Nobody's Slave (16 page)

‘Surely it cannot be many days now before we come to the red-face’s country,’ went on Okeke. ‘Then when we are on land it may be easier to escape.’

‘It may be too late,’ said Okafo. ‘Too late for you, anyway, fat man! Surely it is plain that when we arrive they will sell us for food, and your great flesh will be the first to attract their wives, if such they have. There is no escape from an oven!’

‘Or they may eat us here,’ said Ndalo despondently. ‘Perhaps they too are lost, in this wilderness of water.’

‘Nevertheless we must escape!’ Idigo wrenched at his shackles with his huge hands, baring his teeth in fury as though he would gnaw through them if he could. And so the talk began again, going round and round in the foul, gloomy, timeless twilight of the hold. Another night passed, and they were no nearer agreement. The red-face came to give them their food, and Madu saw Idigo trembling, on the brink of snatching the keys - but somehow the right moment never came. And then they were taken on deck, roped together in groups of a dozen or so - and Okafo made a leap at the man with the scar on his neck. But he was hampered by the rope, and before they could help him he was knocked down by a dozen red-face, and whips lashed his back bloody for punishment. There was no chance to rescue him: the red-face watched with drawn swords or fire-sticks in their hands, their cold eyes mocking, contemptuous.

‘We need to be united,’ insisted Ezendu again, in the hold.

‘We must have a plan, and rise together, if we are going to win.’

And so another night and day passed in talk, with Okafo groaning because of the sores on his back, and gradually agreement began to be reached. But still patience was hardest. That night Idigo and his silent neighbour leapt on the man with the keys, and for a moment the hold was in uproar. But the red-face were ready. They lashed the others back before they had even moved, and Idigo and his friend were kicked and clubbed senseless without any success at all. Still the desperate, bitter talk went on, long into the night, like a child scratching at a wound which will not heal.

Then, one day, when they had been on deck for their exercise and were about to be taken below, Madu was held back from the rest.

It was done by the orders of their leader, the sharp-faced one called the ‘Admiral’; but the one who did it was a boy. He was tall and strong, about the same height as Madu, and it was clear he was a boy because he only had a little soft down on his cheeks where the others had beards. His hair was reddish-brown - curly for the red-face but straggly for an African - and his eyes, when Madu looked at them, were a pale blue. He wore an old shirt and ragged trousers, and his voice cracked awkwardly when he spoke, as Madu remembered his own had done earlier that year.

There was a brief discussion during which the boy appeared to be making some objection, and looked distastefully at Madu, wrinkling his lip. But the Admiral over-ruled the objection, as Madu knew he would.

And then the boy untied Madu from the rope.

Madu’s mouth must have fallen open with shock, for there was a burst of laughter from the watching red-face. The boy frowned, said something sharp in his impossible, whining language, and beckoned Madu to follow him. Madu gaped at him, dumbfounded, and then turned to Idigo at his side.

‘What is it? Is it ... do they intend to eat me?’

But the others did not know, and could not help.  Idigo shrugged, and said: ‘It is useless to resist. He wants you to go with him, that is clear.’

It seemed strange to be walking free, without a rope or a chain, even surrounded by red-face. But Madu had little time to enjoy it. He had hardly taken three uneasy steps across the uncertain, rolling deck, before the boy, frowning more than ever at his slow, trance-like stupidity, grabbed him roughly by the arm and dragged him forward, so that he almost fell before they reached the ladder.

‘S
O, AT least he has some skill at that,’ chuckled John Hawkins, watching the African boy’s dark, sensitive fingers squeeze steady spurts of milk from the goat’s udder into the pail. If you can teach him to serve me at table as well, and dress himself as a Christian, you'll have done something, Tom lad.’

The nanny goat, perhaps alarmed by Hawkins’ voice, chose that moment to rebel. Taking advantage of Tom's loose grip, she twisted her head out of his hands and butted him sharply in the stomach, so that he sat down abruptly on the deck and slid gently to leeward. He clung onto the rope around her neck, but she scrabbled desperately to be free, wrenching her neck sideways and putting one foot in the pail before the African boy and two laughing sailors subdued her. As Tom got to his feet and took a tighter grip on her head, the African boy snapped at him sharply in his own, incomprehensible language before putting his hands gently to the udder again.

