The Call of Zulina (5 page)

When the hidden snickers and rib-poking jokes grew too obvious, Joseph shrugged his shoulders and said, “They's jealous o’ me good fortune, is wot!”

On the rare occasions when Grace accompanied her parents to a party or rode in the wagon with her father to the market, he seemed oblivious to the mocking salutes and whispered ridicule his company produced.

As for Lingongo, although she constantly referred to herself as a princess, never once had Grace seen any of her mother's people. Oh, she had heard many tales of gold and riches. Certainly, Lingongo proudly draped herself in luxurious royal clothes. Grace heard stories of Lingongo's father, the great king, who with a single word had the power of life and death over entire villages. But other than slaves, Lingongo was the only African whom Grace had seen at the London house.

Across the inside kitchen, through the entryway, and on to the outside kitchen, Grace followed Mama Muco's sure steps. At every turn, she braced herself for the slash of Lingongo's voice, but the call of birds awakening in the trees and her and Mama's soft footfalls were the only sounds.

When Mama stepped onto the courtyard, Grace glanced down in spite of herself. Not one spot remained on the newly scrubbed stones. Mama hurried across the courtyard until she reached the gravel road. But then she stopped and grasped Grace's hands in her own. Those large, calloused hands that had wiped away Grace's baby tears and rocked her fever-wracked body. Those scarred hands that had more than once stopped Lingongo's whip from ripping into Grace.

“Please, won’t you come with me?” Grace begged.

“I am a slave, Grace,” Mama said. “You are not. Find Yao. He will take you away.”

“Mama—”

“Your Bondo … I did not do it. I would not. She brought him to me already prepared for the oven,” Mama said.

Blinded by tears, Grace kissed Mama on the cheek and took off running across the mint patch in the far corner of Mama's garden and toward the scorched field. The African savanna was dry and barren, yet cadres of slaves managed to coax fields of sweet potatoes and groundnuts and cassavas from the reluctant soil. Groves of trees peppered the compound grounds as well— papayas and mangoes, jackfruit and cashews.

When Grace reached the blackened earth where she last saw Yao, she paused, shaded her eyes, and squinted out to the east. The rising sun silhouetted clouds of mosquitoes swarming black against a silvery yellow sky. Suddenly, a great bird plunged from overhead and rent the morning with its shrill screech. So close did it pass that Grace could feel the rush of wings on her face. But before she could react, the bird swooped back into the sky, its freshly caught breakfast clutched in its claws.

So fast. So unexpected.

Watch out for mosquitoes, but fail to see the attack claws.

“Bubuanhunu,”
Grace breathed. “Dangers where you least expect them.”

Grace lifted her skirt and plunged forward. Past the cassava fields, past the cashew trees, past the goat pens she ran. Her heart pounded and her breath came in ragged gasps, but desperation urged her on. At long last, Grace caught a glimpse of the wall stark against the morning sky. Good. That meant she couldn’t be far from the grove of ghariti trees.

From the time she was very small, Grace had clambered up the rough trunk of the tallest of those trees, the one that grew at the far corner of the wall near the front gate. From that perch on a sturdy branch she could gaze at the outside world. Hidden in the canopy of leaves, she had spent many hours plotting a future for herself on the other side of the wall. That tree was the place of dreams. It was the place of hope.

More than once over the years Joseph had threatened to cut down those trees, but Lingongo forbade it. “It would anger the ancestors,” she insisted. “Then we would see no end to our troubles.” And so the grove stayed.

By the time Grace reached the shaded canopy of ghariti leaves, she was thoroughly exhausted. But already the sun was rising in the sky. Soon Mama Muco would climb the stairs to Grace's bedchamber with a basin of hot washing water. She would make an excuse for Grace's morning delay—say she was pouting, perhaps, and refused to leave her room. But soon Lingongo would know. It could be that she already knew. Grace brushed her weariness aside and searched out the tree pressed hardest against the wall.

The tree had grown since Grace's childhood climbing days. Now one gnarled branch twisted all the way over the top of the wall. Despite her cumbersome dress, Grace sought out footholds in the deep bark fissures. But she was no longer the tough-skinned child who used to shinny so easily up the trees. The rough tree trunk gouged her tender hands and ripped at her skirt.

A proper English lass!
Grace laughed to herself. What would Charlotte Stevens think if she could see her hanging on this tree like an overgrown tomboy? And in a fine English morning frock, too, which Joseph Winslow would quickly inform Charlotte was extremely expensive because of the silvery filigreed ferns woven into the fabric?

Proper English lass, indeed!

An English lass with not the first idea of how to be English. An African who didn’t know Africa. A lady whom no one would ever see as a lady.

But not a slave. No, not a slave!

Slowly, cautiously, Grace eased herself onto the branch that hung over the wall. She inched her way out—a little more, then a little more—until the branch sagged under her weight. Stretching her body out as far as she could, she gripped the branch with both hands and continued to edge forward.

With a splintering crack, the limb suddenly broke loose. Grace had no choice but to leap. She landed on top of the wall on her hands and knees. Cautiously, she peeked over to the other side and saw to her alarm that the wall was high … much higher than she had expected. And there was no tree on the other side to help her down, either.

From her perch on top, Grace saw that the path didn’t come up to the wall the way she had imagined it would. In fact, quite a wide expanse of thick brush lay between the two. Not a bad thing actually, since a number of people were already on the pathway heading for town. Were she to leap down directly into the middle of them, she would attract attention, which was the last thing she wanted to do.

