Sacred Hunger Read online

  Her long yellow hair flowed down her back. Her royal blue gown, voluminous at the skirts, left her white shoulders bare, and her great smooth breasts with their brilliant crimson nipples.

  Her arms were drawn back behind her, disappearing in the folds of her dress, and this gave her a poignant look, like a captive giant pinioned for sport or sacrifice.

  Kemp turned passionate eyes on Erasmus.

  ‘By God,” he said, “she makes a fine figure. But I must have a coronet for her.”

  “I can fashion you a gilt coronet in best elm,” Oates said, with a sort of irritable resignation, “I can set it on her brows and fix it into quarter-inch panels round the head and glue it in place I make a glue here that will stick you till the last trump, Mr Kemp. It will be a separate piece but there is no stress on it to speak of This was the solution finally agreed on; but because of the delay the installation of the duchess had to be done almost at the last, the shipyard carpenters hoisting her into place and setting her on the prow amidst other last-minute tasks, finishing the hatches, mounting the swivel guns on the bulkheads of the quarterdeck, coating the ship’s bottom with the mixture against ship-worm newly recommended by John Lee, the master-caulker of the Royal Dockyard at Plymouth, composed of tar and pitch and brimstone.

  The launching itself was a quiet affair. It had come to Kemp that he would be tempting fate to make a show.

  In the event there was just father and son and a few bystanders and the people of the shipyard to see her into the water. Kemp had champagne served at the dockside and he made a short speech, thanking the men who had worked on her. They cheered him with full throat; he had always been popular with them and it was known that he had dealt generously with the widow of the man who had been killed and the family of the disabled survivor.

  There was the customary silence as the last of the scaffolding was removed, the shores knocked away and the ship eased up from her blocks. She seemed at first undecided whether to settle again, then she moved massively forward down the greased slipway, the timbers that cradled her keel moving with her. For those few moments she glided resplendent, all below the water-line new-painted white, her clean plank above shining with resin, her mainwales and the lettering of her name picked out in dapper black; but she lost this gliding grace when she touched the element she was made for, ducking her rear into the dark water, wallowing there while the timbers of her cradle, freed at last, floated up alongside.

  The last Kemp saw of his ship was the duchess yearning away from him, as the Liverpool Merchant was towed out stern-first into midstream, where her masts would be fitted. It is true that on the eve of her sailing he would stand at the dockside, peer across the misty water, see, or have the illusion of seeing, the masts and spars of his ship where she lay anchored out in the Pool; but this was any ship now, a shape become generic, universal. His last real sight of her had been that swanning glide, that brief, ungainly wallowing, that yearning retreat of the figurehead. It was the last of her he would ever see.

  PART TWO

  10.

  Matthew Paris’s last night on shore was spent at an inn in Water Street, not far from the docks.

  He had called earlier at Red Cross Street to make his farewells, declining all hospitable urgings, deeming it easier for himself as for his patron if he did not impose himself for such a short stay.

  His wish was for solitude; more of his uncle’s ardent prophesying he did not feel able to endure and he might have been constrained to show it.

  He was ready for the voyage, as far as concerned physical readiness; he had the bare wardrobe he thought would suffice, together with his medicine chest, instruments, bandages and dressings and a large store of medicaments and drugs: not knowing what to expect, he had brought everything he could think of, from mustard to eucalyptus oil. In the lacquered box his aunt had given him he had his writing materials and in a larger one of tin plate lined with wood his books, which for reasons of space were few and carefully chosen: Pope, Maupertuis, Hume, Voltaire. These four he had rescued from the bailiffs, who had taken almost everything else. On the fifth, Astley’s New Collection of Voyages and Travels, he had spent some of his uncle’s money, having been assured that it was a mine of information for anyone wishing to learn about Africa. Alongside these, in that same stout box, was the unfinished translation of Harvey’s Treatise on the Movement of the Heart and Blood, which he had begun in prison, when with his uncle’s help he had been able to afford a private room.

