The Hunger (13 page)

“Each to your decks,” they called.

The prisoners shuffled below with sagging shoulders and hanging heads. Taking what few things these men possessed might have broken their spirits. John felt a profound shame that British men could treat their fellow humans so.

The decks with gun ports were open during the day but the orlop deck got light and air only from the periodic hatches to the decks above, so it was dim and dank even in the morning. The prisoners handed up three corpses after stripping them of anything of value. Reynard stopped some quarreling with a sharp word.

John introduced himself to those immediately around him, hoping to find Dupré but having no luck. Reynard and Vidal, the man whose hammock hung above him, soon put John straight about life aboard the hulks. Normally men practiced all sorts of simple crafts: carving, weaving straw hats. They traded with merchants from Portsmouth for raw materials and sold their finished goods for a pittance compared to what they were worth. The shillings they earned were used to buy enough food to avoid slow starvation, or comforts like playing cards or a decent blanket—all gone now. Their supplies were forfeit and the means to trade their finished products cut off by the lieutenant.

John’s stomach was shocked at his first meal. The
bread, what little there was of it, was raw and gooey inside, burned outside; the stewed vegetables had been near to rotten going into the soup. There was no meat, meat being served only every other day, but his fellows assured him the meat would be near spoiling or past the point. John’s stomach knotted itself in protest.

In the afternoon, making his way around the orlop deck, he found the prisoners from the French frigate
Reliant
. Pressing down his satisfaction, he struck up a conversation about the appalling conditions. Dupré turned out to be sallow-faced, with lank hair and burning brown eyes under heavy brows. “I am glad to meet one whose fame has run before him.”

The man’s eyes narrowed.

“You are a man of importance to the emperor,” John apologized hastily. But he saw with approval that he had planted a seed of curiosity in the man’s speculative expression. They talked warily of Dieppe. Dupré had lived here and John knew enough of the town to reminisce.

“Why would a simple merchant end in this hell?” Dupré asked, eyes hooded.

“Some merchants are not so simple.” John kept his voice low. “I traded with England.”

Dupré had the faintest air of doubt. It would be unremarked by any but John. “Many traders disobey the law without ending in the hulks.”

John smiled softly. “I bought wool destined to be made into uniforms for our glorious army.” He paused. “And perhaps they thought, mistakenly, I traded in less tangible articles.”

“Ahh.” Dupré nodded, looked about to ask another question, and shut his mouth.

Good
, John thought.
Let him wonder
. “I understand money cures many ills on these hulks. We are brothers of Dieppe. Do you fancy the orlop deck, monsieur? Or should we negotiate our way up the ladder?”

Dupré was nothing loath. Reynard helped John negotiate a place on the gun deck. He spent a whole louis to buy a place not only for himself but for Dupré and Reynard. Reynard accepted his gesture but then took him aside. “Never be carried away by generosity, nor by any other feeling here,” the man admonished. “Get used to shutting your heart to all pity on the hulks. It is the only way you will survive.”

Reynard could not know that Dupré at least, was not an object of disinterested generosity, and John did not enlighten him. The three men made their way to their new places. On the gun deck, some prisoners had carved a little personal space, where they once kept books, or an upended barrel on which they played with greasy cards. All was gone now, except for an easel set next to a porthole that held an exquisite naval scene painted in oils. The oils themselves still gleamed wetly on a palette and stood in small bottles on a shelf.

“You seem fortunate,” John said. “Your possessions alone survived.”

The painter snorted. He was a young man of perhaps eight and twenty, and comely. “I get a pound apiece, but the lieutenant gets ten. The brute who sells them in Portsmouth gets twenty. The lieutenant would not cut off the source of his income.” He bowed. “Louis Garneray.”

“He takes a cut of all our sales. I give his prohibition three days,” Reynard observed.

An idea flickered through John’s brain, a fragment only, but with possibilities.

“Monsieur Garneray,” he said, looking at the very fine painting showing eleven hulks in Portsmouth harbor. It was most precise. “Have you ever made engravings?”

“I did some woodcuts and a little metal work before I joined the navy.” The young man drew his prominent brows together, puzzling.

