Ramage & the Guillotine (35 page)

“No, no,” Ramage said modestly, “apart from boasting, I should also be telling lies if I confessed.”

“Very well,
Citoyen
Prosecutor, let us hear the evidence against this traitor!”

Ramage jumped up, the irons on his wrists clanking. “Don't call me a traitor! Why, you haven't heard a word of evidence yet!”

“You are unduly sensitive, M'sieur,” the judge said calmly. “You are a traitor—we know it and you know it, but there are certain formalities we have to go through. Continue,
Citoyen
Houdan, and ignore this traitor's interruptions.”

“When arrested at the Hotel de la Poste by members of the Committee of Public Safety,” Houdan said, “the accused di Stefano was unable to account for the whereabouts of his accomplice, who had a few moments earlier been detected in the room of a naval officer carrying despatches to the Ministry of Marine. The said accomplice was denounced by the daughter of the landlord of the Hotel de la Poste, who saw him.

“The accused di Stefano claimed to be an Italian citizen and a shipbuilder concerned with the Invasion Flotilla at Boulogne. He produced a passport and travel documents to prove this assertion and claimed that he had been recalled to Boulogne for further talks with the naval authorities there.

“I produce exhibits A, B and C which disprove these claims.

“Exhibit A is a letter from the Port Captain of Boulogne, duly notarized, which says that the accused has never had any discussions with the naval administration whatsoever. Exhibit B is an affidavit from Admiral Bruix saying that the naval Lieutenant in whose room di Stefano's accomplice was found is the regular courier carrying highly secret documents between the Ministry of Marine in Paris and the naval headquarters in Boulogne.

“Exhibit C—” he waved a sheet of paper which was liberally covered with red seals, “is an affidavit from the Ministry of Marine which says that among the despatches carried by the courier on this particular day was one from Admiral Bruix giving information upon which the whole future of the war depends. Information,” Houdan said, raising his voice aggressively, “whose value to the English would be beyond price.”

With that, Houdan passed the papers to the judge, who turned to the man on the right.
“Citoyen
Garlin, you will put forward the defence.”

For a few moments Ramage was dumbfounded: he had heard enough from Louis to know that the administration of justice in

France was crude, but he had not expected this. He stood up. “Surely the court will not hear my defence until it has heard the prosecution's attempt to prove the charges against me?”

Again the judge smiled. “You were not paying attention. The charges have been read and the prosecution has proved their truth. You—”

“Witnesses,” Ramage said angrily, “why, not even the landlord's daughter—”

“The witnesses have been heard,” the judge said, picking up the papers which Houdan had passed over to him. “Who can doubt the word of the Port Captain of Boulogne, Admiral Bruix, and a senior official of the Ministry of Maxine? And do you deny that the landlord's daughter saw your man in the Lieutenant's room?”

“But no one's proved I had anything to do with it! The prosecution has to prove I was trying to read the despatches!”

“Weren't you?” the judge asked quizzically.

“Of course I was not. I would have needed supernatural powers to know that the Lieutenant was carrying papers of any sort, and considerably more than supernatural powers to have known that on Saturday night he was carrying a despatch which you say is ‘beyond price.' Apart from all that I have absolutely no interest in such things.”

The judge rapped the table impatiently with a gavel. “You must not interrupt the court's proceedings with all these irrele-vancies:
Citoyen
Garlin will make your defence.”

“But I haven't spoken a word to this man!” Ramage exclaimed. “He knows nothing about me—why, he has never seen me before!”

Garlin smiled slyly. “The accused has little understanding of the judicial process,” he said to the judge, who nodded and turned to Ramage.

“Your defence counsel is correct, and for your information
Citoyen
Garlin has defended hundreds of criminals who—”

“Has he ever defended an innocent man?”

The judge looked embarrassed and then angry. “Of course,” he said peremptorily. “Now be silent and listen to your defence.”

