Ratcatcher

“I’m waiting,” Jago said.

Scully’s jaw twitched. A spark of anger flared in his eyes. “I hear you,” he said softly.

“Good,” Jago said. “Now, anyone else got anything to say?” He glared at Scully’s companions. “No? Well, that’s a relief.” He turned back to Hawkwood, muttering darkly. “Stupid buggers! Now, where was I?” He raised his mug.

“Who’s he?” Hawkwood asked.

“Scully?” Jago spat out the name with contempt and lowered his drink. “He’s naught but a lower-deck lawyer. You don’t want to pay him no heed.”

“Seaman?”

“Aye, and he’s a fine one to talk. When it comes to keeping bad company, Scully could write a bleedin’ book. That’s if the bastard could write in the first place, mind,” Jago added with grim humour.

“What’s his story?”

Jago stared into his mug before looking up and shrugging dismissively. “Ex-navy. Claims he was a gun captain on the old Inflexible.” Jago smiled thinly. “One of Parker’s bully boys.”

“Parker?”

“Aye, you remember. Delegates of the Whole Fleet at the Nore, they called themselves. A right bloody mouthful. Though I knows a better word for ‘em.”

It came to Hawkwood then. “Mutineer?”

Jago nodded. “One of the ringleaders, so it’s said.”

It may have seemed ironic that Jago, a deserter, should have cast a mutineer in such a dark light, but Hawkwood knew that in Jago’s eyes there was a world of difference between the two.

“So, how come he slipped through the net?” Hawkwood asked.

“Ah, now there’s a tale, right enough,” Jago said. “You recall how I said he was a gunner on the Inflexible?”

Hawkwood nodded.

“Well, it were the Inflexible’s crew who was last to surrender, all except a dozen or so, Scully included, who wanted to fight on. The rest of the crew, though, had had enough and they locked Scully and his diehards down below. It was while the rest of ‘em were waitin’ to surrender that Scully and his men climbed out of a gunport and made off in a couple of longboats.”

Hawkwood listened as Jago told him how the escapees had made it as far as Faversham, where they had stolen a sloop and set sail for Calais, in the hope of joining the French.