Rapscallion

by James McGee

  "Heard that was a fearsome fight," Millet said.

  Fouchet frowned. "The siege took two weeks, I think I read."

  "Twelve days," Hawkwood said. "Might as well have tried to stop the tide. How do you mean, read?"

  "It was in the newspapers. They're forbidden, but we manage to smuggle them in. Costs us a fortune. A few of us understand some English, but it's usually Murat who translates. Not that we believe everything that's in them, of course. You were wounded?" The teacher indicated Hawkwood's facial scars.

  "One of their riflemen took a stab at me with his bayonet."

  "You were lucky. You could have lost the eye."

  "He was upset." Hawkwood shrugged. "We'd killed a lot of his comrades. Our cannon blew them to pieces. It didn't stop them coming at us, though."

  "What happened to the rifleman?" Charbonneau asked.

  "I killed him," Hawkwood said. "He died, I lived. We surrendered. The British won."

  Hawkwood's manufactured account wasn't too far from truth. He'd read the dispatches. The Rifles had been in the thick of the action, providing covering fire for the Forlorn Hope, the forward troops leading the assault on the walls. The breach had been nearly a hundred feet wide, a huge target for the French gunners who'd launched a hail of grapeshot on to the attackers. It was only after the cannons had been destroyed and a French magazine had blown up that the British had managed to finally take the town. That much had been covered in the newspapers, but only the dispatches covered the aftermath, with accounts of how British soldiers, incensed by the slaughter of so many of their comrades, had gone on a drunken rampage. To prevent a massacre, officers had been forced to draw their swords on their own men. To add to his woes, Wellington had lost two of his best generals: Mackinnon of the 3rd Division and the Light Brigade's Black Bob Crauford, under whom Hawkwood had served on a number of engagements.

  "Bastards," Millet muttered. "Goddamned bastards!"

  The occupants of the table fell into a sombre silence.

  Charbonneau broke the spell. "What about you?" he asked Lasseur.

  Lasseur launched into a humorous account of his capture and imprisonment. It wasn't long before his audience was smiling again, by which time supper was almost over. The messes began to break apart as the prisoners retrieved their hammocks from the foredeck and took them down to their allotted spaces below.

  The boy had fallen asleep at the table, head across his folded arms.

  "What's his story?" Fouchet asked, as Millet and Charbonneau left to reclaim their aired bedding.

  Lasseur shook his head. "He hasn't said much. My guess is he got separated from the rest of his crew. So far, all he's given me is his name."

  Fouchet nodded his understanding. "I suspect he'll be all right once he's with someone his own age. I'll have a word with the other boys. Perhaps he'll talk to them. In the meantime, it would be in his best interest if you kept a watch on him."

  The quiet note of warning in the teacher's voice caused Lasseur to pause as he got up from the table. "That sounds ominous. Something you're not telling us?"

  "The boy's young, small for his age, an innocent from what you've told me and from what I've observed. He's also far from home and therefore doubly vulnerable. It should come as no surprise to you that there are those on board who would be likely to take advantage of his situation."

  Lasseur sat back down. "How likely?"

  Fouchet smiled sadly. "My friend, there are over nine hundred men on this ship. More than eight hundred of them are imprisoned as much by inactivity as they are by these wooden walls. I suspect you already know the answer to your question." The teacher picked up his tin and utensils and rose stiffly from his seat.

  From the look on Lasseur's face Hawkwood knew the privateer captain was remembering his exchange with the balding man on the gun deck. Lasseur stared down at the sleeping boy. His face was as hard as stone. "I'll bear that in mind," he said.

  It wasn't the first time Hawkwood had experienced the restraints of a hammock. There was a definite art to clambering into the sling, but it was a case of once mastered, never forgotten. As a soldier, he'd grown used to bivouacking in uncomfortable surroundings, be it barn, bush or battlefield. On the march, you took advantage of sleep and sustenance when and where you could, because you never knew when the opportunity would arise again. A hammock was the epitome of comfort compared to some of the places he'd had to rest his weary head.

