1636: Seas of Fortune (21 page)

“And where do we find it?”

“It is usually easiest to dig it up from the sides of stream banks.”

Kojo flashed his teeth. “Fine. Now let’s talk price.”

The Gustavans didn’t care for digging in the constant heat and humidity; it was worse than farming. So they were happy to give the Coromantee the opportunity to mine the bauxite.

Of course, that meant that the Coromantee had to be allowed to shift their village to the west side of the river, the Gustavus side, since that’s where the known deposits were. The colonists debated this a bit, but Carsten Claus, the acting governor of the colony, pointed out that the deposits were still more than a day’s march south of Gustavus, and so the Gustavans didn’t have to worry about casual thievery on the part of their new neighbors.

What really clinched the deal was when Heyndrick de Liefde, who was the cousin of the colony’s founder, David de Vries, suggested that the Coromantee would act as a buffer if the English colony farther south, at Marshall’s Creek, got restive. There were many Dutch among the colonists, and given the treacherous attack by the English on the Dutch fleet at the Battle of Ostend, they weren’t happy about the proximity of the English, who had come before them to Suriname.

* * *

Borguri, who had been the highest ranking of all the Imbangala on board the
Tritón
, had declared himself their chief when they were freed by the Gustavans. He fought two duels to secure his position, but in view of their small number, had declined to kill either challenger. To make sure that they didn’t consider this a sign of weakness, he beat them to within an inch of their lives. They now obeyed him with seemingly doglike devotion.

It was a pity, he thought, that the guns recovered from the longboat were unusable. But he kept them. If his warriors carried them openly, their opponents would think that they worked, and would respond accordingly. They might flee, instead of charging, perhaps. And, if they weren’t fooled, well, the guns were reasonably good war clubs.

The freed slaves had divided into groups along tribal lines, and spread out in the area east of the Suriname River. The Imbangala had raided the weakest of the nearby groups, for provisions and tools that might be used as weapons, but since the Africans started with little in the way of possessions, they weren’t very productive targets. Not yet, at least.

For the moment, while the Imbangala regained their strength, they concentrated on stealing, not killing. The only exception was if they encountered any of the Ndongo, who they had fought back in what an up-timer would call Angola. ‘Ngola was the title of the Ndongo king, Nzinga. Who actually was a queen.

The white traders who circulated among the African settlements were more tempting prey. But Borguri wasn’t ready to attack the whites yet. Not even those traders, let alone the white colony west of the river. The whites were too well armed, he didn’t want to draw their attention yet. His warriors could steal from the whites, if they could avoid being spotted, but no more. If spotted, they must just flee. No killing. Yet.

The Indians, now . . . At first, the Imbangala had avoided confrontations with them. After all, this was their land. Who knew what spirit protections they had? And of course they had missile weapons, which the Imbangala had to make for themselves. But the Imbangala’s contempt for the Indians grew. They were clearly primitives, like the upriver Africans the Imbangala once captured for sale to the Portuguese.

The Imbangala chief studied the Indian villages nearest to the Imbangala camp. When did they hunt, what weapons did they carry, did they make war on other villages, did they set sentries when they held festivals. After some time, he picked the Imbangala’s first native target.

The Indians had been drinking
piwari
all day and night. They were ripe for the plucking. There was just one more matter to attend to.

Borguri looked at the Eboe fisherman. His head had been shaved, and ashes from the Imbangala hearth fire sprinkled over it, to erase his old identity, to remove him from the protection of his ancestral spirits. Assuming that they cared what happened to him across the Great Sea. In the ordinary course of things, in a few weeks he would go through a binding ritual which would make him property of Imbangala’s lineage, and drive thoughts of escape from his mind.

But no war party could set forth without at least one human sacrifice, to please the gods and feed the warriors.

* * *

Maurício spoke to the sentry. “I need to talk to him.” The guard shrugged. “Watch your step.”

