Young Writers Society

Chapter 2

They made good time after that, though the mood aboard the ship bordered the surreal. It was a profoundly abnormal thing to see the captain subdued and uncertain, while Wilhelm strutted about aboard the helm deck with as much pride as a silver-backed gorilla. His dutiful followers, hoping for an elevation in post, doubtless, followed him as wide-eyed sheep behind an uncaring shepherd. He regaled them with tales of swashbuckling heroism and impossible feats, all the while puffing with fervor on a West Indian cigar. There were two types in his following, the first being the salted hand, who groveled with his words but swallowed the empty pomp like medicine. The second were a much more voluminous bunch, a freshwater smattering of cabin boys and deck hands, the only ones who believed that Scott had put down the Caribbean slave riots with a flintlock and a cudgel.

Wilhelm had decided to put port in at Jamaica, to season his slaves. They would be whipped and bullied and taught the ways of true civilization, which most slaves came to mean “best at making pain.” Agatha was to continue to America, picking up cotton in sale to Britain and proceeding for a new batch of lost souls. They would leave them in Jamaica and take the seasoned ones straight to America. If Wilhelm was one thing, he was a good salesman and a better businessman, knowing that seasoned slaves were one and half the price of an unseasoned straight of Afrika.

They put in on a cloudless day, a day where the men on the rigging were splashed with sun-spray and the waves throbbed as a frenzied drum. The wind carried a dark colored scent to her, and Wilhelm knew it as a good sign. They had found Jamaica. Unloading was the worst job of any, and men drew lots for it. It was no small task to wade into the hold of rotting flesh and souls, unchaining those who would have your blood.

It went without a hitch, except when the key-man got to the back, and found the boy who had been whipped a month before. He was lying in the back of the boat, which was the worst, for all that is foul shifts to the deeper recesses of the aft-end. The man next to him was quite obviously dead, probably for a week or more, splayed limbs stiff in the rigors of death. The boy was shivering uncontrollably, tremors wracking his tried body. His back had turned a rotten black, and flies clung to it like a squirming, buzzing robe. He dazedly looked up, and the crust of fever grew in his bloodshot gaze. As the stricken key-holder looked down and met his gaze, the boys eyes began to smolder, and he leaped up, stirring the carpet of flies to ignite in a spark of blackened flame. He leaped at him, but was immediately repulsed by the unforgiving iron on his wrists and feet.

The holder cried out, running back up to the deck.

The captain turned angrily to the men who had disrupted the line of broken slaves.

“What do you think you’re…”

“Sir, the one in the hold, with the, the whip-, whipped b-back, sir” he panted, fear deserting his lungs of air, “Animal, sir. Charged me. Bull, bull, was a bull,”

He slid back as the captain smiled grimly. Here was an opportunity, a chance to get on the favorable side of the man he hated most.

“Don’t unchain ‘im. Tear his shackles from the wall, ‘n bolt ‘em together. Let him shuffle to freedom!” The men laughed, and several left to get the tools.

Awhile later, the boy squinted dolefully as he was roughly dragged from the dank hole in the ship, and as they set him on his tender feet, he immediately collapsed. The crueler ones laughed, pulling him along the splintered boards and taking great care to run him into things. A count-taker waited at the bottom, glancing disapprovingly at the limp corpse they had dragged from the pit.

“Are you absolutely sure he ain’t dead?” He asked with a doubtful look, squatting to examine his eyes and teeth with the one eye the Lord had left him.

“Aye, he be living well ‘nough. Nigh killed a mate of our but ten minutes ago. No sah, he ain’t dead. Don’t look for much, but he’s spirit abound, aye.” The new first mate Touvre grinned with what he supposed to be disarming charm. The message was not received.

“See here, man, this’n ain’t t’ last a week in the seasonin’ camp. Why should we waste a penny on his food? Be as much good to chuck ‘im in the grave now as any time. ‘is teeth are good, but there’s fever in ‘is eyes, I’d swear it. We had that ‘fore, wiped out ‘alf the stock, it did.”

“Look here. You’ll be lettin’ this’n on or we take our cargo elsewhere. We don’t wanna deal with an extra mouth an’ a fightin’ spirit on two legs o’ the journey, and we don’t mean to. You’ll take ‘im.” Touvres lost all pretences of good cheer, and gave a most dangerous look to the count-taker, “J. Scott Wilhelm’s on that there boat there, y’see? And he wants his slaves seasoned proper, aye? So take ‘im if y’ still want the deep purse of Wilhelm on yer books.”

“Right then, I’ll take ‘im. That name carries a bit ‘o weight round ‘ere yet, and I suppose naught could hurt to take ‘im. But mark m’words, he won’t be here fer ya when you return, aye?” The abashed man groveled, scraping together the remains of a savaged pride.

Touvres turned to go, satisfied, but on an afterthought, wheeled around.

