Ramage And The Drum Beat (18 page)

‘I agree it’s not our business what goes on in France while they try to establish a better system of Government. That was long overdue. But how does declaring war on everyone else help? Now, still talking of liberty, they’ve over-run half of Europe. Since this – ah, liberation – has simply replaced the previous misrule with French misrule, I think we’re entitled to ask the Directory if one inch of the foreign lands captured by General Bonaparte has helped give France a better Government, put more bread in the French people’s larders, or helped the peoples of the foreign lands. From what I hear, Bonaparte charges them a pretty penny.’

A servant came on to the balcony and poured more brandy.

‘Since I’m here solely as the Consul of a neutral country, I suppose I should guard my tongue; but I keep on asking myself whether Spain has just entered the war against England of her own free will, or because France has given her no choice. I’m certain of one thing, though: the French consider the Spanish Navy as being virtually under the Directory’s command.’

Ramage felt the Consul had a good reason for saying that, and wondered how to discover what it was.

‘Surely, sir, the King of Spain is too proud a man to take orders from men like Barras and Carnot? Surely he isn’t at the Directory’s beck and call?’

‘He has no choice,’ the Consul said drily, and as he looked out across the Plaza del Roy. Ramage took the opportunity of pouring most of his brandy into the oleander tub. ‘No more choice than you’d have if a footpad stuck a pistol in your back on a dark night and demanded your purse. I suspect the Directory have been more responsible for Langara’s replacement than the King.’

‘Langara’s replacement?’ Ramage exclaimed. ‘I’ve heard nothing of that! Why, he’s been back in port only two days.’

‘Langara himself heard only when he arrived in Cartagena. In fact,’ the Consul could not help adding, the brandy getting the better of discretion, ‘I was in the curious position of knowing even before the admiral.’

Ramage nodded knowingly and said, ‘You obviously have influential friends in Madrid – and a fast messenger!’

Would the Consul fall into the trap and, in correcting him, reveal his source?

‘I have influential friends in Madrid, yes; but I don’t need my own messenger,’ he said enigmatically, then deliberately turned the conversation by adding, ‘Aren’t you interested to know the name of the new admiral, and why Langara was replaced?’

‘Of course, sir.’

‘Langara has gone to Madrid to be the new Minister of Marine: I assume to liven up the Navy. The new admiral is Don Josef de Cordoba.’

‘Has he arrived here yet?’

‘No, and I doubt if he’ll hurry himself.’

‘Why, isn’t the Fleet going to sail again soon?’

‘No – they’ve been given at least four weeks in which to refit, and from what I hear they need every minute of it. Anyway, I’m sure Admiral Cordoba won’t want to arrive here until his house is prepared for him!’

The Consul spoke ironically and Ramage laughed. ‘Yes – they must air the bed, polish the silver and stock the cellar. Is he going to be a neighbour of yours?’

‘No – he’s taken a house near the Castillo de Despenna Perros. But my dear young man, forgive me: your glass is empty!’

Again the servant was called, and again the glasses were filled.

‘Your health, Mr Gilray.’

Ramage raised his glass. The risk involved in calling on the Consul and revealing, by inference rather than a direct statement, that he was not simply a seaman, had so far been more than worthwhile. But he was curious to know if he’d been right in not risking telling the Consul his real name. If the old chap knew, would it lead to him sharing more of the information he was getting about the Spanish Fleet, or throwing Ramage out of the house?

‘You spoke of Cornwall yesterday, sir. You were born there?’

The Consul put down his glass and settled more comfortably in his chair. ‘Yes – I spent the first twenty years of my life there. Or most of it, anyway. My family were Bristol merchants and shipowners trading with America. My father went to Bristol once a week, otherwise we lived – well, in some comfort, at St Teath, while his partner, my uncle, lived in New York running affairs there. And then the War came… Soon we had lost all but one of our ships, and all our American market, so we could not do business elsewhere. Naturally we were quickly impoverished. Fortunately my uncle had foreseen much of what would happen – I fear my father tended to ignore his advice – and had begun other commercial enterprises in America which were not so badly affected by the war and increased considerably at Independence. He had no children, and I had no inheritance to come from my father…so I joined my uncle in New York.’

