As the column passed through Manciano on the last leg of its journey back to the coast, it seemed to Ramage that he had spent his life marching, and coughing as white dust swirled up from the track like fog and made his throat raw.
Orbetello was a walled town, and the Via Aurelia on its way to Rome passed just to the east. A town with a big jail - he, Jackson, Stafford and Paolo had become familiar with the piazza at the time they attacked Port' Ercole with the bomb ketches. Yes, Orbetello could provide temporary lodging for hostages and their guards if they were on their way to Rome. Or perhaps not so far - Tarquinia, maybe, which was just short of halfway to Rome. And the port of Civitavecchia was less than halfway between there and Rome. But why go all that way to find a port when within ten miles of Orbetello there was Santo Stefano at one end of Argentario and Port' Ercole at the other? It made no sense, and Ramage realized that he was not thinking clearly, as though the thudding of his heels on the hard track was numbing his brain.
As if understanding his problem, Paolo said:."Why Orbetello, do you suppose, sir? I can understand the French using the town jail to punish people, but it's a bad place to keep important hostages. They're likely to die of prison fever. I should have thought that Pitigliano and the Orsini Palace were just right."
As they marched along the track the setting sun was ahead of them, glaring in their eyes. Now Paolo had rounded it all off. Why Orbetello? It was convenient for Santo Stefano or Port' Ercole, and that was that. Ports meant ships.
Except . . . yes, except that Santo Stefano had the large Fortezza di Filippo Secundo. That would be a good place to lodge hostages. And Port' Ercole had at least two suitable fortresses. But... the more Ramage considered the merits of either place the more the "but" intruded. Two of them, in fact. The first was, "But why move them from Pitigliano?" and the other, "But why Orbetello?"
Paolo said: "Perhaps they wait in Orbetello until a ship arrives at Port' Ercole or Santo Stefano."
"I've thought of that," said Ramage, "but to take them where? If the French wanted them up in the north they'd make them march - they probably haven't enough ships to spare to carry them to Genoa by sea. Or down to Civitavecchia, come to that. There'd be no point in taking them to Corsica or Sardinia: the bandits and guerrillas make enough trouble already."
"The islands off the coast?" Paolo ventured.
Ramage shrugged his shoulders. "If it was Elba, the French would have marched them north to Piombino, not Orbetello, and put 'em on board the ferry. Giglio? That's possible and only a few hours' sail from Santo Stefano. A small, mountainous island, small harbour, at least one fort... but enough room to house the hostages and their guards? Vulnerable, too: don't forget the Barbary pirates still raid such places, and I don't think the Emperor would be very pleased if his valuable hostages became galley slaves.
"That leaves Montecristo - yes, possible: sticks up out of the sea like a back tooth, just like Pitigliano in the valley. Then Pianosa and Capraia to the north. All vulnerable to pirates."
He shrugged his shoulders again as he marched. "Who the devil knows: we're looking for logical moves, but generals and admirals and emperors are usually more quirkish than logical. Damn and blast this sun; the glare makes my head ache."
"We're not due back at the beach to meet the Calypso's boats until tomorrow night, sir," Paolo reminded him.
Which meant, of course, that now they were clear of Manciano they could stop and, after a meal from the provisions he had commandeered in the town, rest, starting again tomorrow when they had the whole day for the march. It would be wiser to halt well this side of the Via Aurelia, crossing it and getting to the river mouth only an hour or so before the Calypso's boats arrived. Providing the Calypso had not been trapped and sunk or captured by a couple of French frigates which happened to be passing . . . I'm very tired, he told himself; as soon as it is dark the ghost of Hamlet's father will appear from among the dark green cypress to tell me ever sadder stories of death and duplicity.
He took a few quick paces to get ahead of the column, turned to face it, and held up his hand. As soon as the men halted he pointed to the row of cypress just back from the road and told the men to fall out for the night.
