'There are really three stories,' she began, 'but I'll start at the King's Arms.'
Yorke groaned. 'Surely we don't have to hear all about your journey to London, at tenpence a mile including turnpike charges and tips.'
'No, but you have to hear about the beginning because that's where I met the young man who escorted me all the way to London - to Palace Street, in fact, to Nicholas's home.'
She looked at the two men with what seemed to Ramage to be an impish grin, as though she was enjoying teasing them. 'Yes, I had just arranged with the innkeeper for the hire of the coach, and paid half the fare in advance, when this young man burst in, very agitated because all the seats were taken in the London mail coach.'
'So you offered him a seat,' Yorke said crossly. 'A complete stranger! He could have been a footpad's accomplice!'
'He could have been, but I only offered him a seat after I'd discovered he was someone we were looking for.'
'Who? An honest politician?' Yorke asked sarcastically.
'No, a witness for Nicholas.'
'We don't lack for witnesses,' Yorke said bitterly. 'We just lack witnesses who know what happened on board the Jason.'
Alexis nodded contentedly and smoothed her skirt. 'This one does.'
'And we need to be able to get his evidence into the minutes of the court's proceedings.'
'Yes,' she said demurely, 'that's arranged, too.'
'Look here, Alexis,' Yorke exclaimed angrily, 'this isn't a joking matter.'
'I'm not joking,' Alexis said, 'just listen, without interrupting. It's not often I get a chance to talk for a whole minute so -'
Ramage coughed and Alexis glanced round, smiling.
Then she told how the young man - in fact, only a youth of seventeen - proved to be a midshipman who was leaving his ship and the Navy. He had seemed overwrought, and did not have enough money to get to London: he wanted the innkeeper to accept a ten-day bill of exchange drawn on his father, who was a Member of Parliament. She had felt sorry for the youth, who was clearly well educated, and then discovered he was leaving the Jason for a reason which seemed to hang over him like a shadow.
'So I offered him a seat, and I told him his father could pay for his place when we reached London. I warned him that we would be driving day and night, and that he would have to eat and sleep in the coach, and he agreed: he could not get away from Plymouth quickly enough.'
So each of them had climbed up into the coach, the postboys had slammed the doors and swung up the steps with the usual crash, the coachmen had whipped up the horses and they had thundered through the night, both Alexis and the midshipman trying to sleep. When they stopped next morning to change horses they had a hurried breakfast and the midshipman had commented on Alexis's tan, and she had taken a chance and mentioned very casually that she had just arrived in England from the West Indies. As she had intended, this had led to the midshipman exclaiming that his ship had been part of the escort for that convoy.
Alexis explained how she had sensed that the youth - his name was Edward Blaxton, son of one of the Members of Parliament for Maidstone - wanted to tell someone about some awful experience he had undergone, but she had decided she would hear the story more fully if she let him tell it bit by bit, as the days went by during the journey to London. And that was what happened. He would mention one episode when they stopped briefly for dinner, she would hear of a later one when the coach stopped to change horses and there was a quarter of an hour's quiet. An earlier episode might be related while they had a hurried supper as the horses were changed and the coach axles greased.
The journey itself, Alexis admitted, became a nightmare: soon she could remember no other life than being confined inside a coach and breathing the smell of mildew and old leather. Occasionally she and Edward would try to clean it up, because eating a snack amid all the jolting meant that crumbs and pieces of cheese and cold meat would slip down under the leather seats.
Gradually the coach made its way towards London: eventually Exeter, Honiton, Axminster, Bridport, Dorchester, Blandford, Salisbury, Andover and Basingstoke became memories, places where horses had been changed, surly or bowing and scraping innkeepers served or refused meals, where a horse went lame or an axle ran hot. Then the place names became more associated with London than the West Country - she particularly remembered a good dinner at Bagshot, where they also changed horses, with a good road on to Sunningdale. Then Staines and another change of horses, and on to Heston and another change at Brentford. By then, as they approached Westminster, she knew everything that had happened on board the Jason and she had made a dangerous decision: she had told Midshipman Blaxton the reason why she was hurrying to London, and he had immediately volunteered his father's help. His father, it seemed, also knew Addington well and had a London house. She had left Blaxton at his home in Berkeley Square, with him promising to bring his father to Palace Street as soon as possible.
'I had to risk upsetting your father,' she told Ramage, 'but I needed somewhere as a headquarters. I could have used our own house, but that seemed to be wasting time: I needed to talk with your father and at the same time have somewhere to meet young Blaxton's father. And of course, Palace Street is so close to the Admiralty and Parliament.'
She gave a nervous laugh. 'To be honest, by now I was frightened to death at what I'd done. I wasn't at all worried until we reached Hyde Park Corner, but when Edward left the coach in Berkeley Square, I suddenly felt very lonely, and I knew that if I opened up our own house I'd just sit in my bedroom and weep. So although I didn't know your parents, I decided that if I was going to weep I'd sooner do it in their company.'
'Were they very frightening?' Ramage was curious about the impression they made on a stranger.