John waved a hand airily. “And if someone bankrolled
you, you could obtain the necessary engraving supplies from your connections? You will need special paper and ink.”

Garneray nodded, wary. “It would take a week.” Reynard looked speculative.

“Then consider me your banker,” John said. “I have some very particular scenes for you to copy. I believe they would be a boon to your fellow prisoners.”

“Special scenes?” Garneray asked. “What kind of scenes? Naval?”

“I should rather say . . . commercial. They are devised by the county bank.”

“Ah,” Reynard breathed, understanding. He nodded at John. “You, sir, are a dangerous man, and a welcome addition to our company.”

The prisoners were ninety percent French in the
Vengeance
, and they had formed their own society, with its own rules and its own form of justice. The guards, what few were needed to keep the floating prison secure, stayed abovedecks supervising exercise, or in their quarters, gaming. They did not venture belowdecks. So the rule of law for deeds committed by prisoners on prisoners was left to the prisoners themselves. Disputes were judged by a council of eight, and punishment meted out at their direction. Stealing was punished ruthlessly with lashing, not surprising when the little a man had was all that stood between him and starvation or fever.

That afternoon, they found one of the prisoners had preserved his deck of cards, concealed upon his person. John joined the game with Dupré. They played Macao. John knew he would get no information from his quarry yet, but he wanted to make certain Dupré would seek another meeting. Nothing engenders confidence like winning money from a man at cards. So he brought out a small portion of his sous, determined to lose them to Dupré.

It was hard. At one point, when John had won his third hand in a row despite all he could do to lose, he began to wonder if Dupré was playing poorly on purpose. Dupré’s expressions were as hard to read as John expected, but the man still did not win. His lack of skill foiled even the advantage of his opaque nature. He seemed distrustful of John’s luck, and a premonition of disaster invaded John’s breast. Would he ever get the man to reveal his secret?

Eight

“You are a man most naturally secretive,” John observed to Dupré the next afternoon. “It makes you the devil of an opponent at cards.” A lie, of course. He had managed to lose some money to the man, but that had not increased Dupré’s trust. Perhaps anyone who traded with the British was suspect. Could Dupré not see that such a man would be perfectly placed to carry messages from French agents in England? John had thought him more imaginative. But he had not asked again about John’s trade.

They played whist as they waited their turn to go up on deck for exercise. John now wore a money belt around his waist. Reynard was Dupré’s partner. John had some ensign named Philippe. Word had it the bodies of the escaped French prisoners still dangled from the booms. Impotent outrage alternated with depression in the prisoner population. Dupré seemed unaffected. Underneath John’s outward calm his spirits were low. He had never been less proud of being English. The fact that he was going to kill Dupré or turn him in for torture did not help. He was as bad as Rose and company in his way.

“I think,” Dupré observed, “that you also have a secretive habit.”

Was Dupré making his overture at last? “Perhaps we have that in common. Along with a certain . . . familiarity with human evil.”

“Ahhh.” Dupré played down a card. “You mean that outrage comes hard for us.”

Damn him. John peered at his hand. He needed to lose this rubber since he had won the last. But there was nothing for it. If he played a smaller card in the suit, the others would remember when the king he held was revealed later. “To a certain kind of man, outrage seems pointless.” He laid the card and collected the trick.

“Don’t think I am sanguine.” Dupré perused his hand. “I would rather be elsewhere.”

“Without doubt. I have extremely urgent business.” John made a stupid lead into a suit he knew was Dupré’s strong second.

“Merchants always think business is urgent.”

“Let us say our cause would think my business urgent, too,” He must go so carefully.

Dupré glanced up under his brows as he took the trick. “Easy to say. But
if
what you say is true, what will you do about it?”

John looked from Reynard to Philippe. “What any good Frenchman should do. Escape.”

“Shush,” Reynard hissed. “Escapes are most often betrayed from belowdecks.”

“There are spies for the English among us?” young Philippe asked, appalled.

“Spies are everywhere,” Dupré observed. He showed no signs of rising to the bait.

Philippe took the trick in spite of John’s best intentions.

“Yes,” John said, his voice flat. “So I have heard.”