“An’ tar ‘im good, willya? He was quite a bit ‘o trouble fer our cruise. But I guess I do ‘ave to thank ‘im a bit,” He shot off a gap-toothed, mustard grin, “It’s ‘cause of ‘im that I’m firs’ mate, eh?” He laughed, and strode away.

The count-taker nudged the boy, and gave a low whistle.

“A week was far too generous, mate, far too generous.”

He woke up in a bed, a real bed, though his name for it was not ours. No bunks, no hard wood, no splinters lodged in the ragged skin that remained on his torn back. He rolled over, and pain lanced through him once again. He stifled a long, drawn out scream in the woolen blanket, a skill well-practiced on a ship where weakness lost your food. He glanced carefully back, and stifle once more the urge to cry out. Where on his back there had once been festering, blackened flesh, there was now a thick coating of some foreign substance sticky and pungent. It was hot, and burned into him whenever he tried to move. He tried to will himself into unconsciousness, but to no avail. A brand seemed to burn his mind with the horrors of the journey. The bloated, fattened flies, the death, the tell-tale scraping of the tooth-fish on the bottom of the boat – these were not in him now, but were him. He if they were part of him, he no longer liked who he was.

Nyame, help me. To my aid, Nyame of the sky. Come with your Abosom, justly abosom. Nyame, help me. Nyame, Nyame of the sky. Help me. Tano, strike them down, strike them Tano. Asase Ya, swallow them with the grave within. Swallow them. Nyame, help me.*the people of this region would not have worshipped this pantheon, but have more likely been involved with West African Vodun. I used the boy as a worshipper of Nyame for the sake of simplicity.

And on and on, as he called to the spirits of the water and tree, lurkers of the river-rushes and formers of the earth. One by one, he screamed to the world beyond the sea, to the nether beneath his feet, to the enigma in the sky. But no savior, not for the child in chains. So he must not be a child. He would be a man, a strong man, a man of the true Akan people. And as it was often said, the strongest man has stronger words. But the boy had no words. Not here. Not among these vodun-ghosts.

He carried on in this fashion, rattling his chains in time to his silent chants, cradling his head as it buzzed with the rot of memory. A knock on a thick, oaken door shook away his mournful reverie. A slim, dark girl entered without waiting for a response, stepping carefully over the boot-worn boards as a deer approaches the stream. She was laden with a rough wooden serving platter, and on it was a dented tin of water and a rough crust of hard tack. But though the boy was starving, the sight of food was not what captivated him. He saw only the girl, slim and bruise-blackened, with shadows painting the undersides of her eyes like warpaint. She was bent-backed, and shadows were carved deep in her ebony eyes, which glared with a resigned mistrust into the floor. And all of this, to the boy, could not have been more the pinnacle of beauty.

“Are you-are you…” He stammered, feeling words form in his mouth as a woman molds wetted clay.

She glanced up sharply, horror etched in her worn face.

“No, do not speak that. Not here! Not anymore! Not ever!” The girl spoke their tongue with an unpracticed stumble, a strange lilt tripping her every word. To the boy, though it was strange, he felt a deep resentment at such a marring of his native tongue. It was the way the ghost-men talked, and she did not deserve to taint his words with her foul mouth.

He struggled up, glaring at her, but was instantly disarmed by the alarm in her eyes.

“Why… why should I not speak?” He asked her, bewildered by her fear.

“No, it is not that. But if you are to speak it must not be in that tongue. Every word of that language is worth six lashes and a handful of salt. Do not speak them again – at least not here.” Her ending lament startled the boy, and his stumbling anger melted into pity. This was no Akan woman, not anymore. She could no longer even stand upright in front of her own people, and speak the true words. She was nigh a ghost herself.

“No! Do not look at me like that. It is not that I would harm your spirit, but that I would protect your back – and your mind.” Her eyes fell back to the knotted floor at this last word, and he struggled to understand why.

“Then… what shall I speak?”

She looked up quickly, smiled, and spoke a few rough words in the strange man’s tongue.

The brand flared again in his mind, burning through him, tendons taut and eyes aflame. He flew at her, teeth bared in a snarl of mindless hatred. She wheeled backward, dropped the platter, and sprawled upon the floor, gasping, flooded with the stench of human rage. He caught once more on the unforgiving bracelets, and sank back with pathetic resign.

The girl quickly gathered up the splinters of the platter, and turned to leave.

“Wait!” he called, heedless to the warning she had pressed upon him. She turned back warily, fear flitting about on her poorly painted mask.

“Will you tell me… the meaning of one of your ghost-words?”

“Aye. Which?” she smiled with wan exhaustion. He struggled to remember, to pry an odd word from a blood-stained memory.

“M-….Mercy.”

She smiled, spoke, and turned. He watched her leave, stepping silently out like a roan doe.