The Voyage of Promise (23 page)

W
hy are you slowing down, Jonah?” Benjamin Stevens demanded of the trustee, who sat beside him driving the wagon.

“Respect for the ancestors, Master,” Jonah replied. His face registered no emotion.

Ancestors!
Benjamin wanted to yell.
It isn’t the ancestors who desire the guns and gunpowder. It is the power-hungry living!
But he tugged the floppy-brimmed straw hat down further over his sun-scorched face and kept his peace.

In all his years in Africa, Benjamin Stevens had never before ventured out to the boundary rocks that marked the beginning of the land of this great kingdom of the Gold Coast. Never before had he had a reason to do so. With the tail of his shirt, he swiped at the sweaty dirt caked on his face. Benjamin had no idea of the proper greeting to call out to the African men who stared at him from the road… or even if any greeting would be considered proper.

The baskets women balanced on their heads—some partially filled, many almost empty—spoke of the end of market day. Boys darted out close to the wagon, chasing errant goats
also on their way home at the end of the day. Benjamin had purposely waited until the sun sank low in the sky to journey across the blistering savanna. This was a dreadful season in Africa for a man with light skin and blond hair, and especially for fading blue eyes. Lingongo would not be pleased by the hour, but she would just have to wait.

When the wagon reached the royal enclave, Benjamin was amazed at the simplicity of the king’s abode. Just a hut, it was. Larger than the other huts, to be sure, and more elaborately decorated. But the drabness of the hut itself disappointed Benjamin. He had imagined the king’s palace to be a place of gold and jewels. At the very least, it should have enough wealth to make the venture worth the toll it exacted on his conscience.

Benjamin jumped down and started toward the royal hut. Immediately two men rushed out to stop him.

“The
okyeame
, Master,” Jonah warned. “You must wait for him to speak your words to the king.”

Oh, yes. The king’s mouthpiece
, Benjamin Stevens remembered.
The custom that absolutely must be followed. Was there no end to this day?

When at last the
okyeame
considered the wait long enough to be sufficiently respectful, he stepped forward and said to Benjamin, “King Obei awaits you. I will make your words soft and beautiful, and then I will present them to him.”

Benjamin Stevens bowed his head, removed his hat, and followed the
okyeame
into the sacred territory.

Always a temperate man, in no way pretentious, Benjamin Stevens was not prepared for the grip the royal hut would have on his heart. The gold chair, the ornately crafted pieces of solid gold jewelry that hung heavy from the king’s neck and arms and ankles and adorned his brow, the cloth woven through with gold threads, golden candlesticks, golden
statues. And Lingongo sitting beside the king, even more richly adorned than the high one himself.

It is not fair
, a voice inside Benjamin Stevens screamed.
You are the master! You are the wise one! All this should be yours! Or at least a good part of it should be.

King Obei sat on the royal chair, his feet resting on the
sika’gua
of power. Through his speaker he said, “You are pleased with our wealth; we are pleased with your strength. You keep us stronger than any other kingdom; we will make you more wealthy than any other white man on the coast.”

Benjamin looked at Lingongo. “Keep them strong” meant trade only with guns and gunpowder, not bolts of cloth and beads and iron bars. More guns and gunpowder flowing in meant more death and destruction.

“A gift to seal our partnership,” Lingongo said. She nodded to the speaker, and he took from her hands an elegantly carved gold tortoise. “The symbol of peace,” she said.

Benjamin was amazed at the weight of the figure. Solid gold! He ran his roughened fingers along the satin-smooth edges and squinted to make out the details of the tortoise. Such expert craftsmanship! With what the Africans had to offer, he could go back to London and live out his days in comfort and luxury, and hold his head up in pride while his grandchildren played at his feet. And Henrietta, if she still lived, would never again have the unlimited right to brag about her great successes, for whose success could hope to measure up to his own?

“We will send our warriors deep into Africa, to distant villages four and five days’ journey from the coast,” Lingongo continued. “Villages not yet touched by slavers. They will bring back strong young men that you can sell for many more bars than the leftover men you can get in the coast villages. They will also bring back beautiful young girls who will raise
up new slaves to your liking. Those in new villages will be easy to catch, because they will not yet know to run from us.”

Africans catch Africans, Benjamin reasoned. So it had been forever, and so it would always be. If they were not slaves to the white man, they would be slaves to each other.

“Soon the ships will come once more,” King Obei said through the speaker. “The trade has been slow for many months now, but if we work together, soon it will be fast and heavy once again.”

It was the fortunate Africans who would be on those ships, Benjamin reasoned, for they would be going to a place of civilization. They would live in countries where preachers preached God’s truth, where missionaries taught civilized living, where a heathen soul could be saved. How could giving up a few years’ freedom on earth compare with life eternal?

“We choose to work with you because we know you to be a wise and temperate man, thoughtful and dependable,” said the king. “We admire you for the way you conduct your life. Some white men are fools, but you are not one of them. We can work with you in trust and respect.”

And so, with the gold tortoise grasped tightly in his hand and dreams of much more to come, Benjamin Stevens ordered Jonah to unload the guns and gunpowder from the wagon.