Maurício took a deep breath and entered the hut. The change in illumination, from the high tropical sun to the indoor gloom, was stunning. It was several minutes before he could see much beyond the tip of his nose, and he said nothing until his eyes adjusted. At last he could make out the dark figure sleeping, or pretending to sleep, at the far end of the hut, his arms and legs both shackled, and the leg shackles in turn fastened to a chain which circled the great tree trunk that rose from the ground, piercing the roof of the hut.

“I have a few questions for you.”

“Do you now? Come a little closer, so I can hear you better.” The erstwhile slaver captain rattled his chain. “It’s not as though I can come closer to you.”

“I’ll just speak louder, thanks,” said Maurício. The first day after his capture, the captain had half-strangled the man who brought him food. The captain was then punished, by being given nothing to eat for several days, and was fed only after he apologized properly. Maurício was not especially reassured by this expression of contrition.

The captain laughed and laughed, then stopped abruptly. “Well, well, I am a busy man, as you can see. So be quick about it.”

“It’s a small matter. One of the Coromantee said that his two children were kidnapped and taken to Elmina for sale. He pursued the kidnappers and was captured in turn.”

The captain snickered.

“He spotted the children in a pen, but that was all.”

“How old were they?”

“The boy twelve, the girl eleven.”

“Ah, a good age. They can be trained as domestic servants, or be taught a trade and hired out. Of course, they are long-term investments.”

Maurício suppressed the urge to strangle the captain. “So, do you know what happened to them?”

“I can make an educated guess. But what’s in it for me?”

Maurício hesitated. He had already read the ship’s log, and quizzed all of the other survivors of the slaver’s crew. The captain, damn his soul, was Maurício’s last hope.

“I suppose I could do something about your rations, if I thought your answer was sufficiently helpful.”

“My rations, eh? Well, that’s not good enough. I want my freedom.”

Maurício turned and started to walk out.

“Wait, young fellow.” Maurício stopped.

“They can put a ball on this chain and let me walk about a bit, outside. Where would I run to, after all? If the Africans didn’t get me, the Indians would.”

“I promise that if you give me the information I need, I will speak to the governor, and request this boon.”

“Not on
my
behalf. As a favor to you. To redeem
your
word.”

“Yes, as a favor to me! Now talk, damn you!”

* * *

The attack took the Indians by surprise. The men were too drunk to put up a fight at all. The women weren’t in much better state.

The men of warrior age were slain and eaten, to the horror of their kin. Not that cannibalism was unknown in South America, but of course the Africans had different rituals and so far as the Indians were concerned, what the Imbangala were doing was completely wrong!

The younger boys were gathered together. They would be taught, brutally, that they were now Imbangala. The young women would become wives of the senior Imbangala warriors, and the older men and women would be put to work, as slaves, in the fields. If the old men thought that farming was beneath their dignity they would be beaten until they rethought the matter.

A week or so after the assault, one of the young women managed to escape. Tetube hid in an old hunter’s shelter that her brother had once pointed out, until the Imbangala tired of searching for her. Then she slipped downriver.

Long Rainy Season (April to August, 1635)

Carsten raised his hands. “All right, I can’t hear anyone if you all talk at once.”

“We’ve had goods stolen, time and again,” one colonist, who frequently made trading forays across the river, complained.

“Anyone killed?”

“Not yet,” the trader admitted.

“That’s not all,” said a second colonist. “The Africans are already killing each other.”

“Are you surprised?” asked Henrique, Maurício’s white half-brother. “It’s not as though they were all that friendly back in Africa, you know. That’s how at least half of them ended up as slaves in the first place. They fight these little wars, and the prisoners get sold.”

“So the villages are armed camps, now,” added the trader. “It makes it tough to do business. The Africans are thinking more about fighting than about farming, I assure you. They have less to trade and sooner or later some nervous sentry is going to shoot an arrow or throw a spear into one of us.”

“We just find out who started it, and teach them a lesson,” said Heyndrick. “That’s what cousin David did with the Indians in America.”

“You mean kill them?” asked Michael Krueger. “I have a better idea. If a tribe can’t keep its people from stealing or killing, then I think it should be considered lawful to re-enslave them all.”

