Ama (54 page)

“Aim at their hearts,” she heard Williams' voice, “I want no bullets in their heads.”

A cry came from the men at the foremast, “Ready, Cappin.”

“Hold tight,” cried Williams, “Now men, ready, take your aim, fire!”

Fire and smoke emerged from the barrels of the guns. The crew cheered. The bodies of the victims slumped in their harnesses. From the watching slaves there rose an awful groan. Ama thought she heard an echo of the lament from the holds.

The trussed bodies were brought down and laid on the tables, blood dripping from their wounds.

“Firing squad, you may retire,” said Williams.

Ama thought she saw a glint of madness in his eye, but his orders were short and precise.

“Knaggs, another job for you. Take the cutlass and decapitate the corpses.”

“Sir?”

“Decapitate. Cut off their heads.”

Even Knaggs was beginning to think that Williams was a trifle touched. He nevertheless prepared to do as he was ordered. Holding the cutlass in both hands he raised it above his head. Waiting a moment in order to achieve the maximum theatrical effect, he brought the knife down, severing the corpse's neck at a single blow. The head fell to the deck, rolled a short distance and came to a stop. Blood issued from each part of the severed neck. Again a groan of bottomless despair issued from the throats of the slaves.

“Good,” said Williams, “They are beginning to get the message. And now the other one.”

“Well done, Knaggs,” he continued when the second head lay on the deck. “Now I need another volunteer. You, Knox; you have volunteered. Step forward now.”

“Yessir,” said Knox, stepping forward.

“Men,” said Williams, addressing his crew, “I should like you all to be quite clear as to my reasons for staging this performance today. We have a job to do. We now have a full cargo. Our job is to get these slaves to their destination in marketable condition. During our voyage down the coast I have spoken to them many times, explaining that if they were peaceful and obedient, I would be just and merciful. Last night, not for the first time, my trust was betrayed. It is clear to me that these people do not have any concept of right and wrong as we do. I was consequently left this morning with no alternative but to display to them the power that lies within my hands. My intention is to cow them into good behaviour. There will be no more kindness on this voyage, only the strictest discipline.

He turned to Knaggs and Knox.

“You will each take one head. Hold it between your palms like this.”

He demonstrated. Each man picked up a head.

“Now, Knaggs, you will start from the port side and you, Knox, from starboard. Present your head to each slave in turn and make them kiss the lips. If force is necessary to achieve this, it will be used. Now proceed.”

As Knaggs pressed his head against the face of the first slave, forcing him to kiss his lips, Ama shouted, “No, no. Do not do it. Do not let them force you.”

“That woman is incorrigible. Knox, take your head to her. Now make her kiss it.”

Ama shook her head from side to side, struggling desperately to avoid the dripping head.

“Knox,” called Williams, “Just press the bloody end of the neck into her face.”

* * *

When the kissing was over, Knaggs challenged Knox. Their mates wagered their rum allowances.

At a count of one-two-three the two men ran to the gunwale and simultaneously threw the heads far out to sea. Ama, sobbing still, her face covered with drying blood, remembered a nightmare she had had in Yendi, all that time ago. It was as if it were coming true now. Time seemed to have stopped. The heads appeared to float in the air, spinning, so that one moment they saw the face, the next the unkempt hair.

Knox was the winner: his head struck the water further from the ship; Knaggs, understandably, was in poor condition after the weeks he had spent in irons on the forecastle.

The two headless bodies were unceremoniously dumped overboard for the sharks.

Now Tomba was bound to the foremast. Williams descended to the main deck and swung the cat at his naked back. He inflicted the same punishment on Ama. Then he returned to the quarter-deck and watched as each member of the crew took a turn at lashing each of the two rebels. Only Butcher was exempt: his job was to count the lashes, making a tick in his record book for each. They took their time. Sometimes five minutes elapsed from one lash to the next. The first lash hurt Ama most. Some of the knotted ends of the whip drew blood from her back; some wrapped themselves around her and struck her naked belly and breasts. While she waited for the next she closed her eyes and tried to discipline her mind, forcing herself to concentrate on Itsho, numbing herself to all else. Then Knaggs threw a bucketful of sea water over her. She had not seen it coming and she screamed at the sting of the salt.

