Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [50]
This purgatory lasted most of the night. On the following morning, weakened but feeling light and purged – and ravenously hungry – Paris went up on deck. The weather had cleared. The light seemed strangely pure to him, like the primal light of the world. The sea was still choppy and seamed with white but the sky looked as soft as some small bird’s breast. He saw two men high up on a cross-piece of the mainmast. Others were hauling on a rope immediately below, to sway up the yards. Thurso stood on the quarterdeck with the helmsman directly behind him.
Paris gave the captain good-morning, heard no reply and went directly to the galley, where he found Morgan, the cook, stirring with a long ladle in a deep and narrow-necked iron cauldron.
‘What is that?’ he asked.
Morgan removed the short, foul-looking pipe from his mouth. ‘Lobscouse, sir. That is what they call it.’ Morgan’s face had a shine of sweat that seemed permanent. He wore a calico apron greasy with the wipings of his hands, and a ragged bonnet of dark red wool sat on top of his head. This cap was his badge of office on board. No one ever saw him take it off.
‘What is lobscouse?’
‘That is according to what goes in it.’
There was something sullen in this and Paris realized after a moment that the man distrusted him and perhaps thought his question some kind of a trick. ‘No,’ he said, ‘really I do not know. What is in this particular one?’
‘Salt beef, potatoes and onions in this.’
‘Please go on with your smoking. It is not ready now, I suppose?’
‘No, sir. Only just got the fire up, after this dirty weather. It will be given out to the men at dinner-time – eight bells.’ Morgan paused. He still had not looked directly at Paris. ‘There is burgoo left over from breakfast,’ he said at last.
‘Burgoo?’
‘ ’Tis only boiled oatmeal, sir, with a bit o’ sugar.’
‘I will have a good bowlful of that,’ Paris said. ‘Make it up thick, will you?’
‘Very good, sir. I will get the boy to bring it below.’
‘No,’ Paris said. ‘I am unwilling to wait so long. I will have it here and now.’
‘Here, sir?’ Scandalized into directness at last, Morgan permitted himself a stare. ‘In the galley?’ He saw a smile come slowly to transform the surgeon’s white face.
‘Yes,’ Paris said. ‘And as soon as may be.’
From his place by the helm Thurso had watched the emergence of his surgeon with an ill-will tempered only by his weariness. He had slept hardly at all since the onset of the squally weather, undergoing the travails of storm baptism for his ship, a kind of agony commensurate with that endured by Paris, though on the plane of spirit rather than flesh. He had felt the gallantry of the vessel – she would strain and tear her own ligaments if kept too close-hauled. But to turn her away from the wind meant detours and delays, and this conflicted savagely with his wish to make good time on the voyage. Standing in the roaring darkness, hands fast to the rail of the quarterdeck, he issued his orders, heard Barton transmit them, heard the human voices blend with the voices of the wind. Rising from brief slumber he thought he saw the running glimmers of Aurora Borealis in the northern sky, fugitive