Sacred Hunger (63 page)

He thought again about the Governor’s record. A cavalryman by training, he had fought with Cumberland against his fellow Scots and held a command under Ligonier in the expeditionary force to Flanders. He had come to North America in 1757 and fought the French and their Indian allies in Pennsylvania and South Carolina. In 1761 he had helped in the defeat and decimation of the Cherokee nation, distinguishing himself as much by his adroit manipulation of rivalries among the tribes as by skill in the field. His present post was a recognition of these services to the Crown. He would need all his diplomacy now, since the main task facing the new administration was to persuade the fierce and numerous Creek Indians to the north and west of them to surrender large tracts of their territory.

Campbell had risen on a certain kind of shrewd and dogged merit, without great influence or flavour.

He would not want to make enemies at home now.

The knowledge of all this was present to Erasmus as he sat there at his ease in the warm evening, with the land breeze bringing a scent of autumn roses, and the sound of the sea in his ears. Speculation, if not knowledge, there must have been on Campbell’s part too, as he now broke a short period of silence by saying in that softer voice he used for more deliberate speech, “You suggested earlier, if I am not mistaken, that we might be of some service to you. But perhaps you would prefer some later occasion to talk of it?”’

“No, no,” Erasmus said. “I have no objection to discussing the matter now, none at all.”

He began to speak about the
Liverpool Merchant
, the delayed return, the assumed loss, the lapse of twelve years, the visit of Captain Philips, the ship as he had last seen her, grounded and abandoned. He spoke of his belief that the mutineers and the remnants of the negroes had survived and the possibility they had continued living together in the wilds of south Florida. “Life would be possible there for a small number and they had women with them,” he said. He had not mentioned his cousin.

“It is my intention to pursue these men and bring them to account. I know I can count upon your help as the newly invested Governor. These men have formed a colony of criminals within His Majesty’s Colony of Florida and they must be rooted out and punished with the law.”

A short silence succeeded this. Then Campbell said, “You are speaking of a company of renegade whites and runaway negroes beached up in south Florida twelve years ago. Sir, the times have been violent. They are most likely to be dead or scattered long ago.”

“It is the violence of the times that affords me reason. It is obvious that they did not plan to escape by sea. And the overland route northwards would have been difficult, extremely so, with the Spanish here and the tribes hostile. Their safety would have been in keeping together. They had blood on their hands, if I am right. Where were they to make for?”’ He had spoken with confidence but as the silence continued he felt a touch of panic. These were men of experience. He had not realized until now how much he wanted his reasoning to prevail with them. “Then there are the stories that the Indians tell,” he said, into the silence. “They talk of a community of black and white living in the south part of the peninsula.”

“I have heard of no such community,” Campbell said. ‘The evidence for it seems slight to me, sir.”

This brought a welcome anger. Scepticism from such a quarter was only to be expected—it afforded the best excuse for denying help. “I have judged the evidence sufficient,” he said coldly. “I have given you full and adequate reason. I am the one who is injured in this. I have the same right to redress here as I would anywhere else within His Majesty’s dominions. Those negroes who were on the ship originally and any offspring they may have had subsequent to their escape are mine by right of purchase.”

“Speaking of those same negroes…”

Redwood had leaned forward and was regarding him with a look of good-humoured curiosity. “Tell me,” he said, “did it never occur to you that the negroes might have risen against the crew and killed them? Such rebellions have been frequent enough on slaveships —more frequent than mutinies. In that case, none of the seamen would have survived and the blacks might have made south for the Keys. I don’t say this is what happened but I am surprised that you do not think of it as the first possibility.”

The question took Erasmus completely by surprise.

He returned the major’s gaze for some moments without being able to think of an answer. He did not like the expression of curiosity on Redwood’s face; it was the look a man might have on seeing something odd, but not dangerously so. The silence on the terrace lengthened from moment to moment. It came to Erasmus in his disarray that his cousin’s guilt was not a matter of logical deduction but a terrible necessity…

“Why, but of course,” he said, “it could not have been the negroes. It would have needed able seamen to bring her in so close, find the mouth of the inlet and then take soundings so she could be towed.” He felt as if he had passed some crucial test.

