Nobody's Slave (17 page)

‘Aye. And no doubt he will dispense it.’

‘What is the matter here?’ The Admiral and the surgeon arrived almost together, the latter scurrying silently to Tom's side when he saw the blood, and then snapping at his assistant to fetch water, herbs and cloth. The Admiral glanced at the wound briefly as he took in the scene.

‘No death-wound there. Let us keep our tempers, sirs, and we shall muddy the waters less. Mr Fitzwilliam, why are you holding my page?’

‘Because he offered to kill young Tom, my lord. When I came in the savage was on top of him, and the knife out. We have it here. I said 'twas foolishness to …’

‘I heard what you said, George. But I scarce thought the lad had so much strength in him. Tom, the lad's as skinny as a rake beside you - what happened?’

Hawkins sat down in his carved oaken chair at the head of the great table, giving a sense of calm and order to events.

‘He attacked me, my lord, and ...’ Tom choked, finding the words hurt in his throat, and wiped some of Madu’s spittle from his eye. He glanced bitterly over at the black boy, who watched him, impassive, almost insulting in his contemptuous silence.

‘Attacked you, lad? Why?’

‘For no reason, my lord. Only that I would hurry him to remove his doublet.’

Tom wondered then how he would answer the question that would come next. Would it be better to have the black boy hanged outright by the Admiral, or spared until Tom could avenge himself?

‘He took your knife, and tried to kill you with it - is that so?’

Tom looked long at the black page-boy, in his fine doublet and crumpled ruff. Would it not be pleasant to see a noose tightening around that neck, see him gasping for breath as he himself had done?

‘He took my knife, my lord.’ He felt the slight easing of tension in the cabin, saw George Fitzwilliam smile. ‘But he didn't try to kill me with it. He ... he thought of it, I think, and then threw it away.’

Tom mumbled the last words quickly, hurt by the pain they caused to his pride as well as his throat. What a fool he looked, to be beaten in a fight with a slave-boy, and then have his life thrown back in his face!

John Hawkins gave a short, dry laugh. ‘Well. So it seems there is mercy even among savages. I cannot fairly hang him for that.’ He turned to Samuel, looking carefully into the closed, impassive face. ‘And what have you to say for yourself, sir? Eh? Nothing, I suppose. Boy, answer me! Why you fight him?’

A flicker of expression crossed Madu’s face - something between surprise and pride. Yes - clearly pride was there - Tom saw it in his eyes, and the unmistakable lift of his chin as he looked deliberately away from the Admiral, unconcernedly out of the window.

‘You whoreson young dog!’ Hawkins swore, very softly and vehemently, yet with a touch of admiration in his anger that hurt Tom even more. For a moment there was complete silence, while Madu continued to stare out of the window. Then Hawkins laughed; and there was that in the laugh too, which twisted Tom's stomach with shame.

‘Well, gentlemen, it seems I have chosen a king's son, at least, for a page! No doubt he will duel with
me
next, if I let him!’

Madu looked around, surprised at the laughter, losing a little of his dignity. Hawkins sighed.

‘But we cannot have such violent brawling here, nor such ingratitude neither. Send for the bosun to give him twenty lashes, will you, Master Barrett? And then tie him to the mainmast for a day without food or water. Perhaps that'll teach him to better appreciate his position.’

H
E COULD have been hung, or keel-hauled - dragged underneath the keel of the ship, from bows to stern, slowly, by ropes attached to his arms and legs - but Madu did not know that. He only knew the pain of the open sores on his back; and the steadily increasing ache in his legs as he stood all night, staring astern, feeling the pitch and the roll of the ship under his feet.

And yet, despite the pain, it was strangely a time of great peace. For the first time for many days he was alone - not surrounded by the press of bodies in the hold, nor harried by the whining language of the red-face boy to do something, learn something new. The few sailors on the maindeck ignored him. So he had only to stand and suffer; and as he suffered, think.

