The Call of Zulina (21 page)

“Master Joseph,” Muco called out. “What is it?”

“Leave me be!” Joseph scowled. He didn’t slow his steps, and he took pains to avoid her face.

“Master … is Grace … ?” Mama Muco began anxiously.

“Don’t ye never say that name in me ’ouse again!” Joseph barked. He pushed past Mama Muco and hurried on.

Terror gripped Mama Muco's throat. She looked back toward the compound wall and, to her astonishment, saw that the gate, which was always kept tightly bolted, stood wide open. Whatever did it mean?

For many hours, Muco paced back and forth through the courtyard, waiting and watching and wondering. All the while she beseeched God on Grace's behalf. Joseph Winslow had long since retreated to his study. As for Lingongo, no one seemed to have any idea where she might be.

Long after the sun had set and blackness enveloped the night, Muco continued to stand watch in the courtyard. A sprinkling of pale stars came out and a tiny sliver of moon rose in the sky, yet still she lingered. When the moon was almost overhead, Muco finally heard the rustle of someone at the gate.

I must not be caught where I do not belong!
Muco worried.

In a panic, she hurried to secret herself in the closet off her kitchen pantry sleeping quarters. Quickly, she pushed aside the buckets of sweet potatoes and squash, and she squeezed in between the sacks of flour and the store of dried beans and millet. Then she pulled the door almost closed behind her. It was a perfect place to keep her eye on things without being seen.

“Joseph!” Lingongo's voice rang through the kitchen, and it blazed with fury. “You had better be here!”

Muco poked her head out in time to see her mistress storm into Joseph's study.

Slaves were not allowed to enter the private living quarters unannounced, especially not at night. But Mama Muco was more worried about Grace's well-being than about a beating from her master. So she followed Lingongo, taking care to stay hidden in the shadows.

“… with no food and no water,” Lingongo was stating with a gratified grin, “because I had the tunnel door bolted shut!”

“Tomorrow mornin’ I’ll send me trustees in wi’ muskets blazin’,” Joseph said. “Blow the ’ole lot o’ ’em to bloody ’ell, I will!”

“Have you ever stopped to consider that those jailers of yours are nothing but slaves themselves?” Lingongo challenged. “Did it ever enter your mind that they just might turn their muskets on you?”

“Naw, they won’t, neither. They's faithful to me, they is. More faithful than me own flesh an’ blood!”

“How can you be so certain?”

“I ain’t no dolt, Woman!” Joseph retorted. “That Spanish ’un—’Tonio. The one wi’ the
juju
powers. I’d trust ’im wi’ me own life, I would!”

“You cannot trust anyone, Joseph!” Lingongo cried in exasperation. “Those white sea captains you call friends may all be far away from here by tomorrow. If the trustees think they have a chance to go free, they will turn on you before you have time to fit a musket. Even the
slattees’
fighting men will turn against you if they see it to be for their good!”

“Wot o’ the
slattees
? They ain’t even involved in this, Woman!”

“Everyone is involved in this! After all your years in this land, you do not even hear the
ntumpane
, much less understand the language of the talking drums. You have no idea that even now they pound out your name and mine too. Now everyone in every village up and down the coast knows slaves at Zulina fortress drove us away from our own slave house!”

Joseph hoisted himself out of his chair and glared at his wife. “White men sticks together wi’ white!” he said. “And them Africans wot fight again’ us, they’ll pay a sore price fer their trechery! Ye jist mark me words on that.”

“You fight in your way, Husband,” Lingongo said. “Then I will fight in my way. Your way will injure, but my way will kill.”

“Now, see ’ere!” Joseph protested.

“No, you see here,” Lingongo shot back. “You do what you do. Then I will finish what you start.”

Mama Muco barely had time to jump back into the corner and press herself against the wall before Lingongo swept past her and out of the room and then on down the hall. For a long time Muco hung back in her hiding place, hardly daring to breathe. The door to the office still stood open, and she could see Joseph Winslow hunch-shouldered beside his desk. Finally, he sank back into the chair and dropped his head into his hands. This was her chance. Swift and silent, Muco eased out the door and slipped back into the safety of the pantry room.

At the foot of Muco's bed stood a small, unpainted wooden chest, its top fastened with worn leather hinges. It was where she kept her few possessions. Muco opened the lid and carefully lifted out the Book of God that a long-ago missionary had brought to her village when she was just a child. Never would she forget the day he opened that book and showed her people the marks that talk. How amazed she had been at the stories they told!

“Yes,” the villagers told the missionary. “We understand. You adore Jesus because he speaks to the Creator. He is your mediator with the spirit world.”

But then one day the missionary fell ill with jungle fever, and the next day he died.
“Obeah!”
the villagers had whispered to each other. Witchcraft. And so the book was snatched away and tossed outside the bamboo gates of the village.

Young Muco didn’t believe that
obeah
killed the missionary. And she didn’t want the God stories to be gone from her life. So while the village was sleeping, she left her mat and crept outside her family's hut, and then ever so silently, she went outside the bamboo gates. She retrieved the missionary's book, and she brought it back with her. Oh, so careful, so quiet, she had been as she pushed aside the banana leaves that covered the roof of her sleeping family's mud hut and tucked the book deep into the thatched roof. Later, when the slavers came to her village with their flaming firesticks, she had just enough time to pull the book down and hide it in her clothes before she was shackled and dragged away.

