“You should have called me earlier,” he told Augusta as he took his leave.
The patient spent a fitful, restless night.
Since De Bruyn's return Ama had not had more than an hour’s continuous sleep. When Van Schalkwyk came in the morning, she was exhausted.
Van Schalkwyk read the will to De Bruyn and helped him to scrawl his signature at the bottom. Then he signed as witness. Ama wrote “Pamela”, as he instructed her, in the place provided for a second witness. Then Van Schalkwyk left, taking the will with him.
* * *
Pieter De Bruyn fell into a coma four days after his return to Elmina from Axim.
Ama and Augusta kept a vigil by his bedside but both were so exhausted that they fell asleep. When they awoke at first light, the Governor was dead.
Augusta started wailing an improvised lament, “Mijn Heer, why have you left us. Mijn Heer, why did you die? You have left your wives widows . . .”
Ama put her hand on Augusta’s shoulder and interrupted her, “Sister Augusta, Mijn Heer was a white man and a Christian. Let the Dutch bury him after their own fashion.”
She felt a guilty sense of relief that it was all over. She had fought for his life but she had known from the first day that it would be a miracle if he survived. Whites had little resistance to Africa’s diseases. She wondered how it was that Mijn Heer had lived so many years.
The visiting surgeon came and signed a death certificate. Van Schalkwyk came and prayed. They left Augusta and Ama to prepare the body for burial. When they had washed the corpse, they dressed it in De Bruyn’s best uniform. That task finished, they bathed and dressed themselves in the new red and black funeral cloth which Augusta had sent for. Then they sat and waited. Early in the afternoon, castle slaves carried in the coffin the carpenters had made. They lifted the body into it and tacked the lid down.
In the courtyard the coffin was opened and for an hour the company staff filed by to pay their silent respects.
* * *
As they wound their way back from the Dutch cemetery, the sound of musketry still ringing in their ears, Augusta asked Ama, “Sister Ama, what will you do now?”
“Maame, I am too tired to think of that. I told you that Mijn Heer made a will before he died. I heard Van Schalkwyk read it to him before he signed it, but it was in Dutch and I couldn't understand much. The Minister told me that in his will he granted me my freedom. I hope that that is true. But as to what I will do, I need to sleep before I can think of it.”
At the front gate of the castle, Ama shook hands with Augusta and with the King of Edina and his delegation. She declined their invitation to join them in a funeral celebration, pleading exhaustion. While she was talking to them, she saw Jensen and his Rose, now visibly pregnant, enter the portal. She felt a slight sense of unease, but she was too tired to attempt to identify its cause.
Van Schalkwyk passed by and stopped to talk to her. Beyond Edina, the sun was a red ball, lighting up the western sky.
“I will go and see Jensen to fix a time to read the will,” he said and patted his waist coat. “I have kept it here for safe custody.”
When Ama reached the top floor she was surprised to see that the door of De Bruyn’s room was open. Her apprehension increased as she went in. Jensen and Rose were surveying the candle-lit room and its contents with a proprietorial air.
“What do you want?” Jensen snapped at her.
“Please, sir, I am very tired. I had little sleep while I was nursing Mijn Heer. I thought . . .”
“Never mind what you thought. I am the ‘Mijn Heer’ here now. You will sleep tonight where you came from and where you belong.”
There was a discreet knock on the open door. It was Van Schalkwyk.
“Ah, Jensen,” he said, “I have been searching all over for you. They told me I would find you here.”
“Mijn Heer Jensen, if you please. I act as Director-General until the Company Directors rule otherwise. What do you want?”
Van Schalkwyk blanched at the snub.
“Mijn Heer Jensen. Director-General De Bruyn made a will before he died. I have it here. He appointed me his sole executor.”
He drew the document from his waist coat.
“I wondered if we might fix a time for it to be read to the officers.”
“Let me see that,” demanded Jensen.
Van Schalkwyk handed it over. Jensen took it to the escritoire, where there was a candle. He read the document.
“This is a forgery. I know De Bruyn’s signature. He did not sign this. I recognise your handwriting Van Schalkwyk. I will have you arrested and charged with forgery.”