He thought of the look on Tom's face when he had realised he was beaten. A look of disbelief - and then shock rather than fear, as Madu's fingers tightened on his throat, and the knife came closer. Afterwards he had looked bitter, utterly foolish before the other red-face. That had made Madu's heart exult a little, even in the confusion of feelings which he had hidden from the red-face with scorn.

He had begun the fight to kill Tom, not humiliate him. This boy was Temba's killer - it was Madu's duty to avenge him. But he had not been able to do it. Afterwards, as the lash cut viciously into his back, he had not struggled at all, or wished for it to stop. As if Temba, not the bosun, were beating him, and every lash was laid on with the scorn that would drive him out of the Mani tribe.

He would never be a Mani warrior now, even if he could escape and return. Twice he had betrayed Temba - once when he should have run to save his life, and now when he should have avenged him. The first time he had had the excuse of his foot, and the lack of time for thought; but not this time. This time he had known what to do, and failed. The action was his alone, as the punishment must be. Those who betrayed their tribe were not part of it. Those who failed their friends had none.

As the great ship creaked and rolled its way over the midnight sea, and the few sailors moved unheedingly around him on the decks, Madu hung his head on his chest and wept. He wept long and silently, grieving for all that he had lost. He thought of his stepfather, Nwoye, who had died as a warrior should, struck down even as his own blow went home. He thought of his mother and little sister, Ekwefi, and wondered if they were still alive. He would not see them again. Yet his mother was a Sumba - surely they would have seen her tattoos? She was beautiful too - would the Sumba spare a beautiful woman and a little girl? But he had seen women and children struggling in the marshes as he was rowed to the ships.

Even if they were saved, they were lost to him now. He looked up, past the grey, ghostly sails, and saw the great wheel of stars move slowly overhead. He was quite alone now, unsheltered as a star in a universe of empty darkness. Even the men in the hold were strangers to him now. Without tribe or family or friends, the thought of action had no meaning any more. Whatever he did was a mere whim, hardly affecting even himself, and utterly subject to the power of others, and the vagaries of a chance he could never control.

Perhaps it was because he had half-known this already that he had failed to act as he should. With his fingers on Tom's throat, the knife in his hands, he had thought, not of revenge, but only of the fact that Temba was dead. Not only Temba, but Nwoye too - his whole village was lost or destroyed and killing Tom would do nothing to bring them back. Not even their spirits would see what he had done, for no spirit could cross this much water. He would only have added to the blood and slaughter that the red-face and Sumba had brought to his people, and suddenly there had seemed no point.

He was alone; he wanted no more part of murder and misery, even that which the red-face deserved.

And so for the moment he was still alive, when both he and Tom should have been dead. For how long, he did not know - perhaps they would leave him to die of thirst and starvation. But he was too weak to worry about that – at least it was better to die here than in the cramped, stinking hold. Better soon than late.

Tied to the mainmast, he had time to watch how the red-face climbed up and down and heaved on ropes to set the great billowing cloths they called 'sails'. They did this to the orders of the giant black-bearded man on the quarter-deck, the one they called the Master. Madu saw it done a great deal that night, for the wind changed often; the Master watched that, and felt the ship turn and the sails flap as they set in their new positions.

Tom came on deck with a lantern, throwing huge looming shadows of men onto the sails. He bent over the glow of the glass case on the quarter-decak, called the ‘binnacle’, and was lit in a way that triggered Madu's fevered memory, like a lightning flash in the dark. He saw again Ekwefi held by the hair, and the flicker of flame along the sword pointing to her throat.
That boy who so nearly killed her had been Tom!
That same red-brown hair, that same flash of teeth in the pale, beardless face! Madu strained at his bonds, thinking again how he should have killed Tom when he had had the chance; then he thought: after all he pushed Ekwefi away; he saw what he was doing and spared her. As I did him.

Dawn came up behind the poop, and the other ships of the fleet appeared, like ghosts on a grey, hazy sea that stretched to the horizon all around. Different sailors came on deck, and some laughed and spat in his direction, deliberately eating and drinking nearby to taunt him, or so it seemed. But Madu did not respond, and after a while they left him alone.

