4
The ship was called The Brave Venture. It had three masts and what seemed to me at first like a thousand sails. In time I learned there were fifteen.
And I was not thrown overboard. Although there were times, weeks into the crossing, when the sea rolled and rolled and I swore I would rather die then than live through the storm.
The Barratts kept to their cabin mostly, and Mr Bird stayed in his cage, as the old mistress was worried he might be lost at sea. I made sure to keep out of their way. I noticed they didn’t have much luggage, only one trunk each. Missis Palmer told me they planned on buying fine English goods for their return, as clothes in England were much better quality than anything you could buy on the island. I said nothing, but noted that the old mistress seemed to have left her stick behind at Barratt Hall and gave thanks.
I learned a lot. The sailors were, like those in the town of Falmouth, men of all colours from across the world, and unlike us slaves, all of them were paid for their labour. I got used to looking some of the white sailors in the eyes when we spoke, especially the mate, Mr Kelsall, who seemed like the saddest man I ever met. He kept me busy with various errands and chores, and it pleased me to think that even though I was a slave I was not kept chained up as Thomas said they were on the journey from Africa.
And some of the crew even spoke to me as an equal: Ivan the cook, who came from somewhere so far north, he said the sea froze solid half the year (I did not believe him) and Georges a deckhand from Brazil. Then there was the cabin boy, Henry, who looked half my age even though he swore blind he was fourteen, and so older than me by a couple of years. I was surprised when he first sat down beside me, to eat his midday meal.
“In London,” he explained, “where I am from, there are all sorts of folk.”
I made sure to seek him out when I had any time between chores.
I envied Henry’s ease at sea. I watched him climb a rope faster than a rat up a tree and he capered helter-skelter along the yardarm of the main mast as if he were on solid ground. My heart was in my mouth.
When he came down he was laughing at me. “Your face! You were scared!”
“Was not,” I lied. “Back home on the estate, I have shinned up palm trees just as fast as you!” I looked him straight in the face then because that bit, at least, was the truth. And I realized it was the very first time I had stared down a white boy. I stared harder. I would not give way.
Henry shook his head and smiled. “Come up then!” he said. “Come up, Nat, and see. You can look upon the edge of the world. There’s nothing like it.” He took the rope in his hand. I had not moved. “You are scared!”
So up I went after him. And even though he tried to frighten me by making the rope swing and sway, I found it an easy climb. Narrower than a tree trunk, but with plenty of grip to it. I was up before I thought about what I was doing or where I was going. But when I inched over on to the yardarm, the narrow wooden pole from which hung the main mast, and saw the world of water far below reeling and rolling. I felt cold and sick with fear.
Henry did not seem to notice my unease, only shifted himself along the yardarm.
“Look!” He pointed out behind the ship. “Dolphins!”
Henry was sitting on the spar as comfortably as the young master would sit in the deep-sided wicker chair on the veranda at Barratt Hall. I pulled myself into a sitting position beside him. I felt my legs hanging down, loose in the air, and the long nothingness that stretched out underneath. My stomach turned over and I held on tight.
“Nat, see?” he said, pointing.
I was gripping the spar I sat on so tightly that my knuckles showed white through my skin. Henry elbowed me and I thought for a moment that I would fall.
I cannot remember how I made it down, only that I never went up there again and I kept my feet firmly on the deck, even when Henry told me I was missing an unusual cloud formation or school of flying fish. And to be fair Henry did not laugh, he said I had done well for a landlubber – the name for those, like me, who preferred dry land.
One morning when we were scrubbing the deck I decided to share my story. “You have to promise me, Henry, you won’t tell a soul. If the Barratts find out…” I drew my finger across my throat as if I was cutting it.
Henry spat on his palm and put it out for me to shake. “I’d never rat on you! Don’t you know that?” He looked at me with a serious expression, and I could see he was sad I didn’t trust him. I glanced round the deck and checked none of the other crew were near. Then I shook his hand hard and told him about my life on the plantation, about Mamma and Martha, and how I planned to return to Jamaica and free my family.
