The Voyage of Promise (9 page)

Satisfied that he had at least scored the final point, Sir Reginald leaned back against the fireplace mantle to bask in his triumph.

“And so, it is speaking the truth that is most important to you, husband?” Lady Charlotte asked.

“Indeed it is. A man of truth has every reason to expect truth from his wife,” Lord Reginald replied in the sanctimonious tone that so frayed Charlotte’s endurance. “If I cannot believe the words you speak, then you are unworthy to be called Lady Witherham.”

In the brief interval that Charlotte was silent, a self-satisfied smile settled across Lord Reginald’s face. Then, in her sweetest voice, Charlotte said, “Perhaps the booklet was left by the black woman with red hair and the green eyes that flash with fire. You know the woman I mean. You insist she come to this house to help in the service as a chambermaid. Ena. That is her name, is it not? I do believe you scheduled her to clean your study this very morning whilst I was away visiting mother and you were out of town. But, no, you were not out of town, after all. You were right here at home, were you not?”

Lord Reginald’s face blanched.

“Honesty between us. What a fascinating idea!” Lady Charlotte said. Then, with her laugh echoing around her, she headed for the stairs and the security of her private chambers.

T
he days drag by too slowly, every one exactly the same as the one before,” Jasper Hathaway had continually complained to Grace of their time aboard the ship.

Grace certainly did not find it so. One day the sea would lie so still and clear that when she stood on the deck and looked down it was almost as if she were gazing into an immense looking glass. But the very next day, winds would tear at the sails, and the sea—frothy and wild—would pound the ship with such fury she would wonder how the boards held together. One day the steaming deck would be lined with drying laundry and hammocks airing in the scorching sun, and the next day rain would fall in such torrents that even the rats dared not venture out on deck.

“Thank you, God, for the still seas, and thank you for the blowing wind,” Grace prayed. “Thank you for the sun and thank you for the rain. Thank you, God, even for the rats.”

It was a sincere prayer, too, for it was due to the plague of rats that Puss was on board the ship. The huge orange-striped cat, with bright green eyes and outsized claws, was so effective that some sailors complained he was depriving them of fresh
meat. Cook scolded Grace for feeding scraps to Puss: “Feed ’im fer free an’ ’e won’t work no more. Not much different than a man in that!” But Grace and Puss were friends, and she treated him as such. By mid-journey, Puss was snoozing off a good bit of his work time on Grace’s bunk.

While the days were not the same, they certainly were predictable. Grace appreciated that. Every morning, the cabin boy brought breakfast to her room—oatmeal or bread and hard cheese, now and then a fresh egg, and tea with milk. Her mornings she spent reading Captain Ross’s Bible. Afternoons, after the cabin boy brought her a cool drink and hard bread, she waited for Puss to come by, and they both took a rest. If the cat tended to his rat-catching business and left Grace alone, she read right on through the afternoon. At the sound of eight bells in the afternoon watch—precisely four o’clock—tea was brought to the captain’s office. Grace was always welcome to join the officers. She generally ate her dinner alone in her cabin, for she never felt truly comfortable with the men.

Sometime after the first watch—eight in the evening— when the air was cool and the deck quiet—Grace strolled along the quarter deck and paused to look out over the rail. She made it a practice to draw in her mind a detailed picture of Cabeto, lest she forget some feature about him. The wrinkles around his laughing eyes, the ripple of muscles in his strong arms when he brought the hoe crashing down on hard ground, the touch of his calloused hands, strong enough to crush a gourd yet tender enough to wipe the tears from Kwate’s baby cheeks. Cabeto, a brawny man of peace, a gentle man of action.

Alone with the moon and the stars and her memories, Grace begged Mama Muco’s God to take care of Cabeto. “And please show me the way to his side.”

One gray day, Grace left her cabin door ajar in hopes that Puss would stop by and cheer her up. She was feeling particularly lonely, not even in the mood to read the holy book. In the early afternoon, an off-key work song drifted over from the main deck as the sailors set a rhythm for pulling the lines. Grace longed to watch them work and listen to them sing, but she knew better.

Eight bells. Tea time. Grace sighed heavily, and stretched out across her bunk. But the crewmen stopped their singing, and Puss still had not come to keep her company. So Grace pulled herself together and brushed the wrinkles from her dress, then went out to join the officers for tea.

“You look a wee bit off your pace, lass,” Captain Ross observed. “Are you feeling well? Perhaps Doctor Wills should listen to your lungs.”

