Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [216]
Holding it carefully he went some paces forward to where the sunlight shafted through from gaps in the deck above. There was no lock but the wood had warped; he had to use some force to open the lid. Inside was a loose sheaf of papers and a stoutly bound book edged with red leather. A glance at this told him that it was a journal of some kind; the pages were covered with the angular writing he recognized as his cousin’s. The loose sheets too bore his cousin’s hand. There were words and phrases crossed out here and there. He took a sheet at random, raised it to the light and looked at the first few lines:
Thus it is that while the heart remains unharmed, life can chance to be restored to all parts, and health recovered. But if the heart be either chilled or affected with some grievous ill, it must needs be that the whole animal will suffer and fall into corruption …
Erasmus looked up towards the source of light. There was a spider’s web directly above him, the strands dusty-looking in the sunlight, the fawn-coloured host motionless in the centre. Vaguely at first, then with a sudden tightening of the throat, he remembered how his father had enjoyed singing Paris’s praises, how delighted he had been to be sending such a well-qualified surgeon with the ship. Among these accomplishments of his nephew had been the fact that he was translating a medical work from Latin, a treatise on the heart.
Erasmus could hear the voices of the men stationed on the bank. The angle of the sun had changed in this brief space of time: the light fell now directly on his face, the web was in shadow, scarcely visible. Within these rotting bowels of the ship he sensed a life that had cautiously resumed, faint scurrying sounds, minute displacements. This crumbling structure, coffin of his father’s hopes … But it was Paris who had deserted him, left him to die in ignorance. This box, which had been a parting gift, these papers, he had not forgotten them, not overlooked them: he had left them here because they belonged to a life that was over, one to which he had not intended to return; either that or he had been no longer among the living when the ship was drawn up here.
Erasmus replaced the papers, closed the lid. One or the other it must be – it was the doubt that had brought him so far. If his cousin was dead, the ledger could be closed. If he were alive he had to be found and hanged. Somewhere in this wilderness they might be still, those who had survived. The stories of the Indians came to his mind. Stories or legends, Philips had not seemed sure … They would never have stayed here among the swamps. They would have made for higher, drier ground. Unlikely they had gone so very far, hampered and burdened as they must have been, and in such difficult terrain. His mind moved among possibilities with an insistent logic. They might not have stayed together, they might have scattered, gone their different ways. But there was safety in numbers. They might have made northwards in a body for Georgia or Louisiana. But that would have meant hundreds of miles through Spanish territory, with hostile Indians all along the northern borders. Could the remnants of the crew have abandoned the negroes and escaped by sea, perhaps to Cuba or Hispaniola?
But he did not believe it. He was convinced, in a way that went beyond logic, that this ingrate jail-bird cousin of his had compounded his crimes and made his disgrace complete by siding not only with the mutinous scum of the crew but with the runaway blacks as well.
The conviction transcended his hatred for Paris. That high sense of justice that he had experienced during the voyage returned to him now. ‘It is not finished,’ he said in a low, impulsive mutter. Once more he lifted his face to the broken sunlight. ‘The debts are not paid yet. If he is alive, I will find him.’ As always, he gathered his surroundings to him, took them to witness. He promised the silence