He said it was a fine thing I was doing, and told me about himself.
“I grew up in London,” he began. “An innkeeper’s son. I ran to sea after my brother Jacob, who was pressed.”
“Pressed? What’s that?”
He stopped. “Have you not heard of the press gang?”
I shook my head.
“They take men for the navy. By force.”
“Like slavery?” I asked.
Henry shook his head. “Oh, there’s payment,” he said. “But no choice. My brother Jacob was tricked into taking the King’s shilling. He was right sore, but I being only ten years old and having no more wits than an empty cup, went after him of my own accord, thinking to keep him company.”
Henry told me a merchant ship such as this was a million times better than a navy man o’war he’d been on at first. He said he’d had enough of the Spanish wars and planned to work his way up to mate and make his old man proud.
I told him I was going to London to seek my freedom and he wished me luck.
“I’ve seen those slave ships, smelled their foul stink,” he said. “And I’ve seen the schools of sharks following, waiting for an easy meal. I cannot imagine a worse sort of life.”
We picked up the bucket of dirty water and carried it to the side of the boat. Mr Kelsall the mate was busy close by, looking over some sails for mending.
Henry and I lifted up the heavy pail and slopped it over the side. The sea swirled green and blue alongside the boat and looking down into it I swallowed, anxious.
“So they do really throw folk to the sharks? Alive?” I said.
Mr Kelsall looked up when he heard me. “Oh yes. Those sharks don’t follow the ships for nothing. Some Africans try to throw themselves overboard rather than live in chains. Think when they are dead they will float up into the sky and fly back to Africa.” He shook his head.
“Is this your story again, Mr Kelsall? About the massacre?” Henry said, and nudged me, whispered low. “He would marry my sister, Nancy, and has told her so many tales, all of them sad.”
Mr Kelsall looked hurt. “Would that it were only a story…”
“Mr Kelsall worked the trade,” Henry said. “The slave trade.”
I shuddered. I had heard stories too: men, women and children chained and packed like fish in a barrel.
The mate nodded. “Never again. Things I’ve seen would make a grown man lose his reason. I’ve seen men turn into monsters on account of money.”
Henry picked up the empty bucket and his mop but I stopped. I looked at Mr Kelsall. His face was brown with weather and sun and his eyes had almost the same sadness I’d seen in Old Thomas’s.
“What did you see?” I asked.
“You heard of the Middle Passage?” he said.
I nodded. Henry did too.
“We load up in Liverpool with blankets and buttons, brass goods that shine but cost tuppence to make, then sail to the coast of Africa, buy up as many Africans as we can cram into the hold and sail west.”
“Why do you pack us so tight?” I said. “It never made sense to me, so many die on the boats…”
Mr Kelsall shook his head. “The more Africans we carry, the more we sell. If a few die, ten or twenty even, we still make a good bounty.”
“But the chains?” Henry asked. “Why chain the poor souls up?”
I said nothing. I was furious just thinking about it.
“We need the chains. Sometimes there’s only small crew, twenty men or so, and on my last voyage on the Zong, up to four hundred slaves. If they weren’t in chains, and we never had guns, they’d kill us all.”
“I can see that,” Henry said.
I was still fuming. Mr Kelsall went on.
“And we have to season them up, get them used to the hard life that’s coming. Make them realize they aren’t people any more. Just goods.”
I stood up, ready to walk away. If I didn’t leave, I would punch something.
Mr Kelsall stopped me. “I know. I understand it all now – the cruelty, the pain. I will never forget. You do not know how hard the memories press down on my soul.” His eyes were pale and watery. “I deserve your hatred,” he said. “What I saw on that last voyage, no man should ever see.” He breathed in a long shuddering breath. “People tossed overboard. The bodies in the water, all those sharks thrashing beneath, turning the sea red.” He blinked a tear. “Those poor souls.”
Mr Kelsall mumbled to himself and made the sign of the cross.
“How is that possible?” I said, fury burning in my heart.
