The Guineaman

  Makepeace saw this too and let her go. She dropped to the deck like a sack of grain, inert and almost completely still. Then her body heaved, drawing air into her lungs and Kite saw that she was not dead. Makepeace grunted, then stepped over her and went forward, following Mason out of the gunroom into the gloom of the slave rooms beyond the door. Kite stared down at the gasping woman, then knelt beside her with a sigh. Putting his hand on her back, he felt the heave of her lungs as instinct grasped at the life that had hung so perilously at Makepeace’s whim.

  He stayed thus, stooped over the woman as her breathing became normal again, unconsciously rubbing her back, waiting for Mason to reappear and conduct her forward, wondering if she would be capable of moving herself.

  ‘Tie her to the damned table for the night.’ The commander’s voice broke into Kite’s thoughts and he looked up. Makepeace had re-entered the gunroom pushing the young woman of Kite’s fancy before him. His intentions were clear. Mason followed. ‘Oh, take her out, Mason,’ Makepeace ordered nodding at Kite’s patient. ‘Do what you like with the whore, though mind the dress…’

  But Kite was not listening, he was staring at the terror in the young woman’s eyes, aware that her plea could not be more eloquent than if she cried out in perfect English. What she thought of the events that had transpired in the gunroom, he could only guess at, but his own complicity seemed so obvious as he squatted with his hands on the distressed and stirring female that Mason now stooped over. Kite stood up and Mason dragged his burden like a sack over the painted canvas on the deck, uncaring that her head and shoulders bumped and struck the chair legs as she passed.

  Kite looked from the young woman to the leering Makepeace, then acted on an irresistible impulse to stop the captain from raping her.

  He blocked the narrow space that ran down the length of the table and along which the captain and his prisoner would have to pass to reach the privacy of his cabin. ‘Not her, sir!’ he said, head up, his shoulders hunched, anticipating the blow and aware now of the power in the captain’s hands, one of which was ominously clasping the young woman’s neck.

  Makepeace looked at Kite. Slowly he turned his victim’s head and regarded her. ‘And why not her, Mr Kite? Do you want her for yourself? Have you developed a taste for the black wench then? The Quaker misgivings gone at the twitch of your prick, eh?’ Makepeace was chuckling. Suddenly he thrust the young woman violently forward and she cannoned into Kite who seized her. Kite was still staring incredulously at Makepeace whom, he realised, he had mutinously defied.

  ‘I have seen you watching her,’ Makepeace said dismissively. ‘Go and take your pleasure of her. That is what women are for, Mr Kite. That and the perilous business of bearing offspring.’ And then Makepeace had somehow passed them and only the bang of his cabin door marked his passing.

  Kite stared at the young woman. Her face was inches from his; she was frozen in a rictus of fear.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said urgently, never recalling that he had used those very words when soothing her abraded ankles. ‘It’s all right,’ he repeated, then, putting up his hand to stroke her face, he gently drew her into his cabin and closed the door.

  ‘Shhhh…’ He let her go, his finger to his lips, casting about him, hurriedly closing his journal and stowing it away, along with the quill and ink-well. The young woman retreated to huddle into the forward outboard corner of the cabin from where she stared up at Kite, her beautiful dark eyes round with apprehension.

  Crouched down, her vulnerability struck him with a wave of lust.

  Chapter Seven

  The Negress

  The blaze of sudden ferocity in Kite’s expression ignited a responding terror in that of the trembling, crouching negress. She shut her eyes tight, screwing them up against his imminent assault, the only defence she could offer. It stopped Kite dead. He felt the pang of guilt as a physical wrench in his guts. Yes, he wanted the woman, as a young man wanted a woman, but not in this manner! Instead he squatted beside her and slid an arm about her shoulders, a gesture of almost fraternal concern. He felt her shudder, as the captain’s half-strangled whore had shuddered, but he made no further move, sensing that inaction would the quicker console her. After a while he felt her trembling ease, and he bent and kissed the top of her head. At this she looked at him and he gently withdrew, easing himself back against the adjacent bulkhead and placing the tips of the fingers of both hands on his breast said slowly: ‘Kite… I am Kite… Kite…’

  She tried to enunciate the word, but her mouth was dry and she had to swallow before she uncertainly formed his name. ‘Kite…’ she said.

