Nobody's Slave (33 page)

‘Feel there. Tell me what you feel.’

He moved his fingers gently, carefully in the darkness, feeling how slight, how slender the waist was compared to his own. And the little knobbly ridges of the spine ... but there were
two
ridges, one at an angle to the other ... and another and another, running crosswise or diagonally across her back. The skin was not smooth at all like the soft, delicate cheek brushing his own; it was ridged and knobbly, seamed with little lumps and lines, like old scars.

‘Feel higher.’

His horrified fingers crept higher up the back, hoping, longing for an end to the unreal, elephant-hide roughness; but the criss-cross ridges persisted, with only the occasional tiny patch to tell how the back might once have been. Not until his hand came at last to her neck was the skin soft again, with the first downy hairs of the head; and then he realised she was weeping, and clasped her clumsily to him to try to give some comfort.

She sat up, and pulled down her blouse.

‘That is why I do not sometimes wear just a skirt, as the other girls do. I am told it is not nice to look at.’

‘But what is it?’ Madu asked, awed. ‘Is it a disease?’

‘A disease? No – it’s all right, you don't have to wash your hands!’ Her voice had gone hard, brittle, as though she might be hurt again. ‘You haven't seen much, have you, Madu, if you can't recognise the scars of a whipping.’ A sudden burst of laughter from the fireside made her turn her head, and the flickering torchlight sparkled yellow on a tear as it trickled down her cheek.

‘A whipping? But ... no whipping could be as bad as that. It should be cured by now!’ Madu thought of his own back; perhaps it was marked a little, by the leopard and the whip, but nothing like as much as hers.

‘It
is
cured - as much as any whipping by Tenedos de Luxan can ever be cured. I had eighty-five lashes.’ Nwayieke’s proud, brittle voice broke at last. ‘Oh, Madu, is it as bad as that? Is it really like a disease?’

Clumsily, he took her hand. For a moment she leant her head on his shoulder and wept silently; he lifted his other hand to pat her on the back and then the hand hovered, uncertain where to go. He searched for the right words.

‘No. Not like a disease. It is terrible, though. Does it hurt?’

‘No. Not often. There is hardly any feeling left in it.’

‘What was it for?’ The flare of shock in him was beginning to die down to a smouldering, impotent rage.

‘For? Oh ... I stole Donna Henrietta's dress. She said so, anyway - I thought she had thrown it away.’

Madu sat silent, seething. One of the Englishmen had launched into a loud, hearty sea-shanty. He saw Tom's red, happy face among the others around the fire, clapping in time and bawling out the chorus with the rest. He felt he wanted to find the people who had done this, and kill them, slowly.

‘You are right. It is as bad as anything I saw on the ship.’

‘And yet there are good Spaniards too. Yours were kind.’

‘They would not have done that.’ Madu shook his head slowly, remembering Isabella's occasional bursts of temper. ‘At least, I don't think they would. I don't know what to think. And now we have these English slavers here, in the village. They can be as cruel - some of them could have done it.’

‘But they are on our side. For now at least. Don't you see - they want to fight the Spanish, for their gold and silver and suchlike nonsense. But if they fight the Spanish they help us fight slavery too. It is slavery that is wrong, more than the people who do it. Sumba sell slaves, even Mani do it, as well as English, because the Spanish want to buy us. But if the English steal the Spanish silver, the Spanish will have no money to buy. Then we can beat the Spanish and take this country for our own.’

As she spoke the torchlight was reflected in her eyes, little dancing flames in the black, beautiful face. Then, as Madu did not answer, she leant forward slightly, and the eyes were shaded again.

‘Maduka?’ The fingers searched for his again, uncertain. ‘Is it too ugly? Do you hate me now?’

His hand clasped hers firmly. ‘Hate you? No! Why would you think …?’

‘Because of my back. It is not beautiful ...’

‘Nwayieke.’ He held her hand carefully between both of his own, looking straight at her. He spoke low and quietly, though few would have understood the Mani words, even if they had heard.

‘Nwayieke, you are my girl now, you should know that. And your back is not ugly at all. It is beautiful, because it is a part of you. And I want you for my wife.’

