Ramage & the Rebels (34 page)

He felt a tap on the shoulder and looked up to find her father standing beside him. “We'll put her on the settee. It will soon pass.”

By the time she was sitting down and obeying Ramage's instructions to breathe deeply, the colour was coming back to her face and her hands were exploring her hair, in case some strands had escaped. Aitken had walked the three lieutenants to a large painting on the wall which showed a group of people skating on a frozen lake, and now the four lieutenants, perspiring from both the tropical heat and the situation, examined the ice and the surrounding snow with great concentration.

Van Someren pointed to a door Ramage had not previously noticed. “To the balcony,” he said. “Perhaps you would be kind enough to take Maria outside, for some fresh air.”

Outside it was cool; darkness had fallen but there was still a gentle breeze from the south-east. A few hundred yards away the sea slapped lazily on the beach and over Waterfort the stars of Orion's Belt waited for the Southern Cross to appear.

As Ramage shut the door she walked over to the elaborate tracery of the balcony rail and standing with her back to it faced Ramage as he came towards her. She was silhouetted against the millions of stars that can only be seen from the Tropics, and as Ramage approached she held out her hands. He walked into her arms and as he held her closely he was pleased that she followed the French fashion: the thin cloth of her dress hid her body from the eye but did nothing to conceal it from the touch.

“I am sorry,” she whispered. “I did not understand. Your officers—they seem so young …”

“They are,” Ramage said wryly. “Aitken is almost my age.”

“But to me—” she took his right hand. “This afternoon, only a few hours ago, this hand killed a man.”

“If it had not, that man would have blown me in half—here,” he said roughly, pressing her hand against his stomach. “That's where the muzzle of his gun was.”

She shuddered and traced the shape of his hand with her fingers. “All this killing—it never ends.”

“There's been very little of it out here,” Ramage said. His voice was low but harsh; he remembered only too well the guillotine he had seen in every town square during one brief foray into France; he knew only too well what “The Terror” had done to anyone disagreeing with the Revolution. “The islands have escaped up to now. You have no idea of the battles being fought in Europe.”

“Jules tells me,” she said.

“Jules?”

“My—last year my father announced my engagement to the First Lieutenant of the
Delft
frigate. He is due here. My father hoped his men would dispose of the rebels.”

“Why has he been delayed?”

“I don't know. No explanation has come from the Netherlands.”

Ramage could not see her features clearly in the darkness, but she did not sound like an infatuated young woman grieving over her future husband's absence, and “my father announced my engagement” was a curious phrase.

She kissed him again and then traced his features with her fingers, as though trying to learn his face by touch. “Lord Ramage,” she murmured. “And you are not yet married? So handsome, so brave—and, if you are a lord, no doubt so rich,” she added in a gently bantering voice which asked questions which Ramage had no intention of answering.

“The Navy leaves me no time to do anything but go to sea.”

“Ah—but you are in port now.”

“And you see what happens!”

They moved apart as they heard the door handle rasping, and then the Governor bustled out, followed by the lieutenants. “How are you now, my dear?” he asked the girl, and when she assured him she was recovered he said: “I think your mother would like to see you: some trouble with the kitchen staff I think.”

As soon as she left he said to Ramage: “Perhaps we should discuss plans before dinner; then we can enjoy our food without distraction.”

When Ramage agreed the Governor said: “Should we talk here? We run no risk of servants hearing too much, and I imagine you want your officers present.”

For the next fifteen minutes van Someren told them all he knew of the rebels' activities, how far they had advanced, and how long—unless something was done quickly—before the rebels reached Amsterdam. At the end of the recital he asked Ramage: “So what do you propose doing?”

“Thinking about it at dinner, Your Excellency.”

“But you must have some idea, surely?”

Ramage shrugged his shoulders, and then realized that van Someren could not see him in the darkness. “There are many things we could try to do. But the fact is I have about one hundred and fifty seamen and forty Marines to deal with perhaps five hundred men who know the island well.”

