The Sparks Fly Upward

by Diana Norman

  She, however, refused to accompany them. Nor would she so much as profit a Bristol coffeehouse by partaking of a cup in it.

  ‘Where you going to be, missus?’ Sanders said. ‘We can’t leave you alone.’

  She was momentarily at a loss; the last time she’d visited Bristol had been with Andra, for a meeting between him and a Cornish mine owner investigating the use of drainage engines in his tin mine. They’d stayed in the house of one of Andra’s Methodist friends who, like most Methodists, campaigned for abolition, but it had been years ago and she doubted if she could find the house again, even if the man still owned it.

  However, there was one thing Makepeace knew well, and that was waterfronts. She headed towards the river, followed worriedly by the others, scrutinizing each inn and tavern as she passed, her dissatisfaction with Bristol not being improved by the occasional poster for runaways. ‘John Fairbrook, sea captain and warden of Saint Mary Redcliffe Church, offers a handsome reward for anyone recapturing a negro man named James, a native of Jamaica, five feet six inches high, scar on left cheek ...’

  ‘What you looking for, missus?’ Sanders said.

  ‘I’ll know it when I see it.’

  She found it, with its rear tucked against an escarpment overlooking the docks and a long stretch of the River Avon. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘I’ll stay here till you come back.’

  Sanders was alarmed. ‘You can’t go in there, missus. It ain’t even a tavern, it’s a . . . an ale house.’

  It was charity to call it even that. It was a mean little wooden building, isolated on its perch of land like a bedraggled, querulous owl. Its name board had half rotted and read THE KING’S ..., leaving the reader to guess at what royal body part it had once aspired to. A flyblown notice in the window read: BED & BRAKEFST 6d.

  ‘The landlord’s honest,’ Makepeace said, ‘which is a wonder for this town.’

  ‘How’d you know?’

  She pointed to an upper window from which protruded a spy glass. As they watched, it described a slow arc that took in the view of both docks and river, then back again.

  ‘He’s got somebody upstairs watching out for the press,’ she said. ‘The other landlords round here, they’re wicked bastards as get sailors falling-down drunk and then sell ’em to the press. Jan Gurney told me.’

  Sanders looked around nervously. ‘This ain’t a naval town, missus. I didn’t think it had press gangs.’

  ‘It’s got slaver gangs, they’re worse.’ Seamen were reluctant to serve on slaving ships, less from moral principle than from fear of dying. Slave captains were brutal and didn’t spare their crews who, in any case, were open to the infections that appalling conditions created among the human cargo. And there was always the danger of revolt if slaves with nothing to lose managed to free themselves of their chains.

  Being pressed into the British Navy was no bed of roses but being pressed onto a slaver was deadly.

  Stephen Heilbron was preparing a report which, he’d told her, showed that the mortality rate among sailors aboard slavers was nearly as horrific as that of their human cargo. ‘Perhaps the public will respond to that at least,’ he’d said, wearily.

  The door was warped and Makepeace applied her boot to it.

  It was dark inside and smelled of ale, cheap tobacco and old sea boots. A stove threw out heat. The dozen or so men hunched over its central table looked up with suspicion at the figure standing in the doorway, its enveloping fur-lined cloak momentarily suggesting that a rather pretty bear had come to call—not, however, a cuddly one.

  Makepeace threw back her hood and the sun flamed her hair into an aureole as she stalked in. ‘Which of you’s the landlord?’

  A man rose from the table, his apron greasy enough to have stood up by itself. Makepeace crossed the room, took out her purse and slammed half a guinea in front of him. ‘I’m waiting for the Wexford packet and I’m waiting for it here. The lad upstairs can tell me when it gets in. That suit you? Good.’

  In fact, she was home. She knew these men, well not these, but men like them had been among her customers in the waterfront tavern she’d run for her father back in Boston. They, too, had hidden from British press gangs and customs men. The Roaring Meg had been bigger, generally more pleasant and definitely cleaner, but it and this King’s Whatever were definitely cousins.

  She turned to Sanders and with some ostentation handed him her purse, making sure the clientele saw her do it. Today she had deliberately worn no jewelry in case it attracted snatch thieves—a woman could have her lobes torn off in a grab for her earrings. ‘Now, you take the rest of my money and go off to explore the town.’ She looked round at the faces staring at her. ‘What?’

