The innkeeper removed the plate which had been piled with sole and a moment later - for this was the signal - Louis was looking at him anxiously. 'Are you all right, M'sieur?'
In anticipation of the question, Ramage had been surreptitiously holding his breath until he felt dizzy. He put a hand to his head and groaned and with his head spinning found it required no acting skill. He stood up while he still felt dizzy and in a moment Louis was beside him, solicitous and reassuring the French lieutenant.
'He and his foreman - they lunched at a café. The foreman is already ill; now M'sieur is stricken.'
Ramage, suddenly afraid that the lieutenant would insist on helping him to his room and already worried about Stafford, found it easy to simulate a retch and a moment later retched again and tasted the onion soup. He muttered in Italian, brushed away Louis's hand, told them both to continue their meal and rushed for the door, as though about to be sick. As he closed the door behind him he heard Louis telling the innkeeper with artful hypocrisy that the Italians had to take the consequences if they chose to eat in cheap cafés . . .
He managed to stop himself running up the stairs two at a time; instead he walked up slowly and heavily, groaning every now and again. Would Stafford be back in their own room or still in the lieutenant's? For all his play-acting in the dining-room he now felt genuinely queasy, as though the sole had come to life in his stomach and was swimming round vigorously in the onion soup. He recognized it as an old friend (or enemy): the queasiness he always felt when fear and food met together. 'The condemned man ate a hearty breakfast.' Good luck to him; such a man had either no imagination or a stomach of iron.
He gave the pre-arranged triple tap on their door and heard a movement in the room. A moment later the door opened and as soon as he stepped inside was closed and quietly locked by Stafford. There was nothing on the table - and nothing on his bed or Stafford's. The seaman had failed. He must have entered the room but not found the satchel. Or the lieutenant was on his way to Paris to collect dispatches, not deliver them. The queasiness increased and he belched, a vile compôte of sole and soup.
He turned to ask Stafford what had gone wrong - and saw that the man was grinning.
The Cockney walked over to the chest of drawers, pulled out the second drawer and carried it to the table. Lifting out some clothes, he produced a shiny leather satchel the size of a family Bible and with a long shoulder strap. Ramage saw that the top flap was down and the clasp was locked,
With a flourish Stafford produced a thin sliver of metal, inserted it in the keyhole and turned. The flap sprang open from the natural stiffness of the leather, and Stafford took out a dozen letters and two slim packets.
Ramage sat down at the table, his heart pounding; one half of him wanted to snatch up the envelopes and see, from the superscriptions, if there was a dispatch from Bruix to the First Consul; the other half of him shied away like a horse balking at a fence, scared to take the plunge because the consequences of there being no such dispatch meant that he would have wasted several days by believing a fool of a corporal.
Stafford tapped one of the letters. 'My French is a bitrudeemental, sir -'
'Rudimentary,' Ramage corrected him absent-mindedly.
' - rudimentally, sir, but I think this is the one you want.'
Addressed to,’Le Citoyen Pierre-Alexandre-Laurent Forfait' at 'Le Ministère de la Marine et des Colonies' in Paris, a line of writing above the seal on the back showed it was a dispatch from 'Eustache Bruix, Vice-amiral, Commandant, Force Navale de Boulogne.'
Ramage put it to one side and looked through the rest. All were addressed to various departments in the Ministry; the sender's name on the back of each indicated its mundane contents — 'L'Ordonnateur de Marine à Boulogne,' 'Bureau des Armements et Inscription Maritime au port de Boulogne' and so on. None was addressed to the First Consul, but Ramage was not surprised: an admiral would report to his Minister. The First Consul was the Corporal's embellishment.
Stafford was setting out his equipment - a flat spatula with a wooden handle, several sticks of sealing-wax of varying shades of red, and a thin-bladed knife. He gestured to a candle already alight and standing on the chest of drawers - it would be an hour before it was dark and Ramage had not noticed it - and said: 'All right if I close the shutters, sir?'
Ramage looked out. Anyone at several windows in the house opposite could see into the room. The thought of the watchful gendarmes in their cocked hats decided him and he pulled the shutters close.
Stafford put the candle on the table and added paper, a bottle of ink and a quill to the collection of items. Ramage picked up Bruix's letter and examined it. The blob of red wax was perhaps half an inch in diameter, and soot from the clerk's candle flame had made black streaks in it. The oval crest - the impression of an anchor with 'Rep. Fran.' at the top and 'Marine' below - had been carelessly applied by the clerk who canted the seal as he pressed so that the wax was wafer-thin on the left side and a quarter of an inch thick on the right. Several small blobs of wax were spattered round it, as though the clerk's hands shook - or else he was a damned clumsy or careless fellow. Ramage could imagine what would happen if a British admiral ever saw his letter sent to the First Lord of the Admiralty in such a state: the clerk would suddenly find himself at sea as a cook's mate!
Stafford was holding the spatula blade in the candle flame, moving it so the metal heated evenly. 'That the one you want opening, sir?'
The Cockney was casual, almost offhand. Ramage had no idea how the devil the man was going to open a letter sealed with the stamp of the French Navy when he did not have the seal to make a fresh impression when he closed the letter again. Was he being too offhand? Did he realize that, apart from anything else, their lives might depend on his skill? 'Yes, but will you be able to seal it again so a clerk in Paris doesn't spot anything?'
'You won't be able to spot anything, sir.' He reached for the envelope. 'If you'll just hold this spatchler in the flame, movin' it like so, I'll get ready.'
Ramage took the blade, watching shadows dancing over the walls, and was reminded of a magician. Stafford picked up the letter and ran his fingers over it. 'One sheet of paper folded three times, ends turned into the middle, put inside a plain sheet which is folded three times and ends folded in the middle, an' a blob o' wax to seal it. People never learn!'
'Never learn what?'
Stafford grinned impishly. 'Never learn it ain't a safe way to send a secret letter wiv people like me around!' He picked up two sheets of plain paper from his pile and compared them with the letter. "Bout the same thickness: that's lucky.'
'Why?'
'Means we can experimentate wiv the 'eat o' that blade.' He folded the first sheet into three, and then folded the two ends inwards so that they met edge to edge in the middle, running his fingers along the folds to crease them, and making a neat packet. He then took another sheet, put the packet in the middle and folded again in the same way, holding the ends down with his finger. He picked up a stick of sealing-wax. 'Have to use the candle for a moment, sir - can you hold it for me?'
He heated the stick of wax and ran it on to seal the paper, dripping enough until he had the same thickness as on Bruix's letter. 'That's it: now, if you'll carry on hotting up the spatchler, sir ...'
He held his own packet in one hand and Bruix's letter in the other, as though comparing the weight; then he felt each of them with the forefinger and thumb of his right hand, as a tailor would examine cloth. 'Both about the same thickness,' he commented, putting Bruix's letter to one side and his own packet in front of him, next to it. 'That's what matters.' He took a piece of cloth from his pocket. 'Let me have the spatchler, sir!'