Ramage

The Italian was now squatting down on the floor boards, almost at his feet: Ramage realized he was there only after hearing a low, monotonous, gabbling of prayers in Latin and noticing some of the seamen muttering uneasily, not understanding what was going on. Prayers are all right in their place, he thought, but if gabbling them like a panic-stricken priest upsets the seamen, then the boat isn't the right place - fear spreads like fire.

He prodded the man with his foot and snapped in Italian,

'Basta! Enough of that: pray later, or in silence.'

The moaning stopped. The soldiers would have reloaded by now. Ramage looked back and could still distinguish the beach.

He sensed the men were jumpy and it was hardly surprising, since they'd been sitting in the boat, or standing beside it up to their waists in water, while a good deal of shooting was going on near by.

'Jackson,' he said conversationally, to reassure the men, 'that was a frightful noise you made on the beach. Where did you pick up the trick of charging cavalry single-handed?'

'Well, sir,' Jackson replied, an apologetic note in his voice, 'I was with Colonel Pickens at Cowpens in the last war, sir, and it was mighty effective in the woods against your dragoons: they hadn't met that sort of thing before.'

'I imagine not,' Ramage said politely, turning the boat half a point to starboard.

'No, sir,' Jackson said emphatically. 'Only the last time I did it, 'twas against a whole troop of 'em in a narrow lane. They were chasing me, you see.'

'Is that so? Did it work?' he asked, conscious the men were listening to the conversation as they rowed.

'Most effective, sir: I had 'em all off, except one or two at the rear.'

'How did you learn this sort of - er, business?'

'Woodsman, sir; I was brought up in South Carolina.'

'Madonna!' exclaimed a voice in heavy-accented English from under the thwarts. 'Madonna! They talk of horses and cow pens at a time like this.'

Ramage looked round at the girl, conscious he had not given her a thought since he climbed on board the boat.

'Would you please tell your friend to hold his tongue.’

She leant down to the man, who was almost at her feet; but he already understood.

'Hold my tongue?' he exclaimed in Italian. "How can I hold my tongue? And why should I?'

Ramage said coldly in Italian: ‘I did not mean "hold your tongue" literally. I was telling you to stop talking.'

'Stop talking! When you run away and leave my cousin lying wounded on the beach! When you desert him! When you bolt like a rabbit and your friend screams with fright like a woman! Madonna, so I am to stop talking, eh?'

The girl bent down and hissed something at him, keeping her voice low. Ramage, tensed with cold rage, was thankful the seamen did not understand: then suddenly the Italian scrambled out from under the thwarts and stood up in the boat, making one of the oarsmen lose his balance and miss a stroke.

'Sit down!' Ramage said sharply in Italian.

The man ignored him and began swearing.

Ramage said curtly: 'I order you to sit down. If you do not obey, one of the men will force you.'

Ramage looked at the girl and asked in Italian: Who is he? Why is he behaving like this?'

‘He is Count Pisano. He blames you for leaving his cousin behind.'

‘His cousin is dead.'

'But he called out: he shouted for help.'

‘He couldn't have done.'

'Count Pisano said he did.'

Did she believe Pisano? She turned away from him, so that once again the hood of her cape hid her face. Clearly she did. - He remembered the Tower: did she think he cheated at cards, too?

‘Well, he didn't go back to help his cousin,' Ramage said defensively.

She turned and faced him. 'Why should he? You are supposed to be rescuing us.'

How could one argue against that sort of attitude? He felt too sick at heart even to try, shrugged his shoulders, and then remembered to say: 'Any further conversation about that episode will also be in Italian: tell Pisano that. I don't want the discipline in this boat upset.'

‘How can it upset discipline?'

‘You must take my word for it. Apart from anything else, if these men understood what he was saying, they'd throw him over the side.'

‘How barbarous!'

'Possibly,' he said bitterly. "You forget what they've been through to rescue you.'

He lapsed into gloomy silence, then said: 'Jackson - the compass: how are we heading? Don't use the lantern.'

The American leaned over the bowl of the boat compass for several seconds, twisting his head one way and then the other, trying to see the compass needle in the moonlight

'About south-west by west, sir.'

'Tell me when I'm on west.'

Ramage slowly put the tiller over.

'Now!'

'Right.' He noted a few stars to steer by. They had ten miles to go before passing a couple of miles off the south-western tip of Argentario. The wounded oarsman argued with Jackson, who finally let him row again and climbed aft to sit on the sternsheets opposite the Marchesa.

The girl suddenly said quietly, as if to herself, 'Count Pitti was my cousin, too,' and wrapped the cape round her more closely.

'The lady's all wet,' Jackson said.

'I've no doubt she is,' Ramage replied acidly. "We all are.'

To hell with it: why should he concern himself about the damp petticoats of a woman who considered him a coward. Then she sighed, slowly pitched forward against Jackson, and slid into the bottom of the boat.

Ramage was too shocked for a moment to do anything: even as she sighed, he suddenly remembered she was wounded: he was the only one in the boat who knew - except Pisano.

'Perhaps.' The flat tone indicated she did not propose to discuss it.

"Until this evening, then.'

She held out her hand and he lifted it to his lips. She was trembling very slightly, but so little that she must have thought allowing him to kiss her hand would not reveal it.

Chapter 9

BY PUTTING floor boards fore and aft across thwarts, Jackson managed to rig up a rough cot for the Marchesa; but before they could lift her on to it, the seamen stopped rowing of their own accord and stripped off their shirts, handing them to the American to make a pillow.

The men began rowing again - a slight onshore breeze was raising a short lop which made the boat roll violently when stopped - and Ramage and Jackson lifted the girl on to the rudimentary cot. Ramage dare not let himself think how much blood she had lost; he did not even know exactly where she was wounded.

The two men wrapped the lower part of the girl's body in her cape and Ramage's jacket. While lifting her they saw the right shoulder of her dress was soaked with blood and Ramage decided it was worth risking using the lantern to examine the wound. If only he had a surgeon's mate on board....

He told Jackson to pass the compass to Smith who was rowing stroke and sitting nearest to them in the boat, only a foot or two away from the girl's head.

'Put the compass where you can set it, Smith: line up some stars and try to keep the boat heading west.'

He reached out and unshipped the tiller. Smith would have to keep the boat on course with the oars.

Now - to cut away the clothing and look at the wound. He pulled his throwing knife from his boot: ironic that it was still stained with the French cavalryman's blood. He held it over the side, washing the steel clean with sea water.

A ripping of cloth made him glance across at Jackson: the American was busy tearing a shirt into strips to use as bandages.

'Ready, sir?'

‘Yes.'

He leaned over the girl - God, her face was pale, a paleness emphasized by the cold moonlight. Lying on her back, eyes closed, she might have been a corpse on an altar ready for a ritual burial. Didn't the Saxons put a warrior's body in a boat with a dead dog at the feet and then set fire to the boat?