The Call of Zulina (4 page)

Grace said nothing. She turned and walked up the stairs and then closed the door behind her. From the corner window she could gaze across the wide expanse of Winslow land. Grace knew every square foot of it—every corner, every field, and every tree. She knew the slave shacks, too, although Lingongo had strictly forbidden her to go there. Even when she was a little child, the groves surrounding those shacks had been her favorite place to hide. The musical jumble of tongues as the slaves called out to one another had so fascinated her that despite the threat of Lingongo's whip, she would hunker down among the trees and listen for hours on end. In time, the languages began to sort themselves out in her ear. Then to Grace's delight, she found she could understand words, only a few at first, but as she grew bold enough to venture among the slaves, more and more words shaped into meaning. Now she could understand most of the slave languages. She was even able to speak many of them.

But while Grace was intimately acquainted with just about everything on her parents’ land, she knew next to nothing beyond the stone wall that cut off the Winslow compound from the rest of the world. That wall—as thick as two men standing beside each other shoulder to shoulder and higher than the head of the tallest slave—had two gates, both of which were kept bolted and locked. Only Lingongo and Joseph had keys. The back gate, which opened out to the flat savanna and stretched endlessly eastward toward Africa's inland plains, was overgrown and rusty with disuse. Everyone used the front gate—the one out to the road that led uphill to the villages in one direction and downhill to the sea in the other. Even now a wagon rumbled up that road and stopped beside the storage shed.

“’Ere now, Yao!” Joseph called out from down below. “Load ’em all!”

Grace watched as Yao jumped down from the wagon and set to work emptying out the entire store of cassava and groundnuts from the storage shed. He loaded them into the wagon and then piled in freshly dug sweet potatoes, taking care to fill every empty space.

“Git started early in the mornin’,” Joseph said. “Give yersef time at the baobab tree. They's always traders there lookin’ to buy.”

It was so dark now that Grace could no longer see either of them.

“An’ don’t be rushin’ ’em buyers, neither,” Joseph ordered. “Ye won’t ’ave so much to carry to market.”

As the fully loaded wagon clattered toward the gate, Grace closed the window and sank down on her bed.
“The road divides … each of us chooses our own way.”
That's what Yao had said to her. He was going to choose a way for himself. She was sure of it. What about her? She could choose her way too!

The baobab tree! I can meet him there.

Yes, Yao would see her waiting at the baobab tree. He would take her to town with him, and she would be away from the compound forever—away from Lingongo and away from Joseph Winslow. And away from Jasper Hathaway. The whole world would be open to her. She could go to the harbor and find Charlotte Stevens's father. Those wonderful places she had always dreamed about—she could see them all!

Grace opened her door into a dark and quiet house. “Mama,” she called in an urgent whisper. “Mama Muco, I need you!”

F
ar up the road outside Joseph Winslow's stone wall, past where it winds into a narrow village footpath, dawn broke over a clutch of mud huts. It awakened fathers and mothers and children and grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins because they all slept together under ever-expanding roofs of banana leaves. Already, blowing dust sanded the savanna countryside. Just the day before, village men had filled the storage huts with harvested millet, which was why wild pigs snuffled and grunted around in such determined exasperation. For them, the millet harvest usually meant full stomachs. But this year the villagers outsmarted the wild pigs. They piled sharp-thorned acacia bushes in front of the entrances to the storage huts. It worked. The pigs’ snorted displeasure was proof of that.

By the time the sun was fully awake, the comfortable crackle of cooking fires arose from in front of every hut, and on each fire, a pot of millet bubbled. Already the men drifted together, their bows and arrows and slingshots and digging sticks in hand, restless to head to the bush. There were edible roots to dig up and tender wild plants to pull and frogs to catch and lizards to bring home, all to toss into the stew pots. Perhaps someone would even catch a larger animal, which would mean a feast for the entire village. By the time the sun was hot enough to bake the earth, each family's porridge would be thick and tasty. Everyone would fill a calabash and then stake out a place in the shade to enjoy the day's big meal. And for the families of the most fortunate hunters, a special treat—a handful of beetles to toss into the dying coals to toast up deliciously crisp and crunchy.

Just outside the village gates, a group of monkeys chattered and scolded, demanding a handout. But no one paid them the least mind.

Several women gathered up the sticks and branches their children had collected and tied them all into huge head loads to make them easier to carry to the market to sell as firewood. Other women wrapped up gourds, or beeswax and honey, or even eggs they had gathered. Anything they could sell, they could carry to town on their heads. Older women prepared to spend the day in the village weaving cloth as they minded the little ones.

Speedy girls settled their water pots on their heads and waited for the slower ones to catch up so they could all go together to fetch water. They ignored the boys who chased each other to the goat pens.

“Tread softly on the ground so as not to disturb the ancestors who lie under it,” the village elder admonished the rambunctious boys from his place under the great baobab tree around which the village had been built. Because the young respected the wisdom of the old, the boys immediately stopped yelling and walked reverently the rest of the way.

The elder sat alone under the baobab tree. Some days, he had no business at all. It was, after all, a peaceful village, and his job was to settle any differences that came up. When a difference was brought to him, he always began the same way
—
by chanting, “We are one. We are of one opinion. We love each other.”

Another day had begun. One more day in the comfortable familiarity of what had happened every other day that anyone in the village could remember.