As he spoke, he waved the will around and, by accident or design, the flame of the candle set the paper alight. He held it by one corner and let it burn.
“Oh, what a pity,” he said. “An unfortunate accident. But fortunate for you. No evidence. Now it will not be possible to charge you. However, I can inform you right now that you will receive a formal letter giving you your notice tomorrow morning. Writing it will be my first official task.
“Do you think,” he continued in triumph, “that I do not know the contents of the reports regarding me that you sent to the Classis? That was most unwise of you. It was your doing to land me with this whining baggage, this excuse for a wife. Now you will have your reward. You will take the first ship bound for Amsterdam.”
“You can’t do this,” blustered Van Schalkwyk.
“I can do whatever I like. By virtue of the Company’s rules I am automatically invested with all the powers of the Director-General; and in this establishment the Director-General is second only to God. Now get out.”
As Van Schalkwyk beat a crest-fallen retreat, Jensen called for a guard.
“Take this slave to the female dungeon,” he ordered, indicating Ama.
“Wait,” Ama cried, as the guard came towards her. “Mijn Heer gave me my freedom before he died.”
“Oh, he did, did he? Well then where is the evidence? Where is the completed form of manumission?”
“He ordered the Minister to write it in his will. I heard the Minister read it to him and saw Mijn Heer sign it, weak as he was.”
“And where is this will, pray?”
“You have just burnt it,” said Ama.
The enormity of her predicament suddenly dawned upon her. After two years of faithful service to Mijn Heer as his wife, she was to be hurled unceremoniously back into the dungeon.
Jensen was obviously enjoying her discomfort. She saw the cruel smile on his handsome face.
“You shit. You shit-arse. You rapist. You bastard. You pig. You filthy pig,” she exploded.
A cloud passed over Jensen’s face.
“Out!” he instructed the waiting guard.
“Lock the door,” he ordered Rose.
“A pig, am I? A shit-arse? Is that what that stupid fool De Bruyn taught you English for? To abuse your betters? Now we'll shall see who is the pig, who is the shit-arse.”
He grabbed her. She felt at once his overpowering physical strength. In a moment he had stripped her mourning cloth from her and then her beads. He threw her face down over the bed. She felt his trousers slip to the floor and heard him kick them aside.
“Itsho! Itsho! Help me,” she cried, then, “Rose, Rose.”
“Rose you come and watch this performance,” commanded Jensen.
Then he entered her, not her vagina but her anus.
“Shit-arse, eh? Pig, eh?” he said again and again keeping time with his driving.
When he had finished he rested in her for a moment.
“Rose, my darling,” he commanded his wife, “fetch me something to wipe my shit-arse prick with.”
Rose opened a drawer and found there Ama’s oldest cloth, her only painful memento of home.
Jensen withdrew and without waiting to clean his organ, threw Ama to the floor.
Ama had been raped before, twice, but never had she been so humiliated. She wanted to die.
“Who’s a pig, now, shit-arse?” he demanded.
He pulled up his trousers. Then he kicked her in her naked ribs. She screamed in pain.
“Speak.”
He threw the cloth at her and went to look at his dim candle-lit image in the mirror.
“Rose, shut your fucking mouth.”
The girl was whimpering. Jensen washed his hands.
“Unlock the fucking door,” he commanded.
She ran to do his bidding.
THE LOVE OF LIBERTY
African slaves were sold in Lisbon as early as 1441. The European discovery and colonisation of the Americas set the scene for the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which lasted from early in the sixteenth century until the second half of the nineteenth. The slaves were all African. So too were many of those who sold them. The buyers and shippers were almost all Europeans. In the course of three hundred years, upwards of ten million black men, women and children arrived in the Americas as unwilling migrants. Millions more died on the journey to the Atlantic coast, and at sea.
CHAPTER 23
The Holy War in the mountains of the Futa Jalon lasted fifty years.
From time immemorial the Jalonke had been the owners of these upland areas: that is why their Susu brothers called them Jalon-ke. Descended from the rulers of the old Mali empire, they were aristocrats, soldiers, traders; and not too fond of physical labour.