‘That was a rebuke, no doubt! They manage such things better in his country, Tom,’ drawled George Fitzwilliam, from where he lounged in amused idleness by the quarter-deck rail. ‘Perhaps you can learn from him!’

Tom seethed with impotent rage. If the Admiral had to have an African page, surely someone else could have been given the humiliation of training him. The Admiral must know how he had hated the Africans ever since Simon's death - yet here he was, condemned to be in everyday, endless contact with one! Two days ago, Fitzwilliam had remarked how alike the two boys were in height, and build too, if the skinny African were better fed, and the thought had made the Admiral give Tom the responsibility of training him. It was a responsibility which had so far brought Tom no praise - only blame or mocking laughter when things went wrong, and the irritation of being in continual contact with someone who was in his own way as helpless as Simon, and yet was a member of the race that had killed him.

Tom thought the boy himself made it worse. True, he was willing and quick enough at some things, like this farm work with the goats, and seeing to the chickens and the two remaining pigs, as he must have done at home. But when learning how to stand at table, pour wine, fetch and carry dishes, respond to his name when called, he had seemed sullen, uninterested. There was no gratitude for having been rescued from below.

And when it came to wearing the page-boy's outfit the Admiral had had made for him he was as stupid and stubborn as a mule. Tom had some sympathy for him, for at Fitzwilliam's suggestion the clothes had all the fearsome complications of court fashion - wide white ruff, broad-sleeved shirt, tight-waisted doublet with twenty-eight buttons to fasten; trunk-hose held up by braces, and below them tights and fashionable pointed shoes: hardly suitable clothing for anyone on a ship, let alone a boy who had never worn anything in his life before but a simple cotton shirt and trousers, and frequently less.

But Tom did not think of that. He only thought of the infernal nuisance of trying to teach the boy to wear it, and persuade him to keep it on when he had. The Admiral, and most of the other gentlemen, were vastly pleased with the outfit, and insisted on Madu, whom they called Samuel, wearing it at table for a whole week after it was made, and often during the day as well. That was when it got damaged - when Madu kicked the shoes off and threw the first pair overboard, or tore the buttons of the doublet while trying to force his way out of it as though it were some kind of trap. Each time he did that, or when he was slow in putting it on, Tom beat him, as he deserved; but he never seemed to learn from the beating; only hunched his shoulders, looked down, and grew slower and worse at everything he did, so that Tom beat him more.

His name seemed to be another problem. What was wrong with the name 'Samuel' Tom couldn't imagine, but clearly its owner could. At first he had taken to it readily enough, as indeed he had picked up other words and commands. After a few days he could speak and ask questions of a sort, by combining the words he knew with pointing and expressive gestures of his face and arms. For a moment Tom had even begun to suspect him of intelligence; and all around the ship, especially among the gentlemen, wits had begun to improvise ‘Samuel conversations’, rolling their eyes, pointing and grunting at things instead of speaking normally, which had at least made him a source of amusement, even to Tom.

But then Samuel himself had put a stop to it, by more or less ceasing to speak. He obeyed commands sullenly, with a slowness that gradually became more and more finely judged, until he knew exactly the speed at which he could do something without provoking an angry word or a blow. He seemed to withdraw into himself, except that sometimes, when he judged Tom was in a good mood, he tried to begin a conversation, always about his name.

‘I not Samuel,’ he would say. ‘I name Maddoo’ or sometimes he would say ‘Moody’ or ‘Maddy’. And since he was undoubtedly both moody in temperament, and strange in behaviour, this caught on among the sailors. Cries of ‘hey, Moody, cheer up, boy. Give us a dance!’ or ‘climb the mast, Maddy! Fetch us some nuts?’ echoed from the rigging, followed by gales of loud laughter, until the Admiral himself forbade it, and the boy sulkily returned to the name of Samuel.

The fight occurred almost without warning. The meal in the great cabin was over, and Tom was watching Samuel get out of his page-boy clothes, to see that he did not tear them.

It was a fine night. The ship was drifting slowly across an almost mirror-like sea, with all sails set to try to catch the feeble ghost of a breeze, which was all they had felt for the last few days. Nearly all the gentlemen were on deck, watching the last magnificent purples of the sunset in the west, and the first traces of the magical, moonlit phosphorescence in the ship's wake and bow-wave. For a rare moment the boys were quite alone in the great cabin, with only the oaken table and gentlemen's sea-chests for company.