Redwood nodded. “Certainly men unused to the sea could not have done it,” he said. “When you say help, I take it you mean troops. You can hardly go down there on your own, waving a warrant.”

“I have estimated that I shall need a force of fifty men under an officer and two sergeants, and two light cannon,” Erasmus said.

The Governor uttered a short exclamation, somewhere between a laugh and a snort. Thereafter there was silence, which neither wanted to be the first to break. It was Campbell who yielded. In a voice that this shock had softened almost to the caressive, he said, “I beg you will listen to me, my good sir. I intend to be quite frank with you. I am a plain military man, so you will forgive my bluntness. In the days before us there is no slightest prospect of your obtaining five troops, let alone fifty. I should be compelled to say the same whoever asked me and whatever bad report I might suffer for it back home among people who do not understand the exigencies of the situation. You could not have come at a more awkward time with such a request.

Perhaps you know something of how things stand with us here?”’

“I know you are on the eve of talks with the Creek Indians.”

“Sir, the tribes are camped in the woods on the west side of the Still John River. They will not cross the water yet. They give the care of their horses as excuse. They are cunning and they have had things their own way in East Florida for a long time.”

“It is a monster of our own making,”

Redwood said. “The Lower Creeks were allied with us in these late wars. We supplied them with muskets and rum in equal measure. They helped us to victory here by keeping the Dons cooped up in their forts.” He was in the light that fell on to the terrace from the dining-room behind them and Erasmus saw that he was smiling, it seemed rather bitterly. “Now they think we owe them something, the poor benighted heathen,” he said.

“Aye, man, we know all that, those are the necessities of war,” Campbell said impatiently. “What I am talking about are the problems of peace. The tribes are assembling at the river, not thirty miles off. We have a force of fewer than two hundred men, cavalry included.

That is all they have thought fit to give me, sir.

There is no prospect of raising a militia, the province is empty, the resident population have followed the Spanish to Havana. In three days we ride out to Picolata to receive the chiefs. The Indian agent is due to arrive from Georgia some time tomorrow to take part in the talks.”

“And the talks will be directed…?”’

“To the establishment of mutually agreeable frontiers between the lands of the red people and those of the white.” This came with a certain suavity, as if Campbell were rehearsing his lines for the conference. He had a way of turning his irritation into an occasion for rhetoric.

“In short,” Redwood said, “our red brothers have to be persuaded to surrender large areas of their traditional hunting grounds. What makes it just a trifle delicate is that they outnumber us at present by roughly twenty to one.”

Campbell made an irritated bridling movement of the head. It was clear that he found the major’s sarcasm irksome. The sarcasm itself seemed to Erasmus in some way factitious or assumed and he was once again aware of stresses between these two men.

“No question of using force,” Campbell said, “ihe future of the colony depends on settlement. A fair and p oper settlement which will lay the basis for lasting peace. We must secure land in quantity enough to bring settlers from England and we must be able to guarantee the frontiers.”

“I quite understand the situation,” Erasmus said. “I will be content to wait until these discussions have been completed.” He knew this form of words would not be greatly agreeable to Campbell, suggesting as they did that a promise had been made. “I can employ my time very profitably in the interval,” he added quickly, ‘“making a survey of the surrounding countryside. I suppose I may have the use of a horse?”’ This laying of a small question over a larger one was a device he had found useful in the past.

“Why, as to that, certainly,” Campbell said.

“And a groom, if you like. But I cannot be so definite -“

“You will have read by now the letters I brought with me?”’

“I have read them, yes.”

‘allyou will know, then, something of the interests I represent. I don’t go into it at present, it is something we can discuss in the days ahead, but they are very considerable, especially in the matter of capital at disposal for investment -“

He broke off and drew out the watch from his waistcoat pocket. “Is it really so late?