  He smiled and nodded. Then he extended his hand and without thinking, still looking into her eyes, touched her breast, raised his eyebrows questioningly and made as if to say a word. She frowned and repeated, ‘Kite.’

  Kite smiled again and shook his head, touched his own breast, repeated his own name, then her shoulder. She said something which he failed to catch and he quickly cupped his right ear and bent forward. She repeated the word which, if it was her name, he found himself unable to grasp. Instead he sat back on his haunches and said, ‘I shall call you Puella, which is Latin for girl.’ He repeated the name slowly. ‘Puella.’

  Since he could not discover her real name, to confer some artificial English substitute seemed but one more imposition; the Latin noun seemed a not inappropriate, expedient and, he hoped, temporary substitute.

  Rising, he slipped out of his cabin and reappeared with a handful of biscuits and some water from the gunroom which he offered her. Eagerly she grabbed the carafe of water and upended it, swallowing quickly. When she had finished she gestured at her leg irons and said something which he interpreted as a request that he should remove them.

  He shrugged and shook his head. ‘I cannot,’ he said. Then, realising that if he said more, though she would be incapable of understanding it, she might comprehend that the matter was more complicated, he went on.

  ‘Believe me, Puella, I would willingly remove those confounded irons if it was in my power, but they would only be replaced tomorrow.’ He saw the disappointment in her eyes and it suddenly occurred to Kite that although he, along with every man aboard the Enterprize, knew the fate of the negroes, they themselves would have no idea of what lay in store for them. Thus his kindness, however partial, might seem to her not a temporary amelioration of her confinement, but the end of it. He fervently wished that this was so, but knew that the morning would present him with further problems. What, he asked himself, could he do to mitigate the poor creature’s distress, to show her that although she must remain shackled, he meant no harm? Impulsively, he suddenly scooped her up and laid her out in his cot, pulling a sheet over her. Touching her lightly on the cheek, wished her good night.

  Then he spread a blanket on the deck and lay down to sleep.

  When he woke it was still early. The faint clink of iron recalled the presence of Puella in his cot and told where she shifted uneasily in her sleep. He sighed, aware that he could do little to preserve Puella’s privacy, yet dreaded her reaction to being returned to the women’s room on the slave deck. He wished that there was someone on board who could translate between them, and express his intention of doing whatever he could to help her, but they had left Golden-Opportunity Plantagenet at York Island. He considered buying her himself; the notion had merit, for it offended no-one and while he might be thought a damned fool, he could stomach that. But he presumed he would have to wait until the slaves were put up for sale, whenever and wherever they were landed. Then another idea struck him; so as not to wake her, he quietly slipped on his shoes and went on deck.

  It was still dark and for a moment he stood in the chilly night air, staring at the first flush of the dawn to the east. Gerard had the watch and loomed up like a ghost. ‘Well, Mr Kite, what a surprise, I hear you have feet of mortal clay after all.’

  Kite opened his mouth to protest the innocence of his behaviour, but thought better of it,
realising his continence would be as misunderstood as his own initial misunderstanding of Molloy’s rectitude. It was preferable to meet his problems at a level others comprehended.

  ‘I have taken a woman, yes. Is that so very remarkable?’

  Gerard chuckled. ‘In your case it’s remarkable, yes. Was she good?’

  ‘I’ve had better,’ Kite riposted, pleased with the readiness of his glib reply.

  ‘Have you now? Well, well. And I had you for a cock-virgin.’

  ‘We all make mistakes, Mr Gerard. Now, perhaps you will tell me something. How do I get her made into an assistant, as the other men’s women have become. She would make a good assistant to Wilson and myself.’

  ‘Well…’ Gerard appeared to consider the matter.

  ‘Look, I understand I am entitled to profit from a slave or two. Why cannot I have this one…’’

  ‘In lieu of payment?’

  ‘If necessary.’

