Rapscallion. James McGee

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СКАЧАТЬ notice. In a week, you’ll start to smell the same. The name’s Murat, by the way. And we call this area the Park. It’s our little joke.” The interpreter nodded towards the open hatch and the top of the ladder leading down. “You’d best get a move on. Squeeze through, find yourselves a space.”

      “Murat?” Lasseur looked intrigued. “Any relation?”

      The interpreter shrugged and gave a self-deprecatory grin. “A distant cousin on my mother’s side. I regret our closest association is in having once enjoyed the services of the same tailor. I –”

      “How much do you want for your boots?”

      Hawkwood felt a tug at his sleeve. One of the yellow-uniformed prisoners had taken hold of his arm. Hawkwood recoiled from the man’s rancid odour. “They’re not for sale.”

      There were ragged holes in the elbows of the prisoner’s jacket and the knees of his trousers shone as if they had been newly waxed. His feet were stuffed into a pair of canvas slippers, though they were obviously too small for him as his heels overlapped the soles by at least an inch. Several boils had erupted across the back of his neck. His shirt collar was the colour of dried mud.

      “Ten francs.” The grip on Hawkwood’s arm tightened.

      Hawkwood looked down at the man’s fingers. “Let go or you’ll lose the arm.”

      “Twenty.”

      “Leave him be, Chavasse! He told you they’re not for sale.” Murat raised his hand. “In any case, they’re worth ten times that. Go and pester someone else.”

      Hawkwood pulled his arm free. The prisoner backed away.

      The interpreter turned to Hawkwood. “Keep hold of your belongings until you know your way around, otherwise you might not see them again. Come on, I’ll show you where to go.”

      Murat pushed his way ahead of them and started down the almost vertical stairway. Hawkwood and Lasseur followed him. It was like descending into a poorly lit mineshaft. Three-quarters of the way down Hawkwood found he had to lean backwards to avoid cracking his skull on the overhead beam. He felt his spine groan as he did so. He heard Lasseur chuckle. The sound seemed ludicrously out of place.

      “You’ll get used to that, too,” Murat said drily.

      Hawkwood couldn’t see a thing. The sudden shift from daylight to near Stygian darkness was abrupt and alarming. If Murat hadn’t been wearing his yellow jacket, it would have been almost impossible to follow him in the 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 СКАЧАТЬ