“Now the castle,” she told him, “can only travel in straight lines and it cannot jump. It must capture any enemy piece that comes in its way and take possession of its square. Do you see?”
Kwaku nodded. Butcher lifted his remaining bishop. Before he could put it down, Ama stretched out her hand, caught his hand in mid-air and forced him to put the piece back on the square it had come from. The doctor turned to her, astonished at her action. Somewhat abashed, without saying a word, Ama explained with signs. That move would leave the doctor’s single knight defenceless. Bill Williams would be able to announce his customary “check mate!” in not more than three moves if he were to make that move with his bishop. Butcher understood. However he lacked Bill Williams’ will to win; he was too tired or too lazy to try to figure out his opponent’s future tactics.
“Well, miss,” he asked her, “what would you do?”
She leaned over and castled, moving Butcher’s threatened king two squares sideways and bringing his rook into a position in which Williams’ queen was in danger of attack. The two white men looked at the board; then they looked at each other; then, together they turned to look at Ama.
“Please, what did you do?” Kwaku asked her.
“That is a special, secret, magic move. You are only allowed to make it once in every game. But before you learn it you must learn all the others.”
“Sister Ama,” he asked, “can real horses jump?”
* * *
Williams picked up the south-east trades. With a full head of sail, he made steady progress.
But he continued to sleep badly and his waking hours were afflicted with disabling headaches. Butcher bled him but the relief was transient. His temper was unpredictable and even his nephew steered clear of him. Williams senior consoled himself with rum and daydreams of a quick sale of his cargo and an early return to England.
In spite of herself, Ama was exhilarated by the speed of the small ship. She lay on her back, watching the great, taut, sweeps of canvas and the clouds scudding across the sky. Sharks were their constant, sinister companions but there were also grampuses, dolphins, whales. The boys would wait for the flying fish to break the surface of the water and then cry out in a single chorused breath, lifting the tone of their voices as the creatures rose to the zenith of their trajectory and then letting it fall as they re-entered the water with a splash; and they would laugh in delight.
Then the wind dropped and the sails drooped limply from the yards. The long flag which only a few days before had danced from the very top of the queen gallant mast, now hung lifeless. One day followed another. Even in the shade of the awnings the heat was oppressive. The crew began to fight among themselves and Williams had to threaten Knaggs that he would put him in irons again. They fashioned large fans from scraps of old canvas and at night had the slave boys stand over them, fanning the air to make a feeble breeze while they tried to sleep.
The male slaves became increasingly irritable. Fights were common. The Asante fought amongst themselves, but if one of them became involved in a quarrel with one of Tomba’s people, they would stand together. Now that they were no longer manacled, small incidents could flare up rapidly into brawls, drawing in more and more of the despairing men. The crew kept constant watch, brutally suppressing any incident, treating violence with violence. The heat and humidity and smell in the holds became unbearable. During the day they might manage to doze. But awake in the darkness, the nights seemed interminable. Even the daily intervals on deck gave them little relief since, unlike the women and the boys, they were not provided with a canopy to protect them from the overhead sun.
The drinking water in the butts began to taste peculiar. Stocks dropped to danger levels and Williams reduced the ration. The crew were worse off than the slaves. Williams kept their container sealed so that it was only possible to suck water from it through the barrel of an old musket inserted through the bung hole. This straw was kept in the crow’s nest and any sailor wanting a drink had to climb the mainmast, retrieve the straw and, when he had finished with it, return it to its place.
The bloody flux spread amongst the slaves and from them to the crew.
There was little to distinguish one day from the next. Williams appeared on deck from time to time and scanned the horizon for evidence of a change in the weather, but there was none. He cut the crew’s weekly food ration to three pounds of bread and three pounds of meat, mostly fat and bones. He could not afford to starve the slaves by reducing their miserable allocation of corn mush, or even the twice weekly supplement of salt beef or pork. The hungry seamen swallowed their pride and begged rations from the Africans.