“This I know, but surely …”

“I'm sorry, Your Excellency.”

“But—well, I must insist. I am the Governor of the island and I have surrendered it to you. I insist that you defend Amsterdam, and I insist on knowing—knowing now—how you propose to do it.”

Ramage did not feel particularly angry; in fact he more than understood the Governor's concern. But like his daughter earlier, van Someren was talking without considering the facts.

“I think, Your Excellency, we ought to go down to dinner.”

“Captain Ramage,” van Someren said sharply, “I insist on knowing.” Clearly he was not going to move from the balcony, and the mosquitoes were beginning to trouble Ramage.

“Your Excellency,” Ramage said quietly, “yesterday you surrendered this island to me. We signed all the necessary documents. Since then I have continued to address you as “Your Excellency;” you have been treated as though you were the Governor …”

Would he need to say more? Van Someren was quick to answer: “But I
am
the Governor!”

“Forgive me,” Ramage said almost dreamily, “how can you, a Dutch subject, a citizen of the Batavian Republic, be the Governor of an island which, since yesterday afternoon, belonged to Britain?”

Van Someren was silent for several seconds and Ramage heard two or three of the lieutenants shuffle their feet as they realized the significance of what their Captain had said but were far from sure what van Someren was going to do.

“Again, I must apologize,” the Dutchman said. “You are of course quite correct. You are, I suppose, the new governor—and naval and military commander.”

“More important for the moment,” Ramage said dryly, “I am your guest for dinner, and I'm sure we all have a good appetite.”

L
IEUTENANT Rennick looked at the map yet again. To the trained eye of a Marine officer, the island of Curaçao looked like a femur, or whatever the big thigh bone was called, long and narrow, thinner in the middle. More important than the shape, though, the Governor had sent out a mounted night patrol, at Captain Ramage's request, to find out exactly where the rebels were.

The Governor had been sure they'd be split into three groups, one advancing on Amsterdam by the south coast, another along the road running the length of the island like a spine, and a third skirting the north coast—the island was less than seven miles wide where Amsterdam was built. In fact, though, the patrol had reported back just before the
Calypso
's officers left Government House at two o'clock in the morning that the rebels were in no sort of formation; they were camped together for the night (and according to local people had spent the previous one there, too) at a place between Willebrordus, on the south coast near Bullen Bay, and the village of Daniel, on the centre road.

This put them ten miles from Amsterdam, which with trained troops would have been dangerously close, but because the rebels were a collection of undisciplined privateersmen, wastrels and troublemakers, the Captain had suggested that for the rest of the night a dozen Dutch soldiers with a couple of horses for messengers should be stationed as sentries five miles from Amsterdam along the south coast, another dozen along the centre road level with them, and a third group on the north coast. That ruled out any surprise attack on the port for the rest of the night; a sentry on a horse galloping across this flat country would take very little time to reach Otrabanda.

All this, Rennick reflected, was not the way the Marines had been taught to conduct their business during their brief training at Chatham, but Mr Ramage obviously had some ideas of his own. But Rennick knew that his own father, now a lieutenant-colonel in the 1st Dragoons, would be startled to hear some of Mr Ramage's views. Rennick grinned to himself: his father's ideas about warfare had not changed from the principles drummed into him by his own father, who had also served in the 1st. In fact there had been three generations of Rennicks in the 1st (dating from the day it was first formed in 1683) and his father had expected him to be the fourth. Old Colonel Rennick was appalled (almost apoplectic, in fact) when his son had announced he wanted to go to sea; indeed, he had slammed down his brandy glass so hard that it broke, whereupon his wife had hysterics because it was one of a dozen inherited from her grandfather.

In his ignorance the would-be sailor did not know that eighteen years of age was much too late to begin a naval career, but a chance meeting with another youngblood who had made the same mistake put him on to the Marines. His father, finally accepting that his son was lost to the 1st Dragoons (thus saving himself several hundred pounds for a subaltern's commission, with hundreds more for later promotions, since advancement depended on guineas, not glory), mentioned casually that George Villiers, the Member of Parliament for Warwick (the county in which the Rennicks were considerable landowners) was a friend of his.