  Books were a habit and so a need. But whether or not to include Harvey was something he had hesitated long over, caught in a contradiction he could not resolve. Stepping on to a slaveship, sailing with her, was as near to cancelling his former life as he felt he could come. And that was what, when he interrogated himself, he believed he most wanted—he wanted to cauterize the nerves that held him to the past. And yet he had not felt able to leave Harvey behind. Ambition, the wish for some lustre to fall on him from this great and revolutionary work? But how could that live in one breast with a desire to kill the self, to smother it in darkness, a desire so urgent at times that it came to him like an impulse of violence? And why, in spite of this, did the past lie in ambush for him at every unguarded turning of his thought? His desolation bristled with such questions, like blades.

  There were reasons more immediate, and these also he gave weight to. The voyage was likely to take eight months at least and he did not expect to be occupied with medical duties for the whole of the time; there would be vacant hours to contend with. Eight months, he thought, sitting at the window of his upstairs room, looking out at the light rain which had just begun to dampen the cobbles. Perhaps longer, perhaps a year-all according, as Thurso no doubt would say. Perhaps in that time, among those new scenes, he would become somehow different. But it did not seem likely. He felt fixed for ever in his shape, impervious to change, whatever lay before him. It seemed to him that he had reached this final shape quite quickly: a few random blows had been enough. All the years before, his studies, his practice, the happy years of his marriage, he had remained unformed, impressionable, he had thought of himself as flowing towards something in a kind of pursuit. Quite suddenly this had been reversed, he had become an object of persecution. Was this the rescue, this shape of stone he was now? Those in pursuit did not turn to stone, only the pursued were wrought into shapes beyond change.

  ..

  In the late afternoon he had writing materials brought up to him and sat down to write a letter to a friend and colleague in Norwich, to whom he had entrusted his collection of fossils, all he had, really, to leave or care about. He hesitated for a little while, looking from his blank page to the thin slant of rain outside. He had said goodbye before he left —this was a mere indulgence of his solitude. Almost he decided not to write at all. Then, with an impulse of impatience, he dipped pen in ink and began: My Dear Friend, I write on the eve of departure, to say my farewells over again and to thank you once more for all your acts of kindness towards my Ruth and myself.

  A blurring of his page obliged Paris to pause here, though having only just begun; gratitude to his friend released tears in a way that thoughts of his wife could not—her name in his mind was all desolation.

  Clear-eyed again now but with throat painfully tightened, he resumed: I do not in the least know what awaits me on this voyage and—though this need not at all distress you, my dear friend, and I am not seeking to make a parade of it I am quite indifferent to what becomes of me, at least so I think at present, though if it came to a danger to my person, I dare say I should scramble with the rest, that being our nature.

  If I should not return, please keep for your own use the collections you have been kind enough to house for me all this while. They are all I possess of any value. I mean to say by this that you should keep them whatever happens and regard them as yours; since even in the unlikely event of my ever returning to Norwich, I shall not want to set eyes on them again —they would recall the past too painfully. I hope
the specimens will be of use in your own investigations, and in particular those preserved parts of sea animals, by which we learn of the changes of place in the waters which otherwise could not have been supposed.

  I am giving up the work, because it belongs to a part of my life that is over now for ever, but I have not changed in my convictions. I can only recognize one vital principle throughout animate nature: by natural gradation of species we must always be led to an original species, and this must be the same for man. Though life may appear very compounded in its effects in a complicated animal like man, in my view it is as simple in him as in the most simple animal. I think we have reason to suppose that there was a period in time in which every species of natural production was the same, and this could square with the account of creation given to us in the Old Testament. But over great spans of time andwiththe earth and water changing situations, there have been many sorts of transmutation. It is not true, as they said, that I denied God’s creation and promulgated atheistical notions. But I cannot agree, my reason will not allow me, with those who would have us believe in a fixed immutable species or in successive acts of creation and extinction…

