Map Full

 

Author’s Note

The tiny island where Ramage and his men fought out their battle actually exists as described, 673 miles from Bahia. Still uninhabited, it belongs to Brazil. It was first surveyed by Captain Philip D’Auvergne RN, Prince of Bouillon in 1782 and his original chart, in the British Museum, shows he made an error of only about twenty-five miles in plotting its position.

 

D.P.

Yacht Ramage

Marigot

St Martin

French Antilles

 

Chapter One

Ramage lowered the copy of the Morning Post and listened. A carriage was clattering to a stop outside the house and old Hanson, muttering ‘Coming, my Lord, coming!’ as though someone was already hammering impatiently at the door, was shuffling across the hall. Pausing for a moment when he saw Ramage sitting in the drawing room he called: ‘The Admiral’s back, Master Nicholas!’

Dear old Hanson; for as long as Ramage could remember the butler always muttered ‘Coming, coming’ as he walked across the hall to answer the front door, and at every third step his right hand, with thumb and finger extended, lifted to his face to push his pince-nez back up over the bridge of his nose. It must be a most sensitive nose because Hanson’s spectacles rarely slipped right off the tip to dangle from their black cord. Ramage remembered as a boy, fifteen or twenty years ago, watching fascinated as the butler lovingly polished the silver. Would they . . . would they . . . yes, there – but a quick movement of the right hand would, disappointingly, catch them just in time.

Hanson was always so relieved when any of the family returned home to the house in Palace Street, even after only an hour’s absence, as though a social call or a shopping expedition was as dangerous as a foray into dense jungle. On this occasion Ramage’s father had been over to Wimpole Street to call on Lord Hood (who, as a characteristically brief note explained, was beneaped in his house with gout). The two old admirals enjoyed gossiping and discussing foreign affairs, and certainly Bonaparte’s latest move must have given them plenty to talk about. Had father been able to learn more than the rumour reported in the newspapers?

Gianna would be pleased the carriage was back: she was anxious to use it to call on her dressmaker. Instead of having the woman visit the house, Gianna wanted to go to her establishment to inspect rolls of materials, and Ramage was hoping his mother would go with her: as the first week of his first leave for nearly two years came to an end, he was at last managing to relax quite happily in an armchair. In a few more days he might agree to plunging into the London social activity, to be shown off by his mother and Gianna, but for the moment (as Gianna had grumbled last night) the bear was happy sleeping at the end of his chain, and would have been much happier to have come back to England and found Gianna and the family staying in Cornwall: Blazey Hall, sitting four-square among the crags and rolling hills, was always peaceful; the village of St Kew was ‘home’, not London with its noise, smells and crowds.

Yet London this morning was still surprisingly quiet: the hucksters and piemen had not yet reached Palace Street, the air was still and the house seemed glad of the rest. The high ceiling made the room seem larger than it was, and his mother’s choice of a very pale grey paint and a blue the shade of ducks’ eggs set off the oak panelling. The glass of the diamond panes in the windows showed that Mrs Hanson had kept a close watch on the window cleaner, and the doorknobs shone with a brilliance that would bring an approving nod from most first lieutenants.

He heard the sharp clatter of the carriage steps unfolding. His father said something to the coachman, Albert, and a few moments later was in the hall, with Hanson taking his coat, hat and cane. Both Gianna and Lady Blazey had heard the arrival and were now coming down the stairs, greeting the Admiral. Ramage heard his mother ask if there was anything wrong, and the earl must have answered with a gesture because she said: ‘We’ll join Nicholas in the drawing room and you can tell us about it.’

Ramage stood up as his mother came into the room, followed by Gianna. The Countess of Blazey, wearing the large amethyst brooch Ramage had given her last week on her fifty-first birthday (causing her to burst into tears, exclaiming that his unexpected return to Britain and a month’s leave was the best present she could have), sat down and said: ‘Your father is just going to change into some comfortable clothes . . . Now, tell us what the newspapers have to say, so we are all prepared for his gossip.’

Ramage knew Gianna was becoming excited by the rumours, but both he and his father had discounted them to her; there was no point in letting her build up hopes to have them smashed when it was discovered that the British government was the victim of a spiteful jest by Bonaparte.

‘I haven’t read The Times yet, but the Morning Post only reports what we’ve already heard.’

‘Read it, caro,’ Gianna said.

‘There are a few lines on the front page and I am sure it’s just speculation, not based on anything they’ve been told by the Secretary of State’s office.’

