The Blackbirder

Chapter 4

The battle had lasted no more than a minute.

James let the body of the captain slip from his knife. It stared up, wide-eyed, from the deck. It seemed surprised. James could not imagine why.

Aft, two of the slaver’s crew were dead, another cut badly across the shoulder. Armed though they were, those exhausted, half-crazed slavers had been no match for the Northumberland’s men.

The three living men of the blackbirder’s crew sat on the deck, hands up in surrender. One was weeping, sobbing, tears running down his stubbled cheeks. Around them, James’s men held them at bay with their own weapons.

They thought they were finally safe, James reflected. Thought they had come through it at last, reached the safe embrace of the Chesapeake, and then this. Death at the hands of black men.

James took a breath. The anger was gone, it had dissipated with that one cathartic thrust. But now he had to think, because everything that he had come to know and depend upon was over, for him, for his men, for every person aboard that tortured blackbirder.

“What the hell have we done? What the hell have we done? They’ll fucking hang us for this.” Retching. It was Sam, puking with abandon. He was smeared with blood, his coat and shirt torn in the melee.

Under it all, under the noise of the sobs and the retching and the shouting, was the sound from the hold; clanking, screaming, moaning.

And despite those many layers of noise whirling through his head, James could see the essential truth of Sam’s words.

They would fucking hang them for this.

The black men; himself, Cato, Joshua, the others-all would be lucky even to live that long. No jail would hold them until a trial. They would be dragged from their cells and beaten to death. A warning.

God, he had to think.

“James…” Cato now, the tone of that one word pleading.

“Get them people up from below. Break open them hatches, get them people on deck.”

It was something to do. Forward motion, the next step, and it gave James a moment to think while the others were occupied, allowed him to think without a dozen eyes boring into him, as if trying to peer through his skin and find an answer that they thought must be there.

“James…” It was Sam now, his eyes wild with panic. “I don’t blame you for what you done, don’t blame you, but this ain’t my fight, you see? I didn’t want no part of this…”

“Go. It ain’t your fight, so just go. Take them”-James nodded toward the three surviving members of the slaver’s crew-“take them aboard the sloop and go.”

“Take the sloop? But how…? What about you?”

“We ain’t going back. Not to Virginia. Nowhere in America.”

“You’re going to sail this blackbirder? She’s near a wreck, food and water’s probably gone…”

“It don’t matter. We gots no choice. Whatever condition she in, we gots to go.” He had not decided that so much as understood it. They could never go back, not if they wished to live to week’s end.

Lucy. Dear God, had she seen this coming? Some premonition? He had heard of women having such things. He had called her foolish. Now he might never see her again.

And then William was at his side too, tugging on his shirt, his dark eyes wide. “I don’t want no part of this neither. I ain’t gonna hang for this.”

“You got no choice, boy.”

“I didn’t have nothing to do with killing them people,” William protested, which might have been true. James had not seen the fight. “I don’t want no part of this.”

“It don’t matter,” James said. “They’ll hang you just for being here, and you a black man. Don’t you see that?”

“I ain’t staying.”

James looked at him for a long moment. The kindest thing he could do would be to chain William to the deck, make him come. But he had no reason to think that the fate of the men on the ship would be any better than what waited for William back home.

“All right. Go with Sam.” James turned from William and addressed the former deep-water sailor. “Tell Marlowe what happened. Tell him the truth. Gonna be a lot of stories told, but I want Marlowe to know the truth.” That was important.

Sam nodded and he and James looked at each other, neither man sure of what to say.

“God speed you, King James,” Sam said at last.

“And you.”

Then Sam turned to the white men at his feet and James turned his attention forward and both understood that that had been their last meeting on earth. James could think of no other words, not with the raging confusion, the terror, and the uncertainty in him.

He had not felt such things for twenty years, not since the last time he had walked the deck of a slaver, iron manacles on his wrists and ankles.

