Quiddle pauses, the bald spot motionless in the dark. A profound silence settles over the churchyard. Nothing moves. It is as still and dark and bleak as the back side of the moon. “Listen,” Quiddle says finally, “you keep it up and we’ll both be in a state. Now get on down here and give me a hand with this stiff.”
Ned drops the shovel with a clatter and eases down at the edge of the pit, feeling his way gingerly, catching his breath in case there’s an odor, his whole body revolting against the task at hand. Quiddle has propped the corpse up, stiff as a log, and is struggling to maneuver it toward Ned when suddenly a great crashing weight descends on Ned from the rear and impels him face forward into the coffin. Quiddle sprawls, the corpse totters, Ned cries out and the presence at his back — it is warm, possessed of arms and legs — grunts like a rooting pig. And then all at once a blinding light is shining in their faces and a voice snarling: “That’s royt: dig away, Quiddle. It’ll spare me the effort.”
Dirk Crump is standing over the pit, a lantern in one hand, pistol in the other. His accomplice is atop Ned, Ned is atop Quiddle, and Quiddle is wedged into the corner with the cadaver. As if in protest, the corpse’s hand is thrust straight out of its shroud, the raw ragged gashes slanting across the wrist, flesh gone gray, nails battered and black. “All royt Billy, ye’ve done well,” Crump says, “—come out of it now.”
It is then that Ned gets his first look at the accomplice and realizes with a start that he’s staring into the pale green unbelieving eyes of Billy Boyles. “Billy?” he says. But Boyles is backing away from him, his face working, eyes collapsed in on themselves with terror and disbelief. Then his mouth opens, a hole black as the night. “Run!” he shrieks, alternately clawing at the edge of the coffin and blessing himself, Ned reaching out to pacify him and Boyles screaming again, his voice pinched and raw with terror, the voice of spitted babes and animals skinned alive. Crump drops the lamp in shock and bewilderment, light dashing out on the ground in a spray of hot oil and the quick inevitable night rushing in to swallow it. There is the sound of scrambling, hands and feet tearing at the earth. Crump shouting out an obscenity and then Boyles’ traumatized shriek again: “Run for God’s sake, run — it’s a haunt!”
The snarl of the pistol is almost anticlimactic.
♦ WORDS ♦
Sir Joseph Banks, at fifty-five, is a hub of power and influence. President of the Royal Society for the past twenty years, Honorary Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Knight Commander of the Bath and member of the Privy Council, he is the doyen of the British scientific community, a distinguished botanist whose collection ranks among the best in Europe, founding member of the African Association, former explorer and eponym of a number of South Pacific landmarks, the man to whom the government turns for consultation on nearly every scientific matter, from the most effective way of preserving breadfruit on the H.M.S. Bounty to the disposition of explorers in the Tropics.
Though born to wealth and privilege, it was in the role of explorer that he first caught the public eye. In the late sixties and early seventies he circumnavigated the globe with Captain Cook, and was so successful in promoting his own role in the expedition that he was named President of the Royal Society shortly thereafter. He is self-righteous and proper, autocratic, insatiably curious, a manipulator, collector, seedsman, hobnobber, pacesetter, publicity hound — but above all else an explorer grown too old for exploring. And so, like the ex-athlete turned to coaching, he is mentor to his geographical missionaries. He is a man of taste, refinement and connection, a man of dedication and perseverance, a man who can make the entire country sit up and listen. At the moment, however, it is all he can do to keep from shouting.
“What’s this I hear from Edwards?” he says, each word cutting like a sword. He is sitting at the head of the big conference table in his study, shoulders hunched, chin jutting forward, looking for all the world like a bulldog straining at an invisible leash.
“Sir?” Mungo is flushed to the ears. He looks up quickly and then drops his gaze to the glass of claret in his hand.
“Don’t play games with me, boy — you know damned well what I’m talking about.”
“If you mean the Baroness—”
“The Baroness,” Sir Joseph mocks, hanging on each syllable as if it were smeared with excrement. “The woman’s a disgrace. She’s an immoralist, a vampire.”
Mungo looks up as if he’s been slapped. “You’re not being fair — she has her good points.”
“A pair of boobs, Mungo, a pair of boobs. That’s all.” He holds up a palm to forestall any further argument. “I’m not going to debate the subject. I want you to stay away from her. Period. You’re not just some hick from the Borderlands anymore, son — you’re a celebrity, you’ve got a position to maintain. And I’ll be damned if one of my geographical missionaries is going to run around town like some lower primate with an itch in his testicles.
“You’ve been at it for two weeks now — to the detriment of your work on the book, so Mr. Edwards tells me.” Banks’ expression softens a bit.
“We have subscribers to account to, Mungo. The good people who put up the money to buy you this glory that’s gone so quickly to your head. Isn’t it about time you sat down and repaid them?”
He pushes himself up from the table and shuffles over to the sideboard to refill his glass. Then adds, almost as an afterthought, “After all, it’s only words they want.”
♦ ♦ ♦
Words. They haunt him night and day, through his rewrite sessions with Edwards, through breakfast, tea and dinner, words masticated over plaice and fowl, lucubrated at the hour of the wolf, pried from the recesses of his memory like bits of hardened molding. . words that fight one another like instruments out of tune, arhythmic, cacophonic, words that snarl sentences and tangle thoughts until he flings the pen down in rage and despair. He never imagined the book would be such drudgery. After the stark physical challenge of Africa and the heady swirl of celebrity, the last thing he wants is to sit at a desk and push words around like a professional scrabble player.
Of course he does have Edwards. Bryan Edwards, Secretary of the African Association, has been looking out for him at Sir Joseph’s request. Precise, logical and thorough, he is constantly at the explorer’s side, coaching, cajoling, editing, sometimes sleeping the night on a cot in the spare room (Mungo has taken lodgings in London at the Association’s insistence and expense). And yet, no matter how eager and helpful his amanuensis is, Mungo still can’t seem to get himself out of bed in the morning. Every cell of his body resists it. He lies there, feeling hollowed out, a husk, drained and sucked dry. It’s an old but familiar feeling, the terrible devastating Weltschmerz of the boy who wakes with the knowledge that he hasn’t finished his Latin assignment.
One afternoon, the weak winter sun spilling into the room like milk, he turns to Edwards and bares his teeth. “I’ve had it,” he says, pushing back the chair and leaping up to pace round the room. “I don’t give a damn if they strip away my salary and boot me out into the street, I can’t write another word.”
Edwards is sitting at a table heaped with an accumulation of torn and yellowed scraps of paper that could only have come from an overturned wastebasket. He is wearing spectacles, and has the thin-lipped, wateryeyed look of the scrivener. At the moment he is sifting through this heap of crumpled paper — Mungo’s original hat-sequestered notes — looking for a reference to Tiggitty Sego’s cousin’s wife that Mungo insists is there.
“I tell you,” the explorer shouts, “I’d rather be tortured by the Moors again, flayed with whips and scourges and shackled face down in my own vomit, than have to spend the rest of the evening here like some damned copyboy.”