Crossed Bones (18 page)

I found mention of a letter from the Mayor of Plymouth in April of 1625, warning the Privy Council that he had spoken with an eyewitness to a fleet of ships (‘thirtie saile’) about to set out from Sale in Morocco bound for our shores bent on the capture of slaves; clearly, the authorities of the time had not acted on the information.

It was the final entry I followed up that sent shivers running down my spine. Quoting the state papers of the time, a Lebanese expert on the period described how in the summer of 1625 Salé corsairs took out of a church in Mount’s Bay ‘about 60 men, women and children, and carried them away captives’. For several moments I sat there, trembling. I read and reread the entry to make sure I had not misunderstood it. Then I took out the little book Michael had given me, laid it on the table and stared at it, feeling the synchronicities wreathing around me like ghostly threads. Here I sat in a library in Penzance, Mount’s Bay, with my left hand on the soft calfskin cover of an extraordinary seventeenth-century memoir and with my right on the hard, smooth plastic of a computer mouse, old technology and new connected by a human bridge spanning four centuries of history. And now my head knew what my heart had already accepted: that Catherine Anne Tregenna had indeed been snatched from Sunday service by ruthless pirates, to be sold in white-slave markets two thousand miles and two continents away.

Just at that moment, as if the electricity of that connection had somehow arced across another emotional gulf, my mobile phone rang. It was Michael.

I should have switched it off and let him stew; but the disapproving faces around me panicked me, and I ran outside to take the call.

‘Hello?’

‘Why did you run off like that? And what about that parting shot – “I thought we’d said goodbye some time ago”? That was hurtful.’

I almost laughed. ‘You’re hurt? What about me? It was you who ditched me, not the other way round. You’ve no right to feel hurt.’

‘I know, I know; and I was wrong. I should never have done it.’

‘Never have done what?’

‘I should never have walked away from you. I can’t do this, Julia. I can’t not have you in my life. I miss you.’

Every dumped woman dreams of having a man say such a thing to her. Every dumped woman practises a number of killer lines with which to squash the insect that crawls back thus. Unfortunately I couldn’t think of any of them. Instead, what came out was ‘Do you?’ in a horrible, yearning whine.

‘Meet me tonight. Come and have dinner with me at the hotel. You could stay, if you wanted to.’ And then he made a sexual suggestion that sent a shock of electricity through my entire body.

‘I really don’t think that’s a very good idea…’ I said.

‘It may not be a good idea, but it’s an idea that always works for us. Come on, you know you want to. And afterwards you can read me to sleep with embroidery hints from your little book.’

It was like having a bucket of cold water upended over me. ‘I can’t,’ I said firmly. ‘It’s too soon, you hurt me too much. I need to think about what I want, what’s good for me. And I don’t think spending the night with you tonight is good for me at all. Go take a long walk and a cold shower. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

Shaking, I rang off, then switched off the phone for good measure. When I got back to my seat in the library, I found that the internet connection had crashed.

There were days when Cat simply wanted to lay her head down against her companion and die, days when she could no longer bear the stench and the captivity, the pangs of her gut or the terrible, suffocating miasma of hopelessness that had stolen over the whole miserable human cargo. At the beginning, outraged by their treatment, there had been talk of insurrection, of overcoming those who came to feed them – holding them down and drowning them in the shit and piss that made a second sea within the ship, of stealing the keys to their shackles, arming themselves with whatever they could find and storming the ship. They embellished the fantasy of this revolt with loving detail: how they would take the raïs and put out his eyes with the same brand that had burned the preacher’s feet; how they would strip him bare and throw him overboard for the sharks and laugh as he was ripped limb from limb; how they would hang the renegade Englishman now known as Ashab Ibrahim from the yardarm, but not before removing the male appendage he must have submitted to heathen circumcision when he first turned Turk; how they would take captive the remaining crew and confine them in this very stinking pit of a hold, then sail for a home port and hand them over to the authorities as hostages against those unfortunate Englishmen still held in the port of Sallee.

Captain Goodridge told how he had heard of a successful insurrection by captives aboard an Algerian vessel. The prisoners had managed by some means or another to bribe one of the Europeans in the crew to release them and furnish them with weapons, and they had killed the captain of the slavers and run the ship back to Plymouth with all speed and honour – whereupon they had roasted a pig on the quayside and paraded it in front of the Mahometan picaroons, threatening to force them to eat it till they wept in abhorrence.

Privately, Cat thought the captain had most likely confected it himself to raise their spirits and his own. In the end, it had not worked. At the very mention of pork, many of the captives had groaned and salivated, reminded afresh of their hunger, while others had retched and added to the noisome liquids that swilled around their feet.

It had not taken long for such rebellious talk to evaporate: a few more days of discomfort, some foul weather which left them bruised and shaken, and the sudden death of the first of the children, a little boy, who had been overcome by fever and flux, and their spirits, such as they were, were broken. The boy’s mother wailed over the tiny body until the raiders came down and took it away. Then she shrieked hysterically that they would eat it, and none could comfort her or assure her they would do nothing of the sort: for no one was entirely sure that such was not the case. The sound of her howling haunted their hours, waking and asleep.

After that, one by one, they fell ill. Two more children succumbed to the fever: a girl of three and a boy of eight. Cat had known the little boy – he came to the manor with his mother on feast days, and she had played Club Kayles with him in the garden. He suffered for several days, but by the time he died Cat found she could neither cry nor pray. She wondered if the first inability was because there was some lack of feeling within her; or whether it was simply that she could produce no more tears for a want of water. As to the second: she knew that her faith had failed her. It was hard to believe that a god who cared sufficiently for his flock could allow children to die in such a terrible manner.