  The eyes returned to examining their tankards.

  ‘Go on,’ she told Sanders, ‘I’ll be all right.’ She looked menacingly at the landlord. ‘Won’t I?’

  The man shut his mouth and nodded.

  ‘You might, missus, but will we?’ Sanders was unnerved. ‘I don’t want us and the boy taken aboard no slaver.’ Luchet and Jacques had followed him in and were staring around them with interest.

  It was a point. Makepeace said more gently to the landlord, ‘Will they be safe from the bastards?’

  There was a sudden air of relief; they were all against the bastards. One of the men at the table became chatty.

  ‘They’ll be all right, mum. Slavers ain’t got time to train men, not like the navy. They only got use for experienced sailors. He’s a coachman, ain’t he . . . ?’ Sanders caped greatcoat gave him away. ‘And the lad’s but a tiddler and he’—this was Luchet—‘don’t look likely for anythin’. Reckon the gentlemen’s safe enough.’

  Makepeace nodded, told her men to take care and watch their pockets, before dusting a bench and sitting down to a pot of ale.

  Two hours later, her cloak hung on a hook and her sleeves rolled up, she was washing pots that hadn’t seen a soapsud since they were fired and she was engaging in an argument with two sailors called Chops and Toey on the advantages of a cutter as opposed to a sloop. Chops, who was black, had been on lookout when she first arrrived but his place had been taken at the spy glass by an elderly white man they called Bosun.

  It was Bosun who called down. ‘Tide’s turned, missus, she’ll be in soon.’

  She went upstairs. The room smelled sour and was almost totally filled by six truckle beds. In the only available corner stood a brimming chamber pot. She had to shuffle on her knees across bare, tick mattresses to reach the window, where Bosun sat. The spy glass, a good one and therefore presumably stolen, rested in a sling hung from a hook in the ceiling. The old man swung its eyepiece towards her. ‘Reckon that’s the packet, right down river. Look, on the bend.’

  Makepeace looked. The sweep of the Avon’s silt was showing the sheen that argued the start of an advancing tide. When it came it would come quickly. The great difference between the river’s high and low tide—about thirty feet—was a problem to the city.

  If the tide was out, ships in the harbor or waiting to enter it were stranded in its mud for hours, leaving them lopsided and their hulks under considerable stress. ‘Shipshape and Bristol fashion’ was a phrase that had come to apply to boats incorporating sufficient strength to withstand the rigours of entering, docking and leaving the port.

  It was a peaceful scene. The river bed was dotted with vessels slanted at a lazy angle as they waited for the tide to refloat them, some almost hidden in the shade cast by the hills on the right bank where the afternoon sun was beginning to go down. Makepeace could just see beyond them the stubby shape of the Wexford packet boat lying on its side in a patch of sunlight speckled by overhanging trees.

  She smiled fondly, imagining her stately brother Aaron having to brace his legs against the bulkhead to stop himself sliding into a heap. There was no room for dignity at an angle of forty-five degrees.

  Beside her, Bosun said, ‘Hello. Trouble on African Queen.’

  A large slaver that lay nearer t
o the docks than the other vessels wasn’t waiting to discharge her cargo until she was upright. Two sailors, one of them with a whip, were standing in the mud watching a line of collared black men and women emerge on hands and knees from the hatch and clamber awkwardly down to join them. A chain ran from collar to collar.

  ‘Naughty, naughty, her’s got away, look,’ Bosun said.

  A woman was running from the vessel, hidden from the sailors by the angle of the mast, making for the bank away from the harbor. As Makepeace watched, the men saw the woman and began to chase after her, shouting. Their boots made heavier progress through the silt than did the woman’s bare feet but she was weighed down by a bundle that she carried.

  Makepeace applied her eye to glass and brought it to focus on the running figure. It was headed away from her so that she could only see it from the back, but the lens brought the bare black skin so close that she could see muscles taut with effort and the patches of mud thrown up as she splashed her way through the gaining tide. A head bobbed up and down over the woman’s shoulder. She was carrying a child. For a moment the spyglass framed its face. It was about five years old and its eyes were white with terror.