The mate blinked at me, then hurried away. He wiped a tear as he went. I had never seen a grown white man shed tears and I longed to follow him and ask him more. But I had promised to help Henry and we still had plenty of work to finish.
“Did you see that?” I asked him when Mr Kelsall had gone below deck. “Those tears?”
Henry shrugged. “That voyage he talked about, that was a year or two ago at least, a ship called the Zong. He thought to make his fortune, but since he returned – and poor as he set out – he’s been that melancholy. Except if you get him talking about our Nancy. Oh he’s a good heart, and I do believe that’s his problem.”
“No man should buy or sell another,” I said. “It is an evil trade.”
“True enough.” Henry picked up the empty pail. “I know there’s many of us would rather fight the French or the Spanish – or both – than crew a slave ship.” Henry frowned. “I can’t imagine what it would be like to be bought and sold like meat or cattle.” He shook his head. “I would not wish that on my worst enemy, and you are, I think, my friend.”
I smiled. I had never had a white friend.
“Henry?” I asked. “I have heard that in England there are no slaves at all. That slavery is not allowed…”
Henry shrugged. “My family, well my sister Nancy mostly, runs a pub, The Cat and Mutton, down by the docks in Shadwell. I’ve seen folk of all colours in there, sailors, servants … can’t recall seeing any slaves as such.”
I took some comfort in Henry’s shrug. Even though I looked for Mr Kelsall later I did not find him, and from that day on the mate avoided me. He looked away when I greeted him – he seemed afraid that I might ask him more.
We suffered one more storm, in cold northern waters, when the boat rolled and rocked so hard I carried all my pineapple plants, snug in their boxes, down into the space under my hammock, where, along with everything else, they slid backwards and forwards as we were tossed on the waves. In the turmoil the glass broke on one of the boxes and I was forced to repot the plant, soil and all, up close with another.
But the young master and the old mistress were both too sick to notice and we sailed into the Port of London seven weeks after leaving Jamaica.
Henry said farewell on the dockside.
“Not goodbye though,” he said, hugging me. “We will meet again, I know it. When I am master of my own ship.”
“I worry that may be too long.”
“Perhaps. Tell you what,” Henry said as he helped me load up the last of the pineapple boxes. Missis Palmer watched, from a distance. She looked damp and cold. Henry lowered his voice. “Since you’re free now, why don’t you tell old sourface to stuff it?”
“Hurry, boy!” she called. I looked at her. Was I free now? Maybe I didn’t have to go anywhere. I didn’t move. Could I really talk back to Missis Palmer?
“Don’t forget!” Henry said. “The Cat and Mutton. If I’m not there, ask for Nancy. I’ll be staying there ’til I get a new ship. I expect Mr Kelsall will be sniffing around too. But don’t let that put you off. You make a better brother than I’ve ever had.”
I blinked. Had he really said that? He saluted, pulled his bag on to his shoulder, and made his way off the dock.
“Nathaniel!” Missis Palmer’s voice cut the air like a knife. Suddenly she was there beside me and twisted my ear hard.
“Owwww!”
“Those who cannot hear must feel!” she said, and marched me towards the front of the cart.
I climbed up into the cart behind Missis Palmer. She threw me such a look but I didn’t care. I had a friend and a brother. And I was in London.
The city was filthy. It was May and the moon was high in the sky, shining brightly. But every building, even those fine ones, taller than mountains, seemed to be very dark. But I did not care. I breathed in deep. Was this what freedom felt like?
The streets were crowded, the like of which I had never seen: animals, men and women, and running between the crowds what seemed like an army of children, unshod and clothed in rags. I had imagined London, the grandest city in the whole of the world, to be, if not quite paved with gold, then perhaps wearing its good fortune, instead of hiding its wealth under a cloak of soot and grime.
As the cart slowed up behind what I guessed was the Barratts’ London house, I shut my eyes and made a promise to myself. I would unpack the pineapples, safe in their boxes, settle them into their new home in English soil. And then I would ask the old mistress for my freedom.
No, not ask, I would demand it.