The Voyage of Promise (13 page)

A
n African mother chained to a post in the open-sided island shelter grasped her young son and crushed him to her with such intense desperation that the child gasped for breath. Even so, she could not cling tightly enough. For a white man came along and grabbed the child away from her, then shoved him outside. As the mother shrieked and wailed, her little one was bound together with other children, then all of them were pulled as one toward the auction stage.

Cabeto saw it all.

A man and his woman clung to each other, the man strong and his woman trembling against him. They entwined their fingers and dug in their nails, and it took three white men to pull them apart, but in the end the white men dragged the woman away. As her husband bellowed out his furious despair, they pulled her by her arms to the auction stage.

Cabeto saw this too.

Then Cabeto saw Tawnia sink down against Safya. “Move away, Tawnia,” he rumbled softly but urgently in their tongue. “Do not be together or you will be separated forever.”

A fierce blow to his side sent Cabeto sprawling and gasping for breath. He was not certain he would ever breathe again.

“No African talk allowed,” the white man ordered.

As the dark cloud of pain cleared from Cabeto’s eyes, and his choking gasps at last caught a bit of air for his lungs, he saw Safya push Tawnia away. Cabeto closed his eyes and concentrated on gulping air. When he opened his eyes again, almost a dozen people sat between the wise woman with the half-closed eyes and the tender young girl. Tawnia looked toward Safya, but Safya kept her eyes fastened to the floor.

“No,” Cabeto whispered to Tawnia. He said it sternly in his language, and Tawnia heard him. He knew she did, for she pulled her eyes away from Safya and fixed them on her own legs.

“Rubbish,” said a white worker not yet old enough to have more than a fuzzy stubble on his chin. “Best to simply toss the lot and begin anew.”

“Rejects, yes,” said his companion, a pale man with a straw hat pulled low over his eyes. “Women and flawed men they are. Still, it may be that we can fetch some price for them. That big one in the corner and the one sprawled on the ground, they may be worth something.” He gestured toward Sunba and Cabeto.

After a moment’s reflection the man in the straw hat added, “I say we take those two and a few of the others to a tavern and offer them cheap. Maybe luck will shine and someone will take the lot.”

“No last scramble, then?” said the one with the fuzzy face.

“Might try. I just will not desert these on the wharf to die. They have already eaten up too much of my investment to allow such a waste. Richard Hudson is set to sail the
Golden Hawk
on to the United States with no more than half a cargo load of indigo, so we might try to get rid of the rest of the slave
cargo over in America. They will take there what planters here refuse.”

“Maybe,” the one with the fuzzy face said doubtfully.

“Those sufficiently broken in,” said the man with the straw hat. “The ones not too quick to fight. Those who don’t cause us trouble. Who can walk and don’t look too sick and feeble. Those are the ones they’ll take on to America.”

Cabeto’s face registered not the slightest acknowledgment.

What did these white men know of him? Of the slave rebellion at Zulina, and Antonio the slave? What could they possibly know of his Grace, who grew up in a London house with an English father? They had no reason to suspect that a broken African they referred to as “rubbish” and “a reject,” whom they saw as just an ignorant, flawed slave who babbled heathen talk, could understand words of both Spanish and English.

That night, everyone drifted away except the white men grudgingly set as guards over them, even though the captives’ chains were so securely bolted to the posts that supported the building it would have taken hundreds of slaves to loosen even one captive. Cabeto watched and waited as the guards nodded their heads and one by one let their eyes drift closed. When the guards at long last snored in unison, Cabeto whispered to the slaves around him, “Do not cause trouble. Do not fight. Stay calm. Do not cling to one another. Walk upright and look well even if you are dying. Only in this way will you live to see the sun cross the sky once again.”

The ones near him whispered the warnings to the ones next to them, and those slaves passed the warnings along to the ones near them, and so on, and so on.

The next day, when the man with the straw hat returned, he found quiet, compliant slaves. When he motioned them to rise, every one of them stood up, and not one revealed the
extent of the effort it took to do so. The man in the straw hat smiled a self-congratulatory smile and hurried away. And all slaves remained on their feet, all supporting themselves, and all keeping their eyes to themselves.

“I told you, Richard,” the man in the straw hat said as he returned with Captain Hudson and Lukas in tow. “Fully seasoned already, every one of them. What this business requires is a firm hand and a steady will.”

“Back to the ship with ye, then,” Lukas ordered the slaves as he cracked his whip. The tip caught Safya’s ankle and jerked her down hard. At first she lay as if dead. Tawnia’s hand flew to her mouth, but Cabeto shot her a warning look and she stifled her cry.

“Git up!” Lukas ordered. He gave Safya a vicious kick to her ribs.

Safya groaned and rolled over.

Sunba could not help himself. He lunged toward Safya. But Captain Hudson was carrying the cat-o-nine-tails. One lash from the cat knocked Sunba flat.

Almost immediately, Sunba got back up and stood unsteadily, glowering at the captain. Sunba’s face twisted with fury, and he clenched his hands into tight fists. Then he put one foot forward.

“Not now,” Cabeto ordered in his low rumble of a whisper. “Fighting will not help us. The time will come to fight. It will come, but it is not now.”

