Corsair (23 page)

Hector stumbled over his words as he answered. ‘I was a clerk on a galley for a few weeks,’ he said. ‘And my friend here was with the musketeers.’

‘A musketeer, eh?’ The comite looked at Dan. ‘He doesn’t speak French, does he?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Well, that’s no harm. He doesn’t need to speak the language if he’s got clever hands. Can he mend guns?’

‘I believe so, sir.’

‘What about you? A clerk, you say.’

‘Yes sir. I was responsible for keeping track of stores.’

‘Any good at it?’

‘My master seemed satisfied.’

‘Well if you’re going to be a storekeeper here, you need to keep an extra sharp lookout. All sorts of things go missing. See that galley down there?’ the comite nodded towards the dry dock where the men were keeping up an incessant thumping and banging with their mallets. ‘Notice anything unusual?’

Hector stared down at the workers. The men were busily breaking down the galley, carrying away the timbers and setting them on one side in neat piles. Most of the workers were wearing what seemed to be a prison uniform of a parti-coloured jacket of dark red and brown worn over heavy canvas trousers. The legs of the trousers were also in different colours, one brown and one buff. All of the men wore bonnet-like caps, but some were dark blue and others were scarlet. He guessed that these marked a different status between the prisoners, and was about to comment when he noticed something else. The planks, frames and beams that were being stacked up were freshly cut. The workers were taking to bits a galley that had never been put to sea. He said as much to the comite.

‘That’s right,’ confirmed Gasnier. ‘That’s what they’re doing,’ but he did not explain further. He only beckoned to an assistant and instructed him to take Dan to the armoury and leave him there in charge of the chief armourer for assessment as a gunsmith. Then, addressing Hector again, he said, ‘You report to the head storekeeper. He’ll tell you what to do. You’ll find him in the main depot over by the sail loft.’

T
HAT EVENING
Hector and Dan met when work at the Arsenal finished for the day and they were shown to their dormitory.

‘I never imagined there were so many muskets in all the world,’ Dan told his friend. ‘There are ten thousand of them stored in the Arsenal – four galleries lined with rack after rack of guns, and they all have to be checked and cleaned and repaired as necessary. I’m to be one of forty gunsmiths employed in that task.’

‘Will you be able to manage?’ Hector asked.

The Miskito nodded confidently. ‘I passed my test. The head armourer handed me a musket and used sign language to ask me what was wrong with it. I pointed to a dangerous crack in the barrel which would burst one day, and I mimed the sort of injury the explosion would do to the man who fired it. He would lose an eye or be scarred for life.’

Dan stretched luxuriously, extending his arms above his head.

‘As soon as I passed my test, an armourer removed my wrist and ankle chains and only left the ankle ring in place. He told me that I will be handling gunpowder from time to time, and the less metal I have about me, the less chance there is of a spark setting off an explosion.’

‘Wish the head storekeeper would do the same for me,’ commented Hector. ‘Wrist fetters are a real handicap when it comes to handling a pen.’

He was about to continue when a voice behind him said, ‘I told you that the commissaire would snap up the least crumb.’ Hector turned to see Jacques Bourdon standing in the doorway, a smug look on his branded face. ‘It only goes to prove the old saying that appetite comes with eating,’ the pickpocket added as he sauntered into the room.

‘You mean you managed to bribe the commissaire?’

‘It didn’t take much, just two small silver coins.’

‘And where did you get the money?’

‘And wouldn’t I have been stupid not to make a few advance arrangements when I heard I was to be taken south from Paris with the chain? I sent my lass on ahead to Marseilles with the cash from my last robbery. I couldn’t hide it on me because I knew those swine of argousins would strip and rob us on the way down here. So she was waiting at the Arsenal gate for one last embrace and it was the sweetest kiss she ever gave me. A mouthful of silver.’

The pickpocket sat down on a bench. ‘It seems I’ve also managed to get myself assigned to that missing galley of yours. What’s her name?
St Gerassimus
, though who was Gerassimus, or what he did to deserve his sainthood, I’ve no idea. But the rumour is that the galley’s to receive the pick of the new Turkish slaves in from Livorno, and that’s good news. Turks make the best oarsmen, as anyone in the Galley Corps will tell you, and if your fate is to be a galley oarsman there’s no better place on the bench than alongside a great big strapping Turk. Which reminds me,’ the pickpocket nodded towards Dan, ‘you said your friend here isn’t a Turk, then why’s he wearing that ring, and no chains?’

‘He’s working in the armoury,’ Hector explained. ‘It’s to avoid accidents.’

Bourdon appeared unconvinced. ‘Tell him not to get any fancy ideas about running away, now that his legs are free. He looks enough of a foreigner, with that long ugly face and brown skin, to be mistaken for a Turk.

