The Poisoned Island (42 page)

“He was killed? Like the others?”

“Not quite like the others. He was hanged, though he may have been dead already. There is a suicide note.”

“You have it?”

“Aye.”

“May I see it?”

Horton takes the note from his pocket, unfolds it and hands it to Hopkins, who takes it from him without looking at him and reads it and then reads it again. Then he makes that same breathy sigh through the nose.

“My God. What a bizarre tale.”

“What do you make of his assertion to have killed the other men?”

“Well, it seems insane to me. Critchley was a hardworking man, respected by his fellows and by the officers. I saw no sign of any such madness in him during the voyage. If it was insanity, it must have come on quickly, or he kept it well hidden.”

“You assume insanity? He rather suggests it was guilt. That they killed a chieftain on the island.”

“I know of no such event. Not a whisper of it reached my ears.”

“But such a thing is possible? The men were left to themselves sufficiently?”

“Well, yes, perhaps. But to move from a sense of guilt over a dead savage to murdering his fellows? Insanity, surely.”

“Perhaps.”

Hopkins hands the note back to Horton, and looks at him then, his eyes clear and unflinching, no guilt in them whatsoever, just defiance and that continuing fierce anger, daring Horton to continue.

“Your wife was very kind last night.”

Hopkins’s nostrils flare slightly at that, and Horton half expects to see a whiff of smoke emerge from them.

“She is an exceptional woman,” the captain says.

“She mentioned your close relationship with Peter Nott—how you helped him on arrival, inviting him to dinner and suchlike.”

“He visited our house for dinner, yes.”

“You did not mention this before.”

“I did not mention that our ship’s chaplain came to my house for dinner? No, I did not. There were a great many things I did not mention to you, Constable. None of them seem in the least bit relevant to the matter in hand.”

“Did you know of Nott’s reasons for coming to England?”

“Well, I assumed his
reasons
were to do with a wish to see something of the world before returning to his home, but the tenor of your question implies I was mistaken.”

“He came to find someone.”

“Really? Who?”

“You visited him in Coldbath Fields?”

“Who? Nott? You bounce around like an anxious cat, Constable.”

“Yes. Nott.”

“I did visit him, yes.”

“Soon after your visit, Nott wrote to Aaron Graham, the London magistrate. Asking for help with finding someone. Did you tell him about Mr. Graham?”

“No, Constable. I told him nothing. I know nothing about this
search
you say he was on.”

“And have you seen Nott since his release from Coldbath Fields?”

“Neither hide nor hair. In fact, I was going to send a note to you asking where I might find him, to learn whether he was well or no. He has not had a particularly comfortable time of it, thanks to your interest in him.”

“Well, perhaps if you see him, you could let us know.”

“I live to serve the River Police Office, Constable. Now, will that be all? I have some matters to clear up before I return to Putney.”

“I think that will be all, Captain.”

Horton stands from the bed and leaves the cabin, ignoring Hopkins’s furious eyes and stepping out onto the quarterdeck. He walks over to the rail and sees Peach waiting there below, and sees a more resentful but still potent fury in the eyes of his fellow waterman-constable. When he left this morning, Abigail’s eyes had been bright. He could do with some warmth from those eyes right now.

He looks back at the open hold and ponders a final search. But the ship is empty, and he has angered Hopkins enough. He decides to leave, and so doesn’t see the dead empty eyes of Peter Nott, lying lifeless against the hull of the
Solander
, waiting for Horton to depart so his captain can drop him over the side and into the rushing Thames.

So this is what it is like to Die.

He is on a ship, and something is looking for him. She is laughing as she looks, this something, but it is not a laugh that brings any cheer. It is full of spite and vengeance. She means to do him a great harm when she finally comes across him.

He is on the deck and she is in the hold. He runs from starboard to port, bow to stern, and she follows him, because he can hear the stamp of her feet and her cold, heartless laughter every time he changes direction, tracking him, waiting for him. On every fifth turn, he wakes up, his breathing like that of an endless runner, his body soaked with sweat, and his eyes stare madly around his little Gerrard Street bedroom again, before she pulls him back down into sleep, back into the nightmare.

Starboard to port.

Bow to stern.

Up and down.

Am I dead? Am I in Hell?

While he runs and wakes and sleeps, he feels the leaf in his stomach, tearing away at him, flooding into his cavities and organs the way that terrible tree had crept into his mouth and nose and eyes. He knows that this is more than just a poison. It is a terrible addiction. Even while it tears at him, he thirsts for it. He knows that on wakening he will need it again, that the kettle will be there in the fire and the leaf will be there in the jar, and Robert Brown will be consumed by his need, consumed beyond all understanding.

As the hours pass, the dread rhythm begins to slow. Finally he is plunged into an empty purple-black sleep, as if at the bottom of an endless ocean.

As morning breaks, Robert Brown awakes to the biggest struggle of his life.

He is clearheaded when he wakes. No headache, no torpor, only clarity. There are just three thoughts in his head. The biggest, by far, is the need he feels for the leaf. The need towers over him, throwing his sense of himself into shadow, blocking out all other externalities. But within it are two other smaller thoughts which have their own intensity and their own urgency. One is that he must destroy what remains of the leaf in his room, lest it destroy him. The other is that he must save the King.

He rises from the bed, and prepares to make some more of the tea, to fulfill his own desire. He can hear his father, shouting from the staircase. He can hear a girl giggling. He takes the jar containing the leaf in his hand and pictures himself filling the kettle with water, pouring it into the cup, adding the leaf, drinking it, and watching the light explode again, and he takes the jar and making a noise which is unrecognizable to him he hurls it through the window and out into Gerrard
Street. There are two distinct crashes of breaking glass: one as the jar goes through the window; another as it hits the street outside, sending the leaf down into the shit and dirt and litter of London. A man shouts in anger. Brown falls to the floor and can do nothing, not even respond to the urgent sound of young Leary banging upon his door.

