The Blackbirder

by James Nelson

  The rowers were clumsy and inexperienced, save for James and his people, and the boat was so packed with armed men that movement was difficult, but with Madshaka calling cadence they managed to get it under way. Once it was clear of the ship’s side Madshaka slipped the sweep into the tholes on the transom, using the long oar like a rudder, a rudder with considerably more leverage and turning power than the former one.

  They pulled through the dark and they made no noise, save for the creak of the oars, the drip of water from the blades. All along the dark shore were spots of light, lanterns or cooking fires still burning at that late hour.

  In the moonlight the surf flashed gray, and soon the pounding of the water on the beach drowned out the sound of the longboat’s oars, despite their being a half mile yet from the first breakers. The smells of the forest enveloped them, the high-pitched cry of a bird or an animal occasionally piercing the roar of the surf. It was his home. He was back.

  Madshaka grinned. He could no longer help it. He had never felt so alive, so happy, so hopeful in his life. He was the hero returning, the conquering hero. Come back with a ship full of plunder from clean across the Atlantic. Come back with an army.

  He thought of his darkest moments, a month into the Middle Passage, when he was so near death, even with taking food from others. He had despaired then of ever arriving at the place he was at now. Foolish man! As if the gods would ever abandon their most perfect creature!

  He felt the after end of the longboat lifting with the first effects of the surf. He spit on his hands, took a hard grip on the sweep, gave it a slight pull to starboard to get their bow aligned. Two more strokes and the big craft was starting to buck, the white water was boiling around her gunnels. He could see wide eyes staring out at the foam, frightened eyes.

  ‘Stop!’ Madshaka ordered, and the men froze, their blades in the water. The surf lifted them again, and then they fell, this time with a sickening motion.

  Madshaka stood on the stern thwart, his ears attuned to the sound of the water, his eyes judging the frequency of the rollers, his legs feeling the rise and fall of the boat. He was the lion, timing his pounce, the cheetah knowing by instinct just the second to bolt. The stern came up, up, then settled, and Madshaka called with all the urgency he felt, ‘Pull! Pull!’

  And the men pulled, pulled hard and fast, and the boat shot ahead, all but keeping pace with the breaking water. Madshaka felt the stern slough around. He leaned into the sweep, using that great lever to haul the boat back in line.

  The wave passed and another had them and their speed built as it lifted them and hurled them toward the shore and despite himself Madshaka could not help letting out a great whoop, a battle cry, an expression of pure exhilaration as he alone, through strength of arm and mind, took that overloaded boat and those frightened children through the surf, the surf that had killed so many weaker men.

  Another wave, but they were through the deadly part now, and Madshaka felt the blade of his sweep grind in the sand and then the forefoot of the boat struck with an impact that made the boat shudder.

  He began to order the men out, to tell them to haul the boat up the beach, and he was wondering how many of them would actually dare get out of the boat, when he saw James and Cato and Quash and Good Boy and Joshua leap over the gunnel and take the boat in their hands, pulling it forward when their feet found bottom, letting the boat take them when they did not.

  There was something disappointing in that, and Madshaka felt as if a part of his victorious landing had been sullied by someone other than himself displaying knowledge and bravery.

  But it did not matter. James could have his last little moment before he died in battle.

  The men in the water hauled the boat further and further onto the sand, aided by the surging water, until those others judged it safe to leap out. One by one they went over the side, lightening the longboat and adding their effort to pulling it along, until soon it was high and dry, beyond the reach of even the most powerful surf. And only then did Madshaka unship his sweep and step ashore, regal and dry.

  He savored the feel of sand underfoot, the constant but subtle undercurrent of sound: surf breaking, wind rustling the fronds of tall palms.

  The French pilot had brought the ship to just the spot. Madshaka knew that stretch of beach as well as any place on earth. The curve of the tree line, the well-beaten trail – all but a road, really – through the forest, the palm trees like columns in front of some stately home, it was as if it were all his.