“Ah yes,” Garlin said. “The defence acknowledges the impossibility of providing a translator into the Italian language at such short notice. Regarding the charges, the accused accepts that he is unable to explain the whereabouts of his accomplice, and he further admits he was in possession of a forged passport and travel documents …”

Ramage knew he was trapped so completely that any protest would be a waste of breath. Providing there had been no hitch, Jackson would have arrived in Folkestone by now, found Lord Nelson and delivered the report. After dawn tomorrow there would be no need to play for more time. On the other hand, there was no need to rush things today: although he was understandably anxious to hurry through all this nonsense, saving ten minutes here only brought him ten minutes nearer the guillotine …

Garlin coughed, as if he realized that Ramage's attention was wandering. “The accused admits that in the absence of his foreman it is impossible to prove his innocence as far as entering the room of the Lieutenant is concerned—” he waited, as if expecting an interruption from Ramage, but none came. “The prosecution has proved the charges concerning the passport and travel documents, so the accused can only ask for the court's clemency. As to the third charge, the accused can only state that, since the seal on the Admiral's despatch was intact when it arrived in Paris, obviously he did not open it.”

Ramage looked up and stared at the judge, who looked back at him with unblinking eyes and said: “The court will adjourn until tomorrow morning to consider the verdict.”

Ramage stood up and bowed. “I assume it is customary to consider an accused man's guilt without hearing his defence.”

“The court has just heard your defence,” the judge said. “It was very ably stated by
Citoyen
Garlin.”

“Citoyen
Garlin made an interesting statement,” Ramage said contemptuously. “He was obviously speaking for himself, since what he said had nothing to do with my case and was certainly made without consultation with me.”

“The court is satisfied,” the judge said, unperturbed, and signalled to the guards, each of whom took an arm and swung Ramage round and marched him out. Before the door shut behind him, Ramage heard the three men laughing among themselves.

Ramage woke next morning with a curious sense of relief: Wednesday had arrived at long last, the day by which Louis and the rest of them should be safely out of the way. Now he could seize the first opportunity to escape that offered itself. That opportunity could only arise outside the cell, or at least at a time when the door was open. He had already missed his first chance—he had been sound asleep when the jailer slid the breakfast tray on to the floor.

He rubbed his chin: four days' growth and it was beginning to feel like a scrubbing brush: all appeals for water to wash in had been brushed aside and he felt filthy. He ate the food and left the tray beside the cot: that meant the jailer had to open the door wide enough to shout at him to bring the tray to the doorway. That might lead to something …

He was still daydreaming, imagining Lord Nelson in his cabin reading the copy of Admiral Bruix's report, when suddenly the bolts slammed back and the door was flung open. One guard came in and covered him with the pistol while two more once again locked irons on to his wrists. They were the same guards as the day before but, Ramage noted sourly, they were now clean-shaven and their uniforms were much smarter, as though it was Sunday. They waited a minute or two and then called down the corridor. A fourth man appeared, holding a musket. “We're ready,” one of them said and, preceded by the musket, Ramage was marched out of the cell.

After going along the corridors and past the room where his so-called trial had been held, Ramage was surprised to see that they had reached the front door of the police station. As a sentry swung the doors open to allow them through, Ramage looked right across the square to the guillotine. Suddenly he was frightened. Would they continue marching to the guillotine platform? Was that why the court had laughed?

The idea was so strong in Ramage's mind that he was startled when one of the guards bumped into him and then swung him round, so that they marched to the left, along the side of the square. He just had time to see the word MAIRIE carved in the keystone of the doorway of the next building before he was bundled inside and along a corridor.

The building smelled musty, and he was just cursing that any attempt to bolt from his guards while in the street outside would have resulted in a pistol ball between the shoulder blades when he realized that he could hear the distant murmur of many voices. Suddenly the leading guard with the musket stopped and flung open a door.

