by Sara Fraser
Sarah studied him carefully for some minutes while his long knowing fingers lifted and fondled the pieces of precious metal. Ideas which had been burgeoning in her mind during the long trek south came to sudden fruition. She wanted desperately to help Henri escape. She wanted, equally desperately, to establish herself as a woman of means. She came to a decision and asked, ‘Is there sufficient price from those to set me up in a business here?’
The man looked up at her and pursed his lips judiciously while he considered the question and its possible implications. Then he nodded.
‘Yes, surely there is. But vot sort of a business had you got in mind?’
‘A club,’ she told him. ‘A gaming club.’
His surprise showed clearly, and he started to shake his head. Then his agile mind saw the idea’s potential, and he followed his instincts.
‘You’ll need tvice or three times vot’s here, to do the job proper,’ he told her, while his thoughts clarified. ‘And you vouldn’t be able to do it on your own. You’d need a good man vith you. One that you could trust and who knew all the capers.’
Sarah’s determination had now reached white heat. ‘Do you know where such a man might be found in this town?’ she pressed.
After a long pause, during which his steady regard of her did not waver, Shimson Levi finally grinned and told her, ‘You’re alookin’ at him, my vench.’
Chapter Fifteen
All through the night, the heavy boots of the marine sentries clumped along the catwalk of the Crown hulk. Every fifteen minutes, the hoarse shouts of ‘All’s well!’ ‘All’s well!’ ‘All’s well! ‘All’s well!’ rang out from ship to ship, reassuring each guard commander that the men he had posted were alert, and the prisoners battened below decks were quiet.
Henri Chanteur lay on his back in his narrow hammock and listened to the sounds of the night. The hammocks were slung in rows across the battery, so closely that the sides touched and if his neighbour, Gaston de Chambray, moved arm or leg, then Henri could feel that movement. He calculated that there were almost four hundred men on this deck, snoring, breaking wind, muttering and crying out in bad dreams . . . The neighbour on Henri’s other side did none of those things. He had died some hours before. Henri had listened to the gurgling death rattles and had roused Gaston de Chambray. The cuirassier colonel had shrugged.
‘Just forget it, Henri. The poor devil will die before morning and will then be happier than we are. Try and sleep, there’s nothing you can do for him.’ . . . And so the young Frenchman had lain listening to the man’s life-force struggling to free itself from the diseased bone and flesh that entrapped it, and had prayed for a speedy end to the suffering.
‘All’s well!’ ‘All’s well!’ ‘All’s well!’ ‘All’s well!’ The shouts echoed across the calm harbour and as those echoes grew faint and far away, Henri heard a peculiar scratching across the deck beneath the hammocks. At first he disregarded it, thinking it to be just another of the many strange ship noises as the old timbers creaked and the waves gently lapped and gurgled against the hull.
‘It’s probably a rat,’ he told himself, knowing that at night when all was quiet, myriads of the rodents came out of the bilges to forage. The scraping and scratching persisted and came nearer.
‘It’s too damned heavy for a rat,’ he thought, and listened hard. The scraping suddenly ceased, to be followed immediately by a loud and distinctive smacking of lips masticating food. This also ceased and for a few seconds nothing more occurred.
Gaston de Chambray snorted and turned his body and Henri was momentarily distracted by the pressure of his new friend’s knees and elbows through the thin canvas wall of the hammock. He moved his own body to escape that pressure and as he settled upon his side, facing the dead man’s hammock, he felt that hammock suddenly drop silently down. Unable to see anything at all in the pitch darkness, he felt with his hand. There was only empty space. A spasm of fear caused his heart to thud and he held his breath to stop himself shouting aloud.
He lay tensed and still, and sensed rather than heard, movement at his side. Cautiously he slid his arm out from his hammock and searched the blackness with his fingers. They suddenly touched warm, living flesh and he cried out in shock.
Instantly Gaston de Chambray was awake. ‘What is it, Henri?’ he asked urgently.
‘Someone’s meddling with this dead fellow,’ Henri told him.
