Wicked at Heart (11 page)

"They're
issued clothes by the Transport Office, and they're fed as well as the seamen
aboard any navy ship.  They have nothing to complain about, damn it, so come
along before I lose what little blasted patience I have left."  He saw two
marines anxiously watching him move toward the ladder.  It was not safe for him
to go below unescorted, and far less safe for the lady.  He jerked his head and
they immediately fell into place behind her, tense, watchful, their weapons at
the ready and their eyes alert for possible trouble.

The hatch to the
stinking, noisy lower deck awaited him like a hangman's noose.  Heat rose from
it like a furnace.  Already, Damon could hear the prisoners down there, yelling
and shouting, already he could see their dim shapes clustering around the base
of the ladder, pale faces turned upward — waiting for him like demons in the
pit of hell.  He had a flashback of Oxford, his tormentors leaning out of the
windows above his head, laughing, mocking, taunting him as he fled, sobbing,
across the lawn.  He did not want to go down there.  God help him, he didn't. 
He clenched his fists, steeling himself. 
They're just prisoners, for God's
sake, they mean nothing, nothing!
 He was keenly aware of
her
, still
behind him, she who was about to witness his further humiliation, she who would
probably laugh right along with them, and he felt his pulse beginning to throb
in time to his headache.  He turned and stared coldly at her, hoping to put her
off.  She was wrinkling her nose and frowning as she peered down into the
hatch, but she did not go for her handkerchief.

He had to give
her credit.  She must be made of strong stuff indeed.  "I see that the
heat and stench alone are affecting you.  You'd be wise to abandon this idea, now."

"On the
contrary, my lord.  We have barely scratched the surface of this problem.  After
you."

Needles of
hatred stabbed through him and in that moment Damon never loathed anyone as
much as he did Lady Gwyneth Evans Simms.  But he would not let her triumph,
would not let her see his fury, and so nodded, allowing his expression to set
in its familiar mask of cold dispassion.  Then, silently vowing revenge for
what she was putting him through, he descended through the hatch, going down
first.

Gwyneth's first
sight of the lower deck was something that would remain with her for the rest
of her life.  As she crept down the ladder into a hot, acrid darkness,
illuminated by nothing but mean stabs of daylight sifting through narrow,
iron-grated scuttles, all noise suddenly stopped.  In the murky, malodorous
gloom she saw hundreds of gaunt faces staring at her, frozen with curiosity,
interest, awe.  She felt the overwhelming despair, misery, and anguish that
infected every inch of this horrific place as keenly as though it were the
plague.  Already the heat was intense, making her gown cling to her skin; the
overpowering stench caused her eyes to water and the bile to rise in her throat. 
As she stepped down onto a deck that was slick with grime, she saw the marquess
standing stiffly by the companionway, where the only headroom was to be had,
making a big pretense out of studying his watch.  His features were rigid, his
eyes shuttered.

"Seen
enough?" he asked sharply, looking up.

She could only
stand there, crouched beneath the low overhead deck as she stared about her,
too shocked to answer, even to record in her notebook what her nightmares could
not have begun to imagine.

Men, some half
naked, some wearing nothing more than the grime that covered them, reposed on
benches or stood idly about, caught in the act of playing dice, conversing,
making ship's models out of bits of wood.  They stared at her.  Lice crawled in
their hair.  Flies drank from the sweat trails that cut rivers down their
filthy faces.  Scabs dotted their skeletal legs, their bony arms, the patches
of skin that showed through the remnants of their clothing.  Some of them had
hard, feral eyes and starved smiles; others looked at her with sad gazes devoid
of hope.  Still others just stared, corpse-like, right through her, their minds
already dead and waiting for their bodies to follow.  Hammocks — some stowed,
some hung, some lying in the damp filth of the deck — were everywhere, and the
deck overhead was, at five feet, so low that nobody could stand up, the result
being that those prisoners who were on their feet were round-backed and
hulking, adding to their frightening, monstrous effect all the more.

And then the
noise started.

"Aaah, look
at the fancy Englishwoman!  Come to stare at us like animals in the zoo, come
to gawk!  Bah, you go, leave us!  Go now, no humiliate!"

Movement,
violent shoving.  "No, let her stay!  We never get to see pretty ladies. 
Let her stay!"

