This Thing Of Darkness (19 page)

FitzRoy and King observed a curious expression steal across the admiral’s face, rather as if a fly had settled on the tip of his nose. He halted Fuegia, just as she was about to clamber aboard his lap.

‘Yes ... well ... quite ... Anyway, FitzRoy ... I’m sure you have plenty to be occupying yourself, what with refitting and such.’

‘By your leave, sir, the
Beagle
has no need for refitting. She is in a first-class state of repair.’

‘Really? Good heavens. Well, I’m sure, nonetheless, you have much to do.’

‘Yes sir.’

Otway turned Fuegia about and propelled her gently towards the others. The big Indian was still staring intently at him, but the brute was saying nothing. As Fuegia toddled back across the stateroom carpet, Otway felt the hairs on his neck lose their charge and fall slack. He was still unsure what had happened, but as FitzRoy and his Indians disappeared through the door, his body gave a little shiver, and a feeling of relief washed through him.

 

Riding back to the
Beagle
with the mail sack, FitzRoy resisted the temptation to investigate its contents. All the crew, he knew, would be hanging by the rail, as eager as hungry dogs for the slightest titbit. He did, however, allow himself a glance at the latest newspapers, which were full of talk of reform, the successful trials of the Rocket and the Lancashire Witch, and the forthcoming opening of the Bolton and Leigh goods railway. What, he wondered, would the Fuegians make of a railway, or a steam ferry, or all the other appurtenances of the modern world? What, for that matter, would they make of the bustle of Rio de Janeiro? He would find out on the morrow.

Back at the
Beagle
he found himself surrounded by a pushing, shoving crowd of seamen, naval discipline hanging by the merest thread. Boatswain Sorrell fought gamely to restore order. FitzRoy had the letters distributed in the order that they came out of the sack, regardless of rank.
As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country
. Of course, some poor souls would always go without mail, even after four years at sea: orphans, perhaps, or once-pressed men whose families had no idea of their whereabouts, or those whose wives had simply abandoned them. He, at least, would be sure to have received a letter from his elder sister Fanny, who had yet to let him down. And sure enough, there, towards the bottom of the sack, was a letter addressed in her hand, affording him a familiar glow of love and nostalgia. Only when he turned it over did he see the black seal, as did everyone else present, and a hush fell over the deck. The nearest crewmen moved almost imperceptibly backwards and away from him.

FitzRoy was quiet. ‘Mr Kempe, would you complete the distribution of the mail, please?’

‘Aye aye sir.’

He took the letter from Fanny into his cabin, and leaned back against the bookshelves, his heart pounding against his chest wall, and he broke the black seal, and read what she had written.

His father was dead.

In a rush, all the air was forced out of his lungs, as if he had been kicked in the gut. His head swam. A wave of nausea rose in his throat, and he thought he would be sick there and then. Everything he had become, everything he had achieved, he had done with the purpose of his father’s approval at the back of his mind. Why? He had barely seen his father since he had been sent away to school at six, and only twice since he had joined the Service at twelve. His father never wrote to him. His memories of his mother, who had died when he was five, were richer and more tangible than even his most recent recollections of his father. It was not as if he could ever have confided in his father, or opened his heart to him. And yet ...
and yet I looked to his approbation as the true reward of any hard times I might pass. I have been influenced throughout everything by the thought that I might give him satisfaction. I always valued his slightest word.

He wanted to confide in somebody now, to sit one of the officers down and tell them all about his father. The way his father spoke, the way he smiled, the way he sat on his favourite horse, the way he had once held his little boy. But it was out of the question. Even if naval etiquette had not forbidden it, he knew that any potential listener would be paralysed by rank, any sympathy they had to offer lost in the abyss between the two pillars of their respective status. A captain simply did not invite his subordinates to explore his personal grief.

FitzRoy looked up as the door of his cabin creaked open slowly. He was about to upbraid his visitor for failing to knock, and the marine sentry for failing to see that such formalities were observed, when he saw the reason for it. The visitor was Fuegia Basket, who peered wide-eyed past the door jamb. She wore a bright yellow home-made dress, like a single flower against the dark wood of the little cabin.