King James left Sam to his business and walked forward to where Joshua and Cato and the others were using belaying pins to knock out the wedges that were holding the tarpaulins over the main-hatch gratings. Cato’s hands were trembling and he fumbled the pin, dropped it to the deck, swore, snatched it up again.

This was his moment to think, but nothing would come, no solid ideas, only swirling impressions and overwhelming desperation, and he was drawn instead to whatever horror lay beneath the heavy canvas.

“Here,” Cato said, “grab hold there.” Joshua grabbed on to the larboard corner of the tarpaulin as Cato grabbed the starboard. From below the cloth the sounds from the hold were muffled but loud, a vast array of voices in tones of anger and fear and sorrow to the point of abandon. James recognized the cadences of African languages, but he could not make out any of the words.

Now and again the sound was punctuated by a wailing, or a screaming or what sounded like a loud entreaty to God. The people in the hold would have heard the anchor cable running out, would be able to sense that the ship was no longer under way. They would know something was about to happen, and their experience would tell them that any change meant some fresh misery.

Cato and Joshua looked at each other, apprehensive. But the thing had to be done.

“Go,” James called, and the two men walked forward, peeling the tarpaulin back off the hatch.

The stink rolled up over the deck and enveloped them, and James was staggered to realize that what they had smelled before had been but a watered-down taste of what the hold contained. It was more than just the smell of bodies and waste. It was festering wounds, rotting human flesh. Death and decay in that closed, hot, sweltering hold.

“Oh, dear God!” Quash exclaimed. Good Boy retched and vomited on the deck. James clapped his hand over his mouth, took shallow breaths, tried to keep himself from vomiting as well. Joshua and Cato dropped the tarpaulin, staggered away.

The cacophony from the hold rose in pitch. Pleading, wailing, and still James could understand no word of what they said. Slavers, he knew, purposely mixed people from distant tribes in their ships so that they would not be able to communicate, to organize and plan. What if none of these spoke Malinke? How would he talk with them? And did he himself remember enough Malinke? It had been more than two decades since he had used that tongue with any frequency.

Dark fingers reached up through the holes in the grating, like tiny arms reaching out, beckoning help. They had to get those people out, but now James’s men were too revolted and too terrified to approach that black hole.

They were saved the trouble. From below a voice cut across the wild jumble of sound, giving an order in some language foreign to James, and with an organized effort the fingers grabbed ahold of the grating and pushed it aside.

James’s men were silent, staring at the hatch, which seemed to move of its own accord. And then from below a black figure emerged, stepping carefully up the ladder, clearly unsure of what was waiting on the upper deck. He blinked and squinted and shielded his eyes from the dim evening sun, looked around. He stepped over the combing, still in a half crouch, ready to move if attacked.

James stepped forward, hands up, palms out. The man looked at him, looked around the deck, seemed to relax a bit as his eyes moved from black face to black face.

He looked back at James, straightened his stance. He was a big man, six feet tall at least, powerfully built and well proportioned. Handsome. He smiled with big white teeth set against dark skin. Held up his hands. Addressed James with words that James did not understand.

James stared at him, shook his head. The man said something else, it sounded like a different language, and James shook his head again.

The man squinted at him, looked closer, and then spoke again, slowly, and the language was Malinke. Slow, uncertain, but clearly Malinke. James’s native tongue, at once familiar and foreign. Images of his father, of his village, swam before him as he heard the words: “I am Madshaka. Are my people safe to come up?”

James nodded, then spoke slowly, finding the words deep in his memory. “Yes. You are safe. Tell them to come up.”

Madshaka turned, looked back down the hold. He called something in the first language he had used, then the second, and then repeated the order in two more languages. One by one the people came up from the hold, frightened, confused, broken. They squinted, like Madshaka, though the light was fading fast in the west. They spread out across the deck, looking carefully around, not trusting the reality that greeted them: freedom, safety.

