In his cabin on board the Calypso, Ramage was sleepy from too large a dinner but otherwise clear-headed because he had refused all wine and the Yorkes had not pressed him. He waited for Bowen to make himself comfortable in the armchair; both Aitken and Southwick sat on the settee.
Bowen had only just returned from the Jason: he had not waited to change his spray-spattered breeches, although his dry boots showed he had paused to get out of ones which had been sodden by the water in the bottom of the boat.
"You mentioned a written report, sir," Bowen began tentatively. "At least, I thought at first that you did. I now realize that I was completely mistaken: that all you really wanted was a verbal report on any conversation I might have with Captain Shirley."
Ramage sat back and considered carefully what Bowen had just said. He had told Bowen to go over and examine Captain Shirley, and return to write a very detailed report on the man's condition which he should sign, with one of the Calypso's officers witnessing his signature. Name, date and location. Now, Bowen is saying, in a roundabout way, that he did not hear him refer to a written report. Something has happened, or Bowen has discovered something (or not discovered it) that he does not want to put into writing and he is trying to avoid involving Aitken and Southwick in anything that can later be construed as conspiracy.
"Yes, indeed, you were mistaken," Ramage said. "Well, now we're all together can I offer any of you gentlemen a drink?"
They all shook their heads. "I was offered enough on board the Jason to have floated her out of a drydock," Bowen said. "Those gunroom officers . . ." He shook his head at the memory. "The third lieutenant stuck his head in a bucket of sea water before going on watch."
"To make his hair curl, or does he find it puts him in the right mood for handling the ship?" Southwick inquired.
"To sober himself up enough to walk comparatively straight. It's not a bucket but a tub: they have one outside the gunroom door. One day someone is going to be so tipsy he falls in and drowns, unless the Marine sentry fishes him out."
"Come now, Mr Bowen," Ramage said, assuming a suitably formal manner. "Tell us about your visit to the Jason. It must make a pleasant change for you to visit another of the King's ships. I trust you were also able to deal with any medical matters arising since the death of the Jason's surgeon."
"Yes, indeed, sir. Nothing like a dead surgeon for increasing the sick list. There's not a man in that ship, from the captain downwards, who hasn't got an ache or pain somewhere since the day they buried the surgeon. That is why I've been such a long time," he explained to Ramage. "I've treated more men on board the Jason in an hour than I've had sick in the Calypso in six months."
Southwick sniffed and brushed his hands together in a dismissive movement. "That's easily explained," he said. "Our chaps are scared stiff of you. Belly? Here, take this soap pill. Chest? Here, take this soap pill. Head? Ah yes, a soap pill is a sovereign remedy for afflictions of the head. You work miracles, you scoundrel. No matter what any of our fellows may contract, there's nothing that doesn't vanish the moment the sufferer thinks about one of your 'sovereign remedies'."
Bowen looked carefully at the master. "Tell me, old friend, for how long have you been suffering with this acute pain in the back that almost cripples you on a cold, damp day? And those rheumy eyes - shouldn't you be thinking of retiring? Perhaps we could get you a berth somewhere as 'mine host' - the landlord in a comfortable old hostelry with a blazing log fire, a lad to help roll the casks off the brewer's dray when it calls once a month (and lift the kegs of brandy from the smugglers' horses, too), and all you need to do is give a sharp tap to start the bung ..."
Southwick grinned, admitting that Bowen had won this round in the continual teasing between the two of them.
"We were talking about the Jason," Ramage said, "but somehow we became involved in finding Mr Southwick's bung-starter ..."
"Ah yes. Well, sir, I went on board the Jason, as you know, and Captain Shirley was expecting me. He was wearing that black coat but was otherwise quite normal. He invited me down to his cabin and offered me rum, gin or wine: he made rather a point that those were the only choices. But I am afraid that was the only example of slightly strange behaviour, and even that is not very strange if he does not have much choice of drink in his locker."
"So what did you talk about?" Ramage asked.
