CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Convent was a five-minute walk from the Commissioner's office. Ramage raised a hand to hail a passing carriage, realized he had no money and began striding up the steep cobbled slope of Convent Lane. With an irritation verging on petulance he reviewed his meeting with the Commissioner. It had begun with almost effusive congratulations, but the old fool ended up being damned stuffy. After implying that delaying sailing for even half an hour to visit The Convent would certainly let Cordoba's Fleet escape through the Strait, and probably allow Napoleon to cross the Channel as well, he'd even hinted that young officers only visited Gibraltar's Convent, to keep up with the right people'.

A mixture of excitement and nervousness made Ramage begin a laugh which he only managed to choke when he saw the frightened look on the hideously wrinkled face of an old woman in a doorway. She was offering him a penn'orth of sticky dates from a greasy wicker basket that looked like an asylum for every fly on the Barbary Coast, but snatched it away when she looked into his eyes and hurriedly crossed herself with her free hand.

At the top of the lane Ramage turned left into Main Street and was promptly surrounded by a crowd of ragged higglers who with strident Spanish voices and clutching hands were peddling everything from corn cures and Crucifixes to demijohns of arracks, their fervour and glittering eyes reminding Ramage of what it must have been like to face the Inquisition.

As he walked through the Convent's big double doors the two sentries rattled their muskets in faultless salutes which nevertheless subtly conveyed that soldiers cared little for naval officers and hardly at all for young lieutenants.

Inside the hall a wizened little man whose ancient wig had for years been a martyr to incipient moulting stood up and cautiously inquired the purpose of the young lieutenant's visit. A lifetime at the job had obviously taught him to take nothing for granted: one elegantly dressed gentleman with languid voice and gold-topped cane might demand an audience with the Governor only to pass a forged letter of credit, while the next could be the Governor's long-awaited cousin. The poor fellow had his carefully enunciated motto written all over him: You Cannot Be Too Careful.

Reluctantly Ramage had to give his name while explaining his business but emphasized it did not matter since he was only a messenger. The old man kept nodding like a pigeon gleaning a newly cut cornfield then, after motioning Ramage to a chair, hurried off down an apparently endless corridor. Ramage deliberately made his thoughts wander to ease the tension. Why was the Governor's residence called The Convent? He'd always intended to ask someone. The chapel next door was originally a Franciscan friary ... In Spanish a monastery usually meant the home of a religious order whose members never went outside, while those free to travel - like the Francisans - lived in a convent. How many governors had bored their guests at dinner with weary jokes about nuns and—

The little man was beckoning him from the far end of the corridor with the nearest he dare get to a show of impatience and Ramage managed to stop himself leaping up like an eager schoolboy. Instead he rose with carefully controlled movements, composed his face in a frown he knew would make his cheek muscles ache within a couple of minutes and walked along the corridor, hat tucked under the left arm, his hand holding the scabbard of his sword. Plonk, plonk, plonk: he walked heavily, hoping the jarring of his heels on the mosaic floor would stifle the inane giggle lurking just under his Adam's Apple.

From the moment the Commissioner had told him, Ramage had deliberately shut the picture from his mind; all the way up Convent Lane he'd forced himself to think of something else. Even waiting there in the chair he'd conjectured about The Convent. And now ... The little man scurrying along ahead stopped every few paces and peered back to make sure he was following, as though scared he'd bolt through a door. Ramage wanted to give him a hearty pat on the back but instead mustered an even fiercer frown and snarled: 'Don't walk so damned fast, I've only got two legs.'

'Oh, quite, quite sir, I'm very sorry,' the little man said sympathetically as if it was the result of battle wounds.

Up a pair of stairs and the corridor was narrower, the closely spaced doors indicating the rooms were smaller, and he guessed they were now in the private part of the residence. The little man paused at a door, knocked and before Ramage could stop him walked into the room and announced in a neutral voice that showed he had not bothered to mention the name earlier:

'Lieutenant Ramage.'

After the gloomy corridors the room was almost dazzlingly bright and for a moment Ramage stood blinking as the door closed softly behind him.

'You look like an owl who's just woken up,' she said and ran over to fling herself into his arms. His hat went flying, the scabbard dropped with a clang, and they clung to each other with that desperate urgency reserved for lovers and those who are drowning.

It seemed hours later - hours during which he wanted to tear off the clothes separating their bodies, hours after scores of kisses on her eyes, mouth and brow, hours after he'd wiped tears surreptitiously from his eyes and openly from hers, hours after the waves of exhilarating dizziness had gone, that she looked up at him and whispered.

'My dearest, I thought you were dead - and then that silly man ...' she sobbed but there were no tears or sadness now, only wonder, almost unbelief, '... that silly man tells me there's a naval officer to see me and I...'

'You what?'

‘I had a terrible premonition he was going to tell me they'd heard you were dead.'

'And when you saw it was me, all you could say was I looked like an owl!'

'An owl?'

He pushed her away and held her at arm's length. There was no mistaking the puzzled expression. Could it...?

'What did you say when I came in?' he asked gently.

'I said nothing. I was so shocked, so - well, I couldn't believe—'

'You don't remember saying, "You look like an owl who's just woken up"?'

'Of course I didn't say that!'

Again the picture came back to him: a picture of battle when a Marine was spun round by a shot which slashed off his hand at the wrist, and as he staggered across the deck holding the stump from which the blood spurted he said to Ramage in a conversational tone, 'I was born out of wedlock, you see, sir; they never knew for certain who me father was ...'

The irrelevant remarks of someone experiencing a severe shock. At this revelation of the intensity of her love for him he suddenly felt frightened and inadequate and unworthy, forgetting it equalled his own for her.

'But you look like an owl now!'

He looked down at her smile which was also an impudent grin: happiness sparkled in the large brown eyes and showed in the delicate flush over the high cheekbones. The impudence was in the arch of the eyebrows and the curve of her lips. He held her tightly and at that instant there was a harsh metallic boom above and a ripping noise at his back. Giving her a violent push out of danger's way he spun round, his hand going instinctively to the hilt of his sword. But even before he could draw it she was standing four paces away clapping her hands and laughing until tears ran down her cheeks. 'It's one o'clock, my love!' she gasped. 'The chapel bell!'

'And I think I've split my new coat,' he said ruefully.

She danced round behind him, 'And you have! The stitching of the seam!'

Even as he joined in her laughter he realized within an hour he must sail. Within ten minutes he must say good-bye.

'My lovely little Tuscan czarina, when you've stopped examining the proof of my passion, can you get someone to mend it?'