“Ah, lawful war,” said Maurício. “The Portuguese did that in Brazil, with the Indians. Funny thing was, there always seemed to be a lawful reason to enslave any tribe which was too weak to resist.”

Henrique held up his hand. “There’s worse news.”

Carsten gave Henrique his full attention. He knew that Henrique was a woodsman, and he and Maurício’s Manao Indian brother-in-law, Coqui, moved freely among the Indians in the affected region. “What?”

“We’ve had reports that some of the Africans have real weapons. Steel swords. Guns even. Some Indian villages have been attacked.”

“Where could they get them from?” Carsten wondered, aloud.

“The Spanish. Or the Portuguese,” Denys Zager suggested. He scowled at Henrique and Maurício.

Henrique scowled right back. “We are wanted men in Brazil. And Maria and Heyndrick transported us here, from hundreds of miles away. They can vouch for the fact that we brought only our personal weapons with us.”

Zager folded his arms across his beer barrel chest. “You say you’re refugees, but how do we know? Perhaps your Indian friends are helping you smuggle weapons here from your friends in Brazil.”

“Enough,” said Carsten firmly. “The accusation is ridiculous. Please don’t distract us from the real problem.”

“Perhaps,” Maria offered tentatively, “we should help the good Africans, the ones who are just trying to defend themselves, deal with the troublemakers themselves.”

“You mean, give arms to the ‘good’ Africans? That’s crazy.”

Carsten clapped his hands. “We will try to figure out which Africans are the source of the problem, and deal with them. With or without African allies, as seems best at the time.

“For the moment, the Africans who wish to trade will have to come to us, not us to them. We’ll set up a trading post just outside Fort Lincoln. We’ll strengthen the inland defenses there, too. And I think we better institute river patrols. Hopefully, the blacks’ll all calm down after a while.”

* * *

Borguri held out his favorite whetstone, and one of his new Arawak wives dutifully poured water over it, letting the liquid cascade down into a waiting basin. A tied-up African watched in fear, not knowing what would happen next.

He pointed to the basin. “Drink,” he ordered. The cowering captive complied.

Borguri then hit him over the head with the stone. “My sword serves me, my stone serves my sword, my water washes my stone, you have drunk my water. Your ancestors have forgotten you; mine watch your every move, your every thought. You are mine.”

He gave the slave a playful cuff, and ordered, “Back to work.”

The slave should be thankful. Now that he was officially part of Borguri’s lineage—albeit at the lowest level—he was unlikely to be picked as a pre-battle sacrifice.

Borguri frowned. The process of assimilation just wasn’t fast enough. Borguri needed a cadre of true Imbangala to serve as role-models for the coerced recruits, and to discipline those who didn’t comply with the rules. There were only so many new recruits he could absorb within a period of a few months.

But if he took too long to build up his strength, the Ndongo would make or buy themselves decent weapons, and counterattack.

So Borguri had made a decision. Just as the Imbangala of old had allied themselves to the Portuguese, Borguri would ally his tribe to one of the Carib Indian tribes. One which, he had learned, was not happy about the white presence in their vicinity. Borguri felt confident that they would be delighted by the prospect of revenge and plunder that Borguri would hold out to them.

Of course, once the whites were driven out, the Caribs would no doubt turn upon the Imbangala.

Except that the Imbangala would turn on them first.

* * *

Maurício walked up beside Maria, coughed. “About that Coromantee man.”

Maria looked up. “Yes? You thought of something?”

“I questioned the crew. Even the captain. They didn’t remember the children, of course. What’re two slaves among hundreds? But they did know which ship left Elmina before they did. And where it was headed.”

“Well?”

“The
Fenix
. Bound for Havana.”

“Well, that’s something. I imagine there would be records of who was sold out of which ship, to which plantation. And there can’t have been that many children. But he certainly can’t go there and ask, can he?”

“He would need to learn Spanish, of course. And if he didn’t want to be a slave within seconds after stepping onto the dock, he would need a letter of manumission. Preferably, from a Spanish source.”