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СКАЧАТЬ line of men on the grating. Their protestations were met with a severe clubbing from the guards. Retreating, the quietened men began their slow and laboured ascent of the stairway.

      Hawkwood watched grim-faced as the men made their way up the side of the ship. Lasseur followed his gaze and murmured softly, “We’d have been better off with the damned Spanish.”

      “Bastards,” a voice interjected bitterly from behind them. “I’ve seen this before.”

      Hawkwood and Lasseur turned. The speaker was a thin man, with sunken cheeks and watery eyes. Grey stubble covered his jaw.

      “I was in Portsmouth last winter, on the Vengeance. They had a delivery of prisoners transferred from Cadiz. About thirty, all told. As thin as rakes they were; ghost white, not an ounce of flesh on their bones and not so much as a set of breeches between them. Only ten of them made it on to the Vengeance on their own. The rest were too ill to leave the longboat. The Vengeance’s surgeon refused to take them. Ordered them to be delivered to the hospital ship. Only the commander of the Pegasus refused to have them on board, not unless they were washed first. So the Vengeance’s surgeon ordered them thrown into the sea to clean them and left the Pegasus to pick up the bodies. Most of them were dead by the time the Pegasus’s boat got to them.” The man nodded towards the drifting longboat. “Looks to me, that’s what’s happening here.”

      “My God,” Lasseur said and fell into a reflective silence as their own longboat, its way now clear, began to manoeuvre towards the ship’s side.

      Hawkwood regarded the manacles around his ankles. If the men on the drifting boat, who presumably had also been wearing shackles, had been thrown overboard they would have been beyond help, sinking to the bottom of the river like stones.

      He took a look at his fellow passengers. No one returned his gaze. They were too preoccupied, staring up at the ship, craning their necks to take in the vast wooden rampart looming above them. The sense of unease that had enveloped the boat was palpable, as if a black storm cloud had descended. Behind their masks, even the guards looked momentarily subdued.

      He could still hear weeping. It was coming from the stern. Hawkwood followed the sound. The boy couldn’t have been much older than ten or eleven. Tears glistened on his cheeks. He looked up, dried his eyes with the heels of his hands and turned away, his small shoulders shaking. His clothes hung in rags about him. He’d been one of a consignment of prisoners, Hawkwood and Lasseur among them, picked up earlier that day from Maidstone Gaol. A midshipman or powder monkey, Hawkwood supposed, or whatever the French equivalent might be, and without doubt the youngest of the longboat’s passengers. It seemed unlikely that the boy had been taken alone, but there didn’t appear to be anyone with him, no shipmates to give him comfort. Hawkwood wondered where the boy had been captured and in what circumstances he might have been separated from the rest of his crew.

      The order came to boat oars. A dozen heartbeats later, the longboat was secured to the raft and the transfer began.

      The odour from the open gun ports was almost overwhelming. The river was bounded by marshland. On warm days with the wind sifting across the levels, the smell was beyond fœtid, but the malodorous stench issuing from the interior of Rapacious eclipsed even the smell from the shore. It was worse than a convoy of night-soil barges.

      Hawkwood shouldered his knapsack. He was one of the few carrying possessions. Most had only the clothes they stood up in.

      The marines set about prodding the prisoners with their musket butts. “Goddamn it, move your arses! I won’t tell you again! No wonder you’re losing the bleedin’ war! Useless buggers!”

      Legs clanking, the men started to climb from the longboat on to the raft.

      “Shift yourselves!” The guards continued to use their weapons to herd the men along the walkway. Movement was difficult due to the shackles, but the guards made no allowance for the restraints. “Lively now! Christ, you buggers stink!”

      The insults rained down thick and fast, and while it was doubtful many of the men shuffling along the grating could understand the harsh words, the tone of voice and the poking and prodding made it clear what was required of them.

      Slowly, in single file, the men clinked their way up the ship’s side.

      “Keep moving, damn your eyes!”

      Hawkwood stepped from the stairs on to the pulpit, Lasseur at his shoulder. A jam had formed in the enclosed space. Both men stared down into the belly of the ship. Lasseur recoiled. Then the Frenchman leaned forward so that his mouth was close to Hawkwood’s ear. His face was set in a grimace.

      “Welcome to Hell,” he said.

       2

      I should have bloody known, Hawkwood thought.

      Ezra Twigg’s face should have given the game away. Hawkwood wondered why he hadn’t picked up the signals. The little clerk’s head had been cast down when Hawkwood entered the ante-room in reply to the Chief Magistrate’s summons. Normally, Twigg would have looked up from his scribbling and passed some pithy comment about the marks on the floor left by Hawkwood’s boot heels, but this time Twigg had barely acknowledged the Runner’s arrival. All he’d done was look up quickly, murmur, “They’re waiting for you,” and return to his paperwork. The omens hadn’t been good. Hawkwood chided himself for not being more observant. Though he had absorbed the warning that the Chief Magistrate had company.

      As Hawkwood entered the office, James Read stepped away from the tall window. It was mid-morning and sunlight pierced the room. Hawkwood wondered why the Chief Magistrate, a man who made no secret of his dislike for cold weather, looked so pensive. Given his usual disconsolate manner when confronted with inclement skies, he should, by rights, have been dancing across the carpet.

      The second man looked around. He was heavy-set, with short, sandy hair, a broad face and a web of red veins radiating across his cheeks. He was dressed in the uniform of a naval officer and clearly suffered from the habitual stoop, characteristic of so many seamen, which, Hawkwood had come to realize, was more a testimony to the lack of headroom in a man-of-war than any lingering defect of birth.

      The officer looked Hawkwood up and down, taking in the scarred face, the unfashionably long hair tied at the nape of the neck and the dark, well-cut attire. The Chief Magistrate walked to his desk. His movements, as ever, were measured and precise. He sat down. “Officer Hawkwood, this gentleman is Captain Elias Ludd. As his uniform implies, Captain Ludd is from the Admiralty.”

      Hawkwood and the captain exchanged cautious nods.

      “The Transport Board, to be exact,” James Read said.

      Hawkwood said nothing. The Transport Board had been created initially to provide ships, troops and supplies during the American War of Independence. But the wars against Bonaparte had seen the Board expand its range of activities far beyond the original borders of the Atlantic. Now, due to Britain’s vast military and naval commitments, the Board was responsible for the movement of supply ships to the four corners of the globe.

      “The Admiralty requires our assistance.” Read nodded towards his visitor. “Captain, you have the floor.”

      “Thank you, sir.” Ludd looked down at the carpet and then raised his head. “I’ve СКАЧАТЬ