The Colony (33 page)

Lastly, as he extinguished the lamps and corked only through fastidious habit a brandy bottle we had together emptied, I asked him why an indifferent God would bother to create men, if holding us only in contempt.

‘For sport,’ the captain said, grinning through the darkness of his cabin.

July 7th 1794

Our living cargo procured, we cast off this morning for the West Indies. I watched them shuffle aboard empty-eyed in their iron manacles. They know nothing of their destination because no slave has ever been freed to return. And some would say that cutting cane on a sugar plantation in Jamaica is a happier fate than being disembowelled in honour of a pagan God.

But these were once proud warriors and it seems to me that they have lost everything that made life a worthwhile pursuit. Their freedom and dignity is gone. They have been physically wrenched forever from their homes and their families. They have surrendered their status in the world. They are and will always now be slaves.

The sailors who man the vessels plying the triangular trade almost never speak about the experience of having human cattle in the hold. They do not speak about the reek of despair that rises like a miasma or the toll of dead thrown daily overboard or the diseases that rage among the packed sufferers below decks as the vomit cakes them and the flies feast and the chafing from their manacles turns raw and their sores weep and fester.

What good would it honestly do to dwell on all this? There is no seagoing venture so profitable and the stories, if they gained currency, would be coin the abolitionists would happily mint and spend freely in parliament and on the stump and even in the pulpit in their attempt to see this inhuman business outlawed.

I cannot see such an ambition becoming successful in my lifetime because there is too much profit at stake and most of it enjoyed by titled and influential men. But such stories would make the seafarers involved seem cruel. Not wishing to be perceived thus, they remain tight-lipped about what they see. And the weak-stomached among them simply retch drily when the need arises and turn a blind eye aboard the ship.

Our miserable cargo comprises Albacheian warriors captured in the latest war by the armies of Dahomey. The prosperity of the latter kingdom means they have flintlocks and so are vastly superior in firepower to their enemy. Thus there was no disgrace in defeat for these men. They are physically splendid specimens; tall and strong and sturdy, at least when they came aboard, despite their shared demeanour of wretched despair.

One among them claimed my particular attention. This was because he stood in such stark and obvious contrast to his fellows. He was smaller than they were by a head and did not share their common muscularity. He was almost girlish in aspect and I thought might be from a different tribe entirely. But that could not have been the case for the others would have killed him in the common cages they share prior to being haggled over by the slave masters on the shore.

As he passed me I studied him and saw that his skin had been elaborately inked in a design I can only describe as exquisitely done. His neck and slender bared shoulders were filigreed with blue and purple and yellow detail. There were characters and geometric shapes of which I have never in my life before seen the like.

He looked me in the eye. They never do this. They are confused and defeated by their awful plight. And yet he looked me in the eye and the look was insolently appraising. And then to my astonishment he grinned at me and I saw that his teeth had been filed into points and coloured too. They are a vivid crimson. And then he was past me, shuffled like the rest of his fellows into the packed and airless hold of this unhappy vessel.

I confess I wondered what nature of man he might be. He does not look like a warrior. He is too slight to hurl the spear or wield the honed hardwood sword with which his fellow tribesmen fight in battle. It occurred to me that he might find more comfort than they will in the hold. But that is a naïve speculation. Despite his size, or because of it, his fellow slaves will be pressed hard against him down there in the closed and sweltering darkness.

There is something lizard-like about this man. It is an accumulation of impressions. It is the slender stillness of him and the pointed teeth and the scales etched onto his shaded skin and something dead and implacable in his stare. He is disconcerting. I am curious about him.

July 15th 1794

I owe my position aboard the Andromeda to my cousin, Rebecca Browning. Though she married Captain Ballantyne five years ago, I still think of her in my mind always by her maiden name. I believe the marriage happy. She possesses a fierce intellect for a woman. They are friends and companions as well as lovers, I think. But she will always be Browning and never Ballantyne to me. That was true before and is truer now that I have seen how coldly ruthless the captain can be in what he believes to be the correct performance of his duties.

