Sacred Hunger (59 page)

A musty odour came to him from the softened, slightly swollen pages. Misfortune was apparent even through the bare entries that had survived:
No slant of wind any way
, he read.
Buried a woman of a fever which destroyed her in 5 days. There are now 67 lost and still in the…

It was near the end of the log, on a page largely effaced, that he found what all this while he had been looking for

: … sea breeze came in but soon overpowered by a smart tornado obliging us to furl all and come to anchor in 25 fathoms… Following morning when hatches raised found 4 slaves dead in their irons. My cnslletter tells me jettison the sick. The men are muttering against me, they are given countenance by Paris who sets himself… sorry now I gave passage to…

The name that followed was illegible. Erasmus read through the entry again with utmost care. When he looked up it was with a feeling of gratitude he did not yet understand, though it was fierce enough to contort his face. His cousin had been there then, still alive at the end—for the log was finished now, only a page remained, and that quite illegible. Paris had played a part in what had happened to the ship…

The abbreviation puzzled him somewhat. He could not understand who might have given Thurso this advice— there was no doubt now that this was Thurso’s log. Perhaps the first mate.

His mind went back to a day at the shipyard when he had seen them come round together, passing through the shadows of the ship’s bows, out again into the sun, the heavy, deliberate captain and the sharp-faced mate.

Barton, his name. He had lifted his head and sniffed at the breeze like a dog…

His thoughts reverted to his cousin, settled on him slowly and with curious care, as though aiming. The clumsy, laughing boy with the sleeves too short who had lifted him away from his failure on the beach, thereby becoming a mortal enemy; the studious youth of his mother’s recommendations; the pale man with the lined face and the hedge-parson’s hat and the shadow of misfortune and disgrace upon him… He was unable to imagine how his cousin might look now; but he knew him in that moment for a leader of mutiny, a man with blood on his hands.

It must be so, if Philips was to be believed: they must have murdered the captain. They had hauled the ship out of sight of the land, hacked down her masts.

They could never have intended to return. Return to what? They had taken the negroes off her. That was theft—they had appropriated the ship’s cargo and carried it to shore. So there was piracy to add to the other counts. White men and black men living together with no chief. Not only Thurso’s blood. My father, waiting for his ship to come home, scanning the maps.

..

Afterwards it came to seem to him that the intention had been formed then, with the quiet sound of the fire behind him and the faint rattle of traffic coming through from Cheapside. But it was not until some days later that he knew beyond question that he had to go, had to see—and not just the wreck. He knew it by the desolation that swept through him at the thought that Philips might have left already, might be out of his reach.

Until this fear was allayed he could not rest. He had sent Hudson in the coach with twenty-five guineas and a note of thanks. And it was Hudson who accompanied him now and waited below while Erasmus spoke to the captain about the two men who had come upon the ship. were either of these still with him? It seemed that one, the ringleader in the business, had been too much of a troublemaker and Philips had handed him over to the harsher discipline of a naval frigate at Savannah. But the other, a man named Harvey, had signed on again and could be found.

An altogether steadier man, this, a good seaman, he had been led astray on this occasion by rum and the foolish hope of catching one of the women…

“They are simple men, sir,” the captain said. He was not best pleased to learn that Erasmus was proposing to take Harvey away from him, a reliable fore-the-mast man being not so easy to replace. But he was conscious that he had himself been treated with generosity; not to comply would have been ungrateful, even had he felt inclined to go counter to the other’s will, which he did not. Kemp was a man who wielded influence, one whom it was unwise to cross. But it was more than that: there was a quality of suppressed passion in him which Philips—strong-willed enough himself, and used to intractable men—found daunting.

So Harvey was found and brought to the Kemp house.

He was blond and ruddy with a usual expression of cheerful competence, though this was overlaid now at finding himself in such surroundings.

“Now,” Erasmus said to him, “how old are you, Harvey?”’