Thinking back, Hector recalled that few of the men he had seen dismantling the galley had been wearing chains.

‘That’s how you’ll recognise the Turks among the other galley men,’ Bourdon continued, ‘Turks don’t wear leg chains or even wrist fetters when on shore.’ He leaned back against the wall, clearly pleased to be showing off his superior knowledge. ‘They only wear an ankle ring. The authorities know that the Turks will very seldom try to escape, because where would they go? They would find it very hard to get aboard any ship to take them home, and here in France who would take them in? So there’s no point in keeping them chained up, except on a galley at sea for fear they mutiny and take over the vessel. And even a mutiny is unlikely. The funny thing about the Turks is that they’ll settle down to whatever job is given them. They’ll work as hard on a Christian galley as on one of their own religion, and often you’ll get better treatment from the Turk on the galley bench beside you than from your Christian neighbour at your other elbow.’

‘Surely a Turk will try to escape if an easy opportunity presents itself,’ said Hector doubtfully.

‘If that happens, the good people of Marseilles enjoy a spot of fun,’ answered Bourdon. ‘There’s a fat reward to anyone who brings him in to the authorities, so the local folk organise search groups and pass the word to be on the lookout for a foreign-looking cove. When they locate their quarry, they chase him, just like running down a hare or stag.’

‘And when they catch him?’

‘They bring him back to the argousin-major, and collect their reward.’

‘And the Turk?’

‘He doesn’t run away a second time. His ears and nose are cut off, and from that moment onward he is kept chained to the bench, and not allowed to go ashore.’

H
ECTOR HAD BEEN
only a fortnight in his job as a storekeeper’s assistant when he came to appreciate the truth of Bourdon’s claim that the management of the Arsenal was riddled with graft. He was standing at the iron-bound gates of the powder magazine, making a tally of the gunpowder kegs arriving from an inbound galley, when he noted something strange. There was a strict rule in the Galley Corps that whenever a vessel returned to port she sent ahead her ship’s boat loaded with all her kegs of powder. These were placed in the Arsenal’s thick-walled powder magazine for safe storage because some years earlier a fully armed galley had blown up in harbour, either by accident or sabotage, and there had been heavy loss of life. Hector had issued gunpowder to the same galley just two days previously, and now he observed that while the number of barrels he received back was the same as had been given out, several of the markings on the kegs were different. Since his days in the stone quarry of Algiers he had made a habit of noting down the different markings on the kegs, and when he checked with the head storekeeper his suspicions deepened. ‘Our gunpowder comes from all over France,’ the storekeeper told him blandly. ‘It depends on the contractors. They’re all small producers because there are no large gunpowder factories, and naturally each maker has his own marks. Just write down the number of barrels returned, and leave the list with me.’

When Hector mentioned the incident to Bourdon that evening, the pickpocket rolled his eyes in mock surprise. ‘What do you expect? The commissaire who organises the purchases of supplies for the Corps will have lined his own pocket when he placed the original powder contracts, and naturally the head storekeeper takes a cut when the materials are delivered into store. So he looks the other way when the captains and quartermasters on the galleys have a bite at the same cherry.’

‘But how do they do it?’ asked Hector.

The pickpocket shrugged. ‘I have no idea, but you can be sure that if there’s a way of turning a quiet profit, someone will have found it. My guess is that the galley captains are selling the better quality powder to the Marseilles merchants, and replacing it with low-grade, cheaper material. But it’s not your job to say anything. You don’t exist as far as France is concerned. You are a non-person. Even if you reported your suspicions to someone like comite Gasnier who has the reputation of being incorruptible, and he brought the matter before the authorities, you could not serve as a witness. Once you’ve been committed to the oar, you are legally a dead man. If I were you, I’d try to work out how the fraud is being done, and then keep that knowledge to yourself until you can use it to your own advantage. But be very careful! The people who run this place take good care that King Louis stays so besotted with his precious Galley Corps that he doesn’t ask awkward questions. They wouldn’t look kindly upon anyone who might upset their cosy schemes.’

J
UST HOW FAR
the Intendant and his staff would go to impress the King became clear when the head storekeeper summoned Hector to his office the very next afternoon.

‘I am selecting you for special duty. The Intendant has informed every department that next Thursday the Arsenal is to demonstrate its skill and efficiency in the Royal Presence by building, launching and equipping a new war galley in just thirty-six hours.’

Hector was too astonished to reply.

‘Of course it’s nothing more than a stunt,’ the storekeeper sniffed. ‘But that’s what Intendant Brodart has ordered us to do, so we have to put up with it. The Intendant boasted to the King and to the minister that the Arsenal is capable of such a feat. Premier comite Gasnier has known about it for weeks. Now it’s official.’