Nobody's Slave, page 6
They landed at a wide, sandy beach on a bend of the river. As the pinnace nosed ashore, six soldiers armed with arquebuses leapt out to guard against a surprise attack. But none came. Tom and Simon helped to haul the boat ashore, and the other boats came in, spilling their men all round them, until the little beach was swarming with men like a marketplace.
There was a brief pause, while guards were detailed to stay with the boats. As Tom checked the priming of his pistols, he saw Simon sitting, exhausted on the sand, and stumbled towards him. Everyone was stumbling; after being so long afloat all the sailors swayed as they walked, used to the normal motion of the sea. He sat down thankfully beside his cousin.
‘How is it, Si?’
‘Well .. well enough.’ Simon flicked his fair hair out of his eyes, and looked up anxiously. ‘If only it wasn't so ... so devilish hot. Do you think it's far to walk?’
‘Maybe. I'll ask for you to stay with the boats if you like. If you can't make it.’
‘I'll make it.’ Simon grimaced, and heaved himself unsteadily to his feet. ‘I want to see it all, whatever happens. Look! Did you see the parrot?’
‘What?’
‘The parrot. There!’ He pointed, and Tom caught sight of a quick flash of red, blue, and gold, like a huge kingfisher; but then it was gone. ‘I'm sure it was a parrot,’ Simon went on. ‘Francis told me the name, and it had the same colours. He knew a sailor who had taught one to speak!’
‘Never! A bird can't speak!’
‘He can. Cousin Francis, parrots can learn to speak, can't they? You said ...’
‘Aye, so I did, young Simon. But now's not the time to teach 'em.’ Their fierce, stocky cousin scowled at them, his red-bearded face streaked with sweat. ‘Get yourselves in line, we'll be off any moment.’
He moved on, checking the weapons of his own crew; and then they were off, a file of men following the Admiral into the forest, on the narrow path that led from the beach.
It was hot and close in the forest, but they moved quietly, intent on maintaining their surprise. As they went they peered about them into the deep green mystery of the undergrowth, sometimes starting nervously at the raucous cry of a strange bird, or the sudden rustling flight of an animal.
Once Tom thought he heard the drumming again, brief but urgent, away to the left; but it stopped almost as soon as it had begun, and the Admiral never faltered in his pace. Tom's loose shirt and canvas trousers were drenched with sweat, and he was glad he had come barefoot; those, like the Admiral and George Fitzwilliam, wearing stout sea boots, trunk hose and chest armour, must be even hotter than he was.
Suddenly, they came to the top of a small rise, and the forest opened: below them were what looked like fields, with rows of tall plants obviously cultivated by men; and straight ahead, behind a thin thorn hedge, the thatched roofs of a cluster of huts, with the plumes of woodsmoke rising from cooking fires. It was a pleasant, peaceful scene, Tom thought - like a village at home in Devon, in the very early morning before everyone has begun to move about.
John Hawkins issued his orders. ‘There's two gates. Francis - take your men to the left, past those trees. When you're ready to rush the gate, fire a shot. We should have 'em all penned neatly, like sheep in a fold.’
Hawkins caught Tom's eye and smiled as Francis led his men away to the left. It was a fierce, conspiratorial smile, full of the joy of the chase; and also relief, that their surprise had not been betrayed. He found himself grinning proudly back.
‘You ready, then, lad? Remember, hurt no-one more'n you can help. They're all worth something - even the mothers and babies.’
‘Aye, sir.’ Tom grinned, noticing the coat of arms on Admiral Hawkins’ armour, a demi-Moor proper – a black African slave - bound by a rope.
The musket-shot came, and Tom and Simon ran down through the fields with the others, yelling for all they were worth. He saw the bosun, running at an amazing speed for such a big man, with his net at the ready. Tom had his cutlass in one hand, and a pistol in the other, but he didn’t need them - their surprise was complete. The primitive thorn fence was unguarded, and the gateway into the centre of the village stood invitingly open.
