Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [295]
The intention once formed, he could not wait for the morning. He had slept little for two nights now and the emotions of that day had exhausted him but he could not rest. The ship was barely under way when he had Barton shaken awake where he lay on the open deck and brought below.
There was rum and salt beef and ship’s biscuit laid out on the table. Also, close to Erasmus’s right hand, a loaded pistol. A soldier with bayonet fixed stood outside the door. Barton sat opposite at the table and a candle-lamp lay between them. The former mate wore nothing but a round cap made of rope yarn, the tattered remains of a red silk scarf and a pair of deerskin drawers, and he shivered like a dog in the warmer air of the cabin. Erasmus poured him a glass of rum and he swallowed half of it, hissing on an indrawn breath as the warmth spread through him. He took off his cap and laid it on the table beside him. His lank, gingerish hair fell forward round his face.
‘I know who you are,’ Erasmus said. ‘You were mate on my father’s ship. You have already answered to your name today and so it would serve no purpose to deny it now. I intend to ask you some questions. If you know what is good for you, you will answer me frankly and fully.’
Barton raised his head to drink again, draining his glass. The sharp edge of his Adam’s apple pricked like a thorn against the loose skin of his throat.
‘If you are honest with me now,’ Erasmus said, ‘I will speak on your behalf when the time comes.’
Whatever calculations Barton engaged in were of short duration. ‘I knowed this would happen sooner or later,’ he said. ‘I am a child o’ misfortun’ an’ no mistake. A man o’ sorrows, I am, and on noddin’ terms with grief. That is in the good book, sir. I was brought up for better things than what you see now. I can read an’ write, if you will believe me, my sainted mother taught me at her knee, but misfortun’ has been my lot in this life.’
‘You will deepen your acquaintance with grief very considerably, my friend,’ Erasmus said, ‘if you thus persist in going round and round about things. What befell the ship?’
‘What befell her?’ Barton eyed the rum. Cornered as he was, his sense of theatre did not desert him. And he was not altogether destitute, he now perceived: he possessed knowledge the other needed – how strong the need could be seen from the quality of attention he was receiving, the starkness of interest on the handsome face opposite him. ‘There is a story in that,’ he said, reaching to take some of the meat.
But he had paused too long. Erasmus struck the table with a blow that made the glasses rattle. ‘God damn your eyes,’ he said, ‘you impudent rogue, you, stop your cursed play-acting or I will shoot you where you sit.’
‘She didn’t go down,’ Barton said in sudden haste. ‘She never went down, sir. We was blown off our course by a storm that comes in them parts in late summer, what they call hurricanoes, sir, but we never sank. That was a stout ship, she was a gallant ship in every line of her, I was proud to sail on her.’
‘I will crop your ears yet,’ Erasmus said between his teeth. ‘What the devil do I care for your pride? Tell me what happened.’
‘By that time there wasn’t enough healthy men aboard to man her an’ we was in fear the blacks would rise on us. We was blown westward here, on to the coast of south Florida. The captain was dead by then … We was unlucky from the start. The trades fell short of us more than usual for the time o’ year an’ we had the bloody flux among the negroes before we cleared the Gulf o’ Guinea. ’Tis a sea o’ thunder there, sir, an’ a breeding ground o’ plague, with rain an’ fire comin’ down by turns. Six weeks an’ we was still south-west o’ the Cape Verde Islands and they was dyin’ on us every day. ’Tis a terrible trade, them not in it will never know the hardships, to see your profits dribblin’ into the sea an’ nothin’ you can do. I felt for your father