There is an infection among the slaves.I have my own theories about the communication of disease. Heat and close proximity engender it and it thrives on human despair and all of these elements are strongly present in our hold.

Six men had died this morning. The six corpses lay manacled and stiff, among perhaps another four or five who were sick, visibly suffering symptoms of the ailment that had killed their fellows. They lay in a row of 20 chained together in their section of the hold towards the bow of the Andromeda.

After a short discussion with the vice-captain and first-mate, Ballantyne armed half a dozen of the crew with flintlocks. Then the entire row of twenty were unchained and brought up onto the main deck and at gunpoint pushed over the gunwale into the sea.

The dead and the ailing and the well went into the sea together. I protested, as discretely as I was able to, to Captain Ballantyne. He looked mildly surprised at the rebuke and then a shadow crossed his features and he told me that it is his obligation to deliver as much of his cargo healthy and intact as he is capable. He was merely isolating the infection. He was doing what a veterinarian would do treating an outbreak of disease among cattle. And he would not brook my interference in the matter and that my comments were not only unwelcome, but insubordinate.

This short dialogue took place as we progressed and the screams of the live and still healthy men drowning in the water faded in our wake. It became clear to me in that moment that the captain does not at all regard the poor creatures in the hold as human beings. Of course he does not, I concluded in that moment. If he did, his task in commanding this vessel would in all conscience be intolerable.

Philip Fortescue had to stop reading. This was not because he was shocked by the detail of Horan’s account. He knew about the specifics of the slave trade in its peak years and so he knew that the brutality shown by Ballantyne was nothing out of the ordinary.

He had to stop, because the exertions of an unusual day had left him utterly exhausted. He supposed his ordeal at the Elsinore Pit had cost him energy and adrenaline. He ached and throbbed and could barely keep his eyes open. He thought what he was reading was interesting and intriguing but he knew that he had to sleep. He was struggling just to bring the words on the page into focus.

He was not just reading the journal. He was transcribing Horan’s arcane 18th century prose into modern English on his laptop as he went. He thought that it would be easier for Jane Chambers to understand if he did that. And he was making his own observations as he went along with notebook and pen. Some of the stuff he had read already seemed significant and even ominous.

He had to stop because he had reached the point where fatigue prevented proper concentration. Anything he read now, if he forced himself to press on, would be stuff he would have no memory of reading in the morning. He felt almost drunk on tiredness. His day had been remarkable and arduous and now seemed very long.

He closed the journal and yawned and stood and stretched. The gloomy thought occurred to him that the womanising cosmologist Karl Cooper was on New Hope Island with Jane Chambers. He vaguely remembered reading about their on-off romantic involvement. Somewhat pathetically, he had bought an issue of Heat magazine he’d seen at a supermarket checkout because she was pictured on the cover and he had learned about their liaison there. Oh, well, Phil my lad, lap of the gods.

He would set his alarm for 5am. That was two hours earlier than he usually got up for work. He thought it would give him plenty of time to polish off the rest of Horan’s clandestine account. Now, though, he had an urgent need to embody the cliché about being asleep before his head hit the pillow.

The storm had blown itself out by the time the expedition members gathered early the following morning in the compound galley for breakfast. There was a change in Jesse Kale’s demeanour Patrick Lassiter noticed immediately.

‘Reckon you can spare me this morning?’

Lassiter thought about this. Napier had been up for an hour already having no success trying to establish radio contact with the outside world. His man Walker, who had some wireless experience, would take over in the comms room so that Napier could join the search for Carrick. The logic of this was that Napier knew the ground better than anyone else on the island. There would be seven security men, himself, Cooper and if needed, Degrelle comprising the search party. Its numerical strength was more than sufficient. It was his private belief anyway that they would find no one. At least, they would find no one alive.

‘I can spare you, Kale. What do you have in mind?’

‘I slept on what the security guy said about keeping busy. When we walked back from the settlement yesterday, I studied the ground.’

