The Call of Zulina (12 page)

Grace was alone in her dark cell when the winds forced the drumbeats through the small opening high up in the stone wall. So constant were the muffled cries and moans that they had begun to sink into the background and she hardly noticed them anymore. But she stirred at the sound of the surf's rhythmic beat on the rocks below. Or was that the surf? It took her a few minutes to realize it was drums. Grace didn’t know their language, but she figured it must have something to do with the ancestors’ anger. They had every right to threaten punishment. She trembled with fear and curled herself more tightly into the corner.

Africans also heard the talking drums. Up the roads and over the paths and down the trails, across the grasslands and through the villages, into the slave shacks at Joseph Winslow's compound and through every crack in the stone walls at Zulina, the wind blew the drums’ beats. Men and women stood still in the fields or gazed up from their pots of bubbling millet. They halted their business talk or ceased tracking prey. Everywhere, men and women stopped and listened to the message of the
ntumpane
:

War is coming …

White men block the coast …

War is coming …

No guns for Africans …

War is coming …

Drums or no drums, Mama Muco had work to do. She boiled water, tossed in the blossoms, and let them steep. She strained the red bissap blossoms into a china cup. (Some things English suited Lingongo very well, including porcelain cups!) Mama then carried the comfort tea up the stairs to Lingongo's bedchamber.

“Your tea, madam,” Muco called out as she rapped gently on the outer door.

Lingongo didn’t answer.

The house slave rapped again, louder this time. “Madam, your tea!”

Still no answer.

For a full five minutes Muco knocked on the door and called out. When Lingongo neither responded nor cracked the door open to reach out for the tea, Muco clattered the cup down on the floor and turned to leave. She started down the stairs, but then her anger exploded, and she stomped back up.

“Your daughter is gone from you!” she stormed at the closed door. “Does nothing touch you?”

She brought her foot down on the fine English porcelain cup, again and again and again, stomping it to powder to the beat of the drums. Then Mama Muco went back down the stairs.

Lingongo would not have drunk the comfort tea anyway. In the time it had taken Muco to boil water and brew the tea on the outside kitchen stove, Lingongo had descended the stairs and left by the front door. She had marched down the cobblestone road to the gate and then down the path, her eyes fixed on Zulina. In the stifling heat of midday, drum voices whipped over Lingongo's head. She had not even arrived at the baobab tree when she saw a wagon coming toward her with Joseph perched up front next to the slave driver.

“We must talk now,” Lingongo called to Joseph. Gesturing toward the slave, she added, “Without him.”

Which is how it came about that Joseph took the wagon and went alone to the powerful African Gold Coast chiefdom at whose head Lingongo's father sat. Lingongo longed to go along. Actually, she longed to go in her husband's place, which she considered the only possible way to ensure that the mission would be done right. But she could not. Only Joseph, as legal owner of Zulina, was in a position to negotiate properly with the king.

Joseph drove the wagon straight into the forbidden palace enclave, past the drummers who knelt high on a ridge, positioned in such a way that the wind would be certain to catch the drumbeats and send them whirling in four directions. Warriors preparing for war,
sofos
entreating the ancestors for wisdom and guidance,
togbuis
speaking aloud the words of the ancestors, and just plain people on their way to complete everyday business—all stopped to stare at the white man, the brazen outsider, who dared drive a wagon into their sacred territory.

Without the slightest hesitation, Joseph Winslow marched up to the royal hut where the king sat on a carved wooden throne encased in gold and right to the place of the
sika’gua
without invitation. Lingongo's eldest brother tried to stop Joseph from entering, but Joseph pushed past him. “I gots business wi’ the king!” he stated. “Outta me way, lad!”

The king's
okyeame
rushed forward to approach the king on Joseph's behalf. “Only talk through the speaker,” Lingongo had instructed her husband. “Do not approach my father directly. The speaker knows the way to put words together so they cause no offense.”

But Joseph would have none of it. If he had something to say to the king, he would just out and say it. And if the king had something to say to him, then his majesty could say his piece too.

So Joseph stood before the king with no mediator and announced, “I will be gatherin’ up all the muskets and gunpowder. No one will have firepower ’ceptin’ fer me.”

“You must have much gold to pay for all this,” the king answered.

“Gold,” Joseph said. “Well, see, that's an inter'stin’ thing, King. There isn’t too much gold available to me jist now. But soon enough I’ll have plenty, I will. The important thing fer ye to know is that ye’ll git no firepower ’ceptin’ through me.”

“Certainly you will make the price agreeable—”

“I will make the price wot I wants it to be. An’ ye has no choice but to pay the price I says ye’ll pay.”

“You and I have a long-standing agreement, sealed with the marriage of my daughter.”

“Yes, yes,” Joseph said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “We still be partners. That's why I be ’ere makin’ the offer to ye and not to yer enemies. But business is business, and it's time we made us a new deal.”

“Deals made and sealed are not thrown aside,” the king said.

Joseph laughed. “Ye isn’t left wi’ much choice now, is ye?”

Because Joseph Winslow had pushed the
okyeame
aside, no one stood between him and the king to add sweetness and eloquence to his words. No one was there to carefully wipe out the insults that crept in to his talk and to replace them with words gentle and wise. No one made certain that what Joseph meant to say was what the king actually heard.

