Grantville Gazette. Volume 21

by Eric Flint

  A week or so after the assault, one of the young women managed to escape. Tetube hid in an old hunter's shelter that her brother had once pointed out, until the Imbangala tired of searching for her. Then she slipped down river.

  Long Rainy Season (April to July, 1635)

  Carsten raised his hands. "All right, I can't hear anyone if you all talk at once."

  "We've had goods stolen, time and again," one colonist, who frequently made trading forays across the river, complained.

  "Anyone killed?"

  "Not yet," the trader admitted.

  "That's not all," said a second colonist. "The Africans are already killing each other."

  "Are you surprised?" asked Henrique, Mauricio's white half-brother. "It's not as though they were all that friendly back in Africa, you know. That's how at least half of them ended up as slaves in the first place. They fight these little wars, and the prisoners get sold."

  "So the villages are armed camps, now," added the trader. "It makes it tough to do business. The Africans are thinking more about fighting than about farming, I assure you. They have less to trade and sooner or later some nervous sentry is going to shoot an arrow or throw a spear into one of us."

  "We just find out who started it, and teach them a lesson," said Heyndrick. "That's what cousin David did with the Indians in America."

  "You mean kill them?" asked Michael Krueger. " I have a better idea. If a tribe can't keep its people from stealing or killing, then I think it should be considered lawful to re-enslave them all."

  "Ah, lawful war," said Mauricio. "The Portuguese did that in Brazil, with the Indians. Funny thing was, there always seemed to be a lawful reason to enslave any tribe which was too weak to resist."

  Henrique held up his hand. "There's worse news."

  Carsten gave Henrique his full attention. He knew that Henrique was a woodsman, and he and Mauricio's Manao Indian brother-in-law, Coqui, moved freely among the Indians in the affected region. "What?"

  "We've had reports that some of the Africans have real weapons. Steel swords. Guns even. Some Indian villages have been attacked."

  "Where could they get them from?" Carsten wondered, aloud.

  "The Spanish. Or the Portuguese," Denys Zager suggested. He scowled at Henrique and Mauricio.

  Henrique scowled right back. "We are wanted men in Brazil. And Maria and Heyndrick transported us here, from hundreds of miles away. They can vouch for the fact that we brought only our personal weapons with us."

  Zager folded his arms across his beer barrel chest. "You say you're refugees, but how do we know? Perhaps your Indian friends are helping you smuggle weapons here from your friends in Brazil."

  "Enough," said Carsten firmly. "The accusation is ridiculous. Please don't distract us from the real problem."

  "Perhaps," Maria offered tentatively, "we should help the good Africans, the ones who are just trying to defend themselves, deal with the troublemakers themselves."

  "You mean, give arms to the 'good' Africans? That's crazy."

  Carsten clapped his hands. "We will try to figure out which Africans are the source of the problem, and deal with them. With or without African allies, as seems best at the time.

  "For the moment, the Africans who wish to trade will have to come to us, not us to them. We'll set up a trading post just outside Fort Lincoln. We'll strengthen the inland defenses there, too. And I think we better institute river patrols. Hopefully, the blacks'll all calm down after a while."

  ***

  Borguri held out his favorite whetstone, and one of his new Arawak wives dutifully poured water over it, letting the liquid cascade down into a waiting basin. A tied-up African watched in fear, not knowing what would happen next.

  He pointed to the basin. "Drink," he ordered. The cowering captive complied.

  Borguri then hit him over the head with the stone. "My sword serves me, my stone serves my sword, my water washes my stone, you have drunk my water. Your ancestors have forgotten you; mine watch your every move, your every thought. You are mine."

  He gave the slave a playful cuff, and ordered, "Back to work."

  The slave should be thankful. Now that he was officially part of Borguri's lineage-albeit at the lowest level-he was unlikely to be picked as a pre-battle sacrifice.

  Borguri frowned. The process of assimilation just wasn't fast enough. Borguri needed a cadre of true Imbangala to serve as role-models for the coerced recruits, and to discipline those who didn't comply with the rules. There were only so many new recruits he could absorb within a period of a few months.