Bowen laughed quietly, as though enjoying a private joke. "Well, he told me about the surgeon dying, and how good a man he was, then described the size of his sick list and asked if I would examine some of the men. I agreed because it seemed it might give me a good chance of questioning them about other matters of more immediate interest to us. Then, very tactfully (by his standards, but rather like a particularly clumsy bull trying to cross a flower garden undetected), he started to ask me about you, sir."
"Me?" Ramage exclaimed. "What on earth did he want to know about me?"
"He asked in a very roundabout way with about thirty very carefully phrased questions, but there was no doubt what he was asking."
"Bowen, stop grinning like a parson who has just received ten times as much as he expected from Queen Anne's Bounty!"
The more he thought about it, the funnier it seemed to Bowen. "The trouble was, sir, I didn't know what answer to give. It all depended on one's point of view."
"Oh do stop guffawing like a schoolboy. What was Captain Shirley trying to find out?"
"If you were mad, sir."
Ramage joined in the laughter. "What point of view did you put forward, eh?"
"I avoided committing myself," Bowen said.
"Oh, you did. . . well, you could have risked perjury and given a definite answer."
Bowen shook his head. "Remember, sir, I was trying to get Captain Shirley on my side. I told him I could not discuss the condition of a patient with anyone else and he agreed - forgetting that surgeons have to give daily reports on every man reporting sick. He wanted to know how long I had served with you, how often you had been wounded, and so on. He belongs to that school of medical thought (dating back about five hundred years) that believes all madness is the result of a blow on the head. Have you ever had a blow on the head, sir?" Bowen asked innocently.
"No, only on my soup."
Bowen nodded. "I thought as much. Well, Captain Shirley and I talked, and he answered all my questions without hesitation. The only trouble is that when a man behaves quite sanely, it is very difficult (impossible, in fact) for a medical man to frame questions that would reveal insanity. You see, sanity or insanity is not like a fever, fractured limb, rash, sprained ligament or anything like that. I give you an example. Two men are sitting side by side, quietly daydreaming. One man is thinking how much he loves his wife. The other man has just murdered his wife and has her fortune in a leather bag beside his chair. One man is sane, the other insane. But looking at the two of them, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, by talking to them, there is nothing to distinguish the mad one."
Ramage sighed with relief. "That was the feeling that Aitken, Southwick and I had - that the man seemed sane even though he had just behaved like a madman. Been a madman, rather."
"That's the problem, sir. I could take you to Moorfields and we could walk through the wards of Bethlehem Royal Hospital - better known perhaps as Bedlam - and men and women would come up to you and I defy you to distinguish whether they are inmates or visitors like yourself. Oh yes, there are many palpably insane - screaming, making faces, claiming to be Genghis Khan, and so on."
"They are the dangerous ones!" Ramage said.
"Not always, sir. A screaming man who wants to take an axe to all piebald horses is probably less dangerous - because one sees at once that he is deranged. But those only rarely insane are usually not violent."
"You mean, they don't get screaming mad?" Ramage asked. "They just go mad in a quiet way?"
Bowen smiled and acknowledged: "Yes, sir, I admit I may have been simplifying a little too much!"
"Anyway, you learned nothing about Captain Shirley. Very well, then what happened?"
"I then held a sick parade, beginning in the gunroom. The gunner and the third lieutenant were both sick. I noticed that all of them were drunk, in varying degrees. And all of them seemed to be frightened of something. Apprehensive, in the way men would be if they'd been told the day the world would end, and it's next Thursday but they have to keep it secret."
"Did you find out anything from the gunroom?"
"Nothing, except that they're all frightened and drunk. Then I saw about twenty of the rest of the ship's company. Nothing serious: just the 'illnesses' you find in an unhappy ship."
Ramage realized that Bowen had made a shrewd observation that applied to just about every ship in the Navy. Unless there was something about the station (the West Indies and the black vomit, for example) then a glance at the surgeon's journal, more formidably known officially as the Journal of Physical Transactions of the particular ship, probably told you all you needed to know about her captain - and her officers, too. In a well ordered ship there was no need to sham sickness. But the Jason's copy was missing: Bowen had just confirmed that . . .