‘Oh, Maduka.’ Her other hand came to join his in the dark; no more. But a promise was made. For while they sat silent, like that, with their hands joined, each watching the other's face as it appeared and disappeared in the flickering torchlight. People were moving all around them, but for Madu and Nwayieke they might not have been there at all.

She spoke again, nervous, hesitant, proud.

‘Then you must speak to the Council of Elders in two months from now. And I will have you. Oh, but Madu …’

‘What?’

‘There is Uzo. We have forgotten him. He has already said he wants me. I have refused him, but I am sure he will ask me again. He is older than you, and a full warrior.’

‘Then I will fight him.’

‘They may allow that - but he is strong! And I have seen them turn down a boy, because he had not proved himself in battle.’

‘But …’ Madu fell silent. Uzo, he knew, had been on several raids against the Spaniards, one in the first few weeks after he and Tom had arrived. Since then, there had been nothing - except that this afternoon Madu had made himself look a fool by running from the English. The English who, it turned out, had come to seek Cimarron help in a raid against the Spanish.

He glanced at Tom's laughing face amongst the others round the fire. There was one red-face at least, whom he could trust.

He smiled at Nwayieke. ‘Then I too will go on a raid.’

E
ARLY NEXT morning, as the dawn mist dispersed and the smoke from the cooking fires rose in thin grey columns outside the huts, Madu walked quietly through the village. Some of the red-face were burnishing their weapons, others stretched and yawned loudly, calling after the girls and women of the village as they passed, pots balanced on their heads, down to the stream for water.

Madu walked to the Council Tree, where the leaders of the red-face and Sumba were gathered with the elders. Francis Drake was there, and Pedro, the tall muscular Sumba with snakes tattooed down both his arms. Tom was nearby, but Madu ignored him; this matter was for himself alone.

He waited politely by the tree while the men were talking. At last Ikeme, the leader of the Council, saw him, standing there straight as a spear, and asked him what he wanted.

‘I have heard that the red-face go to attack the Spanish, and it is my wish to go with them.’

Ikeme frowned. ‘It is true. But they are well armed, and have asked only for guides from us. Maybe a few warriors will go, but there is no need.’

‘Nonetheless I would like to go with them. I have my own quarrel with the Spanish, and I would also like to prove myself a warrior of the Cimarron.’

Ikeme turned, and spoke in Spanish to Pedro, the Sumba warrior with snakes tattooed on his arm. Pedro looked at him gravely, then smiled, a flash of filed white teeth in a black, powerful face decorated with swirling tattoos.

‘Then you must follow my orders, boy, and those of Capitan Francisco,’ he said in Spanish.

Madu looked at the stocky figure of Francis Drake, who was scratching his tawny beard and watching the discussion with interest. This time Madu spoke directly to him, in English.

‘If he understand that I am not the Captain's slave, but a free warrior of the Cimarrons. And I come also as a friend of Tom Oakley.’

Francis raised his eyebrows, surprised, a little irritated.

‘But of course, lad - we came here looking for friends, not slaves. My days of trading with Spaniards are gone for ever. Stay if you like, or come, and welcome - either way you're a free man.’

It was exactly what John Hawkins had said to the runaway slave Alberto, at Rio de la Hacha. And Alberto had believed him, as Madu half-believed Francis Drake now. So easy it was for the red-face to change, to forget what had gone before. Then Tom stepped forward, surprised, clearly proud.

‘He comes as my friend, cousin Francis - the one I told 'ee of, who helped me escape from the Spanish. If you come, we fight together, Maddy, as a pair. Nobody shall make you a slave, unless they make me one too.’

‘They will never do that.’ Madu smiled at Tom, his one friend among the red-face, as the bargain was made before them all. Yet his legs still shook an hour later as he marched out of the village, alone among the strangers apart from two Cimarron guides, with Tom by his side. He looked back, once, to where Nwayieke stood, tall and still by the gate. Then he set his mind forward to the trail.

