Rapscallion

Lasseur, too, had done his share of manual graft, working alongside Hawkwood at the hoist and in the ship’s hold. The temperature within the ship was such that jackets and shirts were soon discarded. The prisoners’ backs ran wet with sweat and it was easy to tell whether an inmate was new on board or a regular member of a work party: the irregulars were the ones whose flesh was as pale as paper.

Lasseur’s hide carried the healthy sheen of a seaman whose voyages had taken him to warmer, far-flung climes. His torso was well formed without being muscular, and evenly tanned – in contrast to some of the men, whose forearms and faces were the only areas of their bodies that showed the effects of exposure to the sun. The rest of their skin, normally covered by a shirt, looked bleached white in comparison.

What also set Lasseur apart were the marks of the lash across his spine. Hawkwood had passed no comment on the scars. He’d enough of his own, including the ring of bruising around his throat, which had drawn a few curious looks both when he’d taken the bath prior to his registration and when he removed his shirt during the work details.

Lasseur had noticed Hawkwood’s passing glance at his back and had made only one comment: “I wasn’t always a captain.”

“Me neither,” Hawkwood had told him, and that had been enough. The rest of the men, whose quizzical looks might have indicated a desire for explanation, they ignored.

When he wasn’t labouring in a work party or talking with Hawkwood or Fouchet, or sometimes with the boy, Lasseur spent most of his time pacing the deck and gazing restlessly across the estuary, locked within his own thoughts. With so many bodies crammed in one place, physical solitude was but a dream. Hawkwood knew there wasn’t a man on board who wouldn’t try and seek solace in the privacy of his own mind. He sought it himself when he could, and took advantage of the opportunities it offered to observe shipboard routine at close quarters. And in the course of his observations Hawkwood had seen enough to know that making a successful escape from the hulk looked well nigh impossible. Moored a stone’s throw from the middle of a busy estuary; surrounded by inhospitable marshland; heavily guarded by its contingent of militia and a commander who was fully prepared to use deadly force against the slightest infraction, the ship was too well sealed.

According to Ludd’s reckoning, four men had made it off the hulk in recent weeks. In the short time he’d been on board, Hawkwood had yet to uncover a single clue as to how they might have done it. He’d tried to pin Fouchet and the others down, but to his frustration they had been of no more help than Lieutenant Murat.

With the exception of those who’d retreated into their own little world and the denizens of the orlop deck, most of the prisoners seemed content to co-exist in small social groups centred round their messes. Many would probably have no idea there’d been an escape, let alone have any knowledge of how it had been accomplished; their first inkling that something untoward had taken place would come with the increased activity of the hulk’s commander and his crew, and the heavy-handed actions of the guards as they inspected and emptied the deck to take an unexpected body count. Someone as well informed as Fouchet would know more, but the teacher was too cautious to discuss such matters with a new arrival, particularly in the light of Murat’s reference to informers. Hawkwood had operated clandestinely before and, though patience did not come easily to him, he’d learned that a subtle approach would achieve better results than barging around asking too many pertinent questions.

Ludd’s suspicion that there was organization behind the escapes had been confirmed by Murat. Yet Hawkwood was still no wiser as to who was behind it. He wondered how long it would be before the translator got back to them. A week? Two? Or would it be a month? Or longer? The thought made his blood run cold. His rendezvous with Ludd was in three days. Would he have anything positive to report? It didn’t seem likely. Unless a man could change himself into something the size of a rat and slip between the grilles like Hawkwood’s scaly-tailed friend the other night, the only way off the hulk seemed to be as a corpse wrapped inside a burial cloth. Even then you wouldn’t get very far.

There had been seven deaths in the time Hawkwood had been aboard. The cause was marsh fever. During the summer months the fever claimed many victims among the weak and undernourished. Age was an inevitable contributing factor, though in the close-knit squalor of a prison ship, fever, typhus, pox and depression showed no favouritism. Two of the dead men had been in their twenties.

There had been no ceremony in the removal of the deceased. Wrapped in filthy sacks of hastily sewn sailcloth, the corpses had been lowered into a waiting boat using a winch and net. Then, accompanied by a burial detail of prisoners and a quartet of militia, the sorry cargo had been rowed to a bank of shingle half a mile off the hulk’s stern. Hawkwood and Lasseur had watched in sombre silence as the bodies had been carried up the foreshore and thrown into a pit dug at the back of the beach. From what they’d been able to see, no words were spoken over the burial before the boat made its return journey.

