Free Ramage At Trafalgar by Dudley Pope Page B

and began folding back a napkin. The basket was full of food and the bishop began tearing the meat from a chicken leg. The chomping of his teeth kept time with the horses’ hooves until he stopped to wrench the cork from a bottle of wine.
    New Cross…they would change horses at Blackheath. How long would that basket of food keep the worthy bishop quiet? The ’chaise was soon passing the Isle of Dogs, over to the left, on the far side of the Thames as it snaked its way through London. In half an hour – less, perhaps – they would reach Shooter’s Hill, passing the quiet beauty of Greenwich Palace on the left. Down there, within a few hundred yards of the Thames, Henry VIII and his two daughters, the great Elizabeth and the less favoured Mary, had all been born. Both the father Henry and the daughter Elizabeth had (almost alone among the monarchs!) understood the importance of a strong Navy due, perhaps, to childhood days spent watching the ships passing? Today the great palace was the Seamen’s Hospital: men crippled in the King’s service at sea now stumped about with crutches and wooden legs where once (three centuries earlier) a boyish Henry VIII had played.
    The bishop chomped on, delving among the napkins to see what else he had to eat. Enough at the present rate to last him until the ’chaise got through Welling and stopped at the Golden Lion at Bexley Heath… Golf. The thought suddenly struck Ramage. Wasn’t it somewhere round here – the common at Blackheath? – that James I first introduced the curious game to England? Ramage shrugged: he did not play himself, and the bishop looked as though he was already taking the only physical exercise he favoured.
    Finally, the carriage swung into the courtyard of the Golden Lion and the two postboys leapt to the ground to drop the steps with the usual crash. The bishop groaned, though Ramage was not sure if it was the noise or the need to leave his food.
    Ramage jumped down to be met by the innkeeper, anxious to serve sherry, cocoa, coffee, ale or whatever the gentleman fancied. The gentleman, stiff and bored, his thoughts suspended somewhere between Palace Street and the number three dock at Chatham, wanted to be left alone. The bishop called for “A cool mug of ale, my good man,” and the ostlers led up the fresh horses.
    Soon after the carriage had started again, the bishop belched contentedly as he dozed, and then wakened to assault the basket once more and continued eating until they had gone through Crayford and were pulling in at The Bull at Dartford to change the horses. Ramage walked round the carriage a few times and soon after they began moving again the bishop was snoring stertorously, lulled by more beer rather than the rough road.
    Horns Cross (curious, he remembered a village of the same name in Devon), then Northfleet and Gravesend, the brown muddy Thames running alongside. The driver had barely started the horses pulling out of Gravesend when he had to stop at the first of the turnpikes, at Chalk Street. Like a thousand coachmen before him, he swore as he fished in his pocket for the coins to pay the toll-keeper.
    Not far, not far, Ramage thought thankfully; the next village of any note is called Halfway House, though Ramage was puzzled by the name. It was certainly not half-way between London and Rochester. Perhaps between Gravesend and the Medway at Rochester?
    The bishop woke up, grunted and made another foray into his basket, cursing a fly which was anxious to spend a few minutes on a crumb clinging to the bishop’s chin. “Ha, soon be at Gad’s Hill,” he said, raising his head momentarily from the basket. “Damnably uncomfortable, these machines. I wonder they dare charge tenpence a mile. Ought to pay the travellers tenpence a mile to travel in ’em.”
    Ramage smiled politely at the only worthwhile comment the bishop had made so far. However, one does not have to attend his cathedral: imagine that voice droning on, warning the