Lassiter nodded. Generally the perimeter and the shingle was the surest way to cover any distance on the Island. But the storm had created a swell that made the breaking waves huge and potentially too dangerous to risk the shore. They had trekked home by the inland route.

‘Most of the topology is thin soil over granite,’ Kale said. ‘But there is an area of bog we passed a mile to the north-west.’

Lassiter thought he knew what was coming.

‘That’s where I would bury the victims in the event of a mass catastrophe,’ Kale said. He sipped coffee. ‘Most other places on the island, you’d be excavating rock to create a deep enough grave. That’s hard work with hand tools.’

‘They didn’t shirk hard work.’

‘I still think the bog is the likeliest bet.’

‘It’s a peat bog,’ Lassiter said. ‘So we’re talking about well-preserved cadavers. And Jane Chambers told the Chronicle that if it was plague, the bacillus could still be virulent.’

‘I’ll take my chances,’ Kale said. ‘I’ve got to do something.’

The Chinook devoted to cargo rather than passengers had left them a Land Rover and a mechanical digger; a small contraption with a metal scoop and caterpillar tracks that operated by remote control. Kale could get the digger onto the back of the vehicle using a ramp. When he reached the spot he could get it off the same way and excavate using the console. Lassiter wondered whether he should be going alone.

‘I’m a big boy,’ Kale said, reading his thoughts. ‘Jane could tag along. But she’s committed to holding Alice Lang’s hand at the crofter’s cottage this morning. After what Napier said about that place last night, I don’t envy them their assignment. Frankly, I’d rather be digging for plague victims.’

‘Take a short-wave,’ Lassiter said.

‘They don’t work here. Not with any consistency.’

‘They work intermittently. It won’t do any harm to take one.’

Kale grinned. ‘I’m flattered by your concern,’ he said.

Some of this was bluster. But Lassiter was impressed by Kale’s nerve and by his decisiveness in seeking to re-establish order and composure by focussing on his personal area of expertise. ‘Do you believe in ghosts, Kale?’

The grin vanished. He said, ‘I wouldn’t dismiss what Sergeant Napier told us out of hand, the way that Cooper did last night. I don’t think what happened to you at the museum in Liverpool sounded much like the consequence of a hangover. I was there yesterday in the settlement and the atmosphere was bad, brother. But if there are ghosts, they were once people. Find the bodies and maybe we put the ghosts to rest.’

‘Maybe,’ Lassiter said.

Kale got up to go.

‘When will you leave for the site?’

‘Got to get some shit together, forensic overalls, camera, voice-recorder because I always keep a verbal log. I’ll take my bag with my trowel and brushes and temperature and depth gauges. As soon as I’ve changed and gathered the kit together I’ll set off.’

‘Take a thermos of something hot and a foil blanket. Keep your eyes open for any sighting of Carrick.’

‘I will.’

Lassiter stood. He shook Kale’s hand. Kale turned and exited the galley and he walked across to where Alice and Jane sat talking to Paul Napier. ‘Where’s Lucy?’

‘She’s popped outside for a cigarette,’ Napier said.

‘She smokes too much.’

‘We all have our weaknesses,’ Alice said.

Lassiter sat with them. He looked at his watch. He was impatient to begin the search for Carrick, but he had to wait for Napier’s boys to finish their breakfast and arrive. A search party comprising men with empty stomachs would lack the energy and alertness to find anything.

He was also worried about Alice. He feared for what she might encounter at the cottage in her mind. He was glad that Jane and Lucy had offered to go with her. But they couldn’t really diminish the ordeal of what she might see. To Napier, he said, ‘Still no joy with the radio?’

‘Walker’s on it. An hour of that wailing is enough for me, to be honest. More than enough; like listening to an infant banshee. It’s pretty creepy.’

Lucy had come back in. She sat down and Lassiter got a blast of her tobacco charred breath. She said, ‘The whole fucking island is creepy. Pardon my French.’

Napier chuckled. Lassiter did not think you needed a detective’s intuitive skills to see that the security head had the hots for the Chronicle’s star feature writer. He wondered was the attraction mutual.