What had been noticeable to Hawkwood was that, aside from himself, Lasseur and a few of the newer prisoners, no one had taken any interest in the proceedings. On Rapacious, death and burial were commonplace.

Mid-afternoon of his fifth day on the hulk, Hawkwood was leaning on the forecastle rail, taking a rest after three hours spent hauling barrels of dried herring and sacks of onions on board. The work had been hard, but there had been a sense of purpose to the task, and, more importantly, it had made the time pass quicker. Now the sun was warm on his back and the estuary was calm. If he closed his eyes and nostrils, a man could, for a moment or two, imagine he was a thousand miles away.

Lasseur was standing next to him. The privateer captain had pulled the cheroot out of his jacket for what must have been the hundredth time and was staring at it with all the concentration of a drunkard eyeing a bottle of grog.

Hawkwood sensed a presence at his shoulder.

It was the teacher, Fouchet, his face frozen in an expression that struck Hawkwood with a sense of impending dread.

“Sébastien?” Lasseur enquired cautiously.

Fouchet stared at them, as if he didn’t know where to begin. Sorrow exuded from every pore.

“Sébastien?” Lasseur said again.

The teacher’s face crumpled. “They’ve taken the boy.”

Hawkwood frowned. “Who have? The guards?”

Fouchet shook his head. “The Romans.”

Lasseur gasped in shock, his cheroot forgotten. “What? How?”

“I sent him to the galley after his lessons to help Samuel prepare for supper. He didn’t arrive. I only found that out when I went to sort out the rations for the mess.” The teacher began to wring his hands. “I should have gone with him. It’s my fault.”

At Lasseur’s request, Fouchet had secured the boy a job as assistant to one of the galley cooks.

“How do you know the Romans have him?” Hawkwood said. “He could be with one of the other boys.”

The dwellers from the orlop had kept a low profile since their lightning raid on the Park – collectively, at any rate. Individually, they still made forays on to the forecastle in search of galley scrapings or the chance to barter, though they were usually given short shrift by the non-Roman captives. En masse, however, their presence on board, only a deck below, continued to cast a dark shadow in the minds of all the other prisoners. They reminded Hawkwood of the untouchables he’d seen in India: hated and feared, but impossible to ignore.

Fouchet shook his head. “I spoke with Millet and Charbonneau. They asked around. Lucien was seen with Juvert.”

“Who’s Juvert?” Hawkwood asked.

“I know him,” Lasseur said quickly. “Damned pederast! I caught him talking to Lucien on the first day. I warned him to leave the boy alone.”

Hawkwood’s mind went back to the prisoner he’d seen crouched beside the boy, slender fingers caressing Lucien’s back. “He’s a Roman?”

“He’s one of Matisse’s acolytes,” Fouchet said.

“Matisse?”

“A vile creature; calls himself king of the Romans. He rules the lower levels. A Corsican, too, if you can believe that,” the teacher added sourly.

“There’s a leader?” Lasseur couldn’t hide his disbelief.

“What about the guards?” Hawkwood asked, wondering why Matisse had adopted the title of king. The Romans of old had been ruled by an emperor, hadn’t they? Though on second thoughts, one Corsican emperor at a time was probably enough. His mind went back to the comment he’d overheard between the two militia men when he’d arrived on board:

Wait till His Majesty gets a look at that!

A sick feeling began to worm its way into Hawkwood’s stomach.

Fouchet shook his head. “They’ll do nothing. No crime has been committed. In any case, they won’t dare to venture that far below deck.”

Hawkwood stared hard at the teacher. “It’s a British ship! You’re telling me the British Navy has no rights on one of its own vessels?”

Fouchet spread his hands. “It has the right. It’s the will that’s lacking, especially where the Romans are concerned. If you want the truth, I think the commander and his men are more wary of Matisse and his courtiers than we are.”

“But the British are armed. They have guns!” Lasseur protested.

“True, but you saw for yourselves the other day: they’ll not use them unless one of their own is threatened.”

Lasseur gazed at the teacher in horror. Fouchet wilted under the scrutiny.