Which did not get over the fact that Bowen had also confirmed that Shirley's form of madness was easy to hide, and dam' nearly impossible for anyone else to prove. And there was no clue to how (or why) Shirley was holding a whole ship's company in silent terror. Looking on the bright side, he had another frigate to help escort the convoy. In fact by normal standards the convoy now had a strong escort - four frigates for just over seventy ships: almost unheard-of these days. Providing, of course, that the Jason was not entirely useless as a fighting ship: a mad captain and drunken officers did not inspire confidence, but it meant -
"He's senior to you on the Post List, but you command the convoy," Southwick said.
"I've been thinking about that."
Southwick nodded because finding himself and his captain thinking alike was nothing very new. "Mind you, sir, that's not to say he has to obey any orders you give if he doesn't want to."
"No, but it does mean he can't use his seniority to take the command away from Mr Ramage," Aitken interjected. "Mr Ramage has his orders in writing from Admiral Tewtin."
"Let's not get too involved in that," Ramage said. "All that concerns us is that if I give the Jason an order concerning the safety of the convoy it's up to Shirley whether or not he obeys it. I think he will. He's obeyed my orders up to now - that's why the Jason is on our larboard beam."
"I dream of the day the Lizard comes in sight," Southwick said.
"I alternate," Ramage admitted. "Sometimes I dream about the day we anchor at Plymouth; at other times I have nightmares about it."
"Have pleasant dreams," Southwick advised. "There's not a damned thing we can do until we get there, and you know my advice - don't fret about something you can't do anything about."
Ramage stood at the quarterdeck rail wishing he could ignore his own rule, that no one was allowed to lean on it with his arms. Evening was the pleasantest part of the day with the sun sinking on the larboard beam and taking with it the heat and glare of the Tropics that eventually seemed to bake and dazzle you into impatience sabotaged by listlessness. Each day the wind had veered a little more. As they left Barbados the Trade winds had blown briskly from the east, with never a touch of north in them, as though to emphasize what many sailors had long suspected, that the old geographers had been teasing when they called them the "North East" trades. Anyway, they had left the islands behind, islands which for the Yorkes and for Ramage had been or become part of life - Grenada, St Vincent, St Lucia and the Pitons, the almost unbelievable matching pair of sugarloaf hills which Nature had dumped on the southwestern corner . . . Martinique, Dominica with its cloak of thick cloud and heavy rain which made it a favourite island for the Spanish plate fleets to make a landfall if they were short of water . . . Guadeloupe which looked on the chart like the two wings of a butterfly, Antigua, parched and mosquito-ridden, then the tiny island of St Barts, and St Martin, the island split between the Dutch who owned the southern half (and called it Sint Maarten, reminding Ramage of a lamb bleating) and the French. Then low-lying Anguilla and beyond Sombrero, a barren rock which seemed to guard the entrance to this wide channel joining the Atlantic to the Caribbean.
From there the convoy had really started its long voyage across the Atlantic and Ramage was thankful their luck had held: the wind had veered to the southeast a day past Sombrero and then held steady for a week so that they were able to steer for Bermuda.
Within a hundred miles of the collection of reefs, wrecks and legends of what used to be called Somers' Island, after its former owner, Sir George Somers, but now more generally known as Bermuda (after the Spaniard who discovered it, Bermudez), the wind had begun to haul round to the southwest and was now starting them off on the great sweep which should carry them into the Chops of the Channel.
Please, Ramage said in silent prayer, do not let it head us; the prospect of much beating to windward with these mules, tacking the whole convoy even once a day, made the patient Southwick blench. But now, as the latitude increased, they were abeam of Madeira away to the east across the Atlantic, while Savannah and Charleston were on the American coast to the west.
Already the real heat had gone: there was a nip in the air at night.
