The Call of Zulina (15 page)

“Don’t make noise again tonight,” the guard next to Antonio called down to the captives. “It will go easier with you if you are quiet.”

As the four guards left, Antonio turned and waved his musket high.
“iAdiós, amigos!”
he called.
“Sleep well!”

“S
ee what I say?” Ikem said when the guards were gone. “We be they slaves. White men not cannibals.”

“I will be a slave to no man!” the beaten man in the far corner announced indignantly. “Not to a black man and certainly not to a white man!”

“And how will you stop it, Sunba?” asked the young woman next to Grace. More than a hint of sarcasm dripped from her words. “The light be bad here, but it looks to me like you be chained to a wall. And did you not lick the slop from your hands as eagerly as the rest of us? You talk big, Sunba, but just what you going to do?”

“You will see,” Sunba answered. “In time, you will see.”

“And what if we do not have time to wait?” asked the man who had not yet spoken. “What then?”

“The time will come, and it will come soon,” Sunba replied. Then he added, “When it does come, we must all be ready.”

“What … are you … saying?” a woman shackled beside Sunba asked in a soft and cautious voice.

“My brother,” said Sunba. “He escaped the traders’ chains. Before he disappeared in the darkness, he whispered a message to me. My brother promised he would return and make me free. When Cabeto comes back—”

“Cabeto!” Grace exclaimed. “Cabeto is your brother?”

“What do you know of Cabeto?” Sunba demanded.

From all around the room, heads turned and eyes riveted onto Grace. Only the young boy who crooned in the corner showed her no interest.

“I saw him,” Grace said. “I talked to Cabeto.”

“Where?” Sunba asked.

“Just outside this place.”

Sunba threw back his head and roared a great, hearty laugh. His thunder of delight, a sound all but forgotten in that wretched place, rang throughout the dungeon and echoed beyond its massive walls. Then as abruptly as he had begun laughing, Sunba stopped. In a gentled voice, urgent with hope, he proclaimed, “Cabeto is here! Do not lose hope! Soon we will be free!”

Now the seven faces turned as one to stare at Sunba. Be free? What a strange proclamation to come from a beaten, whipped slave firmly shackled to a dungeon wall. As for Grace … well, just look at her. She was the only person to have actually met Sunba's brother, yet here she was, too, anything but free! They had all watched her dragged down the dungeon steps, bleeding and unconscious. They had witnessed her arms and legs stretched out and clamped into rusty manacles. And right here, chained to the dungeon wall, she remained. So where, in all of this, was any reason to rejoice? Where was any cause for hope?

It was Udobi, the silent woman, who finally broke the silence. “What you think?” she challenged Sunba in her reedthin whine of a voice. “You and you brother make trouble for us? If yes, do not tell of it. If you make trouble, masters pile much more hurt and pain on us. So much it bury us.”

“Udobi speak true,” Ikem agreed. “You brother not get us out from these chains. If he try and be caught, we all be the ones to suffer. Some of us suffer to our death.”

“We do what they say, we have good lives as slaves,” Udobi implored in a quaking voice. Tears filled her eyes and coursed down her scarred cheeks. “They take care of us. They keep us warm when it cold. They make us dry when rain pour down. We work for them and they give us food to eat.” Udobi's thin body shook with sobs. “Please, please, no make them angry with us,” she begged. “Please not make trouble.”

Sunba's eyes flashed with disgust as he looked first at Udobi and then at Ikem. “We
will
make trouble, I promise you that,” he said in a stone-hard voice. “And they
will
be angry with us—very angry. If you are happy to live as slaves, then stay in your bonds. I do not care. But as for me, I will not live if I cannot be free. Get ready, old mother and old father. Cabeto is here, and there
will
be trouble!”

Somehow, in the silence that fell over the dungeon, Grace managed to drift into a deep sleep. She dreamed of the London house, stark and tall on the African savanna. She was laughing with Yao as the two of them ran across the fields, happy and free. Overhead they heard the roar of mighty wings. When they looked up, they saw hundreds of birds soaring above them. The sun's gold caught the red and blue and green of the birds’ feathers, which glistened in the sun's rays and sparkled like jewels.

“See?” Grace called out to Yao in her dream. “I’m not a slave to Lingongo! You’re not a slave, Yao, and neither am I! We are free to fly with the birds!”

“Over here! This one!”

Whispered voices and the muffled cries that followed them jarred Grace out of her dream. Gone were the endless fields. Instead of Yao and the rush of brightly colored birds’ wings, two men dragged the mute boy across the floor. Strangely and sadly, even as they bustled him up the stairway and out the door, the young one's pitiful croons continued.

“The old ones, too, I said!” The voice that barked this command was unmistakably Tungo's.

Udobi wailed out her distress.

“iSiléncio!”
This had to be Antonio. Grace wondered where the tall, lanky African slave, with his finely chiseled features, could have come from to speak a tongue so strange to her ear. “It is not for you to give orders to me, Tungo! The old
madre y padre
, we will leave them here.”

“They will only bring us trouble,” Tungo argued.