"Hey
Capitaine
,
you got yourself
une belle femme
?  You share her with hungry Frenchmen,
no?"

"Come here
to my hammock,
ma coeur
!  Let me show how a
real
man can pleasure
you!"

The insults and
abuse grew deafening, fists flew, and a wave of threat and hostility began to
push the crowd forward.  Gwyneth looked nervously at Lord Morninghall.  He
shoved his watch into his pocket, his eyes blazing, and turned to one of the marines
who stood on the ladder just behind them.  "Shut these wretches up!"
he snapped, seizing Gwyneth's arm and hauling her quickly toward the next
hatch.

But not fast enough. 
She saw two men eating a dead rat, another grinning madly as he exposed himself
to her, another urinating against the hull and watching, fascinated, as the
urine streamed down the blackened wood.  Filthy hands reached for her, and she
gasped when someone snatched the hat from her head with a shout of triumph,
pulling her hair, pulling tears of pain to her eyes, flinging the hat out into
the masses like a trophy.  She pressed close to Morninghall, suddenly terrified
of becoming separated from him.

"English
pig!  How dare you bring your woman aboard to flaunt her in our faces!"  An
American voice, that one.

And more French: 
"You wait, ze Black Wolf will rescue us!  Ze Black Wolf will make you a laughingstock,
aristo
!"

The clamor grew
louder, and behind her she could hear the marines yelling angrily for order. 
Morninghall had released her arm and was just going down the ladder now, his
shoulders set and rigid, his hair gleaming in the dim lantern light.

"Why aren't
these men better dressed than they are?" Gwyneth asked, yelling down to
him over the din.  She grasped the coaming and yanked her hand away in disgust
at the grime that soiled her glove.  "I thought you said the Transport
Office issues them clothing —"

"They do. 
These men,
madam
, are the very lowest of the low, the
Raffalés
,"
he responded, without bothering to turn around.  "You will find the
officers, the gentlemen, and the Americans in a more acceptable state of
clothing, breeding and manner."

"Surely,
being of a low social class should not mean they have to go about freezing and
half-naked!" she cried, over the noise.

He looked up at
her over his shoulder.  "If they are freezing and half-naked, it's their
own damned fault.  They gamble away their clothing, their hammocks, even their
food, going hungry during the day then slinking around like rats at night and
devouring the crumbs left on the deck.  What do you want me to do about it,
forbid the gaming?  Christ, I'd have a damned mutiny on my hands."

Gwyneth's jaw
snapped shut, for she had no answer to that.  She felt suffocated.  She
continued down the hatch, terrified of losing Morninghall, each step bringing
her into hotter air, louder noise, more terrible smells.  It was all she could
do not to draw her handkerchief and press it to her nose.  She took tiny
breaths, each one an anguish in itself.

She reached the
bottom of the ladder and found herself on another deck.  Sweat was now trickling
down her brow and the curve of her spine, and the air was unbreathable. 
Instinctively, she reached for her handkerchief; then, coughing, she crumpled
it in her fist.  If these poor people could endure such air — for months,
sometimes years, on end — she, who had to suffer it for only a brief time,
would not make them feel even more wretched, more humiliated, by refusing to
share their plight.  Determined to ignore her discomfort, she peered through
the gloom, the shifting wall of unwashed, skeletal bodies, and saw a small
group of prisoners sitting on a little bench, one of them, finer dressed than
the others, holding a book.

"What are
they doing?" Gwyneth asked.

"Damned if
I know," the marquess retorted, giving her a look that dared her to
challenge him.

Her temper began
to boil.  She clenched her teeth in frustration.  Behind her, one of the marines
was just coming down the hatch.  "The gentleman's an officer," he
offered, hearing her question.  "He's teaching the others English."

The gentleman in
question looked up and inclined his head at Gwyneth, the pitiful attempt at
gallantry tearing at her heart.

"Don't look
so upset, ma'm.  These men, they make their own beds, just as His Lordship
says.  The
Raffalés
, they don't care about anything.  They gamble away
the clothes right off of their backs, the food right out of their stomachs. 
But the rest, they all have their own little trades and professions, teaching
dancing, fencing, drawing and painting, and the like to the others — for a
small fee, of course.  They make ship models out of the beef bones or the
bread, sell it to the masses, hold little auctions and such.  I know it looks
like hell here, ma'm, but the prisoners, they adapt.  Why, the Americans even
elect their own officers to govern them, just as they do in their own
government; make their own laws, define crimes, and mete out punishments. 
Cleanest of the lot, though, those Yanks, real fussy about their persons . .
."