“This is what you meant, wasn’t it?” Lasseur said finally. “This is why you told me to watch him. Matisse has done this before. He’s taken other boys. My God, what sort of place is this?”

“If I told you the half of it,” Fouchet replied softly, “you’d say I was mad.”

“What about the tribunal? Doesn’t that have influence?”

Fouchet shook his head. “Not over Matisse, it doesn’t. Besides, tribunal is just another word for committee. When was the last time a committee did anything constructive? And by the time the tribunal’s convened it would be too late. We have to do something now!”

Dear God! Hawkwood thought wildly. “All right, Charbonneau told us anything that happens below deck stays below deck. We’ll take care of it ourselves.”

“How?” Fouchet’s head jerked up. “Wait, you’re going down there?”

“Unless you can think of another way,” Hawkwood said. He waited for an answer.

Fouchet looked at them helplessly.

“This Matisse, can you take us to him?” Lasseur asked.

Fouchet paled. He took a step back, nearly overbalancing in the process.

Anger flared briefly in Lasseur’s eyes and his expression hardened. But as he stared at Fouchet, he saw the fear in the teacher’s face.

“We’re wasting time,” Hawkwood said.

“I’m so sorry,” Fouchet whispered. His face sagged. He looked suddenly very old and very frail.

Lasseur gave the teacher a reassuring smile. “We’ll get him back, Sébastien, I give you my word.” He turned to Hawkwood. “Perhaps we should be armed?”

Hawkwood looked at Fouchet. “Will they have weapons down there?”

Fouchet gave an unhappy nod. “It’s possible.”

“Wonderful,” Lasseur said. “What should we do about that?”

“I can’t see Hellard giving us the key to the armoury,” Hawkwood said drily. “And we don’t have time to go searching. We’ll just have to improvise.” He turned to Fouchet. “Where’s Juvert? Have you seen him since the boy went missing?”

A spark of hope brightened the teacher’s eyes. He nodded and pointed.

Claude Juvert was savouring the moment. He was on the beak deck, in the forward heads, enjoying a piss. There was a splendid view of the river from the pissdales, if you kept your eyes front and ignored the unsightly sterns of the prison ships moored over the bow. There was the gross stench, of course, but it was impossible to avoid that, even with the deck exposed to the elements. There were only six seats of ease on the hulk and with over eight hundred prisoners on board it was rare not to find most of them occupied at any one time. Four prisoners were seated behind Juvert, trousers bunched around their ankles, contemplating their future. Conversation was desultory.

Had Rapacious been at sea and under sail, the smell would have been barely noticeable. The constant deluge of salt and spray cascading over the forward netting would have ensured that the deck received a regular sluicing. The shit and piss stains that accumulated around the holes in the gratings would have been washed away without any bother. With the ship moored in the middle of a river in almost flat calm water with only an occasional choppiness to break the monotony, the sanitary arrangements weren’t anywhere near as effective. It was decidedly moist and treacherous underfoot.

Juvert shook himself dry, buttoned his trousers and wiped his hands on his jacket. Emitting a small sigh of satisfaction, he turned to go.

The blow from Lasseur’s boot took Juvert in the small of the back, propelling him head first against the netting stanchion. There was a dull crunch as Juvert’s thin nose took the brunt of the impact. He let out a yelp. Blood spurted. Lasseur stepped in, took Juvert by the throat and squeezed. Blood from Juvert’s broken nose dripped over the privateer’s wrist.

“Remember me?” Lasseur said. His eyes burned with rage.

Juvert’s eyes opened wide, first with shock and then in fear. He moaned and tried to jerk free, but Lasseur’s grip held him fast.

Hawkwood took Juvert’s left arm. Lasseur took the right. They hauled him to his feet.

“Any trouble,” Lasseur hissed, “and it won’t be just your nose – I’ll break your neck.”

Hawkwood smiled grimly at the row of squatting, slack-jawed prisoners who didn’t know whether to remain where they were or try to make a strategic and ungainly withdrawal. “As you were, gentlemen. We’re just leaving.”

They left the heads, escorting the whimpering Juvert between them. Their emergence drew curious looks. A few frowned at the froth of blood on Juvert’s face as he was bundled unceremoniously along the deck, but one look at Lasseur’s steely grimace was enough to warn them it would be a mistake to interfere.

