Ramage's Trial (41 page)

Ramage found himself in the unexpected role of an apologist for Admiral Goddard, because constantly he had to remind himself that he was not still a lieutenant among lieutenants who were able to abuse admirals among themselves. As a post-captain he had to maintain a semblance of discipline and respect – ironical, when he thought of the officer concerned.

“What is the court considering, eh?” Southwick exclaimed. “Those captains will never stand up to the admiral, you can be sure of that.”

“Captain Swinford – and Captain Royce, too – seem to me to have had enough of him,” Ramage said mildly.

“Sir, do you think they're going to blast their futures on your behalf? It's a big jump from commanding a 74-gun ship to marching around on a three-decker, and when Their Lordships choose the names, anyone about whom there is the slightest gossip might as well resign his commission and buy a half-share in a privateer.”

“Don't forget that when we first served under him, we knew him as Commodore Nelson and many senior officers disliked him. Now he's Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson…” Ramage said.

“Aye, and even more senior officers dislike him.”

“Yes, but the Board of Admiralty were more persuaded by Cape St Vincent, the Nile and Copenhagen,” Ramage said.

“If you'll excuse me, sir, fiddlesticks. He was pushed forward (quite rightly) by Lord St Vincent. Don't forget the row among the admirals, especially Admiral Mann, when as a very junior rear-admiral he was given the Mediterranean Fleet. No one else could win a victory like the Nile, but after that those who disliked him now hate him because they've a few quarts of jealousy to add to the brew.”

Aitken said: “I think you're wrong Southwick. Obviously your general criticism is correct, but there are exceptions. Lord Nelson is one; Rear-Admiral Goddard might be another–”

“Not in the same breath!” exclaimed Southwick. “Please!”

Aitken grinned and explained: “I'm talking about the exceptions, who can be heroes or scoundrels. Seems to me that here we have one of each. Just as Lord St Vincent stuck by an unpopular commodore and put him in the way of promotion, someone has stuck close to Rear-Admiral Goddard, although I don't know who–”

“The Court,” Ramage interposed quietly.

“So we have the King against us,” Aitken mused.

“All this talk doesn't get the evidence down in the minutes,” Wagstaffe pointed out.

“We were talking about what influence those twelve captains will have,” Ramage reminded him.

“I'll put a little money on Captain Swinford,” Southwick said. “He was a good man when he commanded the
Canopus
and he was standing up to the admiral at times.”

“My oath!” exclaimed Aitken heatedly, “none of them were really standing up to him. We still have only one mention of the broadside in the minutes and not the slightest hint of Captain Shirley's madness despite Miss Yorke.
In the minutes
, remember that. Nor anything about the
Jason
's officers being locked up in their cabins. In fact I don't know what the devil
was
left in the minutes.”

“Don't worry about the minutes,” Ramage said calmly, “minutes are for commanders-in-chief and the Admiralty to read after the trial – which means after the verdict. No matter what anyone might say and however much presidents might order stricken out, minutes are only useful as records, and for appeals. No matter what happens, I shan't appeal.”

“So the only thing that matters is the verdict, ‘Guilty' or ‘Not Guilty'. And that verdict is going to be decided by those twelve captains.”

At that moment Kenton arrived at the door to announce that Mr Yorke's boat was within hail, having approached in the lee of a 74-gun ship and out of sight, and he would be on board in a couple of minutes.

The moment Sidney Yorke walked into the cabin, preceded by the lugubrious Marine sentry's announcement, Ramage knew that something had happened: the man's face was drawn and the tropical tan now turned the skin an unhealthy yellow.

The young shipowner greeted the four men in the cabin and then nodded towards the coach. Ramage stood up and led Yorke into the smaller cabin, shutting the door behind them.

“It's Alexis,” Yorke said, and for a moment Ramage was startled because he thought Yorke had already said that, and then realized he had imagined it.

“What happened?”

What
could
happen at an inn? Robbers, sudden illness, the building catching fire – perhaps their boat capsized: the boatmen plying for hire were –

“When I got back to the King's Arms expecting to find her there after giving her evidence, I was handed this note by the innkeeper.”

