Rapscallion (23 page)

Hawkwood
couldn't help but grin.

"You
shouldn't judge the lieutenant too harshly, Captain," Fouchet said
seriously. "In this place, all of us make do as best we can."

"And some
of us make do better than others," Lasseur said.

Fouchet wagged
an admonishing finger. "I'm off before they put me in the hole for
breaking curfew. If I were you, I'd try and get some sleep. We've an early
start tomorrow morning."

"We
have?" Lasseur said.
"How come?"

"Hadn't you
heard?" Fouchet said drily. "There's going to be a hanging."

There was no
scaffold.

Bisected by the
stub of the main mast, the yard was outlined against the dawn sky like the arms
of a scarecrow. Suspended from the yard's port and starboard quarters were
three wooden blocks. A rope was threaded through each block. One end formed a
noose. The free end of each rope was secured to a cleat at the ship's
corresponding port and starboard bulwarks.

A line of
militia guarded the ship's rails, bayonets fixed. The rest of the ship's
complement was drawn up on the quarterdeck. An unsmiling Lieutenant Hellard
was standing with the equally stern Thynne on his right and the interpreter
Murat on his left, their backs to the newly risen sun. Both officers were in
full uniform. Opposite them, on the port side of the deck, a row of prisoners
stood in line abreast, some in prison uniform; some in civilian dress. At first
glance, Hawkwood had taken them for the men under sentence until he took a
closer look and did a count and realized how cleverly Hellard had played his
hand. They were the eight members of the prisoners' tribunal.

You
convened quickly enough to see Matisse's crew swing,
Hawkwood thought.

He'd witnessed
punishment on board ship before, on a voyage taking him back to England after
the ignominy of Corunna. It had been a flogging; a seaman had been found guilty
of disobeying an order while drunk. He had been tied to a grating on deck where
he had received twenty-four lashes administered by the boatswain's mate. The
ship's crew had been assembled to witness the event, with marines standing by,
muskets at the ready.

Squeezed against
the forecastle rail with Lasseur at his shoulder and the two militia escorts
from the sick berth at their backs, Hawkwood was struck by the similarity. But
while the scene was almost identical, the mood was not. The flogging of the
seaman had been greeted by an almost sullen silence, whereas the atmosphere on
the deck of
Rapacious
was more reminiscent of a public execution outside any
London gaol.

It had been
Commander Hellard's directive that all prisoners, as well as the ship's
complement, were required to view the punishment, excluding those too ill to
leave the sick berth, but the sheer number of prisoners housed on the hulk
rendered the order impractical. In the end, the summons had been amended to the
requirement that at least two delegates from each mess were to be present,
including Rafales. As a result, the decks were full. Hawkwood didn't think he'd
ever seen such a woebegone, ragbag gathering of human beings in his life.

Down on the Park
the air, sour with the stench of the befouled, prickled with a sense of
anticipation bordering on excitement. So much so that Hawkwood was half
expecting the ship's pedlars to come crawling out of the woodwork and start
touting for business like the pie and sweetmeat sellers that played the crowds
outside Newgate.

As he looked on,
Hawkwood tried to ignore the compression that was forming inexorably at the
back of his throat and the sweat that was leaking from between his shoulder
blades.

A murmur ran
through the watchers as the condemned were brought out on deck, hands tied
behind their backs and flanked by a militia guard. Two of the men were wearing
togas, the rest were dressed in the yellow uniform. Half the men had cuts and
bruises on their faces. The pair wearing the togas also had wounds on their
arms and legs. Hawkwood wondered how many of the injuries had been inflicted
during the fight in the hold and how many were due to the militia's late intervention.

Someone yelled
an obscenity from the Park, which encouraged a cacophony of catcalls. The
condemned men were white- eyed with terror and visibly shaking.

"Silence!"
Sergeant Hook's
voice boomed across the deck.

As the militia
began to place nooses about the men's necks, two of the condemned collapsed
weeping on to the deck. A jeer went up as they were lifted to their feet. Both
swayed precariously as the ropes were finally slipped around their throats. When
all the nooses had been made fast, hoods were placed over the men's heads.

Lieutenant
Hellard stepped forward, accompanied by Murat. He raised his arm and the deck
fell quiet.

Hellard spoke.
Murat translated.

Hawkwood
wondered about the other nationalities on board. Who translated for them?

"Let it be
known that the ship's company and prisoners are gathered here this day to see
justice done. The men you see standing before you have been found guilty of the
most heinous crimes. It is upon the order of the Admiralty of His Britannic
Majesty that each man is hereby sentenced to death, to hang suspended by his
neck until dead. May God have mercy on their
souls.
"

Abruptly, as if
embarrassed by the brevity of his pronouncement, Hellard stepped back and nodded
towards the members of the tribunal.

The surgeon was
right! Hawkwood thought.

He watched as
twelve men dressed in yellow prison uniforms stepped forward. The twelve broke
into three teams of four. Each team retrieved a rope end from the cleat by the
port bulwark. Turning their backs on the condemned men, the three teams stood
in silence, each man holding a section of rope over his right shoulder.

"Carry on,
Sergeant Hook," Hellard said.

The sergeant
nodded towards a pair of militia guards, one of whom pointed his musket into
the sky. The men on the ropes took up the strain. The militia escort stepped
away.

Hawkwood's fists
clenched. The guard fired his musket.

At the instant
the shot rang out, the men holding the ropes sprinted hard towards the ship's
stern. Behind them, three hooded bodies shot into the air, heading for the
yard. As the ropes were pulled tight, and with the musket report still echoing
around the deck, the rope ends were made fast. Only then did the members of the
teams look up at their handiwork. High above them the three corpses, still
spiralling from the momentum of the hoist, dangled below the yard like
grotesque ornaments.