‘Read it, anyway,’ Gianna said firmly. ‘This Lord Hawkesbury is still so pleased at finding himself His Majesty’s new Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs that he talks only to the King and the Archbishop of Canterbury.’

The countess laughed. ‘Surely you hardly expected him to reveal matters of state at last night’s ball, my dear? After all, the Duchess of Dorset was standing beside you, and she’s a terrible gossip.’

‘I expect him to provide information for the ruler of a friendly state invaded by Bonaparte. After all, I am the Marchesa di Volterra!’

‘Yes, dear,’ the countess said, smiling at what she called Gianna’s ‘imperious outbursts’, ‘but if Hawkesbury had any news about Volterra or, indeed, Tuscany or even Italy, he might tell you if you called at his office in Downing Street, or his home in Sackville Street, but hardly at a ball!’

‘He did not suggest I call,’ Gianna said coldly. ‘Is he one of these new Irish barons? Wasn’t he known as “Jenks”?’

Her tone, Ramage knew, was haughty enough to freeze even the chilly Secretary of State. ‘He’s the son of the Earl of Liverpool. He’s also Member of Parliament for Rye and his nickname comes from his family name, Jenkinson.’

‘This Liverpool – a new creation?’

Ramage laughed and the countess joined in. ‘Yes, “a new creation”. His father received an earldom about five years ago and Jenks has one of his father’s courtesy titles. Like me, in fact, except I don’t use it.’

‘I wish you would,’ Gianna said, beginning to thaw. ‘You are not ashamed of being the son of the Earl of Blazey, and you inherited one of his titles, so why not use it?’

‘Darling, I’ve told you enough times,’ Ramage protested. ‘Admirals with knighthoods don’t like having young captains serving under them with titles like “earl”, or “viscount”. It can often mean midshipmen and junior post captains have higher precedence at receptions than their commander-in-chief.’

The countess said: ‘If Nicholas had attended a dinner at which Hawkesbury was present, before he became a minister, Nicholas would have had much higher precedence – if he used his title.’

‘All the more reason for using it,’ Gianna said. ‘Jenks is a cold pudding.’

‘A cold fish,’ Ramage corrected.

‘Accidente! I always know when I am winning an argument because you begin correcting my English!’

‘Nicholas,’ the countess reminded him, ‘you were going to tell us the news in the Post.’

‘Ah, yes. It says that – well, I’ll read the item:

 

“We understand that M. Louis-Guillaume Otto, the French Commissioner for the Exchange of Prisoners, resident in London, has been a frequent visitor at the office of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs during recent days. It is believed that M. Otto, who has been living in London since the beginning of the present war, has been acting as an envoy of Bonaparte, discussing proposals from Bonaparte for a general peace.

‘”We further understand that Lord Hawkesbury has put Bonaparte’s proposals before the Cabinet and that Mr Addington has informed the King of the details. We believe Mr Pitt’s supporters are violently against a peace. M. Otto can rely on the support of Mr Fox and his faction.

‘”M. Otto has had little official work to do for the past two years: so few French ships put to sea that the Royal Navy cannot take many prisoners. On the other hand the bold British ships are constantly attacking the enemy’s coasts and ports and naturally some are lost, so the French have many British prisoners in their jails. Unfortunately few can be exchanged because we do not have enough Frenchmen to make the numbers even.”’

 

Gianna sighed and rearranged the skirt of her pale dress. ‘Let us hope Bonaparte’s terms are generous.’

The countess shook her head disapprovingly. ‘Gianna, I know you want to go back to Volterra, but don’t let us fall into a trap just because we want peace.’

‘No, Bonaparte would not be offering terms unless it was to his advantage to end the war,’ Nicholas said.

At that moment the earl came into the room: a tall, still slim man with silvery white hair and the same thin, almost beak-like nose and high cheekbones of his son. Gianna looked from Nicholas to his father. Yes, she thought, that is how Nicholas will be in thirty years time. For the first time since she had met him, she felt she could think of him in old age: until now he had been at sea, being wounded regularly once a year, being in action at least once a month . . . Peace would mean he could resign his commission and live in London and Cornwall.

And now, also for the first time, she could picture him growing old without her beside him. Until recently, she always thought of their lives after the war as being lived together, but now, after the years she had lived here in England, mostly at St Kew, she accepted that it was impossible. Noblesse oblige. It was a phrase, but for the two of them it was a code, a law – and for her a sentence of eventual banishment.