He thought for a moment Dupré might say more, but again he closed his mouth. He clearly thought that whatever
John might know, it was not worth exposing his own position. John’s frustration threatened to well from his belly into his eyes, so he stared at his cards.

The guards called the number of their mess and rousted them onto the deck for exercise. They were made to circle round the waist under the bodies of the two dead prisoners. It was cold on deck, but still the bodies were bloated and foul-smelling. The prisoners circled round the small shack built on deck to house the food supplies and the Bentham stove that cooked their miserable rations. The anguish mixed with anger over the treatment of the prisoners’ last remains was palpable. John could hardly wait to be herded below.

Lieutenant Rose came to the edge of the quarterdeck to watch them, grinning. “French dogs,” he said to his second-in-command. “They have no spirit. One must only be masterful.”

John’s blood rose.
Cold, be cold
, he warned himself. Ahead, Reynard stiffened.

Laughter echoed behind them. It was a particularly nasal, British sort of laughter John had heard a thousand times in the clubs of St. James’s. A barrel of half-rotted potatoes stood at the corner. He saw Reynard lean over. His heart sank.

In the long moment when he knew what would happen, conflicting sentiments rushed through John’s breast. He should not endanger himself or his mission. Reynard was right. There was no room for sentiment here. But even Reynard could not hold to his own advice, and what better way to engender some faith in his loyalty to the emperor?

Reynard whirled and hurled the potato straight for the lieutenant. It struck him smack on the chest, bringing him around. The soft fibers burst over the lieutenant’s coat with a satisfying squelch. Almost without thinking, John stooped to the barrel, grabbed a huge potato, dunked it in a bucket of tar and flung it like a missile. It struck the
lieutenant at the throat, cascading black, smelly goo over that braided uniform. And this time the lieutenant was looking straight at him.

The other prisoners dove for the barrel, dipped their rotten weapons in the tar and began hurling them at the officers. Rose shouted for their heads, but the English officers soon had to retreat. Even after the guards began laying about themselves with their truncheons, the tarred potatoes continued to fly. Dupré took a blow to his head. John felt the truncheons on his shoulders. The screeching triumph in the prisoners’ voices gave him strength. He had thrown six of the gooey missiles when more guards came charging out the door from the cabin under the quarterdeck. John saw Dupré go down and dragged him between himself and Reynard for protection. But the melee soon petered out. Prisoners groaned, holding their ribs or their heads. Rose shrieked, a blackened, sticky figure, tar in his hair, on his gold braid, his white stock.

“Get the tall one,” he cried. Hands grabbed John. “I was told he was a troublemaker. Lash him and put him in the Hole. I don’t want to see his face for a week.”

Four guards overpowered John. Reynard stared, pain in his face. Dupré was looking speculative. John grinned and began to sing “La Marseillaise.” Reynard swallowed and joined in. Others followed, one by one. Soon the deck was filled with a baritone chorus.

“Bring the rest of the prisoners on deck for punishment.” Rose had to shout to be heard.

Dupré joined in the singing last of all. John was hauled over to a capstan and tied across it. The hulking guard, Walden, grinned and tore the canvas from John’s back. John looked around without much hope. Where was Faraday?

Beatrix canceled her salon on Tuesday, claiming illness. Symington sent messengers all over town with the cards
crying off. In a way, she
was
ill. She just couldn’t bear the open adoration, the posturing on their part, the forced gaiety on hers, or worse yet, her forced nonchalance. She would have ended screaming at them. But being left to her own devices was even worse. She had paced herself to exhaustion, locked in the artificial darkness of her boudoir all day, and now as dusk fell the night stretched ahead ominously.

A light knock on the door brought her around. She had let all the servants have the evening off. “Go away.”

Instead, the door opened quietly and Symington entered. He bore a tray with a tea service. “The cards have all been delivered, your ladyship. I thought you might like some chamomile tea. It’s very soothing.”

The last thing she wanted was chamomile tea. But the fact that he sensed her distress and brought her something calming was touching. She sat at her writing table while he poured it out. She took a sip. “When . . . when do you go to your sister?” she asked, trying to gather herself.