Every man on deck swiveled in the direction of the voice. With no one looking down at the docks, Matthew stepped out from the barrels he’d been hiding behind. Keeping to the darkness as much as possible, he quickly slunk to the ship.
“Where’s a fine mort? Where’s a fine mort?” Pan croaked out,sounding exactly like a drunken sailor searching for a dockside whore.
“Is that voice coming from this ship?” One of the soldiers called to another in confusion.
Bollocks! Matthew prayed that no one would check the wharf. Hurriedly, he ducked behind a barrel.
“Aye,” another answered.
“Murder on board! Murder on board! Murder on board!” Pan shrieked.
Matthew heard the scurrying of feet as the guards tried to locate the disembodied cackle. Taking advantage of the confusion, Matthew left his second hiding place and grabbed ahold of the ship’s mooring line, first with his gloved hands and then with his feet. After years of practice, it didn’t take him long to inch his way up the rope. Still, his muscles burned by the time he reached the main deck, but he didn’t dare climb over the rail. Instead, he clung tight and listened first.
“It’s a ghost!” A young ensign with an incongruously deep, booming voice shouted.
“Don’t be a ninnyhammer.” An officer with a deep Scottish brogue chortled. “A jack-tar is just soused.”
“Sounds like that old toothless salt when he’s in his cups. Old Akerman, is it?” another man offered.
Matthew reached for the railing. The guards seemed in deep debate now and not liable to notice his ascent. As Matthew swung one leg over the wooden structure, Pan cried out again. “Where’s a fine mort? Where’s a fine mort?”
Matthew spared a grin for the parrot’s perfectly timed theatrics. The cries hid the thump his boots made when they hit the main deck. Creeping behind the small stowed boats, Matthew secreted his movements the best he could. Luckily, he’d learned how to make good use of shadows. The men were so busy arguing withthe young ensign, however, that Matthew may not have needed any subterfuge.
“It is most assuredly a phantom!” the ensign cried out.
“What? One who died with his poker in the fire?” Another soldier sneered.
“Banshee. Love. Banshee. Love.” Pan’s cackle had turned mournful and rather haunting.
“Now, doesn’t that sound like the devil himself?” the ensign demanded. “And it is coming from above us!”
Peering over one of the small craft, Matthew saw all the guards gathered on the quarterdeck. The ensign was jabbing his finger in the direction of the towering masts, and all of the soldiers stared into the night sky.
With everyone distracted, Matthew slithered on his belly and left his hiding place to advance into the open. Moving as quickly as an adder after its prey, he wriggled to the hatch. As soon as his hands touched the cover, Pan began to wail. It sounded like the groans of a drunkard… or the moans of an apparition. Either way, it covered the noise Matthew made as he lifted the wood just far enough to make an opening to squeeze through. Stepping onto the rungs of the narrow ladder, he surreptitiously lowered the cover back into position. Quietly, he climbed down one level, careful not to wake the sailors sleeping in their hammocks.
The snores of the crew members were thankfully loud enough to obscure any sound Matthew made as he descended into the bowels of the ship. A stench rose from the hold. According to Matthew’s intelligence, the prisoners had been stuck in the dark, cramped quarters for over a week. The stink of sweat mixed with the stale, fishy odor of the sea. A chill seized Matthew as he allowed his eyes to adjust to the inky darkness. Heading deeper into the blackness, he felt his way behind a large crate. Using it as a shield, he untied the dark lantern secured to his belt and lit it.
Matthew only permitted a sliver of illumination as he crept through the warren of barrels, chests, and wooden boxes. Finally, he saw the heavy locked wooden door closing off a small compartment tucked into the bow of the ship. The narrow opening for passing food—or pans of human waste—confirmed that Matthew had found the cell.
He adjusted his lantern so that it shined upon the padlock and then grabbed his tools from the bag at his hip. The mechanism was not sophisticated, and it easily sprang apart in his hands.
Slowly, he pulled back the heavy door. The thin glow from Matthew’s lamp reflected off pale, wan faces. Brutish and scrawny, old and young, sickly and hale, they were pressed into a space so small that there was not even room to shuffle more than five inches in either direction. The children had been tossed into this abominable pen with violent criminals.
As appalling as the conditions were for the prisoners, they were not even close to the horrors Matthew had witnessed on a slaver that Sophia’s mother, Brave Mary, and her pirate crew had seized to rescue African hostages. Matthew had helped Brave Mary’s physician, Dr. Diaz—an escaped slave himself—treat the sick and injured.
But he couldn’t think of that suffering now, not with Royal Guards circling above his head and ten young charges to bring to safety.
A few of the healthier-looking men inside the small cabin shifted at the sight of Matthew, but the clanking of their leg irons was the only sound they made. The more alert ones scanned him, observing his mask and solid black attire. They did not raise an alarm, probably in hopes that he’d come to rescue them all.
But Matthew had come specifically for the children, not to release the violent offenders. Prison reform was necessary, but the youths would face the most immediate harm from illness, thejailors, and the men they were shackled together with. The Colonies could offer the adults a new start, a far better chance than they would face if they stayed rotting in a gaol in England.
“I’ve come for the youngsters. If you don’t make a sound, the guards won’t know they’re gone until after the ship has sailed. You’ll have more room, and I’ve brought food and silver in return for your silence.” Matthew spoke in a low voice. “If you raise an alarm, the guards will seize what I’ve brought before you have a chance to squirrel it away.”
The men did not speak but silently shifted to let him enter. Their legs might be chained, but they could still attack. Keeping his mind blank to the danger he faced, Matthew instead focused his almost painfully heightened senses on picking the locks on the boys’ chains. He started, as he always did, with the smallest. He’d done this so many times, it was almost as if he possessed a key. When he’d freed the biggest youth, Matthew moved swiftly to the hatch, his feet moving in time to the rapid beat of his heart. Only when he stood on the threshold did he reach inside his bag and press bundles of dried cod, biscuits, and coins into the outstretched hands. Then Matthew quickly shut and relocked the door, but he felt no relief. The danger was hardly over.
He turned to find ten pairs of eyes shining in the low light of his lamp. Each gaze displayed a different mixture of fear, desperate hope, and disbelief.
“I mean you no harm. I’m taking you to a new home—a place full of boys like yourselves. You’ll be kept safe from those looking for you. If you bolt when we are off this ship, you will be on your own to avoid the thieftakers,” Matthew quietly explained, knowing that no words would earn these boys’ trust. Only time would do that. They would need to see for themselves the dormitories that Tavish had built for the young men to live in while they learned trades.
