I say, toy soldiers! What fun! What’s this fellow’s name?

Colonel Robert Kekewich? Who’s this chap? General Jan Kemp?. He seems to have a lot more horses, that doesn’t seem fair.

Oh I see, silly me, you are discussing the situation in Southern Africa and that snuff tin is the British Camp.

Mmm, yes I see, yes… Yes it is, somewhat. You know, it reminds me of a decision I had to make once. Did I ever tell you the time I was faced with the Complexing Conundrum?

Well, if we are going to talk tactics, then we need officers’ drinks. You, young sir at the bar, fetch us some gin and tonics, will you?

As you are well aware, I promised my mammy I would never fight for the English, but father insisted (with the exception of Caligula) that all us O’Donnells would do service. I did a year as a mercenary within the Royal Austrian Hungary Imperial Calvary. However, my tale does not stem from here, but a few years later, when I went to visit an old cavalry chum in his hometown of Montespertoli, Italy.

Our regiment had been a right mixed bag of potatoes, mainly made up of Saxons and Hungarians and a group of Italians, including my chum, Marco. He had joined the mercenary core to raise money to start his own vineyard. We kept in touch, and I promised one day I would come out and visit him. Roll on five years, and I happened to find myself in Florence – a day’s ride away – and I decided to pop in.

When I arrived, I was most shocked. Expecting to find a merry hamlet in the glorious Tuscany countryside and wine flowing freely, I instead found a dusty, soulless shell, and not a wine barrel in sight.

I seemed to attract hidden stares from behind closed blinds, which made one feel most awkward – like when you accidentally step in a puddle and have to put up with a wet shoe. I was nearly about to leave, when who should appear… not my friend Marco, but another from my regiment, a Bavarian fellow called Hermann.

After we exchanged hails and hellos, I enquired what he was doing here and why the place was so glum. He said two words which changed the taste in my mouth.

“Capitano Vittore.”

I had the displeasure of serving under him and he was a vile man. The kind who moments before parade, picks up a large handful of mud and wipes it all over your Shabraque.

Turns out he was now the Mayor – Vae Victis! No one was allowed to make any wine in the village except for him, and having tasting a bottle of the stuff, it was as foul as his nature. Next, he had taken everyone’s horses in the village and kept them locked up in a huge barn on his estate. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

He had resurrected Jus primae noctis, the right to take the virginity of the maidens of the estate. It was then Hermann revealed why he was here. Turns out the old Hun had fallen hopelessly in love with Marco’s daughter, Letizia. The Capitano had taken her to his villa and was keeping her locked up. It had nearly ruined Marco, and Hermann was on the point of breaking himself.

If there is one thing I cannot stand, it is a bully, and with all bullies, one must confront them straight on.

I went straight up to his villa, jumped over the wall and barged my way in. I found the Capitano, lying down eating grapes.

“I will not call you ‘sir’, for you do not deserve such a title. You have made my chums Marco and Hermann quite sad. I will not leave here until you learn your lesson and release Letizia into my custody.”

Do you know what he did then? He had the nerve to pass wind, and defiantly at that. Well, I made to walk straight past him so I could find Letizia, but before I got halfway across the room I was stopped by a sabre that flew past and embedded itself in the wall. I turned to see the Captain, now standing. He belched, then called, “En guard!”

For a whole hour it was clash, clash, clash, and our fight took us out onto the balcony. He had grabbed Letizia and was holding his sabre to her throat when he said:

“You have proved to me that you are my equal when it comes to the sabre, but are you my equal when it comes to the mind? You can continue to fight me for the girl, or you can rescue the villagers’ horses.”

There was a small fire pit on the balcony, and he kicked the lit contents over the edge, onto the roof of the barn. It caught instantly.

As you can see, it was quite a complexing conundrum. Would I put the happiness of my chums before an entire village?

Never let your heart rule your head, gentlemen. I rationalised that like most bullies he was full of codswallop, and would not harm the girl. He would, however, allow a stable of other people’s horses to burn, so I jumped down from the balcony and let the horses out.

It was quite a sight – the flames leaping high in the air and all the horses running down to the village. So much so, that this sign of freedom was enough to rally the entire village! Soon there was a mob at the gates and the Capitano Villa was being torn down brick by brick. Letizia, Hermann and Marco were all reunited and I stayed on for the wedding, which was a right hoot!

As for the Capitano? He was locked up in his cellars, and was not let out until he had drunk all of his foul wine. The last I heard of him, he had re-enlisted in the French Foreign Legion and was last seen on a slow boat to Indochina.