Get up, you pathetic worm.

The voice is his father’s, the rebel bishop, still shouting from the stairs, though now shouting incontrovertibly at
him
.

Get up, get up now.

I cannot, Father. I am too weak. My legs will not support me.

You disgust me. You chose your King and now your King needs you. He’s no Stuart, and he’s no King of mine. But he is your King, Robert. So get up. Get up now.

The truth of this is manifest. Brown stands.

Now get the manservant, clean yourself up, and remember who you are. You are a man of means and of standing. You are not some piss-stained Chinaman smoking opium in a basement. You are Robert Brown, Fellow of the Royal Society. No preacher, more’s the pity, but you always were suspect in that department. You might burn in Hell for what you don’t believe in, but you won’t burn in Hell for cowardice. Now. Do it now.

Shivering with addiction, the rebel bishop’s voice thundering in his temple, Robert Brown calls Leary to come into the room. The boy’s eyes look astonished as he speaks to him, to tell of the arrival of Sir Joseph Banks.

*  *  *

Brown somehow manages to dress himself in a moderately seemly fashion, and before long appears in the library of the
Linnaean Society, where Banks is waiting. At his first sight of the librarian Sir Joseph is the old Banks again, firm in action and decision. He can see that something is very wrong indeed with Brown, who looks feverish and exhausted and near collapse, and immediately calls for a tonic and a damp towel.

“Sit down, Brown, sit down. Put this towel on your head and
sit down
. Tell me what has happened to you.”

Brown manages to construct a kind of narrative about his experiences of the previous night: the terrible thirst; the vivid dreams of chasing and being consumed; the bouncing around between consciousness and senselessness. And he describes his struggle to wake and to find himself once more.

“And you feel it now?” asks Banks. “This desire to consume more of the leaf?”

“Sir Joseph, with every part of my being,” says Brown. He remembers his earlier vision of the world being broken down into little cells. “Every part of me yearns to consume more of that terrible substance, and every part of me knows that it will bring death.”

“My God,” says Banks while Brown takes a swig of the sweet tonic which has been brought for him. “Have we done an unthinkable thing?”

You, not we
, says Brown to himself, his old self returning by the minute.
I wanted nothing to do with this insane scheme.

Banks barks for Leary.

“Fetch me some paper and a quill, at once. And call a carriage. You need to carry a note for me.”

Leary looks at Brown, angering Banks, who may be in the Linnaean Society and not on his home ground but is by no means used to having his orders questioned. Brown nods as Sir Joseph shouts: “Get to it, boy!”

It takes only ten minutes for Banks to compose a letter to
Monro at Windsor, and to dispatch Leary, who quivers with fear at the mention of his destination. Even in his weakened state Brown is forced to encourage the servant and to make it clear that the matter is of profound urgency and is related to the health of the King. Still looking uncertain, Leary pulls on a coat and disappears, leaving the two men to stare at the floor of the Linnaean Society library. Brown feels desperate and hungry and ill. Banks gives no indication of feeling anything at all.

Brown wonders if they will sit like this, waiting, until Leary returns to tell them either that the King is unchanged—that Monro has not got round to giving him the leaf yet—or that some change has occurred, some awful shift in the King’s state which, if it is anything like the state in which Brown now finds himself, would have implications of such awful grandeur that his sick stomach gives another immense churn as he thinks of it. But then Banks speaks.

“Describe, please, again for me—the effect of the leaf.”

It is a simple request, but Brown feels the weight of what is required of him. A dispassionate observation, as would be required of a botanist coming across a new species in the fields around Edinburgh. He tries to pull himself together, to move out of this fog of thirst, to use the clarity of the thirst to express himself.

“An immensity of pleasure, at first. Accompanied by insight. Or at least the appearance of insight. I believed I could see into the interior of things, into the stuff of matter itself, its particles and its building blocks. I believed I saw how everything living was composed of tiny essences, almost like tiny organisms themselves, alive and multiplying. And everything was subsumed in this terrible harsh light. I believed I heard my father preaching. And, as the vision continued, I believed
I was being chased by a female, who was angry with me and wanted, in some way, to consume me.”

“The vision sounds terrifying.”

“It was, Sir Joseph.”

“And yet you have this desire to repeat it.”

“I do. It is indeed a terrible thing, Sir Joseph. A substance which pleasures and destroys all at the same time.”

Banks stares at him, and Brown feels for a moment that he is himself a specimen, a strange plant growing on an unfamiliar hillside.

“I am not a man of words, Brown. You know that. Words are slippery things which are difficult to dream up and easy to misunderstand. But I would like to find words to apologize to you, Brown. To you, and to my friend the King.”

Brown says nothing, nor does Banks seem to expect it.

“I first heard of the leaf—or at least rumors of it—from a man who accompanied Cook on his final visit there. He’d been on the
Endeavour
with me, also. He told me that a story had lately grown up on Otaheite, a story of a place where a tree grew. A strange and unique tree. The leaves and buds of this tree, when dried and drunk in boiling water, inspired an awesome vision. I was put in mind of
bhang
.”

“Yes, Sir Joseph. And of Hooke.”

“Indeed. As you know, I have long been as interested in the customs of native peoples as I have in the botany of their far-flung shores. It fascinated me what this man said, that a whole culture had grown up around this tree, had as it were accreted itself to the strange religions and practices of the island. Have you heard of an island sect called the Arreoy, Brown?”