My Name Is Not Angelica (2 page)

While the basket went up and down, he told us tales of those who had foolishly attacked King Agaja. Since we were no threat to the king, the dwarf must have told the tales for only one reason. He was sure that they would be passed on to the English in their big fort at the mouth of the river.

The last to be hauled aloft were Konje, my father and mother, Dondo, our servant, and me. The basket bumped against the stone sides of the dark hole. The rope creaked. Water dripped on us. The servants who were hauling us in sang. They stopped. The basket stopped. We dangled for a while, I think on purpose. My mother said that she wished she had stayed at home in our quiet village and I felt the same.

The dwarf had been left behind, I thought, but when the servants lifted us out of the basket, he was there, grinning. He pointed toward a flowery path lined with palm trees. At its end was a wall painted with the same color as the face of the cliff. Above the wall rose three broken turrets with the same zigzags and fish hooks in the Arabic language.

Speechless, every one of us save Konje overpowered by the dark hole dripping with water, the swinging basket, the tumbling walls and turrets that lay in front of us, we passed silently through an arch into a hall lit by torches.

The hall was hung with loops of colored cloth and there were cloth mats underfoot. The air, which smelled of frankincense, moved softly around us, stirred by a row of guards waving palm fronds.

From this hall we were herded into a courtyard that could easily hold a thousand guests. In its center were a pit and a pile of stones that once had been a fountain. Hooded vipers now sunned themselves among the stones.

Around the rim of the courtyard were small openings decorated with flowers. Here we were invited to refresh ourselves. Afterwards, the dwarf led us out of the courtyard through a dark passageway into an even larger courtyard, where the sky was hidden by strips of colored silk.

Smoke filled the air. Oxen and wildebeest turned on spits. Small boys caught the drippings and poured them on the turning meat. Plumed birds roasted on burning coals.

We ate sitting on the floor among flowerbeds. We sipped juices from big-eared jars. Horns and little tan-tan drums played music that none of us had ever heard before.

The dwarf waddled about, making sure that we
lacked nothing to eat or drink. But King Agaja did not appear. I began to think that he did not exist, that the dwarf himself was King Agaja. Then, with a blare of horns, painted warriors marched to the center of the courtyard.

On their shoulders was an ivory chair with gold ropes and bangles. In the chair, almost lost among the cushions, sat a man, no larger than the dwarf, draped in a yellow robe, with a red peaked hat on his head.

Horns and drums fell silent. Warriors that lined the walls of the courtyard touched their heads to the floor. A whispered word from Konje passed among us and we got to our knees, slowly, for none of us, being Christians, felt comfortable paying homage to a Muslim king.

The king spread his hands wide and spoke in a voice made bigger than he was, in the dialect of our village. He welcomed us to his kingdom. He held a cup to his lips and invited us to join him in an act of friendship.

Servants, while the king held the cup to his lips, poured cups of sparkling juice among us. The king drank and we drank. The king finished his cup and tossed it away. We finished our cups and we, too, tossed them away. The king laughed and we laughed.

Quickly, everything changed. The laughter ended. King Agaja, surrounded by his women guards, marched out of the courtyard, through an
arch of elephant tusks, into a room lit with hanging lamps. The dwarf motioned Konje and our Council of Elders to follow the king. A lattice door decorated with glittering gems closed behind them.

The women of our court and the women of King Agaja's court talked little to each other because we spoke different languages. I was uncomfortable.

Musicians played and sweets were served. Night came. The moon rose. Now and again voices sounded through the latticed door, but they were never clear enough for me to hear what was said. Still, I had the strong feeling that an argument had arisen between the king and our Council of Elders about something that could not be settled in a friendly way.

I was right, horribly right. Toward morning, when the moon was hidden by dark clouds, I was awakened by a hand clenched tight on my mouth, another hand at my throat, and a voice saying softly, "Quiet. You will not be harmed."

Sounds suddenly came from everywhere in the curtained room where our women were asleep. The sound of feet moving stealthily on the thick carpets, gasps, curses, a wild scream.

