"It's Alexis," Yorke said, and for a moment Ramage was startled because he thought Yorke had already said that, and then realized he had imagined it.
"What happened?"
What could happen at an inn? Robbers, sudden illness, the building catching fire - perhaps their boat capsized: the boatmen plying for hire were -
"When I got back to the King's Arms expecting to find her there after giving her evidence, I was handed this note by the innkeeper."
He gave Ramage a single sheet of paper which had been folded and sealed with a wafer.
"My dear Brother," it said. "I should have talked about this with you but I was afraid you would try to dissuade me. If Nicholas is left at the mercy of that scoundrel Goddard, he will be found guilty, and I understand he would then have to be sentenced to death because the court has no alternative. I am therefore going to London because there lies authority. I shall be well along the road by the time you read this - your affectionate sister . . ."
"What 'authority' do you think she has in mind?" Ramage asked.
Yorke shrugged his shoulders. "She was very angry with Goddard - I gather he threatened to have her thrown out of the court. Most unwise of him to get athwart Alexis's hawse: even I don't!"
"Is it all right if the others know?" Ramage asked, gesturing towards the three men waiting the other side of the door.
"Of course! I just wanted to tell you first."
They went back into the cabin and before Ramage sat down he told the three officers: "Miss Yorke has gone to London on my behalf."
A startled Southwick said: "What is she going to do?"
"We're not at all sure, but from the way she dealt with Goddard today, I can imagine her coach and four turning into Downing Street!"
"Don't laugh," Sidney Yorke said. "She knows Henry Addington very welclass="underline" in fact the last time she saw him was at Number Ten a few months after the signing of the Treaty of Amiens. She gave him quite a fright: she told him exactly what she thought about anyone who signed such a treaty with Bonaparte. He took it very well, I must say. Knowing what sycophants he usually has round him, that was probably the first time he'd heard the truth for a long time!"
"Could she really be going to see the prime minister?" an awed Wagstaffe asked.
Sidney Yorke pulled a face. "My sister knows an extraordinary number of people and she has a way of saying the most outrageous things without causing offence. In fact some people seem to like it."
"Should think so," Southwick muttered, "particularly if the way she settled the admiral's hash is anything to go by."
"I'm sorry I missed that," Yorke said, "but I had to wait in that damned cabin in case I was wanted as a witness."
"Well, she was magnificent," Ramage said. "One moment an empress and the next a tigress. Poor Goddard never knew whether he was going to be frozen by a regal stare or ripped by a hidden claw!"
"The courts sit again next Monday," Southwick said. "She'll have barely reached London by then. And then she has to see people."
"I inquired at the King's Arms," Yorke said. "Five days to London in a coach and four. Alexis hired her own coach - the postchaise costs tenpence a mile, with tips and turnpikes. She'd have saved money by buying her own coach!"
"There's the new telegraph from the Admiralty to Portsmouth," Aitken said. "They say they can get a message to the Admiralty and a reply in thirty minutes."
"Aye, a very brief message, providing there is no fog between the signal stations, all nine of them. Ten, counting the Admiralty itself," Southwick said.
"Is that true - half an hour?" Yorke asked.
Southwick nodded. "Yes, and the Admiralty is extending it along the coast to Plymouth. This telegraphic apparatus is a very simple thing to operate."
"And I'll bet that Southwick knows where every one of the stations to Portsmouth is built," Ramage said, "and plans to walk along the line of them from London, and then on to Plymouth and back, as soon as he's retired!"
Southwick looked puzzled. "How did you know that, sir? Not walk, though; I mean to do it on horseback."
"I guessed," Ramage said. "You once told me you had just copied out a list of where the stations were. Why would you want such a list, if not to follow the line of them?"
As Southwick nodded in agreement, Yorke said: "Where on earth are they?"
Like a child anxiously waiting to recite his poem at a party and once started unable to stop, Southwick said proudly: "From the Admiralty to Chelsea, Putney, Cabbage Hill, Netley Heath, Hascombe, Blackdown, Beacon Hill, Portsdown and then into Portsmouth.
"Then it is now being extended with stations at Chalton, Wickham, Town Hill, Foot Hill, Bramshaw, Pistle Down, Charlbury, Blandford, Belchalwell, Nettlecoombe, High Stoy, Toller Down, Lambert's Castle, Dalwood Common, St Cyres, Rockbere, Haldon, Knighton, Marley, Lee, Saltram, and then over to Plymouth Dock . . . how about that!"
Yorke had been listening carefully. "Yes, that would make one of the finest rides in England. There are other parts of the country where it'd be more beautiful for, say, twenty miles, but for a two-hundred-mile ride you couldn't beat that."
"When might we expect Miss Yorke back again?" Wagstaffe asked Yorke, "assuming she will need a couple of days in London?"
"Five days up and five back, plus two, which is twelve days," Yorke said. "Which means she can't get back until a week after the trial is over, even allowing that she'll drive the coachmen hard and may well sleep in the coach, stopping only for meals and change of horses."
Southwick nodded his head in agreement. "I can't see that young lady wasting time."
"No, she has hardly any luggage. Mine host at the King's Arms tells me that Alexis hired a coach and four and set off with one piece of luggage and a brace of pistols."
"A brace of pistols?" exclaimed Ramage. "A good idea for a young lady travelling alone, but where did she get them?"
"Oh, we always carry a brace each when we take a voyage," Yorke said. "Who knows, the commanding officer might go mad, apart from the risk of pirates, Frenchmen, privateersmen -"
"- and descendants of buccaneers," Ramage teased.
"It's because of our forebear that we are always well prepared," Yorke admitted with a grin. "Our forebear became rich because the Dons were never prepared. Anyway, you might well feel sympathy for the footpad or ravisher that stops Alexis's coach."
Ramage gave a shiver. "I'd rather not. I've never grown accustomed to being shot with a pistol, and by such a beautiful markswoman would be too painful. However, to get back to the point: what can we do now?"
"Have you anything else to present to the court in your defence?" Yorke asked. "Anything else for next Monday?"
"Nothing. Shirley will make his closing statement for the prosecution and then I make a statement outlining my defence, and the court is cleared while Goddard and his twelve captains consider the verdict. Then, when they've decided, I'm marched in again escorted by the provost marshal - who, incidentally, turns out to be a nice young fellow - and all the witnesses and spectators who are interested follow me in."
"And we all wait for the verdict to be announced," Yorke said.
Ramage laughed. "No. You've forgotten the trial you attended in Port Royal. I'll know the verdict the moment I walk through the door. I just look at my sword on the table: the hilt towards me means not guilty, the point, guilty. I then have a few anxious minutes waiting to see under which Articles of War I'm found guilty. You don't know them like the rest of us, but some carry a mandatory death sentence."