Nobody's Slave (21 page)

‘S
O - THERE'S a breath - and another! Perhaps he'll live yet - bloody young fool!’

Francis Drake watched, grumpily, as Madu's chest began to move. At first it moved faintly, irregularly, as though he were asleep; then his eyes fluttered open and he began to breathe in great, wheezing, panic-stricken gasps, as though all the air in the world would soon be gone if he did not gulp it down now; then he rolled on his side and vomited, bring up gallons of sea-water that oozed away into the scuppers of the longboat.

Tom watched him, thinking absently how odd it was that an African’s lips could go blue, and feeling the scars and bruises round his own face and neck.

When he had dived into the water and swum to reach Madu, Madu had grabbed him everywhere - by the throat, arms, neck, hair - wherever the panic-stricken hands could seize each time Tom loosened them. Tom had had to hit him again and again, hard on the side of the head to save his own life; and even then Madu had fought back before at last he had weakened, and Tom had managed to get a lock round his throat from behind, and hold his lolling head out of the water while keeping clear of the spastically threshing arms.

By that time Tom had become too exhausted to swim, and had managed to do little more than lie on his back kicking feebly against the current which was carrying them steadily away from the
Jesus
, to the river's mouth and the open sea.

No boat had been lowered. Or at least, none that he could see. But then the only one that was available was the one they had been fishing in, hoisted on deck on the far side of the
Jesus
; it was too big and clumsy to be launched all at once. Tom had felt himself weakening, knowing he would have to let go and swim for his own life, if nothing happened soon.

Then the
Judith’
s longboat had come in sight.

‘You're lucky we saw you, lad,’ said Francis, frowning, as he watched Tom dab gently at his puffing lower lip. ‘Another five minutes and we'd have been behind the
Judith,
out of sight, and you'd have been swimming back to England.’

‘Or food for the alligators,’ said another sailor, nodding significantly towards the shore, where something large and long and low hurried swiftly across the beach and flopped out of sight beneath the water.

‘Did he fall in, or what?’ Francis asked curiously, as Madu sat up. He was still taking deep, shuddering breaths as though he could not believe there would ever be enough air again.

‘I don't know,’ Tom answered shortly. He stared at Madu. He did know, or at least he had a good idea. There had been a strange look in Madu's eyes as he had walked past Tom on deck without speaking; and it was not likely that a boy who had clung to the foretop with him in half a gale would fall overboard by accident, at anchor in a slight breeze. Madu could not have been trying to escape, since he could not swim. And he had nearly drowned Tom, who was trying to help him. Tom glared at the soaking black figure in the sternsheets, wondering if it had been worth it.

Madu lifted his head and their eyes met - Tom's that pale, unearthly blue in a ruddy face white with exhaustion, Madu's brown in a face darker than the timbers of the ship. They stared at each other, breathing deeply and shivering in the cool breeze, and each knew something had happened that they would remember, that could not be changed.

It was not gratitude Tom saw in Madu’s eyes, but a challenge.

‘You did this to me,'
the eyes said
. ‘You gave me my life again when I wanted to lose it. You have a responsibility now, you must show me a reason for that.’

And Tom's own look, though he did not know it, said just as strongly:
‘You tried to kill me this time. I offered you friendship and you tried to kill yourself and me too when I dived in to save you. You have no right to do that. You will not do that again.’

‘That’s enough, lads, ye can fight it out later!’ Francis slapped Tom on the back, to break the trance, and shoved him forward, to where a sailor was fending them off from the sides of the
Jesus
with his foot. ‘I'm sure Robert Barrett’s got plenty of work for ye both to do, if the fleet’s to sail this week!’

He threw his head back and cupped his hands round his mouth. ‘On deck there! Two fresh wet fish coming on board! Fully clothed, with legs!’

Sail they did, a few days later, to Santa Marta, where trade was good, and then Cartagena, where the Spanish governor refused to trade at all, and replied to the English ships’ bombardment with cannon of his own; so the fleet set sail for Cuba, hoping to sell the remaining fifty-odd slaves there, on the way home. Madu and Tom grew closer, warily, as the days passed. Each knew that he had owed his life, at one moment, to the other; both wondered what this would mean for them, in the future.