  ‘Run,’ she said, without knowing she said it.

  ‘They’re like us some ways,’ Bosun was saying. ‘Don’t like their young uns taken off ’em. Allus try and get away if they can.’

  ‘Why . . .’ Makepeace took in a breath. ‘Why are they taking it away from her?’ She knew. It was God she was asking.

  Bosun was calm about it. ‘Boy, I reckon. He’ll go to one of they fancy houses uptown where they dress ’em up pretty and sit ’em on the back of their carriage.’

  A voice behind them said, ‘An’ get rid of ’em when they ain’t pretty no more.’ Chop had joined them at the window and was watching the chase.

  Bosun said, grinning, ‘And she’ll go to London. That’s where Teast gen’ly sends ’em.’

  ‘Cat house,’ agreed Chop.

  She couldn’t look away, the spray the woman’s feet kicked up as she ran was becoming irregular, she was beginning to stumble. The sailors were gaining on her. Makepeace’s lips felt numb.

  One of the sailors launched himself and tackled the woman, bringing her down. She fell awkwardly, sideways, so that she wouldn’t crush what she carried.

  They heard the cry she gave as they pulled the child away from her. It was a lost, inhuman sound, like a seagull’s shriek, rising for a moment into an uncaring sky, an acceptance of hopelessness, before it was dissipated in the clamor of the city.

  ‘Where they taking them?’ Makepeace said. Her voice was thick from saliva, she could barely see.

  ‘Teast’s, won’t they?’ Bosun asked Chop. ‘The Queen’s one of his.’

  ‘Teast’s Yard,’ nodded Chop.

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Over Prince Street bridge and . . .’ They had to shout the rest of the instructions after her; Makepeace was already running downstairs.

  It was difficult to find the Yard; the wharves were busy. Cranes dipping cargo into holds or taking it out delayed her and she had to wait while gangs of puffing dockers manhandled crates across her way. She got lost and her requests for direction were answered by abstracted nods of the head. In order to get around one boat, she had to wade through water at the end of a slipway, got her foot caught in a rope and fell.

  It was like one of those sobbing, running nightmares; the vital necessity to reach an object against obstruction. Like the time Philippa had been lost in Plymouth when she was eleven. The woman’s cry had looped Makepeace into a desperation that had also been hers.

  At last she saw a large sign that read SYDENHAM TEAST & CO. It was a shipyard and looked normal; no sign of slaves. A large boat was being refitted, the name on its prow read HECTOR. She called up to a carpenter working on the deck, ‘Where do they land the slaves?’

  He pointed with an adze—farther along, he told her. She ran on.

  There was a large warehouse standing back from the river but the landing stage in front of it was deserted except for a ragged black man who was throwing a bucketful of water onto its setts and sweeping them clean. A huge pillar had been set into concrete in the center, chains hanging loose from it like iron ribbons on a maypole. At one end of the stage there was a row of empty cages.

  Once upon a time she’d wandered around the back of a fairground and into the area where they kept the animals. A troupe of performing dogs had been tied to a post, feline eyes had stared drearily out from cages . . . it had been like this; it had smelled like this. Except that here the animals were gone.

  ‘Where’s the owner?’

  The negro looked towards the warehouse. Its doors were thrown back, showing neatly piled stacks of crates in the interior. A table had been put near the doors to catch the last of the sun and two men were sitting at it, one small, one large, working at some papers.

  ‘Which of you’s Mr Teast?’

  The big man stood up, stretching. He wore a leather coat and a short-stocked whip stuck out of one pocket, its thongs trailing down to the floor.

  ‘Are you Mr Teast?’

  He showed large teeth in a grin. ‘Wish I was, little lady. He’s in Lunnon afeasting hisself and we’re here, ain’t we, Briggs?’

  ‘Yes, captain.’ The small man, who wore cuff preservers over his sleeves, didn’t look up from the papers.

  ‘There were some slaves just landed here,’ Makepeace said.

  ‘There was. I landed ’em. And now I wants to get home.’

  ‘There was a woman ran away, with a child. You got her back.’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘I want to buy her. And her little one.’