Grace assured the captain that her lungs were perfectly fine, as was the rest of her. She ended with a terse, “Thank you kindly, sir, but you need not concern yourself.” Then, in the awkward silence that followed, Grace blurted out the question that had been plaguing her mind all day: “Are there Africans in London?”

“What a question!” Jonas Brandt said with a laugh. “Of course there are, Miss Grace. Many thousands of them.”

“What do they look like?” Grace asked. “I mean, do they dress like English or like Africans?”

“Like English, of course,” Mister Brandt answered. “Just as we are dressed—frocks and hats for the women, and for the men, breeches, stockings, coats, and waistcoats.”

“Are they slaves and trustees?”

“Not slaves,” Jonas said. “They work at regular English jobs—porters and watermen and hawkers and such. As for trusty, I should suppose they are as dependable as any other men in London.”

The others broke out in hearty laughter.

“You must forgive Mister Brandt,” Captain Ross said to Grace. “He has not had the misfortune to spend time in the slave trade. As it is a trustee’s job to keep slaves in line, and as Englishmen do not keep slaves—not officially, at any rate— London has no need for trustees.”

Grace shook her head in confusion. “No slavery in England? That I cannot understand,” she said. “The Englishmen in Africa—that is to say, men such as Mister Hathaway and my father—well, slaves are their business. And Mister Hathaway is on his way to London to meet with his… his… with his partners in the slave trade.”

Captain Ross sighed and shook his head. “You are not alone in your struggle to understand the contradiction. It is indeed a perplexing situation. It is true that Englishmen are active in the slave trade, yet it is also true that in London almost all Africans are free.” After a moment’s pause he added, “Of this you can be certain, lass: once you reach England’s shores, you will never again need worry about being bought or sold.”

When did I first dream of sailing across the sea to England, the land of my father?
Grace wondered.

Once when she was very young—no more than six years old, surely—she and her playmate Yao climbed to the highest branches of the gharati tree on the far side of her parents’ compound. Gazing over the wall, she had bragged to Yao that she could see the other side of the world. Was that the first time she dreamed of sailing away? Or was it when her father came home from a year at sea and brought a book just for her, with wonderful stories and illustrations all about glorious England? Of a certainty, it was well before she sneaked away from her parents’ house, climbed over her father’s wall, and forever left her family’s English compound on the African savanna. Before her capture and the slave rebellion. Before
the first joint of her forefinger was sliced off and sent to her father. Before her first life came to an abrupt end. All that had happened only five years earlier, and the dream had been with her far longer than five years.

“Miss Grace? Miss Grace?” It was the doctor’s voice. “I say! Have you left us and gone someplace else entirely?”

“Oh… no, sir!” Grace answered quickly. “I do apologize, sir. I was just thinking. Just remembering.”

“Of course you were, my dear,” said the captain. “Now you have two worlds fighting for you.”

“I have always had two worlds, but neither one has ever fought for me,” Grace replied in a voice barely more than a whisper. Rather than offer an explanation, she asked another question: “Are there any in London like me? Not really African and not really English? Half and half, and neither and both?”

“Oh, yes,” said Captain Ross. “Half and half, and some half again. Many neither and many both.”

Grace looked at the teacup in her hand. It was just like the one she had long ago learned to delicately hold. White porcelain, it was, decorated with intricately hand-painted blue forget-me-nots.

“My mother would like this teacup,” Grace said to no one in particular. “She hates everything else English, but she loves English teacups.”

Uneasy laughter sprinkled across the group, but Grace didn’t seem to notice.

“Did you know that my mother, Lingongo, is an African princess? She is, although my father always said that would not count for much in England.”

“Unfortunately, he was most likely quite right,” mused Doctor Wills. “In my experience, one kingdom seldom has much use for the royalty—or the populace—of another.”

Another pensive quiet settled over the group. The waning afternoon had dragged on well past teatime. At the sound of the ship’s bell, Doctor Wills heaved a sigh, shook his head, and announced, “Ah, well, as pleasant as this time has been, work calls to me. So with reluctance, I shall bid you adieu.”

“Yes, yes, the duties of the ship. They ever await us, do they not?” Mister Brandt said with a laugh. He too stood to go. Captain Ross did not ask either to tarry.

Grace also set her teacup on the table. But when she stood and began to say her farewells, Captain Ross interrupted, insisting, “No, no, Miss Grace. Please, sit a wee bit longer.”

A worried look crossed Grace’s face.

“It is not a matter for concern,” the captain said quickly. “On the contrary. You asked several questions of me. Now I have one to ask of you.” Again he urged, “Please… sit.”

Grace perched uneasily on the edge of her chair.

