seabirds in the distance and the lap of waves along the shoreline. He could also hear sheep bleating. It was a sound the prisoners had grown used to, for when the wind was in the right direction the animals' plaintive cries could be heard clear across the marshes, even as far as the hulks.
He drew his right knee towards him, extended his right arm, stretched his fingers and began inching his hand down his thigh. It wasn't as easy as he'd hoped. There wasn't enough room in the sack to allow him the flexibility he was looking for while laying on his back. He paused, muscles straining.
Then, taking a deep breath, he twisted on to his left side. Immediately, he felt the corpse beneath him move. A wave of putrescence enveloped him. He bit down on the sour taste and tried the manoeuvre again. This time, he almost made it. His fingertips moved beyond his kneecap. Hunching his shoulders, he reached down once more. The muscles in his shoulder shrieked as his thumb and forefinger drew the knife out from the inside of his boot.
He rested, chest heaving, and waited for his shoulder to stop protesting. Then he turned on to his back once more and brought his arm up. With the knife less than a hand's breadth from his face, he infiltrated the razor-sharp blade into the gap between the stitches in the sailcloth and began cutting.
He was on the second stitch when his ears picked up a sound that hadn't been there before. His skin prickled. Slowly, he withdrew the knife blade down into the bag.
He heard the noise again; someone was approaching cautiously. Hawkwood went rigid. There was a soft scraping sound followed by a brief silence. Then he thought he heard voices talking softly. The words were indistinct. It had to be the militia, come back to check, trying to be quiet about it, and failing. Carefully, Hawkwood reversed the knife and held it flat against his chest beneath his arm. The scraping noises resumed. Suddenly the light showing through the cloth was blotted out. A figure was kneeling over him. Without warning, a knife blade, larger than his own, stabbed through the vent in the cloth inches from his face, sliced effortlessly through the next dozen stitches and the edges of the sailcloth were peeled apart.
'You smell almost as bad as me.' Lasseur wrinkled his nose, chuckled softly and jerked his head. 'He says we've to hurry and we're to keep our heads down, which seems sensible advice.'
Hawkwood looked beyond Lasseur's shoulder to where a man of indeterminate age was crouched, holding a short-handled spade. He was dressed in a long-sleeved grey shirt and a pair of dirty brown breeches. Other than a pair of narrowed dark eyes, it was hard to make out his features, for his mouth and nose were covered by a triangular folded scarf. Hawkwood presumed it was as a guard against the smell from the pit rather than an attempt at disguise. Curly black hair peeked from beneath a soft felt cap.
'Does he have a name?' Hawkwood asked.
'He says we're to call him Isaac.' Lasseur was about to hand Hawkwood the knife when he caught sight of the blade concealed beneath Hawkwood's arm. 'I see you started without me.'
Lasseur tossed the knife to the man behind him and watched with approval as Hawkwood used his own blade to cut himself free before returning the weapon to its place of concealment.
Lasseur grinned. 'Maybe I should be calling you the sly boots instead of Murat.'
'Quit talking and move your arses!' The man calling himself Isaac slid the knife into his belt. 'And don't forget the bloody sacks. You do parlez English, yes?'
'I told you,' Lasseur said. 'We both do.' He looked at Hawkwood and rolled his eyes.
'Right, well, keep your bleedin' heads down! We ain't out of the woods yet.'
'Woods?' Lasseur frowned. 'I see no trees.' He looked about him.
'Jesus,' the man muttered, waving his hand. 'Bleedin' Frogs. Come on, get behind me.'
Hawkwood and Lasseur did as they were told as the guide began shovelling mud back across the top of the burial pit, filling in the depressions where Hawkwood and Lasseur had lain, restoring the disturbed surface. When he'd completed the task to his satisfaction, he turned and pushed past them, still keeping low. 'Follow me. Stay close.'