But the fleet never reached Cuba. North of the island, in the Florida channel, such a wind blew up from the north-east that only one ship, the
William and John
, could beat against it; the rest, with the great, clumsy, top-heavy
Jesus
in their midst, had to turn and run down-wind, swept bare-masted before the gale like broken trees in a flood.

Again the seams of the
Jesus
opened, wider this time than before. Tom and Madu worked with the rest until they dropped, stuffing wads of cloth into gaps by the sternpost that opened as wide as a man's arm. The slaves had to be brought up to the gundeck for very mercy, lest they drown, for living fish were swimming against their chests where they sat, chained in the dark, rolling hold. And when at last the storm abated, in a torrential, tropical downpour that smoothed the foaming sea, the Admiral judged that the damage was too great for them to hope to reach England as they were. They would have to seek a harbour for repairs, he said. So the battered fleet drifted south-west over the heavy, grey rollers towards the nearest refuge: the port that was the gateway to the town of Vera Cruz and the Spanish Viceroyalty of Mexico - San Juan de Ulloa.

M
ID-SEPTEMBER, 1568. The seven English ships limped slowly towards the shore of Mexico. The huge royal banners, their rampant lions and lilies faded now almost beyond recognition, fluttered boldly from the top-masts of the
Jesus
and the
Minion
. All the other flags were struck. The ragged, patched sails, telling so plainly the story of the storm they had recently survived, could hardly haul the leaking, water-logged timbers of the flagship through the waves. The rest of the fleet carried reduced sail to stay in line behind her, as the Admiral decreed.

Yet the
Jesus
was still afloat, and Hawkins, though anxious, was happy. Tom could tell that from the quiet, clipped jokes the Admiral made to Robert Barrett as they strolled up and down the poop. Now and then Hawkins took deep, appreciative breaths of the afternoon air. He glanced ahead, towards the shore, where houses were beginning to emerge, and then aside at the anxious Spanish pilot.

Madu stood nearby, fully dressed in his page's uniform. He felt sorry for the Spaniard, insofar as he could ever feel sorry for any red-face. The man had been kidnapped several days ago, from one of the three Spanish merchant ships that now sailed astern; and he was about to see his countrymen deceived.

Any moment it would come - there! The harbourmaster's pinnace darted out from behind the long, low island that sheltered the port of San Juan de Ulloa. She was beating up into the wind, close-hauled, with the glorious golden lilies of Spain streaming proudly at her masthead. Closer she came, her bows sometimes disappearing in a shower of spray as she pitched into a wave; and then, suddenly, she was alongside, under the lee of the
Jesus
, and the grinning Robert Barrett was down by the mainchains to welcome them aboard in his flawless Spanish.

Only when they came aft, to the poop, did they realise their mistake. The Admiral introduced himself as the representative of her Majesty Queen Elizabeth of England, and even Madu, who hated Hawkins now, could not restrain a broad grin as the beautifully dressed, scented, spray-drenched gentlemen jerked indignantly up from their deep, reverent bows. They stared around them in horror, clutching the hilts of their swords.

One pointed, jabbering in amazement, at the ragged royal standard of England fluttering at the masthead.

‘’Tis the flag of my sovereign, sir,’ went on Hawkins, in English. ‘I have often noted how Spaniards admire it, for indeed 'tis very like your own.’

It was indeed, especially when nearly a year of wind and storm had reduced it to an overall threadbare brown; and clearly the soldiers commanding the guns on the island at the entrance to the harbour thought so too, for when the first puff of white smoke appeared on the island, followed a minute later by the flat bang of the report, there was no splash of a cannonball. The guns were being fired unshotted, in salute to the flagship of the annual fleet from Spain, which was due to arrive any day now bringing the new governor of Mexico. That was why these finely dressed gentlemen had sailed out through the spray to welcome them.