Tom was impatient. He, too, longed to be on deck, and Samuel seemed to be delighting in taking an interminable age to escape from the prison of his fancy clothes. Tom cursed him softly, looking out of the stern windows where the last traces of daylight were vanishing.

‘Come on, you whoreson idle lubber,’ he said. ‘Get on with it.’

Samuel glanced at him briefly, a thing he seldom did these days, and stared him coldly in the face. Then he continued to undo the buttons, even more slowly than before.

‘I said hurry!’ snapped Tom. ‘Unless you want a thrashing, you stubborn black mule! I know your game, and I won't stand for it!’

He got off the table, where he had been idly swinging his legs, and strode forward, angrily pulling aside Samuel’s hands to undo the buttons himself. Samuel’s hands fell slowly to his sides. Afterwards, Tom remembered the tension he had felt trembling through the African's thin body, but he ignored it at the time.

Until Samuel hit him in the stomach.

Tom lurched backwards, groaning, and immediately the black boy’s hands were on his neck, tightening, the thumbs pressing inwards to throttle him. Tom thrust his own arms up through Samuel’s, forcing them aside to make his escape, then lunged forward to hit the African boy in the face. But Samuel ducked, turning as he did so, caught Tom's arm as the blow passed harmlessly overhead, and used Tom's momentum to throw the white boy bodily over his shoulder. Tom thudded against the heavy timbers of the cabin wall, his feet smashing two of the leaded panes of the side window; and the glass caught and cut his feet as he fell, in a winded, crumpled heap against the wall.

For a moment the African boy seemed uncertain what to do. He stared at Tom, quite still, his chest heaving slightly with the effort; then, as Tom found his breath and began to struggle to get up, Madu leapt on him, pinning him down with one knee on his chest, another on his upper arm, and a hand on his throat. Tom was stuck, his other arm trapped by his side against the wall, his left foot still caught on the jagged glass of the window.

The two boys stared into each other’s eyes, quite still. Had no-one heard? Tom moved his trapped hand, very carefully, secretly, seeking the short knife he always wore at his waist. Where ... he had it! If only his arm were not trapped against the wall, weakening his grip! But as his clumsy fingers began to pull it from the sheath, stronger fingers seized his and snatched the knife away. The grip on his throat tightened horribly, throttling him, and as he struggled helplessly he stared up at Madu who held the knife before his eyes, moving it here and there as though deciding where to stab. Tom writhed and heaved, but it was no use: he could feel his strength ebbing as the breath was squeezed from his throat. He went limp, and a purple darkness began to invade his brain. Feebly, he stared at the circling knife-point.

Suddenly the grip on his throat eased, and he could breathe again. He saw the knife held for a moment clearly before his eyes, and then thrown contemptuously away. Madu spat full in his face, and got up,

Tom lay still, gasping air down his aching throat like a drowning pig. He was too dazed to take much notice of the shouts of the men who had rushed into the cabin. When he did start to sit up, he was pushed back by Robert Barrett, while his leg with its bleeding ankle was freed from the broken pane, and Barrett's bear-like voice boomed for the surgeon. Tom sat up, groggily, and saw Samuel being held roughly by George Fitzwilliam. Three gentlemen were excitedly chattering to each other, one holding up the knife which he had found on the floor.

‘Saw it in the devil's hands myself! If young Tom hadn't knocked it away he'd be stuck as a pig by now, sure!’

‘He is too - look at his foot!’

‘That is what comes of trying to train up the heathen! 'Tis pure vanity, like I said before!’

‘I’d like Francis Drake to see this, with all his canting Bible talk! You murderin’ little savage - I'll box your ears!’

And George Fitzwilliam did too, with a sharp punch to each side of his head, before the Master's great bullroar stunned him into stillness.

‘Leave the lad alone, sir, will you! This is no street-corner brawl for all to join in as they will! Justice on this ship is for the Queen's Admiral, as you have reason to know!’

The cabin fell silent as the two men glared at each other; and Tom remembered a bitter fight earlier in the voyage, in which Fitzwilliam had been involved and nearly executed too for mutiny, until the greater part of the ship's officers, Barrett included, had interceded for mercy. Fitzwilliam paused, then nodded stiffly.