Nobody's Slave (10 page)

‘Yes.’ As Temba spoke Madu saw his mother coming slowly back along the street down which she must have fled when the attack started. Close beside her walked his younger sister, Ekwefi, her hand tightly clutched in their mother’s; and there was that in Ezinma’s face that Madu could neither bear to see nor look away from.

She saw him, standing with Temba over the tattooed body of the dead warrior. Madu's hand left Temba's shoulder, awkwardly.

‘I must go to my mother a moment, Tembi.’

Ezinma stood quite still amidst the bustle as he limped the few paces towards her, and she stared at him as though he were a stranger in a body she knew. A man of a different tribe.

‘We are safe now, mother,’ he said, for something to say. ‘We have driven them away.’

‘And you have killed? You killed that man?’

‘Temba killed him, mother. He would have killed me. I ...’ He turned and pointed to the wall, but already men were moving the bodies, and he could see none he was sure he had hit. ‘I fought for the Mani, mother. I am a Mani.’

‘Yes. I see that.’ She looked at him long, and he stood quite steadily before her, feeling her pain and knowing he could do no other. ‘I have seen it before but never so clearly as now.’ She sighed, and seemed to shrink into herself before his eyes, so that he felt for the first time that she was beginning the long, withering process of ageing that would turn her at last into a wrinkled old woman. ‘Then all my children are Mani. And am I one of these?’

She jerked her head angrily at one of the bound, tattooed prisoners who were being herded ignominiously past. The man heard the fury of her voice, lifted his head for a moment, and stared at the tell-tale marks of her filed teeth and tattooed body. It was strange: Madu felt free of her for the first time, and for the first time also, pity.

‘You are one of us, mother. I am a Mani, and you are my mother - you must be a Mani too.’

But Ezinma had lived too long in her isolation to believe it could be changed by a few words from her son, and his attempt at kindness hurt her. She paused before she answered, letting him feel how pompous his well-meant words had been.

‘That is for Nwoye to decide. If he really leads you before the tribe I will try to feel proud, as a mother should.’

Madu and Temba spent the morning after the attack repairing the damage to the city walls, and resting; but in the afternoon, when it was clear that the Sumba were not immediately about to attack again, they were free to explore this strange new world of the town.

They wandered, entranced, around the market in the main square, and through the labyrinth of little streets near it. They were fascinated by the new sights and sounds. There was more activity here than Madu and Temba normally saw in a whole year. The population, already large, was swollen by the inhabitants of many villages like themselves – maybe eight or ten thousand people, all in one place.

There was a thriving market, with dozens of stalls to look at – fruit stalls and butchers, but also weavers, who wove elaborate, multi-coloured cloth; tailors to made shirts, trousers and robes for the rich, woodcarvers, potters, jewelers, workers in ivory and gold – the boys gazed in wonder at the marvellous things they made. Busiest of all were the hot blasts of the blacksmith's forges, where strong, sweating men worked overtime to refurbish the weapons of the patient warriors standing outside. And once Madu and Temba saw the two Mani kings, Sasina and Seterama, striding magnificently in their long robes out of the palace, shielded by their generals and bodyguards who frowned at any common people who did not bow as they moved out of the way.

‘I would like to stay in this town and learn more of it,’ said Madu. ‘Perhaps we should come here again after the Festival of New Warriors.’

‘Perhaps,’ agreed Temba. ‘The girls seem better here too.’ As he spoke he turned his head to stare at a tall, slender girl who sat on a stool outside a hut, spinning goats' wool. For a few paces he walked backwards, staring at her, and almost immediately bumped into Chiclo, a girl of their own village, going the other way with a jar on her head. She shrieked, clutching the jar with both hands, and Temba put his arms around her protectively.

‘Be my fifth bride, beautiful,’ he whispered, and Chiclo, recovering, pushed him away indignantly.

‘Oh Temba, you fool! One day you'll make that face too often, and the monkey-god Anansi will throw you into the black lake and change you into a spider!’

‘Then I shall pull you in with me, so that we can make our own web and live in it!’ he said, and shambled towards her, stretching his arms low to the ground to try to look like a spider.  Chiclo shrieked, and flounced huffily away, the exaggerated sway of her still-thin hips showing how she was trying to retain her dignity. Madu and Temba laughed again.

