Rapscallion (14 page)

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 Rafales' 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 Rafales 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 Rafales 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.

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."