‘Aux armes! Aux armes!’ de Chambray bellowed. ‘Block the ladder! The Imperial Mantles are here! Block the ladder! Imperial Mantles! Imperial Mantles!’
The shout was taken up all through the battery as men were torn from sleep. Then abruptly, there was silence once more. A clattering of booted feet and weapons sounded from behind the guard barrier and from two of the loopholes beams of light streamed into the prisoners’ quarter and a voice roared, ‘Stop that bloody noise, you Frog bastards, or you’ll be fired on.’
From somewhere in the battery a man screamed in terror, ‘Aidez-moi! Aidez-moi!’
‘Here he is! Get him!’ other men shouted in excitement. There was a brief scuffle in the darkness and the piteous screams for help were cut short.
‘I’ll not be tellin’ you buggers agen,’ the threatening voice behind the barrier roared. ‘One more sound and we open fire.’
All was still and silent and after a time the lights disappeared from the loopholes and the boots dumped back up the ladder and dully across the deck above.
‘What has happened?’ Henri whispered. ‘Who was the man who was screaming?’
‘You’ll see in the morning, when it gets light,’ de Chambray whispered back. ‘But now get some sleep, there’s nothing more to be done tonight.’ With that, the older man settled himself back in his hammock and in seconds was again snoring softly.
His mind a jumble of puzzlement, Henri also tried to rest. The battery again filled with the murmurous sounds of sleeping men and he dozed fitfully.
The stars wheeled about the poles and slowly the sky lightened in the east. At eight o’clock in the morning, a seaman went forward and rang the ship’s bell. The burly marine sergeant saluted the naval lieutenant who commanded the night guard.
‘Eight bells, sir. Permission to open portholes.’
The lieutenant, a thin sallow man nodded in affirmation. ‘It’s fair weather, sergeant. You may leave open port and larboard.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’ The sergeant stamped to the taffrail and shouted to the night sentries, seven in number, on the gallery.
‘Open portholes, port and larboard!’
The marines, aided by some sailors, hurried from portlight to portlight unbolting and wrenching them open, taking care to jump back from the apertures to avoid the rush of foul gases that had built up in the pressure from so many lungs in such a confined space.
‘Eight bells! Eight bells! Lash up and stow! Lash up and stow! Eight bells! Lash up and stow!’
Henri was roused by the orders hurled through loopholes and portholes by a dozen leather-lunged men. He felt bleary-eyed and stale in mouth and body. He rubbed his eyelids to clear the gum of sleep and scratched hard at the vermin he had already begun to give unwilling shelter and nourishment to. Gaston de Chambray sat up and grinned at him.
‘You did well last night, mon ami.’
The memory of the previous night’s events flooded back and Henri peered over the edge of his hammock. The dead man was lying face down, arms stretched above his head. His jacket was half off and his legs and lower torso naked.
‘Never mind him for the moment,’ Gaston instructed. ‘You must get your bedding stowed away.’
He showed the younger man how to roll his hammock about his covering and mattress and use its hanging ropes to thread through the brass eyelets along the length of the canvas and truss it so that it resembled a long thick sausage. From his neatly fashioned canvas waist-pouch, Gaston fished a piece of chalk and handed it to Henri.
‘Write your name, rank and regiment on the canvas, so that no
one else will take it.’
Once their hammocks had been placed with the others against the bulkheads, the cuirassier examined closely the pale body of the dead man, paying particular attention to the lean buttocks and thighs. He nodded to the men watching him.
‘It’s all right. The bastard either wasn’t hungry or didn’t have time.’
A collective sigh gusted in relief, and at Henri’s elbow Nathan Caldicott chuckled bitterly and muttered, ‘On the other hand, maybe after spending so much goddam time in this Limejuicers’ floating palace, the poor devil’s flesh was no longer fit for human consumption.’
Henri hardly heard the American. A veteran of the pursuit to Corunna and the savage winter guerrilla warfare in the bitter mountains of Spain, he knew well enough what de Chambray had been searching for. When men grew hungry enough, and desperate enough, then the tenuously enforced restraints and mores of civilization were rent asunder and any type of food became desirable.
