Nobody's Slave
Authors: Tim Vicary
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Genre Fiction, #Historical, #United States, #African American, #Historical Fiction, #African, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense
Nobody’s Slave
Tim Vicary
First published as an ebook by White Owl Publications Ltd 2012
Copyright Tim Vicary 2012
ISBN 978-0-9571698-7-6
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention
No reproduction without permission
All rights reserved
The right of Tim Vicary to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988
Other Kindle ebooks by Tim Vicary
Historical novels
The Blood Upon the Rose
(Love and Terror in Ireland, 1920)
Cat and Mouse
(Suffragettes and Ulster Rebellion in 1914)
The Monmouth Summer
(Love and Rebellion in England 1685)
Crime and Legal Thrillers
A Game of Proof
(The Trials of Sarah Newby, book 1)
A Fatal Verdict
(The Trials of Sarah Newby, book 2)
Bold Counsel
(The Trials of Sarah Newby, book 3)
Website:
http://www.timvicary.com
Blog:
http://timvicary.wordpress.com
Twitter:
@TimVicary
If all the miseries and troublesome affaires of this sorowfull voyage should be perfectly and throughly written, there should neede a painefull man with his pen, and as great a time as he had that wrote the lives and deaths of the Martyrs.
John Hawkins.
The Principal Navigations Voyages Traffiques & Discoveries of the English Nation, by Richard Hakluyt, Volume 7.
This is a work of fiction, but all of the main events in it really happened.
Table of Contents
20. The Word of an English Gentleman
27. Enemies of God; Enemies of Spain
Capture
‘M
EEEEH! MEEEEEEH!’ The little kid's despairing, persistent bleat echoed in the forest, and the forest ignored it. Madu sat in the tree above, quite still, listening. He heard the calls and whistles of a dozen different birds all around him; a hoot somewhere that might be a baboon; the trumpeting of elephants bathing in a river half a mile away; and further off, the shrieks and howls of a troop of monkeys who were probably pelting some unlucky hyena with sticks and leaves from the safety of the trees. These sounds he knew; they did not worry him. The sound he was waiting for would be nearer - a stealthy, half-heard rustle that would give him a few seconds' warning, no more. But all this long, hot afternoon there had been nothing; only the insistent bleats and struggles of the tethered kid below.
Clunk! Something hit the back of his head and he turned quickly, silently, and peered through the gap in the leaves to where Temba crouched in another tree, waiting, his black skin scarcely visible in the deep green shade among the branches. Temba moved his left arm slowly, pointing down to Madu's right.
Madu’s eyes followed the line of Temba’s arm through the jigsaw of leaves and branches to the forest clearing below. His hand gripped the handle of his axe in readiness; but he could see nothing - only a lizard sunning itself on a rock, and a few leaves moving as birds landed or took off from branches.
He glanced back at Temba to see if it was a joke, after all; but the thin arm was still pointing, and Temba's lithe, strong body was tensed behind it, staring at something that Madu still could not see. And somehow the forest had gone quieter than before - fewer birds called, the monkeys had stopped their jabber. Even the kid had stopped bleating, listening perhaps for some sound that might be its mother returning.
Yet nothing happened; and Madu wondered, for the hundredth time that day, whether their handiwork had been good enough. Surely any leopard, however hungry it was, however much it salivated at the tempting sight of the tethered, helpless kid, would suspect the sturdy poles of the cage, and hesitate at the smell of the dank, unnaturally bare earth of the pit they had dug? And yet Madu and Temba had spent hours disguising the cage, weaving still-growing leaves and creepers in and out of its poles to disguise their unnatural regularity. They had carried away the fresh-dug earth of the pit inside the cage, and covered the pit carefully with a lattice-work of light branches, grass and rotten leaves, so that it looked like any other part of the forest floor. After that they had left it for a few days, for the forest to grow used to it. Then this morning they had tethered the kid inside the cage, and climbed into the trees above, to wait.
A branch shook in the forest below, and Madu's heart began to pound, so loud that he thought the whole forest would hear. But nothing happened. The kid cried again - a long, desperate, dispirited bleat, accusing the whole world of forsaking it. The sound of the birds began again, and the forest seemed to relax. Whatever Temba had seen, it must have gone away. Was the smell of the pit too strong, too obvious?
If it was, it was Madu’s fault. Boys on their manhood training were taught how to catch their leopard by building a cage, as he and Temba had done, and baiting it with a young goat. Each pair of boys was given a kid, and told to come back with a leopard - no-one ever came back with both. But Madu had to do one better, as he always did. Only if he did something better than all the rest, would they accept him as equal. And so he and Temba had made a cage with two trapdoors, instead of one.
