Malinke. Malinke that has been with white men for twenty years. We will stand with you and we have been talking to the others. It is your orders we will follow.”
“Good. It is safer that way.” Madshaka was grim-faced, though he wanted to smile, to laugh out loud. He had been robbed of everything, sold into slavery, and now he was halfway back. Now he had a ship of his own, filled with valuables. Now he had an army.
The two men were silent for a moment, taking in the ambience of the ship and the sea. Finally Madshaka spoke, and his words were soft, like a parent speaking to his child, with not a hint of persuasion in his voice.
“In nature, Anaka, there are the strong and the weak. You know that. There is the lion and the antelope and the lion kills the antelope. It is the way of things.”
“Yes…” Anaka’s tone indicated that he did not see where this was going.
“It is the same with men, have you noticed that? Some are strong and some weak. And with nations of men. The Ashanti are strong, the Nupe weak. The Kru are strong, the Oyo weak. We are the lions, they are the antelope.”
“That is true.”
“The lion is not blamed for feeding on the antelope, even though he kills it in order that he might be strong and well fed. I wonder if you think the same is true with men? With nations of men?”
“Well…” Anaka considered this. “The strong nations have always dominated the weak. Like with the lion, it is the way of things.”
“Exactly. You are no fool, Anaka. The strong have always defeated the weak, taken them as their slaves, or sold them to others as slaves. It is the way of things.”
“Yes. But why do you say this?”
Madshaka was quiet for a moment, as if he was considering the question. “I just want you to think on this, Anaka. We might have a great opportunity. We are a strong band, we Kru aboard this ship. We have fought together, we trust each other. In battle. And in our business. That is a rare thing these days. It may not be wise for us to part when we get to Kalabari. Perhaps we should think of the future. Our future. Together.”
Anaka’s face, his thoughtful, flattered, pleased, and curious face, was visible in the faint ambient light and Madshaka liked what he saw.
“Just think on that. That is all I ask. And talk to the other Kru. Not the other people, only the Kru, about what I have said.”
Anaka nodded. “I will.” With that he left and Madshaka was alone in the bow with the great wind ship above and behind him.
He looked out past the bowsprit, out into the dark, toward Africa beyond the horizon.
They would not be going to Kalabari, of course, but it was not time to tell Anaka that.
One step at a time. That was how Madshaka would return.
Chapter 19
William Barrett, known also as Elizabeth Marlowe, sat propped up in the cot in the tiny sleeping cabin of the Bloody Revenge. She was still clad in breeches and waistcoat. On the small shelf over her shoulder a single candle gutted, and opened on her lap was Alexander Olivier Esquemeling’s The Buccaneers of America, the second English edition from the Dutch original of 1678.
It was a hugely popular book and Elizabeth had read parts of it before, but it amused her to find it among Billy Bird’s library. She wondered at his motive for owning it. To learn something of his trade? Hoping to see his own name in print? But of course Billy was no more than thirty-five years old, or thereabouts, probably younger, and the events and people that populated Esquemeling’s book were from a former age.
The Bloody Revenge was all but motionless, riding at a single anchor, after five days of working her way south around Cape Hatteras and into Charles Town Harbor.
They were anchored in Charles Town Harbor, but not the raucous, lively, well-populated section, not anchored off the busy waterfront that bordered the Cooper River, with its several docks and crowds of shipping and boats pulling to and fro at all hours, its chandlers and slave markets and whorehouses, taverns and ordinaries.
Rather, they were tucked into a dark corner behind low, marshy Hog Island, across the river from the town, tide rode at the mouth of Hog Island Creek. In a town such as Charles Town, which trafficked quite openly with pirates, Elizabeth had to wonder what Billy Bird and his “honest merchant sailors” were about, that such secrecy was required.
She could hear shoes and the soft padding of bare feet on the deck above. She stared up at the beams over her head. The rough cut marks left by the adze that had formed them stood out bold in the deep shadows of the single flame.
Billy Bird… She called him a pirate and he was not unequivocal in his denial. But still, his ship was not like what she had been led to believe pirate ships were. Billy gave orders and they were obeyed. Billy lived in the fine aft cabin, and no one entered that space without knocking first.
But Billy was polite to the men, and careful not to violate those “rules” that governed their ship.
Well, there were pirates and there were pirates, and she imagined that Billy and his men had come to some understanding that worked for them all.
Billy Bird. He was handsome, wild, and reckless. Fun. If she were not married to Thomas, then this meeting might have been very different. But Thomas made her feel secure and safe, which Billy never could, and that was the thing she most craved now.
She wished Thomas would come back. She had no idea of how long he might be gone, and she hated the uncertainty. She did not know if he was dead or alive.
She let her head fall back on the pillow, closed her eyes, sighed audibly. She knew fine ladies in Williamsburg who chafed under the boredom of their lives in their far-flung plantations, who dreamed of running off to London or Paris or being taken and ravaged by pirates, or what they thought pirates to be-handsome noblemen in disguise, like the highwaymen in their silly novels.
For Elizabeth, it was the boredom she craved, a simple life with her husband and her garden and not one damn thing happening out of the ordinary.
She sighed again, opened her eyes, swung her legs over the edge of the cot, and reached with her toes for the deck to stop the bed from swinging. She could hear that something was going on on deck, someone had come aboard, conversations taking place in low tones. It was none of her business, she did not even want to know what was happening.
She pulled out the chamber pot, set it on the trunk, reached down to grab the hems of her skirts, and only then recalled that she was not wearing skirts at all. She cursed under her breath and fumbled in the dimness with the buttons of the breeches, those damned irritating, awkward breeches.
She got the breeches down at last and relieved herself and then with even more difficulty pulled the breeches back up, buttoned them, and tucked in the shirt. She cracked the door to the day cabin, not wanting to carry the chamber pot past Billy, but the cabin was empty and unlit.
Through the aft windows, which were swung open in hope of finding some relief from the sultry night, she could hear frogs and crickets and mosquitoes and a host of other creatures that inhabited the swampy island under the brig’s stern. Higher up, over Hog Island, she could see a few lights from the town of Charles Town, about one hundred perches away.
She picked up the chamber pot and stepped carefully across the cabin, letting her eyes adjust to the dark, not wanting to spill the contents on Billy Bird’s fine furniture or the elaborate rug that occupied most of the deck underfoot. At the after end of the cabin she knelt on the lockers that ran athwartships under the windows, leaned forward with the pot, and poured the contents out the window.
She heard the liquid splash and then, to her complete surprise, a shout, a splutter, a curse, right under the window.
“Damn me!” she yelled, and with a start dropped the chamber pot into the dark. It did not hit the water but rather shattered on something hard. She leaned out the window. In the blackness under the counter she could see the vague outline of a boat, loaded with men, dark shapes against the water.