He and Simon rushed in with the others, looking for prisoners. Still there was no-one. He saw an abandoned fire next to a hut, and rushed in through the door, yelling ferociously; then stopped. No-one. Nothing. Only a rough bed on the hard-packed floor, some cooking pots, and a carved doll, that looked like a child's toy. He stepped outside, bewildered. There was the Admiral, looking around as he was. No-one? Surely the village could not be empty?
A band of yelling figures rushed towards them from the left. A sailor raised his pistol to fire, and then stopped. The men were English, like themselves - Francis's men, who had attacked from the other side.
The two groups stood in the centre of the deserted village, staring foolishly at each other. All the huts in the village were searched; all were empty.
‘What - no-one at home? All called away?’ Tom saw a scowl spread furiously across Francis Drake's face, replaced almost immediately by a grin. Then he threw back his head and laughed aloud. ‘All for nothing, then! It seems our fame has gone before us, John! We're not as welcome as we were!’
Tom saw Simon grinning from ear to ear, as though in some huge secret relief. But John Hawkins frowned, unamused.
‘’Tis no laughing matter, Francis. There must be some of the beggars here somewhere, hiding. Find one who can show us where they've gone. Have all the huts been searched?’
They were searched, but nothing was found, not even any animals. Just the quiet, deceitful plumes of smoke, rising from the cooking fires. A group of sailors set light to the thatch of one of the huts out of revenge. Hawkins snapped at them angrily, but they had no water to put it out. For a moment they stood around it, transfixed by the speed with which it burnt, the roof falling in with a great crackling roar, the flames almost invisible in the bright light of day.
It was then, when they were least prepared for it, that the attack came. Tom saw a seaman beside the bosun gasp, and stagger forward a few paces, his mouth open in shock; then he fell to his knees, as though praying. The bosun spun round, amazed.
‘What is it, Joseph? This is no time to ...’
But the man slumped forward, quite suddenly, flat on his face in the dust, the feathered shaft of an arrow sunk between his shoulders, like a giant bee sting.
Then another man fell, and another. There were arrows everywhere, and men running this way and that to avoid them. The arrows were silent, almost invisible, as they flew through the air. No-one could see where they came from. There was just the sudden soft chunk! and the sight of an arrow sprouting from someone's arm or leg or back or the thatch of a hut.
Tom ducked into a doorway and looked out. One sailor lay still in the dust, and two others were crawling desperately for shelter. The rest were ducking, hiding like himself, looking to see where the arrows came from, calling out to each other.
‘By the gate!’
‘No, there - by the third hut!’
‘Behind you - they'm creeping up!’
A pistol shot; then another - and the strong clear call of Admiral Hawkins. ‘To me! Men of the Jesus, take the south gate! Francis, you take the other! We'll trap them in!’
Tom ran out of the hut after the Admiral in a confused rush towards the gate in the thorn hedge where they had come in. He saw two Africans - three - hurry through the gate before them, away among the low trees. One turned to face them, quite still for a long, fleeting instant as he lifted his bow. Tom saw the black skin striped with bold white and red paint, the face a fierce mask, the proud lift of the shoulders - then the arrow was loosed, and even as Tom fired his second pistol the man was gone.
The arrow grazed the Admiral on the neck - a little to the left, and it would have been through his throat. Tom and the bosun offered him help, but he pushed them roughly aside.
‘It’s nothing - leave it now! Shut me this gate! Come on, sirs, heave! Now, watch both ways. You lad - stand there! There may be some more still within the village.’
Tom stared back towards the village. But no more attackers appeared from the huts. Simon stood beside him, his cutlass held manfully before his face to ward off danger. There was a smile on his face that angered Tom. He was sure it was only a bluff.
‘Don't be afraid, Si. Stay close to me - I'll look out for you.’
‘I'm not afraid!’ said Simon indignantly. ‘I'm glad! 'Tis a fine hunt, this!’
‘Oh aye; except they've set a trap for us,’ Tom answered irritably. ‘I never knew a deer or fox do that.’