The teams moved
to the starboard ropes. The militia escorts stepped aside.

At another nod
from Hook, the second guard discharged his musket and the hangmen repeated
their charge. Three more bodies ascended rapidly into the warm air.

A sigh, like a
small wind, went around the deck.

One of the
militia let out a curse as a shower of urine and a splatter of faecal matter
released from one of the slow-swinging cadavers missed his shoulder by inches
and hit the deck at his feet. Casting startled looks skywards, his companions
jumped back to avoid the flow of piss and shit raining down from on high as the
bladders and sphincter muscles of the hanged men relaxed. A ripple of laughter
broke from the mass of prisoners. The tension in the air began to dissipate.

"Silence!"
Another roar from Hook.

"A surgeon
once told me it's a quick way to die." Lasseur stared up at the bodies.

Hawkwood said
nothing. He had known that already. The fact that there had been no kicking or
pedalling from the victims' legs after the bodies had left the ground confirmed
the anonymous surgeon's statement. Death had occurred the second the ropes
were pulled taut, from a swiftly broken neck rather than protracted
asphyxiation. He looked down at his hands, to the redness in his palms where
his nails had bitten into the skin.

He heard Lasseur
mutter something sharp under his breath and turned to find the privateer
regarding him with a mortified expression on his face. Lasseur's mouth opened.

"It's all
right, Captain," Hawkwood said. "It was a long time ago."

For a moment
Lasseur looked as if he was about to respond. His eyes flickered to Hawkwood's
throat and the weals on his palms and he nodded silently.

Hawkwood turned
away and looked towards the quarterdeck where Hellard and Murat were in
consultation with the tribunal, while above them the six bodies, their lower
limbs wet and stained with excreta, continued to sway gently in the morning
breeze. His eyes moved over the water to some of the other hulks. Figures, both
prisoners and crew, were lining the rails; all eyes focused upon
Rapacious.
Hawkwood wondered how quickly it had taken for word of
the impending executions to spread around the estuary. Not long, if navy rumour
mills were as effective as the army ones he'd known.

Slowly the
prisoners started to disperse. The mood was subdued. It was as if the full
reality of all that had just happened was finally sinking in. There were a lot
of baleful glances up towards the yard. Hawkwood recognized the signs. The
collective euphoria that had greeted the hangings was giving way to doubt and
the realization that, in the guise of the tribunal, every prisoner on board
Rapacious
had just, in effect, given support to the enemy.

Hawkwood had
also been aware for a while that his and Lasseur's presence on deck was
becoming the focus of some attention. They were drawing glances, both overt and
surreptitious, some respectful, some wary, and the sick-berth guards were
getting twitchy. Hawkwood allowed himself to be led back below deck.

He glanced over
towards the quarterdeck. The planking below the yard was being swabbed and the
militia were letting out the ropes and lowering the bodies. It was tradition,
Hawkwood knew, for the corpses of hanged men to remain suspended from the yard
sometimes for an hour or two, as a potent warning. He suspected Hellard wanted
the latest victims brought down, either as a gesture to the tribunal or, more
likely, because the smell of the bodies in the heat of the morning would be too
much to bear.

The surgeon,
Girard, was watching the proceedings. Hawkwood presumed he was there to
pronounce the men dead; not that there was likely to be any doubt. If there was
one skill in which the navy enjoyed mastery, it was the tying of knots.

Hawkwood and
Lasseur returned to their cots. Even with the smell of sickness seeping from
every pore of the compartment it was a relief to be back in the sick berth after
the overcrowded topside.

"When do
you think they'll transfer us?" Lasseur looked pensive.

Hawkwood
shrugged, glancing towards the guards who'd resumed their positions over by the
hatchway. "It could be any time. As soon as the commander receives authorization,
would be my guess. It was never going to be before the hangings. We were
always going to be present for that. Hellard and the Admiralty wouldn't want to
miss the opportunity to use us to warn the prisoners on the
Sampson
what will happen to anyone who breaks the rules. I wouldn't put it past the
bastards to have shown the two of us leniency just so that we can spread the
word and put the fear of God up any other would-be insurrectionists."

Lasseur threw
Hawkwood a sideways glance. "Did anyone ever tell you, my friend, that
you've a very suspicious mind?"

"All the
time," Hawkwood said. "It's a curse."

Lasseur forced a
grin, stroked his goatee, lay back and placed his arm over his eyes.

It was odd, Hawkwood
thought, how easy it had become to align himself with the plight of the
prisoners and how quickly the Admiralty had become the villain of the piece.

The sound of
weighted footsteps and an outpouring of profanities interrupted his
ruminations. Two prisoners were stepping off the bottom tread of the stairway.
Slung awkwardly between them was a body. Lasseur let go an exclamation of
disgust. The dead men that Hawkwood had seen being removed from the yard were
starting to arrive.

Hawkwood and
Lasseur watched as one by one the corpses of the hanged prisoners were
delivered into the hands of the orderlies. Millet and Charbonneau were among
those delegated with the task of toting the dead. They caught Hawkwood's eye
and nodded imperceptibly. The surgeon Girard brought up the rear.

Hawkwood
wondered who had come up with the suggestion that prisoners should play such an
active role in carrying out the sentence. If it had been Hellard, in many
respects it had been a master stroke. Matisse and his Romans had waged their
war of intimidation on their fellow prisoners. If Hellard, having taken full
advantage of the loathing felt by all the prisoners for the Corsican's crimes,
had, by some subtle stroke, put the idea in the heads of the tribunal, in one
fell swoop he'd not only adhered himself to the prisoner hierarchy, he'd also
partly absolved himself of what could have been seen as implementing a
draconian sentence on foreign nationals.