In the first couple of years, when she thought of little else than Nicholas and returning to rule her kingdom of Volterra the moment Bonaparte’s troops were driven out, she had ignored religion. Yet she was Catholic and Nicholas was Protestant. Marriage would force Nicholas to agree that their children would be Catholic, and in turn that would mean one of the oldest earldoms in Britain would become Catholic the moment Nicholas died after inheriting from his father.

The twelfth Earl of Blazey a Catholic . . . For the first year or two in England she could see no difficulty about such an old Protestant earldom changing its religion to Rome, but eventually she had come to understand that Britain was built on Protestant foundations, and to ask Nicholas (who would be the eleventh earl when he inherited from his father) to sacrifice the earldom – for that was how it would be regarded – was something that an enemy might do, but not the woman who loved him.

Her other plans – she saw now they were but dreams – were equally impractical, because of that same phrase. Her idea that Nicholas would resign his commission after the war and come to Volterra as her husband was hopeless, and Nicholas himself had made that clear. Volterra, still turbulent after years of French occupation and no doubt still affected by the talk of French revolutionaries, would be in no mood to accept a straniero as their ruler’s husband; not even one who spoke Italian as well as any of them and who had rescued their ruler from Bonaparte’s troops. A foreigner was someone from the next state; to some people a man from the next town. She thought that Nicholas might have in mind that she would hand over the kingdom to her heir, her nephew Paolo Orsini, at present serving as a midshipman in Nicholas’s own ship but – as she had finally been forced to admit to herself – there were at least two things preventing that. First, Volterra, once liberated, would need a firm ruler for the early years of peace, someone who understood the complicated relations, friendships and enmities of the leading families. Paolo knew nothing of all this, and might well fall victim to an assassin. And secondly, his life was now the sea: it was unlikely he would exchange the Royal Navy for the falsehoods and sycophancy that made up life at Court.

Paolo was a new generation: he had never lived in an atmosphere of noblesse oblige so he would sacrifice nothing for it. For her and Nicholas it was as much a part of life as breathing and, she realised with something approaching bitterness, comparable with breathing: it was always there, unobtrusive, noticeable only when you thought of it, but an essential part of life itself.

Her other dream, after recognising that the people of Volterra would not accept Nicholas as her husband, was to have Nicholas sent there as His Britannic Majesty’s Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary. The ruler could summon the British ambassador as frequently as she wished. Yet she knew that neither she nor Nicholas could accept such a relationship.

This was all in the past and in the future . . . Miserably, knowing she would eventually have to sacrifice her first and probably only real love, she wrenched herself back to the present. She watched Nicholas talking with his mother. The suntan was wearing off, and his brown eyes were just as deeply sunk beneath eyebrows that were like tiny overhanging cliffs, but the lines were going: years of squinting in tropical and Mediterranean sun, and commanding one of the King’s ships in actions that usually resulted in a long dispatch in the London Gazette, had left pencil-thin lines on his brow, round his eyes and beside his nose, but they were disappearing as he relaxed here in Palace Street. Nor did he have the worry of the ship: the Calypso was having an extensive refit in drydock at Chatham, and from what he and his father could find out at the Admiralty, he would stay in command when she was commissioned again. Unless . . . unless a peace treaty was signed.

Then, she gathered, at least three-quarters of the King’s ships would be paid off; the Royal Navy would be reduced to a peacetime size. Admirals, captains, lieutenants – there would be dozens to spare. Nicholas might resign his commission because the routine of commanding a ship in peacetime would be too boring for him after the past years of continuous excitement and action.

Yet Nicholas’s mother and father seemed almost hostile to the proposal of peace. No, Gianna corrected herself, not to peace itself but to dealing with Bonaparte. Well, no Tuscan trusted a Corsican, and if she was honest and dispassionate about it she did not trust Bonaparte either: he was the general who led the French army which invaded Volterra. Yet ironically but for Bonaparte she would never have met Nicholas, whose frigate had been sent to rescue her by Sir John Jervis (as he then was, but now Admiral the Earl St Vincent, First Lord of the Admiralty in the present government). So but for Bonaparte – and St Vincent – they would never have met and fallen in love.

Dreamily she returned to the palace at Volterra: she pictured herself in the great state room, sitting in the chair reputed to be eight hundred years old. The big double doors would be flung open, His Britannic Majesty’s envoy would be announced, and Nicholas in full diplomatic uniform would march in to present his credentials. Both of them would be hard put to keep straight faces . . .

She gave a start as the earl clinked the heavy crystal stopper back into the sherry decanter, walked with his glass to a chair and sat down carefully.

