Nobody's Slave (20 page)

The next day the governor, Don Miguel de Castellanos, appeared on the
Jesus
, and offered to trade in peace. He could not do much else, since Hawkins had both his money and the slaves his townsmen wanted to buy with it. He was a short, fat man, with trickles of sweat running off his face from the effort of climbing the ship's side. Madu saw him start with annoyance as he saw Alberto sitting on a cannon in his new coat, calmly watching him; but then he was welcomed and courteously escorted by Hawkins into his cabin, and when he came out he seemed, as most men did after meeting Hawkins, in the best of moods.

Later that evening Madu and Tom waited on the Admiral, the governor, and the captains of the other ships at a banquet in the great cabin of the
Jesus.
Castellanos and Hawkins seemed the best of friends, and exchanged costly gifts. Hawkins gave the governor a rich velvet cloak with gold buttons - perhaps, Madu thought, to make up for the coat Alberto had stolen - and Castellanos, sweating profusely, red-faced and hearty with the food and wine, presented Hawkins with a woman's girdle inlaid with pearls. Madu wondered how a woman would wear it, and whether it was intended for Hawkins' wife, or the Queen Elizabeth he had heard the English speak of.

The next day the selling began. As usual, Madu felt guilty, as the naked, pitiful, bony bodies of his countrymen were led, chained, and blinking, into the sunlight. Many of their bodies were weak and racked by sores and disease after nearly two months in the slimy, stinking hold; and some, he could see, still believed they were being brought up to face their death.

‘Do not fear, grandfather. They won’t eat you. It is only slaves they want, to work their fields and mines for them. It will be better on shore than here,’ he said quickly to one trembling, skinnny old man.

The old man lifted his head to look at him, and Madu saw that the eyes in the black, seamed face were bright with fever. The man was trembling, not with fear, but sickness. The eyes held his, hypnotically, for a moment, while the man searched for words. They were like the eyes of a spirit, not quite of this world, seeing Madu intensely as some new torment in a terrible dream; but the words were measured, solemn, like those of an elder of his tribe.

‘I do not fear to die, my son. But I have suffered enough shame already, without having my ears fouled by the words of one who wears the clothes of these pale devils.’

Then he was gone, shoved roughly to the side by a sailor, and Madu stood, suddenly very cold and alone. He could not move or look away, and in the eyes of all the slaves who noticed him he saw either loathing, or scorn, or worse - a simple blank lack of recognition, which showed him that for some men there was no longer any difference at all between him and their red-face tormentors.

When they were gone he went quickly forward, over the side to the forechains outside the hull of the ship, where he could be alone, and hide. It was true, he thought: he did wear the red-face clothes, he did want to be like them. But not to this extent - not to be blamed for this cruelty, this exploitation of his own people!
I could not help it,
he wanted to shout
. I could do nothing, it was not my fault!

But there was no-one to shout to. Suddenly, desperately, he needed a friend, someone who understood a little of what it was like to be him, and who liked what he was. But there was no-one. He stared miserably at the blue, sparkling water in the harbour, and wished he could swim ashore, to escape and hide in the forest. But he could not even swim.

The river-mouth was full of boats, and from one of them, pulling steadily towards the
Jesus
from further upriver, came shouts and loud noisy laughter. As it came closer Madu saw Tom sitting in the prow, waving ecstatically. Behind him, with the others sailors in the middle of the boat, was something strange, immensely long, and pale and gleaming like the belly of a fish.

Tom waved to him as the boat came closer, and Madu saw that the fish had short, stumpy legs waving upwards from its body. Tom was sitting on its head while its limp tail lolled over the stern, impeding the helmsman from steering. As they came alongside there was more noise and shouting and lowering of ropes, and the monstrous creature was heaved on board.

Madu went to look, and was confronted by Tom, soaking wet and glowing with triumph.

‘How about that for a fish, then, Madu! Did you ever see the like, even in Africa? Twice the length of a man and three times as heavy, I'll wager, by the strain we had getting him on board!
Alligator
, he's called. D'you know how we caught him?’

‘You catched him alive? Not find him dead?’ Madu stared in awe at the monstrous size of the creature. There were crocodiles in the rivers in Africa, but few as big as this; and it was a foolhardy man who tried to spear one from a canoe.

