The Blackbirder

Chapter 27

They made their way back down the trail in the dark, stumbling, cursing, following James. Twice he heard one of them fall, swear, get to his feet again. They gasped in surprise when some animal made a sound not so far off.

These men of his, Cato and Joshua, these natives of Virginia, could belay, coil, and hang a line in complete darkness, could lay out on a yard and stow sail with their eyes closed, could tuck an eye splice in under a minute. Good Boy could wield hammer and saw, and Quash could pound raw iron into whatever he wished, but they were not accustomed to this sort of thing, making their way through the forest in the dark.

James was not so accustomed to it either. He had spent most of his adult life as a field hand, working tobacco crops, and more recently as a sailor. It had been a long time since he had had to navigate the African forest in the dark. But the memories were embedded deep in him, in his head and his legs and his feet and his eyes, and they stirred now and awoke and allowed him to make his way almost as if his life among the Malinke had never been interrupted.

It took them two hours to arrive back at the beach, stopping every ten minutes or so, standing silent and listening, straining to hear any sounds of pursuit. But there were none, and that was proof to James that Madshaka thought he and his men were among those unhappy people trapped once more in a slaver’s prison.

“James?” Cato’s voice. Uncertain. James considered how shocked the young men must be by the rapidly spinning events.

“Yes?”

“What was Madshaka about? Locking them people up?”

“He going to sell them again.”

“Sell them? You mean, sell them as slaves? After all that?”

“That’s what I mean.”

There was silence after that, and James listened to the sounds of the night, but there were none that might indicate men coming after them. Then Quash spoke.

“But Madshaka, he was a slave himself. He was sold out of that very factory, he say so. Why he selling his own people?”

“He’s not.” These men-boys, really-were children of the New World. They did not understand the ways of ancient Africa. “Madshaka, he’s Kru. He kept the Kru with him. The rest-the Ibo, the Aja, the Bariba, all of them-them he lock up.”

James listened for a moment more, then continued. “Madshaka knows that factory too good to have just been a slave there. I think he was slaver. I think the white people betrayed him, sold him, and now he take his revenge.”

More silence as the others digested this. “Damn me,” one of them said. Joshua. Then Quash said, “Now what we do?”

“Go back to the ship. Get her under way,” James said, and it was not a suggestion but a statement.

In the dim light from the stars that filtered through the trees, he could just make out the others’ faces, and he could see there was relief there. They were glad that James was in charge again, making decisions, leading them. They were relieved that the James they knew was back.

They continued on down the trail until at last it opened onto the wide beach, a great stretch of white sand, dull gray in the starlight, that ran off east and west as far as they could see. The surf made a great thunderous roar, with the white edges of the breaking waves foaming high above the level of the sand, then crashing down and racing far up onto the shore.

The surf made James uncomfortable and it gave him confidence, all at once. It overpowered all other sound, made it impossible for them to hear anyone approaching, which was not to his liking. But on the other hand it was the ocean, his element, not Madshaka’s, and it gave him an edge, despite Madshaka’s overwhelming numbers and local knowledge.

But they would not get to sea that night, would not get further than the beach. As soon as they stepped from the trees he knew it. The wind was blowing ten knots and steady, right off the water. It was churning up the surf, making it more dangerous than ever to negotiate. And even if they made it through, there was nothing they could do with the ship. The five of them and a shipload of women to whom they could not speak could not hope to claw the heavy merchantman off a lee shore. They would have to wait for the morning’s offshore breeze, which would blow them away from the land under whatever canvas they could set.

“We’ll go into the forest, sleep for the night,” James said. Even if they could manage to get through the surf and out to the ship, they would be trapped there if Madshaka and his men followed. “You men sleep; I’ll keep watch.”

The others made no protest as they stumbled into the dense woods and flattened out a place in the undergrowth where they could sleep. It was not terribly comfortable, not for men unaccustomed to sleeping on the ground, but they were so completely exhausted that ten minutes later they were asleep and snoring, and James at last was grateful for the overpowering volume of the surf.

He left them where they fell, and moved to the edge of the clearing and squatted by one of the great arching palms and watched: watched the head of the trail, watched the beach, watched the dim white water breaking on the tops of the waves, watched the stars wheel overhead. It was his homeland, his Africa. Why did he feel such a stranger there?

He shook off such selfish considerations and turned his mind instead to what he would do for the others. A prince had to put his people before himself and that he would do.

Those poor people whom Madshaka had fooled, and he was one. He could not suffer them to be sold into bondage again. He had thrown away his own life in freeing them from the blackbirder, his life and those of the men with him. He could not allow their sacrifice to be for naught, could not allow his own life to be worth nothing in the end. He could not let those people endure the Middle Passage once again.

Madshaka would come for the women still aboard the Frenchman, would come for the rich booty filling her hold. But first, if the wind served, he and his men would sail her away. And then they would return for the others. He did not know how, exactly, or when, but they would.

For an hour and more he sat, thought, watched, but there was no movement beyond the eternally restless surf. He knew he could not maintain his vigil all night. He needed sleep as well. He had to be sharp and he could not be if he was exhausted, so he made his way back to the clearing where his men slept, and lay down himself, and in a matter of minutes he was deep in a dreamless slumber.

He woke a half hour before dawn. He had done so nearly every morning of his life, and his body was so accustomed to that rhythm that he stirred despite his weariness and his protesting joints and muscles. He was getting old; he felt it in every part of his body.

The others were still asleep and he did not wake them. They could have a few more minutes because the wind was still onshore, but lighter, and James guessed it would be another hour before it died away and then was resurrected as the morning land breeze that would lift the French merchantman off the coast.

