Rapscallion

Juvert paused. He looked suddenly apprehensive. Hawkwood peered ahead cautiously. He could hear voices, but forward of the mast the bow section of the orlop lay in near impenetrable darkness and he couldn’t see a thing. Then he heard a bray of harsh laughter and he looked again. It took a second for him to see there was in fact a thick layer of blankets in the form of a curtain suspended from the overhead beam, effectively sealing off the main part of the orlop from the fore platform. From the darkness beyond the heavy veil came the hollow rattle of dice and the murmur of conversation.

Lasseur raised the lantern. He nodded. Hawkwood took Juvert’s arm and drew back the edge of the curtain.

During his time in the army Hawkwood had endured a good many sea voyages. The majority of them, almost without exception, had been miserable. But he still held memories of the transport ships and had a vague idea of their layout below deck. In the hulk’s previous life, the fore platform had probably housed the boatswain’s and carpenter’s quarters and workshop, along with the gunner’s storeroom, and the area would have been separated from the main orlop by a concave bulkhead. On Rapacious the bulkhead had been removed. The cabins and storerooms had been transformed into gloomy, lantern-lit alcoves, some of which were partially concealed behind hanging blankets. Hawkwood saw that scraps of cloth had also been hung over the scuttles, reducing the daylight coming in through the grilles.

There were perhaps ten or twelve men present, seated at the tables or sprawled on sleeping racks; most were clad in the drab yellow prison garb. Some, however, were wearing blanket togas. A couple were engaged in a dice game. At another table a foursome was playing cards – drogue, from the looks of one pair, who had wooden pegs clipped over their nostrils while they awaited the outcome of the next hand.

Hawkwood was struck by the strong resemblance to a rookery drinking den. The only difference between this section of the orlop and a rookery were the half-dozen hammocks suspended from the beams.

At Hawkwood’s and Lasseur’s entrance, conversation ceased abruptly. At the card table, the losing pair sat up straight and surreptitiously removed their nose pegs.

Hawkwood broke the silence. “We’re looking for Matisse.”

No one answered. Several men exchanged wary looks.

“Cat got your tongues?” Hawkwood gripped Juvert’s elbow. “Point him out.”

Juvert winced. His mouth formed an O. He looked petrified, but before he could reply, several men stood up. They weren’t empty-handed. Each was armed with what looked like a heavy metal blade, about eighteen inches in length.

Well, Fouchet did warn us, Hawkwood thought. But swords? He heard Lasseur mutter an obscenity.

Benches slid back noisily. Dice and cards lay forgotten.

One of the armed men shuffled forward. He was heavy set with bowed legs and a low brow. “What’s your business here?”

Lantern light played across the speaker’s face. A large, pear-shaped birthmark, as dark as a gravy stain, covered his right cheek and jaw. His nose had been broken at some time in the past.

Hawkwood took a surreptitious glance at the blade in the man’s hand. It looked like an iron barrel hoop that had been hammered flat. The edge was a long way from honed, but it looked as if it could still do considerable damage.

“You’re Matisse?”

The man looked anything but regal.

“I’m Dupin.”

“Then you’re only the monkey. It’s the organ grinder we want.”

Close to, Hawkwood noticed there was something different about Dupin’s uniform. As well as the arrows and the letters on the sleeves and thighs, the yellow jacket and trousers were covered in an uneven pattern of small black dots. Some of the dots were moving. Dupin’s clothes were alive with lice. Hawkwood’s skin crawled. He resisted the urge to scratch and bit down on the sour taste that had risen unbidden into the back of his throat.

Lasseur had seen the infestation, too. The lantern illuminated his disgust. He shuddered.

Hawkwood said, “Tell His Majesty that Captains Hooper and Lasseur are here. He’ll know what it’s concerning.”

“Best do it quickly,” Lasseur said. “Otherwise stand aside.”

Dupin stared hard at the marks on Juvert’s face. Then he turned. He jerked his head at the men over his shoulder and as they moved apart another table came into view at the back of the compartment. Five people were seated around it. There was no throne, as far as Hawkwood could see; only benches. No crown or robes of state, either. Bottles and jugs sat on the table alongside platters of half-consumed bread and cheese.