‘’Course we did! Alive and swimming in the river he was, looking for food!’

‘How?’ The same question and answer was going on in half a dozen groups around the deck; and Madu felt glad that now, especially now, Tom thought it worthwhile to tell the story to him. He wondered where Alberto was - he, too, would like this.

Tom beamed. ‘Well, you know that little dog we caught in the town yesterday - the one the Spanish maid was howling for? Well, we took him and fastened that dirty great boathook to his belly, see, with a stout line to the shaft and the point of the hook sort of curving up over his tail, between his back legs like. Then we went up the river apiece, where we'd heard these monsters was to, and heaved the little dog in, see, right in the middle of the stream. Well, there's the dog, swimming away behind the boat on the end of the line, when all of a sudden there's a swirl behind him, and these eyes, just above the surface, and then these great jaws open
snap!
- like that - you can see how big they are, long as my leg, nearly, and all teeth - and the little dog's gone! He’s swallowed the dog and the hook too! Well, you never saw such a heavin’ and strainin’ and foamin’ of water in all your life. There was six or eight of us hanging on to that line for all we was worth, with old Job at the back there wrapping it round his middle, and the old boat going backwards through the water with her stern down like there's a hurricano blowing! So much water came in we had to bail as well as fish. And all that time we see these other eyes and nostrils swimming round ready to snap us up too if ever we fall in. He must have been fighting two hours before we got him close enough to shoot him!'

Tom stopped, basking in the amazement and admiration of those who had been listening to him.

‘What you do now? Give him to Spanish lady in return for her dog?’

Tom gaped at him. Madu had never made a joke before. Then he began to laugh. The laugh was taken up by all those who had heard, and the joke was passed on until nearly all the main deck was laughing. Madu laughed too, suddenly overcome with his success, and as he looked round at the red, smiling faces of the sailors he thought that perhaps they were not so evil, after all. They were human, like him; they were only cruel to those outside their tribe. And as they laughed at his joke, he thought perhaps he was becoming part of their tribe, now, as he had once hoped to become part of the Mani. After all, Tom was the nearest thing he had to a friend, now. Yet he longed to share the joke with Alberto too. Then he would have two friends on board.

‘Where is Alberto?’ he asked Tom, as the men began skinning the alligator.

‘Who?’

‘Alberto. You know - that black man, speaks Spanish. Has governor's coat on.’

‘Oh, I don't know. Haven't seen him. Wasn't with us in the boat anyway.’ Tom shrugged, eager to see what the monster was like, inside its armoured skin.

Madu went around the ship, asking one man after another.

‘Where is Alberto?’

‘Don't know, boy’ ... ‘Don't know’ ... ‘Haven't seen him.’

He always got the same response. Many seemed brusque, unwilling to talk. Madu knew they didn't like Alberto - he was too noisy and ebullient, did not speak English. But he must be somewhere on the ship. Surely he would not have gone ashore, with the Spaniards once again in control of the town?

For half an hour Madu searched the
Jesus
, from stem to stern, going to every deck and cabin where he was allowed. He could not be down in the hold, among the remaining thirty-odd slaves suffering in the gloom; he would not dare enter the Admiral's or Master's cabins in the stern. But he was nowhere else.

‘Hey, Samuel! A cup of wine for me and Master Fitzwilliam! Jump to it, lad - 'tis a parching day!’

Hawkins and Fitzwilliam were back from taking the slaves on shore, leaving Barrett, with his fluent Spanish, to handle the sales. As Madu brought the wine to the poop deck, Hawkins and Fitzwilliam lounged elegantly against the stern-rail, watching the
Judith's
longboat returning from the shore and a Spanish fishing-boat tack out to sea through the sparkling blue water, its bows occasionally throwing up a fountain of white spray.

‘Good lad! Thank 'ee. Here's to the good health and sense of the governor, eh, George? Let's hope he don't melt into a pool of his own fat before we return next year!’

‘Aye.’ Fitzwilliam raised his silver cup to the Admiral's, smiling sardonically. ‘And let us hope he remembers enough about the process of trade to keep Master Drake from having to blow holes in his house again!’