Time passes quickly when spent in company so congenial. I will not keep you from your rest any longer, gentlemen.”

With this he got to his feet. Redwood walked with him as far as the courtyard which gave access to the guest-rooms. The stables were on that side, the major explained; he had a ride of a mile or so to the house where he was quartered; the officers and a good number of the men had been accommodated in private houses, which had caused trouble in the early days.

“The Spanish generally quit the houses when someone was quartered on them,” Redwood said. “Then they made a claim on us for compensation, a hundred and eighty dollars a week in the case of Cochrane and me. You have met Cochrane, I think —he came to meet you. I told them that British subjects all over America had troops quartered on them when there were no barracks to contain them, without any expense to the Crown, and how could I put the Crown to expense in their favour when it was not allowed to British subjects?”’

He paused, smiling. The moon was up and a pale wash of light lay over the courtyard, silvering the silent stone fountain in the centre and the sharp leaves of the orange trees lining the sides. “We took a stand on principle,” the major said. “Always a very convenient thing to do. In fact we had no money to pay. But Campbell will tell you about that— shortage of money is one of his favourite subjects.”

He was silent for a moment, then said in a different tone, “There is something I was intending to tell you … I thought it better not to speak of it before the colonel. It is an old maxim in the army not to seem to know more about anything than your superior officer, but he has only been here a few months, you know. The fact is, there is some evidence for the existence of this settlement you spoke about just now.

What I said about the negroes rising was only my curiosity.” Something of the same slightly quizzical expression was on his face as he looked at Erasmus now. “It struck me as odd, you know, that you hadn’t thought of it. Anyway, in the first weeks I was here, early in 1763, I talked to a half-breed trapper who had brought in some skins to sell and he told me he had seen black men and white fishing together in a creek back behind the shore. He had heard them shouting to drive the fish into the traps and had gone to look. I remember he said they had bamboo harpoons and there were some children watching from the bank. He said he spoke to them. They talked a lingua franca among themselves, a kind of pidgin. It was summer and they were naked save for loincloths and they had oiled themselves with something fishy-smelling. One of them asked him if he could get horsehair, offered him racoon tails for horsehair, a good trade, the trapper thought, but of course he hadn’t got any…”

“Horsehair,” Erasmus repeated wonderingly. “What would a man in that wilderness want with horsehair?”’

“It was a garbled story. A fiddle came into it somewhere. I don’t recall the details, perhaps I never knew them. The trapper’s English wasn’t exactly -“

“You need horsehair to make a fiddle-bow.

..” Erasmus looked for a moment across the moonlit courtyard. “There was a fiddler,” he said with sudden and rather startling loudness. “He was mentioned … They had a fiddler aboard to dance the slaves.”

“Did they so? That may be it then. I didn’t think too much of it at the time. In the months after the Peace Treaty people came with all sorts of stories, just to gain our goodwill.”

“Did he say where it was?”’

“He did not say exactly. It was in the country north of Cape Florida and the Miami River. That is a region of pinewood ridge and jungle hummock, completely trackless—it has never been mapped.”

“Could the man be found again?”’

“I shouldn’t think so. Not in time to be of any use to you. These fellows go off for months into the wilds.

But I can make enquiries among the Mission Indians who have stayed on here. Most of them speak some Spanish, it is not difficult to find an interpreter. Someone may be found who knows something of the matter. There may be trade links. It is not really so improbable that a small settlement could have survived down there. They are marshlands mainly, I believe, but game must be plentiful, fish too, and it is healthier than the west side because of the sea breezes. During the years of the war there were no troop movements or landings in the far south of Florida. What would have been the point? Miles from anywhere, no use to anyone. There are reports of mixed bands of negroes and Indians from Mississippi raiding in West Florida, but nothing south of the Still John River. I’ll see what I can find out.”