Nobody's Slave (30 page)

‘But then I
must
go! I long to be there when my father is victorious in battle as you were before!’

‘Isabella!’ said her mother, astonished. ‘You …’

‘I shall not
be
fighting any battles, my dear,’ Don Carlo insisted. ‘And anyway, you surely do not wish to be six months or more out of the city now, when Roberto is ...’

‘I don't givea fig for Roberto!’ Isabella glared indignantly at the shocked faces of her parents, and softened her tone a little, pleadingly. ‘I mean, I am fond of him, Papa, you know that, but ... but I have come all the way here, to the New World, and all I have seen so far is this city, and the road from Vera Cruz. I want to see new, different places, like this Panama. I will never see it later.’

‘I too,’ said Lucia suddenly, in the brief silence. ‘I do not mind discomfort, or life on board ship. Besides, Papa will be gone for months - perhaps over a year. Didn't you say so, Papa?’

‘It is difficult to be sure,’ Don Carlo answered. ‘But ...’

‘Then surely, Mama, you will miss him as much as we shall! Isn't it better that we go all together to this Panama, and share the dangers, than ...’

‘Of course it is!’ For once, perhaps the only time in her life, Isabella was in agreement with her sister. ‘It would be impossible for Papa to survive for so long without his family! Don't you see, Mama, it would be the one way to ensure that he would fail - or at least, not succeed as magnificently as he otherwise would - if he were deprived of the comfort and pleasure of his wife and daughters for so long.’

‘I am perfectly capable …’ began Don Carlo in a withering, icy tone, which he used at work to terrify his subordinates; but his wife overruled him.

‘Of course you are, my dear, I should not have accepted you otherwise. But you must admit, the poor girls do have a point; and I should most sorely miss you.’

‘I have already said it will be most uncomfortable and dangerous.' But Don Carlo weakened his argument by looking as though he might actually enjoy leading a life of discomfort and danger away from the collective bosoms of his family; and that of course only made the owners of the bosoms more determined.

‘We shall not follow you into battle, Papa. That will be left to you ...’

‘Unless you need us ...’

‘But really, my dear, the discomfort will be all the greater if you arrive alone. They will shuffle you away into a couple of rooms in the governor's residence, whereas if you arrive with your family, they will be forced to give you a house, which at one stroke will add to your status and your comfort. Everyone will see you are a man of consequence, not to be ignored.’

‘But …’

And so it was decided. Two weeks later, Don Carlo's whole household, with slaves, servants, daughters, and clothes enough for a year, embarked at San Juan de Ulloa. The Spanish captain was outraged when he saw them, but he, too, was unable to resist Don Carlo's new-found status and the forceful enthusiasm of his wife.

F
OR TOM, the excitement was painful. They went on board ship at San Juan de Ulloa,  the same port where the
Jesus
had been captured, and he had escaped in the
Minion
. One of the wrecked Spanish ships was still there in the harbour; there were charred timbers from the fireship at the far end of the island. As they stood out to sea his eyes searched the horizon. Surely Hawkins would come soon - why not
now
, today? It was not impossible.

As they sailed east and then south it became clear that the Spaniards were nervous. They talked a good deal of the English and French pirates along the coast; there were more than ever before, it seemed.

They had good reason to be afraid, Tom thought. The ship they were travelling in ship had very few guns, and none of them well-served; he was sure it could be taken in half an hour. But day after day the eastern horizon was empty, with the occasional faint green line of the shore to their right; and when at last they landed in Nombre de Dios, there was no news of English pirates. Instead, everyone talked of a band of escaped slaves who were living in the forest. Only the week before, a group of them had come into town and audaciously kidnapped a dozen female slaves who were washing clothes by the river.

As Donna Anna had said, the governor was forced to give Don Carlo’s family a large house in the centre of town, whose owner was on a journey to Peru. But Nombre de Dios was a small port, less than a quarter the size of Mexico City, and it was no more than five minutes' walk from their house to the harbour. Here, in a few months, the annual treasure fleet from Spain would arrive, to load the vast quantities of gold and silver ingots which had already travelled a thousand miles from Peru. For the moment, many tons of silver were stored in a treasure house in the centre of town. Every time Tom passed it, he thought, if only John Hawkins were here, or Francis Drake - they would be repaid a thousand times for all the ships and gold they had lost!

