“I see business is good,” Doro said.
Daly stood up. He was short and square and sunburned and unshaven. “Speak again,” he growled. “Who are you?” He was a little hard of hearing, but Doro thought he had heard enough. Doro could see in him the strange combination of apprehension and anticipation that Doro had come to expect from his people. He knew when they greeted him this way that they were still his servants, loyal and tame.
“You know me,” he said.
The slaver took a step back.
“I’ve left your man alive,” Doro said. “Teach him manners.”
“I will.” He waved the confused, angry man away. The man glared at Doro and at the now lowered machete. Finally, he stalked away.
When he was gone, Doro asked Daly, “Has my crew been here?”
“More than once,” the slaver said. “Just yesterday, your son Lale chose two men and three women. Strong young blacks they wereworth much more than I charged.”
“I’ll soon see,” Doro said.
Suddenly Anyanwu screamed.
Doro glanced at her quickly to see that she was not being molested. Then he kept his eyes on Daly and on his men. “Woman, you will cause me to make a mistake!” he muttered.
“It is Okoye,” she whispered. “The son of my youngest daughter. These men must have raided her village.”
“Where is he?”
“There!” She gestured toward a young man who had just been branded. He lay on the ground dirty, winded, and bruised from his struggles to escape the hot iron.
“I will go to him,” Anyanwu said softly, “though he will not know me.”
“Go,” Doro told her. Then he switched back to English. “I may have more business for you, Daly. That boy.”
“But … that one is taken. A company ship”
“A pity,” Doro said. “The profit will not be yours then.”
The man raised his stump to rub his hairy chin. “What are you offering?” It was his habit to supplement his meager salary by trading with interlopersnon-Company menlike Doro. Especially Doro. It was a dangerous business, but England was far away and he was not likely to be caught.
“One moment,” Doro told him, then switched language. “Anyanwu, is the boy alone or are there other members of your family here?”
“He is alone. The others have been taken away.”
“When?”
She spoke briefly with her grandson, then faced Doro again. “The last ones were sold to white men many days ago.”
Doro sighed. That was that, then. The boy’s relatives, strangers to him, were even more completely lost than the people of his seed village. He turned and made Daly an offer for the boyan offer that caused the slaver to lick his lips. He would give up the boy without coercion and find some replacement for whoever had bought him. The blackened, cooked gouge on the boy’s breast had become meaningless. “Unchain him,” Doro ordered.
Daly gestured to one of his men, and that man removed the chains.
“I’ll send one of my men back with the money,” Doro promised.
Daly shook his head and stepped out of the shelter. “I’ll walk with you,” he said. “It isn’t far. One of your people might shoot you if they see you looking that way with only two more blacks as companions.”
Doro laughed and accepted the man’s company. He wanted to talk to Daly about the seed village anyway. “Do you think I’ll cheat you?” he asked. “After all this time?”
Daly smiled, glanced back at the boy who walked with Anyanwu. “You could cheat me,” he said. “You could rob me whenever you chose, and yet you pay well. Why?”
“Perhaps because you are wise enough to accept what you cannot understand.”
“You?”
“Me. What do you tell yourself I am?”
“I used to think you were the devil himself.”
Doro laughed again. He had always permitted his people the freedom to say what they thoughtas long as they stopped when he silenced them and obeyed when he commanded them. Daly had belonged to him long enough to know this. “Who are you, then?” he asked the slaver. “Job?”
“No.” Daly shook his head sadly. “Job was a stronger man.”
Doro stopped, turned, and looked at him. “You are content with your life,” he said.
Daly looked away, refusing to meet whatever looked through the very ordinary eyes of the body Doro wore. But when Doro began to walk again, Daly followed. He would follow Doro to his ship, and if Doro himself offered payment for the young slave, Daly would refuse to take it. The boy would become a gift. Daly had never taken money from Doro’s hand. And always, he had sought Doro’s company.
“Why does the white animal follow?” asked Anyanwu’s grandson loudly enough for Doro to hear. “What has he to do with us now?”
“My master must pay him for you,” said Anyanwu. She had presented herself to the boy as a distant kinsman of his mother. “And also,” she added, “I think this man serves him somehow.”
“If the white man is a slave, why should he be paid?”
Doro answered this himself. “Because I choose to pay him, Okoye. A man may choose what he will do with his slaves.”
“Do you send your slaves to kill our kinsmen and steal us away?”
“No,” Doro said. “My people only buy and sell slaves.” And only certain slaves at that if Daly was obeying him. He would know soon.
“Then they send others to prey on us. It is the same thing!”
“What I permit my people to do is my affair,” Doro said.
“But they!”
Doro stopped abruptly, turned to face the young man who was himself forced to come to an awkward stop. “What I permit them to do is my affair, Okoye. That is all.”
Perhaps the boy’s enslavement had taught him caution. He said nothing. Anyanwu stared at Doro, but she too kept silent.
“What were they saying?” Daly asked.
“They disapprove of your profession,” Doro told him.
“Heathen savages,” Daly muttered. “They’re like animals. They’re all cannibals.”
“These aren’t,” Doro said, “though some of their neighbors are.”
“All of them,” Daly insisted. “Just give them the chance.”
Doro smiled. “Well, no doubt the missionaries will reach them eventually and teach them to practice only symbolic cannibalism.”
Daly jumped. He considered himself a pious man in spite of his work. “You shouldn’t say such things,” he whispered. “Not even you are beyond the reach of God.”
“Spare me your mythology,” Doro said, “and your righteous indignation.” Daly had been Doro’s man too long to be pampered in such matters. “At least we cannibals are honest about what we do,” Doro continued. “We don’t pretend as you slavers do to be acting for the benefit of our victims’ souls. We don’t tell ourselves we’ve caught them to teach them civilized religion.”
Daly’s eyes grew round. “But … I did not mean you were a … a … I did not mean …”
“Why not?” Doro looked down at him enjoying his confusion. “I assure you, I’m the most efficient cannibal you will ever meet.”
Daly said nothing. He wiped his brow and stared seaward. Doro followed his gaze and saw that there was a ship in sight now, lying at anchor in a little coveDoro’s own ship, theSilver Star , small and hardy and more able than any of his larger vessels to go where it was not legally welcome and take on slave cargo the Royal African Company had reserved for itself. Doro could see some of his men a short distance away loading yams onto a longboat. He would be on his way home soon.
Doro invited Daly out to the ship. There, he first settled Anyanwu and her grandson in his own cabin. Then he ate and drank with Daly and questioned the slaver about the seed village.