‘Hood sends his regards, m’dear,’ he said to his wife. ‘Terrible attack of gout; he can’t bear anyone within ten feet of him – afraid they’ll bump his leg. We were almost hailing each other across the room!’

‘I think Gianna is anxious to know if you heard any news of Bonaparte’s—er, offer.’

‘Yes, I did,’ the Admiral said grimly. ‘Too much. Hawkesbury called in while Hood and I were talking, and told us about it. The negotiations are nearly complete; Hawkesbury sees this fellow Otto for three or four hours a day and dispatches go off to Paris daily – apparently we have Revenue Cutters waiting in Dover and they deliver Otto’s diplomatic bag in Calais and bring back Bonaparte’s instructions.’

Ramage said: ‘Did you discover anything about the terms, father?’

The old man was silent for a moment, lost in thought. In memories, Ramage guessed. Thousands of British men had been killed, dozens of ships sunk, countless women widowed and children orphaned. Now the present politicians were likely to make all these sacrifices worthless in their scramble for peace: they would accept any terms Bonaparte cared to offer because they knew a peace treaty meant votes, just as the previous government had squandered thousands of soldiers and not a few sailors through sickness to capture worthless West Indian spice islands because ‘victories’ were always worth a parliamentary cheer. Few Members of Parliament realised that most such islands were only a quarter the size of a county like Kent. Few would remember that Bonaparte controlled everything that mattered, from the shores of the North Sea to the banks of the Mediterranean, including Spain, Italy and Egypt. Except for a naval base like Jamaica, the West Indian islands were irrelevant.

The earl glanced up at Nicholas. Two scars on one side of his brow, another the size of a coin on his head – the hair there was growing back white – and a stiff left arm: wounds inflicted in the West Indies, Mediterranean and Atlantic. Nicholas and Lord Nelson had disobeyed Sir John Jervis’s orders at the Battle of Cape St Vincent and in doing so had turned a miserable defeat into enough of a victory to earn Jervis an earldom, so that Earl St Vincent was now First Lord of the Admiralty. St Vincent was a fine administrator who had, by accident, won an undeserved reputation as a tactician. Had he ever forgiven that glorious act of disobedience by a young lieutenant called Ramage, which was spotted and backed by an almost unknown commodore in a seventy-four called Nelson? Now Jervis was Earl St Vincent; without those two he would still be Jervis, and few would have sympathised had he been put on the beach to draw halfpay for the rest of his life.

‘Yes, and by the time the treaty is ratified I suspect we’ll have surrendered every acre of land we’ve taken except Ceylon and Trinidad, and we may have forced Bonaparte to leave Egypt.’

‘And Italy?’ Gianna said.

The earl shook his head, as though trying to drive away his irritation. ‘Bonaparte has made offers on behalf of France, Sweden, Denmark and Holland. The negotiations concern only territory belonging to Britain or those countries. There has been no mention of Tuscany, Piedmont, the Papal States . . . Nor does Hawkesbury see how we can do anything about them – I asked him.’

‘He’s a weak man,’ Gianna commented.

‘He’s a politician,’ the earl said contemptuously. ‘No votes come from Italy for Addington and his cronies, but the House of Commons will give them three cheers for Ceylon and Trinidad . . .’

‘When will the details be made public – officially, I mean?’ Ramage asked.

The earl shrugged his shoulders. ‘When Bonaparte, or this fellow Otto, say so. Officially Addington and Hawkesbury deny any negotiations are going on. That’s where Otto is so useful: he’s been the official French representative in London since the exchange of prisoners started, so no one takes any notice of his comings and goings.’

‘Gianna’s dressmaker,’ the countess said firmly. ‘We can do more good by visiting her than talking about the tidbits that Bonaparte tosses to us.’

With that the two women left the room to put on outdoor clothes. Even though a watery sun made faint shadows, the chill of autumn was in the air.

The earl sipped his sherry. ‘A sad business. Hood agrees with me that we are giving up just as the tide is turning in our favour.’

Nicholas said: ‘Yes, the French are desperately short of wood, rope and canvas for their ships. Our blockade is really hurting them. I’d have thought that’s why Bonaparte’s offering terms: he wants a year or so of peace to restock his larder. Then he’ll go to war again, knowing we’ll have paid off most of our ships and disbanded our regiments. Once the men have disappeared the pressgangs will never find them again.’

His father put down his glass. ‘Hood made the same points: he too reckons Bonaparte wants a rest, and lost his temper with Hawkesbury over the policy. But Jenks is only a politician, and for people like him no policy need cover more than the next division in the House of Commons. The frontiers of the world are bounded by the walls of the “Ayes” and “Noes” lobbies.’

