by James McGee
"It would depend," Jess Flynn said.
"On what?"
"On Morgan deciding whether or not Seth bothering me was a threat to his business."
"Has he been here?" Gadd stared at her.
"And if he did consider him a threat?" Hawkwood said.
"Then I'd be lending my sister my mourning dress."
"What's the bugger done now, Jessie?" Gadd asked.
"It's all right, Tom. Nothing happened."
"He tried to force himself on her," Lasseur said. "Captain Hooper and I saw him off."
"Bloody hell, Jess!" Gadd said.
"He was drunk, Tom."
"He's always bloody drunk," Gadd muttered.
"And if Morgan decided that Seth bothering you wasn't a risk to his business, what then?" Hawkwood asked.
"I'd spend my days worrying about Annie and her boy."
"Annie?" Hawkwood said. "Your sister?"
Jess Flynn nodded. "Seth threatened to hurt them if I didn't give myself to him. I don't know whether he really would, but if I went to Morgan and he didn't do anything, and Seth found out, he could take it out on them to spite me."
Lasseur turned to Hawkwood. "You should have let me kill him."
Hawkwood did not respond to that. He studied Jess for a moment. "So you've no idea whether Morgan will take your side or Seth's?"
"No. But Seth can't be sure either. He's one of Morgan's bat men, but he knows that won't save him if Morgan decides he's stepped out of line."
"And you're hoping that the mere threat of going to Morgan will be enough to keep Seth at bay?"
"That's a dangerous game you're playing, Jess," Gadd said.
"I know, Tom. You don't have to tell me."
"Bloody Morgan," Gadd said.
Outside, the dog let out a single bark.
"Shite!" Gadd spat, swinging round in alarm.
"Stay here," Jess Flynn said. She stood up quickly and walked out into the yard, closing the door behind her.
They should have stayed in the barn, Hawkwood knew, close to the hiding space behind the bales. They had grown careless.
"There's a cellar," Gadd said urgently. "Entrance is in the pantry, under the mat." He nodded towards a door in the corner.
Hawkwood and Lasseur were already moving as the latch lifted on the back door.
Too bloody late, Hawkwood thought.
The door opened.
"It's Asa," Jess Flynn said. "He's come to pick up the tubs."
"God save us," Tom Gadd said, relief flooding across his seamed face.
Hawkwood and Lasseur helped with the loading. There were six tubs in total. It didn't take long to remove them from the hiding place behind the bales.
The gravedigger had brought two empty coffins with him on the back of the cart. Hawkwood wondered if they were new or the same ones as before. They placed three tubs in each coffin. Laid on their sides, end to end, they were a snug fit. Once the tubs had been secured, Higgs used thin nails to keep the lids in place.
"What if you're stopped?" Hawkwood asked, stepping back. "Won't it seem an odd time of day to be transporting coffins?"
The gravedigger shook his head. "Dead don't know what time it is. It ain't as though they keep regular hours. Leastways, not round here. Besides we'll be stickin' to the back lanes."
"But what if you're stopped and someone wants to take a look?"
"I'll tell 'em I'm carryin' a couple of pox victims. See if they want to take a look then. God's sakes, you ask a lot of bleedin' questions for a Frenchie." Higgs's eyes narrowed. "But then, you ain't a Frenchie, are you?"
"You were misinformed," Hawkwood said.
Tom Gadd rolled his eyes.
"Aye, well, it wouldn't be the first time," Higgs said morbidly. "Not that it makes any bleedin' difference. I just does what I'm told. Now, you ready or not?"
"For what?" Hawkwood said.
"Tubs ain't the only things I came for," Higgs said. "You got any belongings you want to take with you, best grab them now. We've a ways to go."
"Go?" Lasseur said.
"You didn't think you'd be stayin' here permanent, did you? Time you was movin' on."
"Where to?" Hawkwood asked.
"A little place in the country; nice and secluded, no pryin' eyes."
"I thought this was the country," Hawkwood said, thinking, If this isn't secluded, what is?
"There's other parts."
"Asa?" Jess Flynn said.
"Come on, Jess, you know you're not supposed to ask. I deliver 'em and I take 'em off your hands when I'm told. You don't need to know the rest."