The seaman was of those whom nervousness makes more confiding. “I am twenty-nine or I am thirty, sir, depending on how you looks at it. I never knowed my father, my mother gave me up to the parish when I was little, an’ sometimes they told me one thing, sometimes they told me another.”

‘So then, let us say you are thirty. You have your health and strength now, but few seafaring men get much beyond forty with those possessions still, certainly not on ships plying to the tropics. You know this yourself, you have not the look of a fool. Even if you last so long, what would there be for you on leaving the sea but rags and beggary? If you will agree to conduct me to this place where you came upon the remains of my father’s ship..

. I suppose you would be able to find it again?”’

“Yes, sir, I could find it.”

“If you will take me there and show me the place, I swear you will not be sorry. You need never return to the sea if you do not wish to. I will take you into my service on good terms, or if you would rather, I will give you a sum that will set you up in some business ashore. I am a rich man and what I say I will do I will do— anyone who knows me will tell you that. I am asking you for a year of your life and offering to free you from want for the rest of it. Come, what do you say?”’

“I say yes, sir, and trust I will give satisfaction and God bless you for an open-handed gentleman.”

Erasmus relaxed a little. He had offered more than he needed to, which was not a habit of his when bargaining; but he had been in fear that the man would refuse.

“It will take some two or three weeks for me to make arrangements,” he said. “During that time you will live here and you will be dressed and fed. Then you will accompany me, as my servant, to the Florida coast. While in my house you will be expected to conduct yourself properly. Do you take my meaning?”’

“Yes, sir.”

“No drunkenness, no rowdiness, no harassment of the maids.”

“No, sir.”

“You will find me worse than any Indian if you get up to those tricks.”

It was not often that Erasmus made witticisms of this or any other kind; perhaps only relief could have produced this one. He was surprised almost to see a smile come to the other’s face. It was a smile of considerable charm, broken-toothed, guileless, totally unabashed by the reference to his offence. And in it Erasmus saw the beginning of a retribution twelve years delayed. “And you will speak to no one of this business,” he said. “No living soul.”

There was much to see to, but not so much as he had feared. It is when we make plans for an absence that we learn the extent to which we are needed at home.

A good deal of business had to be left in the hands of the junior partner, Andrews; but Erasmus’s secretary was entirely familiar with the workings of the firm and could be trusted to guide and advise. The old man, Fletcher, was still active and hard-headed enough; he grumbled at having more to do, but made no real objection. Someone was found to deputize at meetings of the Association. Many of the members had holdings in the West Indies, so prolonged absence from London was not uncommon.

There was the chartering of a ship to see to and letters of introduction had to be obtained for Colonel Campbell, the recently appointed governor of Florida. None of this presented much in the way of difficulty, but it took time. While waiting, he informed himself as far as he could about this new Colony, acquired by accident almost: Spain had handed her over some two and a half years previously to buy back her jewel of Cuba, taken by the English fleet.

It seemed that what Philips had said of her was largely true. The Spanish had never much valued the possession, except as safeguarding their trade routes from Mexico and the Caribbean. They had done little to develop the territory or even to explore it. It offered nothing, after all, to anyone’s notions of usefulness. The southern part was an uncharted, subtropical wilderness. There was no gold or silver to be found there and any Indians that were captured soon died when enslaved, a fact that greatly reduced their value. During the latter part of the recent colonial wars, the Spanish had scarcely ventured from their capital of Still Augustine in the north, penned in by the warlike Creek Indians, who had been incited and supplied with arms by the English in Georgia. It was with the main task of pacifying these Creeks and assuring them of English gratitude that Campbell had been sent there. Or such, at least, was the declared policy. Privately Erasmus was given to understand that the expressions of gratitude would be accompanied by appropriations of traditional Creek hunting grounds to offer to English settlers.

Harvey, meanwhile, kept to his side of the bargain and behaved well. Metamorphosed into a superior servant, in a suit of good cloth and paste buckles to his shoes and his hair dressed in a pigtail, he entertained his fellow-domestics with stories of the sea and aroused the beginnings of tenderness in the cook. He could still hardly believe his luck.

