Ratcatcher

by James McGee

  Until the horror.

  It had been early morning when the squad of redcoats had come calling, rousting the family from their beds, giving them barely enough time to dress before dragging his father, Samuel, and his elder brother, Robert, out through the smashed and splintered door and across the yard to the low stone wall that ringed the house.

  There had been no trial, no preliminaries, only a short proclamation read by a grim-faced lieutenant. The charge was sedition: providing food and shelter to officers of the rebel army. Sentence to be carried out forthwith. There had been barely time to grasp the true terror of the unfolding events before the morning was split by the sharp bark of command from the sergeant in charge of the firing squad, followed less than a heartbeat later by the ragged rattle of musket shots that rolled across the surrounding meadows like a volley of hail against a window pane.

  They had left the bodies where they had fallen, crumpled in the dust at the base of the wall, leaving two sounds forever ingrained in Lee’s memory: the tramp of marching feet from the departing soldiers, and the shrill, keening cries of his mother as she had cradled the head of her son, the blood of the slaughtered boy soaking into the white of her apron.

  In the beginning, unsurprisingly, Lee’s hunger for vengeance had been all consuming. His hatred of the British Crown had burned like a furnace in his breast and his desire for revenge had never diminished. Over the intervening years, however, as he had grown older and wiser, the heat of his anger had gradually given way to a low simmer and he had been content to wait, to bide his time until the opportunity presented itself. Thus there had been no strategy in Lee’s vow to his dead sibling, no deadline, just a silent oath that somebody, somewhere, would eventually pay the price.

  And then, into his life had stepped Robert Fulton, artist, inventor, showman, philosopher and revolutionary. And only then, bonded by a mutual desire for justice and freedom, and fired by Fulton’s imagination and genius, had the awesome nature, scale and means by which he could exact his revenge revealed itself.

  The distant clang of a ship’s bell jolted Lee from his uneasy reminiscence. He looked down at his hand, recalling the tremor as he had taken the tiny cylinder from the carrier pigeon’s leg and extracted the message telling him the waiting was over. A message from an emperor.

  Although four weeks had passed since his meeting with Napoleon Bonaparte, it seemed like only yesterday.

  It had been another early-morning rendezvous.

  Touched by the pale light of dawn, with remnants of sea mist hanging low over the still water, the Seine estuary was a desolate place, inhabited only by mosquitoes and waterfowl. It was a perfect proving ground: hot and humid in high summer, windswept and icebound in winter, and cut off from the surrounding countryside by a latticework of muddy ditches and foetid marshland, the only means of passage through the region a spider’s web of decaying wooden causeways.

  They had moored the gribane in the middle of the estuary. Sitting heavily on the water like some scaly weed-encrusted sea monster newly arisen from the deep, the squat Seine barge had certainly seen better days.

  In a black, unmarked coach, bracketed by his chausseur escort, the Emperor had arrived accompanied only by his swarthy Mameluke bodyguard, Rustam, and his Minister of Marine, the short, stoop-shouldered admiral, Denis Decres. It had been Decres who had persuaded the Emperor to give Fulton’s device one more chance. It was well known that Emperor Bonaparte had small interest in matters nautical, but Decres was the man in charge of all invasion operations against Britain, so when the little admiral spoke, the Emperor listened.

  The testing area had been guarded by a detachment of the imperial guard under the command of a one-eyed veteran of Bonaparte’s Italian and Egyptian campaigns, Major Jean Daubert. The major, Lee learned, had lost his eye during the siege of Acre, in a hard fought, bloody skirmish with Turkish irregulars. He was one of the most arrogant men Lee had ever met.

  While the major had fussed and fretted over the Emperor and his entourage, Lee and his two crewmen had boarded the submersible and taken her three hundred yards upstream.

  From the shelter of a ruined barn close by the water’s edge, with the stocky greatcoat-clad Emperor waiting impatiently at his side, Admiral Decres had given Lee the signal and the vessel had submerged to launch its attack.

  The destruction of the gribane had been sudden, spectacular and total, to the delight of Lee and his crew, the amazement of the Emperor and the alarm of every bird within a half-mile radius. The sound of the explosion had reverberated across the marshland with the force of a thunderclap.

