The Voyage of Promise (6 page)

“But she be a slave!” Sam spat bitterly, motioning to Grace.

“A slave she most certainly is not!” Captain Ross bellowed. “Miss Winslow is bound for England, not America. If you value your skin, you will remember that!”

For several minutes everyone seemed uncertain what would happen next. They all looked awkwardly from one to another. But if the seamen hoped for a reprieve from their punishment, they were to be sorely disappointed.

“Dismissed!” Captain Ross ordered abruptly. “Back to work, every last one of you, watch or no watch!” To Grace he said, “Will you be desiring further assistance, lass?”

“No… no,” she replied.

The captain bowed low, then turned to go.

“Captain Ross,” Grace called after him. When he paused and turned back, she said, “Thank you, sir.”

If Captain Ross thought his general scolding and all-around punishment would bring the situation to a close, he underestimated the fury of his crewmen. For that very night, as Billy scraped up the last bits of his half portion of pease porridge from his wooden dinner plank and ate his half a biscuit dry, he growled to anyone who would listen, “ ’Ere we be goin’ hungry whilst the slave sits in her private quarters eatin’ like she was the queen. So we knows well where our dear captain’s heart be. Ah, yes, we knows that fer sure.”

W
hether it was day or night, Cabeto could not tell. All he could make out in the stifling darkness was the sweaty body of the groaning man chained in front of him. Cabeto’s left wrist was fettered to the man’s right wrist. If Cabeto tugged hard against that chain, and the one that shackled his right wrist to the weeping woman behind him, he could raise himself up on his elbows until his head hit against the wooden platform the ship’s carpenter had nailed three feet off the deck to enable Captain Hudson to cram an extra one hundred captives into the hold of the
Golden Hawk
. Even pushed up as high as he could, though, he wasn’t able to see much of anything.

“Buried we be,” the man in front of him moaned. “Buried alive as sure as if we lay under the dirt.”

With his ankles locked into irons and chained to rings bolted to the floor, Cabeto found it impossible to change his position. In the suffocating heat, he gasped for air. The hold was so rancid with human stench that Cabeto could not draw a full breath. He could barely keep a straight thought in his mind. Yet he must think straight. He absolutely must.

Somewhere nearby, a woman screamed as her baby struggled to enter a world of insanity.

“Sunba!” Cabeto called.

“I am here, Brother,” Sunba’s answer echoed back through the dark.

“Kome,” Cabeto called.

“I am here.”

“Hola.”

“Here I am,” answered Hola in a frighteningly weakened voice.

As he regularly did at what he guessed to be daily intervals, Cabeto continued the roll call of his villagers. So far, all still lived, unlike the poor young boy on the other side of the woman next to him. She had awakened to find that sometime during the night the young one had gone to the ancestors. For many hours—days perhaps?—she had lain sobbing in the dark, chained to the dead boy. Finally, two white sailors came down, cloths tied around their faces so they could avoid breathing the deadly air, and they carried the boy away. They piled him on top of the bodies of others who had also died and pushed them all up the stairs. In the hold, Cabeto and the woman next to him listened in silence to the splash… splash… splash… splash… of those thrown overboard into the sea.

“Tawnia,” Cabeto called.

“I… am here, Cabeto,” the young girl sobbed.

“Safya.”

“Yes, I am here,” Safya answered hoarsely.

“Ama.”

Silence.

“Ama!” Cabeto demanded. “Answer!”

Silence.

Cabeto forced himself up on his elbows until his head hit against the wooden platform. “Ama!” he bellowed.

Kome echoed his cry, screaming his sister’s name: “
AMA
!”

Silence.

The two screams wove into one agonized wail. The only other sound was the slap of the waves against the ship’s hull. “Of all my family, I alone remain,” Kome cried. “The white man took every other one.”

“The white man took you too,” said a voice from out of the dark. “You too are gone.”

Except for scattered, ragged naps, Cabeto hardly slept. With each lurch of the ship, the rough boards ripped into his naked skin. His lame leg ached from its cramped position. Hour after hour, he lay crunched between two strangers and listened to the cries of misery that poured out around him in a cacophony of tongues.
How like the cells at Zulina slave fortress
, he thought. It seemed impossible that hope could survive in such a place as this.

Yet hope had survived at Zulina. It had more than survived; hope had actually prospered and grown into possibility.

If only Grace were beside me
, Cabeto mourned.

Immediately, he shivered with horror. What was he thinking? How dare he wish such a thing! Wherever Grace was, whatever her circumstances, it could not be worse than this slave ship. Even in the clutches of that white man—

“Brother,” the woman behind Cabeto whispered, “do you remember the color of fire in the sky when morning awakens a new day?”

