Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [223]
Redwood nodded. ‘Certainly men unused to the sea could not have done it,’ he said. ‘When you say help, I take it you mean troops. You can hardly go down there on your own, waving a warrant.’
‘I have estimated that I shall need a force of fifty men under an officer and two sergeants, and two light cannon,’ Erasmus said.
The Governor uttered a short exclamation, somewhere between a laugh and a snort. Thereafter there was silence, which neither wanted to be the first to break. It was Campbell who yielded. In a voice that this shock had softened almost to the caressive, he said, ‘I beg you will listen to me, my good sir. I intend to be quite frank with you. I am a plain military man, so you will forgive my bluntness. In the days before us there is no slightest prospect of your obtaining five troops, let alone fifty. I should be compelled to say the same whoever asked me and whatever bad report I might suffer for it back home among people who do not understand the exigencies of the situation. You could not have come at a more awkward time with such a request. Perhaps you know something of how things stand with us here?’
‘I know you are on the eve of talks with the Creek Indians.’
‘Sir, the tribes are camped in the woods on the west side of the St John River. They will not cross the water yet. They give the care of their horses as excuse. They are cunning and they have had things their own way in East Florida for a long time.’
‘It is a monster of our own making,’ Redwood said. ‘The Lower Creeks were allied with us in these late wars. We supplied them with muskets and rum in equal measure. They helped us to victory here by keeping the Dons cooped up in their forts.’ He was in the light that fell on to the terrace from the dining-room behind them and Erasmus saw that he was smiling, it seemed rather bitterly. ‘Now they think we owe them something, the poor benighted heathen,’ he said.
‘Aye, man, we know all that, those are the necessities of war,’ Campbell said impatiently. ‘What I am talking about are the problems of peace. The tribes are assembling at the river, not thirty miles off. We have a force of fewer than two hundred men, cavalry included. That is all they have thought fit to give me, sir. There is no prospect of raising a militia, the province is empty, the resident population have followed the Spanish to Havana. In three days we ride out to Picolata to receive the chiefs. The Indian agent is due to arrive from Georgia some time tomorrow to take part in the talks.’
‘And the talks will be directed …?’
‘To the establishment of mutually agreeable frontiers between the lands of the red people and those of the white.’ This came with a certain suavity, as if Campbell were rehearsing his lines for the conference. He had a way of turning his irritation into an occasion for rhetoric.
‘In short,’ Redwood said, ‘our red brothers have to be persuaded to surrender large areas of their traditional hunting grounds. What makes it just a trifle delicate is that they outnumber us at present by roughly twenty to one.’
Campbell made an irritated bridling movement of the head. It was clear that he found the major’s sarcasm irksome. The sarcasm itself seemed to Erasmus in some way factitious or assumed and he was once again aware of stresses between these two men.
‘No question of using force,’ Campbell said. ‘The future of the colony depends on settlement. A fair and proper settlement which will lay the basis for lasting peace. We must secure land in quantity enough to bring settlers from England and we