But Drake and Hawkins were thousands of miles away. They might never return; they might even be dead, for all Tom knew. As the days passed, Tom grew downcast, and thought more and more about the other possibility, the one Madu had mentioned. Every day they heard new stories about the escaped slaves – the Cimarrons – living in the forests nearby. The Spanish, clearly, were terrified of them.

‘Maybe no one will come for me,’ he said to Madu as they worked alone in the kitchen one night, clearing and scouring the great cooking pans. ‘But for you, it’s different. There are hundreds of free men in the forest only a few miles from here. A village - a whole town, as big as this, some people say! You could run any day you chose.’

Madu knew Tom was right. Each night he lay awake in bed, listening to the sounds of this tropical forest which were so similar to those of his childhood. In the day there were the screeches of monkeys and parrots; at night the coughing of something like a leopard. And once, he was sure, the distant mutter of talking drums. And yet, for all that, he hesitated. The language of the drums was strange.

‘You think because they black men they all same like me?’ He rinsed a pan, and passed it to Tom to dry. ‘Are Spanish all same like the English, because they all got red face and beards? No, they are different. I am Mani, remember. Perhaps these men Sumba. Escaped slaves, but enemies of my people.’

Tom shook his head in bewilderment. ‘Then if you think these men are your enemies, why not wait for Hawkins, like I say? And come with me?’

‘Because Hawkins
is
my enemy - I know that for sure. And anyway, he is over the sea; when will he come? Never, perhaps.  And these men – these Cimarron – are here, now. No, Tom, you are right. If we want to be free we must trust them, and hope. I only say they may be Sumba to show that for me too it is - how you say? –
a
risk
. But these men are free - we know that. So one night soon, we must go.’

But Tom was still not convinced. Later that night, as they lay in the dormitory which they shared with four of Don Carlo's servants, he listened through the open window, not to the sounds of the forest that fascinated Madu, but to the sounds of the soft breeze in from the sea. He smelt the tang of the salt, and listened to the insistent rattle of halliards against a mast, and the murmur of the surf breaking on the rocks at the harbour mouth. These were the things that drew Tom; the sounds of the sea. For the first time since he’d been captured, they were there, tantalizingly close, a few yards outside his window. He wanted to run away to sea, not join a renegade tribe of Africans.

After a while he slept, and he dreamed he was at sea again. The creak of the timbers and the rush of the wind were all around him. He was on a smaller ship than the
Jesus
- a pinnace perhaps - and there were other ships nearby. It was night, but some of the dim faces in the moonlight were those of his old shipmates from the
Jesus
. But the captain was not Hawkins but his cousin, Francis, and there were many other men he did not know. They were all tense, as though they were about to attack. Eyes peered into the gloom, picking out the white line of the surf against the deeper black of the shore.

He longed to speak to the sailors in his dream, to rejoice in his freedom and find out what voyage they were on, but every time he spoke the words came out strange and woolly from his throat, and the men did not hear. One walked straight through him, as though he were a ghost. Then Francis came near, the night breeze ruffling his curly hair as he leant forward over the quarterdeck rail to give an order, and Tom mustered all his strength to call out, to yell that he was there …

... and woke, instead, in the stuffy, stone-built dormitory, which did not move at all like the sea. He became aware that he was making strange throttled noises in his throat, and that a hand was gripping his arm urgently.

‘Tom! Tom! What is it?’

He sat up and stared, wide-eyed and sweating, into the black face so close to his own. ‘Get off!’ He lunged wildly at the face, but Madu’s hands gripped his, pushing them away.

‘Stop it! Tom, is only a dream. Be quiet, now.’

Slowly he subsided, and lay down again to a mutter of confused protest from the other beds in the room. His breathing steadied.

‘I'm sorry, Maddy. I thought ... there was a ship, a raid.’

‘Not yet, Tom. One day, maybe. Soon. Not yet.’

Tom lay back, letting sleep fold around his regrets. As he closed his eyes he heard a shout in the square outside, and the sound of a man running. But there were often fights and robberies at night; this was real life, not a dream.