‘So you are an American citizen by accident, almost.’

‘Yes – but when I see a young Englishman like you, with your life of adventure, I think I envy you. Mainly, of course, I envy you your years!’ he added with a smile. ‘Yes, if I was twenty now, I think I’d like to be English again.’

Ramage knew at once there was nothing to be gained by revealing his real name; the Consul would help as much as he was inclined without that.

As if reading his thoughts, the Consul said quietly, ‘You still have your duty to do, I suppose, hence the – ah, gentle subterfuge. Are you alone?’

Ramage shook his head. ‘Mercifully, no.’

‘But with three men…’

‘Six – I have a Dane, a Genoese and a West Indian as well.’

The Consul laughed. ‘The world – in a microcosm – in arms against the Directory! These men are reliable? They won’t disappear in an emergency? After all, not one of them owes you any loyalty as far as the Spanish authorities are concerned, although you personally are safe enough while you have that – that, ah, Protection. Without it you could be shot as an English spy – you realize that?’

‘Yes, but I think they are loyal. I hope so. The one real American, Jackson, certainly is.’

‘I trust you’ll forgive this question,’ the Consul said, looking into his glass. ‘You were genuinely captured? I mean, it was an accident of war? Your Protection…?’

‘Or are the English deliberately planting spies in Cartagena?’ Ramage said with a grin. ‘No, I’m afraid it was all too much of an accident: we were caught by the whole Spanish Fleet: I have a Protection simply because one of the seamen had prudently acquired an extra one without the details filled in.’

‘A wise move. All the Protections are genuine documents, incidentally, although I noticed the details of yours were written in a different ink from the notary’s. I asked that man how much he paid for his merely to see his reaction. It was clear only one man was a genuine American.’

Again Ramage laughed and as the Consul joined in, looking up at the ceiling, Ramage emptied his glass into the tub. At this rate he’d soon be able to see the oleander growing – or swaying.

By the time Ramage left, to be back at the inn before curfew, the Consul was happily drunk and insistent that Ramage soon paid him another visit. All the men appeared to be asleep, but as Ramage crept to his bed he heard Jackson whisper, ‘Everything all right, sir?’

‘Yes – he’s friendly enough.’

The small amount of brandy Ramage had drunk was not enough to soften the mattress. He tried to sort out from the rambling conversation exactly what the Consul had revealed. Admiral Cordoba had been given command of the Fleet and a house was being prepared for him. Typically Spanish, that: too fond of comfort to live on board his flagship, even though it was the largest ship of war afloat. With four weeks to refit, the Fleet would be ready to sail, allowing for a few delays, by mid-January. The admiral wouldn’t be concerned with the refitting, so could arrive in early January.

The Consul’s source of information was not from friends at Court and he’d given a curious answer when Ramage had referred to ‘a fast messenger’. What had the old man said? – ‘I have good friends in Madrid, yes; but I don’t need my own messenger’. There’d been a slight and probably unwitting emphasis on ‘my own’, as though he relied on someone else’s messenger. He wasn’t relying on a spy close to Admiral Langara since he’d known of the replacement before Langara.

Ramage knew instinctively that the Consul had told him more than he intended and more than Ramage himself yet realized, and a little thought should reveal what it was. Not the Consul’s messenger, but someone else’s, and not a spy in Langara’s staff: that much was certain. So – how did the information come to Cartagena? Start at the beginning. Probably the King decided. He would tell the Minister of Marine that Cordoba should replace Langara. Normally the minister would write to Langara – and to Cordoba, if he was not in Madrid. That letter would be sent by messenger here to Cartagena and given to Langara, or kept here until he arrived with the Fleet. Of course! Sent by a messenger… ‘I don’t need my own messenger!’

Yet a messenger of the Ministry of Marine could not be in the Consul’s pay because messengers would change: there was obviously a regular messenger service between Madrid and the main ports, Cadiz, Cartagena and Barcelona, just as there was between London and Chatham, Portsmouth and Plymouth. It must be all of two hundred and fifty miles to Madrid from here, mostly across the province of Murcia, which was fairly mountainous, with a high range running parallel with the coast. The condition of Spanish roads was notorious, so the messenger would ride on horseback rather than by carriage, and would probably stay at least two nights at regular inns. Could the Consul have someone at one of the inns who abstracted letters from the messenger’s bag, opened, read and re-sealed them?