I was pulled to my feet and a length of silk scarf wound about my head. In the grasp of two men who lifted me in the air every few steps to hurry me along, I was taken to the cliff and sent down the yawning hole. There were seven people with
me. Who they were, I didn't know until we reached the river and were lying in a war canoe.

In the first gray streaks of dawn I made out Konje, bound hand and foot, with something stuffed in his mouth and a gash on his cheek that hadn't stopped bleeding. Beside him was Dondo, also bound. In front of me was our slave Lenta and her two boys. It seemed to me that Agaja had picked out the six of us deliberately.

There were two canoes close behind us filled with people from our village. But I didn't see my family, my father and mother and my sister. I was never to see them again.

We went down the river fast, through the big loop the storm had made. As we passed our sleeping village, Konje tried to speak but only croaks came from his mouth. Dondo pointed toward the sea.

"Slave ships," he said. "They're waiting for us."

There were three of them where the river met the sea. Three ships that needed paint were anchored a good distance from each other. All had tattered flags flying from their masts.

As we passed the first of the ships, blacks called down to us. With raised fists they warned us of the evils to come. They told us to jump into the sea. Some told us to kill our captors before it was too late.

When we reached the third slave ship, we were
hauled on deck in a net. At the last minute, Konje struggled to get free. But he was still fastened to Dondo by chains. His struggles were ended when a smiling sailor gave him a blow on the head.

The ship had sailed north for many days before I saw Konje again. I worried about him, sure that his arrogance would get him in trouble. I grieved for him, fearing that he was dead. But the worry and the grief saved my life. It kept me from thinking about the terrible thing that had happened to me and my family. It kept me from slipping over the side of the ship some dark night when no one was looking, to my death.

When I caught sight of Konje again, he was no longer in chains. He was dressed in a red shirt and a yellow cap. He was the leader of a gang of slaves who washed the filth from the decks where we lived.

The ship was called
God's Adventure.
One of her owners was Len Sorensen. I had known Master Sorensen for five years. He had come to our village many times trying to buy slaves. He had bought none from Konje's father or from Konje, yet he was always friendly and brought us presents.

Three days later, when he saw me among the crowd of slaves he had gathered along the coast, he was also friendly. He didn't send me back to the village, but he found me a hole that was clean, where I could lie down and stand up. In the rest
of the ship, the decks were so close together you had to lie flat on your back.

More helpful than this, he calmed some of my fears. I didn't believe that the white people where we were going were cannibals, as most of the others believed. They would work us hard but would not eat us.

The island of St. John, which was to be our home, was owned by Denmark, Master Sorensen told me. He said that it was far across the ocean, near America. He told me many things. He told me, for instance, how I would be sold to a white planter, how I should act.

"The planter who buys you," he said, "will put you to work in his household or in the sugar-cane fields. In the fields, under the hot sun, slaves don't last long, perhaps a year. So show your white teeth, Raisha, smile a lot, and don't say anything unless you're asked."

At first we talked in my dialect, but after a while Master Sorensen spoke in Danish and I learned some of his language. This was very helpful when I got to the island of St. John.

God's Adventure
—such a hopeful name for a savage ship—took six months and more to sail from Africa to the islands. We left the mouth of the river in the night. We sailed slowly north along the slave coast and stopped at every port.

Captain Sorensen gathered in two or three slaves in each port. He was very particular. Ashantis he wouldn't buy because they caused trouble, he said. The Senegals were intelligent. The Congos were tall and beautiful. The Mandigos were lazy. The Ibos made good house servants, he told me, and bought ten of them.

God's Adventure
was crowded before we ever left the village of Accra. The ship had four decks, piled one on top of the other, so close, as I have said, that you could not stand up. The new slaves choked the ship. Then a plague broke out and three or four of us died every day.

Lenta and her children lived on the lowest of the four decks. I never saw her until the plague
began and I heard that her son, Madi, was sick. I carried him aloft to my place on the first deck. It turned out that he didn't have the plague. He just couldn't eat the fuzzy green meat and weevily mush he was given and threw them up.

