I imagined the sea sweeping back like a curtain to show the bare bed and the wrecks of boats and everything in them. The Mary Rose was only one ship. Standing there, in the cold moonlit square, with the smell of pitch and the scream of a gull, and the river not far away, my stomach heaved as if it was filling with water. I could feel the suck of the river in and out of my ears and then my face, head and my whole body was submerged. I had forgotten about the things floating in the Thames, brushing my cheeks, brushing against my arms and wrapping around my ankles. Then I remembered the voices, asking me my story.
“You learn not to look,” he said. “You’ve come from London?”
“We live in Southwark.”
“Then you’ve seen death.”
It was everywhere in our streets. Mama had once nursed a young woman who died as her baby was being born. Mama had seen me peering round the door and closed it gently. Last winter, I had seen a young man who had frozen to death in a butcher’s doorway.
“I would feel the dead’s presence,” he said, “as I was scavenging for the merchants’ riches. I was the best diver of all of them. The sea around my island had been my first home. It was a strong, wild sea that beat against our shore. Boats tried to land and soon our waters were full of their cracked hulls. My friends and I used to dive among the wrecks looking for treasure. The only treasure we ever found was fish hooks and coins that were no use to us.”
He looked up at the moon. “They stole us at night. Our island was already not our own, but at first they didn’t bother us. I wonder now if they were watching us, thinking about how much money we could bring them. First, they made me bring up oysters for pearls. When there were no more oysters, I was taken to Portugal and handed over to Corsi in Lisbon. He baptized me and gave me my new name.”
I wanted to ask him what his name had been before. I had asked Mama that too, but she would never answer me. It was like she saved that little bit of her old life just for herself.
“There were three of us,” he said. “From what, in these countries, they call Africa. Me, I was the youngest. Then there was George Blacke, a short man with a chest like a wine barrel. I think it held more breath than anyone else’s, because he could dive for the longest. John Iko was little more than a child, tall and thin, like he’d been turned on the rack. He drank more beer than me and George put together.”
“Where are they now?”
“To survive, we must scatter. When they believed I brought shame on them, all my friends disappeared.”
He started walking again, tracing the perimeter of the square. He was still talking. I trotted along beside him.
“I was the one Corsi said he trusted the most, the one who went the deepest.” He rubbed his ears. “Diving isn’t just a matter of holding your breath. You must know how to balance the weight of the water. You cannot just drop down there like a stone and carry on about your business. You have to learn how to see in those dark depths. You have to feel with your fingers, to understand what you are touching and not flinch away. Your ears burn, deep inside. Your face feels like an eagle has gripped it with hungry claws.”
I touched my own ears. Would that have happened to me if I’d carried on to the bottom of the Thames?
We stopped walking. I thought he was going to go round again, but he turned back towards French Street.
“I was the best,” he said. “And even after Corsi tried to sell me, I still was loyal. I testified in a court of law in London that Corsi had not stolen tin from another merchant. I said that the tin was found far away by the rocks. My English wasn’t good then. I had to trust the wine merchant to interpret correctly. Do you know what they called me?”
“No, sir.”
“Infidel,” he said. “That was their name for me. They said that because I was born in a different land, I was a slave and a liar.
“When I dived,” he continued, “I was filled with calmness. I would feel my heart beating. I would understand how much air to hold inside me and how much to release.” He held his fingers near his eyes. “I would feel the water pressing me as if I was caught between two heavy stones, but I stayed calm, because if I didn’t, I would die. But afterwards, after those merchants ganged together to question my word, I became angry. I tried one more dive, but my breath wanted to burst out of me. For the first time since I was a child, blood poured out of my nose and my ears felt as if they had been pierced with heated pins.”
“Are you still angry?” I asked.
“Yes. Now go to your mother. She will be worried.”
A GOLD COIN ON THE COMMON
Mama is beautiful. She is not beautiful like the rich ladies in their ruffs and furs and jewels, though she would be so much more beautiful than them if she ever had a chance to wear pearls and silk. She