‘She thinks you mean it, you know,’ said Madu. ‘You'll have her father round to see you later.’

But their fathers had more important things to worry about. When they got back to their huts, they saw the men of their village clustered anxiously on the wall, watching Sumba warriors on the far bank of the river. Some new boats had arrived, quite unlike the long thin Sumba canoes. The men in them had unusual, colourful clothes, and red hairy faces. They seemed to be lifting something dark and heavy out of one of the boats.

After dark, Nwoye come down for his evening meal, and sat by Ezinma’s cooking fire. Madu rose to go as Nwoye sat down, but his step-father motioned him to stay.

For a while Nwoye ate hungrily, in silence, while the night sounds of the city settled down around them. Then he sat back and looked steadily at his stepson. There was a tired, solemn expression on his face, as there often was when he looked at Madu.

‘Is your foot better?’  he asked. 

‘A little, Nwoye. But it's still hard to walk without a stick.’

‘That is a pity. We will need every fighting man we can get, in the next few days. Even you.’

‘Yes, Nwoye.’ Madu felt his face flush hot in the darkness, and hated himself for being such a burden. He heard a Sumba drum begin to beat in the forest across the river.

‘The boy can use his bow. He did that well enough this morning.’

Madu felt himself flush still more, as Ezinma spoke. If it was not manly to speak of his own achievements, it was still less so to have your mother speak of them for you.

He felt Nwoye's silence rebuke Ezinma. But then Nwoye sighed - he was always a fair man. ‘So I have heard. Three of your arrows were taken from the dead. I return them to you. One is broken.’

So he
did
know! Madu took the three short arrows wonderingly, wishing even more that his mother had not spoken. The gift in itself was praise enough.

‘You should be glad to have a son who fights so well,’ said Ezinma, making things worse. ‘It is a thing to be proud of.’

‘Anyone would be glad of that, Ezinma,’ said Nwoye surprised, a little irritably; and Madu saw again, as he had seen many times in the past, that Nwoye did not understand how Ezinma might feel, did not think about it. He had no idea how much that remark had cost her. Her Sumba background was only important insofar as it affected him. And the matters of the traditions and survival of the tribe were more important to him than anyone's feelings.

Then, suddenly, all the Sumba drums took up the beat of the single one that had been throbbing before, and the dark hills all around them pulsed with a beat that was taunting, triumphant. And in the middle of the drumming, there was a great crack and boom like thunder from somewhere down by the river, and someone near the main gate screamed.

Men on the walls began shouting and hurling insults back into the night, but Nwoye sat strangely silent.

‘That was the thunder-magic of those witch-devils they have brought to help them. Tomorrow we must throw them into the river, or they will destroy us.’

‘What witch-devils, Nwoye?’ Ezinma's voice was alarmed,

‘The red-face who came from the canoes this afternoon. The Sumba brought a few of them earlier, but now many more have come. They are harder to kill than the Sumba, for their leaders have chests of steel. Their thunder weapons are powerful too, but I doubt if  they can do us real harm. The walls of Conga are too thick, it will take many iron balls to break them down.’

‘Who
are
the red-face, Nwoye? What is different about them?’ It was a question Madu had seldom dared to ask, for he knew there was something evil, almost forbidden about the answer. Could that story of  Ikezue’s really be true, that their faces were red because they ate people? He hoped that this time, Nwoye might tell him.

But Nwoye sat for a moment, silent, and then stood up abruptly.

‘Now is not the time for you to learn,’ he said. ‘It is enough for you to know that they are men, who can be killed, as we can; and that we will have to fight them tomorrow. Let us hope that your foot heals quickly!’

Then he strode away into the darkness. And as he went, Madu had the strange sensation that Nwoye, too, was afraid.

S
O IT was that, a few days later, Tom found himself on another expedition inland. After his conference ashore, the Admiral had sent a small force off under Robert Barrett, and they had waited expectantly. But after two days a messenger had returned with the news that they were not enough. If they wanted slaves, they would need more men and cannons to help the Sumba king break down the walls of the rebel town.

