Nobody's Slave (15 page)

‘It moves! It moves! The house moves!’

A plume of spray rose into the air, and was blown away by the wind into a sudden rainbow caught by the sun. And then another, as the great canoe pitched forward, digging its nose into a wave and then rising, to shrug off the spray like a dog. For that was what it was, Madu suddenly realised, overcome with awe – this wasn’t a house at all, but a great canoe, bigger than any he had ever seen! It had somehow been paddled so far down the river that it was out of sight of land!

But how? Where were the paddlers that were moving such a great thing? He moved towards the side as far as the rope would let him, and rose on his toes to peer over the edge, but there were no paddles to be seen; only the rush of water past the sides of the boat. He turned to the man tied beside him.

‘How does it move?’

‘Look. Up there!’ The man stared upwards, and Madu, following his eyes, reeled back with shock, throwing up his arm to shield himself. Above his head was a great canvas cloth, bulging in the wind, straining to break loose from a mighty pole festooned with ropes. Above that cloth was a platform, like a stork's nest, on which a red-face was standing, and above him another bulging cloth, more ropes, on a pole that must be nearly as tall as a palmito tree. High up in the ropes, above even the second cloth, two young red-face were climbing, their strange ragged hair blown forwards by the wind.

Madu gazed upwards, overawed by the immense power of the wind in the great cloths. He understood immediately how the wind drove the huge canoe forwards, with no need of a paddle - but how did the tall poles stay upright, supporting such a mighty force? Why didn’t the wind blow them over? The red-face must have the skill of demons indeed, to build such a thing!

He envied the two boys up there aloft, calling to each other and laughing as they swayed from side to side against the background of blue sky and pale, wispy clouds. That surely was freedom! For a long moment he watched them, feeling his fingers and toes itch to climb as he and Temba had climbed the trees in the forest, to cling at last to their swaying tops and gaze out over the green distances of the forest canopy.

Then a tug of the rope around his waist brought him down, and he stumbled and fell over a bucket on the deck.

The leader of the red-face had come - a trim, sharp-faced man of middle height, with a pointed dark beard, and calm commanding eyes that surveyed each black man thoroughly, like a merchant examining horses or cattle. Was this the man who chose whom to eat? Madu stared at him closely. He wore a loose, open-chested shirt that rippled in the wind, short bulging blue and yellow trousers, of some fine material that must be padded; and dark blue leggings that disappeared into leather shoes. From his waist hung a long thin sword with a golden, basket-like hilt. He held himself easily, with the quiet assurance of command - his whole appearance was subtly but unmistakably different from that of the other, ragged, untidy red-face who lounged idly around the sides of the deck. Behind him were two or three others, equally richly dressed, who chatted among themselves, examining the Africans with interest.

All the other Africans on deck were men, much older than Madu. As the red-face leader moved along the line, prodding their arms and legs to feel their muscles, Madu heard muttered comments from the others.

‘What does he want, will he eat us?’

‘If he touches me like that, I swear I will kill him!’

‘Don't be foolish, man, he's their king, he can do anything.’

‘If you held him I could take his sword and kill him.’

‘No! It is not the time. One sword is no good.’

Madu marvelled that the red-face ignored them - but clearly the Mani language was quite strange to them. The man who had spoken of killing was a short, powerful young warrior of about twenty, with a broad flat nose and muscular wrestler's arms. He tensed himself, balancing on the balls of his feet to spring, as the red-face leader came nearer to him. Madu's mind raced, wondering what he should do. Could he leap for the sword of another red-face; perhaps the tall, thin one holding a scented white cloth to his nose? Perhaps, if he was quick, and the rope did not halt him ...

Then the moment was past. The red-face king had stared coolly into the warrior’s eyes, and the man had not sprung. The muttered words began again.

‘Why didn’t you attack? Spring, man, before it is too late!’

‘No! He is right, it is not the time.’

‘Watch them first, see what they will do.’

‘But they may kill us now!’

Yet no-one did anything. Madu thought only two of the men knew each other - each accent was that of a different village, some spoke Mani only with difficulty. And all were still weak with seasickness, scarcely staying on their feet on the rolling deck. Yet he felt stunned; he had been so sure they would attack.

