The Call of Zulina (11 page)

“Make room for the next ones!”

The same rough voice barked out new orders—only louder now, and from just inside the open doors. Grace dashed for the right side of the fortress. She pushed herself through a small opening where the low building met the massive one and pulled in her billows of skirt after her. A narrow staircase was cut into the wall, so she squeezed into the gap underneath.

For the first time since she climbed the ghariti tree and jumped off the compound wall, she allowed herself to breathe a sigh of relief.

With the sun now at its zenith, the shadowed gap between the stone walls offered refreshing coolness. Grace reached out and ran her hand along the rough-hewn stones of the wall. She leaned forward, closed her eyes, and allowed the dampness to soothe her stinging face and hands where sharp acacia thorns had ripped into her flesh. Of course, she couldn’t stay there. And yet, as she moved deeper into the gap, she found that the space widened considerably. Maybe she could make this her hiding place for a while. Anyway, once the sun went down, it would be easier to …

A rock-hard hand clamped across Grace's mouth with such force it jerked her backward, knocking her off her feet.

Grace kicked and flailed her arms, trying her best to scream as she fought with everything in her. But she was no match for the muscle-bound arms that gripped her. Dragged backward through a small opening in the wall, Grace was forced into a dark, musty room and tossed to the floor. With a thud, a wooden door slammed shut.

“Don’t hurt me!” Grace pleaded.

Although she could hear ragged breaths, and she could feel the steamy heat of another body uncomfortably close to hers, no one answered. Grace strained to see, but she could make out nothing in the darkness.

A sudden rush of indignation swept Grace's terror away. She jumped to her feet and demanded in English, “Just what do you think you are doing?” No answer.

A small opening near the top of the wall let in a tiny beam of light, and as her eyes adjusted to it, Grace managed to make out the silhouette of a tall, muscular man. Definitely African. A slave, no doubt. Her captor stood directly in front of her, not three feet away.

Assuming Lingongo's famous hands-on-hips stance, and speaking with all the force and authority she could muster, Grace switched to the language of Mama Muco's people. Again she demanded, “Who are you?”

Still no answer.

Indignation thrust Grace up to a Lingongo level of courage, something she had never before achieved. “What do you think you are doing?” she demanded in Yao's language.

“I do not
think
,” the man responded in a low, controlled rumble. “I
know
,
Lioness
!”

“What … ?”

“I waited for you.”

“Me?” Grace huffed. “That's ridiculous! You could not possibly know I’d be coming here. I didn’t even know myself. If it hadn’t been—”

“Your life in exchange for my villagers,” the man stated. “That is my offer.”

“Really, I have no idea what you are talking about!” Grace made a grand show of annoyance. She forced her bonnet back into place and rearranged her badly disheveled clothes.

“Your husband will know what I mean,” the man said. “And when he hears, he will release my people. If he does not, I will—”

“I have no husband!” Grace proclaimed. “But my father is a very important man. I just happen to be Grace Winslow, daughter of Admiral Joseph Winslow, and I demand that you let me out of here at once—or else!”

Grace lifted her head in defiance, fully intending to intimidate this impudent slave into submission. But now that her eyes had adjusted to the darkness and she could see him more clearly, her bravado faltered. She took a second look, and it dissolved completely. The man was
huge
, with a much more powerful build than she had realized. And the way he glowered at her … never had she seen such fierceness in any of the slaves at her parents’ compound. Grace decided it would be better if she did not issue any further orders. This man was no Joseph Winslow. And she certainly was no Princess Lingongo.

“You are not the killer lioness?” the man demanded. “The one they call Lingongo?”

“I … I don’t know about any killer lioness,” Grace stammered. “But Lingongo … she is my mother.”

“Your mother!” The controlled rumble erupted into a roar. “So she sent you!”

“Oh, no!” Grace insisted. “She doesn’t even know I’m here! If she did, she would be furious with me. I just walked up here—”

“No person just walks up to this place,” the man interrupted her.

“Oh, but I did!” Grace tried to explain. “Because it was the only road I could take, you see. The wide road led to town, but Jasper Hathaway is there, so I couldn’t go that way, and anyway two rude seamen blocked that path. And I simply could not go back to my home. And a friend of mine named Yao, who is a slave… . Maybe you’ve seen him? He was brought here and—”

“Enough!” the African ordered. “So you are the daughter of the slave trader and the killer lioness.”

“Oh, no!” Grace protested. “My father is Admiral Joseph Winslow, like I said … a ship captain … and my mother is an African princess. My father works with slave traders like Mr. Stevens, but I know nothing about a killer lioness.”

Grace watched with alarm as seething rage twisted and transformed the man's demeanor. He reached out as though he would grab her. “You are here in answer to their orders!”

Shrinking back, Grace replied, “No! If they knew I was here, they would … they would
—
”

What would they do?
Force her back home in chains and whip her until her back was ripped and scarred? Drag her to her own wedding with a wooden yoke around her neck? Or had they already decided to abandon her to her fate as her father had so often warned?

“I am not a slave,” Grace whimpered.

“Nor am I!” the African proclaimed.