So John Hawkins, gambling all his forces in hope of large rewards, had stripped the fleet of every man he could spare and set off upriver.

It was hard rowing against the current, for in the centre of each boat was a squat, heavy cannon. And they did not just have to row. Three times they came to shallow rapids which the laden boats could not pass, so they had to heave the clumsy guns ashore and trundle them along the uneven, narrow footpaths. The forest steamed with damp heat, so that they were drenched and exhausted in a few dozen yards.

At first the Africans stood around, disdainfully looking on. Then the Admiral seized a rope to heave with the sailors, and gave orders for the other gentlemen to do likewise. Immediately the attitude of the Africans changed, and Tom and the other exhausted sailors found themselves surrounded, and then thrust aside, by dozens of black, muscular figures who heaved the guns forward at a great rate.

The African warriors were only willing to help, it seemed, if the finely dressed English gentlemen would help first. As the day wore on, this distinction became even clearer. To Tom’s surprise, it seemed that the Sumba viewed the English as no more than ignorant, useful savages with a few magical instruments for fighting. In the evening they wandered freely through the sailors' camp, pointing at and fingering their strange clothes and beards, laughing so loudly at a man with red hair that a fight broke out. The Admiral had to speak firmly to their chief, to ask his men to keep away. Yet even when he did so Hawkins' manner was so polite, so diplomatic and respectful, that Tom felt furious, ashamed – and a little afraid, as well.

The Sumba warriors had tattooed bodies, short crinkly braided hair, and teeth that were filed to sharp points like those of a dog or wolf. They wore few clothes, but those they did wear were of soft, fine quality. Their spears and arrows were sharp, and several wore necklaces of shells and shiny stones. They treated the sailors like dirt, and seemed to regard themselves as superior or at least equal to Admiral Hawkins himself.

Hawkins seemed unworried by this, but Tom seethed with fury. Surely the right thing to do was to go ashore and capture these savages, not help them and trade with them like this. That would be the way to avenge Simon’s death!

The second morning they were attacked by a river-horse. They were rowing up a broad, deep stretch of river between thickly wooded banks, watching as the Africans darted between them on their impossibly narrow canoes, some half-standing in hollowed-out logs little more than six inches across, which skimmed across the water like arrows.

Suddenly there was a cry from astern, the crack of breaking oars, and the pinnace from the Angel rose absurdly up in the air, and then capsized, tipping its crew and gun into the water. From beneath it appeared a great black monster, far larger than a bull, its mouth open to reveal huge, cavernous pink jaws that broke the backs of two sailors before they could be rescued.

Yet although the monster was angry, it did not eat them - indeed, later that day they gathered from the Sumba that it ate no meat at all. As it swam away Tom had seen its short, stumpy legs, and the Sumba mimed how they would lie in wait for such a beast when it came ashore, block up its path back to the river with fallen trees, and then shoot it to death with arrows. The skin, it seemed, was very tough - here the bosun agreed, for he swore he had seen his musket-ball bounce off it - but the flesh inside was good, or at least so Tom imagined, from the expressive smacking of lips, rolling of eyes and rubbing of stomachs by the Sumba.

They reached the city on the second day. The huge black-bearded figure of Robert Barrett stood on the bank, guiding them in to a little shingle beach. All around him was a crowd of Sumba warriors, some pounding out a deafening welcome on their drums, while others screamed defiance at the town on the opposite bank of the river. 

Tom was surprised how near the town was - only a quarter of a mile away, across a smooth area of  grass by the river. And he was astonished at its size. He had imagined that all Africans lived in primitive villages. Yet here was a real city, as big as his own home town, Totnes in Devon - and eight thousand people lived there. He could see some of the buildings over the walls, and though most of them were simple thatched huts, there were several much larger ones, laid out around the central market-place to which the streets seemed to lead - some as big, or bigger than his father's house at home.

‘Right, lads, get those guns into position. Quick as you can!’ As the boat beached Admiral Hawkins leapt over the bows, exchanged a few words with Robert Barrett, and then turned to direct the boat crews. He was quite calm, precise as always, unworried by the uproar around him.