“Have you managed to read anything in the Bible I lent you?” the captain asked.

“Oh, yes!” Grace said. “And I recognize many of Mama Muco’s stories in it. Joseph, the slave who saved his family. Pharaoh of Egypt, so stubborn that God sent Moses to call down plagues that filled the people’s houses with frogs and their fields with locusts and their rivers with blood until the Pharaoh finally let the slaves go free. Naomi, who was far from her land and her people, but she went back home again and found a new and happy life.”

“Excellent, Miss Grace,” the captain said. “I was always partial to the story of Noah, perhaps because he, like myself, was a reluctant man of the sea. How about you? Have you a favorite?”

“Perhaps I would have to say Esther,” Grace said thoughtfully. “She was a slave like me—much greater than me, of course, because she became the queen of the entire land, and I
know that will never happen to me in England! But it doesn’t matter, does it, because being queen wasn’t the important thing about her. The important thing was what she did with her power. Captain Ross, did you know that Queen Esther risked her life to save her people?”

“Yes. I have heard the story of Esther many times.”

“There was a special reason for her to be a slave in that faraway land,” Grace said, “even though Esther didn’t know what the reason was. Mordecai told her, ‘Who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?’ ”

What Grace didn’t tell the captain was that she had read the story of Esther not once, not twice, but six times. And each time she read it, she wondered:
Could this be my story too? Could I be a slave on my way to England for such a time as this?

“If I die, I die!” Grace whispered.

“Come, come, my dear lass! I hardly think it will come to that!” Captain Ross said with a nervous laugh.

He set his teacup down on the tray and stood up abruptly. Grace knew what that meant. It was time for her to thank the captain, bid him goodbye, and retire to her own room. That would be the polite thing to do. It was the only proper thing to do. But Grace could not. Something pressed hard on her mind. One more question of extreme importance.

“Captain Ross,” Grace ventured. “I am afraid you will think me terribly impudent and improper, yet I must ask you. I must beg you, sir. When you next go back to sea, will you take me with you? Please, Captain, will you take me to the United States in America, to the place where they sell the slaves?”

The captain raised his eyebrows and stared at her in disbelief. “I most certainly will do nothing of the kind!” Then, the hurt showing in his blue eyes, he said, “After all I poured out
to you from the depths of my heart, would you still take me for nothing but a slaver?”

“Oh, no, sir, I know you are no slaver. I just mean, in your travels, could you find it in your heart to take me to where my husband is?” Grace’s voice trembled and her eyes filled with tears. “I must find him, Captain Ross!” she pleaded. “Please, oh, please! Will you help me?”

“I would never take a girl of your color into a place so crazed with slavery, Miss Grace. It would be the end of you. No! I most definitely will not!”

Grace covered her face and wept.

“If you have any sense, lass, you will commit your husband to the care of the good Lord in heaven,” Captain Ross said. Although his voice was not unkind, it was firm. “Then you will get down on your knees and thank God that you are on a civilized ship sailing in another direction. By God’s grace, you will never see the United States of America.”

S
et me up another quid!” Joseph Winslow yelled as he pushed toward the cleared circle. But his voice was lost in the roiling din of feverish bets shouted out from all directions, the wagers punctuated by the cheers of winners and curses of losers. Joseph leaned over the pit and fixed his glazed eyes on the battered four of the original thirty-two fighting roosters that still stood on their feet. Vicious metal spurs gleamed bright on their legs, and their beaks, sharpened to razor points, showed flecks of chicken flesh and smears of blood.

“Grant me a wager on the red ’un!” Joseph ordered. He slammed his fist against the side of the pit and motioned in exasperation toward the most intact of the sorely mangled birds.

An elegantly dressed nobleman shoved his way up ahead of Joseph. The nobleman’s shoulders, clothed in the sleek satin of an opulent coat, scornfully pushed Joseph’s greasy shabbiness away from the pit. “Twenty pounds!” the nobleman called as he reached out a handful of silver coins. Immediately, the pit boss grabbed up the nobleman’s bet—and his coins.

“Give a bloke a chance!” Joseph cried in exasperation. “Jist a quid is all me asks!” He ran his hands through his disheveled shock of red hair, then down over his unshaven face. “Jist a quid, mate! Wot’s a quid to the likes o’ ye?”

In all the uproar, it could well be that the nobleman had no idea Winslow was even beside him. But the pit boss knew. And he heard the shabby man’s plea to place a bet despite the fact that the man’s hand was empty. He leaned over to Joseph and demanded, “I takes ye fer a waster, is wot. Does ye even gots a quid?”