  But if he took too long to build up his strength, the Ndongo would make or buy themselves decent weapons, and counterattack.

  So Borguri had made a decision. Just as the Imbangala of old had allied themselves to the Portuguese, Borguri would ally his tribe to one of the Carib Indian tribes. One which, he had learned, was not happy about the white presence in their vicinity. Borguri felt confident that they would be delighted by the prospect of revenge and plunder which Borguri would hold out to them.

  Of course, once the whites were driven out, the Caribs would no doubt turn upon the Imbangala.

  Except that the Imbangala would turn on them first.

  ***

  Mauricio walked up beside Maria, coughed. "About that Coromantee man."

  Maria looked up. "Yes? You thought of something?"

  "I questioned the crew. Even the captain. They didn't remember the children, of course. What're two slaves among hundreds? But they did know which ship left Elmina before they did. And where it was headed."

  "Well?"

  "The Fenix. Bound for Havana."

  "Well, that's something. I imagine there would be records of who was sold out of which ship, to which plantation. And there can't have been that many children. But he certainly can't go there and ask, can he?"

  "He would need to learn Spanish of course. And if he didn't want to be a slave within seconds after stepping onto the dock, he would need a letter of manumission. Preferably, from a Spanish source."

  "Henrique could write the letter, couldn't he? Portugal being under the Spanish crown, they would honor a Portuguese document. And I wouldn't think a minor port official in Santo Domingo is going to have been informed that Henrique is a heretic."

  "Probably not. But then there's the other problem. The financial one. He would have to buy his children. And he doesn't have any money."

  "Well, it's going to take him months, if not years, to learn Spanish, and more important how he must act if he wants to be successful. The important thing is that we can give him a reason to hope."

  A moment later she added, "A reason to live."

  ***

  Carsten Claus looked out across the expanse of the Suriname. The river was perhaps half a mile across here. The vegetation on the far bank was dense; there could be an army of Africans hiding there, for all he knew. He wished he knew how the troublemakers were arming themselves. He suspected that the Portuguese in Belem do Para, or the Spanish in Santiago de Leon de Caracas, were involved, to harass the USE. But would they arm slaves who had been taken off a Portuguese-crewed, Spanish-licensed ship? Could any of the colonists have been so short-sighted as to sell arms to the ex-slaves without permission?

  To reassure the colonists, he had put the Eikhoorn on river patrol duty, and banned the Africans from fishing within a mile of the colony. He was waiting for the Eikhoorn to return from upriver; he had some questions for its skipper. But what he wanted most of all was for David de Vries to show up with a ship of force, and more colonists, so that they clearly outpowered and outnumbered the Africans. David should have been here a month ago.

  At least, if their African informants were correct, he could now put a name to the problem: Imbangala. Mauricio, sitting beside Carsten, had just explained to him that since 1615, the Portuguese of Luanda had used the Imbangala as mercenaries in their wars with Ndongo. Ndongo warriors, if captured in battle, were exported to the New World to work on pla
ntations and in the mines. But the Imbangala? Since they were allies of the Portuguese in Luanda, Mauricio hadn't expected to find them sold into slavery. Perhaps these had disobeyed orders? Or had the Portuguese beaten the Ndongo into submission, and decided the Imbangala had outlived their usefulness?

  Carsten expressed the hope that the Gustavans' African friends were, indeed, friends. Mauricio nodded, but offered no reassurances on that score. They sat in silence for a few minutes, then both realized simultaneously that they were no longer alone, and turned their heads.

  "Forgive the interruption," said Maria.

  Carsten forced a smile. "How can a visit from you be considered an interruption?"

  "You perhaps know that Mauricio and I have been researching the whereabouts of the children of one of the Coromantees? We think it very likely that they were shipped to Havana. I wondered-could the Anti-Slavery Society send someone there, to find and redeem them? I am sure it would be very good publicity, to reunite the children with their father."