  He remained silent, let his army wait for his next word as he enjoyed the moment. He moved past them, up the beach, toward the trees. Then he stopped, turned back to them, raised his arms over his head.

  He had their attention now, every eye locked on him. It was a moment of high drama and he held it, let it build, then turned and brought his arms down like twin axes, pointer fingers extended, gesturing toward the dark road. With a wave he began to trot off up the beach and behind him his silent army of black pirates surged after.

  Once they were on the wide trail, once they were enveloped by the woods, Madshaka slowed his pace. It would be better to arrive at the factory fresh than to arrive quickly. There would be no pickets along the road, no guards until they reached the actual gates of the factory. Slavers felt perfectly safe in Whydah and took no more than the most elementary precautions.

  The moon might have set; Madshaka could not tell. Little light would penetrate the thick canopy of the forest. But he did not need much light, because he knew that trail so well, and what little illumination he got from the stars was enough to tell him where he was, how far from the factory.

  They walked for half an hour through the forest before they saw the first flash of earthly light, a lantern or a fire, glimpsed through a gap in the trees left by some quirk of nature.

  Madshaka raised his hand. ‘Hold up.’ He said it in Kru but the others understood his meaning and stopped. ‘I see to the guards. Wait until I return,’ he said, translating it into each language, and then when he knew they understood, he slipped away down the trail.

  One hundred yards and the trail widened out like the mouth of a river, opened onto twenty or so cleared acres of forest, and in the middle of that, an English slave factory.

  It was not the only such storehouse for slaves in Whydah, not even the only English factory, but the others did not matter. This was the one. These were the men who had betrayed him.

  He paused for a moment and let his eyes wander over the familiar sight. This factory, where Madshaka the grumete had become Madshaka the slaver. Where he had learned that the real wealth was to be had by plunging into the forest where the white men dared not go and rounding up those sorry people and marching them here, where they could be sold to the white men who possessed unlimited amounts of money, rum, gunpowder, guns, swords, knives.

  The lion and the antelope. It was the way of things.

  He was better at that game than any, and soon he controlled nearly all of the slaves coming into that factory from the backcountry. The white men did not care for that. It made Madshaka too powerful by half.

  The white men at the slave factory did not care to have a lion in their midst.

  So they had hit him on the head and sold him as a slave himself. There would be others to take his place, others more easily controlled than was Madshaka. It was not the first time white slavers had pulled such tricks. But they were not to be pulled on him.

  The factory’s outer defense, if such it could be called, was no more than a mud wall built up to a height of six feet. The wall formed a great square, each side two hundred feet long, that defined the courtyard within. In the middle of the front wall was the main gate, two wood plank doors shut tight. The worn trail ran from under those doors in a straight line to where Madshaka was standing and then past, a trail beaten by the hundreds upon hundreds of people who had come through that gate and made the one-way trip down to the beach and the ships beyond.

  Over the top of the
wall Madshaka could see the tall thatched roofs of the guards’ house, the factor’s house, and the trunk, a big common prison where the slaves were kept, awaiting their turn.

  Torches mounted along the wall every fifty feet or so threw wide arcs of light, discouraging any clandestine approach over the open ground between the forest and the factory. It might even have given Madshaka pause, had he not known perfectly well that the one guard making his desultory tour along the top of the wall was the only sentry on duty, that the factor and his men would be drunk at that hour, and that barring any cry from the man on the wall they would continue to drink in peace, as sure of their safety as a child abed. Slavers did not feel threatened in Whydah.

  Of all that, Madshaka was certain, but because he was smart and cunning as well as bold he remained crouched at the end of the trail for a full twenty minutes and watched, just watched. The sentry – he recognized Higgens’s slovenly form – continued his slow, lethargic patrol. There was no other movement.

  At last Madshaka moved, swiftly, crouched low, making his way along the tree line, completely invisible to anyone staring out through the torchlight. He skirted off to the right, stepping carefully, keeping his eyes on Higgens, who was moving away from him toward the left end of the wall.