“I do!” Joseph shot back in indignation. “And I insists ye put me down fer a quid wager!”

Cockfights sometimes lasted for hours, but this one did not. Even as piles of money whipped from hand to hand to hand, and as shouts rose from a rumble to a roar to pandemonium, a mangled white rooster reared back his head, and, slashing with a sudden fury of spurs, ripped the red rooster to shreds. The uproar accelerated into absolute bedlam as the victorious white rooster charged the two remaining contenders. But Joseph Winslow was no longer watching. He had already lost. Slouched low, he shoved his way back toward the door. He didn’t get far, though. Two burly dockworkers grabbed him, one on each side; lifted his feet off the floor; and shuffled him back to the pit boss, who was waiting with his hand out.

“Yer quid!” the boss demanded.

“I’s good fer it, I is!” Joseph pleaded.

The burly fellows grabbed him up, and although Joseph kicked and argued and fought with all his might, they dragged him over to a basket that hung down from the eaves.

“It only be a quid!” Joseph begged. “Wot’s a quid matter to ye?”

The two stuffed Joseph into the basket and clamped the lid down tight, buckling it securely. Joseph was locked inside.
Ignoring his pleas and cries and curses and threats, they tugged at the attached rope until the basket hung directly over the pit where it swung back and forth.

“And there ye’ll ’ang til dawn, and maybe longer!” the pit boss called as he shook his fist at the hapless Winslow. “Let ever’one see ye fer the cheat ye be!” Glaring around at the others who surrounded the pit, he called out, “An’ let it be a warnin’ to the rest of ye who think ye kin make a wager and not pay!”

As the last contender fell and only the mangled white rooster remained standing, the betting frenzy turned to jeering at Joseph Winslow’s expense. Mortified, he swung in the basket overhead and contemplated the worthlessness of his life.

But the fights didn’t stop. The circle was promptly cleared, and a new round of fighting roosters was prepared for the pit. Their wings were already carefully clipped and their tails trimmed, and all had their beaks filed and sharpened. Now each bird only need be fitted with deadly metal spurs—the champion’s gleaming silver spurs—and they were ready to fight. As Joseph hung over the pit, the crowd of men below jostled for positions around the circle beneath him. Gentry in well-coifed and curled powdered wigs and fine clothes of satin and silk crammed shoulder-to-shoulder with dock ruffians on one side, and on the other, poor wretches with not a shilling to risk. Immediately the fresh crop of fighting roosters set to attacking one another. And immediately the least of the birds fell. Once again the uproar of bets and threats was in full swing.

Sir Geoffrey Philips, who looked as though he would be far more comfortable sipping tea in a well-appointed sitting room than pushing his way through the frenzied crowd at a cockfight on London’s shabby East End, nevertheless plunged headlong into the wild crowd. He shot a threatening look at
Augustus Jamison, who lagged behind him, hungrily eying the gold and silver as it changed hands. Sir Geoffrey’s fingers traced the bulges in his own purse.

“Gus, do come along!” Sir Geoffrey called out to Mister Jamison.

But the admonition did no good whatsoever. Already the spellbinding noise of betting had grabbed Mister Jamison and pulled him in with its fever pitch.

Sir Geoffrey did his best to push past the two burly guards and head directly for the pit boss, but it was an impossible task—until he pulled out a bag of gold guineas and waved it for the boss to see. Then, miraculously, a path opened up before him. He could not help thinking that his would have been a considerably easier task had Gus Jamison been at his side where he belonged, for Gus was an impressive hulk of a man. Unfortunately, however, Mister Jamison had a weakness for a game of chance—any game of chance. It was a struggle for him to keep his mind on the job at hand.

Sir Geoffrey did his best to make the pit boss understand him. He pointed up at Joseph Winslow in the basket, then he tried to pantomime the men letting Winslow down and unlocking the cage to set him free. Immediately the pit boss reached for the coins, but Sir Geoffrey refused to loosen his tight grip on the bag.

“Bring ’im down,” the boss ordered.

Only after Joseph Winslow was hauled down and released from the basket did Sir Geoffrey drop the bag into the pit boss’s eagerly outstretched hand. And only then, when the negotiations were over and done, did Augustus Jamison amble over and join them.

Joseph Winslow had no idea what was going on, and he didn’t really care. He was just glad to be set free from his prison. Sir Geoffrey took one of Joseph’s arms and Mister Jamison
grabbed the other, and the two set about the task of weaving Winslow back toward the door.