The figure at the centre of the table leaned forward, revealing a closely shaven, oval-shaped head and a face empty of hue.

Lasseur gasped. The privateer’s reaction had come not from seeing the man’s bald pate but from his eyes. They had no discernible pupils. The centre of each eye was not dark but shell pink, as if a thimbleful of blood had been emptied into a saucer of milk. Even odder was the way the head appeared to be disembodied, for the rest of the seated figure, from the neck down, looked to be swathed entirely in black, save for one pale, slender arm which rested languorously over the shoulders of the small, blond boy seated beside him.

“Matisse.” Lasseur made the name sound like a whispered obscenity. He went to take a step forward only to find his path blocked.

The thin, bloodless lips split in two.

“It’s all right, Dupin. You can let them by. We’ve been expecting them.”

7

Hawkwood stared at the pink eyes and the shaven scalp and wondered about the colour of Matisse’s hair. There was a name given to people whose hair was so blond it was almost white and whose red-rimmed eyes looked as if they were leaching blood. Whiteface, some called it, though that wasn’t its only name. Spain was where Hawkwood had come across the phenomenon, for the first and only other time, in the person of a small boy in an orphanage run by priests outside Astariz. The boy had been abandoned in the confessional as a baby, wrapped in a blanket, his only possession a small silver crucifix strung on a bootlace around his neck. The child had been seven years old when Hawkwood had met him and something of a miracle, for no one had expected him to live beyond his fourth birthday. The boy’s eyes had been sensitive to light, Hawkwood recalled, forcing him to spend most of his waking hours in a darkened room. It was one of the brothers who’d told Hawkwood that the word used to describe the boy’s condition had been borrowed from Portuguese traders. It was the name they gave to the white Negroes they’d encountered on the coast of Africa. They called them albinos.

The colour of Matisse’s eyes suggested he might be a victim of the same abnormality. Maybe that was how the Romans’ alleged preference for the dark had got started. Maybe the stories were based purely on a distorted understanding of the Roman leader’s affliction.

Hawkwood’s thoughts were interrupted.

“Captain Lasseur! This is an honour! It’s not often we get to meet one of the republic’s naval heroes. Why, I was regaling my friends here only yesterday with tales of your exploits. Very impressed they were, too; especially with your taking of the British brig. Justice. Where was it now? Off the coast at Oran? I heard you were severely outgunned. That must have taken some courage. We admire a man with backbone, don’t we, boys?”

There was a curious rough yet sibilant quality to the voice. The mocking words were heavily accented and didn’t so much emerge as slither from the tip of the man’s tongue. Hawkwood presumed that was due to the speaker’s Corsican heritage. There was no response from the other men lounging at the table, who looked as dissolute as their leader and decidedly unenthused by the prospect of receiving visitors, irrespective of their reputation.

“And you’ll be our gallant American ally, Captain Hooper! I regret to say, due to an oversight no doubt, Captain Hooper’s reputation has failed to precede him. My commiserations, nevertheless, on your capture, sir. The Emperor needs all the help he can get. My spies tell me you’re newly arrived from Spain; a bloody battleground, by all accounts. The newspapers here say that Wellington’s giving us a roasting. Is that true? Or are they pamphleteering, I wonder?”

Hawkwood ignored the question. He stuck out his boot and shoved Juvert forward. “I’m told this belongs to you.”

Surprise and gravity did the rest. The trip sent Juvert flying. Forced to put out his hands to save himself, he let out an undignified splutter as he slewed across the deck, forcing several of the onlookers to scramble back from his line of trajectory. The boy jumped nervously, his eyes wide. Shaken out of their insouciance, the men on either side of him sat up. Shock lanced across their faces.

The shaven-headed man’s pose did not change. It was hard to read the expression in his eyes as he stared down at Juvert’s prostrate body. Only the contraction of his jaw muscles indicated the essence of his thoughts. He looked up, his arm still draped across the boy’s shoulders.

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