Nobody's Slave (13 page)

The red-face made them get out of their boat and climb up the side of the biggest floating house. Madu was terrified. He tried to leap into the water there and then, to end it all, but the rope around his neck dragged him upward. When he reached the top of the house, he had no time to look around him before he was shoved down again into its cave-like depths. He did not notice the first hole, but the second led down into the darkest depths like a devil's trap. A vile stench, the clanking of iron and cries of fear came out of it. Madu struggled backwards, fighting to get away, convinced that the story he had heard was true. The red-face were taking him down to feed the dead, not below ground, but below water! But the red-face were used to such bouts of panic. They pinned his arms to his side, and forced his flailing, kicking legs down through the dark hole into the hot, foetid air of the hold.

Madu could not stand upright here, nor could he see. The red-face shoved him down onto the floor, knocking the breath out of him. One sat on his chest while another locked something heavy, iron around his feet. Then, as suddenly, they were gone.

Madu lay for a moment, half-stunned, gasping for breath in the thick air. The noise all around him was tremendous, horrible. Women wailed, men moaned, chains clanked, and the very timbers of the floating house creaked and moved. Madu’s chest rose and fell quickly, but he still could not get enough air. And it was so hot! Then he heard a goat bleating further along and suddenly he understood - this was a huge oven! The red-face liked their meat cooked, and had put them down here to roast!

He leapt into sudden, violent motion, to run free, to escape; but his legs were shackled to a chain, and he fell, clumsily - on top of someone else! The face below his swore, and pushed him fiercely off, so that he banged his head against a beam and lay there, moaning, his head in his hands.

His hands - at least his hands were free! He sat up, and fumbled desperately at the chains, feeling with his fingers all around the things that clamped his ankles, to find a way to get them off. But there was none. There was a scream, a bang and clatter from his right, where his eyes made out a little, greyish shaft of light. Three hulking figures blocked it out - two red-face and a thin, terrified black man. Madu became instantly cunning, crouched over his chain, to hide what he was doing. He fought down his panic, and peered to see how the red-face would open and close the shackles. There it was ! A small shaft of iron hanging from the man's waist, which he slipped into a hole and turned. Madu reached out, cunningly, carefully, to the red-face's waist. But just as he was about to snatch the key, the red-face stood up and went, leaving the black man lying chained in the dark. Next time!

But next time the red-face were different, and the key was out of reach, on the man's far side. The time after that he almost had it, but the man chained beside him leapt up, yelling, on some wild scheme of his own. Madu was flattened underfoot in the short, brutal fight, which left the chained man moaning hopelessly on the damp, slippery floor. After that, the spaces next to Madu were filled up and the red-face bent to chain men too far away.

And so he added his own screams and sobs to the general, deafening row until the oven was full, and the red-face put on the lid. It was not a proper lid, he could see that, for some light still came through. It was a lid of crossed bars, perhaps to keep them from getting out rather than keep the heat in. For a long time he stared at the lid, living only for the grey, gloomy light that filtered down between the bars, trying to ignore all that went on around him.

It would have been better to die like Temba. Or like Nwoye, killing his man with his spear. Anything would be better than this - to be cooked like meat in an oven. And yet ... it did not seem to be getting any hotter, and he could still breathe, just, if he kept his mouth open and his chest moving up and down very fast.

How long would it take to die?

The Crossing

‘A
NCHOR'S A-weigh, sir!’

‘Right. Leadsman, call the depth!’

Tom, perched precariously right out on the forepeak of the
Jesus
, began to swing the lead in a circle from his right hand, faster and faster on the end of its long, thin line. He could feel the ship moving under him, gathering way as her topsails were sheeted home. Then there was a splash as the great bower anchor itself was heaved out of the water behind him, and sailors leant out to make it fast to the starboard bow. Tom let go the lead at the top of its swing, and it curved forward in a long arc, taking the carefully-looped line out of his left hand as it went. He leant out, watching it sink past a shoal of fish in the clear, blue water; and then as the ship sailed up to where it had fallen, he noted the knot on the line which showed the depth, and began to haul in, hurriedly, hand over hand. The lead came up, glistening, and he checked the waxed bottom to see what had stuck there. Then he lifted his voice to its loudest, to yell back to the Master.

‘By the mark seven! White sand bottom!’

