"Amen," said Jake, who was one of the dark figures behind the guards. His voice was hoarse. Again, only two or three of the guards added their own "amens," much to Peter's tense annoyance.

  "Lord, we pray for the soul of Etienne LaFleur, whom we speed on his way to heaven after a conflict that we, in our human ignorance, cannot understand —" LaFleur, one of the Frenchmen, had died in a knife fight — "and we ask that you comfort those he leaves behind, and be with them in their hour of grief. In Jesus' name we pray —"

  "Amen."

  The crowd shifted on their feet, huddling in the light rain.

  "And Lord, we pray for the soul of Ralph Leach —" Thank you God, the boat is well beneath the bowsprit now — and we ask your forgiveness for what he attempted to do, for the flesh is weak, especially when . . . when times are as hard as they are now. We ask that you, oh Lord, judge this man on the good deeds he has done, the good deeds that have been in his heart, and God, we ask that you be with his family and friends. In Jesus' name we pray —"

  "Amen," chorused the guards.

  Peter bent his head, the water trickling from the brim of his hat and onto the deck before him. The Bible's pages were damp beneath his fingers, and as he read a few verses from Corinthians, he passionately raised his voice to cover any noise the Black Wolf might make as he effected the rescue of Toby Ashton and Jed Turner — the two that Connor wanted off the ship before it was too late.

  "Oh God, we ask for peace in this world! We ask that all wars might end, and that humankind might exist in love and harmony with one another; we ask for understanding among ourselves; and we pray that you will be with our community, our country, our world. We ask that you put an end to all suffering, Lord, and we pray for forgiveness for those acts of sin that we commit, intentionally and unintentionally, against our fellow man . . . Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer!"

  Radley looked at his watch and shot Peter an annoyed glance.

  "We pray for wisdom for our leaders, Lord, and we pray that you will guide them along the paths of righteousness, mercy, and love . . . Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer . . ."

  The service went on.

  And on.

  And far forward and below, where the waves lapped against the old bow, a black-cloaked figure slipped out of a boat and into a hole beneath the deserted gallery.

  Chapter 11

  It was barely a crawl space in which the Black Wolf found himself, a close, stinking cubbyhole in the bows that reeked of stagnant brine, mildew, and the decaying remains of an old anchor cable. His back was jammed against damp wood, his knees against his chest. Suffocating darkness enclosed him. He heard the distant words of the chaplain's service, smelled the nauseous stench of the prison ship's bowels, sensed the thick, massing swell of hundreds of prisoners just beyond the partition against which his knees were crushed.

  Orla O'Shaughnessy waited in the boat just outside, but that woman had nerves of steel and did not command any worry on her behalf. Cool mist drifted into the hole by which the Wolf had entered this tiny space, but still the air around him was dank and hot. He wished he could see in the choking darkness, wished he could have brought a light, but such a risk was not worth taking. Instead he waited for his senses to accustom themselves to his surroundings and concentrated on getting his bearings by touch. Then he pushed himself forward, twisting his body and thrusting his head through the crude latticework of wood his exploring hand had managed to locate.

  "Clayton." His voice was no more than a whisper.

  "I'm here, sir," the guard answered, ten British pounds the richer for his assistance.

  "Have you the two American lads?"

  "I got Jed with me," came the answer, a foot away in the darkness. "But I couldn't get Toby Ashton. He won't come, says he won't leave his brother behind."

  "I told you not to fail me in this, Clayton."

  "I tried, sir, told him the Wolf was comin' for him, but he said he won't leave unless he can get his brother out 'o the Hole an' bring him too. Said that if he escapes without him that bastard Morninghall will get his revenge by making the brother pay."

  The Black Wolf crouched motionless, head bent and knuckles against his brow as he cursed savagely. Bloody hell. He hadn't counted on this.

  "Send Jed up to me then. Quickly!"