For a minute, the two men stared into each other’s eyes, the armed white man with all the power and the black man with nothing left to lose. Then Sunba stepped back and allowed the sadness to return to his face. He relaxed his hands and looked down at the ground.

Captain Hudson folded his arms across his chest, the cat clutched tight in his hand. His eyes never left Sunba.

“March!” Lukas ordered as he forced the slaves back onto the ship. Safya struggled to get up, but she was too slow. Two seamen grasped her by the arms and dragged her all the way across the plank, over the deck, and down the stairs to the hold. She groaned the entire way.

Back again into the horrible
Golden Hawk
.

Once again, legs were clamped into irons and chained to the bolts in the floor—although this time the slave packing was not so tight and their wrists were not chained to their neighbors’ wrists.

Once again the slave ship began its endless, sickening rocking.

Once again a cloud of dread smothered out the captives’ hope that they might live to see tomorrow, even as it ignited terror that they actually might have to endure yet another day.

“Sunba,” Cabeto called out in a voice hoarse with despair.

“I am here, Brother,” Sunba replied.

“Safya,” called Cabeto.

Silence.

“Safya! Answer!”

Silence.

“Safya! A groan will do!”

Silence.

“Tawnia,” Cabeto called in a choked voice.

Silence.

“Tawnia!” Cabeto demanded.

Her voice flooded with tears, Tawnia replied wearily, “From this day, I will not answer when my name is called. The call is for the living, and from this day, my soul is dead.”

W
ith a clatter of horse hooves, and the tooth-rattling rumble of iron wheels on loose cobblestones, the hackney coach bolted out into the mad jumble of carriages and wagons all clogged together in the street up ahead. Whipping the horses into a faster gallop, the driver easily pulled the coach past two slow-moving wagons. But a larger carriage bore down on them so fast it shook the ground as it barreled past. A small boy, unfortunate enough to step out just at that moment, would have been run down had not a quick-minded passerby grabbed him in time.

“Hot buns! Tuppence! Fresh baked hot buns!” cried a woman pushing a wooden cart.

Right behind her came another woman weaving a wagon along the crowded walk. She bellowed, “Mackerel, jist off the boat! Fresh mackerel!”

Door after door flew open in the brick houses crammed together side-by-side on either side of the street, and women with caps on their heads and aprons over their plain dresses called out to one peddler or another. Not only could they buy fish and fresh baked bread, but apples and meat pies and eggs
and vegetables and flowers and herbal tonics. All this and an endless array of other things Grace couldn’t make out.

In a singsong voice, a milk woman yodeled, “Fresh milk! Quick, quick! Get your fresh milk!”

Taking care not to breathe deeply, which Grace quickly learned inevitably lead to a coughing fit, she gazed in wonder at this strange world called London. So many people! So much noise!

A man drove ten cows into the street directly in front of the coach in which Grace was riding. It was all the driver could do to jerk the horses aside in time to keep from hitting them. Grace, flung against the carriage door, screamed and grabbed for some place to grip.

“Watch where ye’s goin’!” the cowman yelled up at the coach driver.

“You is the one wot better watch yerself!” the driver shot back. “Else I’ll slaughter ’em cows fer you, I will!”

Pay attention to the road!
Grace ordered herself.
I cannot get back to the dock unless I remember the way.

According to Captain Ross’s estimate, Cabeto might already be on his way to the slave market in America. If Grace ever hoped to see him again, she would have to get there too. She would have to go to Charleston, the very place against which Captain Ross so insistently warned her.

But it was not Captain Ross’s life, was it? It was Cabeto’s life. And hers.

“
We cannot control what happens around us any more than we can change what happened to us in the past
,” Mama Muco had told Grace that last happy night in the village before the slavers struck. “
All we can do is decide how we will live our own lives.
”

Grace closed her eyes and whispered, “I decided, Mama. I will find a way for Cabeto and me to be together and to live free.”

As Grace could see it, the only way to get to Charleston in America was by ship. Yet the coach was speeding her away from the docks, away from the ships setting their sails for the new United States. Instead of taking her toward Cabeto, it was rushing her in the opposite direction.

Grace’s plan was to stay the night with Mrs. Peete, then, at first light, to walk back to the dock. She would leave the crate with her belongings behind. What did she care about those fancy frocks and hats and shoes Mister Hathaway bought for her, anyway? Once she made it to the dock, she would surely be able to find a ship going to the United States.

That was her plan. But already she was hopelessly confused. All the houses looked alike. Streets crossed other streets, then they intersected with lanes that turned into courtyards, or still more streets. And just when she thought she might start to understand the direction in which they were traveling, the coach would turn onto yet another street altogether—which looked just the same as the last street but headed in another way entirely. How could she ever hope to find her way back to the docks?

Outside her village in Africa, the single main road divided and went in two directions. Yet both paths led to the great baobab tree where the chiefs were buried and under whose gnarled branches the wise men sat. But in this city, there was no giant baobab tree. As far as Grace could see, there were no baobab trees at all. No ghariti trees, either. Or jackfruit or mangos or cashews.
Do the people in London have nothing worthwhile to eat?
Grace wondered.
How do they make healing poultices for their sick and injured?

