Island of a Thousand Springs

by Sarah Lark

  But this was by no means the end of the journey. The sun had fully risen by then. The roads and paths from Nanny Town were populated with men, women, and children. None of them held back from staring at Akwasi with his unusual spoils of war. A few of the women and girls called out abusive things about whites and spat at her. Nora tried to ignore it. She only wanted to sleep. She could think about everything else later.

  The Maroons led their charges and the beasts of burden with their spoils on a victory march through the village and stopped the caravan in the village square. Most of those who had come from Cascarilla Gardens, now thoroughly exhausted by the journey and overwhelmed by their new surroundings, let themselves fall right onto the firmly packed ground. The residents of the town, attracted by the tales of the successful warriors, supplied them with water, fruit, and flat bread, on which they had painted a sort of porridge. The newcomers hungrily lined up behind the food, but Nora got nothing. The white woman was only given disbelieving or dirty looks.

  Then, a small, inconspicuous-looking woman came out of one of the round huts that surrounded the village square. Nora barely noticed her to begin with, but soon realized from the tense whispers and cheers from the crowd that this was Granny Nanny. The queen. The square fell completely silent as the small woman began to speak.

  “So, you have returned, Máanu, daughter!”

  There was a hardly audible murmur in the crowd. “Daughter” had to be a title of honor.

  “As I told you, Queen Nanny — with rich spoils and reinforcements for the tribe!” Máanu’s voice sounded triumphant.

  “And were you able to free your sister?”

  Nora held her breath. Reluctantly, her respect for Máanu grew. The young woman’s hatred for the backra, paired with her love for Mansah, had driven her to plan this expedition. A single girl had defeated Elias.

  “Yes!” Máanu said.

  Nora assumed that she pushed her sister forward — Akwasi’s big body was in her way and she couldn’t see what was happening. Mansah sobbed again.

  “That?” Nanny asked mockingly. “This whimpering little thing? Was it worth the effort? Well, you would know. And the fellow is burning in hell?”

  “In the deepest and darkest!” Máanu spat.

  “Good. Tomorrow we will conduct a ceremony to exorcise his Duppy. And you … the men are to build a house for you and your sister — and your husband, if you choose one.” Another murmur went through the crowd. This, too, seemed to be a reward. Clearly, Máanu had risen in the hierarchy of Nanny Town. “Now, where is the slave who brought the white woman along?”

  Nora listened in shock, and Akwasi seemed to be startled. How could the queen know that already? But every bush in the last miles before Nanny Town probably had eyes and ears.

  One of Maroons pointed to Akwasi and Nora, and the group parted in front of them. Nora doubled over. She didn’t want to show herself to these people. She was not ready to face the queen and her sharp, mocking voice. Especially because she most certainly looked dreadful. Her dress was wrinkled, torn, and soaked through with sweat; her feet were bleeding; her arms and face were full of scrapes and bruises. Her hair was dirty, damp, and matted up against her exhausted, sunken-in face. Nora wanted to sleep or die, if need be. But she did not want to make an appearance before a queen.

  One of the warriors — not Akwasi — pulled her up. Akwasi was already standing before Granny.

  “It was I!” he said, proudly. “Akwasi. I want her, I always wanted her. And I have killed her lord.”

  “You killed the backra?” with clear esteem in her voice. Akwasi nodded. “We did it together,” he explained. “But ultimately I was the one to sever his head from his body. Well, from what was left of it. So, she belongs to me.”

  Nora shuddered.

  “One could argue about that, Akwasi,” Nanny said. “All the loot here actually belongs to everyone. And we usually take no prisoners.”

  “Is it forbidden in your town to keep slaves?” Akwasi inquired. “You are Ashanti.”

  Nanny sharply exhaled. “I was Ashanti,” she corrected him. “And it’s true, we always had slaves. We lived off the slave trade. But this is my tribe. And we have kept none to this day.”

  Nora felt something almost like a glimmer of hope. If Nanny rejected slavery …

  “Because the gods prohibit it?” Akwasi asked, in a mocking tone. “Like our Obeah Man used to declare?”

