Some ten minutes later Southwick whispered a hoarse warning through the skylight and then the sentry gave a double knock and pushed the door open. A slim man with a wrinkled, tanned face and wearing a faded blue shirt and well-patched white trousers, a broad leather cutlass belt diagonally across his shoulders, walked nervously into the cabin, looking left and right like a bird fearing a trap.
The Frenchman had reached this far without anyone speaking a word: as he came up the side he had been met by Southwick, who pointed to the companionway, and then the sentry had pointed at the open door.
Suddenly the man caught sight of Ramage sitting at the table, a cup and saucer in front of him. He smiled uncertainly, careful as he walked towards Ramage not to bump his head on the deck beams above. There was considerably more headroom than in his galliot, but still not enough to allow him to stand upright.
"Renouf," the man said by way of introduction, "lieutenant de vaisseau ..."
Ramage stood up with just the right pause to be expected from a captain in the Revolutionary Navy. "Ramage," he murmured, giving his name its French pronunciation and turning an old Cornish surname into the French word for the music of birds. He held out his hand and the Frenchman shook it as though it might bite him and then sat in the chair to which Ramage had gestured.
"You have your orders?" Ramage asked in French with suitable brusqueness.
Renouf burrowed into the pocket sewn inside his shirt and brought out a twice-folded sheet of paper. He opened it, smoothed it carefully on his knee and then handed it to Ramage.
The orders told Renouf, commanding Le Dix-Huit de Fructidor, bomb vessel, to proceed to Candia, on the island of Crete, and there await further orders. (Ramage was amused to notice that despite the Revolution, French orders were written in the same dead language contrived by British government officials.) Each ship was commanded by a lieutenant, but the two were treated as a little squadron of which Renouf was the senior officer.
The paper was coarse, and at the top was a circle with an anchor in the centre surrounded by "Rep. Fran. Marine" with "LIBERTĖ" in capital letters printed separately to the left and "EGALITĖ" to the right. The unbleached paper, an economy measure or perhaps just poor papermaking because it soaked up the ink like cloth, had a faint greyness as though the colour of communications from Le Ministre de la Marine et des Colonies in Paris was always like this, even when the actual orders came from the Chef d'Administration de la Marine, Brest (although given in the name of the Minister and la République une et indivisible).
The orders were dated - Ramage paused, working out the new French calendar - four months ago. It had been a long voyage for the two galliots, all the way round the Spanish peninsula from Brest. Le Dix-Huit de Fructidor . . . that name was a special date, but what the devil was it? The first of September was the fifteenth of Fructidor, so the eighteenth was the fourth of September. What had happened then? It did not give the year, either. The new Revolutionary calendar began on 22 September 1792, and introduced a ten-day week. So the 18 Fructidor could be the birthday of the galliot's original owner's mother-in-law.
Ramage searched his memory. Several years ago Robespierre had fallen and the new government had exiled to Devil's Island everyone suspected of being lukewarm towards the Revolution. Within a year or so there had been revolts against the revolutionaries (the Convention, rather) . . . Then there was the Paris rising, which was put down when a young General Bonaparte fired on the Paris rebels with grapeshot, and a new Constitution came into force. The currency collapsed, food prices went up like celebration rockets, and never came down again. The new Directory was not popular. Then General Bonaparte returned from Italy, marched on the capital and scores of deputies were arrested and exiled to Devil's Island.
That coup d'état, or whatever it was called, had been on 4 September 1797, which was le dix-huit Fructidor in year five of the Revolution? Well, Le Dix-Huit de Fructidor, galliot, named after the event, was herself going to suffer a coup d'état within the next half hour. As far as she was concerned the revolutionary wheel would have turned a complete revolution. The thought made him smile, and he realized that Renouf was smiling back rather uncertainly, wise enough to know that junior officers always smiled when their seniors smiled.
Renouf, however, was looking too comfortable. The narrow Gallic face with its olive skin, the hair black and wavy, the queue long and tightly bound, the eyes brown but bloodshot and trying to avoid the glare from the rising sun now beginning to come through the stern lights behind Ramage, needed shaking up. Renouf needed reminding that his head throbbed, that he felt shaky from the night's wine bibbing. He had to be unwary and weak: unwary while he still thought that the Calypso was French; weak when he found that he was a prisoner.
Ramage coughed in the way that most superior officers did before finding fault or blaming juniors. Renouf glanced up nervously to find that the Calypso's captain had folded the page of orders and was using it to tap the table top.
"Citizen Renouf - you seem to be taking your time over this voyage. When the Chef d' Administration at Brest gave you these orders, I'm sure ..."
"But the additional orders," Renouf protested. "From Toulon - they modify those."
"What additional orders?" Ramage demanded heavily, deliberately sounding doubtful, as though accusing Renouf of lying.
Again the Frenchman ferreted around in his pocket and, with the clumsiness of a man not used to handling papers, came out with another folded sheet, which he handed to Ramage after opening and smoothing the page.
Obviously the bomb ketches had called in at Toulon to repair damage or get supplies, instead of making the passage to Italy direct from the Strait of Gibraltar, and, all navies being the same, the unexpected arrival of a couple of extra ships had to be turned to some advantage, however brief. Then Ramage read the extra orders again more carefully and discovered that his first glance had given him the wrong impression. Apparently the ketches were far more important to the French than he had thought, and they were to be escorted by two frigates. These frigates would meet them just down the coast on the other side of Argentario at Porto Ercole. He cursed the revolutionary calendar but worked out that it meant in five days' time. The two frigates were going there after landing some stores at Bastia, in Corsica. The ketches should by then have watered, taken on what provisions they needed (and which were available locally), and then be waiting at anchor outside the harbour because the frigates would then enter to water as soon as they arrived and embark cavalry, infantry and field artillery and transport them to Crete while escorting the bomb ketches.
Ramage considered the dates as he folded the letter. It was now the 8th, and the two bomb ketches had to be watered, provisioned and anchored outside Porto Ercole by the 13th, when the frigates were due. By then cavalry and field artillery would have arrived at Porto Ercole from somewhere nearby, ready to be embarked. Presumably they would bring forage for the horses. But why on earth were the French sending a couple of bomb ketches and a couple of frigates to Crete with cavalry and artillery?
"You have the charts for Crete?" Ramage asked casually.
Renouf grimaced expressively and shook his head. "The frigates are bringing one. I don't even have a chart showing where it is; just a latitude and longitude written down."