‘WE GETTIN’ THE bread, that’s what’s happenin’.’ Sam’s words registered slowly, and Habs felt his hammock pushed harder. ‘It’s our watch.’
‘I can’t get up if the ship is rollin’,’ he murmured.
‘I reckon you can,’ said Sam. ‘We all gettin’ bread. No reason you gettin’ off, cuz.’ He rocked the hammock again, then tried rousing Ned.
‘You, too, Mr Penny. I ain’t gettin’ it all on my own.’ The lamplighter wrapped himself in the folds of a thin blanket.
‘You know, I can’t never hear you, on account o’ my ear goin’ missin’,’ mumbled Ned. ‘Anyways, I can see it’s still dark. And man has no use or purpose until there is light to guide his path …’
‘He does if there’s bread to be fetched and it’s his turn to fetch it,’ said Sam. ‘Mess rules, and you know it.’ Habs could hear the exasperation in his cousin’s voice and opened his eyes. First, he checked his hands, front and back, a habit he guessed would now be with him for ever. Tattooed fingers, four rings and no smallpox blisters. He looked up. Sam was leaning on a stanchion, already working his clay pipe hard, clouds of grey smoke billowing into the thick, fetid air. He caught Habs looking.
‘Can’t be last, cuz,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘If we come back with nothin’ but ship’s biscuits, King Dick’ll go crazy.’
Each morning, the bread rations were available from the two storehouses that stood in the top corners of the market square. Each mess sent out enough men to collect the rations; one and a half pounds of bread per person was one white loaf each and, with twenty or more men in each mess, it was a job for three. The local contractor usually delivered enough for the whole prison, but occasionally there would be a shortfall and the stragglers, the last messes in the queue, were left with the hated ship’s biscuits, the hardtack that had cost so many sailors their teeth.
Habs slid from the hammock, pulled on his boots and jacket then dragged Ned from his slumbers. By the time the turnkeys arrived, Habs, Sam and Ned were among the first at the doors. The icy winds took their breath.
‘Guide me, Habs,’ said Ned, clasping his shoulder. ‘My eyes has to stay shut till the storehouse.’
‘But you’ll miss the beauty of a Dartmoor sunrise.’ Habs shivered as they joined the shuffling groups of men now tumbling from all seven blocks and heading for the square.
‘Let me guess,’ said Ned, his eyes squeezed shut. ‘The sky is grey, the clouds are grey, all the prisons are grey, the English are grey, the coffee’ll be grey and even the bread will be goddamn grey. How’d I do?’ He opened his eyes, looked around, nodded and shut them again. ‘Perfect score,’ he said.
Habs and Sam laughed. ‘You left out the grey fields,’ said Habs. ‘The miles and miles of grey desert.’
‘Uh-huh. My mistake. You’re right there. The only thing that ain’t grey here is your new friend, Mr Hill. He’s the shiniest, whitest white boy I ever seen.’
‘Give him time, Ned, give him time,’ said Sam. ‘The deathly Dartmoor grey will get him in the end.’
‘Musta seemed strange,’ said Ned, ‘having a white boy up in the cockloft like that.’
‘In the end, it got strange,’ conceded Habs. ‘To begin with, it was like bein’ back on the ships. We was all scared. Like there was an enemy out there and it could take us all. We could hear it killin’ every night. Then, when we all got to thinkin’ we would survive, Joe was suddenly the visitor, the stranger again.’
‘So we did some actin’,’ said Sam, ‘put on some scenes we all knew. Any lines we didn’t know, we jus’ made ’em up.’
‘This is you, Habs and Joe?’ asked Ned.
‘Uh-huh,’ said Sam. ‘We even got applause sometimes.’
They passed through the gates into the market square, streams of men now choosing which storehouse queue to join. Habs pulled them left and counted fifty-seven men ahead of them before they reached the small counter in the storehouse. He sensed he had heard a tone of censure in the words of his friend. He frowned at Ned, whose eyes were closed again.
‘Are you disapprovin’ of Joe Hill, Ned Penny?’ he said.
His friend opened his eyes. ‘Is there anythin’ to disapprove of?’
‘I’ve sailed with you, an’ been jailed with you, for two years or more,’ said Habs. ‘There’s a long list of things you disapprove of.’
Ned closed his eyes again. ‘Some more’n others.’
‘What Ned is sayin’,’ said Sam, ‘is you stand out. Folk notice you and Joe around …’
‘Chrissakes,’ said Habs, annoyed. ‘You want us to send letters? That way, we wouldn’t be seen together so much. That better for you?’
‘No, I jus’ …’
‘Enough, Ned, you’ve said your piece,’ said Sam. ‘It’s too early for this.’