At every stroke, the watching slaves raised their voices in unison, sharing the agony of the victims. A moment later there came an echo from the holds, whose inhabitants could only imagine what horror was being played out above their heads.

While this beating was in progress, the long boat was swung out and the two coffins were lowered into it. It was rowed some distance out to sea. The ship's flag was lowered to half mast, Bruce blew a tuneless blast on a trumpet and one of his mates beat a monotonous boom-boom-boom on a drum. At a signal from the chief mate, in command of the long boat, Williams read from the Book of Common Prayer and Arbuthnot, a quarter mile to seaward, did the same.
The Love of Liberty
fired its guns in salute twenty times at half minute intervals, one blast for each year of the life of Harry Baker, the age of George Hatcher being unknown. During the homage, the long boat crew tipped each casket in turn into the water.

After the burial at sea, the time between the lashes became shorter. Ama tried to keep count. She was telling herself,
fifty, fifty, fifty
when Knaggs' turn came round again. He twirled the cat around and swung high, aiming at her head. One knot tore at her left ear. A bunch struck the back of her head. The knot on the longest strand took out her right eye.

Butcher ticked his chart. Then he put it down and went to examine her.

“Captain Williams,” he called up, trying to contain his anger, “any more and I shall not be responsible for this woman's life.”

“Surely it does not make sense,” he begged, “to destroy merchandise of such potential value?”

Williams said nothing. He just indicated with a swing of his index finger that the victims should be carried away. Then he retired to his cabin.

CHAPTER 29

“Well, Nephew, what did you think of today's show?”

The nephew put down his knife and fork.

“A little too gruesome for my taste, Uncle, if you don't mind me saying so; but, then, I don't carry your responsibilities.”

“Believe me, I find the gore as distasteful as you do. If I have said it once, I have said it a thousand times: the slave trade is no business for a gentleman. But you see, these blacks are capable of the utmost barbarity. It is a case of them or us. I had to frighten them, to ensure our own survival. ‘
And if ye will not hearken unto me, but walk contrary unto me then I will walk contrary unto you also in fury; and I will chastise you seven times for your sins.
'”

The nephew was reluctant to contradict an argument for which his uncle claimed the sanction of scripture.

“What happens next?” he asked.

“As far as the slaves are concerned, I intend to keep them penned up in their holds and on short rations for a few days, just to drive the lesson home. I shall drum this into their little brains: that their comfort, indeed their lives, are totally dependent upon my goodwill.

“Tomorrow at first light, you will see us get up the yards and topmasts, reeve the rigging and bend the sails. By mid-morning this accursed continent will be out of sight.”

“How long will it take us to Barbados?”

“Two months, three months. It's all in the lap of the gods.”

“Uncle . . .”

“Yes?”

“May I ask you a question?”

“Of course. What is it?”

“. . . The woman . . . ”

The senior Williams' face darkened.

“Which woman?” he asked.

“Oh, you know. The one who was whipped today. I believe she is called Pamela.”

“Well, what of her?”

“I spoke to her the other day. Just a few words, I admit, but . . . Astonishing, quite astonishing. I mean to say . . . She speaks the most excellent English. Slightly accented, of course, but grammatical. Better, I would have to say than my Irish cousin Clarissa . . . Where on earth did you find her?”

The Captain's eyes narrowed. He wondered whether the boy was having him on. But no, his remarks seemed quite innocent.

“Would you like her?” he asked.

“Like her?”

“Yes, like her. To have and to hold, to love and to cherish, your very own chattel; to fuck or to beat according to your fancy. Your very own personal maid-servant in Barbados, your private piece of black arse, as I believe you put it.”

The younger Williams was taken aback. His late father's brother had never used such coarse language in his presence before. He blushed. His uncle must be a mind-reader. He had indeed felt a strong physical attraction to the girl. He didn't know what to say.