“To seal our deal,” he said.

“To seal our deal,” said King Obei.

“To seal our deal,” said Lingongo.

As Benjamin Stevens headed for home in the empty wagon, sitting as always beside Jonah, who whipped up the horses to a fast trot, he clutched the gold tortoise and dreamed of what it would be like to lead a rich and powerful life. “I will remain honest,” he vowed to Jonah. “Good and honest despite my wealth. And my power. And my great influence, which will undoubtedly stretch far and wide.”

In the royal hut, King Obei raised his head high and refused to take his feet off the stool of power, even for a moment. “It is as I told you; I do possess magical powers and I do enjoy favor from the spirits. The ancestors smiled on me today.”

“The ancestors smiled on
us
,” said Lingongo.

W
here will you be goin’, then?” Mrs. Peete asked in an uncharacteristically tender voice. She was not at all her usual brusque self. She anxiously pushed back locks of frizzy gray hair and wiped her face with her apron.

Instead of answering, Grace went straight to her room.

Mrs. Peete followed and called through the open door, “If’n it be the money that’s troublin’ you, dearie, you don’t has to pay me no more. Keep your shillings for the boat, if that’s what you be bound to do.”

“I don’t know how to explain myself,” Grace said in a voice weighted down with weariness.

“Wot I be tellin’ you is ye cain’t just go trottin’ about alone on the streets. Not in a criminal parish like this one. Not with cutthroats lurkin’ about. Not a fine young girl like you, Grace. You cain’t!”

It was not that Grace didn’t understand the danger. And certainly not that she disbelieved it. It’s just that she knew she had to leave Mrs. Peete’s house immediately. How quickly she had fallen into a routine. And how easily she had found comfort in habit. From the first, it was up before dawn with twenty
minutes for lunch, then work until late at night, seldom stopping before the church bells tolled nine times, or even ten, every day of the week. Mrs. Peete was a kindly woman, and she did not scrimp on the bread and cheese—she even threw a potato into the fire some nights, and they ate it hot with pickles and onions, or sometimes herring, and sometimes they even bought meat pies for supper. Later, when Grace wanted to go to the coffeehouse in the afternoons, Mrs. Peete had taken her shillings and permitted her to go.

But when Grace hid in the service room and listened to the men talking—as soon as she heard Mister Hathaway’s crowing voice—she realized that the sharpness had gone from her resolve. It used to be that every night when she lay down she wept for Cabeto. Every night she traced out his picture in her mind so as not to forget a single detail of him. And every night she whispered anew her promise that she would find him. Every morning when she arose she told herself that day would be the day she would leave London for America.

But hidden away in the serving room, listening to the men talk about the slaves as though they were goats on a mountainside or fish in the sea, it suddenly struck her that many nights had passed since she had traced Cabeto’s face in her mind. Days had gone by washing small linens and eating bread and cheese, and she had not yet plotted out a plan to get to America. If she stayed settled in any longer, Cabeto’s face would fade away from her memory. Then she just might stay in London forever. She must not let that happen.

“But I asks you agin, girl, where is you goin’?” Mrs. Peete insisted. “You’ll end up in some dark room in a cheap flop-house, is wot! They’ll rent you a place on a rope strung across some damp room and you’ll have to sleep with yer arms hung over it. In the mornin’ they cuts the rope and you tumbles to the floor, and out you goes. Is that wot you wants?”

No. No, that was not what Grace wanted. In fact, it terrified her to even consider such a specter. But all the same, she had to leave.

Grace rummaged through her case and pulled out the plainest of her dresses—a blue and white linen. She stepped into the matching shoes, then fitted a straw hat with blue and white flowers on her head.

“You can have everything in my crate,” Grace told Mrs. Peete. “My silk dresses, my hats and shoes, they are all yours. You may keep them or sell them as you wish. The crate is yours too.”

Mrs. Peete gasped and dropped to her knees. Tenderly she lifted the yellow dress and pressed it to her cheek. “Oh, dearie, but they be fine! I never had a new dress, and all to meself too!”

Grace took the silk purse and dropped it down the front of her dress. Only ten shillings left. At least she didn’t have to worry about the purse causing so noticeable a bulge.

“Goodbye, Mrs. Peete, and I do thank you for everything,” Grace said.

“Wait jist a minute, now.” Mrs. Peete opened the cupboard, and from behind the packet of tea leaves she drew out a small package wrapped in an old newspaper. She handed it to Grace. “I has no use for this dainty,” she said. “Put it up yer sleeve. If’n ever you has call to wash it, think of me.”

Grace unwrapped the package to find a linen handkerchief, trimmed with an elegantly handmade lace border. The handkerchief was decorated with embroidered flowers done in the most perfect stitches Grace had ever seen.

“Mrs. Peete, this is beautiful!” Grace exclaimed. “So many hours it must have taken to make it. Surely this cost very much money!”

“Yes,” Mrs. Peete said proudly. “Surely it did. A fine lady brought it to me with her wash, but it fell out from the small linens and t’was left behind. The lady never came back to fetch it.”

