The Call of Zulina (23 page)

“It is folded into a message,” Cabeto stated. “But it is not of our people. I cannot read it.”

“The triangle speaks of danger,” Tungo said.

“It is the folding of my people,” Gamka said. “But … it isn’t right. It must have been done by someone who is forgetting our ways.”

Grace pushed her way through the men. “The cloth belongs to our house slave!” she exclaimed. “It must be a message from her! Read it, Gamka. Please! What does Mama Muco say?”

Gamka held the cloth up. “Tungo is right. This shape gives a warning of danger. But whether the danger is here now or is to come, I cannot tell, because it is not the right size for either. These …” Here he indicated the two extra points that hung down on either side. “These are warnings that danger will come from two sides.”

“The danger comes only from the white man!” Tungo stated.

“Two sides,” Gamka repeated. “That is the message of the cloth.”

“Maybe the danger comes from two directions,” Cabeto suggested. “Maybe from the door and from the tunnel.”

“No,” said Grace. “It comes from Joseph Winslow and from Lingongo. From the slave trader and from the lioness.”

“The second is far more dangerous than the first,” Gamka said. “But that is all I can read.”

“The slave trader first,” Grace said. “Then the lioness.”

“’E
ar, ’ear!” Joseph called out from his perch atop Zulina's rough-hewn community dining table. “We don’t need ’em cowardly buggers wot crawled off in th’ night an’ sailed wi’ th’ tide! Ye is th’ real men, ye is. An’ ye is ’ere an’ ready fer a bloody good fight! ’Ooray fer the fightin’ men!”

Just a fortnight before, an assortment of captains and whatever was left of their sailing crews crammed around this same table—more than three dozen hungry men all told—more than willing to stuff their bellies with the cook's stewed meat and gravy-soaked biscuits. Now only seven white men could be found in all of Zulina fortress, and that counted the cook, who flatly refused to pick up either a sword or a firearm. Cummings was still there, and Thomas Pitts and Henry Taylor. And the Spanish Capitán Carrillo and his first mate, Gonzales.

Joseph had given up on Pieter DeGroot and counted him among the deserters. Yet at the last minute DeGroot slipped in and took a spot at the far end of the table with the trustees.

“This be
yer
fight, Joseph,” Henry Taylor called out. “What’re you offerin’ to do to make it worth our while?”

“If’n these savages gits away wi’ this rebellion, none o’ us is safe, ’Ank!” Joseph bellowed back. “Ain’t that reward enough fer the likes o’ ye?”

Joseph Winslow's face wore the increasingly common ruddy-red mask of too much drink, yet he managed to stand fairly steady and hold his sword high. Over his shirt he had donned a heavy leather vest, though it didn’t have quite the warrior-like effect it could have had if it had not been hanging on him at such a comically lopsided angle.

Before anyone else had a chance to speak against him, Joseph waved his sword high and wide and called out almost jovially, “’Ear, ’ear, me brave lads! This right ’ere today is what we was made fer!”

The men around the table raised their weapons and responded, “’Ear! ’Ear!” But it was nowhere near a resounding answer to Joseph's call to arms. The conviction and commitment simply were not there.

“But why is ye makin’ us go in there?” Cummings said with the tinge of a whine in his voice. “They gots guns! Cain’t ye jist starve ’em out?”

“No!” Joseph responded. “This thing ’as gone on too long already! It gots to be finished ’ere an’ now. An’ we is finishin’ it up today!”

“His woman won’t put up with it no more!” Tom Pitts told Hank in a loud snicker of a whisper. Hank guffawed, and all around the table, Tom was rewarded with hoots and smirks.

“We ’as to show ’em we is in control ’ere, we does!” Joseph insisted. An edge of desperation crept into his voice and the blush deepened on his cheeks and nose. “Else there's to be more an’ more trouble. I says it stops right ’ere an’ now. I says it stops today!”

“And
su hija
, Señor Winslow?” asked Capitán Carrillo. “What about your daughter?”

Joseph's face darkened. “I ain’t got no daughter!” he shot back.

At the end of the table, the trustees sat apart from the white men, except for DeGroot, who purposely squeezed in next to Adisa. The trustees’ impassive faces gave no clue about where their sympathies lay. Joseph turned to them, and the light suddenly beamed back in his face. Gesturing with his sword, he commanded, “You, ’Tonio! Say a
juju
over us!”

Antonio slowly stood to his feet. Raising his face toward the ceiling, he intoned,

“Akui nah itung taksi ka’
,

o tuhan, tenangan kui, ika’ aleng uh nyelung akui nai jadi’

jam ika’ dahin nyepida ika’

                      
Bah.’u’ll.h”

Then he folded his hands and bowed low at the waist.

“’Aa, ’aa!” Joseph responded, clapping his hands together and laughing with glee. With help from Cummings, he managed to stagger down off the table without falling. He grabbed up his sword in one hand, and with the other he hoisted a pistol high in the air. Then he yelled, “Charge!”

Joseph forged ahead, down the main corridor and through the winding passageways. Not until he approached the dungeon grate did he halt and look behind him. The Dutchman and the two Spaniards were there, but the Englishmen had fallen behind. As for the unenthusiastic trustees, they were dragging as far back as they possibly could.

“’Ere now, we's in this together!” Joseph hissed back in an angry whisper. “Quit yer laggin’, ye beastly cowards!” Then an idea came to him and he quickly added, “’Tonio! To the front wi’ ye!”

As Antonio made his way up to Joseph, the reluctant Englishmen grabbed the other trustees and eagerly forced them forward as well.