  Gerard laughed. ‘Are you a fool? Have you any idea what a box of problems she’ll bring?’

  ‘Then I’ll sell her on,’ Kite said with convincing brutality.

  ‘Captain Makepeace doesn’t favour…’

  ‘Captain Makepeace thrust her in my face last night.’ As he uttered the words Kite was seized by a sudden suspicion and immediately voiced it: ‘In fact I’m not sure that he didn’t intend to corrupt me by the act and prove my feet were of ordinary clay.’

  Gerard chuckled beside him. ‘Well, he seems to have achieved a degree of success. You now possess the zeal of the converted, Mr Kite. Only yesterday you moped about, utterly opposed to the trade and now, here you are, up before the sun to ask me about buying a black whore.’

  Kite bit his lip at the insult, then said, ‘I thought perhaps you would approve. It would ease the burden on…’

  ‘Beg pardon, sir…’

  ‘What is it?’ Gerard turned as a man approached them in the gloom. ‘It’s Holmes, ain’t it?’ Gerard peered at the figure who appeared bare legged, his shirt tails flapping in the wind. ‘What are you doing on deck?’

  ‘There’s trouble below, sir…’

  ‘What the slaves,’ broke in Gerard, suddenly tense.

  ‘No, no, sir, not them. That’s Mr Kite, ain’t it? It’s more fever, sir. Johnny Good is shaking in his hammock, sir, damn near threw me out, and he’s started to shout about his muvver…’

  ‘Dear God…’

  ‘I’ll go down, Mr Gerard,’ Kite said. ‘Take me below Holmes.’

  In the next two days eight men were taken ill, including the gunner, Mitchell, the first of the Spitfire’s officers to be infected. The yellow-jack, having lain dormant from its initial appearance among the crew of the Enterprize, had now incubated and struck in all its indiscriminate horror. It was only the beginning; by the end of a week one third of the ship’s company were suffering, some in the preliminary stage, suffering terrible fits of uncontrollable shivering, wracked by pains in the head, the spine and the limbs, some already in the second phase, when an abatement gave the false impression of recovery before the final yellowing of skin and eyes. This was only a brief interlude, for the copious and bloody vomiting that followed was the prelude to the fatal chilling before death.

  Like their consort, the Marquis of Lothian, aboard which the epidemic still raged, the work of the ship suffered. The morning exercise of the slaves was curtailed, then abandoned, for there were barely sufficient men fit to work the vessel. Instead a daily burial party mustered. Makepeace, a scented handkerchief held to his face, hurriedly mumbled the Protestant rites over the corpses, which had been sewn into their hammocks and were now sent to the bottom with a cannon shot at their feet.

  For Kite the outbreak was not without ironic consequence, for he had succeeded in persuading Makepeace to strike off the leg-irons from a few of the women and these included Puella. They helped nurse the dying with a tender compassion that drew from the commander the observation that, ‘such a thing seems scarcely possible and would doubtless prove so if they knew they were to be sold into a lifetime’s servitude.’

  But that, it seemed to Kite, was increasingly unlikely, for the mortality among the crew threatened the continuation of the voyage. This fact formed the core of a shouted debate between Makepeace and Ross at the end of the twentieth day of the passage. Although the ships’ route lay within the compass of the North East Trade Winds which held steady, requiring little sail trimming by day or night, the loss of men seriously hampered the management of the slaves. That morning Molloy and Kerr were struck down.

  Having compared the increasingly parlous state of his crew with that of Captain Ross, Makepeace clambered down from the rail to where Gerard and Kite waited. Kite had just reported the incapacity of Molloy, whose large frame shuddered below in the confinement of his cot.

  ‘You know what is in my mind, Mr Gerard, if things get much worse?’

  ‘I do, sir.’

  Kite looked enquiringly from one to the other, but it was clear that the obscure reference was to be kept from him.

  ‘How many of the blacks are affected today?’ Makepeace asked.

  ‘Only five, sir,’ said Kite, ‘the same number as yesterday.’

  ‘How can this be?’ Makepeace asked frowning, his expression desperate and fearful as he stared at Kite.

