Rapscallion

dark. It was as if the sun had been snuffed out. Hawkwood paused and waited for his eyes to adjust.

'Keep moving!' The order came from behind.

'That way,' Murat said, and pointed. 'And watch your head.'

The warning was unnecessary. Hawkwood's neck was already cricked. The height from the deck to the underside of the main beams couldn't have been much more than five and a half feet.

Murat said, 'It's easy to tell you're a soldier not a seaman, Captain. You don't have the gait, but, like I said, you'll get used to it.'

Ahead of him, Hawkwood could see vague, hump-backed shapes moving. They looked more troglodyte than human. And the smell was far worse down below; a mixture of sweat and piss. Hawkwood tried breathing through his mouth but discovered it didn't make a great deal of difference. He moved forward cautiously. Gradually, the ill- defined creatures began to take on form. He could pick out squares of light on either side, too, and recognized it as daylight filtering in through the grilles in the open ports.

'This is it,' Murat said. 'The gun deck.'

God in heaven, Hawkwood thought.

He could tell by the grey, watery light the deck was about forty feet in width. As to the length, he could only hazard a guess, for he could barely make out the ends. Both fore and aft, they simply disappeared into the blackness. It was more like being in a cellar than a ship's hull. The area in which they were standing was too far from the grilles for the sunlight to penetrate fully but he could just see that benches ran down the middle as well as along the sides. All of them looked to be occupied. Most of the floor was taken up by bodies as well. Despite the lack of illumination, several of the men were engaged in labour. Some were knitting, others were fashioning hats out of what looked like lengths of straw. A number were carving shanks of bone into small figurines that Hawkwood guessed were probably chess pieces. He wondered how anyone could see what they were doing. The sense of claustrophobia was almost overpowering.

He saw there were lanterns strung on hooks along the bulkhead, but they were unlit.

'We try and conserve the candles,' Murat explained. 'Besides, they don't burn too well down here; too many bodies, not enough air.'

For a moment, Hawkwood thought the interpreter was joking, but then he saw that Murat was serious.

There was just sufficient light for Hawkwood to locate the hooks and cleats in the beams from which to hang the hammocks. Many of the hooks had objects suspended from them; not hammocks but sacks, and items of clothing. They looked like huge seedpods hanging down.

Murat followed his gaze. 'The long-termers get used to a particular spot. They mark their territory. You can take any hook that's free. Hammocks are slung above and below, so there'll be room for both of you. Best thing is for you to put yours up now. The rest are on the foredeck; they're taken up there every morning and stowed. When they're brought back down you won't be able to move. You've got about six feet each. Come night time there are more than four hundred of us crammed in here. You're new so you don't get to pick. When you've been here a while you might get a permanent place by the grilles.'

'How long have you been here?' Hawkwood asked.

'Two years.'

'And how close are you to the grilles?'

Murat smiled.

'What if we want a place by the grilles now?' Lasseur said. His meaning was clear.

Four hundred? Hawkwood thought.

'It'll cost you,' Murat said, without a pause. He read Hawkwood's mind. 'Think yourself lucky. You could have been assigned the orlop. There are four hundred and fifty of them down there, and it isn't half as roomy as this.'

'How much?' Lasseur asked.

'For two louis, I can get you space by the gun ports. For ten, I can get you a bunk in the commander's cabin.'

'Just the gun port,' Lasseur said. 'Maybe I'll talk to the commander later.'

Murat squinted at Hawkwood. 'What about you?'

'How much in English money?'

'Cost you two pounds.' The interpreter eyed them both. 'Cash, not credit.'

Hawkwood nodded.

'Wait here,' Murat said, and he was gone.

Lasseur stared around him. 'I boarded a slaver once, off Mauritius. It turned my stomach. This might be worse.'

Hawkwood was quite prepared to believe him.

Lasseur was the captain of a privateer. The French had used privateers for centuries. Financed by private enterprise, they'd been one of the few ways Bonaparte had been able to counteract the restrictions placed upon him by the British blockade. But their numbers had declined considerably over the past few years due to Britain's increased dominance of the waves in the aftermath of Trafalgar.

Getting close to Lasseur had been Ludd's idea, though the initial strategy had been Hawkwood's.

'I need an edge,' he'd told James Read and Ludd. 'I go in there asking awkward questions from the start and I'm going to end up like your man Masterson. The way to avoid that is to hide in someone else's shadow. I need to make an alliance with a genuine prisoner, someone who'll do the running for me so that I can slip in on his coat- tails. You said you're sending me to Maidstone. Find me someone there I can use.'

Ludd had met with Hawkwood the day prior to his arrival at the gaol.

'I think I have your man,' Ludd told him. 'Name of Lasseur. He was taken following a skirmish with a British patrol off the Cap Gris-Nez. The impudent bugger tried to jump ship twice following his capture; even had the temerity to make a dash for freedom during his transfer from Ramsgate. If anyone's going to be looking for an escape route, it'll be Lasseur; you can count on it. He's made a boast that no English prison will be able to hold him. Get close to him and my guess is you're halfway home already.'

The introduction had been manufactured in the prison yard.

Lasseur had been by himself, back against the wall, enjoying the morning sun, an unlit cheroot clamped between his teeth, when the two guards made their move. The plan would never have been awarded marks for subtlety. One guard snatched the cheroot from between Lasseur's lips. When the Frenchman protested, the second guard slammed his baton into Lasseur's belly and a knee into his groin. As Lasseur dropped to the ground, covering his head, the guards waded in with their boots.

A cry of anger went up from the other prisoners, but it was Hawkwood who got there first. He pulled the first guard off Lasseur by his belt and the scruff of his neck. As his companion was hauled back, the second guard turned, baton raised, and Hawkwood slammed the heel of his boot against the guard's exposed knee. He pulled his kick at the moment of contact, but the strike was still hard enough to make the guard reel away with a howl of pain.

By this time, the first guard had recovered his balance. With a snarl, he swung his baton towards Hawkwood's head. But the guard had forgotten Lasseur. The privateer was back on his feet. As the baton looped through the air, Lasseur caught the guard's wrist, twisted the baton out of his grip, and slammed an elbow into the guard's belly.

Shouts rang out as other guards, wrongfooted by the swiftness of Hawkwood's intervention, came running. It had taken four of them to subdue Hawkwood and Lasseur and march them off into a cell.

The clang of the door and the rasp of the key turning in the lock had seemed as final as a coffin lid closing.

Lasseur's first action as soon as the door shut was to take another cheroot from his jacket, put it between his lips and ask Hawkwood if he had a means by which to light it. Hawkwood had been unable to assist. Whereupon Lasseur had shrugged philosophically, placed the cheroot back in his jacket, extended his hand and said, 'Captain Paul Lasseur, at your service.' Then he'd grinned and touched his ribs tentatively. 'I suppose it was one way of getting a cell to ourselves.'

Hawkwood hadn't thought it would be that easy.