The cage was about three metres long; a tunnel of stout posts hammered into the ground, and woven together with creepers. The kid was tethered inside the cage at the closed end. The leopard could only get to it by creeping into the cage from the other end, which was open. A cage door hung just above the open end of the cage, suspended by a creeper. As soon as the leopard was inside the cage it was Madu’s job to cut through the creeper with his axe, so that the door would fall down and close. Then the leopard would be trapped inside the cage. It would start to eat the kid, and then the hunters would kill it with their spears.
That was how the boys had been taught to catch a leopard. But Madu had a better idea. He liked the little goat; he didn’t want it to be eaten. So he and Temba had dug a pit, just inside the cage, for the leopard to fall into. Then, while the leopard was struggling inside the pit, he would open the second door at the closed end of the cage, and pull the little goat out. Then he would close the door and leopard would be trapped. The door was too small, anyway, for most leopards to get through.
That was Madu’s plan - to save the kid and catch the leopard.
Suddenly the leopard came - slinking low and fast across the forest floor, following the focus of its intent yellow eyes so quick and deliberate it was inside the cage before Madu had fully seen it. He jolted into life, and chopped down hard with his axe on the creeper that held the heavy door above the entrance. There was a growl and the crash of breaking twigs as the leopard fell, snarling, into the pit, and the cage door fell shut behind it.
Perfect, Madu thought. Quickly, scratching his knees and hands on the bark in his hurry, he climbed down out of his tree and rushed to the back of the cage. As he bent to pull aside the bar that held the little door closed, his ears were filled with the furious snarl and roar of the leopard, and the high, terrified scream of the kid.
The little goat was pressed hard against the back of the cage, jerking its head frantically to free itself from the rope round its neck. Madu reached in and the kid almost fell out of the door, blocking his way and wasting more time. But it couldn’t run away because the rope round its neck was still tied to the inside of the cage. Madu shoved it aside and chopped hard at the rope with his little axe, but it did not cut. The axe bounced and slipped off the rope because of the tension, the tugging of the kid, something he had not expected. I should have planned for this, Madu realised. This is too slow. The wretched goat is getting in the way.
He chopped again and cut two strands of the rope. He tried again but the panic-stricken kid dragged the rope aside and he missed completely. Just one strand of rope left. He lifted the axe again, but before he could bring it down the rope snapped, the goat kicked him in the face, and the axe flew out of his hand.
Then, with a sudden enormous scrabbling snarl the leopard was up, out of the pit, furious, gathering itself to spring. For half a second it seemed to pause - long enough for Madu to see its mask of rage: the quivering lips drawn back from the great yellow incisors and the hint of movement in the blazing yellow slitted eyes that made him fall backwards even as the quick claw clutched the air where he had been. But before he could grab the door the leopard was coming through the gap - the gap that was supposed to be too small for any leopard, but was not too small for this one, who was not small at all but so large and strong he had broken the bars beside it, and was halfway, threequarters of the way out already.
Madu turned to run but something caught his foot. He felt a hot, burning pain in his ankle; and as he fell over backwards he knew the leopard was out, completely out, and if he did not move quickly he would never move again.
He rolled onto his stomach, got to his feet, and ran, hobbling one pace, two, five - and still no claws dragged him down, no teeth sank in his neck. Why? Behind him was a yell, and then a terrible, horrible snarling, and he remembered Temba. Thank goodness - Temba! He stopped, turned, looked - and saw Temba struggling to hold the end of the spear that he had plunged deep into the side of the leopard's neck - a leopard that had become a writhing, snarling, yellow and black tornado of lashing teeth and claws, and which snapped the shaft of the spear in two even as Madu watched.
Madu wanted to help his friend but he had no weapon. The axe was lost, gone – he looked for it on the ground but couldn’t see it. He had left his spear leaning against a tree five yards away to his left. There would be time to pick it up, he’d thought, when the leopard was trapped in the cage. No time now. He started to run towards it, but everything seemed to happen so slowly; it was like a dream in which he could not move. There was something wrong with his foot and he could not run properly. As he ran he saw Temba leap away from the wounded leopard, trying to hide behind the cage. The furious, snarling leopard gathered itself to spring, the broken shaft of the spear still sticking out of its neck; and Madu yelled.
The yell was not like one in a dream - it echoed so hugely round the forest that for a few vital seconds the leopard was puzzled, uncertain what it was. In those few seconds Madu grabbed his spear. As he did so the leopard saw who had made the sound. It turned away from Temba and crouched, ears flattened, tail swishing, teeth bared, focussing for another dreadful instant before it sprang.
Madu saw the great yellow fangs and the ribbed roof of the cat's mouth coming through the air towards him, and he shut his eyes. He gripped the spear, ducked sideways, and was shaken by a great, numbing jolt that drove the spear's heel into the ground beneath his foot, and then slowly collapsed him over on his side.