  He lay back and listened to the emanations of the four hundred souls hemmed in around him. The sounds varied widely in content and tone, from the drawn-out cries of the distressed and the wheezing of the consumptives to the groans of the dysentery sufferers and the weeping of the lonely and dispossessed. When added to the chorus of swearing, hawking, spitting, farting, coughing and general expectorations common to the male species, they formed a discordant backdrop to the physical deprivations endured by men held in mass confinement and against their will.

  The human sounds began to fade as the hulk's inhabitants fell under the spell of night. In the darkness, however, the ship continued to express her own displeasure. A continuous cacophony of groans and creaks from the vessel's ancient timbers filled the inside of the hull. It was as if Rapacious was venting her irritation at the presence of those trapped aboard her. The pull of the tide and the sound of the wash against her sides seemed magnified a thousand-fold, as did the hypnotic slap of rope and line against her cut-down masts and yards.

  Mercifully, her gun ports remained propped open, for these were the only means of ventilation. Even so, it was unbearably warm. The squeak of hammock ring against hook and cleat was a grating accompaniment to the noisy tossing and turning of the gun deck's restless residents as they sought relief from their sweltering discomfort.

  Even if there had been silence within the hull, the rhythmic step of the sentries along the metal gantry outside and their monotonous half-hourly announcements that all was well was a salutary reminder that the will of every man on board, be he prisoner or guard, was no longer his own to command.

  A sniffle sounded close by. It was the boy. He was lying on his back, blanket pushed down over his lower legs. His right arm rested across his face as if to ward off a blow. As Hawkwood watched, the boy turned his head, the movement revealing his right eye and lower jaw.

  At that moment, a scream rose out of the darkness. It seemed to hang in the air for two or three seconds before ceasing abruptly. Hawkwood knew it had originated not on the gun deck but somewhere below, deep within the bowels of the ship. There was little or no reaction from either the sentries outside or the occupants of the surrounding hammocks, save for one: the boy. Moonlight from the open gun port highlighted a pale segment of cheek, skin tight over the bone. The boy's eye was a white orb in the darkness. He stared wildly at Hawkwood for several seconds, terror written on his face, then his throat convulsed and he turned away, pulled the blanket over himself, and the contact was lost.

  The scream was not repeated. A small, rounded shadow appeared at the grille. A rat was squatting on the sill, preening. As if suddenly aware that it was being observed, it paused in its ablutions and lifted its head. Then, with a flash of pelt and a flick of tail, it was gone.

  Hawkwood closed his eyes. It was interesting, he thought, that the rat, when startled, had chosen to exit the hull rather than seek sanctuary within it.

  Perhaps it was another omen.

  CHAPTER 5

  Hawkwood stood at the rail of the forecastle and gazed down at his new world. The view was less than impressive.

  Aside from the two accommodation decks, the only other areas on the ship where prisoners were permitted to gather were the forecastle and the well deck, the space referred to euphemistically by the interpreter Murat as "the Park". Lasseur had taken it upon himself to pace out the Park's circumference. The survey did not take long. It was a little over fifty feet long by forty feet in width. It didn't need many prisoners to be taking the air to make the deck seem overcrowded. It explained
why so many men chose to remain below decks. With space at a premium, they didn't have much choice.

  Bulkheads at the forward and aft ends of the ship separated the prisoners' quarters from those of the ship's personnel. The militia guards occupied the bow. The hulk's commander and the rest of the crew were accommodated in the stern. At first sight, the bulkheads appeared to be made of solid iron. On closer inspection, Hawkwood discovered they were constructed from thick planking studded with thousands of large-headed nails. Loopholes had been cut into the metal-shod walls at regular intervals to allow the guards on the other side of the partition to fire into the enclosed deck in the event of misbehaviour or riot. They resembled the arrow-slitted walls of a medieval keep. With the gun deck reminiscent of a long dungeon, it wasn't hard to imagine the hulk as some kind of bleak, impregnable fortress.