‘Will the King agree, though?’

‘They’ll persuade him Britain is going bankrupt. It probably is, but better bankruptcy than Bonaparte!’

He held his sherry up to the light coming through the window. ‘When will the dockyard be finished with the Calypso?’

‘Another three or four weeks. It’d be longer, but my fourth lieutenant’s father is the Master Shipwright.’

‘At Chatham? Hmm, used to be a fellow called Martin. Very good. One of the very few honest men in all the King’s dockyards.’

‘It must be the same man: his son is William Martin, known to his friends as “Blower”.’

‘”Blower”? What an extraordinary nickname!’

‘He plays a flute.’

‘Ah yes, you told me. Did very well in that Porto Ercole affair with the bomb ketches, and then with young Paolo in the convoy from Sardinia.’

‘That’s the lad. If he goes on like this he deserves to get his flag.’

‘Won’t stand a chance if there’s peace. By the way, Nicholas, you ought to get Paolo up here from Chatham. Gianna is anxious to inspect her nephew, but she won’t say anything to you for fear of it seeming like favouritism.’

Ramage smiled and nodded. ‘Yes, I’d guessed that, and talked it over with my first lieutenant and Southwick. There’s an enormous amount Paolo can learn while a refit like this goes on, so we decided he’d get no leave for the first three weeks but they’d cram as much as they could into him and then make sure he has a week or two with Gianna.’

‘She’s so proud of him.’

‘She’s right to be. He’s very much like her in some ways. Not so—well, explosive, but a very quick brain. Gets on very well with the men. Brave to the point of foolhardiness. If he survives and improves his mathematics, he’ll pass for lieutenant at the first try.’

‘Have you thought of taking Gianna down to Chatham so that she could see the ship as well?’

Ramage’s face fell. ‘What a fool I am! She’d love it and all the old Kathleens – Jackson, Rossi, Southwick, Stafford – would go mad. Would you and mother come down as well?’

‘Ah—well, I was hoping you’d propose it. Yes, we’d be delighted: we’ve already discussed it, so I know your mother’s answer.’

 

Chapter Two

The black-hulled Calypso frigate had caused a stir of interest from the moment she sailed up the muddy Medway on the first of the flood, her ship’s company racing round the deck working sheets, tacks and braces as she tacked and then tacked again the moment she had way on. The Medway narrows up as it nears the towns past the ruins of Upnor Castle (battered a century and a half earlier by the Dutchman, de Ruyter), and has some nasty bends, with mudflats a few inches below the water to trap the unwary.

Once she had moored off Chatham Dockyard, the ship and her men came under the authority of the commissioner and was soon the target of all his minions. Ramage had managed to get a copy of a recent Royal Kalendar to see the names of the men who would be responsible for the Calypso’s refit and whom Aitken, the first lieutenant, would spend several weeks cajoling, persuading and threatening to get work done properly and reasonably promptly.

The first name in the Kalendar under ‘Chatham Yard’ was the Commissioner Resident, listed as ‘F.J. Wedge, esq., 800 L., more for paper and firing 12 L’. Ramage conceded that the commissioner probably earned his £800 a year pay, and probably quadrupled it from bribes and all the corrupt activities a man in his position could indulge in. The Navy Board were showing their usual parsimony in allowing only £12 a year to pay for stationery and fuel for the fires or stoves. Still, there must be plenty of old wood lying around.

The Master Shipwright, Martin’s father, was paid £200 a year – the same as the Master Ropemaker, Master Boatbuilder, Master Mastmaker, Master Sailmaker, Master Smith, Master Carpenter, Master Joiner and Master Bricklayer. The Bosun of the Dockyard received only £80, but the storekeeper received £200 and was probably – because of the opportunity for fraud – the wealthiest of the dockyard employees.

Most of them had come on board as the frigate was moored up, not because a 36-gun French frigate captured and brought into the King’s service was an unusual sight but because the exploits of the Calypso and her captain had been mentioned in enough Gazettes to make them both famous. It would not mean any favourable treatment for the ship, because dockyard officials were by nature close-fisted men, issuing paint, rope, canvas and the like as though they paid for it themselves. There was the story of one eccentric and aristocratic captain who, receiving the Navy Board’s issue of paint for his ship, wrote to their Lordships and asked which side of the ship he should paint. Their Lordships were not amused and the captain ended up doing what most captains did – paying out of his own pocket for the extra paint needed.