  When he was at the point where the forest made its closest approach to the factory wall, and when Higgens’s back was turned, he raced across the open ground, powerful and silent.

  He reached the corner of the factory and stopped himself with his hands against the wall, let his arms absorb the impact of his great momentum. He pressed his back against the dry mud and he waited.

  Five minutes, ten minutes, and then he heard Higgens’s sloppy footfalls on the crumbling wall overhead, coming closer, closer. Madshaka shook his arms, limbered them up, tested the spring in his legs.

  The crunch of shoes was just over him now, a bit of dirt knocked loose, falling on his neck, and then Madshaka sprung like a snake striking out. He saw Higgens’s startled face, his recoiling body, heard the beginning of a shout as he grabbed the guard by the ankles and jerked him off the wall. Higgens fell in a great, awkward heap, arms flailing out, his musket coming to rest on the wall where he had dropped it in surprise.

  Madshaka pounced, rolling Higgens over, knees on his chest, pinning him, one hand over the man’s mouth, his dirk flashing in the other. He could have killed him that instant but he did not, because in the last seconds of his life he wanted Higgens to know who it was who had killed him. So he held the man down and grinned at him, a horrible leer, and thought of how Higgens had once grinned at him the same way as he jerked the chain attached to the iron collar around his neck.

  He saw Higgens’s eyes, already wide with terror, register recognition, and then go wider still.

  Higgens began to thrash, to try and dislodge Madshaka, but it was futile, like trying to push over a stone wall. Madshaka leaned close, whispered, ‘That’s right, Higgens. It’s Madshaka. I’m back. And now, time for you to die.’

  A muffled shriek under his hand and then he cut Higgens’s throat, sinking the blade of the dirk down through soft flesh until he felt it grate on bone. He held the white man down as he writhed in his death agony, felt the hot blood pulsing over his arm and hand, and then Higgens was still.

  Madshaka leaned back, looked around. No one else in sight, no indication of any alarm from within. He sat and listened to the silence for a moment more, until he was certain that Higgens’s murder had gone unnoticed. He wiped the blade of his dirk on Higgens’s breeches and sheathed it, then trotted back to the tree line and followed it back to his waiting men.

  ‘I kill the sentry,’ he whispered. ‘Now we go, silent, silent, like the leopard.’ This he said in all their languages, slowly, so they would understand the import of his words, then said, ‘Follow me, stay close, yell when I do.’

  He turned, headed back toward the factory, felt the powerful and dangerous presence of the men at his back. He moved along the wide trail, paused where it opened onto the clearing, but still he could see no sign of alarm. He glanced back at his men, their faces set and determined. Their blood was up, he could see. They were ready for mayhem and slaughter.

  He headed off along the tree line again, the same route he had taken to get close to Higgens. Behind him, the padding of sixty pairs of feet made no more noise than the wind in the trees. Less, in fact. He arrived at that point where the tree line was closest to the wall and stopped again and let his men assemble for the final assault. He bounced on the balls of his feet, his whole body tensed, ready for this moment.

  No one betrayed Madshaka and lived long to brag on it.

  He drew his cutlass, and all along the line his men drew their edged weapons as well. He held the steel aloft, looked left and right, checked his men’s readiness, then stepped out, leading the charge at the wall, and behind him the others followed. He picked up his pace as he moved over the open ground, the wall less than one hundred feet away, the madness building, building with his speed and momentum.

  And then he was at the wall but it seemed as if it was no impediment at all. His foot found a chink in the crumbling surface and his legs carried him up and his hands were flat on the top and the next thing he knew he was standing on the wall, and the factory, that familiar factory, lay spread out below him.

  It was time to announce his arrival. He could not hold it in a second more, for he surely would explode if he tried.

  The war cry started in his gut and spread up and out, filled his lungs and his throat and finally burst from his mouth with a thunderous and frightening whoop, and on either side of him his men were gathered on the wall and they began shouting as well, the same terrifying sound of warriors ready for the fight, the fight with no quarter.

