There were rumours that she’d started life as a merchantman for the East India Company transporting ivory and muslin, but had later been judged too small to turn a profit. Others hinted that she had plied a more odious trade, ending her days as a slaver on the notorious Middle Passage.
Whatever the truth, she had probably been beautiful in her prime, bows thrusting proudly into the wind and spray, sails spread against an azure sky. But that had been a previous incarnation. Now, left to her fate, she sat embedded in the Thames mud, a rotting derelict.
No one could remember her name. The letters that had adorned her once graceful stern had long since faded away. She’d gained her sobriquet by what she had become.
Countless strays had sought sanctuary within her reeking hull. Homeless seafarers originally, many of them foreigners; former East India men, abandoned by John Company and left to fend for themselves in a hostile land. Destitute, with no knowledge of the language and no means of finding a passage home. Strangers on a strange shore who had gravitated towards this dreadful place to be among their own kind. Wharf rats.
Hawkwood approached the vessel with caution. Away in the murk, something whimpered, as if in pain. A woman, or a child, it was impossible to tell.
There was a dampness in the air and a smell he could not place, sickly and cloying. It wasn’t coming from the river, he realized, it was seeping out of the hulk. As he drew closer, the smell grew stronger. When he stepped off the gangway on to the deck, the full stench hit him. He knew then what it was: the foul foetor of human misery.
Looking around, Hawkwood could see that almost every inch of deck space had been utilized. Every broken spar, every last strip of canvas, rigging and ratline had been pressed into service to form makeshift shelters. The result was a coagulation of tents, shacks and driftwood lean-tos that would have made a tinkers’ encampment a palace by comparison.
The forward deck grating had been removed, revealing the top rung of a steep companionway. Next to the open hatch, silhouetted by the faint lantern glow issuing from inside the hull, a shrunken figure squatted on its haunches. A pair of half-closed, slanted eyes, set in a wizened, jaundice-yellow face, peered up at him. A thin clay pipe jutted from the creature’s lips. A bony hand, with claw-like nails, reached out, palm uppermost. Hawkwood dropped the coin into the outstretched fingers. The hand withdrew and Hawkwood descended into the pit.
Hawkwood was no stranger to life on board ship. The voyage across the Atlantic to retake Buenos Aires had not been the most pleasurable of experiences. Life below deck had been hard. Hawkwood remembered with loathing the closely packed bodies, the sickness and the appalling food, not to mention the inability to walk upright. The voyage home had been even worse. Violent storms had tossed the vessel around like a cork. There had been times during the passage when, spewing his guts over the lee rail, he would have welcomed death with open arms. But not even those weeks of purgatory could have prepared him for this.
The smell was overpowering, as if something had died and been left to decompose. There was illumination, of sorts, from oil lamps and candles, but if ever a place could be truly called a hell-hole, Hawkwood decided, this was it.
He was standing on what looked to be the remains of the mess deck. There were several crudely built benches and tables, some of them occupied. Whether by the living or the dead, it was hard to tell. Dressed in rags and slumped like corpses, they could have been either, or both. Rats slithered past his feet and darted across the table tops. The air was as rank as a sewer.
Hawkwood picked out the corner of an empty pew and sat down. He felt something slither over his boot. He kicked out and was rewarded with a faint squeal.
“You want grog, culley?”
Hawkwood looked up. The man’s surly expression indicated that he didn’t care one way or the other. Hawkwood nodded, though he had no intention of allowing anything to pass his lips in a sty such as this. A dirty tin mug was placed in front of him and the noxious brew was poured. Hawkwood wiped a sleeve across his face and handed over a coin. The pot man shuffled away. Nothing else to do now except wait, and wonder what had possessed Jago to choose such an unsavoury place for a rendezvous.
Half a dozen benches away, close by the port bulkhead and out of Hawkwood’s line of sight, the pot man answered the summons of a crooked finger.
“Well?”
The pot man nodded sullenly. “It’s ‘im.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. ‘E’s dressed rough, but I saw the scar, didn’t I? Under ‘is eye, right where you said it’d be. Looks an ‘ard bastard, if you ask me.”
A coin was placed on the table. “No one’s asking you, Cooter. On your way.”
The disgruntled pot man pocketed his earnings and slunk off. The receiver of the information stood up.
Hawkwood was staring into his mug and wondering how much harm a single sip would do when he sensed a presence.
“You lookin’ fer Jago?”
The whispered enquiry came from Hawkwood’s elbow, literally. The speaker was the height of a small boy, but that was where the similarity ended. The seamed forehead was high and broad, the nose flat, while the eyes were large and set wide apart under a heavy brow. The speaker’s lack of stature was matched by the incongruity of his dress: a brocade frock coat over a filthy ruffled shirt and striped pantaloons, the latter held up by a wide leather belt. On his feet, a pair of knee boots. The vision was topped off by a blue turbaned bandana. The costume would not have looked out of place on the deck of a Caribbean privateer.
Hawkwood eyed the creature with caution. “Who’s asking?”
“The name’s Weazle.”
Hawkwood hesitated. “Where’s Jago?” The little man, Hawkwood saw, even sported a large hooped earring.
“Last-minute spot o’ business to take care of. Sent me to fetch you, on account of ‘e didn’t want you blunderin’ around in the dark. Now, you comin’, or what?”
The stunted figure was already waddling away. Hawkwood cursed and rose to his feet.
In the outside world, Weazle’s size would undoubtedly have placed him at a disadvantage, making him the target for prejudice and intimidation. On board ship, it was a different matter. In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. In the confined, claustrophobic space between decks, the little man was in his element. While his guide trotted confidently ahead of him, Hawkwood was forced to assume an awkward, neck-straining stoop. More than once he had to duck even lower to avoid striking his head on a protruding beam.
The deeper inside the hull they penetrated, the darker it became, and they were not alone. It would have been impossible to count the number of persons on board. In the disciplined world of a ship of the line, all hammocks would have been slung neatly in rows and aligned stem to stern to conserve space. In the Rat’s Nest no such regime existed. There were bodies everywhere. Sleeping sacks were suspended from the deck beams like seed pods, and judging from the number of limbs sticking out from beneath blankets, many of the hammocks were double occupied. The moans and groans and movements of the occupants confirmed the fact.
Hammocks were not the only form of sleeping accommodation. There were bunks, too, though that might have been too fine a description for what were, in effect, little more than coffin-sized niches. The place was a catacomb. If the rumours of her former trade were true, Hawkwood thought, it was doubtful if any slave had endured more privation than these pitiful souls. The only difference was that her current residents weren’t wearing shackles. At least, none that he could see.
It was as he followed the dwarf through the racks of suffering that his nose had begun to detect another strange aroma, sweet and