'Yes - just keep your voice down and listen for footsteps in the corridor.'
Ramage waited, and when the Cockney began unpacking his bag, emptying the contents on to the smaller bed but remaining silent, Ramage said: 'What were you going to say?'
Stafford looked round in surprise: ' Oh, there wasn't nothing I wanted to say right now, sir; it's just sitting in the coach. not being able to say nothing that's so aggravatering.'
'Aggravating,' Ramage corrected automatically, long since accustomed to the Cockney's mispronunciations. 'Well, make the best of this evening because you'll have to be silent tomorrow.'
'Aye aye, sir,' Stafford said, walking over to the door and kneeling down, as though looking through the keyhole. He opened the door quietly and just enough to be able to look at the edge of the lock. Then he shut the door and walked back to his bed, picking up a small bag made of soft leather and pulling open the drawstring. He shook out several small strips of metal which had the ends bent into various shapes, picked one up and examined it, grunted and put them all back in the bag.
Ramage was unsure how to interpret the grunt and asked: 'Can you manage that kind of lock?'
Stafford looked hurt. 'Wiv a bent pin held in me toes, sir' he said contemptuously.
That evening, after the innkeeper and his painfully thin wife had cleared away the supper and left the room, Ramage said, ‘I haven't eaten a meal like that for a very long time. At least some good chefs survived the Revolution!'
'Wait until you see the bill,' Louis cautioned. 'Innkeepers are the new bankers ...'
Ramage patted his stomach reflectively. 'Jowl of salmon sole, roast pigeon, bouillie beef— I haven't had that for years - and roast fowl. Picardy beer - not much body to it, admittedly, but nice enough if you treat it as small beer - and Volnay wine. Better than salt pork and pease, eh, Stafford?'
The Cockney belched happily, his eyes slightly out of focus. 'Never tasted sole like that, and that there bully beef, or whatever you call it. Beer ain't up to much, like you say, sir, but the wine -' he looked down at his empty glass, 'well, it'd ease the journey down a bumpy road, I reckon. Thought they was short of food!'
'Make no mistake,' Louis said, 'they are. There were food riots in many towns last year. This man Jobert knows where to get the delicacies - and he pays a high price. You can get anything - if you have the money. The ordinary people though: many of them have less than your people in England.'
'Nice to be rich,' Stafford commented contentedly, 'even if only for a few hours!'
Ramage pushed the carafe towards him. 'You and Louis had better finish that up, but don't expect to eat like that every night we're here!'
Stafford shook his head. 'Once in a lifetime's enough, sir. Cor, wait until I tell the lads.' He topped up Louis's glass and then filled his own, and after putting the carafe down, carefully he raised his glass and looked Ramage straight in the eye.
"Ere's to you, sir, an' the Marcheezer, an' may you both live to a ripe hold hage -'
Louis reached for his glass, but Stafford had not finished. 'I'm a bit tipsy, sir, an' I ain't very good wiv words, but the other lads - not just Jacko and Rosey, but all the rest of them - well, they'd want me ter thank you for gettin' them out of trouble so often —' He saw the puzzled expression on Ramage's face and hurriedly explained. 'Well, like when we rescued the Marcheezer, and then when that Don rammed us in the Kathleen, and the privateers at St Lucia with the Triton, an' the 'urricane, an' that skylarking in the Post Office brig . . .'
As if startled at the length of his speech he hurriedly gulped his wine, followed by Louis, and put his glass down nervously.
Ramage held out his own empty glass, and Louis poured some wine.
'Here's to you and the lads,' Ramage said soberly, not trusting himself to say more.
Louis finished his glass and said: 'Before we sleep, we should think of our plan for tomorrow.'
Ramage nodded. 'Since it's a Saturday, the patron won't expect us to try to do any business at the factories, so we'll establish ourselves as visitors. We can have a look at the Cathedral - after all, it's the biggest in France, and even though the Church is not popular here, we Italians are Godfearing people! After that we'll make sure we know all the roads leading away from this hotel, and you must find out where we can hire horses in an emergency - steal them, if necessary.'
He paused for a minute or two, deep in thought. 'Stafford has his picklocks; we have wax in case we have to break and repair a seal, candles, and the little lantern. You have that thin-bladed knife and each of us has a heavier one. Pen, paper and ink to copy any documents. Plaster and some boxwood in case we have to carve a copy of a seal, and the chisels and gouges. You have the sheets of notepaper with the Ministry of Marine heading . . . Can you think of anything else?'
When Louis shook his head, Ramage asked Stafford: 'You have everything you might want?'
'Me picklocks, some thin wire, a spatula an' me fingers; that's all I need, sir.'
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Next morning Louis left them after explaining that he was going to make the necessary arrangements while Ramage and Stafford wandered through the city, establishing themselves as innocent visitors. The short walk to the great Cathedral was almost frightening. The whole city seemed to be silent and foreboding; silent although horses' hooves clattered over thecobbles and cartwheels rumbled; although people walked the streets talking to each other and shopkeepers stood at their doorways, calling out greetings and trying to beguile prospective customers.
There were a few of the noises one would expect in a city; but in an almost deserted city. These were not the noises of a normal city going about its daily business, and he and Stafford had almost reached the Cathedral before Ramage realized exactly what was missing: no one was laughing and no one was bustling: it was as though everyone had a secret guilt and feared that the pairs of gendarmes who seemed to stand at every corner were watching and waiting to make an arrest; that they knew only too well there was among the quiet streets of Amiens a building with barred windows where a man who laughed loudly or joked or behaved in a carefree manner might be dragged before a tribunal and accused of being an enemy of the Revolution.
But surely these,people in the streets were the Revolution: surely it was for them, the sans-culottes, that the Revolution had been staged? With the aristocrats dead or exiled and their estates sold off to the people, with every man proclaimed as free and equal as his neighbour, and the armies of France standing astride Europe from the Mediterranean to the North Sea, surely now was the time for the people to be happy? Yet Ramage sensed that these people in Amiens were far from carefree; they were nervous and suspicious of each other, and looked at those gendarmes not as protectors against burglars, cutpurses and pickpockets but as honest men might be wary of large and unknown dogs.
Louis had told him all this; indeed, he had explained it with great care. Ramage admitted to himself that it had been easy enough to listen but too hard to visualize; one had to see it to believe it.
The majority of the French people had supported the idea of the Revolution: for generations under the monarchy taxation had been harsh and arbitrary, with the poorest always paying the most. But there had been such a struggle for power after the Revolution: such almost unbelievable cruelties and injustices committed with chilhng cynicism in the name of the Revolution by those very leaders, as each struggled for personal power, that the people were bewildered and disillusioned. Debtors denouncing their creditors to avoid paying their bills, vicious men settling old scores by the same means - the people had seen too much of it. Louis must be right - the majority of them were sick of the metallic hiss and thud of the guillotine, sick of passing a tumbril laden with white-faced men and weeping women. This was an aspect of the Revolution they had never visualized and never wanted — seeing former neighbours (and often former friends and sometimes relatives) dragged off to the Widow . . . This bore no relation to getting rid of the tyrannical landowners and the iniquitous tax collectors of the ancien régime; it had nothing to do with driving out the grasping priests and seizing the vast lands owned by the Church.