Ramage shook his head. 'You, Edouard, the gardener and me to capture a frigate? Four against at least a hundred, and the garrison of the Château as well if you tried it in Brest?'
Gilbert nodded. 'I grasp at straws, milord.'
'It's all we have to grasp,' Ramage said. 'I had in mind only that if we can escape to England before L'Espoir sails, perhaps I might be able to warn the Admiralty so that a watch is kept for her. But Gilbert, you mentioned a brig. What brig?'
'Ah yes, that was just some gossip the gardener's wife heard. Not the gardener,' Gilbert said tactfully, as though not wanting to cast any doubt on the intelligence of womanhood in Sarah's hearing, 'he was at the meat market, and she heard about this at the fish market.'
Gilbert was a splendid fellow, Ramage told himself, and his only fault is that for him the shortest distance between two points is a well embroidered story. His listeners needed patience, and it was a defect in Ramage's own character, he admitted, that he had been born with little or none.
'Yes, the gardener's wife - her name is Estelle, by the way - overheard two fishmongers discussing a brig which had arrived in Le Goulet the evening before, escorted by a French corvette.'
'Why 'escorted'?' Ramage asked.
'Oh, because the brig is English, milord, and with the war now resumed one would expect an escort, no?'
Ramage nodded and managed to avoid looking across at Sarah: he knew she would be hard put to avoid laughing as she saw him struggling not to snap at Gilbert, swiftly drawing the story from him like a fishmonger filleting fish.
'Anyway, this brig has a name like Murex. It seems a strange name, but Estelle was sure because one fishmonger spelled it to the other.'
'Yes, it would be Murex,' Ramage said, and remembered another 10-gun brig of the same class, the Triton, also named after a seashell (not the sea god, as many thought). She had been his second command, and she had stayed afloat during a hurricane in the West Indies but, dismasted, then drifted on to the island of Culebra. By now there would be very little of her skeleton left: the teredo worm would have devoured her timbers and coral would be growing on any ironwork while gaudy tropical fish swam through whatever was left of the skeleton.
'Were many killed and wounded when the Murex was captured?' Sarah asked.
'Killed and wounded, milady?' a puzzled Gilbert asked. 'I don't think anyone was hurt. The captain and the officers, perhaps, but I doubt it.'
Ramage had a curious feeling that he was dreaming the whole conversation: that he was dreaming about a fairy tale entitled 'The Two Fishmongers'. The time had come to be firm with Gilbert.
'Start at the beginning and tell us what Estelle overheard in the fish market. Now, she is in the fish market and she hears two fishmongers talking.'
'Well, she was to buy salt cod. There was plenty of that. Then she wanted some halibut - but she could find none. What, she asked herself, could replace the missing halibut? Bear in mind she would be cooking it: the first cook, Mirabelle, refuses to cook fish: she says that a woman with her delicate pastry should not be asked to meddle with scaly reptiles - that's what Mirabelle calls them, milord, 'reptiles'.'
'The fishmongers,' Ramage said patiently.
'Ah yes, Estelle was discussing with them what to buy in place of the halibut. She had the sauce in mind, you understand. Well, the second fishmonger joined the discussion, and while Estelle was thinking, asked the first fishmonger if he had heard about the English brig arriving.
'The first fishmonger had not, and the second - his name is Henri, a Gascon, and he has trouble making people believe his stories: not for nothing do we have the word 'gasconade'.'
'And then...' Ramage prompted.
'Henri then told how this brig had been sighted in the Chenal du Four by the lookouts now stationed on Pointe St Mathieu. Then they noticed the strange business about her flag.'
Once more Gilbert came to a stop, like a murex (or a winkle, Ramage thought sourly) retreating into its shell after every few inches of progress. Dutifully Ramage encouraged him out again. 'What about the flag, Gilbert?'
'She was flying a white flag above the English colours. Had she been captured? the sentries asked themselves. But why a white flag - one would have expected a Tricolore over the English.
'Anyway, they passed a message round to the Château and a corvette which was anchored close by was sent out to investigate. She returned with the English brig following, only now the white flag had been replaced by the Tricolore.
'If you want my opinion, milord' - he paused politely until Ramage nodded - 'the brig had already surrendered, but the corvette met her before she started coming into Le Goulet and put men on board and claimed to have captured her. That way they get a reward.'
They must be optimists, Ramage thought. The British Admiralty courts were notoriously fussy and the agents corrupt when awarding prize money, and he doubted if Bonaparte's Navy even bothered with prize courts. The corvette had been sent out to check up on a vessel already flying a white flag which traditionally meant surrender or truce. He raised his eyebrows in another variation of prodding Gilbert to continue.
'This English brig now flying the Tricolore over the English colours, and with her guns still - how do you say, withdrawn, not in place for firing...'
'Not run out.'