"Bollocks, Asa," Gadd said. "Don't give me that. Where are you taking them?"
Higgs sighed, bit the inside of his lip, and said, "All right, I'm takin' them to the Haunt. Satisfied?"
Gadd frowned. "Why there?"
"God's sake, Tom, I'd have thought that was bleedin' obvious."
"What's at the Haunt?" Hawkwood asked.
"It ain't what," Gadd said, an edge to his voice. "It's who."
Hawkwood waited.
It was the gravedigger who finally answered: "Mr Morgan wants to meet you."
Well, this should be interesting, Hawkwood thought.
The sun was hanging low over the end of the valley as the gravedigger steered the coffin-laden cart up the track towards the trees. It was a strange feeling, leaving the place that had been their home for the past three days. Hawkwood had never been one for looking back over his shoulder but, on this occasion, even though he was impatient to move on, he couldn't help himself. Sunset was probably less than an hour away; at the edge of the woods, shadows were already lengthening and the house and barn were suffused in a warm russet glow. Hawkwood glanced to his side. Lasseur was staring back too, but there was a distant look in his eye that suggested he was seeing something far beyond his immediate view.
There had been no protracted farewells.
Shaking their hands in turn, Tom Gadd had wished them a fair wind and then looked vaguely embarrassed by his verbosity.
Jess Flynn had hung back, only stepping forward to press a folded napkin into Lasseur's hands. "Some food for the journey. It's not much; just some bread and cheese."
As she stepped away, Hawkwood saw her fingers make contact with the back of Lasseur's wrist. The gesture had been so subtle, he wondered if he might have imagined it; yet he knew instinctively he had not and that more had been said in that fleeting touch and in the look on Jess Flynn's face than could have been expressed in a thousand words.
She had turned to Hawkwood then. "Safe passage, Captain Hooper."
"Madame," Hawkwood said.
With a brief nod and a final glance towards Lasseur, she turned and, straight-backed, head held high, made her way back to the house, a shaggy, four-legged shape padding obediently in her wake.
Lasseur had watched her walk away, his face still.
"Time to go, Captain," Tom Gadd murmured beside him.
Lasseur nodded.
The seaman lingered as Hawkwood and Lasseur climbed on to the cart. At the last minute, Lasseur turned to him. "Watch over her, Thomas," he said quietly. "Try and keep her safe."
Gadd nodded. "I'll do my best, Captain." He watched as Lasseur settled himself down and waited until Asa Higgs had set the horse in motion before turning to follow the woman and dog towards the house.
"So, if you ain't a Frenchie, what the hell are you?"
Asa Higgs winkled a clot of ash from his pipe and tapped the bowl against the side of his boot.
"American," Hawkwood said.
"Is that right?" The gravedigger considered Hawkwood's response. "An' that's why you'd rather be fighting for Boney than for the King?"
"He's not my king," Hawkwood said. "That's why we had a revolution."
The gravedigger sucked on his pipe stem. "Emperors pay well, do they?"
"Better than kings," Hawkwood said.
The gravedigger grinned and adjusted his gnarled grip on the reins. "Got a cousi
n over Rochester way tells me they've got hundreds of your lot behind bars. Said the Crown Prince at Chatham is full to the gunwales with pressed Yankee sailors who've refused to fight for Farmer George."
Which was why Hawkwood had been sent to Rapacious, further downriver, where there had been less risk of his false identity being discovered.
The gravedigger went on: "Heard tell the army's been sendin' recruitin' sergeants aboard offerin' sixteen guineas to any American willing to switch sides. From what I knows of the hulks, you'd have thought they'd be queuin' up, but they ain't had any takers. You was lucky you got away."
It had been some time since they'd left the farm. Sunset had given way to dusk, which in turn had darkened into an indigo- hued twilight. It was now night time. There were no clouds to mask the moon. The sky was bright and clear; the stars strewn across the night sky like diamonds on black velvet.
From what Hawkwood had been able to deduce, Asa Higgs had been true to his word, keeping them well away from anything resembling an established road. Most of the journey had taken them down narrow cart tracks and drovers' trails; hidden byways which, over the centuries, had been used by generations of farmers to herd stock across country to market. Some of the trails were so overshadowed by trees it was like passing through a series of tunnels. On these occasions, Higgs had been content to let the horse take the lead, which it had done without any notable deviation. The animal was obviously as familiar with the ground as its driver, which was fortunate, for even in daylight the most eagle-eyed person might have found himself teetering on the rim of the trail, or plunging into the steep-sided gulley below.