When the wandering Fula cattle herders drifted in, the Jalonke gave them land to graze their livestock. In return they expected their tenants to pay a tax on every animal they slaughtered.
In the years before the war started, the Fula and the Jalonke lived together in amity. The Fula worked iron and wove cotton cloth and the Jalonke took these goods to the coast and exchanged them for salt. Sometimes the Jalonke made war on their Limba and Kisi neighbours and sold their captives to the merchants who lived near the mouths of the many rivers that discharge into the ocean along that coast.
The Fula worked hard and prospered. In the course of time they came to resent the taxes which their Jalonke landlords imposed on them.
Then the famous Fula scholar Karamoko Alfa returned from his pilgrimage to Mecca, inspired with religious zeal. Travelling across the great desert, suffering terrible thirst and in danger of losing his life to brigands, he promised Allah that if He permitted him to return to his home in safety, he would undertake to convert all the infidels in the Futa Jalon to Islam. The jihad was the fulfilment of his promise. The instrument he chose was his cousin, Ibrahima Suri, who had already proved himself a capable general. United by their faith, the Fula forces overcame their erstwhile patrons.
Many Jalonke fled to the coast. Others accepted the new religion but found it difficult to accept that those who had once been their tenants were now their landlords. They, too, fled. There were some, however, prosperous merchants and owners of cattle, who were more accommodating. The Fula were not ungenerous to converts who were prepared to co-operate. They appointed some of these men to rule the villages in which their brothers were kept in bondage. They even encouraged them to send their children to school, where they learned to read and write Arabic and to commit passages of the Koran to memory.
One day Karamoko came to open a new mosque. Testing the Koranic knowledge of the local Jalonke boys, he was so impressed with one youngster that he honoured his diligence by honouring him with a new name, that of the patriarch Ibrahima.
Allah bestowed many blessings on the young Ibrahima. It seemed that he could do no wrong. As he grew up, he prospered. He fought in many battles. By the time he was thirty he owned great herds of cattle, a veritable army of slaves, the maximum permitted quota of four wives (one of them a Fula woman), and an ever increasing number of children.
The Fula took to arms again and Ibrahima, now a general, joined their army, along with his slaves. But the slaves of the Futa Jalon were restive and as one great battle reached its climax, they began to desert, first in ones, then in tens and finally in droves. In the end their masters were left to fight on alone. Ibrahima was captured. Denied the customary opportunity to pay a ransom in exchange for his freedom he was marched off to the coast, fettered and manacled.
Chained he might be, but the first thing he did whenever the caravan stopped to rest, was to perform the salat. He prayed, too, all day long as they marched, carrying on a conversation with Allah, reciting passages from the Koran in an undertone, searching for a sign to explain his predicament.
“Allah knows best,” he consoled himself. “Perhaps He is testing me. Perhaps He is punishing me for my pride and complacency. Now I perceive that all my wealth was as nothing in His eyes.”
From Ibrahima's devout soul-searching there emerged in him a determination not to accept his bondage. He had learned the lesson of his humiliation. He believed that Allah now wished him to be free.
He knew the route well, having travelled it as a slave trader several times in his youth. He made his preparations and bided his time. While his fellow slaves and their guards slept, he worked quietly and patiently each night on his rusty shackles.
The camp from which he planned to escape lay in a clearing in the high forest, only a day’s journey from the coast. He knew that if he should fail, he would not have another chance.
Waking, he raised himself on one elbow and looked around. The camp was quiet. He sat up cautiously. The moon had not yet risen and the fires had sunk low but there was enough light to make out the shadowy shapes of the guards. They all seemed to be asleep. He levered the shackles open and removed them from his feet, freeing him from the chain which bound him to his neighbour. An owl hooted and he froze. Then he prized the shackle from his left hand, leaving it hanging from his right. He worked out the course he would take. He would risk passing close to one guard whose cutlass lay beside him as he slept. The only other thing he would take would be a water bag. How he would survive in the forest he had no idea. All his thoughts were concentrated on one objective: to get away. He calculated that because they were so close to the coast his captors would not waste time attempting to pursue him.
