all my plans have worked.'

Intrigued, Ramage asked: 'What went wrong?'

'The cavalry suddenly arriving. I had paid out a good deal of money to make sure we had enough warning to allow the Count to escape.'

'I should think the pr#233;fet received the orders about the Count from Paris during the night,' Ramage said. 'As soon as he read them he sent out the cavalry and at the same time hoped to pick us up.'

Gilbert nodded slowly, considering the idea and finally agreed. 'That would account for it. I do not like to think that I was cheated - or betrayed.'