“Them Africans in that room … they ain’t had neither water or food fer nigh on to three days now,” Joseph whispered back down the corridor. “They be too weak to fight back. Jist go on in there shootin’. I’ll be right behind ye.”

With an unsteady wave of bravado, Joseph did his best to make a grand show of unlocking the dungeon door. The entire effect was ruined, however, when he could not get the key into the lock. He struggled and struggled, spitting curses as he did his best to force it in. The key finally found the hole, and then the bolt slipped free. Just before he pushed the door open, Joseph grabbed hold of Antonio and held him back. Then he pushed the other trustees forward and one by one shoved them through the door.

Immediately, the dungeon exploded in gunfire. In the chaos that followed, Antonio wrenched himself free from Joseph's grasp. He dashed through the door and plunged headlong into the billowing smoke and shrieking chaos.

C
ummings folded almost double as he gasped and choked in the smoke. The others, stupid and stunned, stood and gawked. Not Joseph Winslow, though. He was far too pleased with himself to pay Cummings any mind … or the rest of them, for that matter.

“’Elpless as toothless ol’ women, they be!” Joseph chortled.

Perhaps he was right. Inside the dungeon, after the initial shrieks, everything had fallen breathlessly still.

Joseph hesitated only a moment before he tentatively called through the doorway, “’Tonio?”

“iEntre
, Master!” rang out the confident reply of his trusted slave. “Come on in!”

Joseph laughed out loud. “Jist ol’ women, that's all they be!” he chortled to the others. “Didn’t I tell ye as much? Didn’t I, now?”

Joseph flapped his hands in front of his face to clear a path through the smoke and marched triumphantly though the doorway and made for the stairs. Cummings recovered himself in time to jump to and follow at his heels, and both Spaniards stepped up to march behind them. The very picture of victory, they were! But then, swift as a cheetah on the attack, Antonio sprang out in front of them, leaped over the side of the stairs and down to the dungeon floor. The other trustees immediately dropped to their bellies, rolled aside, and pressed themselves tightly against the walls. As one, eight armed men and women rose up out of the smoky shadows.

As musket fire roared, Tom Pitts and Henry Taylor, who had not yet crawled in through the grate, threw down their arms and ran back through the corridor. As for Pieter DeGroot, he dropped to his knees and hunkered down, clasping his hands over his ears. It was a futile effort, of course. Nothing could block out the screams and shouts that poured from the smoke-filled dungeon.

In the tangled confusion, Capitán Carrillo managed to crawl back out the door, but when the smoke dissipated, his man Gonzales lay dead. Cummings, blubbering and wailing like an injured water buffalo, lay on his back, his shoulder a bloody mess. As for Joseph Winslow, he stood stock-still at the foot of the stairs, wild-eyed and face-to-face with Grace. In her hands was a musket—
his
musket—loaded and ready to fire!

“Well now, me darlin’ daughter,” Joseph sputtered in a voice so shaky he could hardly spit out the words. “I been ’opin’ an’ prayin’ I’d see yer lovely face ’ere. That is, to see ye agin before—” But his voice failed him before he could finish the sentence. He couldn’t even make
himself
believe his lame words. How could he expect anyone else to believe them?

As his desperation mounted, Joseph's eyes darted from one face to another. When they landed on Antonio, he brightened. “’Tonio!” he exclaimed. “Is this all part o’ yer
juju?”
He took a step toward the African. “’Tis magic that's workin’ ’ere, ain’t that right?”

Tungo sprang forward and grabbed Joseph by his fleshy jowl. Then he jerked a knife against the pale throat and pressed it so hard that a thin stream of blood trickled over Joseph's sweat-drenched collar and down onto his lopsided leather vest.

“Grace!” Joseph whimpered. “Grace, me darlin’ daughter. Is ye goin’ to let this madman harm yer lovin’ father?”

“Tungo, stop!” Grace ordered.

What Grace had in mind, no one would ever know, because she was interrupted by the sudden snap of a whip that ripped across Tungo's hand and sent his knife flying. Unfortunately for Joseph, he was between the whip and the knife. The whip caught him in the face and slashed him from his forehead all the way down to his throat.

“Come!” Lingongo called to her husband.

But bleeding and in shock, Joseph seemed to have taken root.

In the silence that followed, all eyes locked onto Lingongo. She didn’t hesitate. Lashing her whip, she cleared a path.

“Now, Husband!” she ordered. “Come!”

Cabeto and Sunba scrambled for the muskets Lingongo had whipped from their hands.

With blood streaming from his face, Joseph shook loose from his stunned paralysis and scrambled up the stairs. But then he stopped abruptly and pulled back. Cummings splayed awkwardly between him and the grate door.

“’Elp me!” Cummings cried out. “Joseph, fer the love of God, don’t leave me ’ere to die.”

Joseph paused, but for only a moment. Then he stepped awkwardly over Cummings, who writhed on the stairs and reached out to him. Without a backward glance, Joseph forced himself through the grate.

Never had Grace seen her father move so quickly. By the time Cabeto could grab up his musket and ready it, Joseph was out the door and had slammed the bolt into place. Cabeto waved his loaded musket in the air and bellowed in fury.

But then he stopped. He strode up to the locked door and ran his hand across one hinge and then the other. He closely examined each one. The two were not the same. One had been damaged. Cabeto stepped back and took careful aim with his musket. Then he pulled the trigger.

The shot was dead-on. When the smoke cleared, a large crack ran down the entire length of the door. The damaged hinge was now destroyed.

As one, Sunba and Tungo ran forward, throwing their full weight against the door. Wood cracked, yet the door stood. Gamka and Cabeto joined, and together they hit it again and again and again. Finally, with a great splintering crash, half the grate door ripped away.