On one occasion they had crossed a river. As the cart rattled over the old stone bridge, Hawkwood had seen the moon reflecting on the dark water flowing beneath them.
Signs of habitation were few and far between. Occasionally a distant light would catch the eye, indicating an isolated cottage or farmstead. There had been no sign of any other travellers.
Hawkwood, Lasseur and the gravedigger might well have been the only people abroad.
"Your friend don't have a lot to say for himself," the gravedigger murmured.
"Been a long day," Hawkwood said. "He's feeling a bit weary."
The gravedigger was right, though. Lasseur had been noticeably quiet since they'd left the farm. It was obvious he was thinking about Jess Flynn.
Just as well we left when we did, Hawkwood concluded. It was patently obvious that Lasseur's feelings for the woman went beyond mere sympathy for the loss of her husband and her solitary status. The manner of their leaving had suggested the attraction was mutual, though Hawkwood knew it was equally possible that the widow's parting gesture had not been a sign of some deep-seated feeling but a tactile expression of gratitude for Lasseur's intervention when she had been attacked. A gut instinct, however, told him that wasn't the case. And therein, he knew, lay the problem. The privateer's concern for the underdog, while admirable, had already cost them dear, nearly compromising their escape plan, and Hawkwood's assignment in the process. The last thing Hawkwood needed was for Lasseur to lose his objectivity over a woman with whom he had no possible future. Sooner or later the Frenchman would have to be reminded that he couldn't save all the lost and disaffected souls, no matter how hard he tried.
The land rose before them. They were no longer travelling in the dips and the hollows but had emerged on to a broader track bordered on both sides by tangled thickets. The night was full of eerie feral sounds: owls hooting, frogs croaking, animals foraging and leaves rustling. Somewhere deep within the wood a fox barked. The noise rose like a scream into the night like a soul in torment. Even though he recognized the sound, the short hairs prickled along the back of Hawkwood's neck.
Suddenly the bark was cut short.
The evening seemed suddenly unnaturally still. Asa Higgs urged the horse on and looked about him warily.
Hawkwood tensed. There had been a movement to his right; a vague, shadowy shape at the corner of his vision, flitting through a break in the trees; moonlight glancing off. . . something; he wasn't sure what.
He felt Lasseur stir beside him and was reassured. Despite the distractions, the privateer's senses were still fully alert.
Even so, neither of them was prepared for the wild, nerve- jarring screech of laughter that exploded from the trees, or the ghastly apparitions that vaulted without warning on to the track ahead of them.
The startled gravedigger yanked back on the reins and the cart slewed sideways.
There were two of them; a matching pair. They were dressed like monks, in black habits and hoods. But it was not the nature of their attire, which was torn and streaked with dirt, or the pistol that each of them brandished that drew the eye and set the heart beating; it was what lay within the cowls. For the black-clad priors had no faces, only bare skulls that gleamed like white-hot coals in the darkness.
CHAPTER 15
Hawkwood wrinkled his nose. Piss; there was no mistaking the pungent odour. It was there, souring the inside of his nostrils every time he inhaled. Holding his breath wasn't a viable option, so there was little he could do except try and ignore it, which was difficult for the smell was coming off the man seated beside him in waves. It was strange, Hawkwood thought; before he'd washed the stench of the hulks from him, he doubted the smell would even have registered. Now, it was all he could do not to clamp his hand over his face.
Sensing Hawkwood's aversion, the black-clad figure turned his head. "Ain't me. It's the bleedin' paint. An' if you think I smell bad, you're lucky it's me keepin' you company and not Billy back there." The figure jerked a thumb. "Now, 'e does bloody stink!"
Lasseur, who had given up his seat and shifted into the back of the cart with the coffins, grimaced.