One day, when Grace was young and the two were alone, Mama Muco took out the God book, opened it up before the girl, and pointed inside.

“These marks can talk and tell wonderful stories,” she told Grace.

“Oh, Mama Muco, you are so funny!” little Grace had said. “Those aren’t talking marks. They are words written in English! I can read them. Do you want me to teach you to read them too?”

The reading lessons started that very day. Letter by letter, word by word, little Grace Winslow taught Mama Muco how to read the white man's marks.

Tenderly, Mama laid the book on her cot, and then she went back to rummaging through her chest. Tonight she needed something else. She pulled out one thing and then another—her other dress, her two aprons, her headcloths. A ragged green, yellow, and red checkered headcloth caught her eye. Yes, that would do nicely!

Carefully, Muco folded the colorful cloth in half and folded it in half again. She continued to fold it until the cloth formed a small triangle with two extra points, one hanging down on either side—one shorter and one longer. Then Muco tucked the folded headcloth into her clothes and silently stole out of the room. Watching to make certain she wasn’t seen, she crept through the inside kitchen and out the back door to the walkway to the outside kitchen and on to the courtyard.

“Please, God,” Muco prayed, “make a way for this slave through the stone wall, just like you made a way for the old-time slaves through the Red Sea.”

Despite the near black of the night, Muco's steps were quick and sure. Rapidly, she crossed the courtyard and walked through the kitchen garden without the slightest concern for what carefully tended plants her feet might crush. Then she struck out over the fields in the direction of the stone wall.

When Muco was first brought to this compound and set to work as a house slave, she had barely begun to bud into a young woman. Actually, she was relatively fortunate. Joseph Winslow directed her straight to his house
—
no imprisonment, no beating, no horrific sea voyage. She had always been able to gather news of the surviving members of her family from other slaves who passed through her master's compound.

And Grace … well, Grace had grown up in her care. Muco had learned to speak English from Grace's tutors.

Mama Muco loved Grace.

Muco knew by the rise in the ground that the wall must be near. When her outstretched hands touched stone, she turned and followed it until she reached the gate.

“Please, oh, please!” She breathed her prayer out loud. “I can’t open the lock and I can’t climb the wall. Please, Lord God, make a way through!”

Mama Muco threw her full weight against the gate, and to her amazement, it creaked open. In her anger, Lingongo must have forgotten to lock it behind her.

“O God, whose hand divided the Red Sea,” Muco breathed into the night air. “Thank you! Thank you!”

Mama passed through the gate and hurried down the road toward the baobab tree where the road divides and goes in two directions.

“Now, O God, open the best eyes to see and know,” Mama breathed. “Open the best eyes.”

S
ilently, Oyo moved over next to Grace and positioned herself in such a way that the stream of sunlight fell directly across her shoulders. Then she stretched her arms upward toward the beam of light.

“Outside the sun is hot,” Grace said softly.

“I like it hot,” Oyo replied.

Grace moved over a bit so that Oyo could fully enjoy the warmth of the slender ray.

“Do you think we will ever see the sun again, Grace?” Oyo asked. “I mean, really see it—up in the sky? Do you think we will ever see the moon and the stars, or hear the birds call in the trees, or see a fish pulled from the river? Do you think we will ever again walk free?”

Grace reached over and put her arms around Oyo's shoulders. “Oh, yes!” she said. “I do! I truly—”

That's when they heard the scratches.

“Ugh!” Oyo winced. “Rats!”

But Grace jumped up. “No! No, it isn’t rats. It's something behind that door!” she said, gesturing to the tunnel entrance behind them.

Antonio jumped up.
“No es posible,”
he said.
“iSomos todos aquí!
All of us are here.”

Tungo leaped into position and took aim with his loaded musket. But then the locked tunnel door swung open, and a tall white man with a bush of yellow hair climbed up and into the dungeon. He carried no gun or knife in his outstretched hands, and when he spoke, his voice was gentle and calm.

“I’ve come to offer you help,” Pieter DeGroot said.

Because Tungo didn’t understand the English words, he responded to the intrusion by waving his musket in as threatening a manner as possible.

“Grab him!” he shouted. “Chain him to the wall!”

Pieter raised his hands in a gesture of surrender and answered in English, “I can’t understand your talk. You can’t understand me, either, can you?”

Grace stepped forward. “I understand you,” she said. “I can tell him whatever you want him to know.”

Pieter stared at the beautiful bronze-skinned young woman before him. Her clothes, although filthy and tattered, were obviously European made of quality material. And her right hand—it was wrapped in a blood-soaked cloth. Pieter knew immediately who she was. Still, he found it almost impossible to connect this graceful young woman to the crude Englishman who had so rudely jolted him from his bed only a few hours earlier.

“Is ye gone like all ’em other buggers?” Joseph Winslow had demanded as he pounded on Pieter's cabin door. “Did ye lift yer anchor in the black o’ the night and sail wi’ the tides wi’ the rest o’ ’em? Bloody cowards, ever’ one! Ain’t too proud to eat me food an’ down me rum, or take me shelter ever’ night, but come a bit o’ trouble and they's up and gone!”

So this was the daughter whom Joseph Winslow had deserted and left to her fate.

Tungo glared at Pieter. “What can you do for us?” he demanded. He raised the musket and aimed it directly at Pieter's face.