Hawkwood risked a glance seaward and saw why they'd been instructed to keep their heads down. Between the burial pit and the beach there was a slight rise in the ground. On the other side of the rise, the shingle sloped down to the water. At ground level, where they lay, the slope was just high enough to block the view of the hulks. A clear worm's-eye view of the estuary was also hampered by clumps of sea-grass which crested the shingle bank for several yards in either direction.
A throaty mutter came from behind. 'I'd stop admirin' the bloody view, if I were you. Signal said we had to get you away sharpish, so unless you're plannin' on hangin' around for the militia, we'd best get goin'. We ain't got all day!'
Hawkwood felt his arm tugged. Turning his back on the water, he tucked the sailcloth bundle under his arm and followed Lasseur and the guide on all fours, away from the pit and its gruesome contents.
It was a laborious crawl. Hawkwood estimated they had probably covered close to fifty yards on their bellies before the ground suddenly opened up in front of them, revealing a steep- sided ditch, some six paces in width. At the bottom of the ditch a three-foot-wide ribbon of murky brown water was bordered by rushes and tall, thin-bladed reeds.
Isaac removed the scarf from his face, passed it to Hawkwood and nodded towards the water. 'Ain't sweet enough to drink, but you might want to think about cleanin' yourselves up a bit. Be quick about it, though.'
Hawkwood soaked the scarf in the water and rinsed the blood from his face before handing the cloth to Lasseur. The water was warm and smelled of peat and more than a hint of dung. Hawkwood didn't like to think what else might be lying under the surface, but anything was better than the stench of the pit.
'You said you had a signal,' Hawkwood said, remembering that Murat had used the word, too. 'What signal?'
He saw that the man was giving him a strange look.
'You don't sound like a Frog,' Isaac said.
'That's because I'm not.'
'Your English is bloody good. What are you then? A Dutchman?
'American.'
'A Yankee?' Isaac's eyes widened. 'Bloody hell, you're a long way from home.'
'So everyone keeps telling me,' Hawkwood said. 'What signal?'
Isaac's expression shifted from surprise to disbelief that anyone with half a brain would ask such a question. He glanced towards Lasseur as if seeking reassurance that his opinion of Hawkwood's ignorance was well founded, and looked surprised to be confronted by the same quizzical expression.
He turned back. 'Your bleedin' washing lines, of course! What did you think it was?'
'Washing lines?' Lasseur said, mystified. Suddenly he glanced down at the rag in his hand and his eyes opened wide. 'Flags! My God, they used the laundry as signalling flags!' He swung back to Hawkwood and grinned wildly.
'All right, that's enough,' Isaac said impatiently. He stared hard at the blood spots on Hawkwood's shirt and at the marks on Lasseur's face and waved the scarf away when Lasseur tried to return it. 'Let's go.
Without waiting for a reply, their guide broke into a run along the edge of the watercourse. Still carrying their sailcloth burial bags, Hawkwood and Lasseur set off in stumbling pursuit.
Hawkwood watched Lasseur stuff the piece of rag into his pocket and had a mental image of shirts and breeches twitching in the breeze like lines of bunting. He wondered how the system worked and guessed the messages were hidden in the sequence of the washed garments. A shirt followed by a pair of stockings followed by two sets of breeches and so on. It was, he was forced to admit, brilliant in its simplicity and - unless you were privy to the secret - totally undetectable.
The land around them was flat and featureless; a mixture of bog and clumpy pasture, crisscrossed with ditches that twisted through the marshland like drunken adders. There were no trees in the immediate vicinity, though further east the land rose towards a series of copse-dotted hills that rolled away gently towards the centre of the island.
Trailing Isaac along the ditch was like following a hound. Every twenty paces or so, their guide would lift his nose in the air as though searching for a scent, before turning to make sure they were still following.
They had travelled a further half-mile before they halted for the second time. They were still only a little over a mile from the ship, Hawkwood estimated. Slightly less as the crow flew; and not nearly far enough away for comfort. Their guide was evidently of the same opinion, for he peered over the rim of the dyke, back towards the
