Now, to their delight, they had on board the Marchesa's nephew (or, as Stafford had proudly announced to the rest of the ship's company when he first heard about it, 'the Marcheezer's nevvy') and it had been tacitly accepted that they kept an eye on him. Jackson had already saved the boy's life once when they' boarded an enemy ship a few weeks ago with Paolo wielding a cutlass in one hand and a midshipman's dirk in the other.
Supposing the boy was killed - how would he ever tell Gianna? Then he checked himself: these thoughts were merely a variation on the game of 'if - 'If Paolo was killed ...' Paolo was lively, energetic, eager to learn, scared of nothing, and appalling at mathematics. As Gianna had said, in the argument which had finally persuaded Ramage, if the boy survived a few years as a midshipman and later a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, he would have learned lessons which would stand him in good stead if he should ever have to rule Volterra when the French had been driven out: he would understand men, and how to govern them, and that was all (whether midshipman in a frigate or ruler of Volterra) he needed to know to survive.
Ramage called to the Marine sentry to pass the word for his clerk, and as soon as the report and the list of names and addresses were handed over to the man for fair copies to be made, Ramage sent for Aitken. The first lieutenant was second in command of the ship; it was very easy to forget (or, more honestly, it was a thought that few captains cared to dwell upon) that Aitken would be in command if anything happened to the captain, and captains were as likely to perish from yellow fever or roundshot as any man on board . . .
The captain was brooding, there was no doubt about that. Aitken sensed it the moment he stepped into the cabin and sat on the settee in response to the captain's gesture. The deep - set eyes seemed positively sunken, yet one didn't need the second sight to guess why the captain was in this mood. There were plenty of men in the Highlands who still brooded over the rapine and pillaging of their villages half a century earlier, when they were still bairns, so it was hardly surprising to find a man like Mr Ramage brooding over that bloody murder in the Tranquil only an hour or so ago.
Now Mr Ramage was staring at him, as though he was a stranger.
'Do the ship's company know what happened in the Tranquil?' It was a puzzling question; there was no way it could have been kept secret, even if it was necessary. 'Yes, sir, they all know.'
'And what are their feelings?'
'Violent, sir, particularly because of the women. We might . . .'
'Might what, Aitken?'
"We might have difficulty controlling them if we find a privateer, sir. If we board one, I mean.'
But instead of getting angry and saying the officers should be able to control their men, Mr Ramage was just nodding; not in agreement but in the way old men nodded their heads when told interesting news.
Aitken was thankful for this opportunity to discuss it 'I was going to mention it to you, sir: perhaps you'd care to talk to the ship's company, to warn them against running amok when we start finding these privateers.'
The young Scot sensed the captain's interest was flagging, and was then not sure whether to be shocked or relieved when Ramage said: 'I propose giving no particular orders if we board a privateer called the Nuestra Senora de Antigua, Mr Aitken. We board other privateers in the normal way and I shall expect that strict attention will be paid to discipline.'
'Aye aye, sir. But no mercy for the Nuestra Senora de Antigua. Is she the one that. . .'
'Yes, she's named in a letter. The last line or two was written as she came close.'
Aitken reached for his hat and was about to leave the cabin, but the captain waved him to remain seated, and said quietly: 'I think you too sense there's something unusual in ill this.'
He did too: he had felt it first when Baker and Kenton came back on board. He and Southwick had already guessed what the two lieutenants were likely to find (not the murdered women, of course) so they were not surprised. But with the return of the lieutenants, Aitken had become aware of a curious atmosphere on board. In a way it centred round the captain, yet Jackson and Rossi seemed affected. Not Stafford, and not Southwick: neither was an imaginative man; one could not imagine them having the second sight.
But he had felt very strongly this sense of - well, what? That the quarterdeck had grown chillier, like walking into the crypt of a church. That he had seen the whole episode before, although it was no stronger than a distant memory or a half - remembered dream. Yet he had known before it happened that Baker would produce a bundle of letters; he knew how the captain would take them and walk over to the companionway and down the steps, hunched as though the letters brought him bad news, instead of having been written by people of whom they had never heard.
That seaman Jackson, the captain's coxswain, he was just walking round as though bewildered, stunned almost, refusing to help Stafford finish cutting up a new pair of trousers. Rossi, too, the third one of that curious trinity, was sitting on his own, his thoughts miles away. Yet of all the men in the ship those two must have seen the most violence and bloodshed. What had upset them could not have been these senseless murders in the Tranquil. It was something else, as though a hand had reached out of the past and touched them on the shoulder.
The first time he had ever had this sensation of a touch from the past was when he was perhaps eleven or twelve years old and had walked from his home in Dunkeld down the steep hill towards the village.
It was a late autumn day with the last of the sun turning the leaves of the great beeches into burnished copper, and be had gone through the gate to the ruined cathedral. It was a stone skeleton; only the walls stood; the roof had long since gone. Yet it was easy to picture the fine stone building in its glory, men and women and children singing hymns, their voices echoing under the vaulted roof. The service would end and they would be blessed, and slowly they would go to their homes, pausing perhaps at the main door to talk for a few minutes, to exchange family news and to gossip perhaps, but feeling spiritually refreshed by the service.
Round the cathedral, lining the paths, were graves and the entrances to vaults; carved marble, stained by age, mottled by lichen, recording a couple of hundred years and more of the story of the people of Dunkeld, and the people walking to the gate would be passing the last resting places of their parents, grandparents, great - grandparents ... As a young boy on that autumn evening he had sensed all this and had in his imagination seen people dressed in clothes he did not recognize, and which he later discovered were the fashions of past centuries.
Between those earlier centuries and the time he stood there as a boy, the cathedral had been burned; the pews and the beams had gone up in flames and the roof had collapsed. No one had tried to repair it; moss and lichen grew in the stones, the grass spread over the tombs. It was something about which his mother would never speak. But as he stood there and thought about it the atmosphere had grown chilly. Not cold and not frightening, even though he had been only a boy. Just enough for him to realize he was experiencing something he would never be able to describe or explain. Indeed, he had never spoken of it Now the Calypso had changed. It was probably his imagination, but as he sat here looking at the captain, he knew that around Jackson and Rossi and the captain there was - well, an aura almost, as though they had stepped from the past Yet it was all absurd: the Calypso was a frigate built only five years ago in a French shipyard, captured only a few weeks ago by Mr Ramage, and Jackson was an American seaman who had volunteered to serve in the Royal Navy and Rossi was a Genoese - what did he call himself? a Genovesi?