“But what if she should come looking for it?”

“Oh, I don’t think so, dearie. That be years ago. Take it and remember yer Mrs. Peete.”

Grace took the old woman’s chapped and calloused hands in her own. “Are you a Christian woman?” Grace asked her.

“That I am, dearie, that I am,” Mrs. Peete said. “I don’t talk about it much, though. I jist tries to live it.”

Grace brought the rough fingers to her lips and kissed them. She said, “Thank you for walking humbly with God.”

Grace knew exactly where she wanted to go. What she didn’t know was exactly how to get there. She started down Waring Street and watched for the basement where Jesse had emerged from the stairway when he took her to meet her father. She had been able to see the docks from there.

Grace knew she must get off the streets before dark, yet even the morning was hazy and looked as if dusk had already settled. Vendors calling out their wares pushed past her impatiently. Beggar children hung about, pleading for a farthing, their pitiful frames swallowed up in cast-off adult clothes. Men in black coats with tall hats pulled low over their eyes shuffled past, then turned to stare after her. Everyone seemed to be watching Grace Winslow.

Grace hastened her pace, then she stepped off onto a side street. Was this the way? Maybe so. Then again, maybe not. Two filthy boys scoured the gutters for rags. When they found one, sodden and foul, they snatched it up and stuffed it into a bag.

“Matches! Matches for sale,” called a ragged woman sitting with her back flat against a massive brick building.

Grace hurried on. Just up ahead was a muddy cross street. She had followed Jesse across such a street, wading through the muddy water, just before she turned down a crowded lane. She waded into the muck of the street, then was almost knocked over by two men chasing rats.

“Watch yersef!” one hollered angrily.

No! This can’t be the same muddy street
, Grace realized with growing panic.
There is no lane here, just a courtyard!

Grace was lost. Not only did she not know the way forward, she was not at all certain she could even find her way back to Mrs. Peete’s house—should she wish to go back. Instinctively, her hand went to the hidden purse. She glanced around her, and to her alarm she saw that a boy with his back to a fence was watching her.

Buildings, divided and divided and divided again into ever smaller and smaller dwellings, squeezed as many people as possible into every available living space. Everywhere in the jumble of dark, narrow passageways were hiding places where criminals could lurk.

I must get out of these dark alleys
, Grace told herself.
On a main street, that’s where I should be…

Grace retraced her steps back through the mud to the other side of the slop-filled street, past the building where the woman had been selling matches and the boys searching the gutters for rags. But neither the match woman nor the rag boys were anywhere to be seen. Nor could she find the main street again. All was a maze of streets and lanes and alleys.

Grace picked up her pace and walked more quickly.

When at last she came to a wider thoroughfare, she turned and hurried along the road, determined to follow wherever it went. Hackney coaches clattered by. Just above her, someone dumped a pan of garbage out an upstairs window. The rotten mess barely missed landing on Grace’s head. When an
unsavory-looking man headed her way, Grace edged between two peddlers’ carts and hastened her steps. Could this be one of the lurking cutthroats Mrs. Peete warned her about?

What have I done?
Grace fretted.
Oh, Cabeto, have I failed you?

A plaintive cry pierced through the rumbling noise of the London street. Grace stopped to listen. It was the sound of a lash striking soft flesh—once, twice, three times. Grace knew that sound well enough. She had even felt the blows more than a few times. And then, the wail once again. A child’s cry, she was sure of that. But from where?

A large brick building loomed on the corner up ahead. The cries seemed to be coming from there.

Grace walked to the front door and cautiously pushed it open. Inside, it was dark and oppressive. “What does ye want, then?” demanded a burly guard on a stool just inside the door.

“I heard a child crying,” Grace explained.

“This be a workhouse! Many children cryin’ in here,” the man stated. “Their mothers and fathers be cryin’ too.”

“I… I wanted to come in and see the child,” Grace said.

“No one wants to come in here. Ever’one wants out.”

“But that poor child—”

“If it’s poor children you cares ’bout, get you to the foundlin’ hospital,” the man snapped.

He tried to close the door, but Grace threw her determined weight against it.

“I don’t know where the foundling hospital is.”

“Fields north of Gray’s Inn, of course. Now git away and let me be!” With that, the guard slammed the door.

Just up ahead, a man was helping an elderly woman out of a hackney coach. Grace hurried over and called to the driver,
“Excuse me, could you take me to the foundling hospital in the fields north of Gray’s Inn?”

“Yup,” said the driver.

“How much will it cost?”

“One shilling,” the driver said.

Grace dropped her new handkerchief to the ground, and when she bent over to pick it up, she expertly retrieved the purse from its hiding place. She opened the purse strings and took out one shiny shilling, which she placed in the driver’s hand.

“If you please,” said the man who had helped the old lady down. His manner was most gracious. He took Grace’s hand and kindly assisted her into the coach, then he pushed up the stairs and closed the door behind her.

How could Grace have known he was a professional pickpocket? Had she not had the opportunity to tuck her purse back into its hiding place rather than grasping it tightly in her hand, it would have been gone in an instant.