  Back on shore, with the barge split in two, driftwood scattered across the grey water, and wooden splinters piercing the surface of the mud flats like arrows, the Emperor had invited Lee to walk with him. There were important matters to discuss.

  But that had been after the discovery of the interloper.

  It had been in the aftermath of the attack on the barge when—unbeknownst to Lee and his crewman who were still aboard the submersible—all hell had broken loose.

  Ironically, it had been the one-eyed Major Daubert who’d spotted the flash of sunlight glancing across the spyglass lens, spearing a warning into the major’s brain, igniting the realization that they were being observed. The major’s response, born of instinct, had been immediate.

  Daubert had led the chase, sword drawn, barking orders at his men, galvanized by the sight of a man’s shape breaking from cover and disappearing around the far side of a high sand dune. At which point the chasseurs had joined the hunt, spurring their mounts forward, using their superior speed to cut off the fleeing figure’s line of retreat. It had been a foregone conclusion that the grenadiers and the mounted escort would run their quarry to ground. There was nowhere for him to go. Escape was impossible.

  And so it had proved, but not before the bodies of two grenadiers lay dead in the sand, slaughtered by pistol ball and sword blade respectively.

  That one man on foot should have wreaked such havoc should have given the major a degree of warning that this was not some local peasant out poaching for game and that it might have been wiser to apprehend the felon alive in order to question him about his origins and intentions.

  The sharp crack of a chasseur’s carbine, however, had put paid to that possibility. The fleeing man had reached the water when the ball struck low on his left side, propelling him into the shallows. The major, seeing the quarry stagger towards the middle of the stream, had shouted at his men not to fire again. As the body disappeared beneath the surface, the major had spurred his men forward, but it had been too late. Dragged under by the current, the corpse had been swept away.

  Or so it had been assumed.

  They had found the discarded pistol close to the body of one of the dead grenadiers and had shown it to Lee upon his return to shore. Lee had immediately put paid to the major’s speculation that the man had been nothing more than an inquisitive local and the admiral’s suggestion that he may have been a would-be assassin sent by Bourbon exiles.

  The pistol, Lee had revealed, was English-made; “York”, the city of manufacture, engraved on to the stock had been the giveaway. Probably naval issue, Lee had surmised, an officer’s sidearm.

  Which meant what?

  The British knew of the device, Lee had told the Emperor. It had been offered to them seven years before. They’d turned it down. However, it wasn’t outside the realms of possibility that they’d received fresh intelligence relating to the improvements in design. It would have been only natural for them to dispatch agents to investigate.

  It’s what I would have done, Lee had admitted.

  Which was when the Emperor had suggested they take a walk, and the mission had been born.

  Lee had been surprised by the Emperor’s candour.

  The war in Spain was going badly, the Emperor had admitted. Wellington was proving a formidable opponent. His victories were undermining the will of France’s allies. Allegiances were changing. It wa
s not only the southern borders that were under threat. It had been hoped that Tsar Alexander’s support would remain steadfast, but doubts had been expressed. Severe measures might have to be taken.

  It had been Lee who had voiced the unthinkable.

  “Your Majesty would attack Russia?”

  The Emperor, to Lee’s astonishment, had merely shrugged. “Perhaps.”

  Which would have meant the Emperor’s armies would be split, and thus considerably weakened.

  “We are very much in need of a miracle,” the Emperor had told him with a grim smile. “A small one would suffice.”

  It was possible that Fulton’s device was the key, the means by which Britain’s supply lines to Spain could be disrupted, giving the French time to regroup and push Wellington back into the sea. Which in turn would undoubtedly force Tsar Alexander to reconsider his responsibilities.

  “All things are possible, Your Majesty,” had been Lee’s tactful response.

  The Emperor had given Lee one month. Whatever was required would be made available. He was to report directly to Admiral Decres.

  And remain vigilant.

  But they had not allowed for Lieutenant Harry St John Ramillies’ return from the dead.

  It had been Bonaparte’s agents who, following the interrogation and execution of suspected Bourbon sympathizers, had passed word that, miraculously, the British spy was still alive, recovering from his wounds, and on the run, aided by the Royalist underground. Moreover, it was believed he carried copies of the submersible’s design.