Then the red-face leader was looking at him. Madu could smell him - a strange mixture of smells, half fair, half foul, the stench of the pale body overlaid with perfume. The man felt his arms, his chest; then suddenly tilted Madu's head up and looked in his eyes. Madu stared back, all the fight knocked out of him by surprise. Was the man choosing who to eat that night? The cold grey eyes gave no sign. Then the man let him go, snapped an order, and stood back, chatting idly to the other scented ones who had come with him.

The short, burly red-face with the scarred neck tugged on the rope and lashed the first man with his short whip of knotted cords, to show that they must go below. Having been out of it, even for such a short time, made the stench and squalor of the hold seem even worse. As they approached the black hole leading down to its depths, Madu struggled wildly, to hold back; but the only result was the hot stunning lash of the whip on his shoulders and head, so that he was half unconscious as the red-face thrust him down in the slime and shackled his feet to the floor.

L
IFE IN the hold was unbearable and endless. The only breaks in the horror were the visits of the red-face who came down to feed them with a mush of yams slopped into bowls, and a miserable cup of water. Sometimes it grew totally dark, but Madu was hardly aware of when. The foetid, heavy air, the smell, the liquid filth everywhere, the rats, the nagging sores made by the chains, the sickening lurch and roll of the ship, the groans, the oppressive sense of being packed alive in a box with a hundred or more other suffering, squirming bodies - all these dulled his mind, so that he could bear to think of nothing. He retreated into some deep, remote cave in his mind like an animal longing to die. Twice in the night he was hit by his neighbour and told to stop screaming; yet he had not known he
was
screaming; it was only a reaction of his body from which his mind had fled.

Some fled and never returned. Over the next few days five men near him died; four silently in the dark, like animals in a cave; while the fifth rocked ceaselessly back and forth, trying to drag his chains with his bare hands out of the oak beams, screaming and yelling like a witless hyena for hours at a stretch until finally, to save their own minds, the two men next to him rose, and choked his misery to its awful end.

But slowly, Madu crawled out of the cave in his mind, and back to life. He found he could bear to notice little things, like the changing colour of the grey light from the grating, the smell of the food the red-face brought, the scurry of the rats in the gloom, while shutting out the rest. And once, when the red-face with the scarred neck slipped and fell in a pool of urine and filth, he even laughed; a laugh that was immediately checked by the lash of the whip, but as soon as the red-face had gone, climbing the ladder with filth dripping off his trousers, the laugh burst out again, in a bubbling stream of clear, healthy merriment that stopped just a little this side of hysteria, but left him and a dozen others who had shared it weak with tears, but undeniably sane and still alive, back in their bodies again.

Daily they were taken on deck, where he could look at the men who surrounded him in the vile half-dark of the hold. There was the short, powerful man with the flat nose and wrestler's arms, who had spoken of fighting on the first day: he was a young farmer, Okafo, who had just married and planted his first crop of yams. Then there was Idigo, a squat, heavy man of Nwoye's age, with the big, powerful hands of a smith, which were ceaselessly flexing and playing with his shackles, knowing they could not break them and yet examining how they were made. Idigo was chained opposite him; to Madu's right was Okafo; and on his left, constantly moaning in a high voice that clucked like a chicken’s, was Okeke, a fat man with a big belly and thin legs who had sold pots to the people in Conga. Opposite him was a carpenter, Ndalo, and further along, next to a silent man with a head like a bull who said nothing, but glared around him bitterly, refusing to move or die, was Ezendu, a warrior from the two Kings' guard at Conga, a tall, sinewy man with a thin nose, the leopard tattoo on his chest, and the deep, authoritarian voice of one accustomed to lead.

Increasingly the hold was filled with talk, rather than the groans of men and the creak of timbers. And the talk brought its own comfort. Sometimes they spoke of the past - who they had been, what they had lost, how the Sumba and red-face had beaten them. All, at some time, spoke of their wives and children, their families - often weeping, while the others moaned in sympathy. Some spoke of the future, of what the red-face might do - but here they knew nothing, except that it must be bad. Mainly, for long stretches of the day and night, they talked obsessively of the red-face, of what they had seen and learnt of the ship, and what they could do to escape. The main conflict was whether they had a better chance of overpowering the red-face here, in the hold, or above, when they were taken out on deck.

