Aitken said: "I think you're wrong Southwick. Obviously your general criticism is correct, but there are exceptions. Lord Nelson is one; Rear-Admiral Goddard might be another -"
"Not in the same breath!" exclaimed Southwick. "Please!"
Aitken grinned and explained: "I'm talking about the exceptions, who can be heroes or scoundrels. Seems to me that here we have one of each. Just as Lord St Vincent stuck by an unpopular commodore and put him in the way of promotion, someone has stuck close to Rear-Admiral Goddard, although I don't know who -"
"The Court," Ramage interposed quietly.
"So we have the King against us," Aitken mused.
"All this talk doesn't get the evidence down in the minutes," Wagstaffe pointed out.
"We were talking about what influence those twelve captains will have," Ramage reminded him.
"I'll put a little money on Captain Swinford," Southwick said. "He was a good man when he commanded the Canopus and he was standing up to the admiral at times."
"My oath!" exclaimed Aitken heatedly, "none of them were really standing up to him. We still have only one mention of the broadside in the minutes and not the slightest hint of Captain Shirley's madness despite Miss Yorke. In the minutes, remember that. Nor anything about the Jason's officers being locked up in their cabins. In fact I don't know what the devil was left in the minutes."
"Don't worry about the minutes," Ramage said calmly, "minutes are for commanders-in-chief and the Admiralty to read after the trial - which means after the verdict. No matter what anyone might say and however much presidents might order stricken out, minutes are only useful as records, and for appeals. No matter what happens, I shan't appeal."
"So the only thing that matters is the verdict, 'Guilty' or 'Not Guilty'. And that verdict is going to be decided by those twelve captains."
At that moment Kenton arrived at the door to announce that Mr Yorke's boat was within hail, having approached in the lee of a 74-gun ship and out of sight, and he would be on board in a couple of minutes.
The moment Sidney Yorke walked into the cabin, preceded by the lugubrious Marine sentry's announcement, Ramage knew that something had happened: the man's face was drawn and the tropical tan now turned the skin an unhealthy yellow.
The young shipowner greeted the four men in the cabin and then nodded towards the coach. Ramage stood up and led Yorke into the smaller cabin, shutting the door behind them.
"It's Alexis," Yorke said, and for a moment Ramage was startled because he thought Yorke had already said that, and then realized he had imagined it.
"What happened?"
What could happen at an inn? Robbers, sudden illness, the building catching fire - perhaps their boat capsized: the boatmen plying for hire were -
"When I got back to the King's Arms expecting to find her there after giving her evidence, I was handed this note by the innkeeper."
He gave Ramage a single sheet of paper which had been folded and sealed with a wafer.
"My dear Brother," it said. "I should have talked about this with you but I was afraid you would try to dissuade me. If Nicholas is left at the mercy of that scoundrel Goddard, he will be found guilty, and I understand he would then have to be sentenced to death because the court has no alternative. I am therefore going to London because there lies authority. I shall be well along the road by the time you read this - your affectionate sister . . ."
"What 'authority' do you think she has in mind?" Ramage asked.
Yorke shrugged his shoulders. "She was very angry with Goddard - I gather he threatened to have her thrown out of the court. Most unwise of him to get athwart Alexis's hawse: even I don't!"
"Is it all right if the others know?" Ramage asked, gesturing towards the three men waiting the other side of the door.
"Of course! I just wanted to tell you first."
They went back into the cabin and before Ramage sat down he told the three officers: "Miss Yorke has gone to London on my behalf."
A startled Southwick said: "What is she going to do?"
"We're not at all sure, but from the way she dealt with Goddard today, I can imagine her coach and four turning into Downing Street!"
"Don't laugh," Sidney Yorke said. "She knows Henry Addington very welclass="underline" in fact the last time she saw him was at Number Ten a few months after the signing of the Treaty of Amiens. She gave him quite a fright: she told him exactly what she thought about anyone who signed such a treaty with Bonaparte. He took it very well, I must say. Knowing what sycophants he usually has round him, that was probably the first time he'd heard the truth for a long time!"
"Could she really be going to see the prime minister?" an awed Wagstaffe asked.
Sidney Yorke pulled a face. "My sister knows an extraordinary number of people and she has a way of saying the most outrageous things without causing offence. In fact some people seem to like it."
"Should think so," Southwick muttered, "particularly if the way she settled the admiral's hash is anything to go by."
"I'm sorry I missed that," Yorke said, "but I had to wait in that damned cabin in case I was wanted as a witness."
"Well, she was magnificent," Ramage said. "One moment an empress and the next a tigress. Poor Goddard never knew whether he was going to be frozen by a regal stare or ripped by a hidden claw!"
"The courts sit again next Monday," Southwick said. "She'll have barely reached London by then. And then she has to see people."
"I inquired at the King's Arms," Yorke said. "Five days to London in a coach and four. Alexis hired her own coach - the postchaise costs tenpence a mile, with tips and turnpikes. She'd have saved money by buying her own coach!"
"There's the new telegraph from the Admiralty to Portsmouth," Aitken said. "They say they can get a message to the Admiralty and a reply in thirty minutes."
"Aye, a very brief message, providing there is no fog between the signal stations, all nine of them. Ten, counting the Admiralty itself," Southwick said.
"Is that true - half an hour?" Yorke asked.
Southwick nodded. "Yes, and the Admiralty is extending it along the coast to Plymouth. This telegraphic apparatus is a very simple thing to operate."
"And I'll bet that Southwick knows where every one of the stations to Portsmouth is built," Ramage said, "and plans to walk along the line of them from London, and then on to Plymouth and back, as soon as he's retired!"
Southwick looked puzzled. "How did you know that, sir? Not walk, though; I mean to do it on horseback."
"I guessed," Ramage said. "You once told me you had just copied out a list of where the stations were. Why would you want such a list, if not to follow the line of them?"
As Southwick nodded in agreement, Yorke said: "Where on earth are they?"
Like a child anxiously waiting to recite his poem at a party and once started unable to stop, Southwick said proudly: "From the Admiralty to Chelsea, Putney, Cabbage Hill, Netley Heath, Hascombe, Blackdown, Beacon Hill, Portsdown and then into Portsmouth.
"Then it is now being extended with stations at Chalton, Wickham, Town Hill, Foot Hill, Bramshaw, Pistle Down, Charlbury, Blandford, Belchalwell, Nettlecoombe, High Stoy, Toller Down, Lambert's Castle, Dalwood Common, St Cyres, Rockbere, Haldon, Knighton, Marley, Lee, Saltram, and then over to Plymouth Dock . . . how about that!"
Yorke had been listening carefully. "Yes, that would make one of the finest rides in England. There are other parts of the country where it'd be more beautiful for, say, twenty miles, but for a two-hundred-mile ride you couldn't beat that."
"When might we expect Miss Yorke back again?" Wagstaffe asked Yorke, "assuming she will need a couple of days in London?"