‘That we are, my friend,’ said the naked man.
There was a whistle of rattan, and the teeth, lips and eyes snapped shut.
‘Silence!’ roared a boatswain’s mate.
Thomas would not, could not, take his clothes off when ordered, but it availed him nothing. They were torn from him, and he was hurled naked into the tub. There he was held down while sailors with brooms scrubbed him till his skin bled. His hair was lopped off, his skull roughly shaved. An evil-smelling yellow powder was poured into the water and rubbed into his skin, ears, eyes, mouth.
After the washing and delousing, Jesse Broad and Thomas Fox stood once more on deck, and watched their clothes flung overboard. The smuggler, silent as the grave, blue with cold, stared straight ahead. Thomas, bleeding from one ear and several scalp wounds, snuffled noisily. He still tried to cover his nakedness.
‘Now, my bright boys,’ said Mr Allgood, appearing before them with a bundle of clothes, ‘here we have clothes fitting for a prince or even a king. Slops we call ’em, on account they comes out of the slop room, and you receives ’em by courtesy and consent of His Gracious Majesty. Who will, I might remind you, require payment for ’em in full to be docked out of your pay, you lucky sailormen.’
He sorted out a great grey flannel shirt, which he held up in front of Thomas like a London tailor.
‘’Ere, you scrawny, ill-favoured, half-starved lubber,’ he said.
‘This is the smallest article of garmentry on board of the Welfare, which is much too good for you an’all, having been took off the corpse of a Spanish nobleman no less. But put it on and shut your gob, before my mates shuts it for you.’
Fox took the shirt gratefully, and struggled into it. The neck was so wide his shoulders almost came through as well as his head, and it reached below his knees. Next he was given wide-bottomed trousers, a short wool jacket, neckcloth, and a belt of rope. He felt better dressed, although the slops were old and worn and much too loose for comfort.
‘Now you, my bucko,’ cried the boatswain, chucking a striped shirt at Jesse Broad. ‘Dress up fine now, for you’re off to see the captain very soon, to share a drop of fine French brandy that was delivered last night by a friend! Silk, I should have brought for you, damn me, but we ain’t none. So good old English flannel must serve!’
Broad did not break his silence as he dressed. The clothes would suit well enough, although he regretted the loss of his own better ones – in a storm at sea these would provide poor protection. But he did not intend to face a storm at sea in them, or the Welfare.
He looked at the figure beside him. The poor boy was yellow-faced, weeping still. Tufts of black hair stuck from his head at angles. His mother, if he had one, would not have known him. A farmer’s boy no doubt. And no doubt illegally pressed.
‘Not in hell, boy,’ he said abruptly. ‘For there is always hope while there is life. Obey orders, and keep counsel. You will come through.’
He said no more, for the rope’s end banged into his back and made him gasp. The farmer’s lad turned a pair of large, swimming eyes upon him, and stared. Deep inside them, something that looked like hope glimmered for an instant.
Inside the captain’s cabin the two stood like cattle at a market. Broad noted the wide polished table, the rich hangings, the heavy darkwood furniture. Only a frigate, but decked out like a flagship. Swift was reputed to be a rich man.
Obviously rumour was not dressed in her liar’s garb on this occasion.
Nor had rumour lied about the appearance of the man.
He was small, but bulky and well-made in his blue coat of the finest, and his many-ruffled silk shirt. An air of confidence, elegance, self-satisfaction sat on his shoulders, and he had an easy, arrogant smile on his handsome face.
The biggest feature on it was a fine, hooked nose, a great sickle of bone that give him the look of an emperor. But the features that captured the gaze were Swift’s eyes. They were pale; of no colour that Broad could distinguish, but pale. Cold and watchful and pale. They watched him now, unblinking. Broad watched back, but he knew more than to stare into the captain’s eyes. He dropped his own as if in deference, while in fact taking in the rest of the man’s figure. A cold, dangerous, cruel sort of a fellow, he decided. Rumour had not lied.
To Swift’s right sat his first lieutenant, a thin, Irish-looking man of Broad’s age – about thirty. He had flaming red hair and wet lips. To the captain’s left, the second. A butter-barrel of a fat man, with a face like a suet pudding. He was known to the people, it later turned out, as Plumduff. Eyes like a pig.
Behind Swift, a corporal of marines, at attention easily on the uneasily pitching deck. At the end of the table, in powdered wig of all things, the captain’s clerk, at a ledger. He had a quill and horn of ink ready. Broad looked through the square stern windows. He could see Point Gilkicker, the green scrub stretching away behind it. He wondered at the grandeur of the reception he and the boy were getting, and decided the officers must have gathered for a more important purpose. For a moment there was silence. Except, of course, for the noises of the ship and the sea and the wind.
‘You, sir,’ said Swift, ‘I propose to rate as able. You are a smuggler, a rogue, a buggering villain. Doubtless the son of a whore, probably the husband of one. But that is my proposal nevertheless. Have you anything to say?’
The first lieutenant, Hagan, licked his lips. Broad stared over the captain’s head, at Gilkicker. A coasting brig hove into view, scampering towards Portsmouth harbour. As she rounded the point, braces and tacks were tended. In less than an hour she would be alongside in Shitty Corner.
‘Your compatriot, your fellow villain, was killed. I might have wished such a fate to overtake you, but God was not kind. I must make room for you in my ship. I propose to rate you able. To hand, reef and steer. What do you say?’
Broad stared. He sensed a movement behind him.
Someone preparing to swing. Swift raised his hand in a small negative.
‘Answer me, able seaman.’
‘Aye aye sir,’ said Broad. Swift smiled a tiny smile. ‘Good,’ he said. Then: ‘You are not the ordinary run of fellow, a fool could see that. You probably know that the manner of your coming on board of my ship was a thought irregular. You probably know that I should, to be within the letter of the law, have you taken to Portsmouth to be tried and hanged. You possibly even know that I cannot, in theory, rate you as able from the start of things. Well?’
‘Aye aye sir.’
‘What else do you know, I wonder? That I found the brandy excellent? That I need good seamen? That you will run at the very first opportunity?’
Broad pondered, but his mind felt stodgy, muddled.
He watched the coasting brig, fast disappearing. He had protection, in theory, he and his fellows were immune. But here, now, such influence – always nebulous – counted for nothing. Swift was the law, and no protection on the earth need sway him from his purpose. Yes, thought Broad, I will run. But what does this blue-coated, fish-eyed man mean by saying it?
‘You will not run, able seaman, you will not run,’ said Swift. ‘For as a smuggler you would hang, and as a deserter you would hang. But as an able seaman, you will be of use. You will not run, able seaman, because you will be watched. Well?’
‘Aye aye sir.’
‘And, able seaman, bear this in mind. No man has run from this ship in some little sojourn in St Helen’s Roads. Two have tried and two have died. Mr Scrivenor, sign him on board.’
The bewigged clerk scratched in the ledger. Jesse Broad was pushed forward to sign. He held the quill clumsily and made his mark. At least no one need know he could read and write.