While Jackson and Stafford and Rossi issued the rations, Ramage sat with his back to a tree, Aitken, Hill, Rennick and Orsini sitting in a half-circle round him.
"Before we start, sir, I'd like to ask Orsini a question."
Ramage nodded to Aitken, and Paolo looked startled.
"That Orsini Palace in Pitigliano - is that your family?"
"A distant branch of it," Paolo said just as Ramage realized that he had not connected Paolo with the palace.
"So you won't inherit it," Aitken commented.
Paolo looked embarrassed. "Well, it's not quite the same as England - or Scotland," he added tactfully. "The big English and Scottish families usually own single castles, and estates, which pass from eldest son to eldest son. Here in Italy we do not have primogeniture; the eldest son has no more (and no fewer) rights than his brothers. If - I take an imaginary example - the Count of Orbetello has three sons, then all three are counts, and so are each of their three sons. When the father dies his estate is divided into three, and so on when each of the sons die. In two generations it will have been divided twelve times - three times, and then three times for each of their sons.
"So the Palazzo degli Orsini in Pitigliano has not been passed from eldest son to eldest son. Quite apart from primogeniture, the Orsini family is large and owns many palaces (what in England would be called large country houses), and when the head of a particular branch of the family dies, his property is divided among many people."
Aitken asked bluntly: "How does this affect you not having a claim on that place in Pitigliano?"
Ramage realized that the real explanation was embarrassing Paolo, who was afraid that Aitken and Hill would think he was boasting. "What Orsini hasn't told you is that he's the present head of the Orsini family. He might well be the ruler of Volterra, if his aunt - the Marchesa, whom you know, Aitken - is dead. The Palazzo degli Orsini in Pitigliano probably belongs to a distant cousin who fled when the French came."
Aitken's curiosity was aroused and both Ramage and Orsini realized that the Calypso's first lieutenant was genuinely interested, not prying.
"So if - if anything has happened to the Marchesa and you are now the ruler of Volterra, where - what, rather - is your home?"
"The palace in Volterra. Or would be if the French had not occupied Volterra, along with the Kingdom of Tuscany."
"So you own a lot of land," Aitken commented.
"My aunt does - or did. If she is dead I inherit a kingdom. But to no purpose: at the moment everything I own is stowed in my trunk in the midshipman's berth on board the Calypso."
Aitken nodded and said quietly: "I'd never thought about this very much. We're really marching across your land."
"Not quite that," Paolo said hastily. "All this area belongs to the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Or did. Who knows what Bonaparte has done now he calls it the Kingdom of Etruria."
"But it's as though we were marching across the hills of Perthshire," Aitken said. "I come from near Perth," he added. "Aye, laddie, you carry a heavier weight on your shoulders than I realized."
The youth shrugged. "If I'd stayed, the French would probably have shot me - or at least let me rot in some prison. By escaping I can at least -" he gave a dry laugh, "- pay occasional visits."
"Aye, this'll be your second that I've been on. Port' Ercole's not that far away."
"But out of range of a bomb ketch," Orsini said, and moved over as Jackson came up with food and the flasks that were full of water when the Marines used them, but now contained wine.
That night Ramage slept fitfully: mosquitoes seemed to whine past him in line ahead, and from nearby a nightjar kept up its drearily monotonous "quark ... quark ..." Occasionally a nightingale began singing and Ramage found himself wakening fully so that he could listen to its song. One of the few drawbacks of life at sea was that apart from the mewing of gulls when they were close to land, the sea was barren of birdsong.
For too many nights now waking meant only lying and thinking about Sarah. He recognized that the worst part was the uncertainty. If he knew for sure that the Murex had been sunk in a gale or by the French, he could mourn her. She would be dead and (the thought seemed harsh but was not) that would be that, because she could not still be suffering in any way. But because she might have been captured (perhaps by privateers) anything could have happened. He forced himself to think about it, even though it made him shudder. If by privateers, they could have raped her and now be waiting for a chance to ransom her. If captured by a French national ship, she would be a prisoner and, given that Bonaparte appeared to be collecting the important and the famous as hostages, she might be a closely guarded prisoner in Paris.