Ramage had stayed on board for a week as the Calypso swung on the buoy with wind and tide until their Lordships answered his request for leave – no officer was allowed ‘to sleep out of his ship’ without written permission, and that included admirals. Ramage had been given a month’s leave and the ship was left in command of James Aitken. The Scotsman had no wish to go up to Perth on leave (Ramage discovered for the first time that Aitken’s mother, the widow of a navy master, had recently died) and he obviously trusted no one else to make sure the refit was done properly. Ramage knew that, however keen and eagle-eyed Aitken was, the man who really mattered was Southwick, the master, a man old enough to be the father and almost the grandfather of both his captain and first lieutenant.

Leave for the men, all of whom had been away from Britain for at least a couple of years, was always a problem for any captain. Usually half the men had in the first place been seized by pressgangs, and if the ship was an unhappy one because of the captain or her officers, giving the men leave would result in a number of them deserting: never returning to the ship and forfeiting a year or more of the pay due to them. Popular captains did not have to worry so much, but even if the men returned, a percentage of them would have spent their leave in and out of brothels and would come back riddled with venereal disease. This would put money in the surgeon’s pocket, because he was allowed to make a charge for venereal treatment, but eventually it meant lost men: nothing cured syphilis.

Some captains gave leave only to selected men but Ramage disliked the system: it smacked of favouritism and the men not chosen were resentful. As he told Aitken, it was leave for all or for none, and he had decided on all: they would be allowed two weeks each.

One watch could go at once; the other when the first came back. He had mustered the ship’s company aft on the quarterdeck and told them of his decision – and told them he trusted them to come back on time. In the meantime, he added, the watch left on board would have to work twice as hard.

Nor had that been an exaggeration. One of the most arduous tasks to be done was changing the Calypso’s guns: she still mounted the French cannons with which she had been armed when Ramage and his men captured her. Ramage had managed in Antigua to get rid of the unreliable French gunpowder and stock the magazine with British, and there had been enough French roundshot on board to fit their size of guns, but the ship had been in action enough times to have the gunner reporting that the shot locker was now less than a third full.

The Ordnance Board had agreed to supply British 12-pounders to replace the French, and the shot to go with them, but not without a good deal of argument. Ramage never understood why the Ordnance Board, part of the army, should have anything to do with naval gunnery, let alone control it completely. Anyway, hoisting out all the Calypso’s French guns and carriages and lowering them into hoys, and then getting all the shot up from the shot lockers – a deep, narrow structure in the ship like a huge wardrobe open at the top – was going to be hard work for the fewer than one hundred men comprising the one watch left on board. Then the hoys would bring out the new guns and carriages, and getting them on board would be more wearying than disposing of the French ones.

Once the new guns were at their ports, there would be new train tackles and breechings to be spliced up – the Master Ropemaker had agreed that the French rope had not been of a very good quality to start with, and two years more service had brought it to the end of its life: when the rope was twisted to reveal the inner strands, they were grey; there was no sign of the rich golden brown of good rope.

Halyards, tacks, sheets, braces and lifts were all being renewed, along with many of the shrouds. The Master Shipwright and Master Mastmaker had inspected the masts and decided not to hoist them out for inspection. Only the foreyard, which had broken in the Mediterranean and been fished by the Calypso’s carpenter and his mates, would be replaced. Then the Calypso would be towed by her boats into the drydock and, once all the water had been pumped out, leaving the ship sitting high and dry, shored up by large baulks of timber wedged horizontally between the ship’s side and the walls of the dock, her copper sheathing would be inspected. All the sheets round the bow and stern would have to be replaced – this was a regular procedure for ships of war because, for a reason not yet understood (though there were dozens of theories), the sheathing there always became thinner and thinner and was eventually reduced to a mass of pinholes. Ramage hoped – even though it would delay sailing – that all the sheathing would be renewed.

It was unusual to keep a ship’s officers and men standing by her during a long refit; usually the captain was given another command, and the officers and men distributed among other ships, but as a gesture to Ramage’s record, Lord St Vincent, the First Lord, had directed that the Calypso’s men should be kept together. Which was also more than a hint that he had a job for them all once the refit was over.

The Calypso, newly coppered, with new rigging and perhaps even new sails, would sail like a witch, he had told his father, who shared his enthusiasm for the skill of French naval architects: they had mastered that strange mixture of artistry and science which produced fast ships of war, particularly frigates.

 

‘Jacko!’ Stafford said as soon as he found the American on deck among the crowd of men who were preparing to hoist a gun out of a port.