'Ah, yes. This brig is anchored in front of the Château and many important men - including the préfet maritime and Admiral Bruix, the commandant de l'Armée navale - are rowed out to the ship. They stay about an hour, and then after they return the crew of the Murex - her name can be read from the shore you understand - are brought on shore and given accommodation in the Château, while French sailors are taken out to guard the rest.'
'The rest of what?'
'Well, the officers, and a few seamen,' Gilbert said, clearly surprised at Ramage's question.
'But why are the officers and a few seamen being left on board? Who were the men brought on shore and lodged in the Château?'
'Why, they are the mutineers, of course!' Gilbert said. 'The officers and the seamen who did not mutiny are kept on board as prisoners of war. That,' he amended cautiously, 'is how Estelle understood it from Henri.'
The ship's company of the Murex brig mutinying within a few days - almost hours - of the resumption of war and carrying the ship into Brest to hand her over to the French? Ramage looked at Sarah, as if appealing to her to assure him that he had misheard. She stared at the floor, obviously stunned.
Who commanded the brig? He could be a lieutenant - almost certainly would be. The Murex would probably have left Plymouth or Portsmouth before war began. Most likely she was based on the Channel Islands.
But what caused a mutiny? The mutinies at the Nore and Spithead had brought better conditions for the Navy and he had never heard any murmurs of discontent since then. There was occasional loose talk of malcontents among Irish seamen; a few captains also complained of the activities of the London Corresponding Society, which some had blamed for the Nore and Spithead affairs, but the subsequent inquiry had produced no proof.
A mutiny in a single ship, Ramage felt instinctively, was the captain's fault. Either he was too harsh (like the late and unlamented Hugh Pigot, commanding the Hermione) or he was too slack, failing to notice troublemakers at work among the ship's company. The troublemakers did not have to be revolutionaries: far from it. There were always men who genuinely enjoyed stirring up trouble without a cause and without a purpose, and they usually became seamen or Members of Parliament, depending on their background. Either way, they talked shrilly without any sense of responsibility, like truculent whores at a window.
The Murex. Ideas drifted through his mind like snowflakes across a window - and, he admitted sourly, they had about as much weight. He looked up at Gilbert and smiled. 'Don't look so sad: now's the time to plot and scheme, not despair!'
The Frenchman shook his head sadly. 'We need a company of chasseurs or an English ship of the line, milord,' he said. 'Three or four of us against Bonaparte...'
'Don't forget Bonaparte was alone when he sent the Directory packing! From being a young Corsican cadet at the artillery school he rose to be the ruler of most of Europe ... Don't despair, Gilbert; come back in half an hour and we'll talk again. First, though, tell me who we can count on among the staff.'
'All are loyal, sir. I mean that none will betray us. For active help: well, Edouard, Estelle and her husband Louis - who was a fisherman before becoming a gardener when the authorities confiscated his boat - will actively help. The others may not care to risk their lives.'
'But those two men and the woman would?'
'Yes, because they all hate the new régime. Not that it's very new now, but they have all suffered. Estelle and Louis lost their fishing boat and then had to sell their little cottage in Douarnenez: Edouard's father should be buried in the cemetery at Landerneau, on the Paris road, but instead the body is in a mass grave near the guillotine they set up in Brest.'
'What did the father do?'
'A terrible crime,' Gilbert almost whispered. 'He was the Count's butler. He decided to stay here in France when the Count escaped to England because he could not see any danger from his own people for a butler. But he was denounced to the Committee of Public Safety as a Royalist.'
'On what evidence? That he worked for the Count?'
'Milord, you do not understand. If you are denounced, you are not brought before the kind of court you are accustomed to in England. You are first locked up, and next day, next week, next month - even next year - you are brought before a tribunal, the denunciation is read out, and you are sentenced. You might be asked for your explanation, but no one will be listening to it. The sentence is the same, whatever you say - the guillotine.'
'Does Edouard know who denounced his father?'
'No, but he knows the names of the three members of the tribunal.'
'What does he intend to do?'
'We Bretons are like your Cornishmen, milord: we have long memories and much patience. Edouard is prepared to wait for his revenge. Nor is he alone: there have been many unexplained accidents in the last year or two, so I hear: farms catch fire, the wheel comes off a cabriolet and the driver is killed or badly hurt ... it seems that a band of assassins occasionally prowl the countryside. It was only six months ago that members of tribunals stopped having armed guards at their houses. But now, milord, I will leave you for half an hour.'
When the door had shut, Sarah patted the bed beside her.
'Come and sit with me - I suddenly feel very lonely.' She leaned over and kissed him. 'If I said what I felt about that, you'd blush.'
'I'd like to blush. For the last few hours I've felt pale and wan.'
'If you'd told Gilbert to come back in two hours, I'd lure you to other things.'
'I had thought of that, but Gilbert will be expecting to hear of a plan worthy of Captain the Lord Ramage - one that frees Jean-Jacques and gets us all safely back