  At six o'clock the guards had removed the hatch covers, allowing the prisoners to carry their bedding topside to be aired. Hawkwood had welcomed the first light of dawn, still conscious of the collective reek coming off his fellow inmates. Lieutenant Murat had given his assurance that it would take only a few days to become acclimatized. As far as Hawkwood was concerned, the moment couldn't come soon enough. The gun- port location may have provided access to the elements and a sea view, but it didn't mean the smell was in any way reduced. The foul odours within the hulk had built up over so many years that they'd become engrained in the ship's structure, like a host of maggots in a rotting corpse.

  Breakfast had been a mug of water and a hunk of dry bread left over from the previous evening's supper. The fist-sized block of stale dough had been made marginally more digestible when dunked into the water. It remained small consolation for what had been, despite Hawkwood's ability to negotiate the hammock, a fitful night's sleep. Though it was a soldier's lot to bed down when and wherever he could, it did not always follow that slumber came easily. The night had seemed endless. Lasseur looked equally unrested as he peered out across the choppy brown water.

  Perched at the extreme north-west corner of the Isle of Sheppey, Sheerness dockyard lay across the starboard quarter; an uneven line of warehouses, barracks and workshops. Rising above these was the fortress; its squat, square outline surmounted by a grey-roofed tower. Guarding the entrance to the Medway River, the fort dominated its surroundings, a stone defender awaiting an unwise invader.

  To the south, at the edge of the yard, lay Blue Town. The settlement provided accommodation for the local workforce and owed its name to the colour of the buildings, all of which had been daubed in the same shade of naval paint. Made almost entirely from wood chips left over from the dockyard work, the small houses weren't much more than crude shacks, clumped together in an untidy rat-run of narrow lanes. Even so, they were several steps up from the previous riverside accommodation. Originally, dock workers had been housed in hulks, not dissimilar to Rapacious, moored to break the flow of the river and reduce the loss of shingle from the foreshore. A couple of them still remained, stranded on the mud like beached whales after a storm.

  Across the river, a mile away to port, the Isle of Grain was a dark green smudge in the early-morning light, while beyond the stern rail, less than two miles to the south, lay the western mouth of the Swale Channel, separating Sheppey from the mainland.

  The weather had improved considerably. Despite the sunshine, however, there was a stiff breeze and it brought with it the smell of the sea and the cloying, foetid odour of the surrounding marshes, which stretched away on both sides of the water.

  A cry of warning sounded from the quarterdeck where Lieutenant Thynne was supervising the delivery of provisions from a small flotilla of bumboats drawn up alongside the hulk. Fresh water casks were being hoisted on board to replace the empty ones lifted from the hold, and one of the casks had come adrift from its sling. It was the second delivery of the day. The bread ration had arrived less than an hour before and had already been delivered to the galley.

  Lasseur eyed the activity with interest. "What do you think?" he said.

  Hawkwood followed his gaze to where the wayward cask was being secured. "It'd be a tight fit."

  Lasseur grinned.

  Hawkwood looked sceptical. "How do you know they don't check inside as soon as they get them ashore?"

  "How do you know they do?"

  "I would," Hawkwood said. "It'd be the first place I'd look."

  "You're probably right," Lasseur murmured. "Worth considering, though." He reached into his coat, drew out a cheroot, and gazed at it wistfully.

  "I'd make that last," Hawkwood said. "They tell me tobacco's hard to come by. Expensive, too."

  Lasseur stuck the unlit cheroot between his lips and closed his eyes. He remained that way for several seconds, after which he placed the cheroot back in his coat and sighed. "The sooner I get off this damned ship, the better."

  Latching on to Lasseur appeared to have been a sound investment. From the moment they'd been thrust into the Maidstone cell together, the privateer captain had made it clear he was looking to make his escape. Gaining the man's confidence had been the first step. James Read had been correct in his surmise that Hawkwood's background story and the scars on his face would stand him in good stead. Lasseur and the others had accepted him as one of their own. Hawkwood's task now was to find some way of exploiting that acceptance. Where Lasseur went, Hawkwood intended to follow.

