Rapscallion (35 page)

There had been
no protracted farewells.

Shaking their
hands in turn, Tom Gadd had wished them a fair wind and then looked vaguely
embarrassed by his verbosity.

Jess Flynn had
hung back, only stepping forward to press a folded napkin into Lasseur's hands.
"Some food for the journey.
It's not much; just
some bread and cheese."

As she stepped
away, Hawkwood saw her fingers make contact with the back of Lasseur's wrist.
The gesture had been so subtle, he wondered if he might have imagined it; yet
he knew instinctively he had not and that more had been said in that fleeting
touch and in the look on Jess Flynn's face than could have been expressed in a
thousand words.

She had turned
to Hawkwood then.
"Safe passage, Captain Hooper."

"Madame,"
Hawkwood said.

With a brief nod
and a final glance towards Lasseur, she turned and, straight-backed, head held
high, made her way back to the house,
a shaggy
,
four-legged shape padding obediently in her wake.

Lasseur had
watched her walk away, his face still.

"Time to
go, Captain," Tom Gadd murmured beside him.

Lasseur nodded.

The seaman lingered
as Hawkwood and Lasseur climbed on to the cart. At the last minute, Lasseur
turned to him. "Watch over her, Thomas," he said quietly. "Try
and keep her safe."

Gadd nodded.
"I'll do my best, Captain." He watched as Lasseur settled himself
down and waited until Asa Higgs had set the horse in motion before turning to
follow the woman and dog towards the house.

"So, if you
ain't a Frenchie, what the hell are you?"

Asa Higgs
winkled a clot of ash from his pipe and tapped the bowl against the side of his
boot.

"American,"
Hawkwood said.

"Is that
right?" The gravedigger considered Hawkwood's response. "An' that's
why you'd rather be fighting for Boney than for the King?"

"He's not
my
king," Hawkwood said. "That's why we had a revolution."

The gravedigger
sucked on his pipe stem. "Emperors pay well,
do
they?"

"Better
than kings," Hawkwood said.

The gravedigger
grinned and adjusted his gnarled grip on the
reins. "Got a cousin over
Rochester way tells me they've got hundreds of your lot behind bars.
Said the Crown Prince at Chatham is full to the gunwales with
pressed Yankee sailors who've refused to fight for Farmer George."

Which was why
Hawkwood had been sent to
Rapacious,
further downriver, where
there had been less risk of his false identity being discovered.

The gravedigger
went on: "Heard tell the
army's been
sendin'
recruitin' sergeants aboard offerin' sixteen guineas to any American willing to
switch sides. From what I
knows
of the hulks, you'd
have thought they'd be queuin' up, but they ain't had any takers. You
was
lucky you got away."

It had been some
time since they'd left the farm. Sunset had given way to dusk, which in turn
had darkened into an indigo- hued twilight. It was now night time. There were
no clouds to mask the moon. The sky was bright and clear; the stars strewn
across the night sky like diamonds on black velvet.

From what
Hawkwood had been able to deduce, Asa Higgs had been true to his word, keeping
them well away from anything resembling an established road. Most of the journey
had taken them down narrow cart tracks and drovers' trails; hidden byways
which, over the centuries, had been used by generations of farmers to herd
stock across country to market. Some of the trails were so overshadowed by
trees it was like passing through a series of tunnels. On these occasions,
Higgs had been content to let the horse take the lead, which it had done
without any notable deviation. The animal was obviously as familiar with the
ground as its driver, which was fortunate, for even in daylight the most
eagle-eyed person might have found himself teetering on the rim of the trail,
or plunging into the steep-sided gulley below.

On one occasion
they had crossed a river. As the cart rattled over the old stone bridge,
Hawkwood had seen the moon reflecting on the dark water flowing beneath them.

Signs of
habitation were few and far between. Occasionally a distant light would catch
the eye, indicating an isolated cottage or farmstead. There had been no sign of
any other travellers.

Hawkwood, Lasseur
and the gravedigger might well have been the only people abroad.

"Your
friend don't
have a lot to say for himself," the
gravedigger murmured.

"Been a
long day," Hawkwood said. "He's feeling a bit weary."

The gravedigger
was right, though. Lasseur had been noticeably quiet since they'd left the
farm. It was obvious he was thinking about Jess Flynn.

Just as well we left when we did
, Hawkwood
concluded. It was patently obvious that Lasseur's feelings for the woman went
beyond mere sympathy for the loss of her husband and her solitary status. The
manner of their leaving had suggested the attraction was mutual, though
Hawkwood knew it was equally possible that the widow's parting gesture had not
been a sign of some deep-seated feeling but a tactile expression of gratitude
for Lasseur's intervention when she had been attacked. A gut instinct, however,
told him that wasn't the case. And therein, he knew, lay the problem. The
privateer's concern for the underdog, while admirable, had already cost them
dear, nearly compromising their escape plan, and Hawkwood's assignment in the
process. The last thing Hawkwood needed was for Lasseur to lose his objectivity
over a woman with whom he had no possible future. Sooner or later the Frenchman
would have to be reminded that he couldn't save all the lost and disaffected
souls, no matter how hard he tried.

The land rose
before them. They were no longer travelling in the dips and the hollows but had
emerged on to a broader track bordered on both sides by tangled thickets. The
night was full of eerie feral sounds: owls hooting, frogs croaking, animals
foraging and leaves rustling. Somewhere deep within the wood a fox barked. The
noise rose like a scream into the night like a soul in torment. Even though he
recognized the sound, the short hairs prickled along the back of Hawkwood's
neck.

Suddenly the
bark was cut short.

The evening
seemed suddenly unnaturally still. Asa Higgs urged the horse on and looked
about him warily.