  Harsh gasps cut the darkness, then the desperate scratching of fingernails against wood, the grunt of the guard, the frightened whispers of the boy. The Black Wolf pushed himself into the tiny space between the latticework, his strong hands reaching out in the darkness to seize the youngster's thin, bony ones, squeezing them reassuringly for a brief moment before hauling him up into the tiny space in which he was crushed. His back grinding into the wood behind him, he shifted and shimmied, dragging the youth up through the crawl space and directing him toward the ragged hole in the ship's hull.

  "Easy now, lad. My friend Orla out there in the boat will help you."

  Too frightened to reply, too terrified of being caught, the youngster pushed his head and shoulders through the hole as the Black Wolf held his ankles to steady him. Moments later the Wolf felt the tug signifying that Orla had him in her arms.

  "Got him, sir!" she whispered.

  He let go. One left.

  "Clayton!" he whispered fiercely. "Get Toby Ashton whether he wants to come or not, and be quick about it!"

  There was the sound of movement, then Clayton was gone. The seconds crept by as the Black Wolf waited, lodged in the tiny, airless crawl space, his heart thundering in his ears, his breathing sounding loud in the darkness. He buried his mouth against his arm, trying to mask it, though the sound was unlikely to be heard. He pictured Peter up there, drawing out the service as long as possible, raising his passionate voice and doing all he could to play his part in this latest rescue. He sensed Orla several feet away, already spreading a black tarp over the lad, thought of the schooner Kestrel, poised for flight and silently cruising the waters just beyond the big anchored men-of-war. Thank God for the misty night, the drifting fog, the gentle whisper of rain and tide.

  There was a noise outside the hull, a faint tapping against the old oak.

  "Captain!"

  His knees crushed against his chest, the Wolf pivoted in the tiny space and thrust his head out of the hole through which he had just passed Jed. Rain pattered softly against his nape, his damp hair; the night was dark, so dark it was impossible to tell where the harbor ended and the night sky began. Tendrils of mist and fog crept across the water, enveloping the lights of the men-of-war, the hospital ship, and another prison hulk.

  Orla's face, smeared with charcoal, was barely visible in the darkness. "I've got to push off a bit — there's a guard coming around the scaffolding, he'll be on us within the next minute!"

  "Right, then. Go."

  The Black Wolf waved her off, ducking back inside the ship as she put an oar against the rotting old hull and pushed off into the darkness, the swirling rush of water following her. He sat, tense, waiting, and damp, the scent of rain and sea air wafting into his tiny space.

  Where was that damned Clayton?

  He'd no sooner had the thought when he heard the measured footsteps of the sentry Orla had warned him about, just outside on the scaffolding not two feet away. The Wolf held his breath. The wooden walkway creaked beneath the sentry's weight as he approached and passed.

  At that moment, Clayton's urgent whisper cut the darkness.

  "Sir, I can't find him!"

  The Wolf froze. Outside, the footsteps stopped.

  Heavy creaks sounded on the scaffolding, and he sensed the sentry leaning down.

  Damnation!

  Clayton, unaware of the sentry's presence and thinking the Wolf had not heard him the first time, raised his voice. "Sir, the Ashton boy, he's not in his hammock. I don't know where he is!"

  Too late. Outside, the guard was on his knees, peering beneath the scaffolding, lowering his lantern and silently running his hand over the curve of the hull. The Black Wolf, trapped, flattened himself against the damp wood at his back as lantern light filled the night beyond the hole, moving this way, moving that, stopping, blinding him —

  "What the hell — Alarm! ALARM! We 'ave us an escape attempt!"

  With all his strength, the Wolf kicked savagely out at that lantern, the arm, even as the sentry, howling, tumbled into the harbor and the ship burst into chaos. A bell began clanging wildly, muskets cracked above, footsteps were pounding overhead, the prisoners beyond the latticework were yelling —

  And the Black Wolf was gathering himself for a mighty leap to freedom.

  He threw himself headfirst out of the hole and into the night.

  His body knifed through the darkness and downward. There was the rush of air past his ears, then nothing but the gut-wrenching shock as he hit the water, its icy embrace ripping his breath away, momentarily paralyzing him, closing over his head and instantly cutting off the ringing alarm from above. He let himself sink a few numbing feet, the heavy folds of his cloak brushing like cobwebs around his face, bubbles hissing and whispering around him. He heard dull thuds, distant pops, the plop-plop-plop of musket balls slamming into the surface above.