Then the churchbells began to ring.

Clang! Clang!
At first it was just one bell, alone, aloud in the darkness; then others joined in, peal upon loud, outrageous peal smashing the silence of the night. What was it - a fire, an attack? Everyone in the dormitory sat up, cursing, wide-eyed, amazed; and then, as the uproar went on, began shouting and scrambling for their clothes.

There were shots outside, shouts, the clatter of many feet, a dozen voices giving orders, the rattle of sword on sword. Then the sudden, shattering volley of arquebus fire.

‘It
is
a raid! Come on, Madu - quick, look!’ Buckling on his trousers Tom sprang onto a chair to peer out of the window, into the square - a square that was the very world of his dreams! The hair rose on the back of Tom’s neck.

There was fire there - lines of slow-match burning where arquebusiers must be standing in the dark. The firelight flickered on the steel blades of pikes which some men – raiders perhaps? - were thrusting at soldiers trying to oppose them. There was a tumult of voices, and there in the midst of it all some that were English!
English voices out there in the square!

‘St George! God and St George!’ With a great cry a group of the raiders rushed upon the Spanish soldiers. There was a brief, confused, struggle; several men fell, and the rest ran. Two minutes, and it was all over; the square was controlled by the raiders. Raiders with English voices, and the loud, tumultuous warning of the bells!

‘Come on, Maddy, quick - out of the window!’ But the high windows of the dormitory were too small for easy movement, and Tom had to struggle to get his shoulders through. As he squeezed through, he saw a man just a few yards away. A short, arrogant, curly-haired figure of a man from his dream. A man he knew well. His cousin, Francis Drake.

‘Francis!’
But the tumult of the bells drowned his call, and his cousin did not hear him. Then hands seized his legs, dragging him down out of the street and back into the room. Tom resisted as hard as he could, clinging to the side of the window with his hands, but at last he fell heavily back on the floor and looked up, furious, into the faces of the Spanish servants.

‘No! Let me go! You don’t understand! It's the English! 'Tis Francis come again!
Franciiiiis!’

He butted one of the servants in the stomach, dragged his arm free, punched another clumsily on the nose, and stood face to face with Madu, who had neither touched him nor moved.

‘You’ve got to come now!’ Tom yelled. He turned wildly to the door, but the Spanish servants seemed determined to stop him. A hand grabbed his ankle as he ran. He turned to Madu for help, but a great blow hit the side of his own head, filling it with the sound of the bells that were suddenly ringing there too; and then another blow; and then, nothing.

Cold; his face wet - something trickling across his forehead, into his hair, his eyes. There was a buzzing in his ears, red light behind his eyes - blood! It must be blood! Tom sat up, put his fingers to his forehead, fumbling to find where it came from. He opened his eyes. Splash! A waterfall, cascading over his head, clear drips sparkling in the sunlight as they fell from his hair - and behind, a face, unsteady, water-hazy, black; a gleam of laughing white teeth. A jug of water in a black boy’s hand.

‘You awake now? Know me?’ the face asked, swaying strangely and dividing into two as it spoke.

‘Ooooh! Maaoooo!’ A river-horse moaned from inside Tom’s mouth as he lay down hopelessly to sleep. Splash! Another waterfall; and he sat up, rigid, eyes wide, indignant, ready to fight.

‘What happened? Where am I?’

‘Is heaven, Tom boy. My name St Peter. You got some sins to confess?’

‘Maddy!’ It came back to him with a rush - the raid, the fight, the chance of escape. He sprang to his feet and reeled sideways into a bench, watching in wonder as the walls suddenly surged upwards to the ceiling. Madu caught him and laid him on a bed.

‘Careful. Not right time for dancing, now.’ For a while Tom lay still, listening to the armourer's shop clanging in his head, and watching Madu's two faces slowly combine into one. Then he sat up again, with more caution.

‘There was a raid. The English - where have they gone?’

‘Outside. There is fighting near the harbour, and shots. You may get there, if you walk.’

‘I can walk. Help me.’ Tom lurched to his feet, and clung to Madu while the room swirled sickeningly around them. When at last it steadied itself, they hobbled towards the door.