Madshaka stepped up to James. He was naked, save for a cloth around his hips. All of the Africans were dressed that way. The stink of the hold clung to him.

He looked down at James, but despite his overwhelming size he appeared subservient, almost cowed. He said in James’s native tongue, “You are the chief here? You are Malinke? What is your name?”

“Yes, I am Malinke. Was Kabu Malinke, from the House of Mane.” His name? That was not so easy to answer. “Once I was known as Komdaka, prince of the Malinke. Now I am King James.”

“King James?” Madshaka said, trying the words out, working his tongue around them. “What of the ship’s crew?”

“Dead. Captain dead, some others dead. The rest sent away.”

Madshaka looked at him and his eyes grew wide and a look of astonishment, of gratitude and near worship spread over his face. He sank slowly to his knees in front of James, grabbed his hand and kissed it. James felt himself flush, cleared his throat, tried to work out the words in Malinke to tell Madshaka to stand.

Then Madshaka released his hand and looked up into James’s eyes and spoke, and the words were English.

“Thank you. Thank you, King James. You set us free from hell.”

James took a step back. He could not have been more surprised if Madshaka had burst into song. He thought of all those languages the man had called down the hold. African tongues. But how could he speak English?

Madshaka got to his feet with a fluid thrust of the legs, smiled down at James, spoke again in English. “I was a grumete, a boatman. I am of the Kru of Bassa, the most skilled boatmen. I was a merchant, interpreter. Traveled the whole coast, from Goree to Congo. Carried many people in my boat. Learned many tongues.”

The two men regarded each other. Madshaka was Kru, from Bassa. King James was Malinke, from Gambia. They had most likely been born within six hundred miles of each other. But now James was a man of the New World, and the gulf between them was as wide and as deep as the Atlantic.

“Are any aboard Malinke?” James asked. He did not know why. It just seemed like something he should know.

“No. Ship from Whydah. There are people from many places, all mixed up. Ibo, Yoruba, Awakam, Aja, Bariba, Igbomina, Weme, Za. No Malinke.”

James nodded. A polyglot group, but all from within the arc of the Bight of Biafra and the Bight of Benin, two thousand miles from where he was born.

Behind them, more and more people were coming up out of the hold, standing in small clusters, huddled together as if for warmth, men, women, and a few children looking around, pointing, talking in their odd, lyrical voices.

The Northumberland’s crew were in their own group, looking at the freed slaves with as much curiosity as they themselves were being watched. Cato and Joshua had been born in Virginia, as had Quash and Good Boy.

James pointed at the gaping hold, the destruction all around. “What happened?” he asked.

Madshaka looked around, shook his head. He was silent for a moment, as if trying to put the chaotic tale in some order. “We at sea many weeks, many weeks. Very little food, very little water. Sometimes they let us up here, mostly keep down there.

“Then, a week ago, we attacked. Boo-con-eers. Pirates. They take the ship, steal some of our people. They on ship two, three days. Much drinking, much devilment. When they leave they set us all free. We try to take the ship from that bastard captain but the white slavers, they have guns, swords, and we, nothing. They drive us down again, shoot down into us with cannon. Close up the hole.

“They afraid to open hole, afraid we fight them again. So for week we sail, they don’t give food, no help to the people hurt in fight. They die, just left down there. Dead men, women, children. They open up a little place, give some food, some water, but only a little. Many die.”

King James shook his head, tried to imagine the horror. There had been dead enough on his own voyage to the New World, sometimes left for days before their bodies were hurled overboard. He had thought no horror on earth could match that which he had experienced, and here was Madshaka making him realize that he was wrong.

“Kusi!” Madshaka called across the deck, and then in a language that James thought to be of the Aja territory he addressed the man who turned. The man nodded, hurried away from his cluster, stood by Madshaka’s side.

“Him Kusi, Fante, from Great Popo. He grumete too. Not so good as Kru. He speak many languages.”