  He doubled his body and dove deep, striking blindly out toward the harbor's entrance and where he knew Orla already would be heading swiftly. The cloak swirled around him, dragging him backward and impending his progress. Kicking upward as his air began to wane, he groped for his knife, cut the thing off, left it writhing and sinking in the depths behind him. He broke the surface only long enough to get his bearings, the rain beating against his brow. Eighty feet behind him the prison ship was ablaze with light, silhouetted figures running along her foc's'le and poop deck, shots cracking out in the night as tongues of blue-orange fire.

  A musket ball plowed the water six inches from his ear.

  "Captain! Over here!"

  Orla's voice was barely a whisper, but it was enough to guide him. He filled his lungs and dove deep, seeing the dull gleam of light on the surface above him, the inky blackness of the depths beneath. His limbs tingled with the cold, and the current rushed over his head and along his body with the speed at which he drove himself through it. Almost there . . . hold on . . . and then something brushed his fingers. Relieved, he knew it was the rope Orla had tossed to him. He wrapped it around his hand and held on tight, kicking hard so as not to slow her progress, rapidly catching up to the struggling boat.

  She backed water, allowing him precious seconds to haul himself up over the gunwales. Then, gasping and dripping, he grabbed both oars, his powerful arms sending the boat knifing across the harbor and toward the safety of Kestrel.

  She grinned at him, her teeth white in the darkness. "Cutting it a bit close, aren't you?"

