Mistress of Darkness (16 page)

'Oh, aye,' Runner agreed. 'To murder this creature would be a total waste. But she's a slave, you say? There's no doubt about that?'

Malley still grinned. 'I'll wager if you look, Captain, you'll find her mark. I'll wish you a happy voyage.' He jerked his head at the boy, Jem, and they climbed the companion ladder.

Captain Runner sat down at the table, immediately above Gislane's head. 'You'll close that hatch, Penny. We've an hour before the tide is right, wouldn't you say?'

'Aye.' Penny closed the door, then turned and also regarded her, leaning against the steps.

But at last some feeling was returning to her arms, accompanied by a most painful attack of pins and needles, which but encouraged her to be more desperate in her appeal. She got to her knees. 'Please,' she said. 'Listen to me.

‘I am betrothed to be married, to Matthew Hilton. You'll have heard the name, Captain Runner, if you trade with the Indies. He is the heir to the Hilton estates. I'm to marry him. I was to many him tonight. Listen to me, Captain. Take me back to him and I'll see you are rewarded. I'll see you get a new ship, Captain. Please.'

Runner smiled at her. 'I'm not a hard man, nigger girl. I'll not confine you for the whole voyage. You'll work for us. You can cook for us and keep the place clean, like. What do you think of that, Penny?'

'Brilliant Captain,' Penny said. 'It'll be a voyage to remember.'

'It will be that. See the door by the companion, girl? That's your galley. There's a bunk in there too. Just made for a chit like you. We had a boy, but he died. There's a pity, but he wasn't half so pretty as you.' He leaned forward and stroked her hair again. 'Not half so pretty.'

'Please,' she begged. 'The Hiltons are looking for me. They cannot be more than a couple of hours behind me now. If they think you refused to help me, they'll ... they are terrible people.'

'Oh, they are that,' Captain Runner agreed, nodding his head most solemnly. 'But they'll not come here, girl. Now, when you are not cooking or cleaning for us, or darning for us, too, by God, you'll keep us company. You understand me?'

'Starting now,' Penny said. 'As we've an hour to kill.'

She stared at him, unable to believe herself that she was actually kneeling on the floor of a slaver, about to be raped.

'Aye,' Runner said. 'But you'll not forget who's captain of this ship.'

Fear, despair, welled up into Gislane's chest, now accompanied by an emotion she had never really experienced before, anger. For the first time in her life, that she could remember, she actually wanted to hurt another human being. She wanted to slap and scratch and bite and kick, the nameless man who had caused this to happen, Malley and his friend Jem, and now these two leering faces in front of her. She wanted to hurt them so badly that they would kill her in their rage.

She scrambled to her feet and swung her right hand. Captain Runner caught her wrist without difficulty, an expression of mild surprise crossing his features. She struck at him with her left hand, and this too was caught, so she attempted to get her foot up to kick him. but was hampered by her gown.

'By Christ,' Runner cried. 'But she's got spirit after all. You'll help me, Penny.'

The air was so still it seemed the entire universe was holding its breath. Not a leaf stirred in the endless forest which clustered down to the very water's edge, fading imperceptibly from tall sunlight seeking trees into mangrove swamp and courida bush, the whole shrouded in an impenetrable green and brown miasma which did not even end at the white sand of the narrow beach, above which the heat shimmered like a gauze netting. The
Antelope
rode to her anchor as if she were planted in a pale green field; her sails loosely furled, hung from her yards, and on her deck the tar melted in the seams, so that wherever a seaman walked he left dirty black marks behind him, while the wood itself was hot to the touch.

Yet Gislane Nicholson, leaning on the gunwale and staring at the distant shore, listening to the silence which was so clear she could hear the faint 'crack' of a falling: rotted tree trunk, was barefoot. She was, in fact, naked save for her shift, and that garment was torn in several places. It was really too hot for clothes at all; the crew wore hardly more than drawers, and they had shaved their heads and tied them up in brightly coloured kerchiefs as they lounged on the foredeck. She retained her shift, because it was part of her plan for retaining sanity. Shoes were a waste of time, even supposing she possessed more than one. Her stockings had long melted into nothing. Her petticoats and her gown she kept, attempting to preserve them from the prevailing filth, the constant sweat which soon rendered any garment stiff as a board and noisome as a side of badly dried beef. Her shift was like that, but then, it hardly smelt any higher than her body. She combed her hair with her fingers, idly, but that too had not come into contact with fresh water, except when it rained, since leaving England; it clung in a greasy mass which lay heavily on her neck and shoulders. But it would certainly rain today. She had come to count on it, and would strip off her shift and run on deck to stand beneath the teeming, soup-warm drops, feeling them sting her face and body, thud on to her head, suggest a cleanliness she could no longer clearly remember, before the clouds swept away and without hesitation the sweat started again.

