The Voyage of Promise (21 page)

L
ook a’ this one!” a lanky sailor called to Tom Davis. He gestured to Cabeto, who could not get up on his feet. What with bad weather and a shortage of crew, the slaves had spent almost the entire voyage cramped in their chains below decks. Now Cabeto’s bad leg simply would not support him.

Once again, the sailor applied his time-honored method of motivation—a kick in the stomach.

“Leave him be!” Tom ordered. “Carry him up on deck if you must.”

It took two sailors, one on each side, to half-carry Cabeto up the ladder. And when they let go of him, he crumpled to the deck.

“ ’E don’t look like much to me,” the second sailor said. The second sailor was right. Wan and boney, unable to stand on his own, Cabeto truly did not appear to be much of a slave.

“We kin dump ’im behind the post office with the rest of the refuse slaves,” the second sailor suggested. “Then it be in God’s hands, do ’e live or do ’e die.”

Tom shook his head. “Get him water,” he said. “And fattening food. Oil him down good and shiny, and give him tobacco to liven him up.”

Tom looked at Cabeto’s leg and frowned, but he also looked at the rest of Cabeto. “Get him moving, then clean him up. He’s a good-looking one, and his arms are strong. Work the cramps out of his lame leg. We will get some profit out of him yet.”

The sailors forced Cabeto’s excruciatingly weak leg this way and that. To keep from screaming in pain, Cabeto focused his attention on the scraggly line of slaves as it emerged from the hold. Where was his brother?

By nightfall, Cabeto was able to stand on his own, and even to walk a bit—though with a pronounced limp.

“Is ye even tryin’?” growled the first sailor. “Ye better be, if’n ye wants to live to see tomorrow.”

All night, sailors took turns walking Cabeto. They alternated the exercise with “fattnin’ breaks” where they gave him porridge with cream and bread, and plenty of water to drink.

When the sun was up, the first sailor drenched Cabeto with buckets of cold water and went to work on him with a block of soap and a wash brush. He scrubbed Cabeto’s feet, between his fingers, his hair—everywhere except his burn scar. Tom had warned against getting it fired up and angry looking. The second sailor dipped into a bucket of palm oil and rubbed it into Cabeto’s parched, dry skin until he was dark and gleaming.

“I say!” Tom exclaimed when he saw the finished product. “He looks good, and he can walk too! With any luck, we will have English shillings in our pocket before his new owner realizes just how defective he is.”

Tom Davis peered at an auction poster nailed to a tree. He hadn’t scheduled an auction himself. With so much of his valuable cargo already gone, it just didn’t seem worth it. Tom
figured he would take whatever amount he could get for the stragglers, get his ship cleaned and stocked with tobacco and rice, then head for home.

“Well, now, I don’t know ’bout that…” was Seth Slater’s hesitant reaction when Tom asked if he could tack his slaves onto Seth’s posted sale. “Why don’t you put just him in the scramble?”

“In the scramble” meant that all the slaves up for sale were offered for the same price. At the sound of the drumbeat, buyers broke through the doors of the barricade in a mad scramble to grab out the “pick of the lot.” Trouble was, Tom knew full well that his leftover slaves would never fetch full price. They would almost certainly be left sitting alone.

“It won’t injure your sale to have my slaves in the auction,” Tom said to Seth. “You have prime parcels there. All I have is damaged ones, and I plan to sell them cheap.”

Seth walked over to Cabeto. “He looks good enough,” Seth said.

“He most certainly is not good enough. Lame, he is. Won’t go for much, that I know. That one is no competition for your fine offerings.”

Finally Seth agreed—reluctantly. “At the end, though, after mine’s all auctioned off,” he said. Which meant Cabeto and Sunba and the others from the
Golden Hawk
had to watch as one by one people from tribes they recognized were paraded up on a block behind the post office at the foot of Broad Street, just a short walk from the wharf where the
Golden Hawk
was docked. White men in fancy clothes stood below and called out their bids—and their opinions of the offerings.

“Skin too light!” someone called out about a stony-faced man on the block who had just been pulled away from his screaming, sobbing wife. “Five hundred!”

“But good teeth,” Seth called back as he forced the man’s mouth open. “And a strong back that ain’t been whipped, as you can see.” Here Seth pushed the man around and jerked up his arms to display his smooth, well-oiled back. “He won’t cause you no trouble. Seven fifty and he’s yours!”