Yet. . . yet. . . there was no point in having hostages unless your enemy knew about them. Their value was that the enemy knew you had them and that something unpleasant would happen to them unless he did whatever was demanded as the price of their lives or liberty.
Dead or a prisoner? And the same went for Gianna: assassinated or a prisoner? Yes, he thought bitterly, fear is not knowing, and he thought he would never sleep, but eventually he did, wakened as dawn broke by Jackson's insistent, "Sir. . . sir."
Another day . . . another march . . . more decisions . . . hell fire and damnation, he was more tired than he realized. He wanted to sleep, free of those nightmares which were not nightmares because he was still awake.
Jackson passed him his boots and then waited to see if there were any orders. Ramage shook his head. His mind had never been so empty of ideas or, for that matter, so hostile to them. Ideas meant action, and every bone in his body seemed bruised from marching and sleeping on the hard ground, every muscle stretched beyond its limits.
There was a smell of burning and he glanced round to see that the men had lit a small bonfire and over it swung a pot suspended from a tripod of three tree branches.
Sailors always wanted something hot to drink for breakfast, and the fact that they were in the lee of a row of cypress on the road from Manciano to the sea apparently made no difference. Well, to the onlooker it was natural enough: soldiers were always lighting fires to cook their food . . .
An hour later the column was marching westwards: for once the sun was cool and at their backs, and by noon they expected to be resting in the shade of the cypress only a mile short of the Via Aurelia, free to swim in the Albinia river. Wash in it, anyway, as long as oxen had not been sloshing about upstream. Ramage rubbed his chin, the bristles rasping. Within the first hour he was back on board the Calypso, he vowed, he would shave . . .
They had just come in sight of the cypress grove when Rossi laughed and pointed ahead. Coming towards them in the distance was a donkey, and on its back the same hunched figure they had first seen going the other way.
"He's sold his own wine," Orsini said, "and from the look of it he spent some of the money sampling the wine of Orbetello."
"Let's hope he's sober enough to talk sense," Ramage growled, "otherwise you can dip him in the river a few times. Though come to think of it, that won't put him in the right frame of mind to help us!"
The man turned out to be tired, not drunk, but he was extremely nervous, though there seemed to be no obvious reason. Ramage gestured to his men to fall out and rest along the side of the track, and then, with Orsini and Rossi, squatted down on the ground, offering the man some wine from a flask. He shook his head.
"You sold your wine for a good price?"
"Yes," he said abruptly, as though he did not want to discuss it.
"Is Orbetello crowded?" Ramage asked casually.
"No more than usual."
"You stayed longer than you expected?"
"Yes," the man said and rubbed his head as though trying to erase an unpleasant memory. "Mamma mia, when my wife hears . . ."
"What happened?" Rossi asked sympathetically, responding at once to Ramage's wink.
"Gambling," the man muttered. "I can't resist it. I used the wine money."
"But you won!" Rossi said jovially.
"Yes - to begin with. The first night I doubled it."
"Why are you so miserable, then?"
"You know scopa. I lost nearly all of it the next night. Scopa ... Mamma mia, they swept me up." The man still had a sense of humour. Scopa, the name of a card game, also meant broom.
"Anyway, you still have some soldi left, so cheer up!"
Again the man shook his head. "I felt so badly - I knew my wife would be angry. Miserable, I was, and so I started drinking . . ."
"And that's where the rest of the money went," Rossi commented.
"No, only some of it. But I drank so much I went to sleep in the road outside the taverna, and when I woke up . . ."
"Your pockets were empty."
"Yes, some thieving stronzo . . ."
Rossi looked at the man and rubbed the side of his nose with a forefinger. "Perhaps your wife would not be so angry if she thought that ladrone stole all the wine money."