‘Capp’en Fitz’oy,’ she said. She crossed the floor and climbed into FitzRoy’s lap. ‘Fuegia love Capp’en Fitz’oy,’ she said. And he put his arm round her, and he held her as tightly as he possibly could.

 

They made the
Beagle
fast to the quay with the anchor cable, which was unshackled and heaved around a quayside bollard, then lashed to the bitts. FitzRoy went ashore with Bennet and the four Fuegians, who were dressed as inconspicuously as possible, their hats pulled down over their eyes. He need not have worried. In their European clothes they passed easily for local Indians, and did not merit even a passing glance.

The reactions of the four Fuegians themselves were not so incurious, however; as the party made slow progress through the sweating crowds thronging the mole, and across the
praça
before the palace and the cathedral, lines of half-naked blacks carrying huge bundles atop their heads passed glistening in the other direction. Boat, Jemmy and Fuegia quailed visibly, the little girl clinging to York’s breeches for protection, no doubt mindful of the black man in the woods who controlled the weather. Even York himself, FitzRoy thought, appeared less assured than normal: an air of tension pervaded his usually rock-like calm. Then, the sight of an ox-cart before the cathedral pulled them up in their tracks. All the sculpted baroque wonders above their heads were of scant interest compared to this fascinating horned beast, which set the three Alikhoolip chattering eagerly among themselves. FitzRoy had to pull them away before a crowd could gather to see what was so riveting.

He decided they should take the Rua do Ouvidor, where ox-cart traffic had been banned, to avoid any further zoological confrontations. It was, as Bennet remarked, ‘precious warm’, and even without the usual farmyard-deep carpet of ox dung, the stench in the city centre almost made the officers gag after two years at sea. A babbling brown brook of human effluent ran down the cobbled gutter in the middle of the street, naked children paddling and splashing therein with happy abandon. Crooked, maimed blacks stared at the little group, leaning pitifully on their sticks, the offensively poor, unemployable detritus of the slave trade. Others peered through rusty wrought-iron balconies that seemed to imprison them behind pastel walls of mildewed, peeling stucco. FitzRoy felt faintly ashamed that the modern civilization to which he had brought the Fuegians appeared even more desperate than their own.

A padre with a long coat and a square hat bade them good day, and a handsome West African woman sailed by in muslin turban and long shawl, dripping with amulets and bracelets. At the mighty door of the Church of São Francisco de Paula they headed south, past the magnificent arched aqueduct that fetched the city’s water down from the mountains, climbing now towards the more respectable suburbs of Santa Tereza and Laranjeiras. Imported trees grew everywhere here, plum and banana and breadfruit trees by the roadside, and long stands of bamboo transplanted from the East Indies. The houses were bigger, with tumbling vines and verandahs, each one a barrack square for a platoon of potted poinsettias. There were glimpses of olive-skinned children playing in back gardens, under the care of black nurses. FitzRoy took the piece of paper with the address from his pocket to check it once more. They ascended two more narrow cobbled streets, the roads here too steep and twisting for carriages, the Fuegians sweating copiously now in the heat, until eventually a sign in Portuguese indicated that they had arrived at their destination: the premises of Dr Carson Figueira, physician.

FitzRoy pulled the bell, and a silent black serving-girl came to the gate. She showed them through a terracotta-coloured patio lined with potted palms, into a dark, cool, empty room containing only a wall cabinet and a scratched mahogany desk, where she left them to themselves. A few minutes later Dr Figueira himself, a man as colourless as his office walls, appeared in the doorway.

‘You must be Captain FitzRoy. I am pleased to make your acquaintance. I am Dr Figueira.’

The physician’s accent was novel to say the least: it was flat and buttery like that of a New Englander, but it had also been dipped in the dark honeypot of Brazilian Portuguese. It was hard to equate such a rich, dominating voice with its undistinguished-looking, world-weary owner. ‘My mother was American,’ added Dr Figueira, in response to FitzRoy’s unspoken question.

FitzRoy introduced himself, the coxswain and the four Fuegians, and wondered privately about the bareness of Figueira’s consulting room.

‘So these are the Indians your message spoke about?’

Figueira opened York’s mouth and began to inspect his teeth as if he were a horse. York’s eyes bored into the physician’s, but otherwise he reacted with diffidence to being manhandled.