Those hating the heat as the sapper of energy and father to a long list of vile diseases, almost all fatal, and those hating the cold northern latitudes with their rheumatism, colds and consumptions, generally reckoned the temperature dropped one degree for every degree of latitude made good towards Bermuda.
Yesterday the big awning which kept the sun from beating down on to the quarterdeck, making the caulking runny so that if one was not careful the pitch stuck to the soles of one's shoes and made black marks on the scrubbed planking, had been taken down and this morning the sailmaker and his mates had been checking it over, putting in some patches and restitching along the roping where the constant fluttering in the wind and the rays of the sun had rotted the thread. The last job today had been to roll it all up and lower it below to be stowed until the Calypso next slipped back into the Tropics or Mediterranean.
The Calypso was, Ramage reckoned, a hot-weather ship: he had captured her from the French in the Tropics, and she had fought most of her actions in the Tropics or Mediterranean. Her guns would probably warp or miss fire in the cold of the North Sea!
During a near-tropical evening, an hour before darkness and as the last of the cottonball clouds vanished for the night, there was no finer sight created by man than a well-ordered convoy. However patched the sails of the ships, they were brushed a reddish-gold by the setting sun, the heavy shadow on the eastern side of each hull and the light playing on the western making pleasing patterns. Because it was a falling wind, none of the ships was going fast enough to leave a turbulent wake to disturb the pattern of waves and all the ships seemed to be uncut gems set down on deep-blue velvet.
Standing here admiring the convoy as an object of beauty was almost dangerous because he nearly forgot that seventy-two ships were his responsibility: ships laden with valuable cargoes for a country at war and heavily insured, and with probably a couple of thousand men on board. And many women, of course: most of the larger ships carried passengers - plantation owners, tradesmen and soldiers and their wives returning to England. And Alexis, too, who might well at this moment be looking astern from that ship leading the starboard column - although it was unlikely that she could distinguish the Calypso from all the rest of the ships, even if she wanted to.
The quartermaster spoke quietly to the two men at the wheel as the ship wandered a few degrees to windward, and they hove down on the spokes, hoping the bow would swing back before the captain glanced round with a scowl. He never actually said anything but somehow, the quartermaster thought, that was worse: as though Mr Ramage had made an entry in some great ledger and one day he would bring them all to account.
The quartermaster on watch was a Lincolnshire man named Aston, one of the most agile men in the ship but also one of the plumpest. Like a fat pigeon, his body carried extra flesh wherever there was room for it. Although less than thirty years of age, he had jowls and paunch more appropriate to a cleric, although he had a sharper wit and a better understanding of his fellow men. Now he was concerned that the swinging bow should not distract Mr Ramage because he could see that the captain, alone at the quarterdeck rail, was miles away in his thoughts. Aston knew that Mr Ramage had more to trouble him than was a fair load on a man. Commanding a convoy of merchant ships would make a saint run amok, but on top of that there was this strange business of the Jason. Why had she opened fire?
Jackson was with the captain when the Calypso boarded her, and he had been back again with him, but if Jacko was to be believed, Mr Ramage still did not know why it had happened. There was one thing about Jacko - if he could not reveal something out of loyalty to the captain, he always said so. When he just did not know, he usually said so. So Aston was inclined to believe him now - that if there was any explanation at all, it was that the captain of the Jason had gone daft.
That would account for Mr Wagstaffe going over there - it was said he was in command now, which meant Mr Ramage had taken on himself the responsibility of replacing the captain, and Aston knew the Articles of War were hot and strong against that.
But even worse than all that, and something that Aston, recently and happily married, could understand very well, there was the worry about her ladyship: Jacko had heard that the Murex, taking her ladyship back to England, had just vanished after leaving them off Brest. A short enough distance - must be about a hundred miles and the weather was not out of the way. The Murex could have sprung the butt end of a plank and sunk like a stone: she could have been sunk by a French man-o'-war; or she could have been captured by a French privateer. It must be awful for Mr Ramage, just not knowing.
