“James…” It was Sam now, his eyes wild with panic. “I don’t blame you for what you done, don’t blame you, but this ain’t my fight, you see? I didn’t want no part of this…”
“Go. It ain’t your fight, so just go. Take them”-James nodded toward the three surviving members of the slaver’s crew-“take them aboard the sloop and go.”
“Take the sloop? But how…? What about you?”
“We ain’t going back. Not to Virginia. Nowhere in America.”
“You’re going to sail this blackbirder? She’s near a wreck, food and water’s probably gone…”
“It don’t matter. We gots no choice. Whatever condition she in, we gots to go.” He had not decided that so much as understood it. They could never go back, not if they wished to live to week’s end.
Lucy. Dear God, had she seen this coming? Some premonition? He had heard of women having such things. He had called her foolish. Now he might never see her again.
And then William was at his side too, tugging on his shirt, his dark eyes wide. “I don’t want no part of this neither. I ain’t gonna hang for this.”
“You got no choice, boy.”
“I didn’t have nothing to do with killing them people,” William protested, which might have been true. James had not seen the fight. “I don’t want no part of this.”
“It don’t matter,” James said. “They’ll hang you just for being here, and you a black man. Don’t you see that?”
“I ain’t staying.”
James looked at him for a long moment. The kindest thing he could do would be to chain William to the deck, make him come. But he had no reason to think that the fate of the men on the ship would be any better than what waited for William back home.
“All right. Go with Sam.” James turned from William and addressed the former deep-water sailor. “Tell Marlowe what happened. Tell him the truth. Gonna be a lot of stories told, but I want Marlowe to know the truth.” That was important.
Sam nodded and he and James looked at each other, neither man sure of what to say.
“God speed you, King James,” Sam said at last.
“And you.”
Then Sam turned to the white men at his feet and James turned his attention forward and both understood that that had been their last meeting on earth. James could think of no other words, not with the raging confusion, the terror, and the uncertainty in him.
He had not felt such things for twenty years, not since the last time he had walked the deck of a slaver, iron manacles on his wrists and ankles.
King James left Sam to his business and walked forward to where Joshua and Cato and the others were using belaying pins to knock out the wedges that were holding the tarpaulins over the main-hatch gratings. Cato’s hands were trembling and he fumbled the pin, dropped it to the deck, swore, snatched it up again.
This was his moment to think, but nothing would come, no solid ideas, only swirling impressions and overwhelming desperation, and he was drawn instead to whatever horror lay beneath the heavy canvas.
“Here,” Cato said, “grab hold there.” Joshua grabbed on to the larboard corner of the tarpaulin as Cato grabbed the starboard. From below the cloth the sounds from the hold were muffled but loud, a vast array of voices in tones of anger and fear and sorrow to the point of abandon. James recognized the cadences of African languages, but he could not make out any of the words.
Now and again the sound was punctuated by a wailing, or a screaming or what sounded like a loud entreaty to God. The people in the hold would have heard the anchor cable running out, would be able to sense that the ship was no longer under way. They would know something was about to happen, and their experience would tell them that any change meant some fresh misery.
Cato and Joshua looked at each other, apprehensive. But the thing had to be done.
“Go,” James called, and the two men walked forward, peeling the tarpaulin back off the hatch.
The stink rolled up over the deck and enveloped them, and James was staggered to realize that what they had smelled before had been but a watered-down taste of what the hold contained. It was more than just the smell of bodies and waste. It was festering wounds, rotting human flesh. Death and decay in that closed, hot, sweltering hold.
“Oh, dear God!” Quash exclaimed. Good Boy retched and vomited on the deck. James clapped his hand over his mouth, took shallow breaths, tried to keep himself from vomiting as well. Joshua and Cato dropped the tarpaulin, staggered away.
The cacophony from the hold rose in pitch. Pleading, wailing, and still James could understand no word of what they said. Slavers, he knew, purposely mixed people from distant tribes in their ships so that they would not be able to communicate, to organize and plan. What if none of these spoke Malinke? How would he talk with them? And did he himself remember enough Malinke? It had been more than two decades since he had used that tongue with any frequency.
Dark fingers reached up through the holes in the grating, like tiny arms reaching out, beckoning help. They had to get those people out, but now James’s men were too revolted and too terrified to approach that black hole.
They were saved the trouble. From below a voice cut across the wild jumble of sound, giving an order in some language foreign to James, and with an organized effort the fingers grabbed ahold of the grating and pushed it aside.
James’s men were silent, staring at the hatch, which seemed to move of its own accord. And then from below a black figure emerged, stepping carefully up the ladder, clearly unsure of what was waiting on the upper deck. He blinked and squinted and shielded his eyes from the dim evening sun, looked around. He stepped over the combing, still in a half crouch, ready to move if attacked.
James stepped forward, hands up, palms out. The man looked at him, looked around the deck, seemed to relax a bit as his eyes moved from black face to black face.
He looked back at James, straightened his stance. He was a big man, six feet tall at least, powerfully built and well proportioned. Handsome. He smiled with big white teeth set against dark skin. Held up his hands. Addressed James with words that James did not understand.
James stared at him, shook his head. The man said something else, it sounded like a different language, and James shook his head again.
The man squinted at him, looked closer, and then spoke again, slowly, and the language was Malinke. Slow, uncertain, but clearly Malinke. James’s native tongue, at once familiar and foreign. Images of his father, of his village, swam before him as he heard the words: “I am Madshaka. Are my people safe to come up?”
James nodded, then spoke slowly, finding the words deep in his memory. “Yes. You are safe. Tell them to come up.”
Madshaka turned, looked back down the hold. He called something in the first language he had used, then the second, and then repeated the order in two more languages. One by one the people came up from the hold, frightened, confused, broken. They squinted, like Madshaka, though the light was fading fast in the west. They spread out across the deck, looking carefully around, not trusting the reality that greeted them: freedom, safety.
Madshaka stepped up to James. He was naked, save for a cloth around his hips. All of the Africans were dressed that way. The stink of the hold clung to him.
He looked down at James, but despite his overwhelming size he appeared subservient, almost cowed. He said in James’s native tongue, “You are the chief here? You are Malinke? What is your name?”
“Yes, I am Malinke. Was Kabu Malinke, from the House of Mane.” His name? That was not so easy to answer. “Once I was known as Komdaka, prince of the Malinke. Now I am King James.”
“King James?” Madshaka said, trying the words out, working his tongue around them. “What of the ship’s crew?”
“Dead. Captain dead, some others dead. The rest sent away.”
Madshaka looked at him and his eyes grew wide and a look of astonishment, of gratitude and near worship spread over his face. He sank slowly to his knees in front of James, grabbed his hand and kissed it. James felt himself flush, cleared his throat, tried to work out the words in Malinke to tell Madshaka to stand.