Ibrahima closed his eyes and prayed. Then he rose slowly to his feet, gripping the shackle which was still attached to his right hand. He stood for a moment, his heart pumping, before taking the first step. Then, after what seemed an age he was on the path which led from the clearing to the latrines, cutlass in one hand and leather bag in the other. His feet were bare. He wore the same Mandinga coat and breeches of bleached Fula cloth in which he had been captured, though his suit was no longer the spotless white it had once been.
The path soon ran out. It was so dark in the forest that he had to swing the cutlass out in front of him, like a blind man’s stick, to avoid walking into the trees. He had no idea where he was going, no landmarks to guide him. The forest smelt of rotting leaves, dank and sweet. He closed his ears to its strange night noises, concentrating on making his way between the trees. The canopy above him was so dense that even when the moon rose no light penetrated. He tried to keep going in the same direction, but he had no illusions: if he had misread Allah’s will, he might end up back in the camp, having described a circle in the dark.
But it appeared that Allah was with him, for when dawn broke Ibrahima was free.
He drank deeply from a stream. Then he lay down and slept. When he awoke it was already afternoon. Every muscle in his body ached and he was famished. Yet before he did anything else, he washed his face and hands and, guessing which direction was east, said his formal prayers, adding thanks for his deliverance.
For the next few days he wandered in the forest, surviving off half-eaten fruit dropped by monkeys. Early one morning he lay on the bank of a stream and, exercising great patience, caught a fish in his left hand. He cleaned it with the cutlass and ate it raw. He disliked the taste, but lacking fire, he had no choice. The rusty shackle still hung from his right hand.
As he was washing after this meal, he was startled by the report of a distant gun-shot. Overcomi
ng his immediate instinct, to flee, he waited apprehensively; but all was silence. He decided to investigate.
Some time later he came across the hunter, stretched out on his back under a tree, snoring. By his side lay a musket, a leather bag and the carcass of a small buck. Ibrahima gave thanks that there were no dogs. He took the gun first: if the hunter awoke, the man would be at his mercy. He was about to take the buck when it occurred to him that he would not be able to cook the meat. The hunter's pipe lay on his chest: somewhere he must have a firestone. Ibrahima decided to steal the man's bag, returning later for the carcass. All this time the hunter slept. He must have been out hunting all night, Ibrahima reflected. It was not until he was well out of earshot that he allowed himself the luxury of considering the fellow’s reaction when he awoke from his sleep. Then, for the first time in many days he laughed out loud. The poor snorer would surely attribute the theft to malign and mischievous forest spirits.
The buck was heavy on his shoulders. He let it fall and sat down to rest. In the hunter’s bag he found some stale corn-bread which he ate at once. But more important, there was a firestone in a little leather wallet, a sharp knife, some lead shot and a metal box half full of gunpowder.
He walked on until mid afternoon, setting a safe distance between him and the hunter and taking care to conceal his tracks. Then he put down his load, collected firewood and made a fire. He gutted and skinned the carcass, and hung the skin up to dry before setting a leg to roast on a rude spit.
There was a fallen tree nearby. The hole in the canopy had let in the sunlight and dense undergrowth had soon filled the clearing. Here Ibrahima collected branches and green leaves and built a crude smoking oven. He waited until dark to reduce the risk that someone would see the smoke rising above the canopy.
With food assured for at least a week he set about constructing a shelter. The fallen tree lay in the middle of the thicket. It was suspended in space, supported at one end by a profusion of tangled roots, torn from the ground, and at the other by its own splintered branches. He tested it by making a precarious ascent on the inclined trunk. Then he cut and trimmed a number of straight saplings. The lower end of each he placed in a trench; the upper end rested at an angle against the trunk. He wove more slender saplings in and out of the first to hold them together. Then he used his bare hands to squeeze mud into the interstices of this network. He smoothed the wall, inside and out, with the broad blade of his cutlass to. Finally he pressed broad leaves into the soft surface to protect it from the rain.
Ama Page 31