I shared with him the food Captain Sorensen saw that I was given every day. Soon, as we turned back along the slave coast and picked up more slaves, Madi got well. His body was a bundle of bones, but he moved about, ate, and kept the food down.

Soon after we turned back a storm struck us. The ship with all her big cargo was top-heavy. She rolled like a log. Her bare masts dipped into the sea. She creaked and groaned. Gray waves rose up and engulfed the top deck, sweeping men into the sea.

The storm left us afloat off the port of Accra. Here Captain Sorensen took on more slaves to replace those he had lost from poor food, the plague, and the storm, and sailed westward toward the islands with three hundred eighty-one slaves.

We had not sailed far when the ship began to leak where her bottom timbers met the sea. The crack was small in width but long. Water poured in fast and began to flood the lower deck. Captain Sorensen sent sailors down to fix the leak, but they failed. If anything, the sea poured in faster.

He knew about Madi, knew that the boy had fingers like sticks and sent him down with a rope
around his waist to poke strips of oiled cotton into the crack. After Madi worked for a while the seawater came in more slowly.

They pulled him in, gave him a sip of rum, a bowl of corn and fresh meat, and sent him down again. His sticklike fingers worked cotton into the rest of the crack. The leak stopped.

It was dusk by now, and we were sailing along fast when they began to pull him in. One moment he was there, dangling with the rope around his waist, the next moment only half of him was there. Sharks had gotten the rest.

His death came close to bringing a revolt. We slaves talked of little else, until the sailors went around with whips, guards got out their muskets, and Captain Sorensen warned us that unless we quit talking he would give us water to drink but nothing to eat. He would also throw the leaders of any revolt into the sea.

The food got worse. The salted meat had green spots on it. The water in the mossy casks had things swimming around. And the ship stank. She was washed out every other day. Slaves were sent below to burn powder and kill the smells, but still the ship stank. Those in the two deepest decks began to die, three or four a day, and were thrown overboard. A school of gray sharks began to follow us.

Then everything changed. The food got better and there was more of it. One of the sailors told me that Master Sorensen was fattening us up.

"In less than two weeks," he said, "we will reach the islands. He wants everyone to look healthy."

I passed the news to the rest of the slaves, thinking that everyone would be happier, now that we were near the end of our journey. It had another effect. They had gotten used to their lives, bad as they were, and feared what would happen after they reached land.

All that Captain Sorensen had told me about the islands of St Thomas and St. John proved to be true. As we came into the harbor of St. Thomas and I saw the crowd in the streets, as many blacks as whites, gathered around the auction place, flags flying everywhere and bands playing, I remembered everything he had told me.

It seemed as if I had been there before. Even the slave pen with its rusty iron bars and swarms of black guards swinging whips I had seen many times.

Only when we were led onto a platform and I looked down into a ring of white faces sweating in the sun did I wonder if the other slaves were right after all. Perhaps these white men gazing up at me with their mouths half-open really were cannibals who ate people.

Captain Sorensen had decided to sell three of us together, Konje, Dondo, and me. Lenta looked grim and unhappy. She still grieved for her son, so she was kept to one side.

A man rapped his hammer on a stone. He was the auctioneer Captain Sorensen had told me about. "We have three prime slaves of the three hundred slaves
God's Adventure
brought to the island this day," he said. "Here is Konje, chief of the Barato tribe." He put a hand on Konje's shoulder. Konje flinched. "A great breeder of sons and daughters. A magnificent specimen."

Konje did look magnificent. They had covered him with palm oil. He was naked to the waist, and his muscles rippled in the broiling sun. He towered above the black guards standing against the wall and the man with the hammer.

The auctioneer said, pointing to me, "Raisha the daughter of a subchief. Comely, strong, mother of many strong, comely children. She also speaks the
Danish language. And Dondo, trained as a slave in a chieftain's family, is the perfect household servant."