The incidence of the bloody flux increased. Butcher was overworked looking after his patients. He thought of asking the captain’s permission to add Pamela to his small team of auxiliaries but he feared the violence of the man’s language. Hardly a day went by without a couple of corpses being unceremoniously splashed overboard. Sometimes they would float beside the ship for hours before the sharks arrived for their obscene meal. The Chippy began to run out of wood and the white men were no longer accorded the dignity of burial at sea in a coffin. Now the English corpses had to make do with sailcloth.
The Love of Liberty floated idly in mid-Atlantic. Every day at noon, the captain brought out his chronometer and sextant and took a sight on the sun.
“We have not moved half a degree from the equator during the past two weeks,” he told his nephew, “and we’re just thirty degrees west of Greenwich. That puts us two thousand five hundred miles from Barbados.”
Ama borrowed the chess board and pieces and taught Kwaku to play. Bill Williams’ challenge she rejected. She also refused his offer, his request, that she should read to him. But he continued to read to her. Chess and stories apart, she had plenty of time to think. She stood at the gunwale and looked all around her. The Love of Liberty lay at the centre of a perfect circle. She recalled Mijn Heer’s telling her that the earth was a sphere. She had wondered whether he was pulling her leg. Now she could see the evidence, the proof.
She explained it all to Kwaku, but he was unconvinced. If the earth is like an orange thrown up into the air, why does it not come down, as the orange does? And why does the water, the sea, not fall off the bottom? It was too difficult. She could see that it might require an act of faith to accept Mijn Heer’s theory. She decided to try something less complicated. She would teach Kwaku and Mara the elements of English. Life in Barbados might be easier for them if they could understand the language of their masters. So the time passed: on the one hand the death and pain and suffering, the ever present humiliation, the longing for home, the fearful speculation about an unknown future; on the other the peaceful, idyllic ocean all around them, the beautiful sunsets, wonder at the enormity of the whales and the wanton play of the grampuses, the surprises of literature, the challenge of chess and the rewards of teaching.
Weeks stretched into a month, and then another. Now the slaves’ rations, too, were reduced. The muster of corpses increased every day. Amongst them Ama noticed the proud Asante overseer with the bulging eyes. The bloody flux had taken him. She had never learned his name, she thought with regret. Back home, however humble his status, there would have been some ceremony to mark his transition to the world of the ancestors. She began to wonder whether it made any difference.
In the morning, the floor of the female hold, too, was filthy with the foul, liquid excrement of the sufferers. Ama wondered what it was that protected her from the vomiting and fever and dysentery. Only the bleeding of her gums disturbed her, and intermittent pain from the empty socket of her right eye.
* * *
At first light the watch climbed to the maintop platform and scanned the horizon.
Excitedly, he reported a small black cloud. Arbuthnot summoned Williams, who had fallen asleep only an hour before. The Captain was in a foul mood; but when he saw the darkening sky the challenge of imminent danger quickened his pulse and purged his wrath. He
sprang to action.
“Mr. Smith,” he instructed Arbuthnot, “get the cook to feed the slaves at once; tell him to double their ration. It might be days before they get another meal.”
“While they are on deck, have the carpenter fasten a web of ropes to the floor of each hold. I don't want a repetition of Anomabu.”
“Once that is done, get the slaves back into their kennels. Batten down all the hatches.”
“Then rig sails to make a catchment and bring up the empty barrels.”
While they waited for their food, Ama watched the sails being reefed. The storm came nearer and nearer, the shifting dark clouds illuminated by the lightning. The women who had weathered the storm at Anomabu muttered amongst themselves, shaking their heads in alarm.
“Today our lives are in the hands of our worst enemy. The ancestors have surely forgotten us,” one said.
A crack of thunder drowned the dreary murmur of agreement. They shuddered and huddled closer, without hope. Ama looked at the restless sea and thought for a moment that she saw Nana Esi's corpse riding the heavy swell. That woman saw her own future. Did she also see ours? she wondered.