“We have no choice,” Antonio told him. “Our time is gone. Besides, we have no place to take them. We must—”

Antonio had no chance to say what they must do because he was drowned out by the sudden sound of rock grating against rock. The second young boy screamed out in terror. Right next to where he was chained, a stone block slowly slid away to one side and exposed a black gap in the wall. Then as everyone in the dungeon gasped, an African man's head popped in through the newly opened hole. With no idea whether to be frightened or to cheer, they stared in silence as the man pulled himself up and climbed through, right next to the terrified boy.

Grace's heart raced and her breath came in quick pants.

“Cabeto!” Sunba exclaimed quietly.

Cabeto thrust his head and shoulders back down through the opening and called in a hoarse whisper, “I am up!”

“What …
?
What … ?” stammered one of the women.

“That tunnel,” gasped Cabeto. “It is steep!”

“On purpose,
señor
. Because it leads to the door of no return.” Antonio pronounced the words solemnly. “It is meant only to go
abajo—
just down to the slave ships. No one is meant to come
arriba.”

The three men struggled together to heft a wooden crate through the opening, then to drag it out onto the floor. Immediately, Tungo clawed at the slats that sealed the top. Antonio rushed to assist him, and then Cabeto joined in. The three men forced their fingers into the spaces between the boards and pulled together at the wooden slats.

“Kwate!” Tungo called to a fourth man who was just emerging from the tunnel. “Help us!”

With two more strong hands, they managed to tear away the slats. Eagerly, they peered inside. But the excited anticipation quickly froze into stunned silence.

“This is all you got?” Tungo demanded. “Eight muskets and one bag of gunpowder?”

“No more was in the arms storeroom,” Kwate protested. “The crate was supposed to be full.” Then he added, “It does not matter, Tungo. When we get your ransom for the girl, we will need nothing more.”

“No,” Tungo said. A twist of disgust crossed his face. “The white slave trader and his killer lioness will part with nothing. Not one thing will they give in exchange for the life of their daughter.”

After a moment of confused silence, Kwate asked, “What do you mean?”

“I mean they will not meet my demands. Not even to save her life.”

Cabeto stared at Tungo. “They will not let my family go?”

“No,” Tungo said. “Not even that.”

Cabeto staggered as though he had received a physical blow. He shook his head and looked again at Tungo. “They would let their daughter die?”

“That is their answer. They will do nothing to redeem her life.”

Tungo glanced over at Grace, and for the first time, a flash of pity glistened in his eyes.

Grace could not stop the wild howl that exploded inside her and poured out, long and loud and awful. It made no difference to her who heard her grief. At that moment it didn’t even matter to her whether she lived or died.

When her horrible lament had run its course, Grace, emotionally numb, slumped exhausted to the floor. The room was silent. Even Tungo seemed unable to speak.

The first words uttered were both strong and strangely gentle. They came from Sunba's mouth. “Free me, Brother,” he entreated Cabeto. “I must be ready for the coming fight.”

Silently, Antonio removed a key from the chain around his waist and handed it to Cabeto. Cabeto moved swiftly to his brother and unlocked the manacles from his wrists, legs, and neck. Sunba unfolded himself and painfully moved one cramped limb after another. Slowly, he got to his feet and stretched himself to his full height. Grace could see that he was almost as tall and powerful as his brother.

“We fight tonight!” Cabeto said, his black eyes flashing. “We fight tomorrow! And the next day, we continue to fight!”

Antonio looked down at the half-filled crate. “I fear we will die fighting,” he said.

Tungo spun around and pointed his finger at Grace. Once again fire flared in his eyes. “Then she will die first!”

“T
very idea of an engagement party in this ... this filthy desert of a place! Why, it would be laughable were it not so ridiculous!” Charlotte Stevens stormed to her mother. “At home in London, yes, but here I cannot think of one person I should care to invite!”

“This is certainly not a desert, my dear,” Henrietta Stevens said as calmly as she could. “It is a jungle. You certainly shall have a party in London when we return home, but right now, this is where we happen to be. Furthermore, since it will likely be your last trip to Africa—”

“One can only hope!”

“Try to be patient, my dear,” her mother answered, a note of exasperation in her voice. “You know perfectly well it is your father's slave house here that keeps us in genteel comfort in London. Do remember that. I dread our visits here as much as you do, but it is a small price to pay for our comfortable years at home. You may start your list with the Winslow girl. What is her name?”

“Grace.” Charlotte pouted. “But she is an African. If I invite her, I might as well invite all the slaves too.”

“Very well! Have it your own way,” Henrietta said. She lifted her billowing skirts and swept toward the door. “Forget about the gifts your guests would bring. Forget the gold jewelry for which the African people of this coast are so well known.”

After her mother's footsteps had faded into the distance, Charlotte sat down at the desk, took the pen from its holder, and dipped it into the inkwell. Then in a flowing hand, she wrote:

1. Grace Winslow

Yes, Charlotte complained mightily about the voyage from London to Africa—and for good reason. The trip truly was horrendous. But truth be told, she would miss her time here. Her father did spoil her terribly. Every time she came to Africa, he indulged her in every way imaginable. Was there any possibility that Reginald Witherham would treat her even half as well? She had no idea, for she hardly knew the man. Only that he was rich and that he came from a well-connected family. Only that her mother could not stop bragging about the superb marriage deal she had made—single-handedly, too, as she was always quick to point out. Only that he still called her Miss Stevens, and that she had spoken to him so seldom that she had not yet had to decide what she would call him … if she called him at all.