Now, let’s say we stop talking about the Boer crisis and have a proper game of toy soldiers.

“Certo. Inglese?”

“Si.”

Adam Fletcher pulled out a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat from his brow as the young lady behind the counter at the Poste e Telegrafi stepped off her small stool to reach one of the blank telegram forms behind her. She picked up one of the green slips, laid it out neatly in front of her and poised her pen ready to start.

“Questo i testo di telegramma?” she paused “What text of telegram? ”

Adam felt as if the air was being ripped from his lungs as she looked up at him and smiled. What would he say? He had it all worked out in his head before entering through the door, but like the air from his lungs, words were now rushing out of his head. He excused himself from the counter and sat on the tiny bench in the room, the heat overwhelming him. While his peers would be counting down their final days before retirement in the luxury of an oak carved office in London, Adam had spent the last three weeks on a hunt that had started on the coasts of Cornwall and had become a race against a decrepit sea-going boat and the European rail system.

He had only been two days behind the boat when he had arrived at the port of Lisbon in a post-revolutionary Portugal. Some expensive information bought here, had informed him that the boat Ta Metut would head first to Morroco to resupply and then would be proceeding to Gibraltar – which Adam had hoped would be where he would make his intercept. Seven days he had waited and the ship had indeed come into the port, but had not docked, the Captain having chosen instead to anchor in deep water and send a small lighter ashore for whatever business it had.

Information had been harder to come by on the ship’s next move. A Corsican Merchant Captain had told him that these Berber pirate ships normally kept away from the French Algerian coast and the most likely next stopping ports would either be Civitavecchia or Napoli in Italy. After that the boat would only land at obscure ports in Asia Minor where westerners were not welcomed. It would end its journey in Syria and from there its cargo would be taken deep into Arabia. This was something Adam could not allow to happen – Isabella, the daughter of his best friend of thirty years, was a part of that cargo.

Having arrived in Civitavecchia two days previously, he had instructed his business partner to wire him more funds; he had known he would have to have help if he was to have any chance of rescuing her. He had spent the first night scouting the most run-down looking bars and brothels around the dock, but to no avail. He had in his mind a romantic notion of finding a British crew he would be able to rally to his cause in the name of righteousness; reality would be much different.

Along the main dock front had been a brothel with a bar that stretched out along the quay. He had been drinking there, watching the clientele in the hope of finding that crew when he had felt a blunt object being pressed into his lower back. A voice had whispered “Lira, Lira”. Adam had slowly gone to reach for his money, but as he did the look of his friend the morning after Isabella was kidnapped appeared his mind. It was the look of a man who had lost everything and it filled him with rage.

He had then clenched his fist and unleashed a punch that belonged to man half his age and twice his size, sending the vagrant flying backwards. In an area in which fights were an hourly occurrence, he had been surprised to find himself surrounded in response by several of the other bar patrons who branded knives.

Adam had got into a boxing stance – if he was to have gone down it wouldn’t of been without a fight. The stand-off had been broken just as quickly as it had started when the brothel’s Madam had pushed her way through to the vagrant and started screaming at him Italian. She had then made Adam sit down and started to scream at him.

An ex-navy Dutch fisherman Pauel had helped translate. The youth who had tried to attack Adam had been her son, and she had berated the boy, not for robbing her clients, but for having had the daylights knocked out of him by a man who was old enough to be his grandfather. She had then demanded to know Adam’s story and so he then told it, not just to her but to the entire bar.

He had spoken of his friend having found love later in life, and had described how the man had lost his wife in childbirth; how he had brought up a beautiful daughter he doted; how the child had taught him to love the world again. He had told of their holiday in Cornwall when the Berber pirates had come in the middle of the night and kidnapped the fourteen-year-old girl. Adam had spoken of how he could not bear to look at his friend the next morning, then how he had for the last three weeks been trying to get to the boat.

By the time dawn had come, Adam had had all the assistance in place that he would need to take on the pirates, including the Madam’s son. Pauel had warned him that half of those who had taken his money in the promise of help would not turn up, but Adam had been sure that even half would be twice as much as he’d need. Pauel had also offered his boat and crew (for a price, of course) in case the chase needed to go further.

This had been four hours ago; Adam got to his feet and walked back over to the counter. The Ta Metut was due to arrive this evening.

“Signoria, erm, testo…” he watched as the young lady picked up the pen, he cleared his throat and continued ” H…O…P…E…”