Kusi nodded. He was a slight man, shorter than James and older by ten years at least. His face was lined and he bore the traces of ritual scarring, but he had an honest look. “I speak English too, and other tongues.”

“Well,” James began. He stopped himself, framed his words in Malinke, and said, slowly, haltingly, “It is good you both are here. We have much work. You must translate for me. We will have to sail the ship.”

The two men nodded, as if they were already resigned to the fact that they would have to put to sea once more.

The last of the captives climbed up from the hold and stood shielding their eyes from the sun, dazed, staring around. There appeared to be eighty or so in all. James was sure that there had been far more than that when the ship had sailed from Africa.

Madshaka turned toward the clusters of freed Africans and addressed them in a loud voice, a commanding tone that made them all fall silent and listen.

He spoke in animated tones, repeating himself in several tongues and the people nodded. James could not follow the words, but he saw eyes darting toward him. And then Madshaka pointed at James, his finger like the barrel of a gun, and along the deck the people sank to their knees, their wide eyes locked on him.

“He tell them you are their great savior, a great king come to free them,” Kusi explained.

“Oh, for the love of God…Madshaka, tell them…”

But Madshaka turned, as if he did not hear, and in a half dozen great strides was back on the quarterdeck. He snatched up a cutlass that had been discarded there, raised it over his head. He gave a cry, a battle cry, a wild, corkscrew of a sound, and in one stroke severed the dead captain’s head from his body.

Against the rail Joshua turned away, puked with abandon over his clothes, on the deck.

Madshaka snatched up the head by the hair and held it aloft, dripping blood from the ragged neck, dead eyes rolled back. He shouted something several times in several languages, and the people bowed further. Then with barely a flick of his wrist he flung the head overboard.

“You are great man to them, savior,” Kusi said.

Savior. A savior would not have allowed that barbaric display. But it was done, and maybe it would even do some good.

Think, think. Thoughts struggled like a drowning man, kicking for the surface, desperate for air, but they could not rise.

Savior. If they were taken now, then their fate would be much worse than what it might have been on a tobacco plantation. He had condemned them all with his uncontrolled fury, and now they looked at him to carry them to safety.

Think, think, but he could not. They had to go, that much he knew. They had to leave the Chesapeake, leave America, go somewhere. Then perhaps there would be time to think, to organize his mind, to hit on the solution that, like the sky through the surface of the water, he could see, dimly, but could not reach.

“Madshaka, Kusi, come here. You must translate, tell the others what to do.”

And then slowly he began to explain to the men, in the simplest terms, how they would cut the cable and set once more the slaver’s flogging, limp topsails.

She stood across the bedroom, leaning against her vanity. “Oh, dear God, Thomas, pray do not insult me with this rubbish!”

Her arms were folded across her breasts, her long, blond hair untied, hanging down her back and over her shoulders, one wisp half across her face. She was wearing only her shift and the thin fabric did little to hide her body underneath.

Men had fought and died for that body. And well worth it, Marlowe thought.

Lord, but she looked fine. Angry like that, standing defiantly upright, lips pressed together, a slight scowl. She was beautiful at any time, but when she was angry there was a quality that Marlowe could not define, but which he found utterly alluring.

He had made the mistake of telling her that once, when she was angry. Thought it would soften her mood, make her more pliant. He had rarely been so wrong in his judgment.

He wanted to bed her, not fight with her. But fighting was all she was up for that night, and for something so irrational. Damned women, could never understand a thing.

“Listen, Elizabeth, I shall say it again. Tobacco prices have been falling for a year and more, and you know it. And this war will make it worse, much worse. Francis reckons half the plantations will go under, or their owners will have to take on huge debts, and you know what that means. We discussed this venture, agreed it would be a good chance to save us from all that.”

Elizabeth sighed, closed her eyes, threw back her head. A damned patronizing gesture. Much more of that and Marlowe reckoned he would not wish to bed her at all.