As the seamen sat on forms round the bare, grease-stained table eating a breakfast of hard bread and highly spiced blood sausage, Ramage found himself listening to Stafford’s cheerful chattering. A lad trained as a locksmith in Bridewell Lane and by chance swept up by a press gang and sent to sea was now sitting in a Spanish inn, armed with an American Protection, and just as at home as if the inn had been next door to his father’s shop. Yet had he signed the indentures or stayed at home the day – night, more likely – that the press gang was out, he might well have died of old age without going farther than Vauxhall Gardens, a mere five miles from his birthplace…

Well, Ramage thought as he bit savagely at the stale bread, at least Admiral Don Josef de Cordoba will have better bread to eat when he arrives, and there’ll probably be plenty of bustle near the Castillo de Despenna Perros as the house is being prepared.

Seeing Jackson had finished eating, he decided to take the American with him when he went to inspect Don Josef’s house. He asked the men what they had learned about the zebec’s rig and, satisfied they had studied it well, told them they could spend the day wandering round the town.

Don Josef’s house was an imposing building; one that befitted an admiral commanding such a large fleet. Painted white, with a flat roof, it was entirely surrounded by a covered walk formed of graceful arches, like a cloister, and standing in a couple of acres of gently sloping land, most of which was covered with trees and flowering shrubs. Even the gardener’s shed was made of stone, but, Ramage noted thankfully, unlike most large Spanish houses, it was surrounded by a low hedge, not a high wall.

From what he and Jackson could see in an apparently casual stroll past the house, the preparations for Don Josef’s arrival had hardly begun. Most of the windows had the green shutters closed, and except for a gardener hoeing round a double row of shrubs lining the road up to the front door, there was no one else in sight.

For four days Ramage and Jackson took a stroll past the house, and apart from the gardener slowly moving from one shrub to another, there was little to indicate that new residents were due. But on the fifth morning, a dull overcast day with a bite in the wind, showing the snow in the high mountains inland wanted to remind them of its presence, Ramage and Jackson found the great iron gates flung back, the wide, double front doors gaping, all the shutters latched back and the windows open, and signs of movement inside the house.

The gardener was still hoeing and had progressed to the shrubs just inside the gate. As the two men passed he looked up and painfully straightened his back. A shrug of his shoulders and a quick glance at the sky indicated his disapproval of whatever was going on, and Ramage called, ‘Looks as if you’ve finished the weeding just in time!’

The old man carefully propped his hoe against the shrub and walked over to them. Ramage guessed he must be nearer eighty than seventy: his eyes were such a light brown it seemed they had faded with the years, and although the face was lined it was contented, as if a lifetime sowing seeds, nurturing them, reaping their harvest of food or beauty and then, their life over, cutting them down and planting them again, had taught him a philosophy rarely understood by other men.

‘Yes, both rows finished, and now I have to trim them into shape – the sap has stopped rising now,’ he explained. ‘You must never trim them when the sap is rising.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Yes, never when the sap is rising. In the winter they sleep, and when they sleep they do not bleed their sap.’

‘Does the owner of the big house like a fine garden?’

‘Don Ricardo? Yes, both he and his wife love it, but they rarely come: they spend most of their days in Madrid, or wherever the Court is.’

‘But now they pay you a visit?’

‘Oh no – Don Ricardo has lent his house to someone: an admiral, they tell me. I don’t think an admiral will worry much about a garden – he’ll be used to the sea. But perhaps,’ he said hopefully, almost wistfully, ‘perhaps he’ll find the garden a change from always looking at the waves…’

Ramage only just stopped from commenting that Spanish admirals seemed to spend more time in Madrid than at sea, and said, ‘Everyone seems to be bustling at the house: the admiral is due soon?’

‘In a few days. Julio – the major-domo – has just heard the admiral is sending down some of his own furniture and silver from Madrid and it has made him angry: he regards it as a criticism of Don Ricardo. But a man likes to have his own things round him – I told Julio that, but he just blasphemes.’