He gave Ramage a single sheet of paper which had been folded and sealed with a wafer.

“My dear Brother,” it said. “I should have talked about this with you but I was afraid you would try to dissuade me. If Nicholas is left at the mercy of that scoundrel Goddard, he will be found guilty, and I understand he would then have to be sentenced to death because the court has no alternative. I am therefore going to London because there lies authority. I shall be well along the road by the time you read this – your affectionate sister…”

“What ‘authority' do you think she has in mind?” Ramage asked.

Yorke shrugged his shoulders. “She was very angry with Goddard – I gather he threatened to have her thrown out of the court. Most unwise of him to get athwart Alexis' hawse: even I don't!”

“Is it all right if the others know?” Ramage asked, gesturing towards the three men waiting the other side of the door.

“Of course! I just wanted to tell you first.”

They went back into the cabin and before Ramage sat down he told the three officers: “Miss Yorke has gone to London on my behalf.”

A startled Southwick said: “What is she going to do?”

“We're not at all sure, but from the way she dealt with Goddard today, I can imagine her coach and four turning into Downing Street!”

“Don't laugh,” Sidney Yorke said. “She knows Henry Addington very well: in fact the last time she saw him was at Number Ten a few months after the signing of the Treaty of Amiens. She gave him quite a fright: she told him exactly what she thought about anyone who signed such a treaty with Bonaparte. He took it very well, I must say. Knowing what sycophants he usually has round him, that was probably the first time he'd heard the truth for a long time!”

“Could she really be going to see the prime minister?” an awed Wagstaffe asked.

Sidney Yorke pulled a face. “My sister knows an extraordinary number of people and she has a way of saying the most outrageous things without causing offence. In fact some people seem to like it.”

“Should think so,” Southwick muttered, “particularly if the way she settled the admiral's hash is anything to go by.”

“I'm sorry I missed that,” Yorke said, “but I had to wait in that damned cabin in case I was wanted as a witness.”

“Well, she was magnificent,” Ramage said. “One moment an empress and the next a tigress. Poor Goddard never knew whether he was going to be frozen by a regal stare or ripped by a hidden claw!”

“The courts sit again next Monday,” Southwick said. “She'll have barely reached London by then. And then she has to see people.”

“I inquired at the King's Arms,” Yorke said. “Five days to London in a coach and four. Alexis hired her own coach – the postchaise costs tenpence a mile, with tips and turnpikes. She'd have saved money by buying her own coach!”

“There's the new telegraph from the Admiralty to Portsmouth,” Aitken said. “They say they can get a message to the Admiralty and a reply in thirty minutes.”

“Aye, a very brief message, providing there is no fog between the signal stations, all nine of them. Ten, counting the Admiralty itself,” Southwick said.

“Is that true – half an hour?” Yorke asked.

Southwick nodded. “Yes, and the Admiralty is extending it along the coast to Plymouth. This telegraphic apparatus is a very simple thing to operate.”

“And I'll bet that Southwick knows where every one of the stations to Portsmouth is built,” Ramage said, “and plans to walk along the line of them from London, and then on to Plymouth and back, as soon as he's retired!”

Southwick looked puzzled. “How did you know that, sir? Not walk, though; I mean to do it on horseback.”

“I guessed,” Ramage said. “You once told me you had just copied out a list of where the stations were. Why would you want such a list, if not to follow the line of them?”

As Southwick nodded in agreement, Yorke said: “Where on earth are they?”

Like a child anxiously waiting to recite his poem at a party and once started unable to stop, Southwick said proudly: “From the Admiralty to Chelsea, Putney, Cabbage Hill, Netley Heath, Hascombe, Blackdown, Beacon Hill, Portsdown and then into Portsmouth.

“Then it is now being extended with stations at Chalton, Wickham, Town Hill, Foot Hill, Bramshaw, Pistle Down, Charlbury, Blandford, Belchalwell, Nettlecoombe, High Stoy, Toller Down, Lambert's Castle, Dalwood Common, St Cyres, Rockbere, Haldon, Knighton, Marley, Lee, Saltram, and then over to Plymouth Dock…how about that!”