  Nanny laughed. It sounded like the birds squawking in the jungle. “The gods don’t matter to me,” she said. “They keep their own counsel, I keep mine. But we are a tribe here. It belongs to me, Quao, Cudjoe, and Accompong. The mountains here are too small for various tribes. If we fight each other and take slaves, it weakens us. That’s why we also don’t send people back anymore, not even for ransom. It weakens us.”

  Nora lost her courage. Nanny was speaking of strategy, not humanity, and certainly not a fundamental rejection of slavery.

  “She is white,” Akwasi said.

  “Which complicates the matter,” Nanny sighed. “If it were a black woman — she would give herself over to her fate at some point. You want her for your bed, I assume?” Akwasi nodded. “And you’re a handsome man; a black woman would learn to appreciate you. But a white? It will only make trouble, young man.”

  Akwasi straightened himself up. “I will be able to manage my wife!” he said, firmly.

  Nanny laughed. “I am not speaking of nightly troubles. But what is she to do during the day? Till your fields? Do the housework like a black woman? While the others go on about how you won’t make any of them your wife? There are many more women than men here, Akwasi.”

  “Did anyone ask you if you wanted to till the whites’ fields, Queen, when you were captured in Africa?” Akwasi asked. “And what would the white women say when the backra forces you into his bed?”

  Nanny cackled again and her eyes flashed. The dispute with Akwasi seemed to amuse her. “You have an answer for everything, young warrior. So, show me the girl!”

  She pointed to Nora, whose was keeping her head down and trying to hide behind her hair. The warrior that was holding her pulled her head back by her hair, so that Nanny could see her face.

  “What about you, white Missis?” she then asked. “Do you want to serve him or die?”

  Nora looked into her alert, piercing eyes, and the small, wrinkled face that could have belonged to a gnome or fairy. She thought about what she could do or say.

  “I’ve never done anything to him!” burst out of her mouth. “I’ve never done anything to anyone at all—”

  She heard loud laughter. Máanu.

  “That was not the question,” Nanny said, calmly. “But if you want to know: I also never did anything to anyone when I was kidnapped from my village.”

  “I have always helped the people on the plantation. I did for all of you what I could. I helped you when you were sick … I was always against slavery—”

  Now they all giggled. Ashamed, Nora lowered her eyes. She had to stop. She realized that she was making a fool of herself. It was better to just answer Nanny’s question. No one wanted to hear her justifications.

  “I want to live,” she finally said.

  Nanny nodded. “A good answer. You’ll still probably regret it. You hear that, Akwasi, she will serve you. Do you want her as your wife or your slave?”

  Akwasi looked at Nora and wavered. He had loved Nora more than he could stay. But she betrayed him. Just like Doug. They were all the same.

  “As my slave!” he said, harshly.

  Nora lowered her eyes again.

  Nanny raised her eyebrows. “Then take her. But I don’t want to hear any complaints. From any of you. Now go. They will direct you to your new quarters — but the slave stays outside. I won’t force anyone here to share a hut with a white. Build her one in the morning. Or see to it that she builds you one. Do what you want with her.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Akwasi modeled his house in the same
design as the slave huts at Cascarilla Gardens. That was what he knew, after all. The Africans’ round huts, the walls of which were partially made of cow dung, seemed questionable to him, and he preferred the wood-and-mud construction. Nora slept in a corner of the town square throughout the day and first night after her arrival in Nanny Town. So, now she willingly helped Akwasi build the hut. She desperately wanted to escape the heat and the insects, but most of all, the stares and taunts of the other villagers, who passed by one after the other to harass and gawk at the white slave.

  Even Máanu sauntered by while Nora was throwing mud on the walls of her hut.

  “So, how do you like it, white Missis?” She asked, with a crooked smile. “And you, Akwasi? Are you just building a slave hut for her or will you also live there?”

  Akwasi shrugged. “It wasn’t my house that I hated, only the backra who kept me trapped inside,” he said. “I never learned to build anything else. And she has to take what she can get!”

