Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth

between a smile and a grimace came to Thurso’s face and he glanced aside at the merchant. “We generally take care of that the night we leave the Pool,” he said. “We shall gather some likely lads, never fear.”
    “I believe you need more than the usual number of crew on a slaveship, so as to manage the negroes?”’
    ‘Manage them? Aye, you are right, sir. I see you have been going into the matter. Tell me then, how do you suggest we could secure the men, if we took them on so far in advance?”’
    “Let me see now.” Paris affected to consider. He had heard the sarcasm, had noted the sly way Thurso smiled upon his uncle. The balance of pride and humility in him was always uncertain and never more so than in these days of his self-contempt. Whatever he privately felt he deserved, when meeting hostility his first impulse was to fatten it with feeding. “Give them an advance of pay,” he said with deliberate carelessness.
    “Advance of pay, advance of pay?”’ Thurso turned with a stiff gesture towards Kemp, as if the latter must see now how ill-advised it was to have confidence in such a man. “Do you mean we should give them money without securing their persons? That would be utmost folly, Mr Paris. You would never see them or your money again. The men who sign on for the Africa trade are the lowest of seafaring men. They are scum, sir.” He paused, looking closely at Paris. He had seen or sensed some indefinable change in the quality of the other’s attention.
    Predestined foes will find each other out, though signs of weakness may at first be only dimly perceived. Nothing changed in Thurso’s expression or his posture but when he continued it was with a vigilance half instinctive. “Scum,” he repeated.
    “The very dregs of the trade. Some landsmen and simpletons among ‘em, looking for a change of circumstance, but they are men in hard case for the most part, men with something to run from.”
    “Aye, poverty,” Paris said hastily.
    “Otherwise they would choose better.” He saw Thurso bristle his brows at this and was warned again by the sharpness of interest in the small eyes.
    “My nephew is going for instruction and experience,” Kemp said.
    “That is a worthy aim,” Thurso said in a lighter tone. “Of course, I was speaking of the common seamen.”
    “So was I. I do not doubt there are bad men among them. All the same, it is not beyond them to mend, I suppose, these sweepings of the prisons. Those who have remained unpunished may often be more wicked.” He paused in some confusion. Thurso had not mentioned prison, he now recalled. He felt the blood rise to his face. Without quite knowing why, he said in low tones, “Something in us dies so the rest can live on, but it must not be the heart.”
    “The heart.” Grating and toneless, it came with the effect of a contemptuous question. Thurso craned round at Kemp as though looking for some saving intervention.
    “Mr Paris has heart on the brain,” said the merchant, laughing more heartily than seemed warranted at this joke. “He was telling me only last night that he has been busy making a version from the Latin of a work on the circulation of the blood.
    You’ll take another glass, won’t you? We will not all meet again till close on sailing. Let me give you a toast, gentlemen. Perdition to the king’s enemies. Success to our enterprise.”
    Thurso and Paris touched glasses and drank, but it was the spirit of enmity they imbibed that afternoon, and both of them knew it.

7.
    Bulstrode was apoplectic, with a thick neck and protuberant eyes and a gusty habit of breath. As Prospero, in the grip of histrionic excitement, he reddened and swelled in a way that was alarming to some members of the cast. He was winding up to it now, in his morning-gown and wizard’s hat covered with yellow stars, which everyone suspected he had set some of his pupils on to making.
    Caliban was still venting his mirth at the notion of breeding a race