  Carsten swatted a mosquito. "The Society has discussed the possibility of redemption."

  "And?"

  "Decided against it. First, because our financial resources are limited. Second, because we fear that any concerted policy of that kind would just encourage the slavers to fetch more slaves so they could sell them to us for a quick profit. We would be, what's that American term, a 'revolving door.' Once naval resources can be spared to stop the slave trade at its source, and we have better funding, we may reconsider redemption."

  "So what would you recommend?"

  "Well-" Carsten was distracted by the appearance of the Eikhoor n, just coming around the upriver bend. It reminded him of the exciting day that they had seized the Triton, and sunk its longboat, not many yards from where the Eikhoorn was plowing back downriver.

  The longboat. He started cursing.

  "Carsten, what's wrong?" asked Maria.

  "We know from the reports that the Africans who have been causing trouble have weapons. I just figured out where they got them from." He pointed upriver.

  "I don't understand… oh… the longboat? But wouldn't the weapons all be rusted?"

  "By now they would be. But if they were found early enough, not irretrievably. The rust could have been scraped off."

  "But how would they have known where to look? You don't suppose a colonist told them?"

  "Perhaps. It might not have been evil in intent. A colonist might have bragged about the battle. Anyway, I will have the damn boat brought up. We'll take a count of how many bodies, guns and swords are still there, and that will let us make a good guess as to what was taken.

  Carsten stood up. "The crew of the Eikhoorn is going to have to wait a little longer for their supper, I'm afraid. As for your problem, I think you are going to have to find a way for your Coromantee protege to find the money himself. If he does, then the Society could perhaps find a trustworthy agent to send. A clergyman, perhaps."

  ***

  The three Ndongo warriors, Mukala, Aka, and Miguel, studied the body of their fallen comrades. Both bore diagonal gashes on their foreheads, but their death wounds were elsewhere.

  "Imbangala," Mukala said. The Imbangala were in the habit of distinctively marking their kills so that each warrior could claim the bodies of the enemies he had slain, have them carried back to the camp by his slaves, and then eat them with the proper formalities so that their ghosts couldn't haunt the slayer.

  Miguel, pointed to the death wound. "That wasn't made by a spear."

  "No," Mukala agreed. "It's a slash, not a thrust."

  "And look how clean the edges are," said Aka. "That wasn't made with sharpened wood, or flint. It was a cut from a steel blade."

  "This is very bad news," said Miguel. "The whites are arming the Imbangala with cutlasses. That is the only possible explanation."

  "We should have wiped out the filthy Kasanje Imbangala right after we landed," said Mukala. "We had the advantage of numbers then." Many Ndongo, warriors and farmers alike, had been captured and shipped to the New World, to work Portuguese sugar plantations and Spanish silver mines. There were relatively few Imbangala on the slave ship because most were Portuguese allies. But Kasanje, who led one of the Imbangala bands, had set up an independent state in 1620, and so his people were fair game.

  "That is easy to say now," reproved Aka. "But we were so thirsty we could barely move our limbs when we were freed." The slave ship had gone first to Angola, and tried its luck. It ventured further north, among the Coromantee, Eboe and Mandinka, only because it hadn't been able to fill its hold. So the Angolans had endured the privations of middle passage longer than any of their brothers in suffering.

  Mukala made a gesture of propitiation to the gods. "Powers forbid we suffer so again!"

  Miguel added thoughtfully, "If we had attacked the Imbangala immediately, the whites might have feared that we would attack them next, and turned their swivel guns on us."

  "Do you think the Imbangala have guns, too?" asked Mukala. "If so, we are in big trouble."

  "Don't know, but we better tell the elders what we found." Aka pointed at the bodies. "In the meantime let's rig a sled for these bodies. I'll not leave them for the Imbangala. And be quick about it; we don't know when they'll be back."

  A few days later, the Ndongo moved their encampment some miles further east, away from the Gustavans and, they hoped, the Imbangala.