Aston was thankful that he knew his wife was at home in Lincolnshire, looking after his mother and tending the half-acre of land with occasional help from her young nephew. The boy was an idle youngster, but since Rebecca had cut off his meals for a day or two, then cuffed him once when he was insolent, he had mended his ways a bit. In fact Rebecca had been so provoked by him that once she turned him out of the house so that he had nowhere to sleep. He had gone off and told the parson a tall story and without even bothering to ask Rebecca, whom he had known since christening her twenty years before, the parson gave the boy a whack across the shins with his walking stick, made him sleep the night in the parsonage stables and sent him home again next morning with orders to beg Rebecca's pardon.
That sort of parson was good for a village, but all too many of them seemed to reckon that only the squire and his lady were likely to go to Heaven and the rest of the folk were not worth bothering about, damned because they were poor. Well, luckily the local parson was a good old chap because the fact of the matter was (and not even Rebecca knew much about it: she would go telling her mother, then it would be all over the village), thanks to Mr Ramage and the number of prizes they had taken, he had quite a bit of money now. And head money too, for all the prisoners taken. So when the war ended and he had all his prize money together, he was going to make old Swan an offer for Lower Farm. Eighty-four acres and good land. The tithe ran at seven pounds eleven shillings a year, but that field behind the wood was hard to get to and was just right to let out to grazing, leaving exactly seventy acres to farm and the rent would pay the tithe.
He had talked to Mr Ramage about it, and Mr Ramage reckoned Swan's price was about right and also reckoned letting that field for grazing would be a good idea. In fact he had suggested it. The captain said that one of the secrets of good farming was being able to get to all your land all the year round. Having a big field cut off by thick snow or thick mud meant you might as well not own it for many months.
Aston admitted he would never have seen it in that light, but it was true. Mr Ramage also said he would have his man of law go over all the papers with Swan when the time came and make sure everything was in order. That was Mr Ramage for you. Aston knew of other men that Mr Ramage had helped, and he never talked about it, or behaved any differently towards the men: he never expected more than a good day's work. What a landlord he would make!
Ramage, was inspecting the columns of ships, looking at each one through the glass, not from any particular interest but because he knew that for the next few weeks there would not be many more tranquil sunsets. In fact in the next few days he would have all the storm canvas stretched out on deck to be patched where necessary and to make sure the stitching holding the bolt ropes to the canvas was still in good condition. It was curious how the stitching of a sail or awning always rotted long before the cloth itself.
The poor old Calypso needed a new suit of sails, and the present ones should be struck below as spares. The trouble was that she was back at Chatham being paid off when the war started again after the Treaty of Amiens, and she had been hurriedly commissioned - which meant getting the yards across with new rigging, but the old sails were bent on again. The Calypso was merely one of many ships of war being commissioned in a rush, and Ramage had not been there to use cunning or influence to get new sails.
Nor was Captain Ramage himself much better off! One of his first calls in London would be on his tailor. Twenty guineas, probably more, for a full dress coat and epaulette (it was an economy being a post-captain with less than three years' seniority because he had to wear an epaulette on only one shoulder). Ten guineas for an undress coat. Five guineas for the gold-laced hat. Breeches, silk stockings, shirts, stocks, handkerchiefs . . . Silkin, his steward, had a long list which included table linen as well which needed replacing. Well, he did not complain about that: it was very irritating sitting down at a meal alone and restraining oneself, between courses, from poking the tines of a fork into a fraying patch. Silkin did his best to darn the patches, but new ones appeared every time the cloths were laundered.
He remembered Alexis's irritation, while they were having dinner on board the Emerald, when she noticed a tiny worn patch in the table cloth: she had frowned at the steward and glanced at it, and that was all. That was one of the advantages of being in a well-run merchant ship, which used fewer men for the same job than one of the King's ships, but the men probably worked harder because they were paid more and could be paid off at the end of a voyage if their work was unsatisfactory. They could also be picked up by a press-gang before the end of a voyage, too! Anyway, one frown from Alexis might be more effective than an outburst of anger from a post-captain!