He had entered a world where anything could happen. His new master was rich, the rich had unaccountable fancies—and Harvey was glad of it.

Erasmus found a certain kind of happiness in this period of planning. His cause was just: a wrong had been done, and the perpetrators of it might be living still, while his own father had lain underground these twelve years. He said nothing of this, however, to anyone at all. To his associates, as to his wife and father-in-law, he explained the voyage as a business venture. This was plausible enough.

Florida was a new Colony, it was His Majesty’s declared policy to encourage settlement by assisted passages and grants of land. Many could be expected to take advantage of this, there was certain to be a demand for manufactured goods.

“I shall form useful connections up there in Still Augustine,” Erasmus said to his father-in-law.

‘This new Colony is a potential market of very great importance, I believe. Those who strike while the iron is hot will get the best share of it.”

“Do you seriously think that Florida colonists will buy their sugar from us and pay the tariffs when they have Havana just across the water?”’ Sir Hugo looked without friendliness at Erasmus from under white, dishevelled eyebrows. “You must have taken leave of your senses,” he said.

Erasmus met the old man’s gaze with unconcealed antagonism. He had always been impatient of opposition but of late years, with all his opinions confirmed by increasing wealth comt infallible testimony —any slightest criticism drove him to anger.

“I was not talking of sugar,” he said coldly.

“Do you think there is naught but sugar in this world? Do you think people wear sugar on their backs or turn the earth with it? And if it is madness we are talking of, what is this indiscriminate buying of negroes but madness? I am reliably informed that your factors in Kingston are buying men with no mouth left and women with dugs to their knees, and keeping them all in compounds with nothing to do.”

“The compensation we receive from the government will take no account of sick or whole, it will be paid on the number of heads and calculated on current prices.”

“Compensation?”’ Erasmus affected a look of frigid puzzlement. “Whence comes this notion? Some incubus must have visited your sleep.”

“They are going to abolish the trade. It is coming, I tell you, there is a bill preparing now.

I have it on authority.”

“A parcel of clerks and petty fellows that hang about the ministries and sell information by the shilling,” Erasmus said with contempt. It was hardly believable that Jarrold should give credence to such stories. He was a man whose shrewdness and ruthlessness were legendary, who had risen from lawyer’s clerk to merchant banker and amassed a fortune on the way comhe was worth half a million at least. In a lifetime of trading he had scarcely touched anything that did not turn to profit. And to be visited now with this quite unfounded but unshakeable fear of the abolitionists, which was like enough to ruin him. No, not fear, more like a need, something he was seeking. The intervention of God, perhaps … It was an unusual kind of thought for Erasmus and he was uneasy at it—uneasy and perplexed: his father-in-law’s career had after all been highly meritorious in its single-minded pursuit of wealth.

Even now, in the shadow of this Apocalypse of his own creating, the old man was trying to realize a profit …

“You will lose by it,” Erasmus said. “A negro is valuable only in terms of the work that can be got out of him in the period immediately after purchase. He is not a capital asset, the merchandise is too perishable. It is not like cattle, you cannot breed him for profit. This movement for abolition of the trade is a chimera, there will be no bill, there are no voices against it but some few members of the Quaker Faction and one or two meddling fools outside parliament. But it is useless to talk to you.”

The money being thus squandered might have ultimately come down to him through his wife. He had thought at one stage of trying to have the old man declared incompetent, but apart from this particular mania he seemed rational enough. The only thing to be hoped was that he might die soon and so limit the damage.

Erasmus’s own money at least was not in any danger. He had given instructions for his twelve per cent holding in the bank to be quietly sold in small lots while the stock was still high.

His farewells to his wife on the day of departure were scant in the extreme. He was embarking that evening, the coach was waiting below with Harvey and the baggage already inside. He had to wait while Marie announced him: his wife had lately decided, or been told by one of her friends, that too much ease of access between married persons was vulgar.