Yorke had been listening carefully. “Yes, that would make one of the finest rides in England. There are other parts of the country where it'd be more beautiful for, say, twenty miles, but for a two-hundred-mile ride you couldn't beat that.”

“When might we expect Miss Yorke back again?” Wagstaffe asked Yorke, “assuming she will need a couple of days in London?”

“Five days up and five back, plus two, which is twelve days,” Yorke said. “Which means she can't get back until a week after the trial is over, even allowing that she'll drive the coachmen hard and may well sleep in the coach, stopping only for meals and change of horses.”

Southwick nodded his head in agreement. “I can't see that young lady wasting time.”

“No, she has hardly any luggage. Mine host at the King's Arms tells me that Alexis hired a coach and four and set off with one piece of luggage and a brace of pistols.”

“A brace of pistols?” exclaimed Ramage. “A good idea for a young lady travelling alone, but where did she get them?”

“Oh, we always carry a brace each when we take a voyage,” Yorke said. “Who knows, the commanding officer might go mad, apart from the risk of pirates, Frenchmen, privateersmen–”

“–and descendants of buccaneers,” Ramage teased.

“It's because of our forebear that we are always well prepared,” Yorke admitted with a grin. “Our forebear became rich because the Dons were never prepared. Anyway, you might well feel sympathy for the footpad or ravisher that stops Alexis' coach.”

Ramage gave a shiver. “I'd rather not. I've never grown accustomed to being shot with a pistol, and by such a beautiful markswoman would be too painful. However, to get back to the point: what can we do now?”

“Have you anything else to present to the court in your defence?” Yorke asked. “Anything else for next Monday?”

“Nothing. Shirley will make his closing statement for the prosecution and then I make a statement outlining my defence, and the court is cleared while Goddard and his twelve captains consider the verdict. Then, when they've decided, I'm marched in again escorted by the provost marshal – who, incidentally, turns out to be a nice young fellow – and all the witnesses and spectators who are interested follow me in.”

“And we all wait for the verdict to be announced,” Yorke said.

Ramage laughed. “No. You've forgotten the trial you attended in Port Royal. I'll know the verdict the moment I walk through the door. I just look at my sword on the table: the hilt towards me means not guilty, the point, guilty. I then have a few anxious minutes waiting to see under which Articles of War I'm found guilty. You don't know them like the rest of us, but some carry a mandatory death sentence.”

“So if the court…?”

“If the court finds me guilty on any one of those, it has no choice but to sentence me to death.”

Yorke looked grim. “I wonder if Alexis is thinking only of that?”

Aitken said quietly: “She asked me for a copy of the
Articles of War
, and I gave her one, sir. I hope I did the right thing. And I marked the ones under which you're charged.”

“You were quite right,” Ramage said, and remembered Alexis' question in court about the charges, when Goddard had dropped the question rather than read through all the relevant Articles of War. So Alexis had known all the time: she had started provoking Goddard from the moment she began giving evidence.

He had to admit that seeing her sitting in the row of spectators' chairs, he regarded her as a very elegant ornament, much as one might be proud of a fine portrait in oils on one's dining-room walls. He had (he went hot at the thought) only called her as his last witness from fear that she would be offended if he left her out. Ye Gods: one day, when they were old and grey and reminiscing, he would tell her how close she came to never being a witness. But after being a lively witness she was now making a madcap dash to London in a coach and four with a brace of pistols close at hand. Gianna would have done that – and Gianna was at this moment probably dead, killed by one of Bonaparte's police agents. Sarah would have done it – but she had almost certainly died in the
Murex
. Would he always bring death to the women he loved?

 

The rest of the week passed slowly. The last days of autumn brought zephyrs which ruffled wavelets to make the sea look like hammered pewter. Each morning the
Calypso
's cutter under Jackson's command went to fetch Sidney Yorke from the North Corner of the dockyard – the name given to the part close to the Gun Wharf and where North Corner Street met the jetty.