‘All right boys.’ The colonel evidently wielded great authority in this sub-world. ‘Take out the blanket and mattress and tie him up nicely in the hammock. Not that these misers of English will bury him in it, I know. Still, let him go decently from here. Are there any more?’
‘Non, mon colonel, not yet. But I don’t think old Léfèvre will last the day out,’ a man answered.
De Chambray nodded. ‘Very well. Put this poor devil by the hatch when you’ve done . . . Now go about your normal business while we deal with the animal.’
‘He is over here, Colonel de Chambray.’ A skeletal Parisian pushed through the crowd.
‘Good! I want at least twenty men with knives. We’ll deal with him down on the Orlop deck. Trust the cursed English to leave the portholes open and give us too much light when we didn’t want them to.’
‘It’s a beautiful morning, mon Colonel,’ the skeletal Parisian tried to joke. ‘Perhaps the noble Captain Redmond wishes us to enjoy the balmy airs.’
‘Merde!’ For a moment the colonel’s customary good manners deserted him. He beckoned Henri. ‘Come, you must give testimony.’ Then led the way to the wide ladder at the far end of the deck which connected the upper and lower batteries.
The captured man presented a sorry spectacle. He was naked, his body caked with filth, and lice could be seen moving amongst the long matted hair that grew low on his forehead. His hands were tied behind him with rope cunningly lashed also around his bearded throat, and another piece of rope held a wad of rag crammed into his mouth as a gag. Dried blood liberally plastered his hairy chest and shoulders and his eyes were mere slits in a badly swollen, bruised, and cut face.
‘I see les enfants were not gentle with him,’ de Chambray chuckled. He issued a series of rapid orders and a large body of knife-brandishing men acted as an advance guard, pushing the surly-faced inhabitants of the lower battery away from the bottom of the connecting ladder. Henri could see no apparent difference between either the quarters or the men that lived in them.
De Chambray quickly explained. ‘These men on this deck are les raffales. They don’t want to work or try to escape. They are nearly all private soldiers and junior N.C.O.s. All they do is gamble and laze around all day and steal whatever they can. They don’t consider that the war is any concern of theirs any longer. We, les officiers and messieurs ou bourgeois, on the other hand, are still soldiers of France and wish to serve the Empereur. You will learn what I mean and see the differences between them and us as time goes by.’
The party traversed the lower battery and came to yet another ladder, narrow and steep, that went down into the very bowels of the ship. De Chambray issued further instructions and from somewhere stubs of candle were produced and lit. The colonel leant and shouted into the fetid darkness below.
‘Move away from the ladder. Any of you scum that are within five metres of the ladder will get your throats slit.’
He held up his hand for silence and listened carefully. From below could be heard low-pitched mutterings and then the padding and shuffling of bare feet over the planking. De Chambray smiled his satisfaction and jerked his head. A candle-bearer swiftly descended the ladder, followed by three of the biggest men in the party. They disappeared from view for some moments, then one reappeared at the foot of the ladder.
‘It’s all clear, mon Colonel.’
The remainder of the party, dragging the prisoner with them, quickly descended. As Henri put his feet on the Orlop deck he felt his stomach turn over. Despite his sense of smell having accustomed itself to the stench of the upper battery, the sheer putridity of the air down here, with only a single layer of planking separating the Orlop from the bilges, made him feel faint.
‘Behold, Capitain Chanteur . . . the empire of the Imperial Mantles!’ Colonel de Chambray gestured at the space illuminated by the wavering candle flames. . . . ‘And these animals were once the soldiers of Napoleon Bonaparte!’
In a half circle, blinking in the weak light, the Imperial Mantles stared sullenly at the intruders. They were, every one of them, naked. Shaggy headed and heavily bearded, their bodies corpselike in both smell and appearance. Many wore draped around their shoulders the single torn filthy blanket from which they derived their nickname. Henri inwardly acknowledged its justice. The Empereur’s robes of state had swarms of bees worked in pure gold thread as decoration. The blankets of those who possessed them also had small patches shimmering in the candle glow; silvery-gold patches of lice and their sticky eggs.