  Self-contempt had been growing steadily in him and he ended abruptly, with good wishes and renewed thanks. As he chalked the page dry he was swept by a despairing sense of his incorrigible vanity and folly. Even now he could boast of his constancy, could stand up on the ruins of his life and crow with his doctrines like some vainglorious cockerel on a dung heap. He had maintained an abstract truth and published it abroad at the expense of all that was dear to him—and he sought still to make it a cause of pride. It was appropriate that dry bones and dead beetles should be his only legacy. The rabble set on by the Church Party had smashed his press and thrown his furniture out into the street; but by an unerring instinct of contempt they had ignored the cases of fossils in his study…

  If I could have the choice again, he thought, if I could keep my Ruth and the child inside her, I would make any grovelling recantation, on my knees I would confess to all error since time began…

  But this was another proclamation from the dung heap. If he could not claim all truth, he would embrace all error. Never the common mixture of mortality …

  In shame he would have torn the letter across but checked himself; it was well that Charles should know the specimens were for his unrestricted use. He would be more cautious in that use since such was his nature; he would continue to collect evidence, make his observations, write notes; but nothing would be published until he was safely dead. Some day these obscure researches that men all over Europe were making would find a synthesis in one brain and then the age of the earth would be stated boldly and it would be shown how the creatures had changed…

  A little later, when it was getting dark, he went out and walked towards the Pier Head. The rain was still falling. He saw a woman lying sodden against a wall in a fume of gin. One or two taphouses showed gleams of light and he saw a farrier hunched at work still inside his shop. But the streets near the waterfront were for the most part deserted.

  Paris stood in the rain looking towards the open sea. Lanterns of ships out in the road winked through the moist air. The Liverpool Merchant was there with the others, riding on the dark water. For some moments, as he stood there, the night was hushed around him, there were only the winking lights across the water and the silent rain. Then he heard the running of the tide, the scream of a late sea-bird, voices raised and lowered again from a tavern further along the quay.

  He tried to think of Africa, tried to imagine the lives of Africans, lives that would be changed, more even than his own, by the ship. But it was too far away. There was only the rain on his face, the sense of solitude. The door of the tavern opened, two men came out and stood talking there. In the yellow light from the open door the rain had become suddenly visible. Paris saw the glint and swarm of it and without warning was transported to summers of his childhood, insects round lamps at night in the garden or over river water in dying sunlight, rising and falling as regular as breathing in the last warmth of the day.

  The door closed, the bright swarm was extinguished.

  But the vision of those lost summers remained with him, like the sum of all loss. Standing there, looking across to the lights of the ships, one of which was to take him to a future of sorts, Paris could think only of the past.

  11.

  Seated in his cabin, Thurso listened with satisfaction to the sighing and creaking of his ship as she felt the movement of the tide beneath her. She was a good one, he knew it. The sign had been given, the seal of blood was on her. He looked for some moments without speaking at the faces of the three men he had asked to step up here. Barton he knew of old. His second mate, Simmonds, sat opposite, directly under the lamp. He was younger, with fair hair and calm blue eyes and a nose that had been broken once and mended badly. Haines, the bosun, was brawny and dark-complexioned, with a mass of oiled curls and glittering, close-set eyes.

  ‘Now listen well,” Thurso said at last.

  “It is but a few words I have to say but I want them remembered. As you know, we are all but ready for sailing. We are light of some of our salt beef still and all the fetters have not been taken aboard, but that will be seen to shortly and then we need wait only on the wind. I don’t want any of the crew mistreated in the meanwhile. They cannot be allowed off the ship but they can eat their fill and while we are in harbour they can be served a half pint of grog per day for each man—no more, or they will fall to fighting. Keep ‘em busy as far as possible, but there is to be no use of the rope’s end till we are under way and out past the Black Rock.”

  The harsh whisper of the voice ceased for a little while and Thurso seemed to consider. When he resumed, it was on a note that seemed intended to be more jovial.

