Ramage and the Guillotine

'Such documents provide no problem,' the Frenchman said. 'I'll get them before you leave. I need to know what trades you follow though, and you must decide on your names - or what names you want to use, rather. One of the men is not English, I think.'

'One is Italian, one British, and one American. The Italian speaks English and some Spanish. The American speaks a little Spanish - perhaps enough to fool a gendarme. I speak some Spanish, too. The American also speaks some Italian, and so do I.'

'Your Spanish and Italian - is it as good as your French?'

'Better - I've spoken both fairly recently. I haven't used my French since I learned it, unfortunately.'

'You have nothing to worry about. The accent of Paris - it shows. Your teachers made you work hard! But the Englishman - he speaks only English?'

Ramage nodded. 'His own particular brand of it!'

'Then he must be the dumb one, while the two of you must be Italian or Spanish. Italian would be better - the Spanish are not popular in France at the moment, as you probably know.'

'Yes, that gives us one native Italian - a Genovese – and Ican pass for a Tuscan. If the American just grunts and Englishman holds his tongue . . . But trades - what do you suggest?'

'It depends on your task. I'm not prying,' Louis added hurriedly, 'but one trade might be more suitable than another for your -' he broke off, embarrassed and obviously unable to find the right words.

'My masters are worried that Bonaparte's Army of England might suddenly arrive one morning . . .'

'It worries my masters too,' Louis grunted nodding as though Ramage had confirmed his guess. 'That would put every smuggler out of business along the whole French coast. The interests of our respective masters therefore coincide, which makes our task easier.'

Suddenly Ramage remembered the moment when Simpson had changed his mind and agreed to help when, in the comfort of his study, he had finally guessed the substance ol Ramage's orders and realized that, with Bonaparte's threat of invasion, the smugglers' and the Admiralty's interests were perhaps for the first time in history the same.

'Carpenters!' Louis said suddenly. 'Carpenters sent to Boulogne from Italy to help build the ships. You have just arrived. In Italy the French officers - blame the Army - promised you high wages if you went to work on the barges in Boulogne. With your tools —yes, that would help because they are short of tools here -' he saw Ramage's face fall and said reassuringly, 'don't worry, you are poor men and cannot be expected to have a lot of tools, not more than I can provide.'

'All we need is some skill with wood; it looks as if you can provide everything else!'

Louis shrugged his shoulders. 'You and your men know enough about the way ships are built to bluff questioners - and that is all it would be, questions. I doubt if a gendarme would give you a plank of wood to make you demonstrate! And if you want to work in the shipyards for a day or two - well, there is so much chaos there that if each of you carries a piece of timber and some tools and you look busy, you could walk for many hours without anyone asking questions - long enough for you to find out whatever you need to know.'

Ramage looked at his hands. Despite the last few hours spent in the Marie's grubby cuddy, his hands were still soft and well-manicured.

'Don't worry,' Louis said cheerfully, 'you are the foreman, and anyway it has taken you a month to get to Boulogne from Italy: time enough for any man's hands to get soft. Your men's hands are harder, I noticed. Well, you all had to stop from time to time to do some carpentry to pay for food. You found the business, since you speak some French - not very good French,' he warned, 'in fact only just sufficient to make yourself understood - and you made the men do the work, as all good foremen should.' He chuckled at his own joke and added: 'If I wasn't so well known here I would act as the entrepreneur!'

He stood up. 'I will go and arrange the papers and hide some tools where we can pick them up later. We must make up names for all of you, and you must practise signing them. If gendarmes stop you and are suspicious, the first thing they do is make you sign your name. Then they compare it with the signature in the passport.'

‘Tell Rossi to choose short and easy names then,' Ramage said, visualizing Stafford stumbling over something like 'Giuseppe di Montefiore'. 'In fact let me look at the list. But - how can they practise the signatures before they see what names are written on the passports?'

Louis grinned and shook his head slowly. 'You underestimate us, Lieutenant,' he said. 'I shall bring passports complete in all but three details - the owner's name, trade and address. And official paper so that we can draw up a travel document for the four of you. Something impressive to introduce you to the master shipwright at Boulogne.'

'He's the man we must keep away from,' Ramage said cautiously.

'Don't worry, the introduction is only for you to show an inquiring gendarme.' Louis thought for a moment. 'Money- you have money?'

Ramage nodded. 'Sufficient, I think, but if not. . .?’

'If not, a draft on London ...’

CHAPTER EIGHT

By eleven o'clock that night Ramage and his three men were comfortably installed at a small inn midway between the quay where the Marie was alongside and the eastern side of the harbour, where barges and gunboats were secured several deep, waiting to be fitted out with sails and guns.

Louis had warned them that the innkeeper was a revolutionary: a former corporal who had lost a leg in Spain, though it was generally believed among his customers that it happened during a fracas in a brothel rather than in a desperate affray with the enemy. But the smuggler had also explained that quite apart from the fact that it was cheap, clean and known for its good plain food, it was also just the place that Italian carpenters working at either of the shipyards would choose. More important still, no one would ever dream that a British naval officer and three of his men - spies, no less - would dare to stay under his roof. The regular twice weekly inspections of inns carried out by gendarmes all over the country were cursory; at the sign of Le Chapeau Rouge, merely an excuse for a glass of wine.

Rossi had startled Louis by declaring, with a straight face, that a man owning an inn with that name must be an agent of the Vatican, not a revolutionary, and Louis had begun a vociferous denial before Ramage, worried that their English might be overheard, explained Rossi's play on the fact that a Catholic cleric wore the biretta, 'the red hat,' and someone with a warped sense of humour could claim the inn’s name referred to that, not the Phrygian, or red cap that was as much part of the Revolution as the Tree of Liberty - and the guillotine.

Ramage had negotiated the ritual of getting a room with no trouble. He had led his three men into the smoky and smelly bar, waved cheerfully to the half a dozen men sitting round the table and made a face in the direction of a customer stretched out across three chairs, his head hanging down in the total surrender achieved only by the dead or the drunk.

The innkeeper had been surly until Ramage, in halting French heavily larded with fluent Italian, explained that he and his men wanted accommodation 'for the many weeks' they would be working at the shipyard. As he spread passports and travel documents on the wine-stained counter in a gesture half-triumphant and half servile, as befitted the subject of a conquered state, he commented that Boulogne was indeed a long march from Genova.

'Italy, eh? I know Spain well enough,' the Corporal had growled, as though doubtful of Italy's existence, 'in fact I fought there, and lost a leg, too.' To underline the loss he banged the floor with his wooden stump. 'Corporal Alfonse Jobert, once of the 14th Regiment. You served in the Army of Italy,' he said, as though the fact that a man came from Italy made it obvious, and when Ramage shook his head apologetically he began glancing at the passports and said more sympathetically, 'Well, not everyone could have the honour of serving in the Army of Italy under General Bonaparte ...'