“Yes,” Cabeto said, and the ragged edges of a smile traced his cracked lips. “I remember.”

“Do you remember the sweet taste of palm tree sap when it touches your tongue?” she asked.

“Yes,” Cabeto said. “And also the look of calabashes growing golden in the fields. Do you remember that?”

“Yes. But my memories make me sad because I do not think I will ever see any of those things again.”

With all his heart, Cabeto longed to assure the woman whose face he had never seen but whose sweaty body cramped his meager space. But what could he say? Maybe she was right. Ama did not answer when he called her name. By tomorrow, who else would not answer?

The woman asked hesitantly, “Will you do something for me?”

“If it is something I can do while chained to you and locked to the floor, then I will do it,” Cabeto said.

“The next time you call out the names, will you also call Odera? That is my name.”

“Yes. I will call your name each day, and each day you will answer that you are still here.”

Odera’s request was far more favorable than the one the man chained in front of Cabeto asked of him. “Brother,” that desperate man gasped. “I go to sleep now. Please, do not allow me to awaken. Use your chains to send me to the ancestors. Please, I beg of you!”

This Cabeto would not do. But when the white seamen came around with the twice-daily food ration, the man in front of Cabeto refused to reach out his hand and accept his portion. The men tried to force the food into him, but he clamped his teeth together. Even their lash could not persuade him to open his mouth. Let them whip him to death. He didn’t care.

Waves slapped against the ship’s hull, one after another in endless succession. They set the chains to clanging an eerie accompaniment to shrieks of misery and groans of the dying, a lament overlaid with unending sobs.

When so much time passed that Cabeto was certain it surely must be another day, he called: “Sunba.”

“I am here, Brother.”

“Kome.”

“I am here.”

“Safya.”

“Yes. I am here.”

One by one, Cabeto called out the names of each villager.

Then he called, “Odera.”

“Here I am,” answered the soft voice behind him. “I am still here.”

Rats scurried across the floor, gnawing indiscriminately at ropes or filthy wood or defenseless toes. The living awoke chained to the dead. Men and women went mad, and death followed the
Golden Hawk
like a fiery wind billowing out of hell.

But this day everyone answered Cabeto’s call. Hope survived for one more day.

W
ere any crewmen on the
Willow
shirking their duties? Were animals allowed too much freedom to roam the deck at will? Did the watch commanders pay due diligence to the sailors’ work schedules? Were the rules of cleanliness rigorously observed? Captain Clayton Ross placed profound trust in his officers, yet he found more and more pressing reasons to return repeatedly to the main deck, starboard center. And because the doors to the guest cabins opened off that very area, now and again Captain Ross reaped the reward of a glimpse of the young African woman with a kiss of copper on her skin and a splash of auburn in her raven hair. Fascinating, that’s what she was. Absolutely fascinating!

It was not that Captain Ross had any desire to take over in the fashion of Jasper Hathaway. The captain held nothing but disdain for that man with all his disgusting affectations. If Hathaway failed to survive the trip to England, then as far as Ross was concerned, England would be all the better for it. And Africa as well.

It did pain him to see Grace labor over this man who insisted on referring to himself as her master. All her ministrations
were met with naught but rebuke and condemnation while the insufferable lout prattled on, too proud and too stubborn to cooperate with his own treatment. Well, the
Willow
had a capable medical man in John Wills. He could look in on Mister Hathaway and administer whatever treatment was deemed appropriate. That was, after all, the job of the ship’s surgeon.

But what really concerned Captain Ross was Grace’s safety. He was well aware of the crewmen’s desire for her. As a matter of fact, he had taken it upon himself to put quill to paper and write out explicit orders concerning appropriate crew behavior toward her. Since the men could not read, he had read aloud the detailed list of commands as issued, complete with a stated penalty for each trespass, whether real or perceived. Even so, no one was more aware than he that his ship was populated with far more seamen than officers. And then there was Nate Greenway’s ominous warning. Many others whispered the same ridiculous superstition about the foolhardiness of bringing a woman to sea, of course. But when it came from Nate—an intelligent officer!—it gave even the straight-thinking captain pause.

All these considerations ran through Captain Ross’s mind as he found himself drawn again and again to the main deck, center starboard. But being an honorable and upright man, he kept his mouth closed and his thoughts to himself. Until, that is, the day that shouts from Jasper Hathaway’s cabin created such a stir that they silenced even the calls and chants of the crewmen at work.

“You
shall
do as I command you!” Hathaway ordered in a rasping rattle. “No! You shall not offer one more argument! You still belong to me, and you
shall do… shall do as I… as I order you
!”