Then, their hold was ready and they were herded into the darkness.
The first inside tripped and shouted back a warning. In her usual place Ama found that the Chippy had made a rope fast along the junction of the platform and the hull. She tested it. It gave her a sense of security: it would be easier to weather this storm with something to hold on to. Reluctantly she conceded to herself that for all Williams’ faults as a human being, he knew his business as a mariner and slave-trader.
Up on deck, the captain turned over his options in his mind as he inspected his sails and rigging. Caution suggested that he heave to and ride out the heavy weather. The trouble with that plan was that once the storm had passed, they might be left becalmed as before.
The gale was blowing from the south. If he let The Love of Liberty scud before it, they might be blown right up to the latitude of Barbados. There he could pick up the north east trades and be in Bridgetown in no more than a week or two. It was risky, but tempting.
“Set the course sail on the foremast, Mr. Smith,” he yelled into Arbuthnot's ear. “We'll run before her.”
The first icy sheet of rain soaked the crew, every man jack of them but the captain, who owned a suit of oilskins. Day had turned into night. It was as if a malevolent heaven had descended upon them. An enormous wave towered above the fragile ship, took hold of it and pushed it forward. It swung this way and that, pitching, rolling. One moment they were in the depths of a trough; next they balanced on the crest. The wheel strained against its lashing. Communication became difficult. Arbuthnot, returning to Williams’ side, slipped on the wet deck and grazed his knee.
In the hold, Ama hooked her elbows about the rope. The woman on her left had already vomited; now the one on the right did the same. Ama gripped her arm in attempt to comfort her but she was completely distraught with fear. She shat herself where she lay. Ama closed her eyes in despair. Soon the floor of the hold would be a uniform slimy mess of filth. Already the smell was overpowering. She squeezed her eyes, trying to shut out the world. The ship rolled away from her; the remains of her breakfast poured out onto her neighbour.
Williams realised that he had underestimated the force of the gale. In all his years at sea, he had never seen such a storm before. He shook his head. He would have to swallow his pride and turn the bow into the wind.
Before he could act, lightning struck the ship, splintering the foremast and the foreyard and setting fire to the small sail, wet as it was. For a moment there was an overwhelming smell of burning; then the rain put out the fire and the wind swept away the smell of it.
* * *
Three sleepless days and nights later the storm began to blow over.
In the late morning the sun appeared and Williams was able to establish his position. Arbuthnot stood by him as he squinted through the sextant.
“Now,” he said as the chronometer showed noon.
“We’re off the coast of Brazil,” he told the mate. “Bahia must be just over that eastern horizon.
“Open the hatches. Mr. Butcher, I want a report on the condition of our cargo. Cook, see if you can get a fire going. We could all do with a hot meal. Mr. Smith, rig what jury sails you can muster and set a course for the Portuguese port. And run up the Union Jack if you will. Give me a call as soon as you sight land. I’m going to take a nap.”
Ama came out on deck, starved, dehydrated, filthy. The light of the sun blinded her and she shut her eye. The Love of Liberty was a floating wreck. Only one mast was intact. Another lay across the deck, broken. Pieces of sail, torn to shreds, lay everywhere. The other slaves looked like living corpses. The crew’s condition was not much better. She drank deeply. The water was sweet and there was plenty of it.
“We filled every barrel with rain water,” Butcher told her. “You can even use it to take a bath. We are close to land, now.”
“Barbados?” she asked him, forgetting her vow of silence.
“No,” he replied. “The storm blew us far off course. We are heading for Bahia in Brazil. We should be there by tomorrow at the latest.”
* * *
“Land ahoy!” came a shout from the watch high up on their sole remaining mast.
Bill Williams rushed down to summon his uncle. When he returned, he had a chart.
“Can you see it yet?” he asked Ama.