  At that, he unintentionally glanced at Nora with a look of appreciation, which Máanu painfully picked up on. He still showed no interest in her. He hadn’t even looked at the magnificent round hut near Granny Nanny’s residence that she had been allotted.

  “I want to know why you hate me, Máanu,” Nora said, exhaustedly. “What have I done to you? I didn’t know anything about what Elias was doing. When I worked it out, I went to his room and saved Mansah. And I would have done something earlier, if you had told me. If someone could have prevented Sally’s death, Máanu, it was you. Not I.”

  Máanu glared at her. “Who’s talking about Sally?” she then asked angrily.

  Nora was about to rub her forehead, but had to quickly pull her hand away because it hurt. Her face had been exposed and unprotected for days, and was burned, much to the amusement of those around her. Nora’s attempt to weave a sun hat out of leaves was thwarted by the women passing by. They simply pulled it away from her and trampled the leaves in the dust.

  “Do you not want to be like us, white Missis?”

  Nora was now fighting against a headache and fervently hoped that her skin would get used to the sun. She always tanned quickly and now it would be of vital importance to quickly develop a natural protection against the sun. And a constructed one — her hut had to be finished as soon as possible. Nora threw mud against the wall with renewed vigor.

  The slave huts were usually constructed in a couple of days, so Nora only had to spend one more night outdoors before the house was ready. She braced herself to be raped by Akwasi again, but to her relief, he left her alone. It certainly had something to do with the fact that he didn’t come back to rest. Most of the blacks in Nanny Town disapproved of his two-legged, white-skinned “loot,” even if it was for different reasons. There were some, who were opposed to slavery in principle, having been victims of it themselves. Others felt it was beneath the dignity of a free black to take a white woman into his bed, and hurled abuses at him. But the vast majority simply feared the trouble involved in having a white around.

  “The backras won’t just let go of this,” Nora heard two women whispering to each other while they were pounding grain into flour. “A few horses and mules they get over. But a woman? They will try to get her back and if they level our village to the ground in the process, all the better for them!”

  The fear that he had brought trouble for everyone with his crazy idea had not escaped Akwasi’s attention. Owning Nora would hurt his reputation in his new tribe significantly. There was no way he would now draw even more attention to himself by lying with the white woman outdoors, under the eyes of half the village.

  However, he took advantage of the first night in the new hut and left Nora sore and weeping. She didn’t want to sob or cry — if only to keep from also losing her dignity. But Akwasi’s thrusts were too painful; he penetrated her violently while his strong hands held her upper arms and pushed her against the hard dirt floor. Nora had still not been able to weave mats, so her bed in the house was harder than the one made of ferns on the first night. Akwasi didn’t look at her during the act. He stared past her, and Nora felt like a battered wooden doll that a naughty child had kicked around.

  Towards morning, she managed to get up with difficulty and grind the flour for the cakes that would be her breakfast. At least she didn’t find that difficult. The women who passed by curiously to catch a glimpse of the incompetent white woman were disappointed. After all, Nora had been grinding healing herbs with a mortar, mixing ointments together, and washing bandages for months. Grinding grain, mixing dough, and baking the cakes over the open fire would have even been fun — were it not being done for a man who would stop at nothing to own her, even though he obviously hated her.

  What was more difficult was weaving the sleeping mats. The women made them out of palm leaves, and Nora had actually imagined it being quite easy. She wistfully thought about the dreams she’d shared with Simon, while her weaving fell apart with every new attempt. She would have needed someone to show it to her, but the only one who shyly joined her was little Mansah. The girl was scared and sad. Máanu and the other women in Nanny Town couldn’t replace her mother, even though they were all kind to her — especially so that they could get Máanu, the queen’s new confidant, to like them. Granny Nanny had obviously taken a liking to the young Máanu and often called her into her hut to discuss this or that with the girl. The other women reverently claimed that she was consulting with her.

