Which silenced all of them.
An hour went by. They had subsided to the floor and leaned their backs against the walls, feeling the slight shifting under their legs as the ship moved sluggishly against its moorings. Rudderless, thought Richard. We are as rudderless as this thing that was once a ship, farther away from home than any of us has ever been, and with no idea of what awaits. The youngsters are dumbstruck, even Ike Rogers is unsure. And I am filled with dread.
Came the sound of several pairs of feet thumping on wooden planking, the familiar dull clinking of chains; the twelve men stirred, looked at each other uneasily, got up wearily.
“Darbies f y dimber coves!” said the first man through the door. “Fetters, ye pretty hicks! Sit down and nobody move.”
Six inches longer than the Bristol or Gloucester versions, the chains were already welded to the cuffs, which were much lighter, flexible enough for the heavily muscled smith to bend apart around a man’s ankle, then close until the holes in either end overlapped. Then he pushed a flat-headed bolt through the holes from the ankle side, grabbed the prisoner’s leg and slipped the long tongue of an anvil between it and the fetter. Two heavy blows with his hammer and the rivet ends were smashed flat against the iron band forever.
I will wear these for the next six and more years, thought Richard, easing his aching bones by rubbing them. They do not do that for a mere six and more months. Which means that even after I reach Botany Bay, I will wear these until I finish my sentence.
Another smith had fettered the second six from Gloucester, and just as competently. Within half an hour the two of them had the job done, prodded their assistants into gathering the tools up, and left. Two guards remained; Matty must have belonged to the doctor. However, Matty had passed the message on, for when one of the guards spoke, it was in that peculiarly accented English, not in what time would inform the prisoners was “flash lingo”—the speech of the London Newgate and all those who had dealings with that place.
“Ye’ll mess and sleep here tonight,” he said curtly, tapping the knobbed end of his short bludgeon against the palm of his other hand. “Ye can talk and move about. Here, have a bucket.” Then he and his companion moved out, locking the door.
The two Wiltshire lads were wiping away tears; everyone else was dryeyed. Not in a mood for talking until Will Connelly got up and prowled about.
“These feel better on the legs,” he said, lifting one foot. “Chain must be thirty inches long too. Easier to walk.”
Richard ran his fingers over the cuffs and found that they had rounded edges. “Aye, and they will not rub so much. We will go through fewer rags.”
“Proper working irons,” said Bill Whiting. “I wonder what sort of work it will be?”
Just before nightfall they were given small beer, stale and very dark brown bread, and a mess of boiled cabbage with leeks.
“Not for me,” said Ike, pushing the pot of cabbage away.
“Eat it, Ike,” Richard ordered. “My cousin James says we must eat every vegetable we can get, otherwise we will get scurvy.”
Ike was unimpressed. “That muck could not cure a runny nose.”
“I agree,” said Richard, having tasted it. “However, it is a change from bread, so I will eat it.”
After which, windowless, womanless and cheerless, they lay down on the floor, wrapped their greatcoats about them, used their hats as pillows, and let the gently moving river rock them to sleep.
The next morning, amid a drizzling grey rain, they were taken off Reception and loaded into an open lighter. So far nothing hideously cruel had happened to them; the guards were surly brutes, but as long as the prisoners did as they were told at the pace demanded, they kept their bludgeons to themselves. The wooden boxes were a source of curiosity, obviously, yet why had no one inspected them? On the dock they learned why. A short, rotund gentleman in an old-fashioned wig and a fusty suit came hurrying down from the ship’s remnant of a poop, hands outstretched, beaming.
“Ah, the dozen from Gloucester!” he said brightly, with an accent they would discover later was Scotch. “Doctor Meadows said ye were fine specimens, and I see he was right. My name is Mr. Campbell, and this is my idea.” His hand swept the soft rain aside in a grand gesture. “Floating prisons! So much healthier than the Newgate—than any gaol, for that matter. Ye’ve your property, yes? Good, good. ’Tis a black mark for anybody does not respect a convict’s right to his property. Neil! Neil, where are ye?”
A person who appeared enough like him to be his twin rushed from the bows of Reception down onto the dock and came to a halt with a puff. “Here, Duncan.”
“Oh good! I did not want ye to miss setting eyes on these splendid fellows. My brother is my assistant,” he explained, just as if the prisoners were real people. “However, he is responsible for Justitia and Censor at the moment—I am too busy with my dear Ceres—she is superb! Brand new! Of course ye’re going to dear Ceres—so convenient that ye’re the round dozen and in such good condition. Two teams for the two new dredges.” He actually began to prance. “Splendid, splendid!” And off he galloped, his brother bleating in his wake like a lost lamb.
“Christ! What a quiz!” said Bill Whiting.
“Tace!” barked the overseeing guard, and brought his bludgeon down with a sickening thump on Whiting’s arm. “Nah hike!”
That they understood; with Ike Rogers unobtrusively supporting the half-conscious Whiting, the twelve men edged, hanging on to their goods, down a flight of slimy steps to the waiting lighter.
Stretches of a low, swampy shore and misty profiles of a few ships came and went through the ghostly grey rain; collars turned up, hats oriented to cascade water onto their shoulders rather than down their necks, they sat amid their boxes, sacks and bundles. A silent crew of twelve oarsmen, six to a side, pushed the lighter off, turned it, and stroked toward the middle of the great wide river with a long, easy motion that hardly disturbed the sliding water.
There were four ships sitting one behind the other like a line of cows about three hundred yards off this south or Kentish shore. Each was moored more thoroughly than Richard had ever seen a vessel moored, even in the Kingroad of the Severn Estuary. To fix them, he thought, too firmly to allow them to swing at anchor, of which each had many on chains rather than the normal rope cables. The smallest ship was farthest upriver in London’s direction and the largest brought up the rear, with perhaps a hundred yards separating each from its neighbors in the line.
“Hospital ship Guardian—then Censor, Justitia and Ceres,” said a guard, pointing.
The lighter struck for Censor, opposite the dock, then turned to run downriver with an ebbing tide to make life easier for the oarsmen. Thus they had the chance to look at each of the three prison hulks. Travesties of ships only, mizzens long gone, mainmasts broken off forty feet aloft in cracks and splinters, foremasts more or less intact but stripped of shrouds, clothing hanging limp and wet from lines strung between each fore and main, as well as on the stays connecting the fore with a stub of bowsprit. The decks sported a shambles of wooden huts and jutting penthouses with a forest of iron chimneys kinked at all angles; more of these stood atop quarterdecks, forecastles and roundhouses. Censor and Justitia looked old enough to have gone to sea with Good Queen Bess’s fleet against the Spanish Armada—no scrap of paint left, no copper nail ungreened, no strake unchipped.
By comparison Ceres looked a mere century old; its naval black-and-yellow paint still showed in places and it had the remnant of a figurehead beneath its bowsprit, some sort of wheaty bare-breasted female a wag had finished off with bright red nipples. The gun ports of Censor and Justitia were closed fast, but those of Ceres had been removed entirely and replaced by grilles of thick iron bars which led the Bristolians, experienced in such matters, to conclude that it had two decks below the upper or surface deck—a lower deck and an orlop deck. Once a second-rate ship of the line with 90 guns, then. No cargo vessel or slaver ever owned so many ports along her sides.
