Sir William looked at Ramage. "My apologies. Fact is, we're all on edge, hearing nothing for more than a year." He suddenly realized that it was worse for Ramage. "I hope you have news soon. This uncertainty - it's like a tumour, it just grows and grows."
"Yes, sir, I know, and perhaps I was being too emphatic about the need for surprise. But the way we marched you all out of Castello, signing a receipt for the commandant. . ."
"It was the only way, but will it work again?" Admiral Faversham asked. "Of course the decision is up to you. Perhaps you've already decided?"
Ramage looked round at the three admirals. He saw three desperately worried husbands, and knew they represented five more. In rank any of the admirals could be the commander-in-chief of the Fleet on a foreign station where Ramage was serving but now, as they watched him, they were anxious husbands. For now, it was easier to think of them as husbands rather than admirals because none would try to override the Board's orders to him, and in a year or two he could find himself serving under any one of them. Tact did not come naturally to Ramage, and he knew it. Good manners, yes; he had learned them as a child and they came naturally, like saying "please" and "thank you", and standing when a woman came into the room, and eating bread with his left hand and so on. But tact - well, often words were spoken before Ramage realized that they had turned into bricks the moment they left his mouth.
"Gentlemen, we looked for you in Pitigliano and Santo Stefano and finally found you in Giglio without having any clearly defined plans, apart from our group of make-believe hostages. We hoped to get you out by guile, but we couldn't rule out violence.
"One of my men was shot in the arm while discovering you were not in Santo Stefano. I said guile or violence but violence was going to be the last resort. We knew we were after hostages who were men, not women. I had in mind that if there was any shooting, most of you would probably escape in the confusion."
Sir Henry looked at the other two admirals and then at Ramage. "Now you have just found out something the Admiralty didn't know, or didn't mention in your orders: that there are several women to be rescued."
"Exactly, sir. Like you, the women don't expect to be rescued, so they'll be startled, they'll be encumbered by bulky dresses, and," he added ruefully, "no woman can leave a room she's lived in for a long time without running back for some valuable she's forgotten."
"You've obviously been thinking about all this," Sir Henry commented. "And you've just described my wife!" He saw the expressions on the faces of the other two admirals. "All wives," he added, "except Lady Sarah. I've just this moment remembered how you first met her - rescued her and her parents and many other people from renegades and pirates at an island off the Brazilian coast. Don't give up hope, Ramage."
"No sir. That and memories are all I have." He thought for a moment. He was not in the mood for Major-General Cargill's crude manners or the two young men's enthusiasm. In fact, apart from Sir Henry he really wanted nothing to do with the freed hostages: he wanted no personal pleas or objections or suggestions to affect his decisions.
That the hostages might be in Port' Ercole - yes, it was a guess, but a good one. The answer seemed plausible. The second guess (or choice: the word "guess" carried a hint of a gamble) was exactly where the hostages were imprisoned. This time there was no clue from the Pitigliano commandant. The fortresses were the most likely and, of the two, della Stella seemed the obvious one. But he knew there were some big private houses in the hills behind Port' Ercole. Surely the Borghese family owned much of the land round the port, and they would have one or two houses there. Houses big enough to hold a dozen or so hostages and their guards? Italian houses have big rooms and high ceilings, and all too often shutters take the place of glass in the windows - in winter such houses were not used. Large rooms, balconies, houses designed for occasional summer living by wealthy people casual about their possessions - they would hardly make secure prisons for important hostages. Did that rule out the big houses? Not really - the French guards, with muskets and swords, could terrorize women prisoners: they might well have made two or three of the older ones responsible for the conduct of the rest - made them hostages for the good behaviour of the others . . .
"Guile," Lord Smarden said, trying to prompt Ramage into discussing his ideas. "You can hardly dress up your seamen as women!"
"No sir," Ramage said as Sir Henry gave his fellow admiral a withering look, "but I might ask for volunteers from among people with grey hair to dress up as old women - long black dresses, and baskets, shawls over the head - to make reconnaissances." He was looking at Smarden's grey hair and Sir Henry said at once: "I'm sure Lord Smarden would be the first to step forward."
"I appreciate that, sir," Ramage said, keeping a straight face, "and it would take only an hour or so to train him to walk with that shuffle that comes from worn shoes and bunions."
Lord Smarden looked embarrassed but could not avoid nodding and saying without enthusiasm: "Of course, of course."
"However," Ramage said, "Lord Smarden is right; it obviously has to be guile. If they're not at Forte della Stella, we go on to the other fort, without raising an alarm. If we have no luck there we must try a few big houses. It could take a couple of days - nights, rather, with our party hiding during the day."
"What about the ship?" Sir Henry asked.
"So far the French at both Santo Stefano and Giglio seem quite happy to accept her as French - not surprising, since she is French built - and there's no co-operation between the Navy and the Army."
"So now we sail for Port' Ercole?" asked Sir Henry.
"It'll only take a few hours. I want to arrive at night. If we arrive in daylight, the port or garrison commandant probably feels obliged to come out at once to greet us, but if he wakes up in the morning and sees us already at anchor and bustling about our daily business, he's more likely to put off coming out: he usually has to commandeer a local rowing boat which will be covered in fish scales, so he prefers to wait for one of our boats to come on shore . . . And if none comes by noon he'll take his usual siesta, and before he knows it another day has passed, and the ship has been there so long there's no need for a visit."
Sir Henry nodded his agreement. "I must say you seem to know these people, Ramage. I'd never realized just how much the siesta is an important part of their day until they took me as a hostage. I'd always thought it a waste of time. Now - I suppose it's advancing old age and the heat at noon, but I see its advantages."
"Indeed, sir, and it's a splendid time to make a reconnaissance before any night operations, whether serenading a sweetheart or looking for hostages."
"Haven't had much experience of either so far," Sir-Henry admitted ruefully, "but now we seem to be combining both!"
By noon the wind had backed to the south and was coming up in fitful gusts, with the air beginning to turn sultry. The day had started off with the sky blue and cloudless, and it had stayed like that until after the landing party were back on board with the freed hostages, but then it had slowly, almost imperceptibly, become hazy. Ramage and Southwick, meeting on the quarterdeck, had looked knowingly at each other.
"It's a scirocco all right, sir," Southwick said and Ramage took a telescope from the binnacle box drawer to look across the strait to the top of Monte Argentario.
"There they are," he said, "the balls of cotton streaming to leeward of the peak of Argentario." The clouds, the cotton balls, he remembered, were always the outriders of a scirocco, reliable warnings which were useful because the glass usually gave none.