The sky was low and overcast. The Thames was still, flat and briny and the pebbly shoreline was fish-gutted and strewn with rotting seaweed, but Johannes Meyer was grateful to breathe the open air in deeply.

One by one for the next few hours, two hundred male convicts scaled the salt-wet rope ladders slack against the hull of the Guildford, up onto the deck. Bewildered and exhausted and weak, they took small shuffling steps in their leg irons as they were herded into lines and accounted for. Marked off the list, they hobbled over to a hatch in the deck and climbed down into the hold. It was hot and the same prison hulk stench was there too, though in truth, really, not so bad as that.

Down the ladder, again from light into dark.

‘Get ya foot off me head!’

‘Get ya ’ead off me foot!’

‘Move it!’

Down the ladder, into the hold.

They rushed and wrestled for the berths nearer the hatchways. They fought, dominance and subservience re-established. The weakest would trade all sorts of favours down the line.

After some time, the heavy vibration of the anchor chain suddenly rumbled through the hull. Not a man moved, each one stock-still, sentences cut off in the middle, thoughts slashed, dropped dead. They listened.

The timbers boomed and the ship groaned, the bow dipped under the strain; the men stood braced. Above they could hear the sailors running and shouting now, and whistles blew and their bare feet drummed the deck and then, just like that, the Guildford came free and began to float. Every man’s stomach lurched.

The shock broke. Those on the higher hold decks ran for the few fist-sized portholes cut into the hull for air, a final glimpse of England. Some wept quietly and others sang soft hymns, a few kneeled and prayed. Many sat silent on their berths and stared down into their hands. The youngest were defiant and whispered good riddance, the roughest swore oaths and vengeance.

The tide came in and Johannes Meyer heard the sails snap and flurry in the breeze. The ship swung to port and headed for the estuary, for the sea.

TALISMAN

The croaking of ten thousand frogs woke him. The swarming whir of a million mosquitoes, the screeching of bats as they burst in a black horde out of the treetops.

Krüger lay in the mud at the river’s edge as the sun went down.

He dreamed of Hilde dying in Magdeburg, their cold room in the eaves. She was happy. She said, ‘Send the doctor away.’

‘No!’ Krüger said.

‘Please,’ she said, but he couldn’t look at her now and he was ashamed.

Dante tapped him on the shoulder, handed him a monkey hand, warm from roasting on a fire he’d lit on the floor of the room.