  A brave run that had been brought to an abrupt and bloody end on a lonely, rain-lashed stretch of heathland. But the death of Ramillies, allied to the recovery of the drawings, meant that the mission could at last proceed as planned.

  Until, like a pair of inquisitive, meddlesome magpies, Runners Warlock and Hawkwood had come calling. Not that it hadn’t been inevitable, Lee supposed, that the disappearance of Master Woodburn, a craftsman of some repute, would attract the attention of the authorities.

  What hadn’t been expected was the competence displayed by the men assigned to track down the missing clockmaker. These were not your usual run-of-the-mill constables, ineffective, corrupt Charlies, but professional thief-takers.

  But now, they too, had been dealt with. The seaman, Scully, had seen to that. Scully might be a bruiser, short on brains and heavy on brawn, but he had nevertheless proved exceedingly useful. He had removed both Warlock and Hawkwood, and in removing those two, he had provided Lee with a clear run to his objective. The destruction of which was now only a matter of hours away.

  Lee’s eyes moved to the window once more. The Thames was the city’s life force. The femoral artery. But an artery that was about to be severed in spectacular fashion. The wound might not be fatal, but it had the potential to paralyse the nation and set back the British war effort for some considerable time, allowing Emperor Bonaparte the opportunity to marshal his forces and launch an offensive.

  So now a ship would burn, a prince would die, and the British would quake in their beds.

  And a father and brother would be avenged.

  Revenge, Lee thought, as he began to dress, was indeed a repast best served cold.

  Hawkwood, seated in the bow of the rowing boat, rested his elbows on the oar and tried to ignore the sticky rivulets of sweat trickling uncomfortably down his back and beneath his armpits. His discarded jacket lay on the seat beside him. Jago, resting on his own oar, chuckled at Hawkwood’s discomfort.

  Suspecting that the river would be the most practical means of access, Hawkwood had used his warrant to commandeer the boat from a wherryman at the Ratcliff Cross stairs. The canny boat owner had tried to extract the exorbitant sum of one shilling for the inconvenience and temporary disruption to his livelihood, until a glare from Jago warned him not to push his luck. In the end, Hawkwood had compromised and paid sixpence, four times the normal crossing charge. Better to keep the man quiet, he reasoned, than have him blab to every Tom, Dick and Harry that a Runner was on the prowl.

  They were drifting fifty yards off the Limehouse shore. Looking over his left shoulder, Hawkwood could see the bend in the river and the western entrance to the canals and lagoons that formed the huge West India Docks. Beyond the dock entrance, the river widened out to almost a quarter of a mile as it ran southwards towards Deptford and the Isle of Dogs.

  With the sun barely over the rooftops, the river was already bustling with activity. Lighters, barges, bumboats, cutters and colliers vied for wharf space and an opportunity to discharge their loads and take on new cargoes, while further downstream the tall, slender masts of the larger vessels, East Indiamen and Royal Navy warships, could be seen outlined against the rapidly brightening sky.

  Onshore, it was just as congested. Jetties groaned under the weight of coal sacks, tobacco bales, baulks of timber, liquor casks, and crates of bleating livestock. The smells emanating from the river bank reflected the myriad trades plied within the borough, from the sharp, acrid stench of the lime kilns to the throat-souring odour of the tar yards.

  Suddenly, Jago sat up and nodded towards the river bank. “Land ho, Cap’n.”

  Hawkwood twisted in his seat, and followed Jago’s gaze.

  There was little to distinguish the warehouse from the rest of the waterfront buildings, save for the faded name board nailed on to the wall above the jetty. Located adjacent to the entrance to Limekiln Dock and abutted by a densely packed collection of granaries and storehouses, the warehouse, with its adjoining yard, was not much different from a thousand other commercial properties lining the river from the Tower to Tilbury, albeit in slightly better repair than most.

  Both men picked up their oars. “Well, now,” Jago murmured softly, as they sculled closer to the bank. “Take a lookee there.”

  Hawkwood followed the big man’s gaze.

  A narrow channel and loading dock separated the twostoreyed building from its nearest neighbour, effectively isolating the property from the rest of the waterfront. At the end of the channel, in the shadow of a low stone archway, directly beneath the warehouse at river level, was a pair of heavy wooden doors.