‘Or me steal his treasure,’ Hawkins laughed, then frowned as he saw Madu, standing patiently beside him. ‘What, still here, Samuel? I've told you before, boy - wait on the quarter-deck till you're wanted. There's no room up here for a crowd.’

‘Yes, sir.' Madu turned to go, then, at the head of the ladder, swung round. ‘Where's Alberto, sir?’

‘Next time he'll ... eh? What did you say?’

‘Where is Alberto? He not on board.’ Madu stood his ground stubbornly; nervous at addressing the Admiral but certain that he would know, if no-one else did. Hawkins frowned.

‘Alberto? Who is that?’

‘The black man, sir. The governor's slave, he take us to treasure.’

‘Oh. And his name was Alberto, was it?’ The frown had faded to a look quite casual, quite disinterested. Hawkins would have turned away without answering, had not Madu persisted.

‘Where is Alberto? Not on board, nowhere.’ Surely the Admiral must see how strange it was? The only safe place for Alberto was on the ship, now. Madu did not understand the elaborate lack of interest on Hawkins' face.

‘No, he wouldn't be. He was bought by a merchant, I think. I fear the man meant to sell him back to the governor.’

‘Bought?’ Madu struggled with the words - surely he had not understood right. ‘But he free man, sir. You make him free man!’

Hawkins became impatient. ‘I do not have the right, Samuel, to make a man free or unfree in the territory of the King of Spain. He was a slave - it was agreed between the governor and myself that I might sell him to another man. More than that I could not do.’

‘But he free man!
’ Madu could not believe it. He felt the decks of the ship growing insubstantial beneath his feet, unreal. Hawkins faced him, quite firm now, furious.

‘He was the governor's slave, Samuel, as you are mine. Everything he had was given him by the governor, and he betrayed that governor. There is no place for a man like that on any ship of mine, nor ever will be. Remember that, Samuel. A slave's duty is to his master, no-one else. Now go.’

For a long moment Madu hesitated, measuring the distance to Hawkins' throat; but it was too far. The calm strength of his authority was too great. Madu climbed down the ladder slowly, backwards, until Hawkins' feet were at the level of his eyes, and then gone.

‘See, Madu, we've got the whole skin off it now, in one piece,’ Tom called to him cheerily, when he returned to the maindeck. ‘Look, you and I could crawl inside - both at once, I reckon, if we wants to. 'Tis that big. Bosun's going to cure it and stuff it and take it home, to present to the Queen.’

Madu looked at him with detached, impartial curiosity, as though at some wonder he had never seen before. He noticed the red-brown, untidy hair ruffled by the breeze; the ruddy open face, smiling with pleasure; the pale blue eyes. Strange how oddly human the red-face could seem, at times; how he had almost come to feel affection for them. But they were all animals, underneath; he was no more one of them than he was a Mani. If he stayed here he would be like a lone boy condemned to live among a tribe of clever, vicious baboons.

He went quietly forward, as though he had need to relieve himself at the heads; but when he had reached the little, open platform over the bows, where a couple of sailors were squatting, he did not stop, but clambered lightly up onto the long, slanting bowsprit. He stood there for a second, taking a last, deep breath of the sea air, and jumped.

He had been in the river often at home but could not really swim; there was always too much danger from water-snakes and crocodiles for anyone to stay in the water long. And this immense blue depth, which bubbled and gurgled around his ears as he sank - twice, three times his own depth before he began to rise - was beyond anything he had ever experienced. But he did not expect to rise, and when he did, he put his head down again, hoping to sink; then seeing the bulk of the ship too near, splashed a few confused, panicky strokes away from it and then went down, his mouth and nose filling with the water that he felt his body struggling to reject, even though his mind had known this was what would happen.

Down - the bubbling in his ears, limitless blue and white before his eyes, water in his mouth, his nose - then up again, gasping for breath, arms threshing as the panic gripped him, his limbs frantic, splashing, useless. The water forcing its way up his nostrils, into his ears, his throat, inexorably - he must escape! He came up again, spluttering, tried to raise his head, and saw something fall from the ship which was further, much further away. He felt the river current like a great living monster, sucking him down below its surface, spitting him up and then sucking him down again, squeezing the last cherished bubbles of air out of his drowning lungs, bloating them with water... water ... water ...