Within a week, nineteen had been taken by the flux or other ailments: strong men, young men, sturdy women, lively children. Thom Samuels, whose wound suppurated until his arm went black; Captain Goodridge, whose ship had been taken in the British Channel; Nell’s husband, William Chigwine; and little Jordie Kellynch, who had been coughing for days before being taken from the church; Annie Hoskens of Market-Jew and old Henry Johns of Lescudjack. Her own youngest nephew, little Jack Coode.

Walter Truran healed with remarkable speed, despite the conditions. There were those who believed the symbol of the brand itself protected him; others whispered of a miracle. But the women who had lost children shot him sidelong looks which clearly showed their inner feelings: they wished God had spared their own at the preacher’s expense.

At last, with the spectre of losing the entire precious cargo before him, the ship’s chirurgeon made an appearance, rather against his will. A tall thin man with a long grey beard and hooded eyes barely illuminated by the lantern he carried, he was accompanied by two of the raiders, one of them Ashab Ibrahim, a cloth clamped to his nose and mouth with one hand. The other hand firmly propelled the doctor into the hold.

‘Who here is sick?’ Ibrahim called.

His question was met by a great wave of noise, and the chirurgeon looked aghast. He said something in rapid Arabic to the renegade, who shook his head. ‘Well, do what you can, then.’

The chirurgeon made his way gingerly between the benches, examining a tongue here, the white of an eye there. Some he shied away from touching: they were obviously beyond saving. When he came to a woman two rows in front of Cat, he recoiled. The woman turned her head, moaning, and with a shock Cat recognized her as Nell Chigwine. Thin strings of vomit fell from her lolling chin to her filthy dress; sweat beaded her forehead, and her breathing was shallow. The doctor shook his head and backed swiftly away, gesticulating. He stood in front of the renegade and talked with such vehemence it seemed he was in a fury. He pointed at the sick woman, then indicated the filth on the floor. He waved his arms, shouting. At last, Ibrahim shrugged and bent to unlock the bar which held the shackles in place.

‘Get up!’ Ibrahim said, and kicked at the man on the end of the row when he did not respond. ‘Stand up!’

The man lumbered to his feet, his face a mask of agony as unused muscles protested, and stood there swaying with the rocking of the ship. A fisherman, then, Cat thought, watching as he moved automatically with the motion of the vessel. Nell staggered and collapsed. ‘Get up!’ the fisherman hissed. ‘Your life depends on it.’ He caught her under the arms and hauled, and she clutched at him. It looked as if she would fall again, but some inner force of will exerted itself, and she drew herself upright, looking more corpse than breathing woman.

The renegade chivvied the first group of captives into line, then turned back to address the hold at large. ‘We’re takin’ you up on deck one group at a time for some air on the chirurgeon’s instructions. Anyone who can’t make it up the stairs on their own two feet will be thrown over the side. One person from each row will clean up your shit before going on deck. Then you will return with a bucket of seawater and sluice your area.’ He took a metal pail from the second crewman and threw it to a woman in the first group on their feet. Cat averted her eyes as the woman scooped the filth into the pail and selfishly prayed that this awful task would not fall to her.

She watched three ragged coffles of prisoners following these instructions, leaving and after a while returning, cleaning their area, taking their stations once more. Her feet itched to move; she could almost taste the briny air that awaited her. At last, after what seemed an interminable amount of time, Ashab Ibrahim came to her row and unlocked the bar. ‘Up, all of you.’

They lurched upright and stood there uncertainly, trying to balance. To her horror Cat found that after two weeks cramped into a crouch her legs did not want to support even her reduced weight, and she fell across the man in the row in front of her, who swore in protest.

The renegade caught her by the arm and dragged her to her feet. ‘Can’t afford to lose ’ee overboard, my bird: precious cargo, you are.’ He leered.

Affronted, Cat forced her muscles to obey, shuffling along in the heavy woollen robe they had given her, her chains clanking painfully against her ankles. Someone else had landed the task of cleaning the row.

At the top of the steps, the fresh air hit her like a fist. For a moment she felt dizzy, disorientated. She had to close her eyes against the sudden light and hold tightly to the sides. Someone pushed her in the back. ‘Move on, can’t you?’

Up on deck she stared at the swathes of blue that assaulted her vision: a great vivid sky, streaked with high clouds like mares’ tails; an endless ocean beneath frothing with white caps. The shimmer of the sun on the sea and the whiteness of the belling sails hurt her eyes so that she had to look down at the solid darkness of the wood beneath her feet. Two weeks, she thought (they had all been counting, judging the passage of time by the changing quality of darkness in the hold); two weeks without sight of the world or fresh air to breathe. She had never realized how lucky she was simply to exist at Kenegie; to wish for more than simple pleasures had been a raw vanity.

They stumbled across the deck, impeded by their chains, threw the filth overboard (out of the wind, if you please, as the renegade laughingly instructed them), drew up bucket after bucket of seawater and scrubbed their filthy skin and clothes. Salt stung their sores; strong men cried out in pain.

The crew watched them, their black eyes as inimical and assessing as those of the Kenegie farm cats. While they joked with one another, Cat wondered what they were thinking: were they mocking their captives, commenting on the weakness of these poor pale creatures? Were they totting up their likely prize money, the prices they would fetch at auction; or were their thoughts running along darker lines? She huddled under the robe, using it as both washcloth and towel. How they must despise us, she thought, filthy as animals, crawling with lice, feeble and diseased. They have reduced us to this state so that we are less than human, and that is how they now see us: cargo which must be kept alive to earn any sort of price, as nondescript as sheep. And she kept on scrubbing as if the dirt would never come off.