He swung the telescope from L'Espoir to La Robuste and then to the Jason. All three ships were in good order, and for the moment none of the merchant ships showed any sign of dropping astern, although the sun had slipped well below the horizon. He had forgotten to look for the green flash. He had seen it hundreds of times in various latitudes, but it always amused him to watch for it, knowing that one blink at the crucial moment meant missing that bright green wink which lasted only a fraction of a second.
Young Kenton was standing over on the larboard side of the quarterdeck, having just taken over the deck from Martin. Ramage decided to go down to his cabin. Usually he did not like reading by candlelight in low latitudes because the flame made the cabin too hot, but they were now far enough north for it not to matter. More important, he had just found that the four volumes of letters edited by John Fenn and which he had bought three or four years ago and left in the bookcase, read more like novels than anything else.
Fenn (Sir John Fenn, he seemed to remember: was he not given a knighthood for his labours?) certainly gave the volumes a title which was accurate but hardly inspiring - Original Letters written During the Reigns of Henry VI, Edward IV, Richard III and Henry VII, by Various Persons of Rank and Consequence, and by Members of the Paston Family. To read the letters, as far as Ramage was concerned, was to be one of the Paston family of Norfolk at the time of the Wars of the Roses. Their neighbour was Sir John Fastolf, a soldier who fought at Agincourt (was that not in 1415?), and was changed by Shakespeare from a brave soldier in real life to the bawdy and drunken (but humorous) coward in some of his plays, the name changed slightly from Fastolf to Falstaff, a change too slight, Ramage thought, to avoid a Mr Shakespeare of today being called out by Sir John or one of his friends.
Still, Shakespeare's plays and the Paston family letters were (thanks to John Fenn) a joy to read. In fact he would be hard put to finish the final volume of the Paston letters before the Lizard hove in sight.
Gilbert looked puzzled as he tried to translate what was obviously a joke by Stafford. The trouble was that Gilbert's English had been learned in the eastern part of Kent, where country folk talked broadly and in a slow drawl, whereas the Cockney, Stafford, talked quickly, clipping words like a miserly tailor.
" 'Penten' - I do not understand it."
Stafford, sprawled along the form beside the table, the bread barge in front of him, was roaring with laughter, and Jackson tapped him on the arm. "That was all too quick for me, so how'd you reckon . Gilbert is going to understand?"
"He asked me if I went to church or chapel," Stafford explained. "I said I didn't go to either (he meant a'fore I came to sea) but that some o' my friends said their prayers in St George's Fields."
"What's funny about that?" Jackson asked, and Rossi repeated the question, adding: "You can hurt yourself inside, laughing like that."
Stafford's features were now serious: he was faced with sheer ignorance, and he always delighted in instructing his shipmates. "I was making a little joke, see, about goin' to chapel. To the chapel in St George's Fields. There's only one chapel there -" he began laughing, "- and that's the one belonging to Magdalen Hospital, see?"
"No," Jackson said briskly. "This looks like one of your long jokes that has us all falling asleep."
"Yus, well, I'll shut up then and you can entertain the mess - song or story, eh Jacko?" Stafford asked sulkily.
"Oh come on," Rossi wheedled, now intrigued at the idea of a chapel in a place called St George's Fields. "Tell us about this saint. Why does he have his own chapel?"
"My oath," Stafford said despairingly, "I dunno, s'just a place darn the uvver end o' Blackfriars Road. Why's everybody suddenly interested in it?"
"Because of you," Gilbert said mildly. "You started to tell us a joke about it."
Stafford ran a hand through his hair and sat up straight, a look of desperation about him. "Chapel," he said slowly, as though feeling his way through a fog. "Church or chapel Gilbert asked, and I said some of my friends went to chapel in St George's Fields ..."