Suddenly, Grace longed to pour out her whole story to this man who hid himself in the shadows, to tell him about Yao who spoke his language and who also refused to be a slave even though his back was crisscrossed with scars, and he struggled up the road in chains and with a wooden yoke around his neck. Maybe this African would know something about that train of people she saw. Maybe he could help her find Yao
—
perhaps even set him free. After she told the man her story, she would beg him to let her go. But go where? To release her … but to what? The truth was she had no place to go.

Exhausted beyond endurance, Grace sank into a corner and wept.

The African moved away. He opened the door and quickly pushed it shut behind him. Outside, metal clanked against metal. Grace knew that sound. It was an iron bar dropping into place. She was bolted inside … all alone in the dark.

From all sides, and from up above and from down below, agonized moans and muffled cries wormed their way through the solid stone walls, dragging Grace further and further into the depths of despair. A panic burned in her, gathered in her throat, and grew until she thought it would strangle her.

Jumping up, Grace pushed against the bolted door. “Let me out!” she called. “Please, somebody let me out!”

Nothing.

As she pounded and kicked at the door, Grace's voice rose into a shriek.

No answering sounds. Nothing but the same cries and moans as before.

Grace threw herself against the door and screamed, “I don’t belong here! Please, please … I am not a slave!”

No response.

For hours Grace railed and pounded until her body was bruised and her strength spent, but it was all to no avail. Finally, she crumpled to the dank floor and raised her anguished voice in a hopeless wail that blended in with all the other sounds of hopelessness.

“Don’t leave me here!” she pleaded to the empty room. “Not all alone in the dark!”

The only reply was the wind that howled through the opening high above her head.

“S
top wasting time, Muco!” Lingongo ordered.

Mama Muco hesitated, her dusting feathers poised over the carved legs of the English dining table. “But Master Joseph said
—
”

“I said, stop wasting your time.”

Mama shrugged and moved out to the kitchen garden to pick vegetables. Although she was in no mood to agree with Lingongo on anything, she had to admit that to constantly brush away at never-ending dust was indeed a ridiculous waste of time.

Lingongo went into the dining room and kicked savagely at the leg of the carved mahogany table. Then she grabbed up as many brocade pillows from the chairs as she could hold, and one by one she tossed them through the open window. How she hated the London house! She detested its fussy pretentiousness.
Admiral Winslow!
How could her fool of a husband not know that Africans and white men alike laughed at him behind his back? That they mimicked his strutting walk and pompous carriage? Joseph Winslow—her husband—was nothing but a silly joke.

A joke, however, that kept her people wealthy and respected, and preserved her father's position as the most powerful man on the Gold Coast.

When she heard the back door open and close, Lingongo called, “Muco! Bring a cup of comfort tea to my chambers.”

“Yes, madam,” Mama Muco answered.

Lingongo's locked bedchamber was at the top of the stairs, through an outer room she also kept locked to everyone but herself. The bedroom was furnished in the manner of her royal childhood. It brought her great comfort to run her hands over each of the beautiful carved wooden chests, one after the other, and to remember. No satin or brocade or embroidered fabrics could be found in Lingongo's room. Oh, no. Her furniture was overlaid with paper-thin layers of pounded gold.

In all their years together, Joseph had managed to catch only fleeting glimpses of the opulence of Lingongo's private chamber. One time, early in their marriage when he thought his wife was away, he had dared to pry the outer door open and then to force the lock on the inner door. What he saw in the instant before his wife's whip sent him sprawling came back to him again and again in his dreams. But the scar across Joseph's left cheek was reminder enough so that he never again dared attempt such a transgression.

To make the comfort tea as it should be made—the only way Lingongo would accept it—Mama Muco rushed to gather fresh bissap blossoms from the high, swaying branches that grew alongside the house. Usually, she could holler for a slave to gather the blossoms, but this day no one was in shouting distance. Just as she was about to despair, a blast of wind rattled the thick bush, and red blossoms showered down at Muco's feet. But blossoms for comfort tea were not all the wind brought to her. It also gusted in the faraway voices of the
ntumpane
—the talking drums. Mama Muco stood up, her apron filled with red blossoms, cocked her head, and listened. The drums were some distance away, but they clearly carried the beat of war.

Mama Muco was not the only one to whom the wind carried the beat of the drums.

Joseph Winslow sat at a table in his favorite corner room of Zulina fortress, where the breeze gusted through in a most pleasant way. He stopped, his hand still high in the air and the dice clutched tight, and he listened. The drums annoyed him no end. He knew they carried a message, but because he had never learned to understand the language of the talking drums, he couldn’t grasp the message that whirled in the wind. For the hundredth time, he swore to ask one of his trustees to teach him the drum language
—
it was African, after all. How hard could it be? Then he tossed the dice across the table, rolled yet another unlucky number, and plunged further into debt.

Pieter DeGroot was on the bluffs above Zulina gazing wistfully out to the ocean toward Holland and home when the wind pushed the beat of the drums his way. For all he knew, it could have been a rhythm to accompany some tribal celebration feast, or perhaps it was a religious ritual. Still, the cadence didn’t seem quite right for a celebration. And the drumbeat was so persistent, ever more intense as it went on. Perhaps that was what made Pieter shift nervously and wish with all his being that he was on a ship sailing away from Africa.