That morning I had no qualms about taking money from the tin. The bus fare wasn’t that much that it would be missed and I was using it for a good cause, not the stupid things that my father detested so much. I gladly handed it over to the conductor in exchange for that little ticket on the number 41 that morning. I sat upstairs and listened to the branches scraping along the bus windows as I was carried towards Park Street, towards the library, towards Sally and hopefully towards answers. I thought of the girl and the uncomfortable ride of an old bus swinging around corners and panting up steep hills barely even registered with me.
I arrived at College Green, at the bottom of Park Street, at about eight thirty. The library didn’t open until nine so I spent half an hour sitting on a bench near the statue of Queen Victoria watching the world go by. Everything looked so normal, so ordinary, so dirty and broken. The man-made world had always seemed artificial and disjointed to me. Unnatural constructions trampling their busy march of progress over the beauty of nature. In that half an hour the world seemed as it always had before I had seen the girl. Just normal. Not affected in any way by the brutal death of a beautiful girl. The world kept turning, the banks were open, people went shopping, the ants in the colony were not affected by the death of a single creature. Life went on. The weight of numbers would ensure that losses didn’t matter.
At nine o’clock I went over to the library. As I reached the doors Sally was there on the other side, turning a large key in the lock. She pushed open a door.
“I’ve got something to show you Hun.”
I followed Sally into the library. She stopped at the front desk and put her hand on a pile of six thick books.
“After work yesterday I went up to the university library. I know a couple of the librarians there and they let me borrow these but I only have them for today. They cover European history from the time of Charlemagne up to the end of the sixteenth century. These are the best and most complete authorities on the subject. If there’s anything to find we’ll find it here. Before we go trawling through these things though I have to ask, what makes you think that girl is actually linked to Charlemagne? The Sons of Charlemagne might just be the name of a company, or a rock band, or a social club. Do you have anything that links the two other than a name?”
I knew what Sally was talking about. It had crossed my mind as well. It seemed so unlikely that a king from the eight hundreds could be linked in any way to a dead black girl in Coombe Dingle in nineteen eighty-five. It was more likely that a group, whatever kind of group it was, had appropriated the name for their own cause. But it was all I had, the only line of enquiry open to me. I had one clue that I hadn’t shown Sally. Maybe the business card held the answer.
“I don’t know if it’s linked to the actual Charlemagne. Christ before all this I’d never even heard of Charlemagne. It seems impossible I know but I know what I saw and what I heard.”
I took a deep breath.
“There is something else.” This was it, feet first into the deep end and hope Sally didn’t drown me. “I broke into the house and I found a business card.”
I reached into my blazer pocket and took out the card. I handed it to Sally. She was looking between me and the card with both surprise and interest. As quickly as her eyebrows had raised they moved into a frown as she took the card and examined it.
“You broke into the house?”
“Yep.”
Her entire face seemed to be smiling at me.
“Ha! Well, aren’t you a just a little badass! Tell me everything!”
Sally sat back against the desk, still holding the card, looking at it periodically as I told her. I told her about the carpet that was missing and the business card under the lamp. I told her that the crest was that of Charlemagne, she nodded in agreement at that. I told her that I didn’t know what the number on the back meant but it had to be important to be hidden under a lamp. I didn’t elaborate on my hiding place at home but I told her that I knew you only hid the things that needed hiding. Sally nodded in agreement at that too. After I’d finished Sally looked at me and back to the card. She moved her lips about as she thought and ran the fingers of her left hand through her hair.
“If the girl was a slave, if it was this group The Sons of Charlemagne that traded her, maybe this number on the card is a property number. Traders would assign numbers to slaves to dehumanise them and make record keeping easier. If that’s what this is then your girl was slave number 16354298. Now if that’s true it means there were over sixteen million other slaves before her. You don’t trade sixteen million slaves in a heartbeat. So, if this is a slave number, these people, whoever they are, have been doing this for a long time.”
Sally gave me back the card and turned to the desk. She found a scrap of paper and a pen and started scribbling numbers. After a minute or so she was done. She turned back to me and showed me the number circled on the paper. I looked confused.
“It’s twelve hundred years since Charlemagne,” Sally explained, “so if we divide sixteen million slaves by the twelve hundred years since Charlemagne we get an average of about thirteen thousand slaves a year. I think you’re right, I think this does go back that long.”
Sally put her hand on the pile of books again.
“We need to get started.”
“Yeah but where do we start. I was doing that yesterday and none of it made any sense to me. All the sons are called the same fucking thing, there must be hundreds of books on them, we haven’t got time to read them all. I’ve got till the end of the week but if I’m not back in school next week I’m gonna get found out.”
“You’re right Hun medieval history is tough going. The thing is there’s ….” Sally stopped mid-sentence. She tipped her head upwards and to the right and frowned slightly. I already knew that look, she was thinking of something.
“Maybe we don’t need medieval history Hun. You’re right it’s a minefield and any history of the time will undoubtedly have references to Charlemagne or his sons. We could spend weeks chasing references that turn out to be nothing. Maybe we need to box clever here. Maybe instead of looking at the references we’d expect to find we need to find the references that don’t belong. The Carolingians were gone by the mid ninth century.”