  Jago grinned. “Mighty convenient, ain’t they. You thinking what I’m thinking?”

  Wordlessly, Hawkwood continued to stroke them towards the main shore, to where a weathered stone stairway reached down into the murky water. As the bow of the rowboat nudged the bottom step, Hawkwood shipped his oar and picked up his coat. Jago got to his feet.

  “Not you, Nathaniel,” Hawkwood said.

  Jago blinked. “Say again?”

  Hawkwood turned, foot balanced on the gunwale. “I’m going in alone.”

  “The hell you are!” Jago rasped.

  Hawkwood stepped ashore. Relieved of his weight, the boat rocked alarmingly. Jago staggered as he searched for balance. “Christ!”

  “I need you to keep watch,” Hawkwood said.

  “An’ if you run into trouble?” Jago glared. “Bearin’ in mind what ’appened the last time you went gallivantin’ around on your own.”

  “Give me an hour. If I’m not back by then, contact Magistrate Read.”

  “And then what?”

  “He’ll know what to do.”

  “Bleedin’ ’ell!” Jago said. “An’ that’s your grand strategy, is it?”

  “Unless you’ve a better one.”

  Jago stared at Hawkwood. Finally, he shook his head in exasperation. “Can’t say as I do, off ’and.”

  Hawkwood reached inside his jacket and took out his baton. He held it out. “Take this.”

  “What the bleedin’ ’ell do you expect me to do with that?”

  “You may need it. If anything happens to me and you need to get to Magistrate Read, it’ll help open a few doors.”

  Reluctantly, Jago accepted the offering.

  “Don’t lose it,” Hawkwood said. “It’s the only one I’ve got.”

  “I’ll stick it up my arse. No one’ll find it there.”
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  Hawkwood grinned.

  As Hawkwood climbed the steps to the quayside, the burly ex-sergeant shook his head and stared glumly at the Runner’s retreating back. “I bloody ’ope you knows what you’re doin’, you mad bugger,” he grunted.

  As Hawkwood made his way along the quay, he wondered if it had been such a good idea to leave Jago behind. The ex-sergeant was a good man to have at your back, but it didn’t make sense both of them walking into what might be the lion’s den. So Hawkwood, against his better judgement, and to Nathaniel Jago’s understandable dismay, was on his own.

  At least he was having no trouble blending into his surroundings. He’d had no time to return to his lodgings since reporting back to James Read. His long hair remained unbound and he was still wearing the remnants of his old uniform. To anyone on the dockside, he was just another ex-soldier turned river worker. No one spared him a second glance. Hawkwood picked his way along the busy waterfront, senses alert.

  Very few people had permanent jobs on the river. Most were casual workers, or lumpers, who lived in the crowded alleys and lanes that ran down to the water, their livelihood dependent solely on the movement of vessels. Most lumpers were either holders, who worked inside the ship’s hold, or deckers. Deckers lifted the cargo to and from the vessel, either on to the dockside or via a lighter. It was hard, backbreaking work, requiring brawn rather than brain. But no man complained if it put a roof over his head or food on the table.

  The waterfront was piled high with produce. A heap of sugar sacks sat on the quay in front of him. Without breaking stride, Hawkwood swung the top sack on to his shoulder and carried on walking. He waited for the angry cry but none came. Using the sack to partially conceal his features, he continued along the jetty.

  Hawkwood had no clear idea of how he was going to gain access to the warehouse and yard, other than by stealth or deception. He was still considering his options when his attention was caught by a group of men lounging in the doorway of a grog shop. One in five buildings along the riverfront sold liquor in one form or another. Most innkeepers acted as agents, supplying men to ships. Needless to say, they also supplied liquor to the men, deducting the cost from their earnings. It was a lucrative business and there was no shortage of labourers looking for work, so there was nothing untoward about the scene itself. It was the face of a man leaving the grog shop, a knapsack slung over his shoulder, that had caught Hawkwood’s eye. It was a face he recognized, though he couldn’t put a name to it. Then he remembered. It belonged to one of the group who had shared a table with Scully, in Noah’s Ark.