As the men headed for the bush, their eyes to the ground where the frogs and lizards hid … as the women turned down the path toward the next village, and the next, and the next, and then finally to the marketplace … as the giggling girls adjusted empty water pots on their heads … as the boys tugged at the staked gate of the goat pen … as just another day began in the village, men from a distant tribe swarmed out from their hiding places and encircled the villagers. They entangled them in great nets, like flies trapped by human spiders.

The village men were strong and brave. They did their best to put arrows in their bows and stones in their slingshots and to take aim at their captors, but what good are such weapons against the white man's fearsome firesticks? An ear-blasting roar and a man fell to the ground. He lay still, looking as though a lion had pounced on him and tore parts of him away. Then another roar and the villager's brother fell beside him. Still the village men fought. But what could they do? The strangers charged them with clubs and beat them unconscious.

Before the women could comprehend what was happening, strange arms grabbed them and forced them to the ground. Then ropes wound around their necks. If they struggled, they choked until they couldn’t breathe, and so they stopped the struggle. Instinctively, the girls ran to their mothers, but when they did, the strangers snatched them up one by one. Perhaps the boys could have escaped into the bush if they hadn’t been so confused that they hesitated too long. When they finally did flee, they ran right into the strangers’ arms.

By the time the sun had moved overhead, when the villagers should have been taking their calabashes of porridge to their favorite shady places to enjoy a delicious meal, the men, women, and children stood in a long line—hands tightly bound and a rope tied around each neck—all lashed together into a line of misery. The strangers looked at the sobbing children and heard the mothers’ whispered words of comfort, and they shouted for the villagers to be quiet and start to walk. And not to dare stop. Or to be too slow. And to demonstrate that they meant business, they aimed a white man's firestick at the young boy who sobbed at the end of the line, and they made it roar. The boy fell down dead.

And so the line started to move—awkward and slow at first. But as the
slattee's
fighting men's lashes slashed across one back after another, the villagers’ feet managed to pick up a rhythm, and the line of people disappeared down the road. Hopelessness faded into a cloud of blowing sand.

All that remained in the village were bubbling pots of porridge, a handful of stunned old women who had started out the day weaving cloth but now were left to comfort a flock of sobbing babies, and one toothless elder who wept alone under the baobab tree as he begged the ancestors for help. But before he begged, he chanted, “We are one. We are of one opinion. We love each other.”

Because that was the way he always began.

B
efore dawn cast its first streaks of pink across the sky, Grace pulled her bird-wing blue cotton day dress from the bottom of the pile of clothes heaped in front of her empty wardrobe and slipped it over her head. Mama Muco's usually certain fingers fumbled with the buttons up the back, and Grace brushed out her skirt and straightened the bodice.

“Yes, I suppose this dress will do,” Grace said.

“The road is just on the other side of the wall,” Mama instructed. “Follow it down to the baobab tree.”

Grace tugged at the ends of the puffed-out sleeves. “I hate these silly things!” she complained. “Does anyone outside the wall wear English clothes?”

“Makes no matter,” Mama said. “English clothes is all you got.”

That was true. Joseph made sure of it. And this dress was by far the best of her choices. The pale yellow gossamer frock with lace appliqués? That silly thing immediately wilted in the African sun. And the silk brocade waistcoat decorated with rosettes? The first time she wore it, buttoned up over her green linen skirt and high-collared shirt with ruffled cuffs, the slaves had actually covered their faces and laughed at her! No, the day dress would have to do.

“Wagons and animals and people on foot, they all gather under the great spirit tree,” Mama said. “You certain about Yao?”

Grace grabbed up a handful of her skirt and examined the fabric. “These silvery filigreed ferns woven into the background. Do you think people will notice?”

“No, Child,” Mama answered with a sigh. “No one will know how much that cloth cost your father, except for every white man who ever walked into this house and was forced to listen to his boasting.”

The wind snatched up the screeches and buzzes and chirps and yips of the savanna, whipped them together with the echoes of moaning cries and then stirred them into a cacophony that soared into the air and gusted through the window of Grace's bedchamber. She cocked her head and listened. For as long as she could remember, those cries had prowled with the wind and haunted her dreams. As a child, she had trembled at the ghostly sounds.

“Wind,” her father always said in response to her cries. “Jist the wind. Only a fool is afeared o’ the wind.”

Lingongo had a different answer: “Warning from the ancestors. They are unhappy. Their howling means trouble is on the way.”

Grace knew better than to mention the cries to Mama. Their sound always upset her. The only answer she gave to Grace's questions was, “Do not ask, Child. You be better not to know.”

Grace stepped into dark blue embroidered kidskin slippers, then she followed Mama who was making her silent way down the stairs.

Long into the night Grace lay awake, thinking.
Slave to my mother. Slave to my father. And soon, slave to Mr. Hathaway. No, that I will not be!

Whatever was beyond the wall had to be better. And surely whoever was out there could be no worse than Mr. Hathaway.

Joseph Winslow was a sea captain, although he seldom went to sea anymore. Grace knew he was an important man— important, but not respected.
Admiral
Joseph Winslow: that's what he insisted people call him. And he truly did not seem to notice people's bemusement when they visited the
admiral
in his London house. Glass windows, the house had, and heavy carved furniture shipped over from London
—
fancy brocade upholstery and richly colored carpets.