My memories of the days that followed are patchy. Johan Axel and I lay in bed, sometimes overcome with heat and other times quivering with cold. One of Davis’s maids occasionally brought us broth, into which she dipped pieces of bread which she held up to our lips. The little I managed to swallow I could rarely keep down, and I had often to fumble for the chamber pot to vomit. Often the spasms came on too quickly and my sick instead hit the floor, where beetles and other insects gathered around to feast. Faces flickered by: the maid, Fahlberg, Davis, Johan Axel—pale and frightened in the few moments his legs managed to carry his weight. No longer could I distinguish night from day.
When the fever was at its worst, I made my peace with the thought that my life would soon trickle out of me entirely. Johan Axel raved in the bed next to me without the ability to put any strength into his words. I started to hallucinate, reality no longer discernible from dreams. Scenes of my life were played for me in random order, eventually only to fixate on one single image, and stay there: her kiss, the one Linnea Charlotta and I had shared, the pivot of my short life. Everything else that I had experienced paled beside this memory. With all the life force that remained within me, I swore to do everything I could to experience that moment again.
My next memory is one of blinding light and sudden breeze, and when I opened my eyes, Samuel Fahlberg was standing by my side with a look of satisfaction, the window behind him wide open to air the room.
“So, Erik, the fever has broken. Welcome back to the land of the living.”
I turned my head, and found the bed next to mine empty. “Johan Axel? Is he…?”
Fahlberg shook his head. “Between the two of you, it is young Mr. Schildt who has been blessed with the stronger constitution. He has been back on his feet these past four days and is now strong enough to run errands for the governor. So will you, within a day or two. Make sure to eat enough. You have lost much weight, and you were already skin and bones to begin with.”
By the afternoon, I was able to stand up, albeit with some difficulty, for the first time in what I learned was two long weeks. I stumbled down to the beach, where I sat on the warm sand with a blanket over my shoulders.
As my fingers dug absently in the sand beside me, they encountered a strange object which, when I lifted it up, I found to be a stone, of a kind I had never before seen. It most closely resembled a branch, pocked with tiny holes, bleached white. I could not discern its nature, but it felt good in my hand, and I recalled the promise I had made to Lundström to save some specimens. When Johan Axel came to find me, a little while later, I slipped the stone into my pocket.
Two days later I was ready to work, and presented myself to Bagge, my feverish sweat long since washed away and in newly laundered clothes.
He congratulated me on my recovery. “If you turn out to be as quick-witted as your cousin, you will be an asset to the island.”
Johan Axel had already been appointed Notary, but because of my youth, the governor was unwilling to make an immediate decision, preferring to first test my abilities at various tasks. I was close to objecting, somewhat petulantly, that Johan Axel was only a year older than I was, and that I should not be penalized for being of slighter build and looking younger than I was, but I held my tongue.
“To begin with, you may accompany Schildt and inspect the cargoes on the newly arrived ships. He knows the ropes already.”
The sudden change in status that separated us caused some embarrassment to both me and Johan Axel as we walked down to the Carenage. He appeared more uncomfortable than I, and just before we climbed into the longboat that would row us out to the anchored ship, he drew me aside.
“Erik, I have learned much about the colony these past few days. I visited a similar ship earlier in the week while you were still in your bed. It is better for you to see it for yourself, since I don’t think I can find the words, but I advise you to control yourself. Will you promise me that?”
Without understanding why, I nodded sullenly at these words that had, for a second time that day, made me feel like a chastised child.
We sat quietly at the back of the boat as the oarsmen set out, dipping their blades and finding their rhythm. The breakers near shore were violent and repeatedly pushed our shoulders together, as if to force us back to unity, but the further away from land we went, the calmer the water. Once we had rounded the promontory, I saw the ship. As we approached, I sensed a rank odor wafting over the waves. Johan Axel was already pressing a handkerchief against his nose, and I had to breathe through my mouth. The rowers did not flinch. When our boat finally pulled up alongside the rope ladder that had been lowered down, there was no longer any doubt: these noxious smells came from the ship itself, and I wondered what cargo it could possibly contain.
The captain greeted us on deck and introduced himself as Jones, I forget his first name. The conversation took place in English, and Johan Axel made notes in his docket. In response to the question as to whether we wanted to inspect the cargo more closely, my cousin answered in the affirmative, waving me to precede him as we went below deck. As I passed him, he leaned close and whispered in my ear. “Stay calm, for both our sakes.”
The stench was now so strong it seemed to me to take physical form, and I waved my arms around me as if to ward off smoke or fog. It was dark inside the ship. A sailor with a lantern lighted our way and led us deeper below. Finally he stopped on the steep stairs and lifted his flame to illuminate the darkness in the low space that opened before us. At first, I saw nothing. Then hundreds of glittering eyes appeared, all turned towards us. I don’t know what expectations Johan Axel’s warnings had raised in me, but I could never have imagined that hell itself had been borne across the sea.
They were all lying down, naked in long rows, each chained to the other. Between the rows there were even more of them, placed at an angle in order to make use of every inch of the floor. Men, women, and children, stuffed into an area that was only one meter in height. They lay in their own waste, in excrement and bloody vomit and pools of urine that sloshed to and fro with the waves. Among them lay a couple of dead bodies, turned over with their faces in the filth. The buzzing of flies was so loud that their groaning voices could scarcely be heard. I will never forget their eyes: not those that were full of murderous rage at having borne witness to every blow and humiliation they had been subjected to, nor those—far worse—that were as blank and devoid of expression as cattle, as if long since dead inside.
Under that first deck there was yet another, identical. Then another, and another. We did not go further. From the deepest hold, where all the waste and bodily fluids must have accumulated, there rose a choir of lamenting voices speaking foreign tongues.
“Each grown negro,” the sailor explained, as I kept my knees from buckling by holding on to a rope, “takes up six times one and a half foot, the women somewhat less, and the children five times one. In this way we can fit almost five hundred slaves. Their own kin sell them to us for glass marbles.”
I turned in panic and raced up to the deck, where Jones guffawed at my pale visage. Johan Axel followed me up, and the captain turned to him anew.
“Well, where’s the current market stand, and how about the price?”
Johan Axel gave him some numbers and Jones’s lips moved silently as he did the mental calculation, eventually breaking out in a satisfied grin. My thoughts spun in my head until I could no longer control myself and ran to the railing, where the results of my retching barely missed our transport back. Johan Axel made my excuses. “My cousin was taken ill with the fever and has still not regained his strength.”
On the way back, he put his arm around me where I sat shaking in the scorching sun. “You did better than I, Erik. The first time I saw this, I fainted, and Bagge was quick to blame it on sunstroke.” He drew a deep breath from the fresh breeze. “This is Saint Barthélemy’s secret, Erik, something I have been aware of for a few days now. The largest slave market of the Antilles is on Swedish ground. We have a free port here, free of charge to the vendor and with only a small export charge for the purchaser. Times have never been better than they are now. The English, allied to the Dutch, have declared war on the French. We are the only neutral port in the West Indies, and the westbound slavers have nowhere else to go.”