"Protection!" Ramage exclaimed. "You come blundering through the trees making enough noise to rouse the whole French army, and then have the infernal impudence to suggest that you are going to protect me?"
Even as he spoke he could feel the mosquitoes whining round his ears and settling on his face and neck. He shook his head and realized that his hair, hanging loose, acted as an effective fly whisk - for a few moments, anyway. What was he to do with these two idiots? The whole gipsy business, which was by far the best role for him, would be endangered if these two were within hailing distance. Since he could not send them back to the ship - the Calypso and the two bombs were anchored much too far out to hear a hail - they must stay somewhere out of the way.
He thought for a few moments. Rossi was shrewd; there was little doubt that he had a criminal past, and this was his own country. Jackson was American, and if he had brought his Protection with him he could always try to persuade the French to release him because he was, strictly speaking, a neutral, and could claim he had been pressed by the British and forced to serve. Rossi might manage to find out something from the people drinking in the cantina in Porto Ecole.
The alternative was to leave the pair of them hiding in the pine forest, trying to find fresh water to drink and something to eat. Given that they had landed at all, they would be more useful listening in a cantina - not that either of them spoke French - than cowering among the junipers.
"Listen," he said, trying to keep the anger from his voice, "you both go to Porto Ercole as fast as you can. Pretend you're seamen looking for a berth. Rossi, you do the talking. Think of a story in case French patrols stop the pair of you. Your ship arrived in Leghorn. The captain sent you both on shore to do some errands but while you were away the ship sailed. And you're owed a year's pay. Calculate how much. You've been making your way down to Civita Vecchia, hoping to find a ship there. You came over to Porto Ercole because you saw some French ships coming in and you hoped there was a convoy forming - something on those lines. Mind the French don't press you into their service.
"Now, listen closely. In Porto Ercole, go to one of the bars and listen. I know neither of you speak French but you, Rossi, must arrange something with an Italian who does. Jackson, you'd better pretend to be drunk. What I'm trying to find out is where the troops boarding these frigates are really heading for. They might be going to Crete for ordinary garrison duty; but they could be going there to join a much larger army which will go on to attack somewhere like Egypt, just as the French did recently.
"Bear two things in mind," he emphasized. "I don't want to hear a lot of barrack room gossip, so I want to know the rank of any man who says anything interesting, and you must not show undue interest so that the French get suspicious. Tease them and tell them Crete - if that's where they say they are going - is full of poisonous snakes, or mermaids, or the wine tastes like twice-boiled pine needles."
Both men murmured that they understood, then Ramage remembered something. "Are you armed ?"
"Yes, sir, pistol and knife," Jackson said. "And Rossi has his knife, too."
"What are you wearing?"
Ramage could just make out Jackson's hands in the darkness pulling at his collar. "Usual seamen's clothes, sir. Just the same as an Italian would wear. Rossi checked it all."
By now Ramage was beginning to relent. His initial apprehension that the pair might spoil his plan still remained, but he realized that they were not being deliberately reckless; they genuinely wanted to help protect him and Paolo. Still, he had to be ruthless with them because their presence would wreck the wandering gipsies' act, and perhaps they might find out something in Porto Ercole.
"Very well, off you go. Don't stray far from the bars because we'll be arriving there tomorrow evening. If we are not there by midnight, you'd better look around for a boat to steal to row yourselves out to the bomb ketches - if they ever arrive."
With that the two men disappeared into the darkness, and as the sound of snapping twigs faded in the distance Paolo muttered, as though to himself but obviously intending Ramage tohear: "They were only trying to help."
"Yes they were," Ramage snapped. "If they get us captured, it'll be small consolation as the French strap you down on the guillotine that you were caught only because of the stupidity of two men who were trying to help."
CHAPTER TEN
An hour later Ramage arrived in the piazza at Orbetello, walking with the smooth furtiveness that he always associated with Italian gipsies and followed by Paolo, who was holding the line which was tied round Martin's waist, leading him like a performing bear.
The town, jutting out into the lake formed by the causeways, was surrounded by a thick, defensive wall. The narrow road from the via Aurelia came in to one side of the roughly cobbled, rectangular piazza. The municipio, Orbetello's town hall, was in the middle of a long side with a circular balcony, like a church pulpit, jutting out from one wall so that the mayor, or garrison commander, could woo or harangue his people when he felt the need, looking down on them as he gave them good news or bad.
Ramage saw that just beyond, its tables lit by lanterns, was either an inn or a cantina crowded with customers: customers wearing bright clothes, the well-cut uniforms of officers. Occasionally there was glinting as the badge on a shako or a sword hilt or scabbard flashed in the lantern light where they were lying on the tables among bottles, carafes and glasses.
Then Ramage saw two things that for a long time now had been familiar sights in most Italian towns occupied by the French. The first, standing just to the right of the big double doors of the municipio, was the Tree of Liberty, a metal skeleton that owed its likeness to a tree to the skill of a blacksmith who made it out of narrow iron strips. The second was across the piazza: a small platform with a wooden structure rising vertically at one end, like a tall and narrow but empty picture frame, with a low bench in front of it - the guillotine. The blade had been removed; that would be cared for by the executioner, who would keep it sharp and well-greased so that it did not rust.
Curious that the French could see no contradiction in the two objects, Ramage thought; the dreadful irony that a Tree of Liberty stood in the shade of a guillotine.
There were no horses tethered to the trees growing round the sides of the piazza, so the French officers had not ridden in for a night's carousing: they must be staying at an inn close by; perhaps even this one, next to the municipio. Just as Paolo had forecast, they were not sleeping out under canvas, and he wondered idly where the troops were bivouacked.
Most of the officers seemed to be drunk. Some were trying to sing and several were bellowing in French for waiters to bring more wine. Ramage muttered in Italian to Paolo, who gave a double tug on the line. Martin, putting on a good act as a half-wit (helped by the fact that he could understand nothing that was being said), scrabbled about among his ragged clothes and fetched out his flute. As Ramage bellowed "Viva!", Martin began playing "Ça Ira!".
It was sudden and it was unexpected at the inn, and the shape of the piazza meant the walls acted like a concert hall, giving more body to the reedy notes. The French officers were drunk enough to leap to their feet to cheer the three shadowy figures shambling towards them across the piazza, joining in the words of the most famous of the Revolutionary songs. Martin had not in fact heard it until that afternoon and had been practising, with a few other tunes, under Paolo's watchful eye and ear until the cutter had been ready to leave the Calypso.