‘Jacko, you ‘eard the scuttlebutt? About the captain?’

The tall, narrow-faced American whose sandy hair was thinning, seemed to freeze. He turned round slowly and stared at Stafford. ‘No. He’s all right, isn’t he?’

The cockney seaman laughed, not realising the effect his question had on the captain’s coxswain. ‘Yus, he’s all right – what harm could come to him in London? No, he’s bringing the Marchesa down to see us. And his father and mother. Old “Blaze-away” himself!’

‘You gave me a scare,’ Jackson said, turning back to give orders to the men straining at the rope. ‘I thought something dreadful had happened.’

‘You don’t trust him on his own!’

‘I’ve picked him up unconscious enough times, bleeding like a stuck pig from a sword cut or a bullet, never to take anything for granted.’

‘An’ he’s saved you enough times,’ Stafford said, intending to tease.

‘Five times up to now,’ Jackson said soberly. ‘If I stay with him I may reach old age and see South Carolina again.’

‘You don’t seem very pleased at the idea o’ seein’ the Marchesa again.’

‘I am. It’s just I’m still cold all over from your clumsiness. And his father. What a sailor he was. The countess must be a remarkable woman, judging from her husband and her son.’

‘There’s Rossi—hey, Rosey, hear about the Marchesa?’

The Italian seaman looked up. He had no need to ask ‘What Marchesa?’, but because of the tone of Stafford’s voice he suddenly grinned. ‘Are they getting married?’

‘Nah, nothing like that. But they – she and the captain and his father and mother – are coming down to see the ship tomorrer. Probably coming down specially to see Signor Alberto Rossi, once the pride o’ Genoa!’

‘Watch out,’ Jackson muttered, ‘here comes the bosun.’

The two seamen began heaving on the rope while Jackson went to the gun and made sure the cap squares holding the trunnions down onto the carriage had been pulled up and swung back out of the way. He checked that the sling was square, so that as soon as the men hauled down on the yard tackle the gun, weighing nearly a ton, would rise vertically and not damage anything. He went to the port and looked over the side. The hoy was secured alongside; the men in it were waiting patiently for the next gun to be lowered to them and join the five already lying in the bottom of the hoy, wedged with bags of sand so that they could not move.

Stafford gave a shiver as a gust of wind swept down the reach, pushing at the frigate so that she strained at the heavy ropes securing her by the bow to the mooring buoy. ‘This east wind – goes right through you. All that time in the West Indies and Mediterranington makes yer blood thin.’

‘Mediterranean,’ Jackson said, automatically correcting Stafford, who had a remarkable inability to pronounce place names correctly. ‘It’s the damp in the cold that makes it worse. I’m surprised the captain is bringing visitors with the ship in such a mess. Anyway, how do you know about it?’

‘That chap Hodges. He’s the first lieutenant’s servant while the other fellow’s on leave, and ‘e ‘eard Mr Aitken and Mr Southwick talking about it. An’ we’re going to have to tiddly up the chair; the rats have been chewing the red baize.’

‘Anything to get away from these guns,’ Rossi said wearily. ‘Accidente, twenty men should make light work of hoisting one gun, but they seem to leave the hoist to me.’

Stafford laughed and said: ‘You mean to say it’s too heavy? A French gun? You ought to be able to lift it up like a baby out of a cradle, without usin’ a tackle.’

He helped heave down on the fall and added: ‘’Ere, the Marchesa’s goin’ ter ‘ave a surprise when she sees Mr Orsini. You’d never think he first came on board a shy boy trippin’ over every rope in sight and slippin’ on every step of a companionway.’

 

Paolo Orsini had just left the first lieutenant and his head was in a whirl. He had expected to be given a couple of days leave so that he could visit his aunt and the captain, and of course, the Earl and Countess, at the Palace Street house. He had never thought for a moment that all of them might visit the ship. His aunt knew what a frigate was like because one had brought her to England from the Mediterranean after the captain (and men like Jackson, Rossi and Stafford) had rescued her from a beach in Tuscany, but now she was to visit the Calypso she would see not only the ship in which he served but which he had helped capture. And since then the Calypso had been in action – well, how many times was it? He found he could not remember; his memory was blurred by the time he had been second-in-command to ‘Blower’ Martin in a bomb ketch, and when he had (all too briefly) commanded a captured tartane.

He had grown a good couple of inches; the sleeves of all his jackets were too short, so that his wrists stuck out like sections of bamboo; the legs of his breeches ended just on his kneecaps, making them very uncomfortable – so much so that most of the time he felt like a hobbled horse, though on watch at night he pulled them down so that the waistband was tight against his hips.