  “I don’t want any of the beggars jumping overboard and swimming for it, as I have known happen on other ships. Whether they sink or swim, it is the same loss to us.” He paused again, looking closely at each face in turn—an old, disconcerting habit.

  Raising a thick forefinger, he said, “Anything untoward and you will answer for it. That is all I have to say, gentlemen. Mr Barton, you will stay behind, if you please.”

  When the others had gone both men relaxed in their different ways, one moving less, the other more.

  Barton shifted in his seat and raised a narrow, watchful face. “They have done you proud for a cabin, Captain Thurso,” he said. “Hoak panels, mahigonny table.”

  “Don’t you concern yourself with my cabin, Mr Barton. I can see for myself how my cabin is appointed. My cabin is not in your province.”

  “No, sir, a” course not, only remarkin’.” Barton risked a note of humorous alacrity only possible when he judged his captain to be in the best of moods. But his eyes had narrowed at the rebuke and there was nothing humorous in their expression.

  ‘allyou keep to your side of things and I will see you all right,” Thurso said. “You can leave the sea for good. You know what that side is, don’t you? You will do my shouting for me when we are at sea. When we get to the Slave Coast you will go upriver with me and you will deal together with me for the gold dust on the proportions we have agreed, and you will say nothing about this private dealing to any man either aboard ship or on land. You keep to this and I will see you all right.”

  “You know me, you know Barton. We have dealt this way before.”

  “Aye,” Thurso said grimly, “I know you well. Take some brandy. You know me too, don’t you? You know the Guinea Coast too, don’t you?

  If you don’t keep faith you will not see Pool Lane again, nor the ladies of Castle Street.

  You will not dip your wick there again, I tell you.”

  Barton made no reply to this, merely swallowed some of the contents of his glass, then worked his lean jaws appreciatively. ‘This is a excellent brandy,” he said. “First class.”

  “Never mind the brandy, damn you. You are getting too familiar. This is my la
st voyage, as you know. I intend to run a tight ship, same as always.

  Better than ever, for the last. Try to abuse your position and you will soon discover that Thurso has no favourites at sea.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Thurso raised his head. “I feel her straining,” he said. ‘She is pulling at her moorings. I am going to take care of my owner’s profits too, same as always. I will trade on the best terms I can get.” He kept his head raised, as though listening for something from the night outside. Light from the lamp lit his heavy brows but his eyes were shadowed. “He sets me on again,” he said. “I will do my best for him, same as always.

  It is in my compact.”

  Barton, who had been regarding the abstracted captain with a look of stealthy dislike, said, ‘What compact is that, Cap’n Thurso?”’

  “Never mind, never mind. I have kept my square, I am still here.”

  “Some owner, he is,” Barton said after a moment. “He is all over the place. Still, we have taken on a fair mix of cargo, I will say that for him. He has ordered everything just right for the trade.”

  Kemp had been diligent in this as in all else, and he had taken counsel. In these last few days, in addition to victuals, they had stowed away muskets, flints, gunpowder, glass beads, iron bars, bolts of brightly coloured cottons, bales of taffeta and silk, gold-braided cocked hats, knives of various sorts, copper kettles and basins, casks of brandy and rum, five hundred looking-glasses. Together with this were articles not intended for sale: whips, thumbscrews, branding irons and a quantity of manacles, fetters, chains and padlocks, all of good substance and well wrought.

  “All the same,” Barton said, “three negroes privilege for a second mate, that is unheard of, that is carryin” phahnthroppy beyond what is warranted.”

  Thurso drank and mused, head lowered now. He had a way of removing his attention, as if others were no longer in the room with him. The tide was on the ebb, he had felt the change in the way the ship rode at her anchor. The lamp was turning through a slight arc and light from it moved over the oak panelling, which still smelled of varnish, and over Thurso’s lowered head and the suddenly indignant face of his first officer.