The pit boss took one last opportunity to administer a swift kick to the seat of Joseph Winslow’s pants. “And don’t ye never darken this door agin!” he called after them. “Swindlers ain’t welcome in this establishment!”

When the three reached the walk outside and closed the door on the din of the cockfight, Joseph ran a dirty sleeve over his blotchy face and puffed out his cheeks in relief. “I thanks ye kindly, I does,” he said. “Jist a misunderstandin’, is all. I was on a winnin’ streak, and me—”

“You are Mister Winslow?” Sir Geoffrey Philips asked. “Mister Joseph Winslow?”

“The very one and the same,” Joseph said. “Some calls me Admiral, for I be that—”

“Mister Jamison and I are on our way to a coffeehouse one street over. Will you permit us the honor of your company?”

Joseph looked at them warily. “A pint o’ ale would do me better,” he answered. “An’ a bit o’ somethin’ to ease the grumblin’ in me stomach.” When neither man responded but merely kept walking, Joseph said, “I ’ppreciates yer ’elp, but I cain’t pay ye back right this night. Me creditors owes me, they do.”

“It is not a debt, sir,” said Augustus Jamison. “Consider it a gift… to you from Lingongo.”

Joseph could not have been more stricken if the moon had fallen from the sky and landed at his feet. His face blanched and his tongue froze in his mouth. If the two men hadn’t caught him, he would surely have fallen on his face.

“Me woman… Lingongo…” Joseph stammered. “She be in Africa.”

“Yes, we know,” Sir Geoffrey Philips said.

“She be a wicked, wicked woman. Nothin’ wot ’appened there were my fault. I was a ’onest man, I was. A English gentleman, I was. Admiral Joseph Winslow, that’s wot they called me there. An’ they showed me respect when they said it too. No more they don’t, though. They don’t do that no more.”

Sir Geoffrey, walking stiff and tall with his carved walking stick, and Augustus Jamison, his face blank and unreadable, walked in silence as Joseph prattled on. They took care to steer Joseph around a man who lay dead and unattended on the roadside. Such an occurrence was not uncommon in this part of the city, where the worst off of London’s down-and-outers too often departed life with no one to bury them. As did most of the upper class who had occasion to walk the streets of London’s gritty East End, Sir Geoffrey and Mister Jamison simply ignored the dead man, just as they ignored the general dirt and grime and the piles of rotting rubbish. It was not like the West End, where remarkably lofty standards stood in stark contrast to these.

Finally even Joseph shut his mouth.

“It is a pitiful thing to be stripped of respect,” Augustus Jamison allowed.

“Aye,” Joseph agreed. “That it be, sir. That it most assuredly be.”

“To be left hanging in a basket for all the world to mock and ridicule.” Mister Jamison shook his head sadly at the very thought. “That is indeed a wretchedly low state for a man to sink to—especially one who was once so honorable and respected a gentleman.”

“A gentleman and an admiral,” Joseph corrected.

“Yes,” said Sir Geoffrey. “Of course. A gentleman and an admiral.”

“And all this time your woman—your
African
woman— has been free to live in comfort and luxury, and to tell tales at your expense.”

“Is that wot she be doin’?” Joseph demanded. “That woman be tellin’ tales ’bout me? Still mockin’ me even after I be gone?” Rage boiled up in Joseph and he clenched his fists in fury.

“It does not have to be so,” suggested Sir Geoffrey.

“Wot do ye mean by that?” Joseph demanded.

“Only this,” answered Sir Geoffrey. “Even now, it is possible for you to be the victorious one. It can be you who walks proud, you who wears the fancy new suit of clothes, you who eats fine meals.”

“And it can be you with a bag of gold coins in your hand ready to wager on the cockfights,” said Mister Jamison, his own eyes glistening. “Or you to test your luck with a roll of the dice. Or you to buy yourself a place in a game of Lanterloo, if that is your preference. It appears to me that, given a fair chance, you might well see your fortunes change.”

“Perhaps you will once again be called Admiral and greeted with a salute,” Sir Geoffrey suggested.

“Yes, yes! That be true, jist like I always says!” Joseph Winslow insisted—and he fairly slathered at the thought. “But ’ow kin I make it ’appen? Tell me, fair sirs, ’ow kin I git me chance?”

Sir Geoffrey leaned close and whispered in a conspiratorial tone, “Very well, my good man, we shall tell you.” He took Joseph by the arm and steered him through the open door of a coffeehouse, then over to a quiet table where they could have privacy, yet still enjoy the welcoming warmth of the fireplace. “Mister Jamison and I have a proposition for you, Mister Winslow. I think you will find it agreeable. Most agreeable, indeed.”