Was this worthy of a sketch, a verse, an observation in his diary, Aymer wondered. What was that phrase he’d read that morning in dell’Ova? He took the book from his pocket and found the passage: ‘The solitary Traveller has better company than those that voyage in the multitude, for he has Nature as his best Companion and no man can be lonely in its Assemblies of sky and earth and water, nor want of Friends.’ Aymer read this passage several times. It ought to comfort him, he thought. He was one of life’s ‘solitary travellers’ after all, a Radical, an aesthete and a bachelor. He didn’t voyage in the multitude. He knew that he was destined to a life alone. He looked for solace in the Assembly of sky and earth and water that was spread out before him. But there wasn’t any solace. He couldn’t fool himself. He’d rather be some cheerful low-jack, welcome at an inn, than the emperor of all this landscape.
Thankfully the sound of Wherrytown at work disturbed his Melancholia. The two men on the chapel green were striking granite with their shovels. Nathaniel Rankin’s grave already had collapsing sides. Down on the shore and all around the salting hall, the local women shouted to each other and clattered barrels. And from the harbour there were the sounds of distant carpentry, of mallets hitting nails, and saws in wood. Aymer could see that there were men hauling recut spars and repaired masts into place on the Belle and much industry on deck and on the quay. But he would need an eyeglass to decipher who was who. Was that a couple arm in arm, standing partly hidden by the ship? Was that the Norrises? The only figure he could name for sure was sitting on a horse and waving his arms like a general.
Whip didn’t seem to like the height. She snapped at Aymer’s shoes and barked.
‘Good morning, Mr Smith.’ Preacher Phipps was standing fifteen feet below the overhang and looking up. ‘What brings you to my chapel? You come to be baptized, I hope? What Scriptures are you holding in your hand?’
Aymer resisted the temptation to summarize his views on God and churches. ‘I came only to admire the outlook,’ he said.
‘What do you see then? A man of God engaged in God’s good work.’
Aymer couldn’t stop himself. ‘I do not see you working, Mr Phipps. You do not seem to have a shovel in your hands. I did not spot you yesterday amongst the pilchards. Nor do I expect to see you tomorrow labouring with wood and rope.’
‘I was not sent here to labour with my hands, but to grace the pulpit. The Good Lord chose me for my Morals not my Muscles. And which of those do you excel in, Mr Smith?’
‘I do not aspire to either.’
‘Then I will pray for you.’
‘What will you pray? That I should be more muscular?’
‘More muscular indeed. But hot in body, sir. More muscular in Spirit. More muscular in Faith.’
‘I thank you for your kind concern. But I have walked here simply for the view and not to join your congregation.’ Aymer looked out once again towards the quay. Why hadn’t he been ‘more reticent, more taciturn’? It wasn’t dignified to be caught in debate above an open grave. ‘I thank you, Mr Phipps,’ he said again. ‘I only wish to see what progress they are making on the ship and then I will vacate this lookout and leave you to your holy duties.’
‘See if you can spy your African from there and earn yourself a sovereign.’
‘What do you say?’
The preacher explained how Walter Howells had put a sovereign up for anyone who brought the slave back to the ship. ‘Warm or frozen. The reward is just the same. There is to be a party organized to search for him tomorrow morning after we have put the sailor to rest in this grave. We’ll sniff the fellow out.’
‘Why don’t you leave the man at liberty?’
‘Come, come. We cannot let the man roam free. He is a savage. Dangerous. Unbaptized!’
‘You are a Christian, Mr Phipps. You should concern yourself with his emancipation, not his capture.’
‘We must first capture the body, Mr Smith, and then we can make amends for that by attending to the emancipation of his soul. Is that not your philosophy? Or have I misapprehended it?’
‘Amenders are opposed to slavery. But you are not, it seems.’
‘No, sir. Nor are the Scriptures or the saints. I might refer you, sir, to Moses. And to St Jerome, “Born of the Devil, we are black.”’
The preacher beamed at his two gravediggers. ‘We will dig a grave for him in holy ground if he is found and he is dead. You cannot say my heart is closed to him.’
‘Well, he in’t dead, and that’s for sure,’ one of the old men said.
The second one agreed. ‘He in’t. He’s up to mischief though.’
Between them they recounted all the evidence that they had heard that morning from their neighbours: the theft of clothes and bedding from the inn, the outsized footsteps in the snow, the wind-like, wolf-like howling in the night, the dismembered cow that had been found by the Americans on the beach at Dry Manston. (‘Ripped apart it was. By human hands. And nothing left excepting hoof and bone.’ ‘Not human hands. Not human, anyway, like us.’)
‘I can assure you, gentlemen, that Negroes do not howl at night, nor do they tear up cows like tigers, nor do they have the six-inch remnant of a tail,’ said Aymer, addressing the two gravediggers with what he meant to be a kindly and a patient tone (and an example for the preacher). ‘If they are distinguished from the European then it is by their virtues, not their savagery. It is true that the Negro has great strength and must have if he will toil beneath the blazing sun of Africa. But he also has these further strengths of character, that he is cheerful, loyal and does not harbour grudges for the sorrows and the cruelties of life. I do not speak from theory only. I have met with the man. His name is Otto and I promise you, there is no cause to fear the African …’
‘Not when the blackie’s got a pistol in his hand?’
‘He does not have a pistol in his hand.’
‘Well, that in’t so. He’s broke into Walter Howells’s house and made off with a pistol.’
‘I cannot think that that is true …’
‘And so it is. Mr Howells’s place is only two spits down the lane from me. I’m locking up my doors at night, until the man’s chained up again …’
‘Save a stranger from the sea,’ his friend recited, in his wisest voice. ‘And he’ll prove your enemy. They should’ve let the bugger drown. He in’t worth the sovereign.’
AYMER HURRIED BACK with Whip to the inn. Again there were no signs of life. He put his warmest clothes on underneath his tarpaulin coat. He filled his pockets with the half-stale breakfast bread that was still on the side table. He wrapped some pilchards and some cheese in a napkin. Where should he go? He headed out of Wherrytown on the path that he knew best, the one that met the Cradle Rock. He had an image in his head of Otto sitting on the rock, becoming stone, his blackness camouflaged by sea salt and by lichens the colour of mustard. Aymer’s legs already felt like pease pudding. His heart was beating like a wren’s. He knew his duty now. He knew why he had stayed.