Lines of men, laden with loaves, were streaming past them now, some of them finishing their ration before they had left the square.
‘All I’m sayin’,’ said Ned, ‘is you have us. You know us, is all …’ He left the sentence hanging.
They collected their bread from the hatch of the storehouse, four pasty-faced soldiers shovelling loaves into their hands. One raised an eyebrow, and Sam slipped him four coins. The bread stacked under-arm in columns of threes and fours, they tottered back down the square.
‘Carryin’ goddamn cannonballs was easier,’ muttered Sam. ‘What do they put in this bread, anyhow?’
‘A seditious rag, I’m hopin’ for,’ said Ned, peering closely at his loaves.
‘Jus’ wait till we’re inside,’ said Sam.
Habs was still frowning. ‘If we do the play, do you want to play Juliet, Ned? Is that it? You jealous of Joe?’
Ned coughed up his laughter.
‘Of his ears, yeah! I’d like ’em like they was before the cannon took one. He has fine ears, I’ll say that. But of the rest of him … Maybe you seen more, what’d you recommend?’
‘I’d recommend,’ said Habs, ‘that you keep them eyes open and that mouth closed. At least till after breakfast.’
The mess table was up, the loaves were dropped. Ned found the paper first, gently prising its pages from the dough. ‘How much do we pay that grey weasel for this?’ he said, assembling the paper in a loose order. ‘It says one shillin’ on the front. I’m guessin’ he ain’t cuttin’ the price ’cos it’s a week old.’
‘You guess right,’ said Sam. ‘Two shillings and sixpence we pay, but at least it ain’t a traitorous Federalist rag.’
‘Though, truth told, you can wipe your ass with them,’ said Ned. ‘The Times is most absorbent in that regard.’
Breakfast arrived, four mess men delivering the kitchen’s herring and potatoes in large pans, and they waited for the King.
Habs bent over the front page. ‘Is the news good? We had any more victories?’ Each of the men around the mess table eyed the food and the newspaper with hungry eyes. The coalition of subscribers needed for such an expensive publication had been hard won, and they waited eagerly for their allocated pages.
‘Sometimes I see them papers the Agent lets us see,’ said Sam, ‘the ones they want us to read. Ain’t nothin’ but British lies.’
‘But they’re free lies,’ said Ned, ‘and if I’m outta credit, I find I can make do with England’s lies for a while.’
The heavy tread, the tapping club, and the King was there, steaming coffee in hand. He’d been listening.
‘And when even England’s papers write about our victory in New Orleans,’ he growled, ‘you know it musta been a hu-mi-li-a-tion.’ The King stretched the last word, emphasizing each syllable. He spooned a pile of food into his bowl, the fish now indistinguishable from the potatoes, and stared at the paper. He swallowed half his breakfast down, then distributed the pages. ‘Call out the news when you see it. Don’t imagine there be too many more battles – news o’ the peace’ll reach America soon.’
Breakfast was gone in seconds, chunks of the bread used to mop up the last dregs.
Habs licked his bowl then took his sheet and scanned the densely printed script. It didn’t take him long to find the words he was looking for. ‘Ha!’ he shouted, ‘I got it.’ He put down the bowl, grabbing the sheet with both hands. The other mess readers lowered their pages to listen. ‘“On 8 January 1815, ten to twelve thousand British troops sent from France, an army furnished with all the means of destruction, were attacked by the American General Jackson.”’
Applause punctuated Habs’s reading; other messes were now listening intently. He enjoyed the moment. He had a speech. He read on. ‘“With as much coolness as if he had been aiming at harmless birds, Jackson opened fire upon them and swept them down like grass before the scythe of the mower.”’
More applause, but Habs urged them to stop.
‘Wait, wait. Hear this. “He sallied in pursuit, marching over blood and brains and mangled carcases, and finally drove the survivors to their ships and bade them carry to England the proof that the soil of freedom was not to be invaded with impunity.”’
The metal plates were banged loudly, spoons rattled against the stanchions. King Dick conspicuously folded his arms, his expression grave. The clamour subsided as each man realized he was out of step with the King.
‘Like I was sayin’,’ he said, ‘a hu-mi-li-a-tion. So then, then comes the re-tal-i-a-tion. If we was in Louisiana or Mississippi, it would feel good. Real good. But we ain’t. We in England and, if the English are humiliated, then our guards are humiliated. The militia on these walls is humiliated. And we all know what kinda men they are. They’ll have friends and brothers in that expedition. The blood and brains you read about, Mr Snow, is the blood and brains o’ them. We should expect some score-settlin’ sometime soon.’ He threw his bowl on to the table. ‘Now, find me some other news. Preferably containin’ the word “ra-ti-fic-a-tion”.’