Sacred Hunger

by Barry Unsworth

“All you will deepen your acquaintance with grief very considerably, my friend,” Erasmus said, “if you thus persist in going round and round about things. What befell the ship?”

  “What befell her?”’ Barton eyed the rum.

  Cornered as he was, his sense of theatre did not desert him. And he was not altogether destitute, he now perceived: he possessed knowledge the other needed how strong the need could be seen from the quality of attention he was receiving, the starkness of interest on the handsome face opposite him. “There is a story in that,” he said, reaching to take some of the meat.

  But he had paused too long. Erasmus struck the table with a blow that made the glasses rattle.

  “God damn your eyes,” he said, “you impudent rogue, you, stop your cursed playacting or I will shoot you where you sit.”

  “She didn’t go down,” Barton said in sudden haste. “She never went down, sir. We was blown off our course by a storm that comes in them parts in late summer, what they call hurricanoes, sir, but we never sank. That was a stout ship, she was a gallant ship in every line of her, I was proud to sail on her.”

  “I will crop your ears yet,” Erasmus said between his teeth. “What the devil do I care for your pride? Tell me what happened.”

  “By that time there wasn’t enough healthy men aboard to man her an” we was in fear the blacks would rise on us. We was blown westward here, on to the coast of south Florida. The captain was dead by then…

  We was unlucky from the start. The trades fell short of us more than usual for the time o’ year an’ we had the bloody flux among the negroes before we cleared the Gulf o’ Guinea. “Tis a sea o” thunder there, sir, an’ a breeding ground o’ plague, with rain an’ fire comin’ down by turns.

  Six weeks an’ we was still southwest o’ the Cape Verde Islands and they was dyin’ on us every day.

  “Tis a terrible trade, them not in it will never know the hardships, to see your profits dribblin” into the sea an’ nothin’ you can do. I felt for your father an’ you, sir, my heart bled, Barton has always been faithful to his owners.”

  Erasmus poured out more rum. In these close quarters he could smell the sharp reek of sweat, mingled with some fishy odour, that came from the other’s body, and he tensed his nostrils against it with involuntary repugnance. There was a glaze of the gutter about Barton that no outdoor living had been able to affect; it was there in the abjectness of the manner, which had something insolent in it too, and in the ragged, jaunty finery of the silk scarf. The voice was husky and dry, for all the rum, making its claims of constancy and fidelity, seeking to find the right note, enlist favour, strike a course that would bring him in safe from wind and wave. Erasmus set no store by the protestations, but he did not interrupt.

  Barton appeared to be in the grip of his own story now, staring and eager with it.

  ‘We had to keep ‘em under hatches a lot o” the time, increasing the mortality considerable. I tell you, it would have broke your heart to see it. The doctor worked like a slave himself to keep the beggars in the world…”

  Erasmus looked up sharply at this and found the mate’s eyes fixed on him in a sort of stealthy appraisal, disturbing in one whom he had thought so lost in his narrative. ‘What are you looking at?”’ he said. “Do you mean Paris?”’

  “Aye, him. Feed ‘em with his own hand, he would.

  That would be your cousin, I believe, sir, on the materlineal side?”’

  “What is that to you?”’ Erasmus said violently.

  He was silent for some moments. Then, more calmly, he said, “He did no more than his duty, I suppose.”

  “No, sir. Well, on the materlineal side, so they say, it is not so strong.” No change had occurred in the mate’s voice but there was a certain cautious relaxation in the peering expression of his face and the spread of his elbows on the table. He had found a direction. “He only done what he was paid to do,” he said after a moment. “We all done that, every man of us. This is a excellent quality o” rum, sir.”

  ‘I don’t want to know your opinion of the rum.

  Here, damn you, have some more. How did Thurso die?”’

  “There was various wounds, but the cause o” death was stabbin’.”

  ‘Who struck the blow?”’

  Barton narrowed his eyes as if in a sustained effort of memory. “Things was confused,” he said.

  “It is long years ago now, sir, an” my remembrance is not clear.”

