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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 wo
oden 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 running down her back inside her clothes.
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 cunning, and he knew Monk, as it was his business to know his enemies. He found, stole, or created the right weapon against each of them.
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.