Grace touched her chest and felt the bulge of the purse she had hidden under her dress. Perhaps Captain Ross had given her enough money to ride back to the docks in a coach. Maybe Mrs. Peete was a kindly woman who would understand and help her. A wise person like Mama Muco, perhaps.

Oh, Mama… If only…
Grace shook her head to clear away the memories, and also the sobs those memories always brought.

“Rags! Rags! Throw me yer rags!” called an old man as he slowly pushed his cart along beside the street. A gray-haired woman opened her window and tossed out something that the old man snatched up and threw into his wagon. Then he was off again: “Rags! Rags! Throw me yer rags!”

If the man wanted to pick up trash, Grace thought, his wagon could soon be filled to running over. Never in her life had she seen such piles of rotting garbage as lay open and exposed on the streets of London. Did Englishpeople not have goats to eat their refuse?

The coach made a sharp turn onto a narrow lane, then pulled to a stop in front of a small house crammed between two shops—a blacksmith on the left and a tailor on the right. The driver jumped down, unfastened Grace’s crate and pulled it off the carriage top. He opened the door for her and pulled down the step.

“This be the place, miss,” he said.

Then he was off.

Grace stood on the sorely misnamed Bright Lane and stared blankly at the grim house with crumbling stairs and a sagging door. A foul stench hung in the lane. Grace’s first thought was to turn and run; just leave her crate in the street and run as fast as she could back toward the docks. Maybe she could still find Captain Ross and plead with him one more time. Or perhaps that kind Mister Brandt might still be around and
willing to take her to America. Or even Mister Greenway. She had not even thought of begging him. Why, oh, why hadn’t she thought to ask him about it when they were crossing the river?

“Is yer thinking to stand outside me ’ouse all the day long?”

Only then did Grace see the stocky woman standing at the far side of the house. Her hands were on her hips, her sleeves pushed up to her elbows, and she had a cloth tied around her hair—although a fluff of bushy gray had worked loose and hung down the side of her face.

“Mrs… Peete?” Grace stammered. “Mrs. Nellie Peete?” “An’ who’s doin’ the askin’?” the woman demanded.

“I’m Grace. Grace Winslow.”

Grace pulled the sealed letter from her pocket and held it out to the woman. “To you from Captain Ross.”

Mrs. Peete took the letter and tucked it into her dress without opening it. “So the cap’n sent you round, did ’e?” she said.

Without waiting for an answer, Mrs. Peete stepped over a small board-bridge beside the road, hefted up Grace’s crate with surprising ease, and started for the house. Grace had no choice but to follow the determined little woman. As Grace stepped onto the narrow bridge, she suddenly understood the awful smell. Underneath flowed a river of sewage.

“A washerwoman is wot I be, though I ’spects you knows that already,” Mrs. Peete was saying. “And I don’t mind tellin’ you, I kin use two extra hands at me washtubs.”

Grace hardly heard Mrs. Peete’s words, so intrigued was she at the woman’s face. It seemed to be punched full of little holes.

“You don’t have to start workin’ today, I s’pose,” Mrs. Peete said. “You kin wait ’til the mornin’ when you’s rested a bit.”

Maybe the little holes were marks of Mrs. Peete’s tribe, like the marks on Ikem’s face, Grace thought. Although they didn’t make her look fearsome, and they certainly were not pretty.

“Why is you starin’ at me that way?” Mrs. Peete demanded. “Ain’t you never seen scars from the smallpox?”

Smallpox! Grace had heard of the fearsome disease, to be sure, although she never expected to see anyone afflicted still alive and walking around. She thought everyone who got it died. Now that she saw its vestiges, however, she did recognize similar marks on the faces of some sailors. But seamen’s faces were so leathered and worn, Grace took the marks to be some form of white man’s wrinkles. On the streets of London, she would soon see, more faces were pitted than were smooth.

Mrs. Peete led Grace into the main room. It was piled with clothes to be washed, as well as with clean clothes waiting to be folded and placed in stacks. A kettle boiled over the fire in the fireplace.

Once the door was closed tight, the washerwoman pulled the letter from Captain Ross out from where she had stuck it in her dress and broke the wax seal. She didn’t actually take the sheet of paper from the envelope, though, just the two shillings, which she dropped into her pocket.

Two doors opened off the one room. “That one be your room,” Mrs. Peete said, motioning to the door on the right. “T’other be mine.” She tossed Grace’s baggage at the door. “Your room and one meal in trade fer your work. That’s me arrangement.” Then she left Grace alone.

All the windows in the house were coated in grime, but in her room the single small window was painted black. Not that it mattered much. There was precious little to see, anyway. A sagging cot almost filled the entirety of the room. No chair, no dressing table. Not even a rag rug on the floor. Grace dragged
her crate into the room and crammed it between the foot of the cot and the wall.

Was it evening? Grace couldn’t remember. Certainly the day had seemed endless. How could she tell time when the room was shrouded in darkness?

Grace flung herself across the cot, pulled her cloak around her, and wept.