  ‘allyou had better endeavour to clear it,”

  Erasmus said. “I shall want to know these things from you.”

  “I dare say it will all come floodin” back to me in the course o’ time. Anyhow, it was the ship’s people that killed Thurso. They rose on him. I spoke out agin it. With Barton, duty always comes first. They would have killed me but they was stopped from it by Mr Delblanc, he was a passenger aboard, an’ by the doctor.”

  ‘What part did he play? Mr Paris, I mean. He was the leader, then? He led the others into this mutiny?”’

  Barton paused. There was no doubt expressed on his face, only a kind of intensified alertness. “Yes, sir,” he said, “he was the leader, without the shadder of a doubt.”

  “Was he the first to raise his hand against the captain?”’

  “In a manner o” speakin’, he was. You see, sir, we had decided to jettison a good part o’ the cargo. That is, the captain had decided it an’ he put it to me an’ Haines an’ the carpenter, Barber, the night before. Haines was the bos’n. The second mate was dead by then of a putrid fever and so we was the only officers left, if you don’t count the -“

  ‘Jettison them? You mean throw them overboard?”’ Erasmus passed a hand over his brow.

  “What, alive as they stood, and fettered?”’

  “Only them that was sickly, sir. We knowed we could never make Kingston market with ‘em. An” if we did, we could not have sold “em, they was too far gone. The worst o” the weather was over but we was blown far westward, Jamaica was a good ten days off by the captain’s reck’nin’, even in fair conditions. The water was givin’ out, we was already on half a pint a day. We was wastin’ water on the negroes, d’you see, sir, because they was dyin’ anyway. That is not a efficient use o’ resources. Not only that, but a negro dyin’ o’ nat’ral causes was a total loss to the owners, that is to your father, sir, beggin’ your pardon, an’ to you as his son an’ hair. If they was jetsoned we could claim the insurance, an’ that stood at thirty per cent o’ the value in them days. But you had to show good an’ sufficient cause.”

  Erasmus was silent for some considerable time, holding a hand over his eyes as if to shield them from the light.

  ‘Shortage of water would constitute sufficient cause,” he said at last. “It could be seen as a question of survival. But wait, did you not say that there had been storms of rain? The casks should have been full.”

  “My,” Barton exclaimed admiringly, “you have got a head on your shoulders, sir, an” no mistake. The main cask was holed, the water leaked away unbeknown to us.”

  ‘allyes, I see,” Erasmus said slowly.

  “The cask had suffered damage in the rough weather.” A court was likely enough to accept that, he thought, with Barton spruced up to say so and one more to support him. “I find that Captain Thurso acted lawfully and within his rights,” he said.

  “That is how we seen the matter when the captain explained things to us. Haines would tell you the same, but unfortunately he has passed over, he was murdered by savvidges.”

  “And my cousin intervened, you say? He set himself up against the lawful authority of the captain?”’

  “Yes, sir. It was early mornin” an’ Mr Paris was below with a fever. He must have heard some commotion—we had already sent some o’ them over the side. He come up an’ seen what was happenin’ an’ he shouted an’ raised his hand agin it. The captain drew a pistol on him an’ that was what started things off.”

  ‘Thurso went armed then?”’
r />   “He had taken to it, sir. The men was mutterin” agin him.”

  ‘As pretty a piece of arrogant meddling as ever I heard of,” Erasmus said, as if to himself.

  “The more I think about the business,” he said more loudly, “the more it seems to me that the captain’s decision was a sound one, not only in practical terms, but also more humane, as shortening the sufferings of these wretches.”

  “Them is the sentiments I remember experiencin” at the time.” Barton raised his thin face as if sniffing at the air, and for the merest glimmer of a second lamplight was confused with sunlight in Erasmus’s mind and he remembered again the day of the accident at the dockside, Thurso and the mate emerging side by side from the shadow of the ship’s hull. Barton had spoken to him about the building of the hull, he recollected. He wore the same relishing look now and Erasmus had the same sense that the mate was trying to form some alliance, some intimacy of understanding, between them. ‘I am not interested in your sentiments,” he said. “Keep them to yourself.