  ‘They are a lower order of being,’ Gerard said, ‘their immunity proves it…’

  ‘Aye, that may be true,’ said Makepeace, ‘but Kite here is so far unaffected and he has been in constant contact with the sick.’

  ‘Perhaps I too am of a lower order,’ Kite remarked. Black humour, he had observed, was a common means by which the seamen coped with the dread of their circumstances.

  Makepeace smiled thinly. ‘I think that highly possible, Kite.’ He looked up at the foretopsail. ‘If this wind holds we shall sight land within the sennight; it remains to be seen whether we can win this race and keep sufficient men to work the ship into port.’

  ‘If we run into enemy men-of-war…’ Gerard left the sentence incomplete, but Makepeace merely shrugged.

  ‘Let us hope,’ he said, ‘we have a man left to strike the ensign.’

  ‘Kite will do it,’ said Gerard, half smiling.

  *I have Little Inclination to Write these Lines. *

  Kite dipped his quill and stared across his cabin to the rumpled cot.

  We now have over Half the Ship’s Company sick with the Yellow-Fever. I am Deeply Perplex’d to know where this Contagion Arises. That it Comes from the Coast of Guinea is Clear, for the Negroes have grown Accustomed to it and are hardly Affected by it, but by what means, or from what Agent the Infection Comes, the Disease remains a Great Mystery.

  He paused again, recalling the Sherbro and the dense jungle that crowded its banks, hemming in the grey-green water and depositing in its stream the detritus of its endless cycle of life and death. Did the slime laden water contain some organism that bore the fatal disease? It was not dissimilar to the fever known in England as the Marsh Ague, endemic, he knew, in low, boggy and foetid areas. Although the deep and flowing Sherbro seemed at first to bear little resemblance to the marshes lying in the estuaries of many English rivers, he recalled the heavy miasma which, after nightfall, would descend upon the river like a thick and steaming fog. Was it this dense mist that, penetrating the opened ports and descending through the open gratings and companionways of the waist, introduced the deadly fever into the Enterprize?

  Was it the river water, or the river-borne mist? Or both?

  Then Kite remembered something with a start of horror and culpability. He himself had insisted the slaves were washed down with water from the Sherbro; had this sanitary measure actually imported the fever? ‘Oh, God…’ he groaned, burying his head in his hands, shaking with deep sobs at his profound ignorance and the fatal events which had led to this tragedy.

  ‘Kite… Kite?’

  He looked up, wiping the moisture from his eyes. The negress Puella had entered his cabin, b
arefoot and noiseless. She bore a bowl of steaming rice and he realised he had not eaten for hours. He nodded and expressed his thanks, taking the proffered bowl from her. She drew back to hunker down in the corner of his cabin, folding her arms on her drawn-up knees and staring up at him.

  After swallowing a mouthful he said, ‘You are good to me, Puella. I thank you.’ He put the spoon in the bowl and extended his right hand, repeating, ‘thank you.’

  She reached out and took his hand. It was the first mutual intimacy they had shared and they both smiled. ‘Kite may die, Puella,’ he said, ‘and God knows what will become of you, but if I live, I shall not abandon you.’ He cleared his throat and shook his head, adding in a firmer voice, ‘no, I shall not, upon my honour.’

  He knew she had no idea what he said as he made this compact with providence, but he sensed she derived some satisfaction from the sound of his voice, for she smiled again and he was beguiled by the curve of her full lips and the way a smile made her wide but not uncomely nostrils flare.

  Scooping the bowl clear of rice he set it down, whereupon she rose to remove it. Standing close to him, swaying with the movement of the ship, she looked down at him, her breasts prominent, infinitely desirable and appealing. As she took up the bowl she gently touched his cheek. He resisted an impulse to put his arm about her and in the same instant she slid her hand about his head and drew his face to her. He felt the soft firmness of her breast, the erect tissue of her nipple, against his cheek and the soft touch of her lips on the crown of his head.

  ‘Kite,’ she said slowly. Then she was gone, leaving him sitting like a loon, staring at the closed door of his cabin. He sighed, profoundly touched, then took up his quill again.