There was the flap and crack of canvas as the great sail just behind him – the forecourse - was sheeted home, and the ship surged forward faster. All around, the little fleet was setting sail, standing out from shore with the land breeze. Ahead of him he could see the
Minion
and the
Judith
, each with men swarming aloft like spiders to set their sails.

‘By the deep three! Gravel bottom!’

As they moved steadily away from the land, and the white bow
-
wave began to foam under the
Jesus'
forefoot, Tom began to relax and enjoy himself. Master Barrett thought he had done well ashore, he knew, and this was part of his reward. It was an easy task, swinging the lead, more pleasant than most. Yet he was both glad and sorry to be putting out to sea. Glad, because he had had his fill of the horror and confusion of fighting. He had sought revenge but found only the humiliation of a trading alliance with an African king, the nightmare of the burning town, the child he had almost killed. Compared to that, the sea was clean, simple, beautiful - the problem of wind and water, no more. Yet the sparkling of the sun on the water, the steady motion of the ship, reminded him suddenly, irresistably of Simon, sitting beside him in the forechains on the day they had come to Africa. Now Simon, the cousin he had promised to take care of, was far under water with the fishes.

He swung the lead again and there was a flurry of splashes ahead, as though he had thrown gravel. Tom laughed - it was an explosion of flying fish, escaping from bonito. The lead landed amidst them, and then went on and on down, to the very end of the line. He hauled in, turned and yelled, full-throated: 'No bottom!'

‘Aye! 'Vast heaving the lead! Leadsman come aft!’

Tom rolled up the line and clambered up to the forecastle. The green arms of the bay were already falling back, letting them go, and the first true pitch and roll of the Atlantic waves began. His cousin Francis waved amiably from the quarter-deck of the
Judith
, which he had taken over after her captain died.

The wind freshened as they came out to sea, and by mid-afternoon, when the captains of the other ships began to come on board for the Admiral's feast, the movement of the ship was considerable. Tom was in the great cabin to serve the wine. The captains arrived to loud, cheerful laughter, several, like Francis, half-drenched with spray. Robert Barrett slapped him on the back, chuckling heartily.

‘Never mind, Francis
-
a good swim'll give you an appetite! And the Admiral's got enough to fill your insides before you go back!’

There was a fine feast indeed, all on the Admiral's best silver plate, to celebrate their departure. Food fresh from the land - turkey-cocks, roast venison, bush-cow, monkey and hippopotamus meat, with beans, cabbage, yams, maize, coco-yams, limes, and pumpkins to follow. Tom had eaten earlier, but as he kept the gleaming, elaborately inlaid silver drinking cups well-plied with wine, he found himself drooling afresh as each new dish was brought in, and hoping some might be left over.

The gentlemen were in their richest clothes, and on the deck outside the Admiral’s musicians played sweet music. Several gentlemen, however, seemed to find the ship's movement and the stuffy air of the overcrowded cabin a bit much. George Fitzwilliam picked fastidiously at his food, his face a pale, greeny colour above the elaborate curls of his ruff. Francis, who was no friend of Fitzwilliam's, noticed it too, and impulsively heaped his neighbour's plate with hippopotamus meat.

‘Here, George, feast on a bit more of this delectable river-horse! There is no flesh fills a man with strength quicker!’

Fitzwilliam winced, pushing the plate away. ‘I thank you, Francis, but I have no desire for the strength of a brute monster. And if it is so violent, I think it might rise and upset my stomach as the animal upset your longboat in the river!’ He took a hurried sip of wine, amid the laughter.

‘Suit yourself, then,’ said Francis, eating with gusto. ‘But 'tis the right flesh to build a man up, I reckon, judging by some o' the slaves I've stored below!’

Fitzwilliam snorted, but was interrupted before he could answer by Nicholas Antony, a thin, intense Lutheran merchant.

‘Let us hope they are still as strong when we reach America, then, Francis, so the Spaniards will give us their true value.’

‘Amen to that!’ said Robert Barrett. ‘And this wind gives us hope of it. A swift crossing with a fair wind will give them less chance to waste away, as some do.’ He bit lustily into a chicken leg, and wiped the grease from his beard with his hand.