It suddenly clicked for me as well.
“There shouldn’t be any references for them past there!”
“I mean there’ll be some for a few centuries after that but by the eleven or twelve hundreds and past that there should be hardly any. If we start in the thirteen or fourteen hundreds we’ll cut down the workload drastically. Any reference to Charlemagne, the crest of Charlemagne, any son of Charlemagne might be what we’re looking for. When we find a point of reference we can track them from there to here.”
I can’t be sure but I think I began bouncing on the balls of my feet at that point.
“If we trace them, write it all down, get the evidence, we can go to the police. They’ll have to listen if it’s in front of them!”
My excitement at seeming closer to the truth almost obscured the thought that had popped its head around the corner of my mind. I was so eager to get going I almost allowed it to dissolve without recognition. Just in time my mind caught sight of it and dragged it before my eyes.
“Hold on. I don’t understand. If this is a European thing, how does it connect to a black girl? Shouldn’t we be looking at Africa?”
Sally stopped picking through the pile of books she had borrowed from the university.
“You’re right, this is obviously bigger than just Europe, this thing must be world-wide. I mean if you’ve been trading slaves since Charlemagne you would definitely be involved in Africa. India as well, South America with the conquistadors maybe? Hell, they could be everywhere.”
Suddenly the task had become so huge again that we both sank a little. Sally leant against the desk and I sat on a nearby chair. We thought in silence for a few minutes at least, though it felt like we were in limbo for hours. At last S
ally moved, stood, put her hand on my shoulder and spoke purposefully.
“Right Hun, we’re not gonna find answers sitting here doing nothing. I’m gonna start with these books from the university, you go and start on African History and slavery. Just go along the line, take a book, check the index for references to Charlemagne, sons of, crest of, that sort of thing. If there’s nothing in the index put it back and move on to the next one. If you find a reference, look it up. If it seems to connect keep the book. Make a pile and we’ll photocopy the pages. O.K?”
I was so glad Sally was helping me. I would have given up long ago, just as I had given up for the whole of the summer. I was still angry with myself about that and the thought of giving up again spurred me to action.
“Got it,” I replied as I stood, “where’s African history?”
Sally gestured towards the back of the library.
“Go to European where you were yesterday, keep going back and a few rows from the back on the right.”
“O.K.” I picked up my bag and started off in search of African history.
“I’ll come get you at lunch O.K Hun?” Sally called after me. I turned as I was walking, just like I had with my sister that morning.
“O.K.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I spent the next few hours going through book after book after book on African history and the slave trade. There was a metronomic nature to taking a book, flicking to the index, running my finger down the pages, then returning the book to the shelf when no reference was found and moving along the line to the next book. The smell of the books and the dry, warm air in that place tired my eyes. By the time Sally came to find me at half eleven my legs ached from standing for two and a half hours and my pipe cleaner arms weren’t doing much better.
“How you doing Hun?” Sally asked as she rounded the corner of the aisle. She looked at the small pile of books on the floor.
“Are those for us?”
I nodded as I pushed a book back onto the shelf.
“Yeah I’ve found three references. It’s not much.”
“It’s more than we had this morning Hun and I’ve got a few interesting bits too. Come on, time for lunch, My treat.”
“Oh, I’ve got a packed lunch in my bag.” I don’t think I’d ever said anything so pathetic in my life before. I felt like such a child, standing there in my school uniform pointing to my bag. Sally just smiled.
“I’ve got a packed lunch too Hun but I think we need a little treat, come on!” and with that she disappeared again. I dutifully followed and met her at the front desk.
“There’s a café across the green, Woode’s, do you know it?” Sally asked as she grabbed her handbag and made for the door.
“No, I don’t go to café’s much.” I replied. Christ, I couldn’t have sounded more feeble if I’d tried! Sally just smiled, again, and started walking.
“You’ll like this one, they have excellent chocolate fudge cake!”
Woode’s was a festival of dark wood and brass. Set up much like a school cafeteria it had food displayed along a walkway that people shuffled along with trays, picking up what they wanted. The line slowed where the indecisive dithered over the choices and at the end where the production of fresh coffees and teas bottlenecked the patrons before they slipped towards the two tills. Past the tills was a seating area straight out of my Parisian fever dream. The eclectic mix of students, professionals, tourists and workmen were all draped on dark wood chairs encircling tables that were a little too close together for English comfort. The heavy smells of a hundred coffees and more cigarettes hung in the air, new patrons and departing ones briefly moving them like a plane cutting through cloud.
Being the child I was I guiltily picked the cheapest food I could find, an egg sandwich wrapped in cling film and sat on a chipped white plate. Sally asked me if I was sure that was all I wanted, told me I could have whatever I wanted. I said I was fine but she insisted on buying me a coke and a piece of that chocolate fudge cake. Sally picked up a prawn salad, had the young guy behind the counter do her a plate of chips, took a piece of the cake for herself and ordered a large black coffee. Sally led the way through the room to a free table against a wall. As we ate we talked about what we had found out that morning.
