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,