‘Yet however fast we sail we'll lose some,’ continued Antony, his long pale face morose among the red-faced heartiness around him. ‘It takes a month at least to reach New Spain, and some of the creatures die in less than a week. I've seen it happen. A curious animal, the African. Take him away from the familiar, and he loses all heart, seemingly.’

‘And so might you do, Master Nicholas, were you in like case,’ said Francis amiably. ‘’Tis no light matter, to be torn away from wife and home, and sold across the sea.’

‘But I should have my religion to comfort me,’ answered Nicholas solemnly. ‘These savages have none, that I can discover.’

‘Then maybe we should teach it to 'em. I've often thought it would be a fair exchange, to save their souls in return for selling their bodies. 'Twould confuse the Spaniards neatly, too.’

Tom looked at Francis in surprise, remembering how Simon had said something similar, and saw the sharp eyes twinkling over his cup as he drank. Was he serious? He knew Francis Drake was a religious man, a Lutheran like Nicholas Antony; yet his humour had pricked the bubble of the merchant's solemnity before. But it was not only he who was confused; the Admiral frowned too.

‘No, Francis, there'll be none of that. I aim to drive a fair trade with Spain, not tamper with the goods before we sell them.’

‘But we sell only the body, John, that's trade. 'Twould be a sin to sell a man's soul - especially to a Spaniard!’

‘Trade is based on trust, Francis, and not altering the terms of a bargain after it is made, as I tried to explain to the African king two days ago. If we want to trade with the Spaniard, we must be worthy of his trust.’

Francis set his cup down impulsively, his face flushed with sudden anger. ‘Trust, John? Do you talk of trusting the Spaniard after last time? After he took three hundred Africans from us at La Hacha without paying for a single one? Do you talk of trust with such Papist dogs as that?’

This was a bad memory from Hawkins’ last trip, when, exactly as Francis said, the Spanish colonists had managed to swindle the English out of a deal, keeping 300 slaves for which they paid nothing at all. John Hawkins remembered it well, but he controlled his temper better than his young kinsman. He listened, cutting a lime thoughtfully with his knife, and then smiled; that firm, canny smile which gave him command over other men's emotions.

‘I know their limits, Francis, I have known them longer than you. But never fear, I intend to get full value for the slaves we lost last year, and if they should pretend to forget about it, I shall send you in first to remind them.’

Francis responded with a grim smile. ‘Let's hope they
do
forget, then. I'll pull their noses for them!’

‘If you can reach 'em, Francis,’ put in Robert Barrett genially. ‘Your Spaniard carries his nose pretty high, you know.’

‘They'll need to, with this cargo on board,’ snorted Fitzwilliam mockingly. ‘There is already a vile stench from the hold, when one goes forward.’ He was talking, of course, about the smell from the slave deck, where the Africans sat in their own excrement.  Everyone had noticed it, not just the fine gentlemen. As the others laughed, Fitzwilliam ostentatiously wiped some crumbs from his beard with a scented silk handkerchief.

‘Indeed, George,’ said Hawkins. ‘So let us drink to a fair wind, to keep the smell on the foredeck, and speed us on our way.’

‘A fair wind!’ They raised their cups to his. But most, Tom knew, drank more deeply than the Admiral, whose wine was well watered. It was so he kept command of himself, and thus of them.

‘And now, gentlemen,’ he said, as they lowered their cups. ‘Let me have your ears, for your noses have sniffed out a matter important to us all.’

The Admiral's voice was serious, with that indefinable blend of the refinement of the courtier and the bluntness of the common man that made him such a pleasure to listen to.

‘We have had a more troublesome voyage so far than I could have wished for,’ he began. He looked around the table while his fingers played with the stem of his silver cup. ‘But I rejoice to have been surrounded by men who have not been daunted by such troubles, but have turned 'em to our profit when they could. And profit, sirs, is what we are after, and what we have a right to expect.’ He paused, looking round at their smiling flushed faces. ‘By my reckoning we have upwards of five hundred African slaves in our vessels, besides pepper and ivory and cloth - a goodly cargo. Not so many slaves as we have space for, perhaps, but even that we may turn to our advantage. For as Nicholas here says, there are always some who die on the voyage. I have noticed before, that the closer they are crammed together, the more seem to die.  As George's nose tells him, they breed foul odours already, even with the space we've given them. And we are only one day at sea.’