He stood and stretched and worked each aching limb, then stepped quietly to the edge of the trees and peered out at the beach. He could see a bit farther down the stretch of sand, just past the breakers, but still there was nothing revealed that might cause him any alarm or make him lead his little band back into the woods where they might hide from those hunting them.

He remained in that place as the sky grew lighter; first white then the palest of blue and finally orange, and the light spread along the beach and the forest and the ocean. There was the multitude of shipping- the local traders and the blackbirders and no doubt a few pirates- riding at their anchors, their bows pointed generally out to sea.

The French merchantman was there, just where they had left her. And beyond her, just coming into focus in the gathering dawn, another ship, standing in under topsails.

James drew in his breath, quite involuntarily. The sight of her filled him with delight and terror and ennui and anger, all those emotions, all jumbled together so he did not know what to say or feel or think.

She was the Elizabeth Galley, in all her perfection, one that he himself had helped render. Marlowe had found him, hunted him down like a runaway slave. And now, once again, everything had changed.

Madshaka had had a tremendous time, but as the black night that made dark mirrors of the windows of the factor’s hut began to grow gray with the approach of dawn, he knew that it was time to rest.

He and his men, the Kru, the core of his army, had spent the night in celebration. They had feasted on Van der Haagen’s food, poured his wine and rum down their throats, smoked pipe after pipe of his tobacco.

Madshaka knew the place well. He had spent many evenings in that house, sitting, eating, drinking with his white colleagues. He knew his way around the pantry and the liquor stores, knew well the trophies that decorated the walls: war clubs and shields and spears and massive iron swords taken from warriors killed trying to defend themselves and their clans. Several he had collected himself.

And all the while the Dutchman and his colleagues had been made to sit at table with them, to join them, to pretend to be celebrating as well. This they did to the best of their ability, but with Stevens’s corpse growing cold on the floor, his eyes open, his hands clawlike in death, the pool of blood around him congealing where he lay in it, they did not feel any of the bonhomie of Madshaka and his men. Still, they maintained their forced smiles and even produced a chuckle or two.

To his credit, Van der Haagen did not even pretend to enjoy himself, and he did not yield to Madshaka’s threats and entreaties that he should do so. Van der Haagen understood the politics of Whydah well enough, Madshaka guessed, and he knew his murder would not go unpunished. He, Madshaka, could get away with butchering the assistant factor, could take the actual running of the factory for himself, but Van der Haagen was still needed to be the nominal factor. The king of Whydah would not ignore the murder of a British slave trader.

“Now, Van der Haagen, why you don’t celebrate with us?” Madshaka asked, pushing a bottle of wine toward the Dutchman, who glanced down at it but made no move to pick it up. “Your old partner Madshaka is back now, and I brought you a whole shipload of slaves. And these are slaves you already sold once! Now you get to sell them again!”

“You sent a band of heavily armed men into the trunk, you bloody fool. What are you going to do now, and them all armed with cutlasses and knives and God knows what else?”

“Ah, you, too much worry. They get thirsty enough, they trade weapons for water, you see.”

“You better hope you’re right,” Van der Haagen said.

“Of course I right. Them, like sheep, and me, a shepherd, and I lead them right here.”

And that was true. He had led them right to that place, herded them into the trunk and now they were his flock to do with as he would. There were no leaders among them, none that might inspire them to rise up, to fight back.

Except King James.

Madshaka stopped in midlaugh, squinted, looked down at the table. King James. He had meant to kill him last night, during the fight, but it had slipped his mind. He must not have noticed James among the others, or he would not have forgotten to rid himself of that potential problem.

He turned and said to Anaka, now head of his Kru guard, “Go to the trunk and get King James. If you cannot get him out safely, then take a musket and shoot him though the bars of the door.”

“Yes, Madshaka,” Anaka said. He ordered two others to follow and they hurried from the hut. They spoke in Kwa, as they had all night. Madshaka knew that Van der Haagen and the rest could not speak or understand Kwa and it unnerved them. They could speak a sort of pidgin Yoruba, the lingua franca of that part of the coast, but they knew no Kwa.

Madshaka understood how effective that could be. He had used it to entirely usurp King James’s command, and James had not even known it.

“What is the matter?” Van der Haagen asked. “Have you forgotten something? I hope your plan has not run into problems.”

“No, no,” Madshaka said, and he realized to his annoyance that he had been frowning, so he forced himself to smile his big, embracing smile and said, “No, Factor, everything is at last as it should be.”

But he was not so sure, and though he forced everyone to continue on with the celebrations, Madshaka grew increasingly uneasy. And the longer his men were gone, the more uncomfortable he became, until finally he was no longer able to hide his mood behind a false smile. The others sensed this, and became more and more quiet, until the celebration was no more than a few muttered words.

Then at last Anaka was back. Madshaka perked up as he stepped through the door, and then frowned to see the look on the man’s face.

“Well?”

“Madshaka, King James is not in the trunk.”

Madshaka just stared at him, said nothing, so Anaka said again, “He’s not there. We separated the people out, looked at each man individually, looked at every face. King James is not there. Not him or any of the English.” For want of another term they referred to those slaves born in Virginia as “the English.”

Madshaka frowned, stared out the door at the courtyard. How could James not be there? He had been with them when they charged the wall, he had made certain of it. But somehow he had not been part of the group that had been tricked into the prison.

If he was not in the trunk, then he was out there, somewhere, hiding, watching.

Madshaka thought that he should be angry about this, should be raging and turning the furniture over in his wrath. Someone should die for this blunder, but he did not know who.

His plan had worked perfectly, as flawlessly as ever one did in an ancient story told by elders around a fire. And now, a kink, a flaw, and, of all things, King James, loose, out there. He was not so foolish as to doubt that King James was a dangerous man.

He should have been burning with rage at the news, but he was not.

Madshaka was not angry. He was afraid.