“Six hundred!” another man called out.

“Seven hundred!” Seth countered. “No less.”

In the end, the man bought the light-skinned slave with the good teeth and strong, smooth back for six fifty, which meant absolutely nothing to Cabeto. But high price or low, only one thing was in Cabeto’s mind:
Who has the right to put a price on a man’s body and soul?

The winning bidder claimed his prize by looping a rope over the light-skinned man’s neck, pulling a pair of blue trousers on him, and tugging him away. The light-skinned man stood still and wailed out a cry in African words.

“Stop that!” roared his new owner. The white man jerked the rope hard, and the man fell on his good teeth. “Don’t you never use heathen words again!” the white man ordered.

We will take our lives and meet in heaven!
That’s what the man with the light skin and good teeth had yelled. Cabeto looked over at the man’s wife. She had heard it too. Immediately she stopped screaming. And though the white men saw nothing, Cabeto saw the man glance back at his wife.

“We have several children for sale, from about four years old to about twelve years old,” the auctioneer called out. “Girls to work in the house and boys already in trainin’ as overseers. Their mother is not for sale. Owners are keepin’ her. But fear not, these people care nothing about family. They are more like animals in such matters and—”

“You!” Tom said as he pushed Cabeto with his foot. “You’re next up.”

Cabeto stood on the block, his head held high and proud. Before Tom Davis was halfway through his pitch, a stout man, sweating profusely in the noonday sun, called out irritably, “Come, come! What’s wrong with him?”

“He is young and strong, and—”

“Yes, yes, and he has good teeth,” snapped the stout man. “We can see all that. I want to know the problem. Don’t play us for fools! You wouldn’t be tacking on a good specimen like this at the end of the auction unless he was deficient in some important way!”

Before Tom could answer, another man up in front called out, “I see it! It be his leg. Burned, it is. Weak and lame, I have no doubt.”

“Not lame,” Tom protested. “You saw him walk up here. An old injury, yes. Scarred, yes. But think of the work you could get from a strong buck like this.”

“Whipping scars on his back too,” another man called out.

“But not too many, though,” Tom replied.

“Two hundred dollars,” called the stout man, “and only because I’m a gamblin’ man.”

“I only take British shillings,” Tom said. “No South Carolina dollars.”

“In that case, sir, you can take your damaged slaves back to England with you!” exclaimed the stout man.

“Twenty gallons of rum,” called a man with a bushy mustache and unruly bristles of hair.

“British shillings, if you please,” Tom repeated.

“We do not please,” someone called back. “I bid twenty-five pounds of gunpowder.”

“That, sir, is an insult!” Tom replied.

In the end, the man with the bushy mustache and unruly bristles of hair bought both Cabeto and Sunba together for
ten gallons of rum and three hundred shillings—about half the expected price for one good slave. Even so, Tom Davis was pleased with the sale. He was in a hurry to clean and fumigate the ship, load it up, and sail for home.

As for the man with the bushy mustache, he already was thinking of the land he badly needed to clear. He had put the job off far too long. Problem was, felling full-grown trees and clearing snake-infested swamplands—those jobs were too dangerous for valuable slaves to take on. These two, though… why, they were just what he needed—strong yet expendable.

G
race gasped at the magnificence of Larkspur Estate. Imagine Charlotte Stevens living in such a castle! No, not Charlotte Stevens. It was Lady Charlotte Witherham who was mistress of this fine palace.

“Stop gawking,” Ena scolded. She leaned out the window and yelled for the driver to take them around to the servants’ entrance.

“Backdoor for the likes of you,” Ena said to Grace.

“Aren’t you coming with me?”

“Certainly not! And you must promise me you won’t tell Lady Charlotte it was me what brought you here. She doesn’t much fancy having me about, anyway, and if she was to know I involved myself in this business—and that I pulled you in with me, besides… well, she must not know.”

After being let out at the back of the mansion, Grace watched the hackney coach rattle back down the drive, past the perfectly tended gardens and carefully manicured lawns, until it disappeared under a canopy of lacy willow fronds. Ena was gone. Now Grace was all alone. Once again.