‘That's just it, don’t you see? At least it shows they’re not animals! We shan't catch ’em without a fight!' Simon laughed, his face happy, almost radiant. Tom could not understand it - perhaps Simon was mazed.
Shouts, shots, and cheers came from the other village gate, where Francis’s men were.
‘Sounds like they've caught some there, anyway,’ he said. ‘Though we'll have a job to get them to the boats.’
But return to the boats was what they had to do. Francis's party had indeed caught two men - tall, proud warriors with painted, mask-like faces, who stared down at their captors disdainfully. Somehow they had to get these prisoners back to the boats, as well as the injured sailors. There were four walking wounded, including the Admiral, and two who had to be carried. Quickly, they made litters made from the beams and thatch of the village huts. Then they set out.
The arrows began again as soon as they were out of the village. It was as though the forest itself was fighting them. They saw no enemy at all; just a sudden curse, or cry of pain, and another sailor staggering, clutching the shaft of an arrow sunk in his arm or chest; and the quiet rustle of someone hurrying away in the woods. The sailors hurried on, sweating, afraid, while the mocking chatter of monkeys and parrots echoed weirdly around them, and their own breath rasped in their lungs.
Tom wished he had made Simon stay at the boats, and felt sick with guilt at having led him into danger. But every time he looked at Simon, there was a silly, brave grin on his strange young cousin's face, as though he were enjoying himself in some way; and Tom felt an unusual, irritated admiration.
Suddenly they stopped, stunned by the sound of drums throbbing menacingly ahead of them. This time it was less like a message. There were several drums beating together, throbbing louder and louder to a crescendo of sound which numbed them. The sailors stared at each other, awed, unable to think. Then the drums stopped, and the sudden silence was pierced by a scream, then a chorus of bloodthirsty yells and a scattered volley of shots from the direction of the beach ahead.
‘They're attacking the boats! Make haste there, or we'll be stranded!’ Admiral Hawkins leapt into life, hurrying ahead with the men who could still run. Tom was dragging Simon along, and the others about him were running too, pushing the reluctant African prisoners, giving a hand to those carrying the litters. But a gap began to open between them and those in front, and Tom saw more than one man about him glance anxiously over his shoulder.
An arrow hummed past his ear, dropping a man in his tracks. Tom bent to help him, but he was dead already. He heard a whoop to his left, and another further ahead. Despite the suffocating heat, Tom felt a chill between his shoulder blades, and the truth froze him like a winter's wind. It was they, not the Africans, who were being hunted now!
His feet moved slower and his breath came harsher, but still he ran. Then suddenly, there it was - the end of the path, and in the dazzling sunlight on the little beach, a melee of men, struggling, yelling, fighting for their lives. Tom ducked into the melee, glancing desperately about him to find the quickest way to drag Simon to the pinnace. He saw a tall African, painted all over in fierce patterns of red and white, plunge his spear into a sailor's side as he lifted his arm to strike; saw John Hawkins lunge again and again with his rapier; saw a sailor, struggling futilely in his own net while an African pierced him with a spear; saw John Sanders the bosun knocking one of the black men out of a boat with an oar; saw Francis, cutting with his sword at an African's spear.
Tom saw all these things, but there was one thing he missed. He did not see the lanky, sharp-eyed black warrior, standing cunningly by a tree on the edge of the conflict. The man lifted his bow again and again, each time a sailor stood clear for a second from the fierce mass of fighting Africans. Each time he fired, a sailor screamed, or spun round in agony.
Simon saw him. Just as they were about to climb into the pinnace he yelled, and pushed Tom back, so that Tom stumbled and fell, with his cousin collapsing on top of him.
For a moment Tom’s head was underwater, but he wrenched himself up, spluttering, cursing Simon for holding him down, and tried to shove him away. But Simon's body was strangely heavy, and rigid - twitching as though he had the palsy. He pushed Simon off him, and felt his wet hair crawl on his scalp as he saw what had happened.