Lasseur placed his lips close to Juvert’s ear. “Did I or did I not warn you to stay away from the boy?”

“W-what boy?” Juvert spluttered. The collision with the post had split his lip and loosened what remained of his yellowing front teeth.

It was the wrong answer. Lasseur spun Juvert round and slammed him against the curved bulkhead. Then he slapped Juvert sharply across the face. “Don’t play games with me! I’m not in the mood.”

“What have I done?” The words emerged weakly from between Juvert’s bloodied lips.

Lasseur hit him again, harder and very fast.

Juvert let go another high-pitched squawk. Blood dripped from his nose and down his chin.

“You took the boy, Lucien, didn’t you?” Lasseur pressed.

Hand over his nose, Juvert mumbled something unintelligible. Tears of pain misted his eyes.

“What?” Lasseur cupped a palm to his ear. “Speak up. We can’t hear you.”

Juvert, anticipating another blow, threw up his hands. “I had to do it.” The words bubbled from his broken nose and split lip.

“Had to?” Hawkwood said.

Juvert spat out a thick gobbet of blood. “It was Matisse! He made me. I was in debt after losing a w-wager. He said if I delivered the boy to him, he’d consider the debt paid.”

“You gutless piece of shit,” Lasseur snarled. He drew back his balled fist.

Juvert cringed and shut his eyes. “Please –”

“Please? You dare to beg? Did Lucien Ballard beg? Did any of the boys beg when you delivered them to him?”

Juvert shrank back.

Concerned that Lasseur would do Juvert permanent damage before they’d achieved their objective, Hawkwood put out a restraining hand.

“You’re taking us to Matisse,” Hawkwood said. “And then Captain Lasseur and I are going to point out to His Majesty the error of his ways.”

“You can’t,” Juvert pleaded, trying to pull away. His frightened gaze moved first to Hawkwood then to Lasseur and then back again. “You don’t know him. Matisse will kill me.”

Hawkwood nodded towards Lasseur. “He’ll kill you if you don’t. And if he doesn’t, I will. So move yourself.”

There should have been an inscription carved into the overhead beam, Hawkwood thought, as he looked down the darkened stairwell: Abandon hope, all ye who enter. He’d heard the phrase somewhere, but he couldn’t recall when or where.

Lasseur had purloined one of the lanterns from the gun deck. He held it over the hatchway. The opening was small compared to most of the others on board. The stairs leading down looked narrower and a lot steeper, too. Poised on the rim, Hawkwood could just make out the bottom step. It lay in shadow, barely visible. There were no signs of life, though he thought he could hear vague sounds rising from deep within the well; faint whisperings, like tiny wings fluttering. There were muted rustlings too, and growls of laughter, and a rattling noise, as if tiny claws were skittering across a table top.

Juvert looked like a man about to be thrust into a pit full of vipers. Blood from his broken nose had congealed along the crease of his upper lip and both cheeks carried thin vertical scars where the sweat and tears had forged tracks through the dirt on his face.

“Move,” Hawkwood said brusquely.

Pushing the reluctant Juvert ahead of them, Hawkwood and Lasseur stepped down through the hatch.

It was like plunging into an oven. Hawkwood felt as if the air was being drawn from his lungs with each step he took. He recalled Murat’s description of the orlop and its lack of headroom compared to the gun deck. Even so, when he reached the bottom of the stairway, he was unprepared for just how low the deckhead was; at least another six inches lower than that of the gun deck. His ears picked up a dull thump. The lantern light wavered and he heard Lasseur curse; proof that even an experienced seaman could be caught unawares.

Hawkwood suspected the word had been passed the moment Juvert’s heel hit the top step. The whispering he thought he’d heard earlier had intensified as news of their descent spread through the deck. It sounded like leaves soughing in the wind.

Had the ship still been seaworthy, the orlop would have been below the waterline, with no access to natural light or ventilation. But, as Hawkwood had seen from the longboat, scuttles had been cut into the hull along the line of the deck. Smaller than the gun-deck ports, square cut, and blocked by metal bars, they were nevertheless of sufficient size to allow daylight in, much to Hawkwood’s relief. He hadn’t relished negotiating the dark with the lantern as their only source of illumination.