“Please… please—” This was Grace’s voice.

“I still have my whip, and you are still my slave!” countered Jasper Hathaway, though his waning strength drained some of the menace from his threats. “Do not think that because… that due to my compromised condition, I… that I shall hesitate to use the lash or… or—”

Captain Ross pushed his way into the unlocked room. “Not on my ship, you shan’t!”

Jasper Hathaway sagged against his pillows looking ghostly pale and gaping at the intruder. He clutched a cloth and used it to mop at his bleeding mouth.

“As commander of the
Willow
, and hence the one who bears ultimate responsibility for the well-being of my passengers, I order Miss Grace Winslow away from your cabin for the remainder of the journey, Mister Hathaway.”

“Now, see here. This is my—”

“No,
you
see here, sir. I am captain of this ship, and therefore in full command! And I believe I have made my position on servitude abundantly clear. I applaud Miss Grace for the care she has provided you thus far. But henceforth I shall insist that Doctor Wills take over your care.”

“I demand that I be allowed the services of my… my personal servant,” Jasper Hathaway responded as indignantly as his wretched condition would allow. “Furthermore, I demand that she supply me with the fresh fruit I know you have hidden away for your own personal use. You have no right to provide for yourself and your officers whilst paying passengers go in need.”

Captain Ross, his eyes narrowed and a shadow of disgust darkening his face, pronounced in metered cadence, “I assure you, sir, we have no such store of fruits. The officers, including myself, all adhere to the self-same procedures Doctor Wills prescribes for you. As master of this vessel, I have as my personal
responsibility the safety of each passenger. It is I who am now forced to issue a demand.”

That was how Grace came to be established in the comfortable cabin situated between that of the captain and the one shared by Brandt and Nate Greenway. On the first morning in her new accommodations, Grace arose early and hurried to the galley to prepare morning tea for the captain.

“Capt’n sent ye, did ’e?” chided the skeptical cook. He was a sturdy stovepipe of a man, thick and squat and plain, never without the cooking spoon he swung around him like a weapon.

“Well, no,” Grace said. “But I need to serve him his tea before I see to his breakfast, and I—”

“See to his breakfast, is it? And why is that? The captain cain’t walk no more, is that the way it be?”

Grace had no idea how to respond to so outrageous a question.

“If’n ’e wants ’is tea served to ’im, ’e kin ask me fer it same as ’e does ever other day,” the cook said with a dismissive wave of his cooking spoon.

The fact was that Captain Ross did
not
want Grace to serve him his tea. In fact, he didn’t want anything from her at all. “You are a passenger on my ship,” he said with a courteous bow. “My only desire is to see you safely to England, and then to wish you well in a new land.”

Grace took to joining Captain Ross and Jonas Brandt for afternoon tea in the captain’s office. Often Doctor Wills joined them, and on occasion, Nate Greenway as well. At first Grace was quite uncomfortable with the cadre of proper Englishmen—even a bit fearful of them. But as she listened to them talk and laugh, she grew more at ease. She especially enjoyed the stories of their exploits at sea, and of their adventures in exotic countries—China, Spain, Italy, Portugal.

“You will adore London, Miss Grace,” Jonas Brandt said to her. “It is the greatest city in the entire world.” That’s all it took to launch the men into tales of the wonders of London.

“In one way, it is an entirely new city since the Great Fire,” said Doctor Wills.

“The whole city burned?” Grace asked incredulously.

“It might as well have,” said the doctor. “Just over one hundred years ago, it was—in 1666. The fire started in a baker’s house. Just an ordinary house fire, it was. That happened often since all the houses were made of wood back then. But that summer, not a drop of rain had fallen, and winds blew with an unnatural might. So when one house burst into flames, another followed, then another, then another, then another, until the fire liked to reduce the city to ashes.”

“They couldn’t put it out?” Grace gasped.

“They tried, of course. But their buckets of water were useless against such an inferno.”

“All the churches had lead roofs back then,” Nate Greenway added, “and they say that lead melted and poured into the streets like milk.”

“Fifteen thousand homes burned in that fire,” said Doctor Wills.

Grace gasped out loud. In her mind, she didn’t see London burning. She saw roaring flames swallowing up her parents’ house.

“Ach! A great tragedy it was,” said the captain. “But great good came out of it too. With so much death and destruction, the king ordered the city rebuilt and new houses and shops to be made of brick, not wood.”

“… beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.” Words from Mama Muco’s holy book. Words from her Bible.

“Never again will another fire like that burn down London,” said the doctor. “Such a horror must not happen twice in the same place.”

But it had! They had built their village on the place of the disaster, and just look what had happened! Just see the horror that had happened again!