  ***

  The Gustavans' spirits were lifted by the somewhat belated arrival of the four hundred ton, eighteen gun Walvis, their lifeline to the USE. It was commanded by Captain David Pieterszoon De Vries, President of the USE-chartered United Equatorial Company-their employer. It was accompanied by a jacht, the six gun Siren.

  He brought news which was both welcome and unsettling. Welcome, in that peace had finally come to the Low Countries. Unsettling, in that there was now a Catholic King in the Netherlands, Don Fernando. The colonists, many of whom came from the Netherlands, were mostly Protestants, and therefore not inclined to trust the ex-Cardinal Infante's promise of religious tolerance-even if Fredrik Hendrik was now a "trusted advisor."

  On a personal level, Maria was overjoyed when David brought word that her brother Adolph and his wife Catharina had survived the Spanish invasion. Her cup of happiness overflowed when David gave her a letter from Adolph.

  This reaction was somewhat tempered once she had read the letter. Adolph was a professor of medicine, and the curator of the Leiden Botanical Gardens. Just as their father had been, before him.

  He complained about the damage the Spanish troops had done to the garden. He complained that the students weren't paying attention in class. And he complained that the administration had unfairly reprimanded him for not showing more activity.

  It was, he pointed out, all Maria's fault. He would have sent his Catalogus plantarum to Elzevier for publication two years ago if Maria hadn't sent him all those new plants from Grantville, thus throwing him off schedule. And then made matters worse by sending him exotic specimens from Suriname.

  To add insult to injury, since she was gallivanting around the New World, without the slightest regard for her reputation (and for the damage she was doing, by association, to his dignity as a professor), that meant she wasn't back home drawing the plant illustrations for him.

  At the end of this litany, he closed by hoping she was well.

  Maria crumpled up the letter and tossed it into the Suriname River. "If it isn't one thing, it's a brother," she announced.

  ***

  David digested the news without any more change of expression than an up-timer might have seen on the faces carved upon Mount Rushmore. But he knew that the Imbangala couldn't be allowed to get away with killing colonists, even ones who foolishly ventured into their territory.

  "All right, this is what we'll do. First, we need to fortify the town and Fort Lincoln. Fortunately, I brought cement, and instructions on how to use it to make concrete. Concrete is stronger than wood, and doesn't
need to be carved like stone. Besides cement, we need sand, gravel and water, but I believe this country has those materials in abundance.

  "I also have the materials for a proper gatehouse, that is, I brought a portcullis and the like. And I have cannon in ballast. They are pedreros that were being sold off and replaced by newer designs, but they should be fine for fighting these Imbangala.

  "We will need the Africans or the Indians, or both, for fighting in the forests. While the colonists are seeing to the defenses, we will send out emissaries. Heyndrick and Maria, you'll take the Eikhoorn up river to talk to the Coromantee. And see if Captain Marshall, or his Indians, are willing to offer any assistance.

  "Henrique and Mauricio, you'll go to the Mandinka and the Eboes."

  "The Ndongo are much more numerous, and they are already at war with the Imbangala," interjected Mauricio. "Wouldn't I be more use talking to them?"

  "Perhaps, but we know that they are also more hostile to Europeans, thanks to what the Portuguese have been doing in Luanda the last hundred years. I can speak Portuguese-I was Jan Pieterszoon Coen's right hand man in Asia. But I can tell them honestly that I am Dutch, and the Portuguese are my enemies. Present company excepted, of course.

  "Also, we hear that they've moved pretty far to the east. We'll need a big ship like the Walvis to force its way back to windward, find them, and move them some place more useful. And I'd be needed to skipper the Walvis in any event.

  "Coqui will come with me, to talk to the local Indians. And also-what's her name?"

  "Tetube?"

  "Right. The lass who witnessed Imbangala atrocities first hand. Anyway, we'll organize a Grand Alliance, and put down the Imbangala for good."

  ***

  "He's coming, he's coming!" the Mandinka children shrieked, running up the path to their village.