“Listen, Thomas, for I too shall say this again… no, wait. I won’t. You do not listen in any event. Just… just for a moment, think about your ship. Picture the second that she came into sight from the carriage, the moment that you leapt out, quite ignoring Francis and me. Have you pictured that? Now, tell me that this damned privateer is just about money.”

Marlowe scowled, remained silent. Damn her, the insensitive bitch. He glared at her, wanted to leave the room, slam the door, tear it from its hinges. Felt the uncomfortable sensation of looming truth.

He had been thinking for two months of the feel of a heaving quarterdeck under his feet, the insular world of a ship long under way, the thrill of sighting a strange sail, the brace and leap of boarding some prize.

He had never once thought of the money he might earn, the booty he claimed might save Marlowe House. Did not even know how much he would need to keep the place running, or how much he already had.

“We cannot survive the season without I bring in some money from this venture,” Marlowe said slowly.

“Oh, indeed? And how long can we now go before we must borrow? Tell me, how long can we continue to pay our people before the money is gone? Or are we broke now? Pray, tell me.”

Marlowe was silent once more. Elizabeth kept the books, Bickerstaff ran the plantation. He just rode around, lord of the manor. Hadn’t a clue what was going on, because he didn’t give a damn about such things as farming and bookkeeping. And so he could not answer that question. He knew it, Elizabeth knew it. Damn her for doing this to him.

They were silent for a very long time, eyes locked. Two very stubborn people, two people who had learned from hard use never to yield an inch.

And in Marlowe’s mind, the heaving quarterdeck, the leap over the rail.

He knew that Elizabeth was right. He was bored. He had spent well over a decade as a pirate-an extraordinary amount of time for that profession-and half of it just to get himself to the place he was now.

He closed his eyes. Opened them again, gave her a weak smile. “You are right, my love. You are right.”

“Thomas, do not placate me…”

“I am not, truly I am not. I want to do this thing because…I want to do it. I do not know what more to say, what I can do to make it better.”

He saw her anger, her stubborn unwillingness to yield, melt away just as his own had done. She was across the room and in his arms, her head tucked under his chin.

“My love, my love, I am sorry,” he said.

“Don’t be, Thomas. I understand. You would not be the man you are if you could stay happy at home. I just…I… you must understand. Understand yourself why you have to go.”

They embraced, and after a minute Elizabeth spoke, her face buried in his chest, her voice muffled. “I am just selfish. I can’t stand seeing your joy at something besides me, and our home. I hate that ship because it is a part of your life that is not a part of mine. It will take you away from me.”

Marlowe did not know what to say to that, so he said nothing. They just stood there, in each other’s arms, rocking slowly, enjoying that heightened affection that follows an argument, like the bright blue skies that come on the heels of a cleansing storm.

And then a pounding from belowstairs, an insistent fist on the front door. They both looked up, ears cocked to the sound.

“What the devil…,” Marlowe muttered. It was well past midnight.

The pounding came again, and then quiet, and then again. Marlowe released Elizabeth, and stepped quickly for the door, Elizabeth just behind him. Out of the bedroom and down the hall, his slippered feet silent on the rug that covered most of the oak floors. At the top of the wide stairs that flowed down to the front entry Marlowe saw Caesar, the aging house servant, muttering and hurrying toward the door, dressed only in his nightshirt, a flickering candle in his hand.

Marlowe bounded down the stairs, Elizabeth still behind him, quite ignoring her immodest appearance. Caesar stopped on seeing him, glanced at the door, awaited orders. The pounding resumed.

“Pray, open it, Caesar,” Marlowe said.

Caesar grabbed the doorknob, twisted, swung the door back. In the light of his candle stood Sam.

His clothes were torn, his face and shirt smeared with blood and vomit, his eyes wild. And even before he spoke, Marlowe knew that everything had changed.