He eyed the two large beds. 'I seem to remember you snore, Rossi. What about you, Stafford?'
The Cockney shook his head sadly. 'Me too, sir. Jacko doesn't - you'd best share a bed wiv 'im, and I'll doss wiv Rossi.'
'Very well,' Ramage said, and took the passports and travel documents from his pocket. 'You'd better look after these,' he said, handing them to Jackson. 'Who knows, I might get as drunk as that fellow stretched out on the chairs.'
The American grinned. 'That'll be the day, sir. You all right for money?'
Ramage took ten francs from the handful in his pocket and gave the rest to Jackson. 'You might as well look after these, just in case.'
He sat down on the bed for a few minutes. A ghost of an idea had appeared while the Corporal was telling the story of the lieutenant-de-vaisseau's overnight stay in Amiens. And 'ghost', he reflected, was the right description: the more he thought about it, the more he saw it had precious little shape or substance. Well, there was time enough for him to look closer...
He found the Corporal waiting behind the bar, a bottle in one hand and the corkscrew ready in the other. 'Ah,' he began turning the corkscrew as soon as he saw Ramage, 'you can tell me if you have a red wine the like of this in Italy.'
'I'll be glad to,' Ramage said eagerly; so eagerly that the Corporal hastened to make it clear that Ramage was paying for it. 'It's not expensive, though, and you'll enjoy it!'
The bottle had gone and been replaced by another (the Corporal making sure that each bottle was paid for as soon as it was uncorked) before Ramage could get him back to the subject of his brother at Amiens, a man for whom the Corporal combined envy with pride.
'He has a fine position, right by the crossroads, Paris ahead, Rouen to the right, Arras to the left. That's the secret of a profitable inn, of course; you have to be where the traveller can find you. Great mistake I made, settling here. I was relying on the local people for custom but -' he glowered at the half dozen men still playing dominoes at the table, two empty bottles and one half-full representing the entire evening's drinking for six men, 'well, you can see; they talk like wine cellars about how much they need, but half a bottle each sees them through the evening.
'My brother, though: there he is, on the main post road to Paris, tactically placed —' he cocked his head a moment, as though the word brought back memories of a more martial life, 'yes, strategically placed for the travellers to Paris. Travellers have the money to spend. Generals are the best - at least six staff officers with them, and a dozen soldiers. Forage for the horses, a big dinner and an early breakfast and they're away, so you can get their rooms tidied up in good time for fresh guests.
'Ah, my brother knew what he was doing when he took over the Hotel de la Poste. He was telling me his plans for after the Invasion of England. He thinks he'll open his first place at Dover - after the travellers' trade again, of course. He's not sure from the map which is the most popular route to London, though. One road goes through - Canterbury, I think he said - and the other through Ashford. He'll wait and see which the Army favours and take over the best hotel at one or the other place. London - ah, he has big plans for London. The headquarters staff, that's who he has his eyes on in London.'
He filled his glass and drank deeply and, as if comparing the position of former Corporal Jobert in Boulogne with his brother M. Jobert in Amiens, he said almost spitefully: 'But he's not in England yet, and he has his problems in Amiens. Ah, I could tell you a thing or two about them, too . . .'
His eyes seemed to go glassy at the thought, and Ramage prompted him. 'We all have our problems, it's overcoming them that distinguishes the men from the boys!'
'Or the girls,' the Corporal said, almost absently. 'It's his daughter that is the problem, you see. My niece. A fine girl mind you; pretty and hard-working, but inclined to be wilful. My brother says that the minute the girl and the lieutenant first looked at each other, he knew there would be trouble.'
He drained his glass, and Ramage pushed the bottle towards him. 'Trouble? With the lieutenant on the First Consul’s headquarters staff?'
‘The Admiral's staff,' the innkeeper corrected him. ‘Twice a week he rides into the hotel yard - on Saturday night as he goes to Paris, and on Tuesday night as he returns with orders and dispatches for Citizen Bruix from the First Consul. It all seems very romantic to a young girl, I suppose.'
'It would be a good match,' Ramage said, knowing that would provoke the Corporal into more confidences.
The Frenchman shook his head sadly. 'It might seem like it to you, because you are looking at it as a carpenter; but you have to consider it from the point of view of a man of property: a man like my brother - or me, come to that. She’s his only child, you see, so what happens when he's gone? None of us live for ever. But a lieutenant's wife - will a naval man settle down to an innkeeper's life after the war?'
Ramage nodded his head vigorously, not liking the sad note. creeping in to the Corporal's voice, which was already slurring as the new wine added its weight to that drunk before Ramage and his men arrived at the Chapeau Rouge. ‘After all, you've settled down as an innkeeper after a military life.’
The flattery was so gross that for a moment Ramage thought he had overdone it, but the Corporal screwed up his eyes, as if examining the statement and liking what he saw. 'That is true,' he admitted judiciously, 'and I don't want you to think I'm against the young man. He is a smart fellow. Five years ago he was a haberdasher’s assistant. He joined the Navy – and now look at him. Why, in a year or two who knows – he might be given the command of a sloop of war; a frigate, even.’
‘He’ll end up an admiral, you’ll see,’ Ramage whispered in a suitably awed voice. ‘An admiral, think of that!’
'Not a chance," the Corporal said firmly, 'the war won't last long enough. It takes time to become an admiral; another seven or eight years, I should judge, and the war will be over this time next year, you'll see.'
'Still, he has an interesting job now - and exciting, too; just imagine, galloping to Paris with urgent dispatches; sleeping with a pistol in his hand to guard them safely I expect . . .'
The Corporal laughed condescendingly. 'Not as romantic as that, I can assure you. Sleeping with a pistol in his hand - why, he would probably blow his foot off in his sleep! That's the thing you people don't understand. When you are handling secret dispatches all the time - as this young man is - you get used to it. Like you carpenters starting off with a plain plank of wood. Why, my brother says the lieutenant has even left the satchel behind on the dinner table - how about that, eh?' He nudged Ramage across the table. 'Mind you, my brother is a responsible innkeeper, and seeing the young man was lifting his glass a bit freely - it's a fault he has, 1 have to admit - he kept an eye on the satchel. After all, the First Consul's secret documents have to be safeguarded.'
'Indeed they do,' Ramage said. 'What about another bottle?'
Ramage was weary, jubilant but just sober when he finally returned to the room to find Jackson still awake but the other two snoring stertorously. After assuring Ramage that the passports and travel documents were safely hidden under the bolster, Jackson waited to see if he was going to hear an account of the talk with the Corporal. Ramage thought about it for several minutes and decided that their situation was precarious enough for the American, as the second-in-comand of the little expedition, to need to know all the details, so that he could take over if necessary.
Keeping his voice down to a whisper, Ramage quickly outlined the orders he had received from Lord Nelson and the procedure he intended to adopt to get reports back to England.