Penny Owens, the maid, answered Grace’s tentative knock. Expecting a delivery boy, she was quite taken aback to see a nicely dressed African woman, and then to have her ask for Lady Charlotte by name!

“My lady expects you then, does she?” Penny asked suspiciously.

“No,” Grace admitted.

“Ye can’t just walk in off the street and ’spect to visit with a grand lady,” Penny scolded. The maid gave Grace a thorough once-over. “You is lucky t’was me what opened the door to you. Any other would have tossed you out on your ear. An’ likely I should ’ave done the same meself.”

“Please,” Grace begged. “I know Charlotte—Lady Charlotte—from when we were girls together.”

Penny’s eyes narrowed, and she peered more closely at Grace. Her trained servant’s eye immediately recognized the chapped hands of a washerwoman. “Is you thinkin’ I’ll believe a fine lady like her knew the likes of you?”

“Believe what you want to believe,” Grace snapped. Then, quickly repenting of her tone, she pleaded, “Please, ask your mistress. If I am not telling you the truth, it is me that will be whipped out into the street, not you. But if I
am
telling the truth and you turn me away, then it will be you who is at fault. Then you will be the one to feel the punishment.”

Penny stepped back to consider. She wiped her sweaty palms across her crisp white apron and heaved a worried sigh. She was not at all disposed toward making decisions that resulted in bringing blame and punishment down on herself. Certainly, she would not show Grace to the parlor. Nor even to the sitting room. But Penny did allow Grace to stand in the kitchen as she went to find Lady Charlotte.

“Someone to see you, my lady, in the kitchen… ” Penny said with an apologetic curtsy.

“It be a mystery,” Penny answered in response to questions concerning the visitor’s identity, for she had neglected to ask a name. “Insists she knows you from the past, she does.” Penny’s anxiety mounted with every second. “Shall I have Rustin remove her, my lady?”

Lady Charlotte Stevens Witherham had spent her morning engulfed in boredom, and now a mystery stood in her kitchen. She had no intention of allowing such an opportunity to pass her by. Even if it was nothing but a clever beggar, it was worth a few minutes of her time.

“Grace Winslow!” Lady Charlotte gasped when she saw who was waiting for her. “Whatever are you doing here?” But before Grace could answer, Lady Charlotte took her by the arm and pulled her to the door. “Oh, Grace, you must go. You absolutely must not be found here!”

But Grace had no intention of going anywhere, and she told Lady Charlotte as much.

“Come out to the garden, then,” Lady Charlotte insisted. “We can talk there. But hurry, now. Hurry!”

Lady Charlotte led her down a graveled path and through a garden door. Grace stared around her. This was nothing like Mama Muco’s garden. It had no squash or calabash gourds growing, or any of the other vegetables she was used to seeing. It seemed to be completely made up of beautiful, sweet-smelling flower beds with narrow paths winding between them. Lady Charlotte led Grace to a small table and two chairs nestled under a stand of great flowering trees. The trees had vines climbing their trunks, and they gave off the sweetest fragrance.

“Honeysuckle and jasmine,” Lady Charlotte said. “Magnificent, is it not?”

But Grace didn’t want to talk about the garden. She told Charlotte everything, from the destruction of her village in
Africa and the death of her little Kwate, to the way the men packed Cabeto and the other villagers onto the slave ship. She told of her own ocean crossing on the
Willow
. And then she told of the charred remains of the coffeehouse.

“The important thing is that you are now safe in London,” Lady Charlotte said. “Here, no one can make you a slave.”

“But I don’t want to be safe in London!” Grace cried in exasperation. “I want to find Cabeto! I want to live with my husband, free and in peace!”

“Oh, Grace, that’s the problem with dreamers like you,” Lady Charlotte said. “You just cannot accept the world the way it is.”

“The way it is isn’t the way it should be!” Grace insisted, a slashing edge to her voice.

“No, no. I do not pretend that it is. But you and I are never going to change the world.”

“We cannot change everything,” Grace said. “But you and I
can
change some things.”

Lady Charlotte shook her head. “No, not I. You don’t know Reginald. You do not know my husband.”

Grace opened her mouth to protest, but before she could speak Lady Charlotte jumped to her feet. “Oh, Grace, I have a splendid idea! You no longer need to destroy your hands working in that horrible wash water. You can come here and live with me! You can be my personal maid!”