“I'll sell her to you. I reckon I could get all of fifty pounds for her in Barbados. I know a Methodist preacher there who would snap her up at that price; use her to teach the slave children in his school. But I would let you have her for forty. Well?”

“I would need some time to think it over, Uncle.”

The Captain grunted and drained his glass. There was an uneasy silence.

“Uncle, if you'll excuse me,” said the nephew, “ I think I'll make a few circuits of the deck and then turn in. I'm rather tired.”

* * *

“Let me take you up on deck. The fresh air will do you good,” the doctor told her.

He had used up his stocks of ointment on her back and Tomba's. Their wounds had healed. The scabs had come off.
Their backs are a mass of scar tissue, but they have survived
, he told himself.
That is my job as surgeon. What more can I do? I cannot change the world.

He helped Ama up the steps to the quarter-deck. She had not spoken to him since the beating. Indeed he had not seen or heard her speak to any one at all. She seemed to have shut herself off entirely from the outside world. That was not surprising. Such a lashing as Williams had inflicted upon her was a traumatic experience of the first order. As a doctor he could manage the physical recovery; but the healing of the psychic wounds was beyond the compass of his skills.
Does she know that she has lost an eye
? he wondered, as he settled her under the shade of the awning.

The young girl who was her constant companion sat by her side. Butcher put his foot on the gunwale.

“That's the Portuguese island of São Tomé or Saint Thomas as we call it,” he told her. “We are now on the equator. Do you know what the equator is? I learned in school that it is an imaginary line drawn round the earth, ‘like the belt about my middle', my teacher told us.”

He mimicked his old teacher's large belly, but either she did not understand his joke or she was just not amused by it.

“I always wondered how it was possible to draw an imaginary line,” he mused. “We are already a few hundred miles into the Atlantic Ocean. Tomorrow, so I am told, we shall sail for the Americas.”

He knelt, lifted her chin and looked her straight in the eye. She looked back, but as if she did not see him.

“Is there anything I can get you?”

Sometimes Mijn Heer would use just those same words. Ama shook her head. As she lay in the hold recovering, she had made a resolution that no word of English would ever again pass her lips; and she would not co-operate with any of the whites in any way whatsoever.

She had mixed feelings about Butcher. She knew that he was not a bad man. If it weren't for him she might have died after the beating. But it was also true that he was white and that put him squarely in the camp of the oppressors, whether he liked it or not. She resolved her ambivalence by acknowledging his questions with a nod or a shake of her head, but without speaking. He seemed to accept this, which only served to compound her dilemma. It would be easier to maintain her resolution if the whites were uniformly cruel and insensitive.

Ama looked around. There had been a change in lifestyle on board during the period of her convalescence. The boys now spent the whole day on the quarter-deck with the women, much to the joy of Kwaku's mother. The men were allowed up on to the main deck for several hours each day, in shifts. They had been freed of their irons which were now used only for punishment.

Williams junior, William Williams, the nephew, Bill to his friends, was a bit of a dandy. In order to maintain a proper distance from the common seamen, he paid close attention to his dress. He kept his trunk in the captain's cabin and as soon as Williams senior made his appearance on deck in the morning Bill would nip down for a change of clothes. He spent part of his day circumnavigating the main deck. A clear path had to be kept for him along the gunwales on either side. He would examine the faces of the slaves with interest, nodding to himself as if confirming some private theory. He shared his uncle's love of books and had the Chippy fashion a deck chair for him which he placed in a corner of the quarter-deck in the shade of the awning. In the late afternoon Butcher would join him in a game a chess. Bill seldom lost. At the end of each game he would cry out in triumph, “Check-mate,” and from this he acquired his nickname from the slaves.

“Check-mate, Check-mate,” they would call as he perambulated and he would graciously tip the peak of his hat in acknowledgement.

He never entered the holds. However he did interrogate Butcher closely on the condition of his wards. He asked particularly after the two surviving rebels, the man called Tomba and the woman known as Pamela.