Then the first group of Africans were brought up from the hold. They clustered around him curiously, before the bosun whipped them away. Oddly, he felt no closer to them than he did to the sailors. One or two asked why he was there, and he told them, briefly; but they were strangers, not men of his village; and they knew nothing of the ship other than the hold.

Yet as he heard them washed and forced to dance, behind him, he told himself that this feeling was wrong. The men of the hold were his people now, if anyone was. He could not exist alone, belonging to no-one. If he lived, if he were set free, he should use all the knowledge he could gain of the ship to help the prisoners escape, and turn the ship around, as he had heard them discuss below.

If
he were set free ... As the sun rose higher, glaring down now directly onto his face, Madu's head began to throb and his tongue swell in his parched mouth. His consciousness came and went; for long periods he gazed at the sparkling water of the sea, imagining himself a fish, swimming forever in its blue depths. Even to drown would be bliss. Then, in a clearer moment, he saw the Master showing Tom something to do with the binnacle, the height of the sun, and the cross-staff he held to his eye. He saw that Tom seemed slow, the Master impatient - and a vision came to him of himself doing these things, excelling at them, putting Tom to shame. If only he were set free! He might become a man of power, to be obeyed and envied, as the other prisoners must have envied him his fine clothes, before he had been whipped. What a fool he had been, to resist his own good luck! If he were set free, he would learn everything about the ship, he decided. To help the prisoners if he could, but in any case, to help himself ...
if he were set free!

Ezendu, Idigo and Okafo were brought on deck, with the others who had been chained near him. They saw Madu, and cursed the red-face foully. And then Ezendu began the singing.

At first they sang an old lament for a great Mani city that had been lost, long ago, as Conga was now. The singers sang softly, looking over their shoulders fearfully, expecting to be whipped. But although the red-face watched them curiously, they did nothing, and the song gradually grew in strength and beauty, as each man put his soul into it, remembering how it had been sung round village fires he would never see again. Madu felt the song as a double lament, for the tribe which had been beaten, of which he could no longer be a part. Tears rose briefly to his eyes, and then, through them, he saw dimly how the red-face were nudging each other and smiling. When the song was over they clapped their hands and shouted, as though for something they had enjoyed.

Ezendu was as startled as the rest; but after a short pause he began another song. This one was not so mournful. Indeed, it was an old satire, about how Anansi, the spider-god, had tricked a blind girl into marrying an ugly old man, by describing him as young and handsome. It was a light-hearted, comic song, and at first the others looked at him in sullen surprise, and refused to join in the chorus - this was no place for such nonsense. But then the words began to change: in each of the verses where the girl complained about some part of her husband that she suspected was ugly, Ezendu was putting in words describing the red-face! The others saw the joke, and began to respond, singing the chorus and waiting to see what Ezendu would add next; and in the final verse, where the blind girl's sight is suddenly restored, Ezendu sang:

You cannot ask a girl to marry

Such a monster, such a horror!

With a face so red and hairy

And a stink so sweaty, beery!

All such devils should be drowned at birth!

The chorus rang out almost heartily; the red-face laughed and applauded as before, and Ezendu and the others looked around them, their faces still carefully wooden as they had been throughout the song, but a twinkle of bitter amusement in their eyes. Madu saw the Admiral smiling down from the poop, and the words of the song echoed with a confused, ridiculous hope in his heart. If they could fool the red-face like this, maybe they could fool them about other things, too!

Madu was cut down that evening, parched with thirst and half unconscious with standing for so long. The surgeon rubbed salt into the sores of his back, so that they stung like fire and he howled and struggled to get away. The red-face sailors laughed; then when the pain began to fade, an old white-haired, white-bearded man gave him water, making him sip it slowly when he wanted to gulp the lot, and then put a blanket over him and left him to sleep where he lay. The next day, his duties began as usual, with Tom his overseer.

T
OM FOUND that the punishment had done his charge good. He was quiet, a little weak and clumsy at first, but much more docile and willing to learn. There seemed little fight left in him now. He made no attempt to frighten Tom, to remind him of what might have happened. He decided that the African boy really had changed, and learnt his lesson.