Nevertheless, here were three spies. What the devil could he do with them? There was no point in getting the two sentries to knock them about - these men were not clods; any information they had would be extracted only by trapping them with words.
He took out his watch. In five hours the regiment was due to move to Porto Ercole. By then the colonel would probably still be in a drunken stupor, but it was no good starting two hours late because, faced with the wrath of a senior officer for arriving late, the colonel would have no scruple in denying he had given the order the previous night. To be fair, the old fellow often said things when he was drunk that he did not remember next morning when he was what passed for sober. Most of the time this was just as well.
Obviously there was nothing more that needed to be done at once: the spies had been caught, and they could be taken out to the frigates, interrogated again, then tried and executed. In the meantime he could get some sleep and this jail could hold the three men until they were transferred to the baggage train. They could spend the rest of the night in those chairs, securely tied up - there was no point in risking them escaping. He gave orders to the guards and said to Ramage: "I leave you for the night. Do not try to escape - the guards have orders to shoot. Later we find out what you are doing."
The guards changed hourly and noisily, each couple bringing a new candle with them so that they could change the one in the lantern. Ramage talked to Martin and Orsini, after making as sure as he could that neither guard spoke English. There was little to talk about and neither youngster seemed very worried because, Ramage realized just as he was feeling sick with despair, they endowed him with magic powers which would ensure their escape.
What a brief and inglorious sally into enemy territory it had all been! He had left his ship and her two prizes; he had landed on French-occupied soil for what had seemed at the time the best of reasons - to find out the destination of a possible French army and fleet; he had been captured within three or four hours; he and two of his officers were to be executed within a few hours more.
The Admiralty ... the devil take Their Lordships. Gianna was about to lose the man she loved, and the nephew who was her heir. Of course she could fall in love again, and would, too, and produce her own heir. He shrugged his shoulders, feeling slightly silly at making such an obvious gesture while lashed to a chair in Orbetello's jail, and told himself that as far as the kingdom of Volterra was concerned, all that had happened was that the clock had stopped for a while. And for Britain? That was more serious. Their Lordships, and therefore the British government, would have no warning that the French were not only planning a new attack by land, but were busy assembling an army and a fleet, and that the target for the new attack was in the eastern Mediterranean. Ramage realized that it would be many weeks after the attack had been made that the British would learn about it, because they had effectively evacuated their ships from the Mediterranean.
Egypt or the Levant - that was where the attack was to be made. He was sure of that because of the drunken colonel's diatribe against sand. It could be another attack on Egypt, to make up for Bonaparte's defeat at the hands of Nelson and General Abercromby, or it could be an attack in the Acre area, for example, because it was the British defence of Acre that prevented Bonaparte's move northward. In either case, Egypt or the Levant, the French were using Crete as a base, and that plus the impending attack was all that the Admiralty needed to know.
Ironically, he had found the probable answers, Egypt or the Levant, within a very short time - but as the French major must have realized, information is useless to a spy if he cannot pass it on to those who can use it. Nevertheless, he had been criminally stupid in bringing Paolo along; Rossi would have been just as useful . . . and it was doubtful if he had really needed Martin.
He should have no sympathy for Rossi and Jackson, but he was grateful for their misguided attempt to help and worried about them. It seemed inevitable that they too should be captured. Well, Aitken had his orders, so he knew what to do if the Captain had not returned by midnight. He would be in command of quite a little squadron, and he would behave in the same way and have the same responsibilities as if Ramage had died on board from wounds or illness. The Royal Navy was organized on the axiom that no man was indispensable . . .
Someone hammered on the door and a moment later a key turned from the outside. As it was flung open, Ramage saw several soldiers waiting in the passage. One of them said to the guards: "Take the prisoners out: we are about to march."
"Are we to shoot them here in the square?" a guard asked in a matter-of-fact voice.
"No, the navy will do that in Porto Ercole, so the sergeant says. They are to go ahead of the baggage train." As he spoke, Ramage could hear the clippety-clop of a horse's hooves and the heavy rumble of wheels rolling over cobbles as a cart approached the town hall.
"Do we keep them tied up?" the guard asked.
"Leave them as they are; we'll load them on to the cart secured to the chairs. We don't have time to waste undoing these ropes and then tying them up again, and the mayor won't mind us taking three of his chairs."
The other guards sniggered and the rest of the soldiers crowded into the room. Ramage felt himself tilting backwards as three men picked up the chair to which he was bound and carried him out through the door. They hurried along the corridor, up the short flight of steps and along to the front door of the town hall, cursing as they banged elbows on the walls in the near-darkness and barked shins on the legs of the chair. Finally they had the chair tilted back so that Ramage was lying almost horizontally and was able to see another group of men behind carrying Martin and his chair, while more sturdy curses in English from beyond showed that Paolo had not been left behind. Ramage hoped that the French soldiers would not suddenly drop Paolo's chair, or bump him so painfully that he let fly a broadside of French or Italian oaths . . .
Outside, a chilly greyness over the far end of the square showed that dawn was approaching. Two unshaven soldiers with battered and sooty lanterns lit up a baggage wagon; about eighteen feet long with four wheels, the front pair smaller than the rear, it had a single horse pulling it, a wretched-looking animal whose ribs showed up as black stripes of shadow, its back a steep valley between neck and rump. A canvas hood protected the wagon from rain, a grotesque and tattered bonnet in the dim lantern light.
The wagon was stowed with crates and kitbags but a space the width of the wagon and about three feet long had been left at the rear end. The soldiers heaved the chair up and another man waiting inside helped them tilt it over the tailboard. A moment later Ramage found himself sitting upright in the back while more soldiers lifted Martin's chair. Finally, when the three chairs were in the wagon, the waiting soldier checked the ropes binding them and then climbed up on top of the casks and kitbags so that he could watch his prisoners. A lantern was handed up to him and, at a shout from the sergeant, the driver cracked his whip and the horse lurched forward, its harness rattling.
Ramage then saw men on horseback riding into the piazza, their plumed shakos showing that they were officers obviously waiting for the colonel and the major to appear so that they could start off for Porto Ercole. Where were the men and guns? Ramage guessed they must be camped along the via Aurelia and were yet to have their first taste of the sand on the causeway.