There was no chance of getting on shore and buying new uniforms here in Chatham: he had hinted to Mr Aitken, who had pointed to the shiny elbows and mildewed lapels of his own uniform and said dourly: ‘This is ma best – you see what the Tropics did to it!’

The Tropics were a destroyer: leave a jacket hung in a locker for a week and it grew a fine crop of green mildew wherever a trace of food or drink had spilled on it. Leather, whether boots, shoes, belts or scabbards, grew rich yellow and green mildew as fields sprouted new grass and clover. Iron and steel rusted: a sword or dirk left in its scabbard for a few weeks would rust even if coated with grease – the rust seemed to grow beneath the coating. Rope lost its springiness and became dead, apparently from the sunlight, although no one could explain exactly what happened. Sails suffered too; the humidity and constant tropical showers brought on the mildew, while the blazing sun took the life out of the threads so that it was easy to poke a finger through canvas which looked perfectly sound. Even worse, the material was so weak that the stitches securing a patch just ripped it away like a slashing knife. He had seen a patch blown clean out of a sail – and a few moments later the sail itself had split, starting from the hole left by the departed patch. Yes, most interesting, but what the devil was it that the first lieutenant had ordered him to do? Quickly Paolo tried to remember the conversation. Mr Aitken had said he had just received a letter from the captain saying he was bringing the Marchesa and his parents down to Chatham for a visit to the Calypso, and he wished Midshipman Orsini, able seaman Jackson, and ordinary seamen Rossi and Stafford to be available. Then he said they would be coming down by carriage and mentioned the name of the hotel they would use. And the commissioner of the dockyard was making his yawl available and they would be leaving the jetty of the commissioner’s residence to board the ship at ten o’clock in the forenoon. Then what? The chair! That was it: the red baize needed replacing; and a whip had to be rove on the starboard main yardarm.

The English language was sometimes absurd. On land a whip was something you used on a horse or mule; in a ship it was a small block and a rope. Then there was a block – on land that was a large piece of something, like a block of wood. In a ship a block was what men on land called a pulley. And a sheet! That was the most hilarious of all – on land you found a sheet on a bed, although you could also have a sheet of paper. In a ship a sheet was a rope attached to the corner of a sail to control its shape. A seaman did not ‘put’ a rope through a pulley, he rove it through a block, or he was ordered to reeve it. Paolo saw the first lieutenant coming up the companionway. Damn, where was the chair stowed? The bosun would know.

Aitken paused and looked round him. To an untrained eye there was chaos, with seamen running here and there like ants when their anthill was disturbed, but a seaman could distinguish order. Apart from young Orsini – clearly he had been standing daydreaming – the seventh 12-pounder was already hoisted out and slung over the side, the men under Jackson lowering it into the hoy.

But devil take it, how was he to have the ship ready for tomorrow’s visitors? The captain would understand and, from what everyone said, the Marchesa would too. But Admiral the Earl of Blazey was the fifth most senior admiral in the navy (he knew that because the moment he received the captain’s letter, he had looked up the father in the latest edition of Steele’s List of the Navy). Still, even a senior admiral would make allowances for the necessary activity. So that left the Admiral’s wife. Well, all admirals’ wives brought only misery and harassment to first lieutenants, whether of frigates or 100-gun flagships, and the Countess of Blazey was unlikely to be an exception.

Orsini had finally bestirred himself: no doubt asking the bosun where the chair was stowed. He was a remarkable young lad, and Aitken looked forward to meeting the aunt. It was curious how at first, when he joined the captain, he had assumed that Paolo’s aunt, the Marchesa, was a wrinkled old Italian dragon, full of unpredictable whims and with enough influence to break a post captain with a pointing index finger and a mere lieutenant with a flick of a little finger. He had been quickly corrected by those who knew her – old Southwick, for instance, who doted on her – and told that she was five feet tall, about twenty-three years old, and the most beautiful woman they had ever seen. She had striking blue-black hair, large brown eyes – and, when she felt like it, was imperious.

Still, that was not surprising, because she had once ruled the kingdom of Volterra; her family had done so for centuries, until Bonaparte’s invading army forced her to flee to the coast, to be rescued by the captain – then a junior lieutenant. And they had fallen in love. Hardened sinners like Jackson, Stafford and Rossi, who were in the ship’s boat that rowed her to safety (even though one of Bonaparte’s cavalrymen had put a bullet in her shoulder), fell in love with her too.