She shook her head. Then there came a cheer from the forecastle and a rush to the forward gunwales.
“There it is. Land ahoy!” shouted the young Williams in great excitement. “Do you see it now? Now, if I am not mistaken that must be Cape St. Anthony. Brazil! Robinson Crusoe country!”
“Have you read Robinson Crusoe?” he asked her.
She nodded. But Brazil? She couldn't remember any mention of it.
“I wonder where he had his plantation?” Bill Williams mused.
Late in the afternoon they rounded the Cape and entered a broad bay.
Williams savoured the sound of the words, “Bahia de Todos os Santos. The Bay of All the Saints.”
Blue waters, a forest of tall masts, green islands; small sailing boats flying for refuge in the last hour before dusk. Some passed close by. Ama noticed again the curiosity of their crewmen. She could understand: The Love of Liberty was a floating wreck.
The sun picked out a row of gleaming white buildings on the top of the promontory, painting them a deepening orange as it sank.
“Cidade do Salvador, the city of our saviour,” Williams told her, scanning the city with his uncle’s telescope.
“Slaves to the holds,” ordered Arbuthnot. “Let go the anchor.”
AMERICA
America
At the end of the twentieth century, the population of Brazil stands at some 165 million. Of every ten Brazilians, six are descended wholly or in part from African men and women who were transported across the Atlantic against their will during the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
CHAPTER 30
Coming out of the hold at dawn, Ama gasped. The upper city, the Cidade Alta, silhouetted against a crimson sunrise, seemed to have taken on a completely new character, ominous, threatening, somehow sinister. Then, rubbing the sleep from her eye, she discovered the straggling lower city, the Cidade Baixa, emerging from the early morning shadows at the foot of the cliff.
The bay was already filled with sails. One of the small boats approached The Love of Liberty. An impressive figure of a man stood at its bow, his gloved hands resting on a polished brass railing. He was dressed in a spotless white uniform with gold buttons and golden braid at the shoulders, and two rows of medals decorated his chest. Over his wig he wore a black tricorn hat with a red cockade. His uniform reminded Ama of Jensen, Esi’s pig-god, the first time she had seen him. She leaned over the gunwale and spat into the water. Then she looked again. Of course it couldn’t be Jensen. It wa
s only the uniform.
The chief mate was overawed by this imminent manifestation of foreign officialdom. He sent Knox scuttling for the captain, who was enjoying his first good night’s sleep in months.
The four black men who manned the official’s boat were stripped to the waist. One of them threw a rope to the waiting Bruce and shouted something up to him with a broad grin.
“An the same to you, mate,” Bruce called back.
The man asked him a question. Bruce shook his head and spread his palms.
“No savvy,” he replied.
The official was struggling up the rope ladder, which seemed to have taken on a life of its own. He looked down and swore at the slave below. Arbuthnot helped him and his sword over the gunwale. He was adjusting his uniform when Williams appeared.
“David Williams, Master of The Love of Liberty, Liverpool, England,” he said, holding out his hand. “Whom do I have the honour to address?”
“Christovam da Rocha Barbosa,” Ama heard the man sing out his name. She thought she heard him announce that he was the director of the port of Salvador, but the rest was lost to her.
Williams resorted to sign language and a change of accent.
“Eengleesh sheep,” she heard him say, pointing to the Union Jack, but then her attention was drawn elsewhere.
“My brothers,” she addressed the slaves who were lolling idly in the boat below her, “do any of you hear Asante?”
One of them stood up and cupped his hand to his ear. She repeated what she had said but now that she could see his face and the unfamiliar incisions on his cheeks, she knew he would not understand.
The man identified himself with a flourish and a bow.
“Domingos Cabinda,” he said and then pointed to the others, who laughed at their friend’s fine manners.
Each waved an acknowledgement as he was introduced: “Santos Gêge, Bernado das Minas, Policarpo Nagô.”
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