Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [0]
The Partnership
The Greeks Have a Word for It
The Hide
Mooncranker’s Gift
The Big Day
Pascali’s Island
(published in the United States under the title The Idol Hunter)
The Rage of the Vulture
Stone Virgin
Sugar and Rum
Sacred Hunger
Morality Play
After Hannibal
Losing Nelson
The Songs of the Kings
The Ruby in Her Navel
Land of Marvels
The Quality of Mercy
FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, January 2012
Copyright © 1992 by Barry Unsworth
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1992.
This novel is a work of historical fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents relating to nonhistorical figures are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to such nonhistorical incidents, places, or figures to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
eISBN: 978-0-307-94844-1
Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.anchorbooks.com
v3.1
TO JOHN, MADELEINE AND FELIX REISS.
WITH LOVE.
I should like to thank the British Council for the grant of a six-month Visiting Scholarship to Sweden and the staffs of the English Department and Library of Lund University, where the background reading for this novel was done, for their unfailing help and kindness.
Some safer world in depths of woods embrac’d,
Some happier island in the watry waste …
Alexander Pope
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Prologue
Book One: 1752–1753
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Part Two
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Part Three
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Part Four
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Part Five
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Part Six
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Part Seven
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Book Two: 1765
Part Eight
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Part Nine
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-eight
Chapter Forty-nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-one
Chapter Fifty-two
Chapter Fifty-three
Chapter Fifty-four
Chapter Fifty-five
Epilogue
About the Author
PROLOGUE
According to Charles Townsend Mather, the mulatto was dark amber in colour and grey-haired and nearly blind. He was small-boned and delicately made and he had a way of tilting his head up when he spoke, as if seeking to admit more light to the curdled crystals of his eyes. He was an old plantation slave from Carolina, freed when he was past work and turned off the land. In the spring and summer of 1832 he was begging every day in the streets of New Orleans and down on the waterfront. He would wait on the quayside for paid-off sailors, to whom some clouded impulse of pity or contempt might come. He was a talker; whether there was anyone to hear or not, he went on muttering or shouting the details of his life.
His slave name was Luther, then Sawdust was added, because an overseer made him eat sawdust once to discourage him from answering back – it seemed he had always been a talker. So Luther Sawdust. But in the bars along