James McGee - Rapscallion

Juvert looked like a man about to be thrust into a pit full of vipers. Blood from his broken nose had congealed along the crease of his upper lip and both cheeks carried thin vertical scars where the sweat and tears had forged tracks through the dirt on his face.

"Move," Hawkwood said brusquely.

Pushing the reluctant Juvert ahead of them, Hawkwood and Lasseur stepped down through the hatch.

It was like plunging into an oven. Hawkwood felt as if the air was being drawn from his lungs with each step he took. He recalled Murat's description of the orlop and its lack of headroom compared to the gun deck. Even so, when he reached the bottom of the stairway, he was unprepared for just how low the deckhead was; at least another six inches lower than that of the gun deck. His ears picked up a dull thump. The lantern light wavered and he heard Lasseur curse; proof that even an experienced seaman could be caught unawares.

Hawkwood suspected the word had been passed the moment

Juvert's heel hit the top step. The whispering he thought he'd heard earlier had intensified as news of their descent spread through the deck. It sounded like leaves soughing in the wind.

Had the ship still been seaworthy, the orlop would have been below the waterline, with no access to natural light or ventilation. But, as Hawkwood had seen from the longboat, scuttles had been cut into the hull along the line of the deck. Smaller than the gun-deck ports, square cut, and blocked by metal bars, they were nevertheless of sufficient size to allow daylight in, much to Hawkwood's relief. He hadn't relished negotiating the dark with the lantern as their only source of illumination.

If the gun deck resembled a cellar, the orlop was more like a catacomb. He heard Lasseur mutter another oath under his breath and remembered the privateer's comment about boarding a blackbirder off the African coast. It sounded as if Lasseur was reliving the experience. The heat would have been enough to trigger memory. It was stifling; more so than on the gun deck, and the humidity was intense. Hawkwood's shirt was damp with sweat. His skin prickled uncomfortably.

According to Charbonneau, the Romans craved the darkness. The statement wasn't strictly true: the open scuttles proved that and Hawkwood could also see the flicker of lantern light. It made him wonder if it wasn't the Romans and the Rafales' fear of outsiders that governed their near nocturnal existence rather than their supposed predilection for perpetual twilight.

Peering into the orlop's murky interior, he could make out crude benches and rows of sleeping racks. Many of the men on the racks were naked. Huddled together like spoons, their skins as grey as cadavers. Others, clad in what remained of their uniforms, resembled scarecrows, while the ones dressed only in their blanket togas looked more like moths as they melted in and out of the shadows or hovered around the guttering candles, gripping their cards with spindle-thin fingers.

Hawkwood, shirt moulded to his flesh, was beginning to envy the men who were without clothes. It was becoming harder to draw breath. The cause of the faint rattling noise that he'd detected earlier was now clear and he chided himself for not recognizing it as dice being rolled across table tops. Even naked and starving, the Rafales were prepared to gamble their lives away. The darkness couldn't conceal the wild expressions on the faces of the wretches hunched around even the dimmest candle flame. Each tumble of the die was accompanied by cries of excitement or gales of manic laughter. It was like walking through the corridors of Bedlam.

Heads turned towards the intruders. Some faces showed open hostility. Others reflected fear at seeing their sanctuary violated. Some of the men on the sleeping racks, who in the midst of all the wretchedness had still managed to retain a small sliver of dignity, hunkered down in a desperate bid to conceal themselves beneath their meagre scraps of blanket. The remainder turned their faces away and tried to merge into the shadows.

Charbonneau had referred to the orlop-dwellers as animals. Even allowing for prejudice, the description had seemed harsh, but looking around it wasn't hard to see the truth in it. As he made his way along the deck, Hawkwood's stomach heaved at the sight and stench of prisoners lying in their own filth.

"I would not keep dogs in a place like this," Lasseur whispered, horrified.

It seemed impossible to believe that men could allow themselves to be subjected to such degradation. It made Hawkwood wonder about British prisoners held in French gaols. He didn't know if the French used hulks. There were prison fortresses, he knew that; many of them in the north, at Verdun, Quimper and Arras. Were the conditions there as bad as this? It was more than likely any French prisoner who did manage to escape would waste no time in reporting the brutal manner in which they'd been kept. It wasn't inconceivable that, in retaliation, the French authorities would make it their duty to display the same lack of compassion as their British counterparts.

Like many soldiers, Hawkwood had always viewed a quick death in battle as infinitely preferable to being cut and probed by the regimental surgeon and slowly dying, crippled and in agony. Now, bent almost double and surrounded by such abject misery, it was only too clear there were fates far worse than the surgeon's knife. Being captured and held in a place like this — that was death of a kind; a slow, lingering death. And no man, no matter in which army he served, deserved that.

As Hawkwood crabbed his way beneath the beams, trying to avoid the stares, several dark objects tacked to the support struts caught his eye. He paused, curious. Lasseur held up the lantern. Hawkwood found he was looking at a row of rat pelts, with the ears and tails still attached. What had Charbonneau told them? Even the rats aren't safe. Hawkwood wondered what rat meat tasted like. He turned away, sickened.

They were almost at the bow. Ahead of them, the base of the foremast rose solidly out of the deck. The press of bodies wasn't so bad here, Hawkwood noticed, which was curious. It was as though the mast was some sort of totem, beyond which the mass of the Rafales were not prepared to venture.

Hawkwood was acutely aware of the ache at the base of his spine; the effect of being bent double. He tried to ease the discomfort by straightening, suspecting it would be a futile exercise, but discovered to his relief that the height of the deckhead between the crossbeams had become a little more generous. He still wasn't able to stand upright, but there was a definite improvement over the miserly headroom at the bottom of the hatchway.

Juvert paused. He looked suddenly apprehensive. Hawkwood peered ahead cautiously. He could hear voices, but forward of the mast the bow section of the orlop lay in near impenetrable darkness and he couldn't see a thing. Then he heard a bray of harsh laughter and he looked again. It took a second for him to see there was in fact a thick layer of blankets in the form of a curtain suspended from the overhead beam, effectively sealing off the main part of the orlop from the fore platform. From the darkness beyond the heavy veil came the hollow rattle of dice and the murmur of conversation.

Lasseur raised the lantern. He nodded. Hawkwood took Juvert's arm and drew back the edge of the curtain.

During his time in the army Hawkwood had endured a good many sea voyages. The majority of them, almost without exception, had been miserable. But he still held memories of the transport ships and had a vague idea of their layout below deck. In the hulk's previous life, the fore platform had probably housed the boatswain's and carpenter's quarters and workshop, along with the gunner's storeroom, and the area would have been separated from the main orlop by a concave bulkhead. On Rapacious the bulkhead had been removed. The cabins and storerooms had been transformed into gloomy, lantern-lit alcoves, some of which were partially concealed behind hanging blankets. Hawkwood saw that scraps of cloth had also been hung over the scuttles, reducing the daylight coming in through the grilles.