Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [224]
‘I quite understand the situation,’ Erasmus said. ‘I will be content to wait until these discussions have been completed.’ He knew this form of words would not be greatly agreeable to Campbell, suggesting as they did that a promise had been made. ‘I can employ my time very profitably in the interval,’ he added quickly, ‘by making a survey of the surrounding countryside. I suppose I may have the use of a horse?’ This laying of a small question over a larger one was a device he had found useful in the past.
‘Why, as to that, certainly,’ Campbell said. ‘And a groom, if you like. But I cannot be so definite –’
‘You will have read by now the letters I brought with me?’
‘I have read them, yes.’
‘You will know, then, something of the interests I represent. I don’t go into it at present, it is something we can discuss in the days ahead, but they are very considerable, especially in the matter of capital at disposal for investment –’ He broke off and drew out the watch from his waistcoat pocket. ‘Is it really so late? Time passes quickly when spent in company so congenial. I will not keep you from your rest any longer, gentlemen.’
With this he got to his feet. Redwood walked with him as far as the courtyard which gave access to the guest-rooms. The stables were on that side, the major explained; he had a ride of a mile or so to the house where he was quartered; the officers and a good number of the men had been accommodated in private houses, which had caused trouble in the early days.
‘The Spanish generally quit the houses when someone was quartered on them,’ Redwood said. ‘Then they made a claim on us for compensation, a hundred and eighty dollars a week in the case of Cochrane and me. You have met Cochrane, I think – he came to meet you. I told them that British subjects all over America had troops quartered on them when there were no barracks to contain them, without any expense to the Crown, and how could I put the Crown to expense in their favour when it was not allowed to British subjects?’
He paused, smiling. The moon was up and a pale wash of light lay over the courtyard, silvering the silent stone fountain in the centre and the sharp leaves of the orange trees lining the sides. ‘We took a stand on principle,’ the major said. ‘Always a very convenient thing to do. In fact we had no money to pay. But Campbell will tell you about that – shortage of money is one of his favourite subjects.’
He was silent for a moment, then said in a different tone, ‘There is something I was intending to tell you … I thought it better not to speak of it before the colonel. It is an old maxim in the army not to seem to know more about anything than your superior officer, but he has only been here a few months, you know. The fact is, there is some evidence for the existence of this settlement you spoke about just now. What I said about the negroes rising was only my curiosity.’ Something of the same slightly quizzical expression was on his face as he looked at Erasmus now. ‘It struck me as odd, you know, that you hadn’t thought of it. Anyway, in the first weeks I was here, early in 1763, I talked to a half-breed trapper who had brought in some skins to sell and he told me he had seen black men and white fishing together in a creek back behind the shore. He had heard them shouting to drive the fish into the traps and had gone to look. I remember he said they had bamboo harpoons and there were some children watching from the bank. He said he spoke to them. They talked a lingua franca among themselves, a kind of pidgin. It was summer and they were naked save for loincloths and they had oiled themselves with something fishy-smelling. One of them asked him if he could get horsehair, offered him racoon tails for horsehair, a good trade, the trapper thought, but of course he hadn’t got any …’
‘Horsehair,’ Erasmus repeated wonderingly. ‘What would a man in that wilderness want with horsehair?’
‘It was a garbled story. A fiddle came into it somewhere. I don’t recall the details, perhaps I never knew them.