He rubbed his head, trying to restore the train of thought, but he had drunk his own rum issue and Gilbert had passed over his, and Jackson had paid him a tot for a favour done yesterday. Finally, he remembered. "Yus, well, I was really tellin' Gilbert that my friends were - well, young ladies who had to make their own living, if you get my meaning."
"Whores?" Gilbert asked.
"Well, yes, but that's a strong word."
"St George's Fields," Rossi said relentlessly. "Accidente, San Giorgio mi aiutaP'
"Wotchew rattling on abart, then?" Stafford demanded suspiciously. "Speak English!"
"I was asking St George to help me," Rossi said, "but you need his help more. Now come on, start again. First, we have the chapel in St George's Fields."
"Well, the chapel belongs to Magdalen Hospital," Stafford said, as though that explained everything.
"And . . ." Jackson said encouragingly, "what sort of hospital is it? Like Greenwich Hospital, for seamen?"
"Nah, nah, nan!" Stafford exclaimed. "That's the whole joke - it's for 'The Reformation and Relief of Penitent Prostitutes'!"
"A sort of Stafford family home, like Mr Ramage has St Kew, eh?" Jackson asked drily.
"You don't believe me," Stafford complained, "but it's run by dukes and earls and rich merchants. Has a surgeon, several apotharies -"
"Apothecaries," Jackson corrected out of habit.
"- yes, s'what I said, and parsons. One's the chaplain and two more take it in turns to preach each evenin'. And the matron - she's a hard old biddy, I can tell you."
"How can you tell us?" Rossi inquired innocently. "Surely you've never been 'penitent'?"
Stafford realized he had talked too much, but as Jackson and Rossi (and Mr Ramage) knew that his job before the war, after an apprenticeship to a locksmith, was hard to describe, there was no need for secrets.
"One of my sisters," he said, offhandedly. "She got mixed up with that bad lot around Blackfriars and before we knew what had happened this pimp was threatening to cut her wiv a knife."
"Then what?" Jackson asked, realizing that there were still aspects of Stafford's past life he knew nothing about.
"Well, when Neilley (that's what we call her 'cos she don't like plain 'Nell') when Neilley got the word back to us, me and some mates went darn to Blackfriars and called on this pimp."
"And murdered him?" Rossi asked. Having spent a childhood in the Genoa slums, he was genuinely interested how the day-to-day problems of life in London were solved.
"Nah, that's 'gainst the law," Stafford said airily. "We just took Neilley and left 'im for dead."
"There is a difference?" Gilbert asked, who had been trying to translate for Louis, Auguste and Albert.
"Oh yus, indeed. Murder's a capital offence in England, you know that. Get topped if you're caught. You know," he explained, seeing the blank look on Gilbert's face, "'topped' - hanged. So we just cut him up a bit, like he'd threatened to do Neilley, and if 'e died later 'cos he 'adn't the sense to stop bleedin', that's 'is affair."
"What about Neilley?" Jackson asked, puzzled by the connection with Magdalen Hospital and the dukes, earls and parsons who ran it.
"Oh, at first she took on a bit. She'd got a bit o' a taste for the life, if you get my meaning, but I persuaded her a stay at the Magdalen would put her right. Prayers and poultices, that's what she needed for a few weeks. She didn't agree, but she went all the same, and I used to go darn there a couple of times a week, just to make sure Neilley was paying attention to what all those dukes and earls and parsons and apotherums were telling 'er."
"Was she? Many peoples is talking," Rossi observed.
"She was listening an' prayin' an' taking her medicine," Stafford said. "The matron was watching her, special."
"What, you paid the matron for special attention?" Jackson asked doubtfully. It did not sound like Stafford who, he thought, had always taken what he wanted, providing the lock could be picked.
"Well, not exactly paid 'er," Stafford admitted, for the first time looking uneasy. "Just sort of 'inted to 'er that if Neilley wasn't right as rain by St Swithin's Day, an' penitent too, matron might find 'erself in need o' a lot of prayin' and medicalatin' too."
"Medicating," Jackson said. "You're a rough lot. What happened to Neilley? Was she the 'penten' you were telling us about?"