An arrow had gone clean through Simon's neck, so that the feather stuck out one side, and the barb the other. His young cousin’s neck was arched, trembling, the unconscious muscles trying to force the arrow out; but it was useless - an artery was pierced, and Simon's life's blood was already pulsing out, staining the sand and water by the bows of the pinnace.
After a minute or so Simon opened his eyes. He saw Tom, and tried to speak; but just then a rush of sailors clambered on board, trampling over them both in their hurry, and Simon fell unconscious again from loss of blood. Tom cradled him in his arms, ignoring the hubbub all round. He called his name frantically, and tried to staunch the ceaseless flow of blood with his shirt, but it was no use. Simon was dead before the first boat was launched.
7. The Allies
‘...AND THUS we do consign them to the deep.’
The Admiral's strong, mellow voice fell silent. He looked up from the prayer book, and nodded to Master Barrett.
‘Heave 'em over, then, lads. Steady does it. One at a time.’
The two men who stood at either end of the first of the nine long bundles of sailcloth bent, lifted their burden, and with one easy movement swung it out over the rail. There was a splash, the men stood back, and the next bundle was lifted.
Tom stood fourth in the line, at the end of the shortest bundle. His feet were a few inches from the bulge of Simon's head, and the other round bulge next to it, which was one of the cannonballs sewn into the shroud to take the body to the bottom. The sailor at the other end of the shroud was no special friend of Simon, but then he had had few friends on board. Only his cousin Francis, who was busy with his own burials on the Judith, and Tom, whose life he had saved with his own.
The third splash lifted a few drops of spray onto the hot deck, and it was Simon's turn. Tom and the young sailor bent, and as they lifted, Tom thought how strangely stiff the shroud was, as though it contained a beam of wood instead of a body. As they swung it over the rail Tom almost forgot to let go, so that the bundle swung with its head inward towards the ship as it fell. I cannot even bury my cousin properly, he thought. I promised his father to take care of him, and this is what happens. He stepped back out of the way, staring dully out over the glittering, emerald sea.
As soon as the last body was over, the Jesus' orchestra struck up a hymn, and the deep voices of the sailors joined in with the gentlemen's lutes and viols. Tom tried to sing too, but found he could not; instead he wept, as several other sailors did for their friends, glad of the hymn to cover the sound. Simon had irritated him nearly every day with his fears and frailty and smugness; but he had been his cousin for all that, whom he had known since childhood. And there had been nothing frail about the way he had died. Tom remembered Simon’s mocking laughter when they had been attacked, and the light of adventure in his eyes, when others had panicked. Then at the last it had been Simon who had seen the archer, and pushed Tom down to save him. Simon had died saving Tom’s life.
He saw splashes at the side of the Minion too, and the William and John, and even the little Judith. All the ships’ crews had suffered. He saw the fin of a shark cruising in from the sea, and hoped the current of the river would bring his cousin's body quickly under the mud.
All the boats had returned from the raid, but few slaves had been captured; and the casualties, already heavy, soon became worse. Over the next few days, as the fleet crept south, several more men died. Always it was the same way - a man who had been wounded by an arrow developed a raging fever, a ferocious thirst, and then became paralysed, so that his jaw was locked tight and could only be held open by inserting a stout piece of wood or a spoon between his teeth. Clearly the arrows had been poisoned. They feared for the Admiral, who had been hit in the neck; but his scratch must have been lighter than the others’, or the surgeon's care for him better, for he survived when others died.
They looked for easier targets, creeping into estuaries and inlets, sending surprise parties ashore when they saw a village, but they had little luck. Sometimes they met Portuguese ships from whom they could buy or steal a few slaves, but never enough. At night they heard the drums talking among the dark trees to their left, telling of the approach of the fleet, and in the morning the Africans who might have been there were gone. Tom volunteered to go ashore on these raids as often as he could. He took a fierce vengeful joy in herding the few bound, terrified captives into the boats, or burning the abandoned villages. And several times a day he found some excuse to go below to the hold, and gloat over the slowly increasing mass of black figures chained there, as though their imprisonment could somehow atone for Simon's death.