They travelled for four days, during which Tom and Madu learnt the story of the English sailors' journey so far, and their purpose now. While John Hawkins, in England, was negotiating with the King of Spain for the release of the sailors and hostages he had left behind, these men had come directly seeking revenge. All summer they had been plaguing the coast like mosquitoes - there had been the attack on Nombre de Dios which he and Tom had seen; the capture and burning of Spanish ships outside Cartagena; and another daring attack a month ago, when Drake's English and Pedro's Cimarrons had lain in wait for a mule train outside Panama, bringing untold riches across the isthmus to Nombre de Dios. But that had failed at the last minute when a drunken sailor had leapt out of hiding too soon.

Now, he could tell, the English were grim, tired and desperate for success after their efforts. At times only the jaunty, irrepressible determination of Tom's cousin, Francis; kept them going - he and the giant, tattooed Sumba, Pedro, who towered over the stocky English captain, and made the trees echo with his hearty laughter in the evenings. Pedro, at least, was no slave; perhaps, Madu thought, the alliance could really work.

So it was that a week later, Madu lay silently in the long grass behind a rock, listening intently for a repeat of the sound he had heard from further up the road, where it wound, brown, dusty and tantalisingly empty into the forest.

All night they had been there, two miles outside Nombre de Dios, waiting and listening to the sounds of the forest. During the day, they heard only birds and the distant sounds of sawing and hammering in the town, where the Spaniards were building galleys to ward off the English and French pirates. More than one heart in the party beat a little faster at the sound, for they knew that if the raid failed and they were captured, it would be their hands that would pull the galleys' oars for years to come; their backs that would bend under the lash of the whip.

But the sound that Madu thought he had heard was different; the faint tinkle of a bell. He knew that the Spanish hung bells around the necks of their mules, to help find them if they ran away. Was an escaped mule coming this way, or something else? There it was again, clearer now; and another with it - several. A parrot flew screeching overhead, a flash of red and blue and yellow; and Madu glanced to his left, a hundred yards further up the trail, where he could see the face of Pedro, hidden like himself behind the long grass.

A brief flash of teeth in a smile; then a hand tattooed like the head of a snake, with the fingers held up, counting. Five ... five again -
ten
: at least ten mules, Pedro thought. Madu leant around the rock and passed the message on to Tom, from where it went to Francis and the main force of the red-face, waiting just around a bend in the road.

But as he listened longer it became clear there were more, far more than ten mules approaching. Pedro's fingers flashed again and again with the increasing numbers: twenty-five, fifty, seventy
- a hundred
!
More!
Three groups of mules - one of fifty, two of seventy, each loaded with boxes that carried gold and silver bullion - a robber's dream! There was a laugh of delight, hastily checked, from among the main party, and then quiet urgent movement began along the side of the road, stretching the length of the ambush out to account for the greater numbers.

Tom moved up next to Madu, his hands sweating slightly as he held the short, deadly bow he had learned to use among the Cimarrons. In his belt was a short stabbing sword he had been given by Francis. But he would use the bow first, to cover Madu when he went in with his spear and wicker shield.

As well as the bells, he could hear the murmur of voices from the muleteers now. He felt his heart beat fast - the raid
must
succeed, this time. Not only for the gold and silver, but for revenge against the Spaniards who had tricked, imprisoned and humiliated so many of Hawkins' men. It would be revenge, too, for Madu and the Cimarrons. Tom could see that if it succeeded, it might help him to repay Madu for helping him escape, for keeping him alive in the forest where surely he would have died on his own.

But most of all Tom hoped the raid would succeed because if it did they would all return to England, in triumph at last. For that Tom was prepared to kill every Spaniard in the mule-train single-handed, if he had to!

The mule train was in sight now, passing ten yards away along the road - the mules nodding along under their burdens, nose to tail in a thin line led by African slaves. An armoured Spanish captain rode a horse at their head, with a hawk on his wrist. Beside the mules, every ten or fifteen yards, were soldiers, sweating under the burden of helmet and breastplate and arquebus. But the soldiers were spread out along the line, one every five or ten yards, not gathered in a bunch as he had expected.

A whistle blew. Its high insistent sound scattered a flurry of parakeets, and turned the Spaniards' heads. It was the Captain's whistle, which he used to give orders at sea. Tom bent his bow, loosed, and saw his arrow glance harmlessly off the helmet of a Spaniard, an inch too high. He leapt to his feet, loosing off another shaft as he ran close behind Madu, to attack.