The
Jesus of Lubeck
politely returned the salute, her guns also unshotted. The great ship cruised gently into the harbour, taking the position of maximum strength, overlooking the guns of the island. It was not John Hawkins' fault that the Spanish gunners, seeing the
Jesus’
cannon pointing down at them as the
Minion
followed her in, suddenly decided to abandon their guns in panic, and row like maniacs for the shore, their oars almost lifting their boats out of the water in their haste. After all, England was still officially an ally of Spain, and no-one had attacked them at all.

This new trick of John Hawkins did not fill Madu with admiration, as it might have done, before Alberto. Hawkins was a charming, honourable man, he saw, to men of his own tribe, and even - up to a point - wealthy Spaniards; but black men, slaves, were not human for him. They were property, they had no rights. The idea of himself as a black ship's pilot had never been more than a joke, something funny to think of because it was so utterly out of the question. Fitzwilliam and Hawkins had talked of it like that, with no more idea of hurting his feelings than of hurting those of an animal.

That was how he’d felt when he had jumped into the sea; he’d been like a boy who had seen his reflection in a pool, and realized he was not human. Only Tom, perhaps, saw him as human. And over the last month, as the two had worked together round the ship, it had been Tom - the bluff, insensitive, hearty red-face killer of Temba - who had, without knowing it, helped Madu to stay sane. For Tom had saved the life of a person, not an item of property.

The rest of the red-face he thought of as animals. Either he or they were inhuman, and it could not be him. The stories he had heard in Conga had been right - the red-face must have been damned by the gods, long ago. When he realised that, he became more settled in himself, untouchable. He no longer wanted to join their tribe or even to live, any more. But he would not let them kill him, either – they did not matter enough for that. They could not touch him.

He looked at the men around him now, as the
Jesus
lay at anchor behind the long low island that sheltered the lagoon of San Juan de Ulloa from the sea. The Master, Robert Barrett, was already ashore with a party of seamen, taking possession of the guns which the Spanish soldiers had abandoned. The
Minion
was anchoring alongside, while the
Swallow
followed her in, with the
Judith
and the
Angel
not far behind. Tom was aloft with the topmen, furling the sails tight to the yards; while on the maindeck the bosun and the carpenter were already setting up their tools, ready for the repairs they had to make. Hawkins was talking urgently to the exasperated Spanish officials, trying at one and the same time to assure them that he meant no harm, and to persuade them to send timber and sailcloth and food from the town, if they wished to be released.

‘Samuel!’ he said, clicking his fingers for Madu to come. ‘See that the great cabin is prepared to entertain our guests, and tell the cook that I shall feast them tonight, while I am waiting for the supplies from the shore. Gentlemen, gentlemen! I do assure you that I shall pay for everything, and that I have no designs whatever on the merchant ships anchored here. I promise you ...’

Probably he will keep that promise, too, thought Madu sourly, as he went to do his master's bidding. When the other party was strong, as the Sumba had been, or pale-skinned, as the Spanish, John Hawkins was the soul of honesty. But he wondered, as he stood around the table that night, whether the Spanish, smiling sweetly at the Admiral and then glancing covertly at each other with their dark-olive eyes, would be equally honest with Hawkins, if they had him in their power. Perhaps they had some secret which would give Madu his revenge at last. He watched, and wondered.

Next morning the secret was plain. Outside the harbour, their colourful sails gleaming in the morning sun, was the annual fleet from Spain. They floated nearer, eleven ships all told, beating into a wind that was now offshore, and their banners streamed sideways from their mastheads as the lions and lilies had streamed ahead from the
Jesus
the day before.

Robert Barrett went out to meet them, in a pinnace. Tom and Madu went too.

The ludicrous nature of the mission filled Tom with joy; one single English pinnace sailing out to challenge a great armada of Spain. But Robert Barrett did not see it like that, and choked Tom off when he laughed at how foolish the Spaniards would look, having to wait outside their own harbour while the English ships repaired at their leisure.

‘That's just the sort of fool thought you would have, lad,’ he muttered, his eye on the sail and the pennant at the masthead. ‘What chance do you think we'd have of trading with the Spaniards again, if we treated 'em in suchlike fashion?’