'Frightening? My goodness, if I'd been their daughter they couldn't have made me more welcome, even though I must have looked like a street woman who hadn't changed her clothes for days. I hadn't since leaving Plymouth, of course, and I was probably wild-eyed. I was certainly incoherent when your butler - a delightful old man whose spectacles kept sliding down his nose - opened the door. I could only ask for 'the Admiral', but your mother heard me, and all I could say to her was 'Nicholas', but that was enough.'
Alexis described how the Earl had taken her into his study and she had poured out an almost incoherent description of Rear-Admiral Goddard's behaviour at the trial. At this point the Earl had become angry, she said, because he had just received a letter from Nicholas telling him to refrain from interfering. 'That letter hurt him: I think you must have written tactlessly.'
She then told Ramage's parents how she had decided to come to London to get help. The Earl had asked very bluntly, she said, whether or not Nicholas thought he had a chance of being acquitted, and she told him that it was Nicholas's acceptance of defeat which had started her off on the road to London.
''Defeat' is pitching it a bit strong,' Sidney protested but Ramage shook his head.
'I don't know about you,' he admitted, 'but I was feeling defeated. I couldn't - still can't, for that matter - see a way of getting round Goddard, and only two or three of the captains seemed prepared to argue over all that deleted evidence. Three votes out of twelve means an almost unanimous verdict of guilty, particularly since the junior captains vote first.'
'The junior vote first?' Alexis was puzzled.
'When all the evidence has been heard and the prosecution and defence have stated their cases,' Ramage explained, 'the president of the court (after it has been cleared of everyone except the members) asks each member whether or not he considers the accused is guilty or not. He asks the most junior captain first, and then the next most junior, and so on. The theory is that the juniors give their opinions without being influenced by the seniors, but he'd be a mutton-headed officer who reached the end of a trial without seeing or guessing his seniors' views.'
'Well,' Alexis continued, 'your father thought you seemed to feel defeated, and so did I and,' she added with a grim laugh, 'the opinions of the two of us carried a lot of weight in Palace Street.
'Then the fireworks started. Your father had been fairly calm until then: your mother could control him, in other words. But when I told him young Blaxton's story he swore and swore. I must say that as soon as your mother reproved him - she was concerned for my young ears - he changed to Italian, which I don't speak, but even then his meanings were quite clear since I read Latin.'
She described how by then the room was beginning to spin because she was so tired, and the Countess had insisted that she had some sleep. In fact she slept for nine hours and when she woke and washed she rushed downstairs in a panic - to find that the Earl, Sarah's father the Marquis of Rockley, and Sir James Blaxton, with the young midshipman, had already been along to the Admiralty and waited on Earl St Vincent.
'Your father says the First Lord is dour, the sort of man who is miserly with words. Lord St Vincent made it quite clear he could not interfere with the court- martial, apart from delaying it for a week, to give us time to discuss it, but what he could do was make sure that all the legitimate evidence - your father says he laid great stress on that phrase 'legitimate evidence' - should be heard and recorded in the minutes.'
Yorke said bitterly: 'How can that be done with Goddard sitting there?'
'Wait a moment, Sidney,' she said. 'It seems that the First Lord is a worldly man and he acted as though there was no point in sending orders to the port admiral here in Plymouth. The inference was (although Lord St Vincent did not put it into words, of course) that Goddard probably influenced him. All that was needed, the First Lord said, was someone in authority making sure that the trial was conducted properly, and that is why he delayed it a week.'
Yorke groaned. 'You don't mean to say that after all your efforts, you left it like that and came back here?'
She nodded and Ramage guessed that Sidney Yorke had underestimated his sister. Perhaps brothers always did because the important impressions were made during childhood. But Sidney was not only underestimating his sister, he was underestimating the Earl of Blazey, the Marquis and Sir James Blaxton. And come to that, the Countess of Blazey as well.
'Sidney, there are times when I could shake you.' The exasperation showed in Alexis's voice. 'It seems to me that this man Goddard has bewitched you. Well, he hasn't bewitched me; he's just made me very angry. And he's had the same effect on Nicholas's parents, the Marquis and Sir James Blaxton - and perhaps Earl St Vincent, but I wasn't present.'
She rearranged her hair, a womanly gesture that Ramage found quite beguiling.
'So this is what has been arranged. By chance one of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty (Nicholas's father says he's one of the officers most highly regarded by Earl St Vincent) was at Portsmouth. He is Captain John Markham, son of the Archbishop of York. Do you know him, Nicholas?'
Ramage shook his head. 'Only by sight and reputation: he's a well respected officer. It's not often captains are made sea lords, and Earl St Vincent neither suffers fools gladly nor plays favourites. He must have advanced Markham because he is competent.'
'Good. Well, Captain Markham was in Portsmouth on some Admiralty business, and the First Lord immediately wrote to him and sent the letter to Portsmouth in the night bag - apparently the messenger leaves in the evening and gets to Portsmouth early next day. Captain Markham was told to get to Plymouth by any means he chose, but he had to be on board the Salvador del Mundo by half past eight next Monday - that's tomorrow morning - and sit as the First Lord's observer at your trial.'