“Come, now! Why tell tragic tales?” Nate exclaimed. “Tell of the Frost Fairs when the Thames freezes over.”

“Oh, yes,” Jonas said. “Shops and food stalls and puppet shows…”

“… sledding and skating. That is what I remember from my boyhood days,” said Nate. “Ice bowling too.”

“Mince pies to eat and hot baked potatoes to keep your hands warm whilst you watch the entertainers,” said Doctor Wills.

Captain Ross laughed heartily. “The colder the winter, the thicker the ice. The thicker the ice, the better the fair. It is just as I said: From bad comes good. From the worst comes the best!”

One afternoon when the first mate was standing watch and not in attendance at tea, after Doctor Wills had excused himself to see to his patients, and Mister Greenway to consult his navigational charts, Grace found an excuse to stay behind. “Captain Ross,” she said when the others had gone, “did you ever sail on a slave ship, sir?”

Slowly, precisely, Captain Ross lifted his teacup to his lips and sipped. His hand shook so badly that tea splashed down the front of his spotless coat. Clayton Ross sighed deeply and set his cup back down.

“Yes,” he answered. “Two times I sailed as mate, one time as captain. But I shall never do so again.”

“What was it like?”

“Why do you ask about a slave ship?” Captain Ross snapped. “You are not on so accursed a vessel.”

“No,” said Grace, “but my heart is.”

For several minutes, Captain Ross sat and considered. When he finally spoke, it was with a weary voice. “Under my captain’s orders, I packed the hold of that first slave ship tight. We set sail in a ship screaming with agony night and day, until I thought I would go mad. But we sold the slaves on the island of Antigua and I walked away a proud man with a bulging purse. The second trip, I hardly heard the cries, so stopped were my ears with the promise of riches. On the third trip, I sailed from Africa not only deafened by the hope of profit but blinded by the promise of power. It was the worst sailing of all, yet I am pained to admit that I cared nothing about the suffering in the tight-packed hold below me.

“Then somewhere in the blinding black of rough seas, as I lay alone on my bunk, one haunting voice rose out of the agony, a lone lament to a life lost forever. The mournful melody echoed up through the ship’s boards and pierced clear through to my heart. That single tormented tune will not leave my soul in peace, not to this very day. I never again sailed another slave ship, nor shall I.”

Grace stared at the gentle captain in wide-eyed disbelief. “You will learn, my dear lassie, that it is not only terrible people who are capable of doing terrible things.”

“My village… everyone was bound with ropes and taken away,” Grace said. “They killed my little son, my innocent Kwate. And they took away Cabeto, the love of my heart. Only Mama Muco is left for me in Africa. Or it may be that she is not. How can I know?”

For many minutes Captain Ross said nothing. He didn’t even make a pretense of drinking his tea. When he finally spoke, he said, “The horrors of the slave trade are many. One
of the greatest is that it destroys the humanity of those who practice it. It must be so. How else could reasonable, decent Christian men and women bring themselves to act in so beastly a way?”

“What will happen to him?” Grace asked in a voice barely more than a whisper. “What will they do to my Cabeto?”

“Do not ask me such a question,” the captain replied. “Thank God that you are here, and then let it go. Give thanks to Almighty God that you, at least, are safe.”

“Tell me!” Grace demanded with an edge of desperate ferocity. “What of my husband?”

Captain Ross leaned back and sighed deeply. “They will take him to the islands, Antigua or Saint Kitts,” he said. “They will work him chopping sugar cane, and there he will stay for the rest of his life. A strong, able-bodied young man—he could live for five years, maybe six.”

“But he isn’t able-bodied! Cabeto was badly injured in a fire. He is lame in one leg and badly scarred.”

“Oh,” Captain Ross said. His voice had an ominous sound.

“What?” Grace demanded.

“Well, in that case, they probably will not keep him in the islands. The work there is too hard for someone in a compromised state. They will likely take him on to the United States and sell him at the slave market at Charleston. He will probably sell cheap… to be used for dangerous labor.”

“And then what?”

“And then they will work him to death.”

Grace jumped to her feet. “I have to get to him first!” she cried. “Please, can you take me there? To the United States? To the slave market in Charleston?”

Carefully, deliberately, Captain Ross replaced his cup on the tea service and laid the tea set aside. He stood up and
carefully smoothed the creases out of his coat and trousers. “No, I cannot,” he said. “Even if I could, I would not. I realize it causes you pain to hear me say so, Miss Grace, but you are best advised to put this man out of your mind. He will not survive more than a year.”

“Then that means I have one year to find him!” Grace declared. “One year to find the good in the bad. One year to find the best in the worst.”