His words
blended into a soup of incomprehensible excuses as Gwyneth, feeling faint,
fanned herself with her notebook.  "Then why is the stench so bad down
here?  Are the latrines never emptied?  Are the decks never washed?  Are these
men never allowed to bathe?"

Lord Morninghall
was waiting, watching.  Flickering lantern light painted his face in tongues of
orange, making it appear diabolic, savage even.  "Those things, and
others, are
supposed
to come about," he muttered darkly, almost to
himself.  "But it would appear that the very people one assigns to oversee
such tasks find more
interesting
things to do."

The marine
flushed, visibly distressed.  Seeing that Gwyneth had noted his captain's
cryptic words and was now studying him keenly, he gave a lame smile, trying to
defuse the tension-filled moment.  "We don't like to wash the decks too
much, ma'm, especially not in the cooler months.  More damp, it just brings on
sickness and such —"

"What about
bathing?"

"Well, er,
yes, some of 'em bathe . . . sometimes . . ."

"Aren't
they given
soap
?"

"Soap isn't
something the authorities issue, ma'm.  I mean, this isn't a fancy manor house
or anythin' . . ."

"So I
see," she murmured coldly.  She entered this too in her notebook, but as
she bent her head, the sweat ran down her brow and into her eyes, and the smell
pushed its way into her nose, the back of her throat, even her head.  She had a
sudden, very real fear she was going to faint.

She saw
Morninghall regarding her, coolly disdainful yet meditative, as though he knew
her plight and was reveling in it.  She shot him a look of pure loathing and
took a few hesitant steps away from the ladder.

Down here, the
air was so heavy that the few lanterns that penetrated the gloom did so with
the same effect of a ship's light in a heavy fog, making it appear fuzzy, hazy,
dim.  Gwyneth, gagging, could only take in desperate, pinched gasps of it. 
Each tiny breath brought her near to retching.  Her eyes watered.  Her nose
burned, her stomach began to roil, and the heat, emanating from hundreds of
sweating, unwashed bodies crammed into such a small space, pressed against her
senses, her clothes.  A fly buzzed around her eyes and she batted at it, only
to have it come back; she batted at it again, harder this time, feeling
hysteria and a mad urge to flee this hell of hells beginning to overpower her. 
She tried to stand up, bumping her head on the low deck overhead, and as she
instantly recoiled, near to sobbing, she saw a dead rat underneath a bench, and
more flies crawling across it, some of them rising to move lazily through the
humid, unmoving air.

And still, those
devils' eyes of Morninghall's, watching her.

The fly came
back, and with a little cry she swatted at it, backing up to where the marquess
waited.

"Seen
enough?" he asked harshly.

She shot him a
look of pure disgust that he could let things be so bad down here, and saw the
shame, the embarrassment, in his gaze before he turned his face away, his jaw
hard.

"No, my
lord," she replied, her voice trembling with anger and determination. 
"I feel as though I'm going to be ill, my head is dizzy, and I am near to
swooning for lack of air — but no, I'm not ready to leave.  I would ask,
however, that since this wretchedness does not appear to be affecting you as it
is me that you be gentlemanly enough to stay close to me, perhaps take my arm,
in case I become unsteady on my feet and finally succumb to that which I see
and smell around me."

Damon stared at
her, momentarily disarmed and struck dumb.  The woman was as pale as a sheet,
perspiring, swaying dizzily — yet she was not about to abandon her quest.  She
had nothing to gain personally from doing this, yet she was still able to put
aside her own physical discomfort for the common good of something greater than
herself, able to overcome her disgust and fear and find compassion for these
filthy men who had taunted and insulted her.  It was total selflessness, and in
contrast he felt small, mean, unworthy.  Something hurt inside of him, as
though a crack had split his heart, and a wave of admiration for this plucky
little woman's spirit and courage swept through him.  He reached out, as she
had humbly asked him to do, and steadied her elbow.  "Very well, then.  If
you wish to see more than you might as well see the Black Hole as well."