Grace stared at her in disbelief.

“Oh, I don’t mean be a slave or anything like that,” Charlotte said quickly. “We would be more like friends, except that you would wait on me and bring me my tea and draw my bath and such. It would be perfect! No one would suspect a thing. And Reginald couldn’t complain about you being African, because he chases so outrageously after that black girl of his own.”

Grace pulled her rough hand away from Lady Charlotte’s silky smooth one. “I didn’t come here to be your slave, Charlotte,” she said. It shocked her to hear the icy tones of her mother Lingongo chilling her own voice.

“No, no, not my
slave
,” Lady Charlotte insisted. “My
servant!
”

“Nor did I come here to be your servant. I came because one time, when I least expected it of you, you did a wonderful and generous thing for me. You didn’t have to do it then, and you do not have to do anything for me now. But I came here because I thought you might help me again. Charlotte, I have to find Cabeto.”

Lady Charlotte sighed and shook her head. “Really, Grace, will you stop pretending? Your Cabeto is gone. And although you may not believe it, you are the fortunate one—indeed, more fortunate than most women ever are! You once had the love of a man, even if it was for only a short while. Most of us never even have that.”

Grace gazed around her at the palatial estate where Lady Charlotte lived in enormous privilege and great comfort, where she was called “my lady,” and people bowed to her. Closing her eyes, Grace remembered again the mud hut, thatched with banana leaves she and Mama Muco had gathered together. An enormous spider had crawled out from the pile of leaves, and Mama had snatched it up with her fingers. Holding the squirming spider by the leg, she launched into a story about the trickster spirit Eshu and how he loved to wear the guise of a spider. Such a warm house it was, with Cabeto and Mama, and all of it swaddled in the baby delights of Kwate. A life swollen plump and round with love. A life filled with fresh hope for a new circle of life. Not like this palace—beautiful and majestic, but cold and lonely and angry and sad.

“Surely your husband is a powerful man. He could help me get to America.” It was not a question, but a plea.

“He most certainly could,” said Lady Charlotte. “But he will not. Stay away from Lord Reginald, Grace. He is a dangerous man. It is easy to underestimate him. Please, do not make that disastrous mistake.”

Grace had no more to say to Lady Charlotte. They walked together out the garden gate and back to the house. But they did not go to the kitchen. Lady Charlotte led Grace to a side door that led into the sitting room.

“I would have our carriage driver take you to your place,” Lady Charlotte was saying, “but I really do not think it appropriate to—”

At the sound of voices, Lady Charlotte grabbed Grace. “Reginald is home!” she said with an edge of terror. “He is coming this way!”

“… and that fire only served to bring more sympathy their way!” Lord Reginald stated, bristling with disgust. “That right there is what I have been saying. Power must never lie in the hands of the common populace. The people simply are not capable of acting logically. This is particularly true of the lower classes. They react only to passion and emotion.”

“Quick!” Lady Charlotte whispered. She grabbed Grace and pushed her into a small service room off to the side. “We can hide here!”

“Place the blame where you will, but the fact is, public outrage simply is not on our side,” said Augustus Jamison.

“We can change that.” This was Lord Reginald again.

“Please, my dear Lord Reginald,” implored the ever-patient Sir Geoffrey Philips. “We have twice tried to do this according to your direction—and at great jeopardy to ourselves, I might add. No one ever accepted our insistence that the fire was started by an enraged populace weary of abolition rhetoric. I
believe they suspected the truth from the beginning, but chose to ignore it out of respect for your family. You had hoped—we all had hoped—”

Lord Reginald interrupted, “That is not at all an accurate—”

“Please, my lord, I do you the endless courtesy of listening when you speak,” Sir Geoffrey retorted rather sharply. “Will you not extend me the small courtesy of allowing me to make just this one point? As for the anticipated mob riot, it did indeed very nearly happen. The problem was that the mob, made up of those
supporting
the abolitionists, came off as the rational, clear-thinking ones. Those we hoped would gain support for our side did nothing but look to be the hired and paid fools they were. You want the people to speak? I dare say they are doing exactly that. The problem is, they are not speaking our message.”

Lord Reginald’s reply was low and angry. But Grace was no longer listening.

The coffeehouse fire! It was them!