Execution Dock

There was a snigger of laughter from one of the other men. They began to relax. They were the hunters again, no longer the victims.

Orme had taken off his jacket and given it to the older boy to cover his nakedness and his humiliation. Sutton did the same for the younger one.

The movement caught Hester's eye and suddenly she realized that they were all frozen here, arguing, and any torture could be happening to Scuff. There was no purpose in pleading with Phillips to tell them where he was. She slipped between two of the customers and touched Orme. “We have to look for Scuff,” she whispered. “There may be other guards, so keep your gun ready.”

“Right, ma'am.” He yielded immediately. He nodded to Sutton, who was almost beside him, Snoot now on the floor at his heels. The three of them inched towards the doorway as the quarrel between Monk and Phillips grew uglier. Monk's men were posturing themselves to take over with violence, moving to get the physical advantage, disarm those most likely to have weapons, or to be able to seize one of the children to use as a hostage. Wilberforce was drawn in. Sullivan swayed from one side to the other, his face dark, congested with a desperate hatred like a trapped creature between its tormentors.

Monk would strike soon, and then the fighting would be swift and hard.

Hester was afraid for him, and for Rathbone as well. She had seen a horror in his eyes far beyond the cruelty or coarseness of the scene. He was struggling with some decision of his own that she did not yet recognize. She imagined that it could be a kind of guilt. Now at last he was seeing the reality of what he had defended, not the theory, the high words of the law. Perhaps some time she would even apologize to him for the harsher things she had said. This was not his world; he might really not have understood.

Now all that mattered was to find Scuff. She dared not let her mind even touch on the chance that he was not here, but held captive locked in some room on shore, or even dead already. That would be almost like being dead herself.

She followed Sutton through the doorway and found herself instantly in a passage so narrow the slightest loss of balance bumped her shoulders into the wooden walls. Sutton had already turned left towards the bow of the boat. Snoot was almost under his feet, but as always not making the slightest sound except for the faint scrape of his claws on the damp wood of the floor. The smell of bilges and the mustiness of wet rot were stronger as they went forward. Sutton turned abruptly left again and scrambled down a steep flight of steps. He reached for the dog, but Snoot slithered down, fell the last short way, and was on his feet again in an instant.

Here the ceiling was low, and Hester had to bend to avoid cracking her skull on the crossbeams. Sutton half-crouched as well. The smell was stronger here, and the dog's hackles were raised, his small body shivering and bristling in awareness of something deeply wrong.

Hester could feel her breath tight in her chest and the sweat ru

There was a row of doors.

Sutton tried the first one. It was locked. He lifted his leg and kicked it hard with the flat of his foot. It cracked but did not give. Snoot was growling high and softly in the back of his throat. His sensitive nose picked up the odor of fear.

Sutton kicked again, and this time it gave way. It crashed open to reveal a small room, little more than a cupboard, in which cowered three small boys dressed in rags, their eyes wide with terror. They were comparatively clean, but the arms and legs poking out of their clothes were thin and as pale as splintered matchwood.

Hester almost choked with hope, and then despair.

“We'll come back for you,” Sutton told them.

Hester was not sure whether that was a promise or a threat to them. Perhaps their choice lay between Phillips and starvation. But she must find Scuff; everything else would have to wait.

Sutton forced open another door to a room with more boys. He found a third, and then a fourth that was right at the very stern, empty. Scuff was nowhere.

Hester could feel her throat tighten and the tears sting her eyes. She was furious with herself. There was no time for this. He had to be somewhere. She must think! What would Phillips do? He was clever and cu

Snoot was quivering. He darted forward and started to run round in tight little circles, nose to the floor.

“C'mon, boy,” Sutton said gently. “Don't matter about rats now. Leave ‘em alone.”

Snoot ignored him, scratching at the floor near the joints in the boards.

“Don't matter about rats,” Sutton repeated, his voice tight with grief.

Snoot started to dig, scraping his claws along the joints.

“Snoot!” Sutton reached for the dog's collar.

There was a faint scratching sound beneath.

Snoot barked.

Sutton grasped his collar but the dog was excited, and he squirmed out of Sutton's grasp, yelping.

Sutton bent forward and Hester was right behind him. Looking more closely at the floor, she saw that the lines of the boards were not quite even.

“It's a trapdoor!” she said, hardly daring to believe it.

“To the bilges. Mind your hands, there'll be rats. Always is,” Sutton warned her, his voice breaking with tension. He reached for the knife at his belt, flicked open the blade, and used it as a handle to ease the trap open and pull it up.

Below them Scuffs ashen face looked up, eyes wide with terror, skin bruised and smeared with blood and filth.

Hester forgot all the decorum she had promised herself and reached down to pull him up and hold him so tightly in her arms she might easily have hurt him. She pressed her face into his neck, ignoring the stench of rot on his skin and hair and clothes, thinking only that she had him at last, and he was alive.

He clung to her, shuddering uncontrollably, sobs racking his thin chest.

It was Sutton's voice that brought her back to the present, and the danger she had momentarily forgotten.

“There's rats down ‘ere all right,” he said quietly. “It's straight to the bilges, an’ there's been another boy down ‘ere, poor little thing, but there in't much left of ‘im now, just bones an’ a bit o’ flesh. Don't look, Miss ‘Ester. Take the boy out of ‘ere. Enough to drive ‘im out of ‘is ‘ead, stuffed in ‘ere with rats and the ‘alf-rotted corpse of another child. I'll tell you this, if Mr. Monk don't get that son of the devil ‘anged this time, I'll do it with me own ‘ands…” His voice trailed off, suffocated by emotion.

Reluctantly Hester let go of Scuff, but he couldn't let go of her. He whispered softly, just a little cry, and fastened on to her more tightly. She would have had to break his fingers to loosen his hold. She staggered to the door, arms around him, keeping her head low beneath the boarded ceiling, and met Orme at the top of the steps, his face shining with relief.

“I'll tell Mr. Monk,” he said simply, swiveling to go back up again. “I'll… I'll tell ‘im.” He stood still for a moment, as if imprinting the scene on his eyes, then gri

Hester lost count of how long she sat on the floor cradling Scuff in her arms before Monk came down, just to look at the boy for himself. The other boys explained that the corpse below the trapdoor was that of Reilly, the other missing boy who had tried to rebel. He had been almost old enough to sell to one of the ships leaving London, but he had tried to rescue some of the younger boys and had been locked in the bilges for his rebellion, as an example. He could be identified by the small charm around what was left of his neck.