The murmur became louder, and then he was being marched into a large hall in which a hundred or more people sat on forms. Like the audience at a theatre, they were all facing a raised platform where three men—the trio who had formed yesterday's tribunal—sat at a table covered by a large but faded Tricolour. In front of the table was a box on which a raggedly dressed, unshaven man was balanced, his hands manacled, a gendarme at either side.

Ramage's escort jerked him to a stop and, as he realized that he had been brought to some sort of ceremony, the man on the box, with a suddenness which took the gendarmes by surprise, knelt with his manacled hands held upwards in a gesture of supplication, and almost immediately began a terrible wail.

As the audience began to jeer, the judge in the centre of the trio at the table made a contemptuous gesture of dismissal, and the guard on either side of the prisoner tugged at his arms.

“Mercy!” the man shrieked. “In the name of God, mercy—my wife—”

“You appeal to God, do you!” the judge bellowed angrily. “Very well, let's see if He shows you mercy, because no traitor deserves any from the Republic!”

The man, knees sagging and barely able to support himself, was dragged out through a door on the far side of the hall. Ramage was just bracing himself to be marched to the box when he saw another prisoner, who had been kept against the wall farther down the hall, being pushed towards the table.

The man was so frightened that, unbalanced by having his hands manacled, the gendarmes had to hoist him up and then hold him in position.

“Jean-Baptiste le Brun!” the judge thundered, and Ramage watched the audience. Most of them were grinning, teeth bared and sitting forward on their forms. All of them were enjoying it—with the exception of a white-faced woman sitting near the back: she was now standing, tears streaming down her face, gripping her hands and moving her head from side to side.

“The court has heard the charges against you, and your defence, and the sentence of this court is—death.”

The audience waited a moment—to Ramage it seemed they wanted the man to scream, or collapse—and when they saw him turn to get down from the box they lost interest and began gossiping. The wretched man had disappointed them; Ramage sensed that if there were many more performances like that they would leave and go to the nearest café.

Once down from the box the man braced himself, shaking off the hands of the gendarmes. Then he stopped and turned to the crowd and waved to the weeping woman. It was a poignant gesture; all a condemned man could say to the woman he loved. Ramage knew it was all he would want to signal to Gianna if she was there. And perhaps he would wave to her when his time came; it would puzzle all the ghouls—there would be scores of people round the platform of the guillotine—and they would glance over their shoulders to see who he was waving at, never guessing that she was on the other side of the Channel.

The gendarmes were pushing him now, and he braced himself and strode down towards the box, at the last moment walking a little faster than the guards so that he could jump on to the box without their help.

He held the judge's eyes and the man's lips curled into a sneer.

“Gianfranco di Stefano,” he said softly, as though savouring the words, “the court has heard the charges against you, and your defence—” he lingered over the words, as if to provoke an outburst from Ramage, “and the sentence of this court is—death.”

Still Ramage held the man's eyes, thinking to himself: so this is what it is like … far less frightening than staring into the muzzles of the enemy's guns.

A moment before the guards tugged at his arms, he jumped sideways and down, turned to the door and walked out, shoulders back, head erect, not too quickly, but just fast enough for his guards, all of whom were short men, to have to scurry to keep up with him.

As the door was shut behind him he realized that there had been no jeering. He almost laughed when he reflected that every one of them in that hall, judge, prosecutor, defence counsel and audience, had been cheated: they thought they had sentenced to death an Italian shipbuilder (indeed, the audience did not know even that much: to them a man with an Italian name had been sentenced to death), whereas in fact they had caught a British naval officer, who, despite the affidavit from their own Ministry of Marine that the seal on Admiral Bruix's despatch was untouched, had read the despatch and passed the information it contained to Lord Nelson.

There seemed to be a certain cachet about being condemned to death. For a start, two guards now brought each meal, one covering him with a pistol while the other carried the tray. It was as though they too knew that the only way of getting out of the cell was by overpowering a guard. Yet they put the tray down carefully, instead of giving it the bang that spilled the soup.