  Thurso could hardly have done more for those negroes, short of killing them out of hand.”

  “He couldn’t do that, sir.” Barton spoke softly, seeming in no way put out by the snub.

  “That would be unlawful. The underwriters would never have consented to pay money on negroes killed aboard ship, not unless it was in the course of a uprisin”, an’ these was in no case to rise on us.”

  Erasmus nodded. ‘As I understand it, the mutineers, led by Mr Paris, later appropriated what remained of the negroes and carried them ashore.

  That is correct, isn’t it?”’

  “Yes, sir.”

  “First mutiny, then murder, then piracy,”

  Erasmus said. “Any one of them a capital offence.” As he spoke the ship’s bell sounded on the deck above them—it was two o’clock in the morning.

  The night was calm and the vessel sat evenly upon the water with no sound but the slow, irregular creaking of her timbers.

  “They needed the negroes,” Barton said.

  “They couldn’t have got the ship in behind the shore without the blacks to help with the towin”. She had to be towed from the banks, sir. Every man, woman and child that could stand on their feet had to bear a hand with the ropes.”

  ‘allyes, yes, I know that part of it. In your opinion, was there any intention to return?”’

  “The vessel was grounded, sir. They hacked through her masts.”

  “Did they declare they would not return? Did you hear Mr Paris say that?”’

  “Yes, sir, I did. Him an” Mr Delblanc. They talked about settin’ up a kind o’ colony in the wilderness, where men could live in a state o’ nature.”

  ‘In a state of nature? What the plague does that mean?”’

  “Curse me if I know.” With instant responsiveness Barton’s tone had changed to match the amused contempt he saw come to Erasmus’s face. “They talked a lot about freedom an’justidge,” he said. “They was goin” to found a colony where everybody would be equal an’ have no use for money.”

  ‘That den of thieves.” Erasmus, suddenly, was smiling. There is a broad division between those who laugh at the perception of incongruities in the world and within themselves, and those in whom laughter is released as a celebration of their own successes, a perception, not of incongruity but of total, triumphant correspondence. Erasmus was of this latter sort.

  Everything had fallen into his hands. He had Paris alive; the guilt was confirmed, the evidence overwhelming; in Barton he had found an instrument of justice infinitely pliable. And now to hear of these ridiculous aspirations… It was like crystal sugar on the cake. “By God, that’s rich,” he said.

  And Barton, seeing his new protector’s smile deepen, felt something of the delight of one who has found the key to a puzzle he had feared might be too intricate. “They thought they could start afresh,” he said, with contemptuous indulgence.

  54.

  Through the hours of darkness Paris lay on the borderlines of fever, where thought and dream and sleeping and waking are confused together. Towards morning the throbbing of his wound eased for a while and he entered a phase of clearer recollection. He was back again in the public room of Norwich Jail, with its dark, greasy walls and echoing pavement and the usual lords of the place, violent criminals all, occupying the coveted area round the fireplace. One of these he remembered in particular, and even his name, Buxton, a man convicted for robbery on the highway, on appeal for his life, a broken-toothed, staring fellow of unpredictable mood. It was Buxton, wearing a towel on his head tied up in knots in imitation of a judge’s wig, who had presided at the “trial” of the young debtor. The mock-serious expression of this unbalanced ruffian was present to Paris’s mind as vividly now as if there had been no interval, as was the lost and frightened look of the young man. The two faces had remained in his memory side by side, Buxton and Deever, natural complements one to the other. Two hours in the pillory had been the sentence of this court. With his head through the legs of a chair and his hands tied up to the sides, Deever had stood stock-still in full view, head thrust forward tortoise-like below its absurd carapace, too afraid to do more than absorb his shame…

  I did not intervene, Paris thought. Perhaps I lacked courage, perhaps I was afraid I might make things worse for him. It was impossible now to be sure. Memory, which still retained clearly enough the impressions of sight—Buxton with his grotesque trappings of justice, the flushed and humiliated face of the young man—did not permit any exact recollection of feeling. Certain it was that he had done nothing; the victim had been released finally on the promise of five shillings.

