Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [288]
‘Head full of beer, you no catch nottin’,’ Sallian said scornfully. ‘Catch fall on you face.’ She smiled in spite of herself and her body shook a little. Billy often made her laugh, though he rarely knew precisely why; it was one of the things that had kept her tenderly disposed towards him over the years. ‘Catch paka bite you ball,’ she said, still laughing. She did not believe that he would go.
But Billy was on his dignity now. ‘You go see,’ he said. ‘Billy Blair, him word him bond. Say do one ting, he do dat ting. Inchebe altagedder same-same.’ He moved away in good order, turning short on Sullivan when he was out of range. ‘See what you done? Now I got to go out fishin’ in the middle o’ the bleddy neet.’
Sullivan appeared unmoved. ‘Ah, what we do for the ladies,’ he said. ‘But then, where would we be without ’em, Billy, tell me that. There is one here tonight that sees me worth.’
‘She needs glasses then,’ said the exasperated Billy. ‘Michael, I make you out to be round forty-four years old. You’ve got precious little to offer, a rabbit now and then, a few rows o’ pompions and pumpkins, a basket o’ clams. You’ll never get a young ’un now, not with all these lads comin’ up.’
Sullivan smiled and shook his head. ‘You are forgettin’ one thing, Billy.’
‘An’ what may that be?’
‘You are forgettin’ the power of music.’
The sound of the music carried far through the night. Occasional strains came to the ears of Erasmus Kemp as he advanced cautiously in the faint moonlight, with Nipke and the Creek scouts leading the way and the labouring troops strung out behind. Guessing that some sort of celebration was in progress – and thankful for it as reducing the vigilance of those he was seeking – he asked Cochrane to order a halt. It was his idea to encircle the settlement while everyone was sleeping and attack in the early morning before they had time to make any resistance. Surprise was the essence of this plan; they must be taken before they could scatter and run – once in the bush they would be impossible to capture; he had no resources for pursuit, and the troops would be vulnerable in the extreme to ambush and harassment. Everything, then, depended on this dawn attack. If successful, there need be little bloodshed, the whole population could be disarmed and bound and brought to where the boats had been left. With luck they could all be at sea again by the evening of next day, on the way to St Augustine.
So Erasmus reviewed his plans, while the troops crouched waiting, straggled over a low outcrop of limestone which was the driest land they could find. They were newly arrived from England, mainly country boys from Wiltshire, weary and dispirited now after long hours of struggling through this unfamiliar and difficult terrain, alternately scrambling and wading, burdened with musket and pack, dragging the high-wheeled cannon behind them. It had not occurred to their superiors that the hot, close-fitting, conspicuous tunics might be in any way unsuitable for an expedition of this kind. They had had to be disembarked the night before under cover of darkness and had spent the whole of the following day lying concealed, waiting for nightfall. Two men were already disabled, one bitten by a cotton-mouth snake, the other with a broken collar-bone from falling down a pothole in the limestone ridge.
None of this affected the issue and so it was not of much concern to Erasmus. He was close to his quarry now. It was not weariness he found himself having to contend with, but a tearing impatience. For a good hour after the music had ceased he governed himself to remain there, on this rocky strand, with the misty exhalations of the marsh rising all round, weirdly shot with moonlight, vicious with mosquitoes, echoing occasionally with loud percussive sounds, like metal striking stone, produced, so Nipke had told him, by the jaws of infant alligators snapping at frogs and crayfish in the shallow water. When he was sure that all was silent