RAMAGE STOOD on the slimy steps at the quay and turned round to help Gianna out of the boat. She paused because the shoulder wound prevented her using her right hand and she needed the left to lift her skirt slightly.

 'Wait a moment,' he said and, bracing himself, picked her up by the waist and swung her out of the boat and on to the step. She was so light that he wanted to carry her up the steps in his arms, but the Lively's boat was waiting. He said to the midshipman in the sternsheets, 'Thank you: return to the ship.'

 At the top of the steps she said: 'It's a long walk to the Viceroy's house.'

'Are you sure you are feeling strong enough?’

 'Yes, of course,' she said quickly, and he realized - or was it that he hoped? - she wanted to be alone with him.

 As they walked along the Quai de la Santẻ Ramage glanced across the narrow harbour at the great Citadel, its sharply angled walls merging into sheer rock, and noted that like most harbour defences it was useless: completely vulnerable to attack from the landward side.

The hills and houses shielded the quays from the Libeccio and the heat rose up from the stone blocks, solid and invisible. Fishermen wearing leather aprons and canvas smocks were pulling nets and lines up on to the quay from their gaudily painted boats. Here and there, sitting on the cobbles, backs against the wall, were their wives, nets across their legs, and each with a bare foot protruding from her skirts, using a big toe to hold the mesh taut as her hands looped and dived with the flat wooden needle, repairing holes. The women had fixed  expressions on their faces which, despite the cowl-like hoods over their heads, were tanned deep brown by the sun and heavily wrinkled. None looked up; for each one there was no horizon, no existence beyond the torn nets.

 Ramage and Gianna reached the end of the quay and turned right into the narrow street leading to the Viceroy's residence. The houses on each side were so high that it was like entering a chasm and the street was packed with groups of people gathered, gossiping vociferously: no one listened - each waited impatiently for the other to pause in order to take over the conversation.

 Most of the men here were obviously shepherds: they wore thick woollen stocking caps or broad-brimmed, round-topped hats that shaded their faces. Some argued, bartered or quarrelled while still astride their tiny donkeys, feet almost touch­ing the ground on each side, and sitting on angular wooden saddles shaped like the sawing horse used in England for cut­ting up firewood, and which chafed bare patches on the animals' backs. Ramage noticed that every man - fisherman, shepherd or idler - had a musket and cartouche box slung over his shoulder, and a pistol or knife in his belt.

 There were several old women in the groups, some sitting side-saddle on donkeys, their long hair black from the smoke of fires in their huts and covered with a black scarf. Black, black, black - everyone seemed to be in perpetual mourning. Black hair, black hats and headscarves, black breeches on the men, black skirts and blouses on the women....

 Everywhere there was an all-pervading stench: a nauseating blend of brocciu, the harsh goat's milk cheese hanging in every house, of stagnant sewage, excrement and urine, garlic-laden breath, the sweat of people unused to washing, and rotting vegetables. Ramage, thinking of the island's beauty from seaward, and then looking up the street, recalled a remark of Lady Elliot's - 'All that Nature has done for the island is lovely, and all that man has added filthy.'

 Unlike the fishermen's wives on the quay, who were completely engrossed in their work, the women and men stared at the two of them as they walked up the street, stepping round  large piles of refuse, across small ones. They stared as they approached and Ramage could feel their stares even after they had passed. As always in a Latin country it was impossible to guess whether the glittering eyes showed curiosity or hatred.

 Occasionally they passed a few British soldiers, smart but perspiring in red coats and pipeclayed cross-belts, gravely saluting Ramage while careful not to step into one of the heaps of rotting rubbish.

Once clear of the houses the street became wider and treelined.

'How did you know about the trial?' he asked suddenly.

 'Boh!' she said with a grimace: the Italian way of saying 'Who knows?'

'But someone must have told you?'

'Of course they did!'

'But who? Who have you been speaking to?'

'Speaking to no one!'

'Then someone wrote to you.'

'Yes, but I promised never to say who it was.'

 'You don't have to,' he said, suddenly remembering Lord Probus's remark the previous evening, 'I've another letter to write.'

'But this person,' he continued, 'told you your cousin would be giving evidence at the trial?'

'Yes.'

And, he thought to himself, better leave it at that: she was content, almost matter-of-fact, about what she had done. God knows, even for an impulsive girl of her age it was a brave thing to do; on the other hand, few girls were the head of such a powerful family. Yet there was something else he had to know.

'Gianna—'

'Nee-cho-lass,' she mimicked.

She was smiling, but it was not a smiling question.

 '—Did you do this - I mean, why did ...' Cursing himself, he tried to phrase the question carefully. She gave him no help: they just walked on, side by side, towards the Residency, neither looking at the other.

'You know what I am trying to ask?'

'Yes, but why ask it?'

'Because I want to know, of course!'

 'Nicholas, it is strange how you know so much - and yet so little: so much about ships and guns and battles and how to lead people ...' She seemed to be thinking aloud rather than talking to him.'... And yet so little about the people you lead.'

He was so taken aback that he said nothing.

 Ramage recalled with a shock that barely three hours earlier Gianna had burst into the court on board the Trumpeter. Now he was a guest in a magnificent palace, sitting in a comfortable cane chair on this terrace, overlooking a garden flanked by myrtle hedges and ablaze with the last of the season's ole­ander and roses, with small, pointed cypresses scattered about like sentries among the orange trees and arbutus.

 From the terrace, looking across the blue Tyrrhenian Sea towards the distant mainland of Italy, he found it hard to believe there could be war in any part of the world, least of all just over the horizon: the line-of-battle ships, frigates and smaller craft at anchor in the Roads at the bottom of the garden were, in this sharp clear light, and against this background and atmosphere, things of grace and beauty, not speci­fically designed to kill, sink, burn and destroy.

 The far horizon to the eastward was beginning to turn a faint mauve in the late afternoon while behind him the sun would soon dip behind Mount Pigno and draw a shadow over the town and port of Bastia. To his left the outline of the island of Capraia, dissolving in the haze, would soon be invis­ible like Elba directly in front of him and tiny Pianosa on the right. Out of sight over the horizon, British frigates were block­ading Leghorn to prevent twenty or so privateers in the port from getting out. But to little purpose.

 While Lady Elliot and Gianna sat close by him in the shade of parasols clipped to their chairs, Ramage was still trying to absorb the extraordinary news Sir Gilbert had given him ten minutes earlier: during the night the French had landed several hundred troops at the north end of Corsica, and they were marching southwards on Bastia. How they evaded patrolling frigates was a mystery; but they had at most nineteen miles -but more likely only fifteen - of extremely mountainous countryside to cover before they reached the town.