"Very well, sir," said Kenton. "But -"

"But they're not the sort of orders you like getting," Ramage said sympathetically. "Well, young man, they're not the orders I like giving, because if you have to carry them out it probably means I've gone over the standing part of the foresheet, and taken all my party - and probably the hostages - with me. But that's what promotion and responsibility entail."

"We'll see you on the fourth night, sir," Southwick said, "and, if you've room in your knapsack, a bottle of that Orvieto wouldn't come amiss."

Ramage chuckled. "Marching thirty miles carrying a bottle of Chianti just to satisfy a whim of a mutinous master . . ."

"I wouldn't mutiny if you brought the wine," Southwick said. The two men shook hands and, after he had shaken hands with Kenton and was walking down the quarterdeck ladder to join the men waiting in the waist, Ramage could not remember ever having shaken hands with Southwick before starting off on an expedition. He shrugged: Southwick heartily distrusted anything "foreign", and this expedition involved more things "foreign" than Southwick had ever dreamed. The master was still puzzled by Ramage's wish to spend his honeymoon in France and, Ramage was quite sure, still reckoned that dabbling with foreigners was the reason why Lady Sarah might well be dead . . .

He reached the maindeck and paused for a moment. Just over there, on the mainland, more than twenty centuries of recorded history had unfolded. Invasions by men speaking many languages, from the Phoenicians and Carthaginians to the Romans, from the Goths to the Vandals - and, the latest, the French. Battles, political plots, religious quarrels - and all had ended up with men (and women, for that matter) being buried in the rich Tuscan soil. Devil take it, he told himself sharply, you cannot lead men with that attitude. Yet he was neither scared nor sad. One never set foot on Italian soil - or, indeed, arrived in Italian waters - without thinking of the past centuries. The galleys of Santo Stefano sent to help fight the Saracens in the Battle of Lepanto (nearly five centuries ago) must have been rowed out of this bay, turning southward to round the foot of Italy to join the Spanish and Austrian fleets whose admirals' orders were simple: to prevent the Saracens from conquering Europe - which would be easy enough if they defeated the combined fleets of Spain, Italy and Austria.

You think of great fleets of galleys when you are giving orders to your men on board the cutter, gig and jolly-boat. . .

Ramage followed the last man down the ladder and found himself in the gig with Jackson at the tiller and Orsini and Rossi crouched in the sternsheets, ready to help him on board.

He gave the order to cast off and then looked round. From down here the Calypso seemed enormous, but curiously enough the dark shapes of Argentario, the mountains behind Talamone and the Torre Saline seemed to have shrunk. Ramage pointed to the tower. "Very well, Jackson, we lead the way and that's where the mouth of the river lies ..." Oars slid into the water; Jackson's commands came crisp, pitched so that the men in the other boats could hear.

Even in the darkness Ramage could see that both Orsini and Rossi looked impressive in their new uniforms, sewn up earlier that day. So that was how an officer in the Grand Duke of Tuscany's army looked!

"I trust you'll lose that Genovese accent," Ramage told Rossi. "The accent of Siena - that's what we need for a good Tuscan."

"Si, siamo paesani, signore," Rossi said and the accent in which he had said "Yes, we are countrymen" was almost perfect.

"Careful, you'll find yourself giving big tips," Orsini said, teasing Rossi over the Genoese reputation for meanness.

"Tuscany has no great reputation for generosity, signore," Rossi said respectfully. "In fact under the Grand Duke ..."

"Don't confuse politics with people," Ramage said firmly. "And don't spoil legends. Legend has it that the Scots and the Genovesi are mean, and nothing you can do will change it. The Cockneys are like the Neapolitans."

"What are the other comparisons, sir?" Orsini asked.

"Blessed if I know," Ramage confessed. "Veneto - that'd be Norfolk, Suffolk and Lincolnshire, I suppose. Flat land and wary people. Mestre, Padua and Ravenna . . . well, that land round the Po Valley always puts me in mind of Romney Marsh, though the Italians aren't so secretive as the Marsh folk. Not so much smuggling! Rome - well, Romans compare directly with Londoners. Welsh? They vary so much it's hard to say ... I'm certain of one thing, though: there's no such thing as a typical Englishman, and since Italy is such a collection of different states there isn't a typical Italian.

"I'm talking of the nature of the people, of course. Most certainly there's a recognizable English type of man and woman. But Italian men - you could confuse them with Spaniards, maybe Frenchmen. The women, too. Not now, of course, after the Revolution. The Spanish women would be heavily chaperoned, while the Frenchwomen would be dressed more freely. The Italian women -"

"Would be chattering away to their cicisbei," Paolo said. "I can't see cicisbei prospering under the present regime," Ramage commented.

"Sir," Jackson said. From the warning tone of his voice Ramage turned just enough to be able to see him holding the iron tiller under one arm.

And Ramage could smell it. Such a mixture of smells, in fact, that even if you were blindfolded and carried halfway round the world, you would still know you were in Italy, or approaching very closely. The faint scorching wood from the carbonaio's turf oven; the sharper yet sweet scent of pine trees, and was that rosemary or thyme? And the all too familiar odour of seaweed washed up on the water's edge and drying in the sun and at night, when the temperature dropped, absorbing the night damp. And the whine of insects and the distant hoot of a nightjar. It was like coming home, only this time he was unlocking the door knowing there might be a burglar in the house.

"Seems a long time ago - and yet yesterday," Ramage murmured.

"Leaves me flummoxed, sir," Jackson said. "To me it seems only last week we were landing at the Torre di Buranaccio to find the Marchesa. Yet another part of me hasn't been to Italy for years."

Ramage turned to Orsini. This was Paolo's homeland: this would be the nearest he would get to Volterra until the war ended. "How about you?" Ramage asked quietly.

"The pines. Not because we have so many in Volterra but when I escaped I worked my way down the coast through the pine forests. To me now they mean safety. But Volterra - the smells of a town. Donkey droppings, spilled wine and casks being cleaned, boiling pasta, sweaty woollen clothes . . ."

"Yes, the woollens. No Italian peasant on the hottest day will go without his woollen shirt. . ."

"That's because Italian peasants know the danger of catching a chill by losing the perspiration and letting in the poisonous night vapours."

"They may be right, sir," Jackson said to Orsini. "I don't see any Italians overheating themselves rowing round here at night!"

"We Italians are cleverer than we look," Rossi said unexpectedly.

"Certainly you're not rowing," Ramage said dryly.

He looked round and saw the other two boats following closely astern, and in the distance he could just make out the dark bulk of the Calypso. Good - the men rowing the three boats back here to meet them after the Pitigliano expedition would have no difficulty in finding their way.

As he surveyed the plan up to date, he was sure that the safest place for the Calypso to wait was out there in the middle of the bay, right in front of and between Talamone on the mainland and the Fortezza di Filippo Secundo at Santo Stefano, easily seen by every general, admiral, sailor, soldier, tinker, avvocato or pimp taking the Via Aurelia to or from Rome. Who would think that an English frigate would be anchored there! Accidente, the commandante would have to be a buffone!