The man thought for a few moments and then shook his head. "No, I've been away too long for that. If I had come back the next day with that story it would have been all right, but I stayed longer . . . she knows."
"Not the first time, eh?" Ramage said understandingly. "Is this why your father-in-law speaks so badly of you?"
"You know about that, then?"
"At Pitigliano, at the sign of the scissors? Yes, of course. By the way, one of those falegnami has closed."
"I'm not surprised," the man said, shaking his head. "The one on the gate side? Yes, well, he drinks, you know."
And now, Ramage thought, we are all friends together. Time to ask some more questions without arousing the man's suspicions. "You didn't play scopa with any of the French soldiers, then?"
The man looked up at him, his eyes bloodshot and squinting as though the light was too bright. "The French soldiers went two weeks ago. The ones that came from Pitigliano, that is. The usual garrison is still there, but they don't play scopa. Some French game they have, with different cards from ours."
"So the taverns are quieter now," Ramage commented. "Where have the French taken their money to now, I wonder?"
The man looked directly at Ramage. "Signore, I don't know what you are doing, but if you are on the side of the French, surely you would know the answers to all these questions?"
"The Army of Italy is a big one," Ramage said vaguely. "Orders go astray, mistakes are made . . ."
"Permesso?"Rossi asked.
Ramage nodded, giving the Genovese permission to say what he wanted. Rossi understood people instinctively; he had a knack probably learned in the stews of Genoa, and it was a knack which would still work in the open fields of Tuscany.
"Amico mio," he said, "I think you have guessed."
"I never make guesses, I'm always wrong. And just now -" he looked at the pistols tucked in Ramage's belt, "- making guesses could be dangerous."
"All right, don't guess," Rossi said. "All we ask is that you answer our questions if you wish, but if you want to remain silent, then please don't betray us the minute you get to Manciano."
"You mean I could betray you? That you are not with the French? What about those men?" He gestured to where Gilbert was sitting.
"Yes, you could betray us, and they are not French. They are simply dressed in French uniforms."
The man turned from Rossi and looked directly at Ramage, paused a moment as though reassessing him, and then said: "You are the leader, eh?"
Ramage nodded.
"You are Italian?"
Ramage shook his head. "I was not born an Italian, but these two were."
"That I can tell. Once a Genovese always a Genovese. And the youngster, he is Tuscan. Allora, I help you. You have my word. Not," he added, "that that means much to you, but I am known as an honest man."
"Yes," Ramage said, "I see that. We are looking for the French soldiers who were in Pitigliano."
"The French soldiers or the Inglesi prisoners?"
"If they are still together, does it matter?"
The man grinned and shook his head. "Two weeks ago - I know the date because I had to go to Orbetello to do some shopping - the French took their hostages to Santo Stefano. As I rode back along the road (along the Via Aurelia, before taking this turning) I saw a French ship sailing into the port. I think it took them all away."
"You don't know the destination?"
The man shrugged his shoulders. "No. It was not a big ship, but there are many places. Giglio, Elba, Montecristo . . . Even Corsica or Sardinia."
"Thank you," Ramage said. "I know you have told us this because we are paesani, but I wish we could help you with soldi, so that your wife is not so angry, but unfortunately we have neither French nor local money in our pockets."
"I guessed that," the man said, "and I would not have accepted it anyway. I am not a soldier or -" he winked at Ramage, "- a sailor, but I am a proprio Toscano, even if my father-in-law says bad things about me. Tell me, did all go well in Pitigliano?"
"Quiet. The few people we saw helped us. We were there only a few minutes."
The peasant nodded. "When I first met you, I wondered but dare not risk saying anything. Even now, you could shoot me, saying I am a traitor."
Ramage pulled one of the pistols from his belt, flicked open the pan so the man could see the powder, and shut it again. Then he cocked the gun and gave it butt-first to the man. "If you think you are going to be shot, you can take me with you."
The man handed back the gun. "Grazie, signore, but let us both try to stay alive - me to face my wife, you to find the prisoners . . ."