  But what chiefly occupied him now, as the first light strained through the port of his cabin, was not his failure to protest or intervene, but his failure to learn the lesson so conveniently offered. For the men who did this cruel thing had suffered themselves in real courts and had been condemned.

  I should have known it then, he thought. Nothing a man suffers will prevent him from inflicting suffering on others. Indeed, it will teach him the way… Was it always wrong then to believe that the experience of suffering would soften the heart? Those who were fond of declaring that they understood human nature would no doubt conclude so. But as the light strengthened slowly, enabling him to make out the bare furnishings of his cabin, it came to Paris that he did not want to be numbered among these knowing ones, that such understanding was worse than error, worse than hope endlessly defeated. If that is what it means to be wise, I choose folly, he told himself, and slept again and woke to daylight and a sweat of pain and the sight of Sullivan’s face above him. “What are you doing here, Michael?”’ he said.

  The beautiful, vague eyes of the fiddler sharpened with a sort of triumphant satisfaction. “I told him I was the one looked after you before,” he said. “I went up to him an” I introduced meself an’ enquired if he had seen anythin’ of me fiddle an’ he said he had not seen hide nor hair of it an’ he was very much afraid I would have to consent to be hanged without it. So I looked him in the eye an’ I told him hangin’ was a matter for the judge an’ if I got off I would want to know what had become of me fiddle. While he was thinkin’ over this I told him I looked after you before when you was sick an’ he damned my eyes an’ give me permission to do the same now.”

  "That was well done,” Paris said, smiling.

  “My cousin wants me looked after so that he can the better hang me, though why he has pursued me so I cannot tell. There is not much you can do for me in any case. I applied a tourniquet as soon as I was able, to stop the bleeding, and the sergeant—who knows the business better than a number of surgeons I have met—helped me to set the leg in splints before I was carried aboard. So long as I keep still, I shall be tolerably comfortable.”

  “I thought you might like to have the comfort of washin”.”

  Sullivan said. ‘I have brought a bowl of warm water. An” I can fetch you vittles from the galley as required—he has giv
e his permission to that.”

  It was Sullivan’s standard medical procedure, which Paris remembered now from the time of his fever.

  ‘It is very good of you, Michael,” he said. More in order not to disappoint than for any other reason— he felt weak and disinclined to move—he submitted to the bathing of his face and arms and chest.

  Sullivan was gentle and deft and kept up a stream of talk. There had been two deaths among the people of the settlement in addition to those of Billy and Kireku. Cavana had been fatally wounded when he tried to break out with Danka and Tiamoko on the other side of the compound; Neema, seeing him fall, had lost her head and rushed out after the men and been killed before she had gone a dozen steps. Her baby, which they had named only the night before, was being suckled by Sallian. Nadri had succeeded in reaching the trees but he had been tracked down and taken by the Creeks.

  “And Tabakali?”’

  “She is there with the rest of them,” Sullivan said. “Kenka is with her, an” the other two children.

  They are all together on deck under guard of the sojers.

  The crew people are kept separate.”

  ‘allyes,” Paris said, “we have a separate future now. They cannot sell us, you see, so they will try to hang us as the next best thing.”

  “Koudi is there, among the others,”

  Sullivan said. “She looked at me kindly while I was playin”. I should have gone to her straight, but I did not. We are not allowed near them now. After we get to Still Augustine I’ll never see her again in this life.” He paused a moment and his face brightened a little. ‘Mebbe I will, after all,” he said. “I have had a good omen.”

  ‘What was that?”’

  “There is a bit of a story to it. When I was first brought aboard the Liverpool Merchant in company with poor Billy, God rest his soul, I was wearin” a fine coat with brass buttons down the front.

  Now this coat was took from me without so much as a by-your-leave, along with ivery stitch I had on, an’ I was given slop clothes from the ship’s store.