'Was your tour of Amiens successful?'
'Interesting - we weren't doing anything in particular!'
'Visiting the Cathedral, talking to a man suspected of being an anti-Revolutionary, having lunch in a café frequented by agents of the Church ...'
'We were being watched, then?' Ramage asked ruefully.
Louis shrugged his shoulders and continued speaking in French. 'No more than any other strangers walking round the city. The gendarmes are at every corner solely to keep an eye on everyone, and they report before they go off duty.'
'How do you know what they reported?' Ramage asked curiously.
'I have friends,' the Frenchman said with a wink. 'But don't worry, no one suspects you. As soon as you both left the Cathedral, the gendarmes checked that you were staying here and that your papers were in order. I'm only telling you so that you have an idea of how these people work. You are not used to a country where everyone is a potential spy, and where some men make a good living by acting as police informers.'
He sat down at the table and reached for the wine bottle. 'Well, our friend the lieutenant has arrived.'
'We heard him go to his room. He's still there,' Ramage added gloomily. 'I've just realized he may have his supper there, too.'
‘That would have made it difficult for Stafford, eh?'
'Of course it would - and may,' Ramage said sharply, irritated by the Frenchman's bantering tone.
'On the contrary,' Louis said cheerfully. 'Instead of the lieutenant eating in his room and we eating in ours, you and I will be eating downstairs at the same table. You'll be able to meet the lieutenant - and the landlord's pretty daughter. Who knows, you might make the lieutenant jealous!'
The Frenchman thought of everything. Ramage was both relieved and yet irritated: he hated being in another man's hands. He had commanded his own ship for too many years to like having the initiative taken out of his own hands. In the past he had received his orders and was accustomed to the brief nod of acknowledgment when he succeeded and had always been ready for the blame if he failed. But here in France, here on enemy soil, his world was turned upside down.
He had his orders, yes, and damnably difficult orders they were. Putting the success of his arrival in France in the hands of a smuggler - yes, that was unavoidable and had been anticipated by Lord Nelson. But being in the hands of another smuggler, a Frenchman into the bargain, for the rest of the operation: how could he ever explain that to His Lordship? Damnation, it was as much as he could do to accept it himself, even though he had absolutely no choice if he was to succeed. Well, success would be its own justification, and (he gave an involuntary shiver) if he failed the guillotine would make any explanations on his part not only unnecessary but impossible: the Admiralty would never know if it was the fault of Lieutenant Ramage, the First Consul or the fourth gendarme in the back row.
An orchestra! He grasped at the idea but knew it was a straw. Louis, Dyson, the two seamen, Stafford and himself - they were an orchestra, and unless he accepted the fact he would make his life a misery. Louis's part was making sure they did the right things in France; Stafford dealt with that part which - he could not suppress a grin - would land him in jail in London; Dyson and the two seamen looked after communications; and himself — well, he was the conductor. He waved his baton, having made sure everyone was playing the same music, and generally kept an eye on the whole thing, hoping no one would blow a wrong note or drop his instrument with a loud bang.
For a few moments he felt better; then he found himself thinking once again that it was not a nightmare; he really was sitting in a room at the Hotel de la Poste in Amiens with a French smuggler and a Cockney picklock: on their efforts, cunning and skill might depend whether or not the British Government would know in good time if Bonaparte's invasion plans were propaganda - a gigantic bluff intended to tie down Britain's Channel Fleet - or a vast operation which would go into action in a matter of weeks, if not days. And which, he told himself coldly in an attempt to drive out the fears, could result in the French Army of England becoming the Army ot Occupation. If life in Boulogne and Amiens were examples of what the new France did to its own people, it required very little imagination to think what the new France would do to old England. Old Britain, he corrected himself.
'Supper is at seven o'clock,'.Louis said. 'Unfortunately our friend Stafford has an upset stomach and looks too ill to come down, so he will be free to get on with his work while we and the lieutenant attack the soup - onion soup, the landlord tells me; bis wife's speciality. And I think you will have to retire to your bed when you begin to feel ill after the sole - the same symptoms as Stafford and due to something the two of you ate for lunch in that wretched café, no doubt. That will leave you free to inspect Stafford's work while the lieutenant and I attend to the roast sucking pig that you requested me to order specially - and which,' he said with a broad grin, holding out a hand as if to fend off Ramage's protests, 'and which is the reason why we are all supping together downstairs tonight: you ordered roast sucking pig and invited the rest of the guests in the hotel to your table.
'The lieutenant is the only guest, apart from ourselves. The landlord was very impressed with the generosity of his Italian guest: no doubt it will show on your bill,' Louis added impishly. 'I am, incidentally, a connoisseur of sucking pig: I can tell in a moment if it has tasted anything but its mother's milk; any innkeeper who tries to serve me a wretched little under-sized beast which had been fed on grain for a few days - well he had better watch out! I shall report in due course if I received value for your money!'
Ramage had never felt so hungry, onion soup had never been so delicious - or less satisfying. The sole melted in the mouth but did damned little to soften the hunger pains in his stomach. The lieutenant, young and fair-haired with long silky moustaches, was expansive and friendly; a casual onlooker would have assumed he was the host and Ramage and Louis his guests. The innkeeper wore a new blue apron and a frilled white shirt and walked round the room beaming, his dumpy daughter's cheeks were pink with barely controlled excitement and her eyes danced and were shiny with love for her lieutenant.
Louis spoke little and while not appearing to eat fast managed to consume twice as much as Ramage, who was obliged from time to time to answer the lieutenant's questions. The lieutenant, he swore to himself, was an expert in asking short questions that needed long answers. And all the while the delicious aroma of the sucking pig roasting on its spit wafted through every time the door between the kitchen and the small dining-room was opened. Ramage glanced at Louis and thought that if he could have had a few slices of the sucking pig he would not care if a cunning farmer had fattened the runt of a litter with grain; in fact a few slices of the toughest old sow in the whole of Normandy would be welcome.
Upstairs an even hungrier Stafford was at work: Ramage had tried to avoid thinking about the Cockney, not because he feared that he would fail but, with the French lieutenant sitting on the opposite side of the table, he had the uncomfortable feeling that if he thought about Stafford the Frenchman would suddenly remember something he wanted from his room. He had watched him all the time the soup was on the table: a splash of onion soup down the Frenchman's stock would be enough to send him upstairs to change. Then he had worried that a glass of wine would spill, or a piece of fish drop from a fork. And all the time Louis had eaten stolidly, eyes on his plate, shoulders hunched - but, Ramage sensed, his ears missing nothing, whether a horse's hooves in the street or the crackling of dripping fat as the sucking pig turned on its spit.