  Mansah, however, knew better. “Queen not consult with anyone,” she explained to Nora, as she tried to help her weave. She ended up being just as unskilled at it as the white woman. There had to be a trick that neither of them had mastered yet. “But speak English with Máanu. And want to learn to read. Máanu say she can’t do right, but need to ask Akwasi. But Granny don’t talk to Akwasi, she angry because Akwasi bring Missis. Later she will need to, Máanu says, because she can’t read contract.”

  “A contract?” Nora asked, surprised and a bit hopeful again. “The Maroons want to sign contracts with the backras?”

  Mansah shrugged. “Don’t know, Missis, Máanu says Granny won’t. Because contract always mean sending slaves back if ran away. But Cudjoe probably will …” Cudjoe seemed to be Nanny’s oldest brother. Nora had heard in Kingston that he had initiated the Maroons’ raids and uprisings in the first years. At this point, however, he was in Saint James Parish, in the northwest area of the island.

  Maybe he wanted to really legalize his town.

  “Quao was with him,” Mansah went on. “But now back. And argue with Nanny.”

  “About a peace agreement?” Nora asked.

  Mansah shrugged again. From her, Máanu’s characteristic gesture didn’t seem so annoying, but rather whimsical.

  “Don’t know, Missis,” she repeated. “Nanny and Quao speak foreign language. Ashanti-language. Máanu says she would like to learn. Learning proper language of right people!” Nora pushed her hair out of her face — after which, her weaving immediately fell apart again. The leaves were just too smooth; without any frame, they wouldn’t hold together. Resigned, she looked into Mansah’s eager little face.

  “Máanu is not an Ashanti,” Nora then remarked. “As far as I know, Mama Adwe is Dogon. And the Ashanti have enslaved the Dogon for centuries. So why is their language better than English? For that matter, you should speak properly, Mansah. There is no reason for you to speak like a little baby; you no longer have a backra to insist upon it. You are free. So, try to build proper sentences!” The next few hours passed with efforts being made on both sides. Nora struggled to create a sort of weaving frame and Mansah tried to formulate correct phrases in English. The latter was far more successful than the former. Already annoyed, Nora wanted to simply stack up the leaves on top of each other, just to have somewhere softer to lie when she received an unexpected visit. Mansah immediately hid behind Nora when anyone’s shadow fell upon her. She had been doing it the whole afternoon — after all, one woman after another had
been dropping by to make fun of Nora’s clumsiness.

  Mansah did her best to deprive them of their fun. The person who’d just walked up, however, had no interest in Nora’s work. He unabashedly surveyed the white woman.

  “So you’re the one,” the man finally said. “I couldn’t believe it until now. I thought you were maybe mulatto or something. Very white. But yet … yet not a white missis.”

  Nora looked up at him angrily. “Well, then welcome to the menagerie!” she remarked. “Seeing as you are not the first, perhaps Akwasi should take money for putting me on display.”

  She knew that this was unseemly, but she openly returned the man’s inquiring stares. The man that stood before her was rather small, but strong. His face was broad, his eyes as piercing black and sparkling as the queen’s.

  “He would get none from me, Missis, as I have every right to look at you. I am Quao, the king.”

  So, Nanny’s brother. Of course, he looked like her, but seemed to be younger.

  “And? Do I please you?” Nora asked. “Or I shall I first show my teeth?”

  At the slave markets, that was always demanded of the two-legged wares.

  Quao laughed. “You should not bite me,” he warned. “But otherwise … If I am to be honest, I don’t like you at all. You will only make trouble here.”

  Nora snorted. “I didn’t ask to come here,” she snapped.

  Quao sighed. “But something must have happened between you and this boy to make him love and hate you so much. Have you encouraged him? Are you one of these whites who like to nibble on some black meat?”

  Nora glared at him. “I’ve never—” but then she remembered the night of the Obeah ceremony and lowered her eyes. “I didn’t start that …”

  “Oh,” Quao raised his hands as if he were about to summon the spirits. “So, there was something. I suspected as much. And Nanny, too. It could all be so simple if this boy and Máanu … But anyway, — what’s your name?”

  Nora told him.

  “So, Nora …”