The deck itself was thick with tiny delicate bones, scraps of bedraggled half-chewed fur and skin, and soggy with human excreta. Even as Henri stared in horrified disgust, there was a movement amongst the refuse and with a shout of glee one of the Imperial Mantles flung himself forward to snatch up a writhing, struggling, squealing black rat, which he held high in triumph before neatly breaking its back with his thumbs.
‘At least we’ve made one of these creatures happy, gentlemen,’ de Chambray observed quietly. ‘We’ve provided him with a fine dinner. Now listen to me all of you,’ he shouted. ‘This animal here,’ he indicated the bound prisoner, ‘last night attempted to rob the body of a dead officer. We permit a few of you to wander our decks at night and pick up any scraps of food that you find there. I do not wish to stop this custom. But you all know well the penalty for stealing from either the living, or the dead . . . Capitain Chanteur, give your evidence,’ he ordered sharply. ‘Come on, man! Tell what happened.’
Henri stepped forward and related what had occurred.
‘Do you recognize this man as the guilty person?’ de Chambray demanded.
Henri’s jaw dropped in sheer surprise at the stupidity of such a question. ‘Mais non! How could I?’ he burst out. ‘It was pitch black at that time. I couldn’t possibly recognize anyone in such conditions.’
The colonel frowned. ‘Sergeant-chef Malet. Step forward,’ he ordered curtly.
A barrel-chested, shaven-headed man, the sergeant-chef spoke in the thick argot of the Marseilles waterfront.
‘At your orders, mon Colonel.’
‘Give your statement,’ de Chambray told him.
‘Oui, mon Colonel.’ The man stared straight ahead, expressionless and rattled out, ‘I have the hammock directly in front of the ladder to the lower battery. The instant the alarm was raised I and my copains blocked the ladder. It was impossible for any living creature to pass without us knowing . . . And no one did pass.’
‘Good.’ The colonel’s deepset eyes lost some of the anger that had entered them when Henri had spoken. ‘We shall waste no more time. This man was the only one on the upper battery who did not belong there. Without doubt he is guilty of attempting to rob the dead. Commandant de Malvoisin, Commandent de Thierry, Capitain Arnaud, what verdict have you arrived at?’
The three men so addressed had been standing opposite the prisoner regarding him closely. They whispered together briefly, then one after the other replied with a single word, ‘Guilty!’
The bound man began to shake
his head frantically from side to side and tears squeezed out of the slits of his eyes.
The colonel’s face was grim. ‘The verdict is guilty! The penalty is death!’ he stated curtly.
Choking sounds came from deep in the prisoner’s throat and his knees buckled. De Chambray pointed at two of the Imperial Mantles before him.
‘Put him in the bilges,’ he told them.
With no hesitation they sprang to obey, while a space was cleared amongst their fellows to disclose a trapdoor. The trap was opened and the prisoner dragged to the opening and heaved head-first down it. There was frantic splashing and thudding and both Imperial Mantles followed feet-first down the black hole.
‘This is murder!’ Henri ejaculated angrily. ‘There is no proof that he was the man. Where are the trousers that were stripped from the body? He didn’t have them.’
‘Hold your tongue,’ de Chambray barked at him. ‘I will remind you, Capitain Chanteur, that this is a military tribunal.’ His face was merciless, and Henri felt the sickening realization that nothing he could do or say would alter the course of events. He remembered the words of the marine sergeant after the fight. ‘Indeed it is the truth, what you said, Englishman,’ he thought helplessly. ‘They are all mad on board this hulk.’
After what seemed endless hours, but in reality only a few minutes, the flaccid, steaming wet corpse of the drowned prisoner was lifted from the bilge hatch and thrown to land soggily at the feet of de Chambray. He nodded and pressed on the dead stomach so that a spout of water gushed from the gaping mouth.
‘Let this be a lesson to the rest of you,’ he warned, and amidst a frightened silence the party returned to their own quarters.
When they reached them, the colonel spoke to Henri. His manner was once more courteous and his voice pleasant-toned and gentle.
‘You are shocked and disgusted, I know, my young friend. But when you have been here a little longer, you will realize why we have to do such terrible things.’