“Good-bye Mother,” Grace said with determination. “Goodbye, Father.”

She moved to the edge of the wall. “And Mama Muco. Oh, Mama, how I hate to say good-bye to you!”

Then she closed her eyes and jumped.

G
race landed in a swath of dusty grass between the wall and the path. Quickly, she jumped to her feet and brushed the dirt and dry grass from her clothes. She adjusted her bonnet, which had been knocked askew by her undignified landing. Then with all the confidence she could muster, she turned her steps down the rutted dirt path and headed for the road that ran past the giant baobab tree.

Women balancing head loads … men walking together in twos and threes … people calling out morning greetings to one another. Grace looked straight ahead and hurried along the pockmarked road among them. She attracted more than a few curious stares, but most people seemed more interested in their own business than in her.

Surely, I’m getting close
, Grace thought as the sun climbed overhead and the path veered away from the compound wall.
Maybe over—

“Good morning, Grace!”

Grace gasped and jerked around.

“Is anything wrong, my dear?” It was Jasper Hathaway. He had come up behind her with no more sound than a stealthy leopard stalking unsuspecting prey.

“Why … no … Mr. Hathaway,” Grace stammered as she stepped back from the grinning trader. Too eagerly he reached out his plump hands to her. Flashy diamonds on his fingers caught the morning light and sparkled blue and yellow and red. Grace couldn’t help noticing that already, even though the sun had not nearly reached its zenith, he was sweating profusely in his too-tight-around-the-collar ruffled shirt, ready-to-pop-at-the-stomach frock coat, and white silk stockings on feet stuffed into buckled black shoes.

“You just startled me … sir,” Grace said.

“I do apologize,” Mr. Hathaway replied with an exaggerated bow. “But, my dear, you really must leave off the undue formality and call me Jasper.”

He smiled much too broadly for Grace's liking. In her opinion, Mr. Hathaway did everything much too broadly. While he sat at her parents’ dinner table, filling his vast stomach with her pet gazelle, he made a point of showing off his two gold teeth. Now as he smiled, they flashed and glittered in the early morning sunlight. If only he knew how grotesque they appeared to Grace.

“What might you be doing out alone this fine morning?” Mr. Hathaway asked. “Am I correct to guess that you were on your way to visit me?” Once again that leer of a grin spread across his face.

“Um … no … I have business to which I must attend,” Grace stammered.

“Business?” Mr. Hathaway raised his bushy eyebrows at so unexpected an answer. “So lovely a young lady as yourself?” Then a shrewd look crossed his jowly face, and he slipped his fat arm around Grace's waist in a most unwelcome way. “With me as your husband, my dear, you would never have to worry your pretty head about business again. You could lie in your feather bed until noon with slaves to wait on you, and I would take care of every business matter. I know you would like that, now, wouldn’t you?”

Grace stepped aside. “If you will excuse me, Mr. Hathaway, I must be on my way,” she said a bit more curtly than she had intended.

“Jasper. You must call me Jas—”

But Grace didn’t wait for him to finish. She turned away abruptly and hurried down the road. As Jasper Hathaway watched her go, a flash of anger erased his cloying gaze and his face hardened in a resolute glare.

“We will be together soon enough,” he called after her. “Soon enough, my lovely lass.”

A chill ran through Grace at the stony tone of his voice. Without looking back, she broke into a run.

When Jasper Hathaway called out again—louder this time—a tinge of threat skulked through his voice. “And then you won’t turn your back on me, Grace Winslow. No, you will not. Not ever again!”

What had been a simple path worn through the tall savanna grass by the tread of endless feet stopped just ahead at the gigantic baobab tree. That tree was the center to which the wide road led, as well as all the smaller paths. And it was also the point from which all roads began. Magnificent the great tree certainly was, although not many would describe it as beautiful. Completely leafless, as it was most of the year, it appeared to have been plucked out of the ground by a cosmic giant and stuffed back in upside down. That was because the baobab's branches looked to be a system of scraggly roots jutting off an enormous taproot.

“A spirit tree is what it is,” Mama Muco had told Grace when the girl asked about it on her way back from a rare trip to the market with her father. “Power rests in its branches, and majesty in its great trunk.”

Great trunk, yes. So huge that twenty men could stand together inside it.

Not that a baobab tree was unique in western Africa. Many dotted the grasslands, each one revered for its healing properties. Villagers gathered the seeds and leaves and made all types of medicines from them. If the stories were to be believed, many baobab trees possessed special powers. But only the trunk of this one tree, the largest and oldest and most revered of all, was the hallowed resting place of ancient chiefs. Only this one was said to be the dwelling place of the guardian spirits. Only this one was a great and powerful spirit tree.

“Show respect for the ancestors who have walked before you and for the spirits you cannot see,” Mama Muco taught Grace. “But do not worship a tree. And do not worship anything that lives in a tree. There is only one God, and his name is Jehovah.”

In Grace's bedchamber at night, when the house was quiet and she and Mama were alone, Mama told Grace many stories about Jehovah God and about his Son, whose name was Jesus.

“Are those the stories of your people?” Grace asked Mama. “No,” Mama Muco said. “They are true stories for all people. A man came to our village with a black Holy Book, and the stories were in there.”

Those days with Mama Muco seemed so long ago. It was Mama who had cared for Grace. Mama who had taught her. Mama who had protected her. Oh, if only Mama were here now!