James drew in his breath, quite involuntarily. The sight of her filled him with delight and terror and ennui and anger, all those emotions, all jumbled together so he did not know what to say or feel or think.
She was the Elizabeth Galley, in all her perfection, one that he himself had helped render. Marlowe had found him, hunted him down like a runaway slave. And now, once again, everything had changed.
Madshaka had had a tremendous time, but as the black night that made dark mirrors of the windows of the factor’s hut began to grow gray with the approach of dawn, he knew that it was time to rest.
He and his men, the Kru, the core of his army, had spent the night in celebration. They had feasted on Van der Haagen’s food, poured his wine and rum down their throats, smoked pipe after pipe of his tobacco.
Madshaka knew the place well. He had spent many evenings in that house, sitting, eating, drinking with his white colleagues. He knew his way around the pantry and the liquor stores, knew well the trophies that decorated the walls: war clubs and shields and spears and massive iron swords taken from warriors killed trying to defend themselves and their clans. Several he had collected himself.
And all the while the Dutchman and his colleagues had been made to sit at table with them, to join them, to pretend to be celebrating as well. This they did to the best of their ability, but with Stevens’s corpse growing cold on the floor, his eyes open, his hands clawlike in death, the pool of blood around him congealing where he lay in it, they did not feel any of the bonhomie of Madshaka and his men. Still, they maintained their forced smiles and even produced a chuckle or two.
To his credit, Van der Haagen did not even pretend to enjoy himself, and he did not yield to Madshaka’s threats and entreaties that he should do so. Van der Haagen understood the politics of Whydah well enough, Madshaka guessed, and he knew his murder would not go unpunished. He, Madshaka, could get away with butchering the assistant factor, could take the actual running of the factory for himself, but Van der Haagen was still needed to be the nominal factor. The king of Whydah would not ignore the murder of a British slave trader.
“Now, Van der Haagen, why you don’t celebrate with us?” Madshaka asked, pushing a bottle of wine toward the Dutchman, who glanced down at it but made no move to pick it up. “Your old partner Madshaka is back now, and I brought you a whole shipload of slaves. And these are slaves you already sold once! Now you get to sell them again!”
“You sent a band of heavily armed men into the trunk, you bloody fool. What are you going to do now, and them all armed with cutlasses and knives and God knows what else?”
“Ah, you, too much worry. They get thirsty enough, they trade weapons for water, you see.”
“You better hope you’re right,” Van der Haagen said.
“Of course I right. Them, like sheep, and me, a shepherd, and I lead them right here.”
And that was true. He had led them right to that place, herded them into the trunk and now they were his flock to do with as he would. There were no leaders among them, none that might inspire them to rise up, to fight back.
Except King James.
Madshaka stopped in midlaugh, squinted, looked down at the table. King James. He had meant to kill him last night, during the fight, but it had slipped his mind. He must not have noticed James among the others, or he would not have forgotten to rid himself of that potential problem.
He turned and said to Anaka, now head of his Kru guard, “Go to the trunk and get King James. If you cannot get him out safely, then take a musket and shoot him though the bars of the door.”
“Yes, Madshaka,” Anaka said. He ordered two others to follow and they hurried from the hut. They spoke in Kwa, as they had all night. Madshaka knew that Van der Haagen and the rest could not speak or understand Kwa and it unnerved them. They could speak a sort of pidgin Yoruba, the lingua franca of that part of the coast, but they knew no Kwa.
Madshaka understood how effective that could be. He had used it to entirely usurp King James’s command, and James had not even known it.
“What is the matter?” Van der Haagen asked. “Have you forgotten something? I hope your plan has not run into problems.”
“No, no,” Madshaka said, and he realized to his annoyance that he had been frowning, so he forced himself to smile his big, embracing smile and said, “No, Factor, everything is at last as it should be.”
But he was not so sure, and though he forced everyone to continue on with the celebrations, Madshaka grew increasingly uneasy. And the longer his men were gone, the more uncomfortable he became, until finally he was no longer able to hide his mood behind a false smile. The others sensed this, and became more and more quiet, until the celebration was no more than a few muttered words.
Then at last Anaka was back. Madshaka perked up as he stepped through the door, and then frowned to see the look on the man’s face.
“Well?”
“Madshaka, King James is not in the trunk.”
Madshaka just stared at him, said nothing, so Anaka said again, “He’s not there. We separated the people out, looked at each man individually, looked at every face. King James is not there. Not him or any of the English.” For want of another term they referred to those slaves born in Virginia as “the English.”
Madshaka frowned, stared out the door at the courtyard. How could James not be there? He had been with them when they charged the wall, he had made certain of it. But somehow he had not been part of the group that had been tricked into the prison.
If he was not in the trunk, then he was out there, somewhere, hiding, watching.
Madshaka thought that he should be angry about this, should be raging and turning the furniture over in his wrath. Someone should die for this blunder, but he did not know who.
His plan had worked perfectly, as flawlessly as ever one did in an ancient story told by elders around a fire. And now, a kink, a flaw, and, of all things, King James, loose, out there. He was not so foolish as to doubt that King James was a dangerous man.
He should have been burning with rage at the news, but he was not.
Madshaka was not angry. He was afraid.
Chapter 28
Boston at night. The streets that seemed so narrow in the daytime crowds now seemed impossibly broad. A sharp report from the waterfront-a pistol shot or a dropped hatch cover. Raucous laughter, but small, far off, and it died away and the streets were quieter still. And dark. The pious people abed, the frugal Yankees did not burn their candles.
Only the night watch stirred, and his shoes could be heard some distance away. The night watchman and Billy Bird and Elizabeth Marlowe. They walked in the shadows, paused to listen, Billy Bird and Elizabeth, Elizabeth chiding him for his secretiveness because she felt foolish. The more effort they made to be stealthy, the more she had to admit they were doing a bad thing.
But Billy Bird shook his head, put his finger to his lips, pulled her into the deep shadows of an alleyway. A rat squealed, ran away on tiny scratching feet. A block away, seen through the narrow gap between buildings, and only for an instant, the night watch, moving in the other direction, slowly, bored. So little crime in Boston he was no longer on the lookout for it.
They headed off again, moving from shadow to shadow. The greater good, Elizabeth reassured herself, and envied Billy Bird, who had no qualms about it, or if he had, hid them as well as his black cape hid him.
They skirted the Town Dock, then went down Anne Street, paused, looked up and down the length of the wide road, and took a quick step across, into an alley. Nothing illegal about being abroad that time of night, Billy explained to her, but it would raise questions. Better if they were not seen.
They stepped down the alley, stumbling once in the dark, turned right into another alley and then across a courtyard to meet up with Middle Street. Billy seemed to know back-alley Boston as she knew her own garden.