Which was most unfortunate. Because after Joseph finished speaking, after he said, “So, does we ’ave us a deal ’ere, mate?” and after the king nodded his agreement, Joseph bid farewell to his father-in-law and headed home in triumphant ignorance. He never noticed the anger that flashed across the royal face.

T
he shaft of sunlight that glinted down from the opening at the top of the wall was the only way for Grace to judge time. She had long since given up banging and kicking on the door and slumped into a corner where she lay in hopeless despair. Hours had passed … maybe an entire day … when the grate of the iron bolt jolted her to attention. The door scraped open, and the same African man stepped back through the doorway. This time, however, he was not alone. A second African followed close behind. Short and wiry, this one didn’t seem much older than Grace. Ropes of muscle stood out on his arms and legs, and his wildly twisted hair gave him a fierce look.

“This is the one, Cabeto?” the second man asked in a harshly clipped voice. “This is the slave trader's girl?”

“Yes,” Cabeto answered in his low rumble.

The wiry African stepped up to Grace. He grabbed a handful of her thick hair and roughly jerked her head back. “Copper,” he growled. “Who is her mother?”

“The lioness,” Cabeto answered.

Grace opened her mouth to protest, but thought better of it.

The wiry man barked a mirthless laugh, harsh and clipped like his speech. Grace's heart sank. This man was not like the first one, not like the one he called Cabeto. Cabeto burned with passion, yes. And he was strong and determined. Without a doubt, Cabeto was a man to fear. But if he were cruel or ruthless, something much worse would have happened to her by now.

This new one, though, he was different. Something indefinable hung over him. Something in his manner and his voice—something about his laugh—caused Grace to quake to the depths of her soul. She bitterly regretted having ever left the London house and climbing over the compound wall.

“Her father will pay for her,” the wiry African stated.

“We will offer her for trade, Tungo,” Cabeto said. “In exchange for our people's freedom
—
yours and mine.”

Tungo shot a look at Cabeto. Even in the near darkness Grace could see the greedy glint in his eyes. “And for muskets and gunpowder. And for gold.”

“I know nothing of muskets and gunpowder,” Cabeto insisted, “and I care nothing for gold. If the white man will allow my kinsmen to return to our village and live in peace, I will not seek revenge.”

Tungo glared at Cabeto. “That is not all I want. The white man and his
askari
—his soldiers—must pay for what they have done to us. We will rip this slave house out of their hands. Over their dead bodies, we will dance and beat the drums of
durbar
.”

“Such wild talk!” Cabeto scolded. “Your way will kill all of us.”

Tungo put his face close to Cabeto's. “Now is the time!” he hissed. “The white man's daughter walked into our lair, and he will pay richly to get her back. He will give us anything we demand. If he does not …” Here he gave the tangle of Grace's hair a hard yank. “If he does not, we will slit her throat!”

A scream burst from Grace's lips. With the sudden strength that comes from terror, she wrenched herself away from Tungo's grasp.

His fists clenched, Cabeto reared up to his full height. Towering over Tungo by half a head, he commanded, “No! We will not kill her!”

Immediately, Tungo's demeanor changed. “No, no,” he insisted in a conciliatory tone. “You misunderstand me, my brother. I did not mean we would
really
kill her. We will only
say
we will kill her. When her father hears our words, he will give us whatever we ask. It is the way the white man does business.”

For a moment Cabeto held his aggressive stance. Then with a shrug, he turned away. “Ask for guns and gold if it pleases you,” he said. “I want only to see my kinsmen free.”

Tungo didn’t answer. He brushed Grace with a hard glance and then turned and ducked out through the still-open doorway.

Grace expected Cabeto to follow, but he did not. Awkward and silent, he stayed where he was.

“I should not have brought you here,” he murmured. “This is a fight of your father and mother, not of you.”

“Would … would he really kill me?” Grace asked.

“Certainly, he would,” Cabeto answered. “Why not? After what your father does here in his prison, almost any African would kill you.”

Grace stared at Cabeto in disbelief. “
His
prison? What do you mean by that? My father is the captain of a ship. He's an English admiral. Not a—” Sudden and unexpected tears flooded over Grace, and she wept. “I saw a slave mother and her baby dragged to death because she couldn’t keep up with the other slaves she was tied to, so she—” Now Grace was sobbing. “My father is a proud man, and sometimes a foolish man … but he is not a … not a murderer. He does not kill mothers and their babies … not even if they are only slaves—”

“Your father is the captain of a ship. That much is true,” Cabeto said with icy bitterness. “He is part of the
maafa—
the horrible disaster, the ships of death. He steals people from Africa and forces them across the water so he can sell them to the white cannibals. He calls them slaves, but they are my people.”

Grace swiped a sleeve across her tear-streaked face. “What are you talking about?” she demanded. “My own mother is African!”

“Yes, the lioness. A traitor to her people. We all know of your mother. She is your father's partner in the work of the most wild and cruel of the bush spirits.” Cabeto spat out each word as though it was poison in his mouth. “Or should I say, she is the boss of your father!”

Grace opened her mouth to protest, but the low moans echoed through the fortress walls and burrowed into her. They sent a shiver through her soul and stole every argument out of her mind. Her father's boss … yes, that was an apt description of Lingongo. But a lioness? And a traitor to her people?