Father and son had then paid a visit to the Honourable George Villiers at his town house in Portman Square, and there the man who was also paymaster of the Marines (as well as being the youngest brother of the Earl of Clarendon) seemed glad to see Colonel Rennick and sympathetic towards his son's wish to be a sea soldier. Anyway, a week later a messenger had brought Colonel Rennick an official letter from the Honourable George, and a month later Second Lieutenant Rennick, footsore, shoulders bruised from musketry drill, wrist aching from sword drill, heels blistered from marching, brain weary from (admittedly cursory) lessons in tactics, back weary from drill at the great guns, went to bed at night and if he dreamed it was of commanding his own detachment of Marines in a ship of war.

Now, four years later, it had happened: he commanded his own Marine company of one sergeant, two corporals and forty privates; more important, he commanded them in a frigate which was in turn commanded by the Navy's most brilliant young Captain. Others might disagree—if they did you could probably put it down to jealousy—but Captain Ramage had two rare abilities, and you needed to serve with him and to share in the planning and the operations fully to appreciate them.

The two abilities were in many ways contradictory. Rennick had already discovered that the Captain was contemptuous of gamblers—both the crazy fellows who wagered small fortunes at the London gambling tables and the captains who just shut their eyes and took their ships into action hoping for the best. Yet Rennick had seen on several occasions that no man was a better gambler than the Captain: he would see what ought—or had—to be done, then he would work out the odds, quite cold-bloodedly.

He did not put it into as many words, of course, but in the convoy action off Diamond Rock, for instance, and cutting out the
Jocasta
at Santa Cruz, the odds were (on paper) so much against him that no sane man would accept them. But Captain Ramage did and, Rennick realized later, it was because the Captain read figures on paper differently from most people. There were times when he calculated that one of his own men was worth, say, two Frenchmen or three Spaniards. At other times he doubled those figures. In the
Jocasta
business he must have quadrupled them! Yet he knew his men; he never asked for more than they could give (it had taken Rennick a long time to realize that), and he had this ability to lead the men so that they gave it. Rennick still shivered when he thought of how his Marines had captured and blown up the castles at Santa Cruz: it had seemed impossible in prospect, but in retrospect it seemed easy. Which meant, of course, that Mr Ramage had this knack of seeing a problem simultaneously in prospect and, it seemed, in retrospect.

The second ability, of course, was that he took a decision apparently without a moment's doubt, although he was as likely to refuse a particular operation because the odds were wrong as he was to attempt something else. Nor did he give a damn what anyone thought of him; that was what it all meant in the end. He received his orders, did what he thought was right, and damned the consequences. So far the Admiralty and the various admirals had been forced to congratulate him (Rennick gathered much of this from people like Southwick), but if Captain the Lord Ramage ever put a foot wrong then they'd crucify him. They'd put him on the beach on half-pay and leave the crabs to chew his uniform and boots (and try to forget the despatches they'd been only too pleased at the time to print in the
Gazette
).

Indeed, Rennick's own father had written a long letter to this effect quite recently—after the Diamond Rock convoy affair, although before Santa Cruz—warning him that he had reaped enough glory and should at once get transferred to another ship, one commanded by a more conservative captain. The feeling in London, the old Colonel wrote, was that Captain Ramage's luck had held for several years but was bound to change. To be fair, he also mentioned a story from Mr Villiers that the King had been heard to tell the First Lord that had Captain Ramage not had a title in his own right he should have received a knighthood for Diamond Rock and a baronetcy for Santa Cruz, and that the First Lord's reactions had been mixed. So, the Colonel had written: “Your Captain stands well with the King, but do not forget that their Lordships are the ones who give the orders and read the reports and pass despatches for publication in the
London Gazette.
”