  That got the attention of them both. The little man looked up, blinking, then gave a brief, unamused smile before dipping his quill into an inkpot and returning to his figures.

  The captain settled one haunch on the edge of the table. ‘You do, do ee? Well, you’m too late. They’re all on their way to where they’m going. Can’t delay in this business, can we, Briggs? Time’s money. Longer you keep ’em idle, more they cost.’ He leaned towards Makepeace. ‘You couln’t’ve afforded they anyway, ma dear. We deal in high quality here. What ee want? A nigger to help with the scrubbing?’

  She was without her cloak, she realized, her sleeves were still rolled up, her skirt splashed with mud. She didn’t look as if she had money. She hadn’t; she’d given it to Sanders.

  Behind captain and clerk loomed the vast capitalist enterprise that had infiltrated the country’s bones, its fleets of ships, the banking houses, insurers, lawyers, dealers in stocks and shares; she felt as if she stood naked before a vast and efficient machine that had sucked the mother and child into its mechanism.

  She knew then she wouldn’t find them. Nor would the two of them ever see each other again. The knowledge robbed her of the power to be angry; she was beating on a door that wouldn’t open. Let me in. Let me find them.

  ‘I am a wealthy woman,’ she said. ‘I can send to Coutts Bank and have a draft for any amount you like within the week. I’ll give you my note.’

  He laughed, slapping his thigh; she’d thought only stage villains did that.

  She could see herself reflected in his eyes, a tiny demented thing with pretensions—and something else—he’d taken a fancy to her. After a long voyage, any female would seem attractive but her powerlessness was the draw; helplessness provoked lust in men like these.

  She said sharply, ‘Where have they gone?’

  Still grinning, without looking round, he said, ‘Tell her, Briggs.’

  Briggs tutted; he was in a hurry, but he was a correct little man. ‘My dear lady, you must see that we cannot offend valued customers for the sake of a one-time-only buyer.’ He drew a line under a column of numbers. ‘There we are, captain, all accounted for. I must be off. Mrs Briggs will be waiting. Will you lock up?’ He began taking off his cuff preservers.

  ‘There y’are,’ the captain said to Ma
kepeace. ‘The picaninny’s gone to a good home, you don’t want to worry your pretty head about him. As for her, that’s for us to know and you to find out. You come along with me and maybe as I’ll tell ee over a glass of rum.’

  ‘You stinking pimp,’ Makepeace said and watched his mouth go ugly before she walked away.

  She paused by the black man, who was putting away his bucket and brush. ‘Where did they take them?’ she begged.

  He stared at her and started to say something but Briggs had followed her. ‘Time to go, Chalky.’

  The man nodded and followed the clerk towards the boatyard. Makepeace ambled after them, to get away from the captain before he finished locking up the warehouse.

  It was getting dark. The waterfront was emptying. The bare ribs of the Hector gaped at her as she passed it. Just before she reached the bridge, she sat down on a bollard, too dispirited to go on, grateful for the cold that pinched her.

  You deserve it. All your money and you never thought of buying any of them.

  I couldn’t buy them all.

  You could have saved another mother, another child. You never thought, never thought . . . you and your I-know-slavery. Now you’ve seen it.

  I wanted to save that one, oh, I wanted to save that one.

  The cry would stay in her ears. The picture of the running woman and the bobbing head of her child was etched into her memory with acid. It would burn forever.

  After a while there were lanterns and exclamations but by that time she couldn’t make sense of them.

  Somebody with a deep and beautiful voice said, ‘I’ll carry her, Aaron. Ach, she’s cold as snow.’

  She was lifted and the somebody put the flaps of his coat round her so that she was pressed against his shirt and his body heat warmed her and melted the waiting tears. ‘They took the little thing away from her. Oh God, her cry. I can’t bear it.’

  ‘It’s a wicked world, so it is,’ the voice said. ‘We’ll find her, now. Don’t you worry, mavourneen, we’ll see to that. There, there, A Mhuire is truaigh. Whisht, whisht now.’ The nonsense was crooned at her through a miasma of whiskey but it was soothing, if Irish. Like the lullabies her father had sung her.