  Hawkwood allowed himself a smile. It was strange, he thought, given the short time he'd known him, how much he'd come to like Lasseur. It had been an unexpected turn of events, for the privateer was, after all, the enemy. But wasn't that what happened when men, irrespective of their backgrounds, were thrown together in unfamiliar surroundings? It reminded him of his early days in the Rifle Corps.

  When Colonels Coote Manningham and Stewart had put forward their plan for a different type of unit, one which would fight fire with fire and carry the war to the French, the men who were to form the new corps had been drafted in from other regiments. Suddenly the past didn't matter; whether they were draftees or volunteers, was irrelevant. The men's loyalty was to the new regiment, and the glue that bound them together was their willingness to fight for their country and against the French.

  On Rapacious, it was a similar situation. It didn't matter whether you had been a sailor or a soldier, privateer, teacher or tradesman. The important thing was that you shared a common enemy. And in the case of the men confined aboard the hulk - Hawkwood included - it was the officers and men of His Britannic Majesty's prison ship Rapacious who were the foe.

  According to Ludd, Rapacious hadn't been her only name. During her years as a man-of-war, as a mark of affection her crew had bestowed a nickname upon her: Rapscallion, a tribute to her role in causing mischief to the French.

  It was doubtful, Hawkwood reflected, looking around him, if any of the seamen who'd raised her sails, scaled her rigging and run out her guns would have recognized her now. Any beauty or sense of pride she might have possessed as a mighty ship of war was long gone. Even with the morning sun slanting across her quarterdeck, with her once graceful profile buried beneath a ramshackle collection of weather-beaten clapboard sheds, she was as ugly as a London slum.

  Another cry sounded from the work party. The full water casks had all been taken aboard and the last bumboat was pulling away with its cargo of empty barrels. Several of the full casks remained on deck. The contents were needed for the day's midday soup and to replenish the drinking water tanks. The hoist was repositioned in preparation for the next round of deliveries.

  Lasseur turned from the rail. "Walk with me, my friend. I'm in need of some exercise."

  The number of prisoners strewn around the deck made it more of an obstacle course than a walk.

  "How many soldiers are there on board, do you think?" Lasseur asked. He kept his voice low as they picked their way through the press of bodies.

  "Hard to tell," Hawkwood said. "Not less than forty would be my guess." He looked aft, where two members of the mi
litia were patrolling back and forth across the width of the raised quarterdeck, muskets slung over their shoulders. Other militia were spread evenly around the hulk, including one on the forecastle from where they had just descended. Hawkwood had counted three on the gantry and one on the boarding raft, and there was one at each companionway. He suspected several others were standing by, poised to deploy at the first sign of trouble.

  The two men left the forecastle and made their way below.

  "I did a count last night," Lasseur said as they descended the stairs. "Six on the grating, one manning the raft, and I could hear others on the companionways."

  "You didn't waste any time," Hawkwood said.

  Lasseur shrugged. "It was hot, I couldn't sleep. What else was I going to do? Besides, I've seen the way you've been looking around."

  "There's the crew as well," Hawkwood said.

  "I'd not forgotten. How many, would you say?"

  Hawkwood shook his head. "On a ship this size? You'd know better than me. Thirty?"

  Lasseur thought about it, pursed his lips. "Not so many. Twenty, maybe."

  "They'll have access to arms," Hawkwood said.

  Lasseur nodded. "Undoubtedly. There'll be an armoury chest: pistols and muskets; cutlasses too, probably." The privateer captain fell silent.

  On the gun deck, Hawkwood was surprised by the number of pedlars foraging for business among their fellow prisoners. In their search for both buyers and sellers, they were as persistent as any he'd encountered under the arches of Covent Garden or the Haymarket. The number of men willing to trade away their belongings appeared to be substantial, though from their pitiful appearance, it wasn't hard to see why. Watching the transactions, Hawkwood didn't know which depressed him most: the fact that these men had been reduced to such penury, or the pathetically grateful expressions on their faces when a bargain was struck. Several of the prisoners who'd arrived the previous day were handing over items of clothing in exchange for coinage. They did it furtively, as if shamed by their actions. Hawkwood assumed the money would be used to purchase extra food, a commodity that had become a currency in its own right.