Hawkwood tensed.
There had been a movement to his right;
a vague, shadowy shape at the corner of his vision, flitting
through a break in the trees; moonlight glancing
off.
. . something; he wasn't sure what.

He felt Lasseur
stir beside him and was reassured. Despite the distractions, the privateer's
senses were still fully alert.

Even so, neither
of them was prepared for the wild, nerve- jarring screech of laughter that
exploded from the trees, or the ghastly apparitions that vaulted without
warning on to the track ahead of them.

The startled
gravedigger yanked back on the reins and the cart slewed sideways.

There were two
of them; a matching pair. They were dressed like monks, in black habits and
hoods. But it was not the nature of their attire, which was torn and streaked
with dirt, or the pistol that each of them brandished that drew the eye and set
the heart beating; it was what lay within the cowls.
For the
black-clad priors had no faces, only bare skulls that gleamed like white-hot
coals in the darkness.

Hawkwood wrinkled
his nose. Piss; there was no mistaking the pungent odour. It was there, souring
the inside of his nostrils every time he inhaled. Holding his breath wasn't a
viable option, so there was little he could do except try and ignore it, which
was difficult for the smell was coming off the man seated beside him in waves.
It was strange, Hawkwood thought; before he'd washed the stench of the hulks
from him, he doubted the smell would even have registered. Now, it was all he
could do not to clamp his hand over his face.

Sensing
Hawkwood's aversion, the black-clad figure turned his head. "
Ain't
me. It's the bleedin' paint. An' if you think I smell
bad, you're lucky it's me keepin' you company and not Billy back there."
The figure jerked a thumb. "Now,
'e
does bloody
stink!"

Lasseur, who had
given up his seat and shifted into the back of the cart with the coffins,
grimaced.

Hawkwood's
knowledge of alchemy bordered on the nonexistent.
He had no idea what
made the paint - if that was the catalyst - glow in the dark, and could have
cared even less, though he had to admit the effect was quite dramatic,
especially if you weren't expecting it. Presumably Asa Higgs had been
anticipating some kind of ghostly manifestation, but even he'd nearly jumped
out of his skin, much to the amusement of the spectral duo when they'd seen who
was driving the cart.

The skull images
had been painted in some kind of waxy substance on to close-fitting black cloth
hoods, similar to those used by executioners. When framed by the folds of a
cowl and lit by moonlight, the result was spectacular and, to the uninitiated,
quite terrifying. It was certainly an effective way of persuading unwelcome
visitors of an inquisitive disposition to keep their distance.

But from what?

The track
continued its steady ascent. It was then that Hawkwood saw a light through a
gap in the trees. There was some kind of
man-made
structure ahead, too, but its outline was indistinct. It was only as they rounded
the final bend and the gradient flattened out that he realized what he'd been
looking at.

The turreted
gatehouse looked old, as did the high, grey-stone wall that flanked it. Set
into the gatehouse was a Norman archway. Two men dressed in work-day clothes
and armed with clubs and pistols guarded the entrance. The malodorous friar
gave a nod and the pickets parted to let them through.

The gravedigger
clicked his tongue and guided the horse forward. "Welcome to the
Haunt."

"Haunt?"
Lasseur echoed from behind.

"Monk's
Haunt.
Leastways, that's what we call it now. Used to be St
Anselm's Priory; most of it fell into ruin, but there's a fair bit still
standin'. You'll see for yourself. Place has seen a few owners since them days.
One of the local squires moved in and built himself a house. It was run as a
farm for a while after he died, and then Mr Morgan took it on. It was him who
gave it the name, 'cause of all the stories 'bout how the place was haunted.
That's how he stops nosey parkers from gettin' too close and learnin' 'is
business; on nights when we're moving goods around, he gets the likes of Del
here to play silly buggers and scare 'em away."

The mock friar
grinned then. He had an unruly mop of curly hair, a thin weasel face, and teeth
like a mule. It was on the tip of Hawkwood's tongue to suggest he probably
didn't need the mask.

The friar threw
the gravedigger an admonishing look. "It's no good sniggerin', Asa Higgs.
It works and don't you deny it. I've seen people piss their breeches when we've
leapt out on 'em. There's even been a few who've passed away with the fright of
it."

"With the
bleedin' smell, more like," Higgs muttered under his breath.

"I told
you," Del's voice rose in indignant protest, "it ain't me, it's the
bloody paint."

While Del and the
gravedigger discussed the phosphorescent properties of piss and pigment,
Hawkwood and Lasseur exchanged wary glances. Each knew the other was thinking
back to their conversation with Jess Flynn and Tom Gadd.

A building came
into view. It was hard to make out specific details in the darkness. Hawkwood
assumed he was looking at the main house. The impression was of stout walls,
gabled windows and high chimneys. He could see the silhouettes of other
buildings behind it. Some looked to be whole, while others stood in obvious
ruin; from their imposing size, he presumed they were part of the original
priory. He thought about the gatehouse and the adjoining wall and how far it
might extend. That in turn made him wonder how many other guards were roaming
the woods, for while the place may well have started life as a retreat devoted
to prayer and meditation, this was clearly no longer the case. From what he'd
seen so far, the Haunt had all the hallmarks of an armed compound.

The gravedigger
drove them into a gravelled stable yard, bringing the cart to a halt outside a
set of large wooden doors. The doors were open. Light from within the building
spilled out. The smell of compacted straw and animal dung hung in the air.

Del climbed down
from the cart, nearly tripping over the hem of his habit in the process.
"The boss wanted me to bring you to 'im. We'll try in 'ere first. One of
the mares is in foal. He's expectin' 'er to deliver tonight. Best wait here,
Asa." He beckoned to Hawkwood and Lasseur. "You two, come with
me."