If it wasn’t for me, he would have let George Symons drown, especially if losing him meant saving Mama. Jacques had learnt many times that all lives were not equal. His own, he had believed, was worthless. He would save Mama. He would save me. Everybody else could die.
As the water closed over him, his anger had softened. The weight of the water crushed it from him. On land, he felt the ache in his knees when he walked and in his wrists when he gripped a horse’s reins. In the water, he was twenty years old again. His body was light and moved without effort. He had opened his eyes and it was like visiting a land that he had once known well.
“Except there were no boats beneath us. The big ships anchored further out. It was deep, but I had been deeper.”
He had felt the familiar ache in his ears and behind his eyes. He had pinched his nose and pushed his tongue up against the roof of his mouth. He hadn’t even thought about it, he did it instinctively. Down he went and that’s when he’d seen Mama. She had shifted the rope from her throat to her chest, but the stones were stuck in the mud. Her arms and legs were floating above her, her eyes were closed. He had lifted the rope; there was little slack. As his chest ached, he’d managed to shift one of the stones enough to free her. He knew they were surfacing too quickly, but there was no choice.
George Symons survived. His younger sister still lived in Portsmouth and he was taken there to recover. I do not know what became of Gina and Griffin. Now I am in Southwark again, I think that one day I’ll turn a corner and see them, especially if there’s a fair. When I hear a drum beating I expect to see a small girl in a white costume, but like me, she’ll be nearly fifteen now.
I miss Mama, but I’m grown and should make my own life. That’s what she tells me when I visit her on Sunday afternoons, though she’s always happy to see me. I care for a surgeon’s children, helping his wife with the baby and four others while he’s at sea. It will be at least a year before he returns. Since Francis Drake came back with his riches, every merchant wants to sail to the other side of the world to find gold or rob a Spaniard.
Jacques Francis is still an assistant to the apothecary, though the apothecary is rarely behind the counter these days. His eyesight is so bad he can’t see the labels any more, and he almost poisoned a mercer’s sister two months ago. Now Mama and Jacques are married, they both live above the shop too. They haven’t found any medicine that can cure Mama’s deafness, though it is not as bad as two years ago. Even a month after her rescue, she couldn’t hear anything and the pain deep inside her ear made her cry.
On Sundays after church, we walk along Bankside and watch the ships as they sail out towards the sea beyond. I think Mama and Jacques sometimes talk of returning to the countries where they were born. They know, though, that everything has changed. They weren’t the only ones who were stolen. What if they return to find their friends and family were also stolen into slavery? What if they’re captured again themselves? Mama still believes that we must trust no one. She trusts Jacques Francis, though. I can see it in her eyes. And Jacques? Yes, he cares for Mama too. But when he stares towards the sea, there is another expression on his face. He’s the man who would, for one last time, like to jump from the rocks into the sea and swim to shore with an oyster in each hand.
“Come away from the water, mpendwa.”
I don’t know if Mama is talking to me or Jacques, but he takes her hand and they turn away from the river.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I grew up in West Sussex in the 1970s and 80s. I have two very strong memories from that time that influenced this book. Firstly, a homework assignment when I was about nine. We had to imagine ourselves as a character from Elizabethan times and write a story. I loved history and I loved writing stories even more. However, I struggled. I think I even cried. As far as I knew, people who looked like me were not in England in Elizabethan times. My mum put me straight on that. She said there were people referred to as “blackamoors” around, even then. I started writing my story with renewed vigour.
A second strong memory is the raising of Henry VIII’s flagship, Mary Rose, from the bed of Portsmouth Harbour in 1982. It was like a ship from my imagination coming to life. However, like most of the British history I had learned about, I felt at a slight distance from it. Every history lesson I had absorbed, every book I had read and picture I had pored over as a child, every UK-set historical film and TV series I had ever sat through, told me that people who looked like me had no role in British history other than being slaves.
Now, I know better, of course. Peter Fryer’s Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain was an eye-opener! I had no idea that