"Yus. Well, all that was going on abart the time the press took me up. My fault, 'cos I knew the word was out for a hot press, but one night I was drinking heavy down Fetter Lane an' reckoned I knew me way back 'ome without any of the gangers spottin' me, even though I couldn't see straight."
"And?"
"An' I was wrong. I sobered up in the 'old of a receiving ship anchored off the Tower with 'alf an 'undred other rascals that the pressgang had just rounded up, an' there we all were, screamin' at the top of our lungs that we'd fight the French wivart swords or pay."
Wide-eyed, Gilbert exclaimed: "You were all shouting that?"
"Well, not 'xactly shouting if you get my meaning, but we thought it. We was all recovering from too much drink, an' if anyone 'ad actually shouted, the noise would've done us an injury."
Jackson explained: "Staff sometimes exaggerates a little."
Gilbert nodded and turned to translate for the other Frenchmen, but if anything Stafford's story grew in the translation: like Stafford himself, Gilbert was not one to let facts spoil a good tale.
The Frenchmen listened wide-eyed, glancing at Stafford from time to time. Between them they had lived as fishermen or on the Count of Rennes' estate. Brest was small, built round its port, the river and the naval dockyard. A city like London, with its capacity for sin and which offered such scope for lively fellows like Stafford, was more than they could imagine.
Stafford, his ten minutes of glory at an end, leaned against the ship's side and went to sleep with the Atlantic swirling past his head, separated by only a few inches of oak.
"What a man," Louis commented in French, but Auguste winked. "What a woman, eh? Can you imagine life with the sister of a man like this?"
"I could, but I'm not going to: most of the time it would be like war! In England are all the women like that?"
"No, most certainly not," Gilbert said, shaking his head with the air of a connoisseur. "I met several I would like to have married."
Jackson said: "You are going about it backwards. I followed what you just said. Under English law if a foreigner marries an Englishwoman he can be pressed, because marrying makes him the same as an Englishman - leastways, as far as the pressgangs are concerned."
"You mean that foreigners are not pressganged?"
"Well, they are sometimes, but they can apply to their consul and be freed."
"So as Frenchmen ... ?"
Jackson frowned, suddenly realizing that of the seven men making up Mess Number Eight in His Majesty's frigate the Calypso, Stafford was the only Englishman.
"As Frenchmen, I suppose you rate as 'enemy' unless you're serving in one of the King's ships. Still, there's one thing about it, when we arrive in England you can marry an Englishwoman without fear of the press because you're already serving!"
"What about you? You're American, aren't you?"
"Yes, but our government gives us things called 'Protections'. These certify that we're American citizens, so we can't be pressed. But if we are, we apply to an American consul, and the Protection should get us freed."
"Why don't you have a Protection, then?" Gilbert asked.
"I've had one for years," Jackson said.
"Then why don't... ?"
Jackson shrugged his shoulders. "I'm too old to change my habits and I like serving with Mr Ramage."
"But supposing you were transferred to another ship, what then?"
"We'll see. Mr Ramage and I have managed to keep together - and Rossi and Staff too - for several years now. And Mr Southwick."
"And Mr Orsini?" Gilbert asked.
"Yes, he's been with Mr Ramage for a couple of years or so. "
"So when we get to England we can all stay together in the Calypso?"
Jackson shrugged again. "It'll depend how the Jason affair turns out. If this Captain Shirley has friends in high places, there's going to be trouble."
"But hasn't Mr Ramage friends in high places too?"
"Yes, but years ago his father - an admiral - was made the scapegoat for some government mistake, and people might attack our Mr Ramage to get at the father."
Gilbert sighed. "Politicians. . . they should all be made to go to that hospital Stafford was talking about."
"I've never heard of a penitent politician," Jackson said. "Anyway, I'll be damned glad when we get a sight of the Lizard and then anchor at Spithead, or Plymouth, or wherever we're sent, so we get the trial or inquiry over quick."