  He looked at her and did not smile.

  ~~~~

  It was hard to think with the damned noise outside.

  Another prisoner had escaped the night before The morning newspapers were ablaze with the news, the ship was in turmoil, and even now the prisoners, roused to fever pitch by yet another Black Wolf raid, were cheering and yelling loud enough to wake the dead, making the very timbers of the ship throb with their uproar.

  Damon had no wish to deal with it. He assigned Lieutenant Radley to the task and shut himself in his cabin, picking at his breakfast of fried pork and black coffee as he went, with no small degree of annoyance and disinterest, through the untidy pile of paperwork and ledgers left by his predecessor. He could think of a hundred things he'd rather be doing, but he wanted to be prepared for his meeting with her — even if it was so that he wouldn't appear as apathetic as he felt. There were receipts for food, receipts for clothing, receipts for this, receipts for that, and here a note from the Transport Board. It was stained with tea and he had found it shoved up inside the corner of the desk drawer:

  I am directed by the Board to desire that you will immediately forward to this office by coach a loaf taken indiscriminately from the bread issued to the prisoners on the day you receive this letter . . .

  He tossed it aside. So, the navy had been "testing" the bread, making an effort — at least on paper — to see that the prisoners were being fed something edible. Damon wondered, contemptuously, how many times the "indiscriminate" sample had been pronounced unfit to eat. He wondered how many times action had been taken to make what was supposed to be bread "made of whole wheaten meal actually and bona fide dressed through an eleven shilling cloth" consumable. He wondered what had prompted the government even to look into the matter, and wondered why the hell he was sitting here on a bright, breezy morning, troubling himself about something in which he had no interest, about which he could do nothing anyhow, when he could be out petitioning the Powers That Be to give him a command he deserved.

  Now, Lady Simms . . . she was something in which he most definitely had an interest. And a prurient one at that.

  Pain shot through his skull. The headache had started when he got up, and at the thought of the hellcat, it forked out from his temples and stretched pain across his forehead. Cursing, Damon closed his eyes and cradled his head in his hands. He pressed his knuckles against his temples, hard, wishing he could just push the bones together until they met in the middle, thereby putting a quick end to the agony.

  Outside and belowdecks, the noise continued.

  Leaning on his elbow and propping his brow in the cradle of thumb and forefinger, he turned several more old, yellowed pages, his gaze skimming over notes made by his predecessor, his mind a million miles away. What he wouldn't give to be out on the sea right now, commanding a dashing frigate, a man-of-war, even a little sloop. Anything but a prison hulk, for God's sake.

  Angrily he turned another page and came across an advertisement to contractors regarding victualing on prison ships:

  Sunday. 1 1/2 lb. bread

  Monday. 1/2 lb. fresh beef

  Tuesday. 1/2 lb. cabbage or turnips

  Wednesday. 1 ½ lbs. bread, 1 lb. good sound herrings, 1 lb. good sound potatoes

  Thursday. 1 ounce Scotch barley

  Friday. 1 ½ lbs. bread, 1 lb. good sound cod, 1 lb. potatoes

  Saturday. 1/3 ounce salt, 1/4 ounce onions

  The rations seemed adequate enough. So why, then, are the prisoners so damned thin?

  Gambling away their food? Rejecting it as some sort of protest? Disease from within?

  What, then?

  The contractors.

  The headache was getting worse, beginning to pound against the inside of his skull like a carpenter's hammer, and the noise coming from outside made him want to bang his head against the table until he knocked himself senseless. The fact that he had to meet the hellcat at two o'clock for their scheduled visit to the clothing contractor did nothing to ease the pain.

  With a muttered curse he shoved the whole mess aside. He did not want to deal with Lady Gwyneth Evans Simms, he did not want to deal with this mountain of records, orders, and receipts, and he did not want to deal with those cheating scoundrels who supplied clothing and food to the prison ships. At the moment he didn't want to deal with anything. His palm pressed to his forehead as though to hold in his aching brain, he pulled out the bottle of pills the ship's doctor had prescribed for his headaches. He tossed two of them into his mouth and chased them with a swallow of black coffee. It was lukewarm, now, disgusting. He threw the cup against the bulkhead, coffee and all. A whiff of stench drifted in from the decks below, and a wave of nausea slithered up his throat.

  He looked down at his hands. They were shaking.

  Get the Peterson's.

  He was just retrieving the tome from his bookcase when a knock came at the door.

  So much for seeing whether he was going to live or die.

  Unexplainably feeling guilty, Damon snatched his hand back and straightened up, locking his fingers together behind his back.

  "Enter," he commanded tensely.

  Young Toby Ashton came in. He had been bathed — the rinse water requiring three changes, so Radley had complained, before finally it had run clear — issued a fresh set of clothing, and given a healthy portion of the same food that was now growing cold on Damon's plate. His ginger hair was neatly combed and parted, new shoes gleamed on his feet, and he had been given a fresh pair of spectacles to replace his cracked ones. Yet the frame from which those clean clothes hung was barely more than a skeleton, and no amount of soap and water could wash away the despair and grief in those haunted brown eyes.

  Raw guilt sliced Damon's heart like a knife. Peter Milford had told him the boy had been the object of much abuse belowdecks, with the French prisoners stealing his food and making sport of his meekness, his size, his propensity for tears. Given his own personal experiences with abusive mothers, Oxford undergraduates, and unfair naval politics, Damon knew damned well the pain and ostracism the boy must be feeling. He felt what little heart he had going out to him.

  Damn it to hell.

  It had been so much easier when he'd been ignorant of what really went on belowdecks, when he'd been able to think of the prisoners as the enemy and hadn't spared them a second thought. But it was hard to remain detached when you could smell the truth wafting in through the open window. It was hard to ignore the things you'd been forced to face when they repeated themselves in your nightmares. And it was hard to think of the prisoners as a cold and calculating enemy when one of them, a pitifully starved and sickly little thirteen-year-old, was standing there in front of you, his eyes dark with suffering, pride, and grief.

  It was all Lady Gwyneth Evans Simms' fault. She'd been the one to bring him face-to-face with reality. He'd been fine until she'd come into his life and forced him to look at things he was better off ignoring. Now he knew only guilt and pain and regret. He hadn't had any of this when his heart had been successfully hardened, when he'd walled himself in with ignorance, anger, and self-pity. But those walls were unsteady, and now the mortar was beginning to crumble.