Hawkwood's knowledge of alchemy bordered on the nonexistent. He had no idea what made the paint - if that was the catalyst - glow in the dark, and could have cared even less, though he had to admit the effect was quite dramatic, especially if you weren't expecting it. Presumably Asa Higgs had been anticipating some kind of ghostly manifestation, but even he'd nearly jumped out of his skin, much to the amusement of the spectral duo when they'd seen who was driving the cart.
The skull images had been painted in some kind of waxy substance on to close-fitting black cloth hoods, similar to those used by executioners. When framed by the folds of a cowl and lit by moonlight, the result was spectacular and, to the uninitiated, quite terrifying. It was certainly an effective way of persuading unwelcome visitors of an inquisitive disposition to keep their distance.
But from what?
The track continued its steady ascent. It was then that Hawkwood saw a light through a gap in the trees. There was some kind of man-made structure ahead, too, but its outline was indistinct. It was only as they rounded the final bend and the gradient flattened out that he realized what he'd been looking at.
The turreted gatehouse looked old, as did the high, grey-stone wall that flanked it. Set into the gatehouse was a Norman archway. Two men dressed in work-day clothes and armed with clubs and pistols guarded the entrance. The malodorous friar gave a nod and the pickets parted to let them through.
The gravedigger clicked his tongue and guided the horse forward. "Welcome to the Haunt."
"Haunt?" Lasseur echoed from behind.
"Monk's Haunt. Leastways, that's what we call it now. Used to be St Anselm's Priory; most of it fell into ruin, but there's a fair bit still standin'. You'll see for yourself. Place has seen a few owners since them days. One of the local squires moved in and built himself a house. It was run as a farm for a while after he died, and then Mr Morgan took it on. It was him who gave it the name, 'cause of all the stories 'bout how the place was haunted. That's how he stops nosey parkers from gettin' too close and learnin' 'is business; on nights when we're moving goods around, he gets the likes of Del here to play silly buggers and scare 'em away."
The mock friar grinned then. He had an unruly mop of curly hair, a thin weasel face
, and teeth like a mule. It was on the tip of Hawkwood's tongue to suggest he probably didn't need the mask.
The friar threw the gravedigger an admonishing look. "It's no good sniggerin', Asa Higgs. It works and don't you deny it. I've seen people piss their breeches when we've leapt out on 'em. There's even been a few who've passed away with the fright of it."
"With the bleedin' smell, more like," Higgs muttered under his breath.
"I told you," Del's voice rose in indignant protest, "it ain't me, it's the bloody paint."
While Del and the gravedigger discussed the phosphorescent properties of piss and pigment, Hawkwood and Lasseur exchanged wary glances. Each knew the other was thinking back to their conversation with Jess Flynn and Tom Gadd.
A building came into view. It was hard to make out specific details in the darkness. Hawkwood assumed he was looking at the main house. The impression was of stout walls, gabled windows and high chimneys. He could see the silhouettes of other buildings behind it. Some looked to be whole, while others stood in obvious ruin; from their imposing size, he presumed they were part of the original priory. He thought about the gatehouse and the adjoining wall and how far it might extend. That in turn made him wonder how many other guards were roaming the woods, for while the place may well have started life as a retreat devoted to prayer and meditation, this was clearly no longer the case. From what he'd seen so far, the Haunt had all the hallmarks of an armed compound.
The gravedigger drove them into a gravelled stable yard, bringing the cart to a halt outside a set of large wooden doors. The doors were open. Light from within the building spilled out. The smell of compacted straw and animal dung hung in the air.
Del climbed down from the cart, nearly tripping over the hem of his habit in the process. "The boss wanted me to bring you to 'im. We'll try in 'ere first. One of the mares is in foal. He's expectin' 'er to deliver tonight. Best wait here, Asa." He beckoned to Hawkwood and Lasseur. "You two, come with me."
Del led the way into the stables. Two men were standing by the opening to the stall furthest from the entrance doors. At the sound of footsteps, they looked round. One was hunched, with thinning hair and short bandy legs. He wore a dark waistcoat and a worn leather apron and was holding a lantern. His companion was taller and leaner; his swept-back hair was silvery grey. So, too, was his beard, which was short and neatly trimmed. With his blue eyes and lined features, he could have passed for a distinguished lawyer or a benevolent uncle, had it not been for his shortened left arm, which ended in a leather cup just below his elbow.