If the gun deck resembled a cellar, the orlop was more like a catacomb. He heard Lasseur mutter another oath under his breath and remembered the privateer’s comment about boarding a blackbirder off the African coast. It sounded as if Lasseur was reliving the experience. The heat would have been enough to trigger memory. It was stifling; more so than on the gun deck, and the humidity was intense. Hawkwood’s shirt was damp with sweat. His skin prickled uncomfortably.

According to Charbonneau, the Romans craved the darkness. The statement wasn’t strictly true: the open scuttles proved that and Hawkwood could also see the flicker of lantern light. It made him wonder if it wasn’t the Romans and the Rafalés’ fear of outsiders that governed their near nocturnal existence rather than their supposed predilection for perpetual twilight.

Peering into the orlop’s murky interior, he could make out crude benches and rows of sleeping racks. Many of the men on the racks were naked. Huddled together like spoons, their skins as grey as cadavers. Others, clad in what remained of their uniforms, resembled scarecrows, while the ones dressed only in their blanket togas looked more like moths as they melted in and out of the shadows or hovered around the guttering candles, gripping their cards with spindle-thin fingers.

Hawkwood, shirt moulded to his flesh, was beginning to envy the men who were without clothes. It was becoming harder to draw breath. The cause of the faint rattling noise that he’d detected earlier was now clear and he chided himself for not recognizing it as dice being rolled across table tops. Even naked and starving, the Rafalés were prepared to gamble their lives away. The darkness couldn’t conceal the wild expressions on the faces of the wretches hunched around even the dimmest candle flame. Each tumble of the die was accompanied by cries of excitement or gales of manic laughter. It was like walking through the corridors of Bedlam.

Heads turned towards the intruders. Some faces showed open hostility. Others reflected fear at seeing their sanctuary violated. Some of the men on the sleeping racks, who in the midst of all the wretchedness had still managed to retain a small sliver of dignity, hunkered down in a desperate bid to conceal themselves beneath their meagre scraps of blanket. The remainder turned their faces away and tried to merge into the shadows.

Charbonneau had referred to the orlop-dwellers as animals. Even allowing for prejudice, the description had seemed harsh, but looking around it wasn’t hard to see the truth in it. As he made his way along the deck, Hawkwood’s stomach heaved at the sight and stench of prisoners lying in their own filth.

“I would not keep dogs in a place like this,” Lasseur whispered, horrified.

It seemed impossible to believe that men could allow themselves to be subjected to such degradation. It made Hawkwood wonder about British prisoners held in French gaols. He didn’t know if the French used hulks. There were prison fortresses, he knew that; many of them in the north, at Verdun, Quimper and Arras. Were the conditions there as bad as this? It was more than likely any French prisoner who did manage to escape would waste no time in reporting the brutal manner in which they’d been kept. It wasn’t inconceivable that, in retaliation, the French authorities would make it their duty to display the same lack of compassion as their British counterparts.

Like many soldiers, Hawkwood had always viewed a quick death in battle as infinitely preferable to being cut and probed by the regimental surgeon and slowly dying, crippled and in agony. Now, bent almost double and surrounded by such abject misery, it was only too clear there were fates far worse than the surgeon’s knife. Being captured and held in a place like this – that was death of a kind; a slow, lingering death. And no man, no matter in which army he served, deserved that.

As Hawkwood crabbed his way beneath the beams, trying to avoid the stares, several dark objects tacked to the support struts caught his eye. He paused, curious. Lasseur held up the lantern. Hawkwood found he was looking at a row of rat pelts, with the ears and tails still attached. What had Charbonneau told them? Even the rats aren’t safe. Hawkwood wondered what rat meat tasted like. He turned away, sickened.

They were almost at the bow. Ahead of them, the base of the foremast rose solidly out of the deck. The press of bodies wasn’t so bad here, Hawkwood noticed, which was curious. It was as though the mast was some sort of totem, beyond which the mass of the Rafalés were not prepared to venture.

Hawkwood was acutely aware of the ache at the base of his spine; the effect of being bent double. He tried to ease the discomfort by straightening, suspecting it would be a futile exercise, but discovered to his relief that the height of the deckhead between the crossbeams had become a little more generous. He still wasn’t able to stand upright, but there was a definite improvement over the miserly headroom at the bottom of the hatchway.