‘We should try above,’ insisted Okafo, the young farmer. ‘There is room to fight there. I could take the scar-necked one and throw him to the fishes in a second, before he saw me.’ He pressed his powerful arms against the beam over their heads, testing their strength as he spoke.

‘But the ropes,’ squeaked Okeke, the potter. ‘You cannot break the ropes with your arms. While you are wrestling with him the others will leap on us and beat us - we will still be tied to you!’

‘I have said it before. We must look for a chance to steal a knife, and cut ourselves free. That will be the signal to fight.’

‘And if we lose? If you drop the knife?’

‘You know what I say. It is better to die in the fight than to live like this, caged like animals in our own filth.’

The strong voice of Ezendu, the Kings' guard, broke in. ‘No-one doubts your courage, Okafo. It is worthless to boast of it. But Okeke is right - the rope makes us certain to fail. Also they point the fire-tubes at us. We could all be killed in a moment by that.’

Okafo would not be persuaded. He clicked his teeth bitterly, as he often did. ‘I still say it is better to try.’

‘Then let us try when they come down to feed us!’ broke in Idigo, the smith. ‘The shackles are opened by the keys they carry. If we could only get those, we would all be free. One day they will be careless.’

‘You said they would be careless yesterday, and the day before,’ broke in Ndalo, the carpenter. ‘But they are never careless. There are always at least five of them, with knives and whips. And if one of them escaped to call for help, they would close the door in the roof, and we would be trapped as before.’

Madu looked towards the open hatch, with the grey half-light of the gun deck filtering down through the metal grating. It was their only way out. A rat climbed halfway up the ladder as he watched, sniffing this way and that with its bright eyes and inquisitive nose. A rat could get through the grating, but no man - he remembered the heavy clank and rattle it made as the red-face chained it in place when they left.

‘Then we must catch them all, before they escape,’ said Ezendu, his strong, persistent voice restoring hope. ‘It should be possible - there are almost a hundred of us, and no more than five of them, usually. And once we had them down, we could take their knives, and whips, and guns - I have seen how men use them ...’

‘And the chains!’ said Idigo fiercely. ‘The chains would come free, and you could brain a man easily with those! We could all be armed with them!’

He swung his arm in the air to show what he meant, and for the first time Madu felt his heart beating with fierce, exultant hope. How strong, how terrifying they could be, if they were all free and fighting together, whirling their chains around their heads as they rushed on the red-face ...

‘But we must make sure of the exit,’ said Okafo, won over too by this vision. ‘The first men to climb the ladder must keep the passage clear, whatever happens. Else we are trapped.’

‘Agreed,’ said Ezendu. ‘So we must plan carefully. Every man must know his part in the plan, and what to do, so that we all work together. There must be two parts. First, the attack upon the men with the keys; then the attack on the hatch ...’

‘And then what?’ broke in Okeke, indignant, nervous yet brave enough to challenge the Kings' warrior. ‘What do we do then?’

‘Why, attack the red-face, kill them. What else?’ Ezendu seemed surprised, amused even; but Okeke persisted.

‘And then? Have you not seen the other great canoes, full of red-face? And the sea? There is no land to be seen - how will we know where to go? How can we even control this canoe?’

‘We can ...’ Ezendu paused, and then fell silent, thinking.

The creak and groan of the great timbers filled the silence, stressing the power of the huge ship that was so many times bigger than any of their canoes.

‘We can follow the sun towards its birth-place,’ said Ezendu at last. ‘That I am sure is the way we have come, and the stars must be the same over sea as forest. But how to control the vessel?’

‘We can enslave some red-face,’ said Okafo impatiently. ‘They will obey us if they see the alternative is death.’

‘True,’ said Ezendu. ‘But not at first. And Okeke is right - the red-face in the other ships may attack swiftly, before we know how to control this one. If only we had someone above, who could watch the red-face, and learn how it is done.’