‘My name is Boat Memory, sir. This is my friend Mr York Minster, whose teeth you are making inspection of.’

‘Nossa Senhora.
You’ve been teaching them English, Captain.’

Dr Figueira ignored Boat Memory’s greeting, and it occurred to FitzRoy that he did not entirely take to the Brazilian physician.

‘It is my belief, Dr Figueira, that the Fuegian nation shows a considerable potential to be elevated above its savage state. That is why I am bringing them to Europe. It is why I have brought them here.’

‘You’ll need to make uncommon haste, then. The Buenos Ayreans are heading further south every day. When they reach Tierra del Fuego, the Indians will go the way of the blacks, and be fit only for slaves.’

‘Do you believe that blacks are fit only for slaves, sir? This very afternoon we have encountered most handsomely dressed black gentle-women, habited in turbans and shawls, who had nothing whatsoever of the slave about them.’

‘Those will be Mina Negroes from West Africa. Handsome they may be, but they’re quite unfit for domestic service. They’re too wild, too independent. But they are less than slaves, Commander. Lusheys, for the most part.’

Figueira had completed his cursory examination.

‘The inoculation for smallpox is an expensive business, Commander. If you wish me to inoculate four savages I will, as long as your money is as good as the bank.’

‘I shall have no trouble meeting your settlement here and now,’ said FitzRoy coldly.

Figueira produced a metal tray, upon which lay a lancet, a cloth, a jar of vinegar and a glass phial containing a clear liquid. Dipping the cloth in the vinegar he cleaned a spot on Boat Memory’s upper left arm, and prepared to make a small incision with the lancet. Boat’s eyes widened. ‘It’s just a variolation,’ explained the surgeon. ‘A series of small cuts with a lancet dipped in the cowpox vaccine.’

‘It’s all right, Boat,’ said Bennet softly. ‘We’ve all had the same treatment.’

‘It’s medicine, Boat,’ FitzRoy added. ‘It will keep you safe from illness in England. You must have it done now, because it takes some weeks to work. If you like, I will take it first.’

‘No, Capp’en Fitz’oy. I believe you.’

And he shut his eyes and submitted to Dr Figueira’s ministrations.

Jemmy, who was quaking like a jelly, came next. He winced and gasped in fear as Figueira cut into both arms, then promptly smiled again the moment it was all over. Fuegia Basket, who was third, had seemed unconcernedly braver than the other two until the physician had her in his grasp, whereupon she began to whimper loudly. Both FitzRoy and Bennet started forward instinctively to comfort her, but Figueira was there first, placing his hands squarely on her shoulders. ‘Do not fret, little miss. I will not hurt you, I promise.’

And with that he cut into her arm. Fuegia squealed and burst into tears. Before anybody could move, York was across the room, and had slammed Figueira up against the wall by the throat. FitzRoy and Bennet tried to pull him off, but York’s arm was as rigid as gunmetal. Now it was Figueira’s turn to widen his eyes in fear. York’s fingers squeezed gently into the physician’s neck; and then, to everyone’s surprise, he spoke, in a low, harsh voice that came up from the depths of his throat: ‘Hurt her, I will kill you.’

FitzRoy and Bennet slackened their futile grasp in sheer astonishment. Figueira, whose windpipe was too constricted to speak, shook his head as best as he could to indicate that nothing could be further from his mind.

‘York ... you can speak English!’ gasped Bennet redundantly.

‘He! He! He!’ Jemmy, in the corner, was laughing. ‘Mr York, he learn English all time! Fool Capp’en Fitz’oy, fool everybody. He! He! He!’

 

The packet
Ariadne
sailed into Rio de Janeiro harbour the next morning with the news that George IV was dead. The King had passed away at Windsor six weeks previously, on 26 June. It took some time for the news to percolate through the South American fleet, as there was no actual signal to indicate the King’s death — it having been decided by Sir Home Popham some time previously that it would demoralize the men to include such a communication in the signal vocabulary. In fact, most of those on the
Beagle
were secretly delighted at the news: the new king, William IV, was a Navy man, who had served as Lord High Admiral in Rio. He had been known as a drinking man, a no-nonsense officer and a good sport. There was a general consensus among the crew that — as a former matlow - King Billy would see the Service all right.