“Tell me what you found this morning Hun.” Sally began, sticking her fork into her pile of chips. I looked at those chips and back to my egg sandwich. I hated my parents for making me feel so guilty every time I asked for something that I was now sat in a wonderful café with a fucking egg sandwich in front of me. I consoled myself that I had chocolate cake to look forward to, thanks to Sally. She was right about that chocolate fudge cake, it was a wonderful thing.
“I went through books about Africa and slavery. There’s a bit about the construction of a castle at Elmina on the Gold Coast. The Portuguese king sent a load of ships and men to build a castle in the 1400’s. I can’t remember the dates properly but anyway they were building the castle as part of a port for ivory and gold. The book says that one of the ships had aboard it an official who was nicknamed The Charlemagne. That’s all it says so I looked up the castle. It was used for the Atlantic slave trade until 1814, even after the Dutch seized it. Slaves were taken to Madeira to work on sugar plantations or to Brazil or sold to Spanish colonies. They were taken from Elmina to Lisbon and on from there. The Castle at Elmina carries the crest of Charlemagne above its main gate. The book I read it in said the Portuguese could have enslaved four and a half million Africans.”
Sally had been eating while I explained what I had found and now she stopped and looked me in the eye with an intensity that to begin with was a little scary and a bit sexy. She put her fork down without taking her gaze from mine.
“That’s a big deal Hun. You’ve may have found a big piece of the puzzle there.” She briefly broke eye contact to locate her coffee and then fixed me again.
“If The Sons of Charlemagne were running slave ships from Elmina they would have had the monopoly for over three hundred years!”
“But how did they become involved with the King of Portugal?” I asked. “I thought Charlemagne was German.”
“Frankish Hun, but close enough. As to how they got to Portugal, I might have the answer. I think they started out as mercenaries for hire all over Europe. I started looking through European history and I found a direct reference to a son of Charlemagne. On the evening of 25th November 1120 King Henry I of England set sail for home from Barfleur in northern France. One of the ships in the flotilla, The White Ship, didn’t leave until midnight. The White Ship was captained by Thomas FitzStephen, grandson of Stephen FitzAirard who had carried William the Conqueror across the channel aboard his ship ‘Mora’ in 1066. It is commonly believed that Thomas offered his ship to Henry in a hope of gaining favour, as his grandfather had done with William in 1066. Henry had made arrangements already and so told Thomas that he would carry his sons Richard and William. Again, common wisdom is that after an evening of drinking the ship disembarked at around midnight with passengers aboard. Shortly after setting out The White Ship struck a rock and was sunk, taking every drunken soul with it except one. Berold, a butcher from Rouen, was picked up by fishermen the next morning and proudly told his tale of survival to any who would listen. Well that’s the accepted truth of it. I found a chronicle that has a different version.
It's an anonymous account written in 1148 that states that The White Ship did not sink by accident. The writer claims to have spoken to Berold shortly before his death. Berold claimed that Stephen of Blois had paid ‘A Son of Charlemagne’ to murder all those on board The White Ship. It was intended that Henry would accept the offer from Thomas FitzStephen and that his assassination would set in motion a train of events that would lead to Stephen becoming King. When Henry refused the offer, Stephen went ahead and had his sons killed. Berold told of a man ‘a silent Frank’ who arrived at the shoreline after the flotilla had left and spoke only to Stephen of Blois in whispers. Stephen excuse
d himself from sailing shortly after. He complained of feeling ill and departed swiftly. This silent Frank had with him good food and plenty of drink and so the captain, the oarsmen and the passengers set about enjoying themselves. Berold claimed that he wasn’t much of a drinker so wasn’t blind drunk when, at about midnight, the silent Frank, the Son of Charlemagne, led the two princes and Thomas FitzStephen aboard the White Ship. He returned a few minutes later, alone, and went from the shoreline towards the town. There was the sound of a horn and when he returned the Frank had with him twenty or so men, all heavily armed. These men rounded up and chained the drunken sailors and passengers and led them off into the darkness. Berold and two oarsmen were spared. The Frank at last spoke to Berold. He offered him a large sum of money if he would row out with the two drunken sailors, kill them and scuttle the ship. The money was also to buy a lie. He was to wait in the water until found and proclaim that all hands had gone down with the ship when it struck a rock. He was to tell anyone and everyone that he alone had survived the sinking of The White Ship. The anonymous chronicle claims Berold confessed all of this on his death bed, stating that he had lived his life in fear of the Son of Charlemagne.
The account is written off by scholars as a fabrication. The fact that the writer did not attach his name to the chronicle and the absence of any other corroborating accounts or evidence is said to show that it was a conspiracy theory dreamt up later. Perhaps to try to discredit Stephen and help another with a claim to the throne of England the chronicle is discounted by the very nature of its wild claims. It’s an interesting document though don’t you think Hun? A shadowy figure, a Frank who claims to be a Son of Charlemagne or work for one, people being led off in chains to God knows where? Maybe Berold the butcher was telling the truth. Maybe what we have here is evidence of The Sons operating as early as 1120.
Those who broke the boy: The Sons of Charlemagne Book One Page 10