  The doors to the guardhouse burst open, fifty feet away, the doorway framed in weak light from within, and half-clothed men stumbled out, muskets in hand, right into the face of the horrible shouting, and Madshaka yelled, ‘That right, gentlemen. Madshaka’s back.’

  Then Madshaka leapt from the wall down into the compound just as the first of the guards fired. He heard a scream from behind as one of his own men took the bullet, but the rest were behind him, leaping down, racing forward.

  More muskets blazed away, flashes of light, the bang of the gun, and his men screaming, screaming, in fury, in fear, in agony. Madshaka felt a bullet whiz by but there was no chance that he might be struck down. There was a shield of pure energy around him that would not be penetrated.

  And then he was up with the first of the guards, all of whom had discharged their weapons and now were helpless because they had no skill for fighting, they could only fire muskets.

  The man in front of him, a fat man, white face sweating, terrified, saw death coming at him in the form of a huge, leering black man, the death he feared most. He swung his musket like a club at that face, but Madshaka caught the butt of the gun before it developed any force and with the other hand drove his cutlass through the man’s fat white face.

  His army was there, falling on the guards so fast that they were not even able to retreat to their guardhouse, but were flanked and cut off and hacked to death where they stood.

  The door to the factor’s house was open, just for an instant, and Madshaka saw John van der Haagen, the factor – lean, vicious, his eyes like a snake’s – staring out, saw his assistant and some of the others behind him, and then he slammed the door shut, as if that would protect him from the slaughter.

  Madshaka looked around him. The Kru warriors, the real nucleus of his army, were clustered there, as he had instructed them. He gestured to them and they followed him at a run, racing for the factor’s house.

  The closed door was no more an obstacle than was the outer wall. Madshaka hit it with his shoulder and it collapsed in front of him and he was in the factor’s house, which was no more than a hut, albeit a big one, with a grass roof and a few rooms.

  It was the main room they were in now, with its long table sprea
d with bottles and pipes and bowls and playing cards. Two lanterns hung from a beam overhead, making the room the most brightly lit space in the compound.

  As he had guessed, the factor and his cronies had been carousing, drinking and gambling and working up the courage to go and drag one of the hapless slave girls from the trunk. But now they stood against the far wall, in breeches and sweat-soaked shirts, as if they were preparing for execution. Madshaka pushed into the room and his men flowed in behind him. Stevens, who was the assistant factor, raised a pistol in a trembling hand and fired.

  The bullet missed Madshaka by inches – he could feel its passing – and struck the frame of the door.

  Madshaka stopped, looked at the splintered wood, looked up at Stevens.

  The assistant factor’s hand was shaking harder now, his mouth open, sweat standing out in beads on his forehead. Like Higgens, like the fat guard, he saw before him now the very thing that made him wake in terror in the night: a dangerous African, sold into slavery, come back for him. The gun slipped pathetically from his fingers and made a thudding sound on the dirt floor.

  It did not matter that Stevens had fired at him. He would have died regardless. They were all traitors and bastards, but Stevens was the worst and the most expendable.

  ‘Madshaka …’ said Van der Haagen, a Dutchman in English employ.

  Madshaka ignored him. A demonstration first, to make certain they all knew his position, and then talk. He sheathed his cutlass, took two long steps across the room, grabbed Stevens by the collar of his waistcoat and jerked him closer.

  ‘Madshaka!’ Van der Haagen shouted, but Madshaka whipped out his dirk and drove it into Stevens’s gut, held him there, pinned on the long blade, their faces inches apart, their breath mingling. He could smell the stale tang of dried sweat on Stevens’s clothes, the rum and smoke on his breath, the shit and piss that he could no longer hold in.

  Stevens gasped, his eyes bulged, and gurgling sounds came from his throat. Then Madshaka twisted the blade and pushed Stevens away and the assistant factor fell to the ground and blood erupted from his mouth. But he was not dead, and Madshaka knew he would not be for an hour at least, and his writhing and choking on his own blood created just the background he wanted for their discussion.