The crew enjoyed the rain as much as she; they gathered by the mast to watch her antics. As if they mattered. And of course they dared not touch her, for she belonged to the mate and the captain.

Belonged, she thought, was an inadequate description of her situation. Sometimes she fancied she was part of them. They had now been out of Bristol nearly two months, and in all that time she had been granted but six days of rest from their questing fingers, their hungry lips, their demanding tools. Nor had her respite been anything to do with menstrual bleeding; it had been during the storm which had all but sunk them soon after they had left the Spanish coast. For a whole week the wind had howled and the brig had run before it, at first under storm canvas, but when that had been ripped to shreds, under bare poles. For six long days the crew-had worked the pumps and taken turns, three at a time, on the helm. In their fortitude, their energy, their courage, they had been almost admirable, even as Runner himself had been almost admirable in the way, when the wind finally abated and left them tossing on an empty foam-filled ocean, he had produced his sextant and decided where they were, and judging by the manner in which they had made their landfall, had been right.

And for six long days she had been allowed to lie in her bunk, alone and untroubled. She had gazed at the deckheads as she had rolled from side to side, and listened to the waves slashing at the hull only inches from her ear, and to the heavy pounding of the greybeards coming on board, and she had laughed. Because when the ship sank, they would all go down together.

This was perverse of her, because she did not really want to die. In the beginning, whenever she had gone on deck, they had tied a rope round her waist in case she would throw herself over the side. Now they no longer bothered, although now, in fact, she would gladly have gone over the side, had she known how to swim, just to get cool. But they had lain in this bay for four days, filling their water casks, obtaining fresh meat, and waiting, for the Prince, and there was not a moment when a dark fin was not in sight.

And perhaps, in the beginning, she
had
thought of suicide, briefly. Then she had been sustained by her anger. For a week she had fought them, while her belly retched with seasickness, and blood had dribbled into her mouth with the fury of their kisses. For a week she had hardly eaten, and they had had to beat her with their belts to make her serve their food. In her desperation she had cursed them, and struck at them with her fists, to their huge amusement. She had vowed that she would see them hanged, and they had laughed at that, too. Yet gradually the thought had come to replace all others. She
would
see them hanged. But to do that it was necessary to preserve her own life. And if she would enjoy their hanging, it was also necessary to preserve her own health. On the fourth night out, when Runner had been drunk, he had hit her so hard she had been knocked unconscious, and had awoken with an enormous bruise on the side of her face. The black stain had faded now, although the bone was still tender to the touch.

But she had reflected then that if her object was to stay alive, she was going about it the wrong way, and from that moment had submitted, almost with a will.

For now she possessed a purpose. All the while, as she lay in their bunks, massaged by their evil-smelling bodies, she had thought of them dangling from a rope above her. It had even provided contentment. Her only resolution was that should she, by some mischance, have to die, they would die with her. Thus the laughter during the storm, the almost pleasurable anticipation of the imminent disappearance of the
Antelope
and all who sailed in her. But she was glad they had not. And since the storm, they had almost been friends, in their hatred.

Not, she supposed, that they hated her. Runner was a seaman, and an excellent one. He was a slave trader, and no doubt was excellent at that also. But he was not a particularly thoughtful or intelligent man, and he granted women no more feeling than might exist between their legs. She had submitted because she had grown weary of resisting. That was enough. The threats she had offered in the beginning, the bribes she had attempted, had been nothing more than natural. But the fact was, as he had told her often enough, she was a nigger girl, whose ordained fate was to lie on her back, or her front, or in any position a man might desire, and enjoy it. Once she was prepared to be sensible he was almost kind; only when he took to his rum punch was she now in any danger, as the various bruises she had accumulated revealed. But even then, once she submitted and submitted and submitted, he was unlikely to do more than bruise her. Oh, she had learned well. And a fortnight ago, when they had celebrated Christmas - and how incredible it had been to experience the greatest of Christian festivals on this overheated, filthy, hellship - she had even accepted a glass of rum herself, and for the first time in her life lost her misery in the pleasure of inebriation.

So then what had happened to the breathless girl who had stolen away from her foster parents' house? She closed her mind to that. What had happened to Mama and Papa Nicholson themselves? She closed her mind to that. What had happened to Matt? She closed her mind to that most of all. She was living a long nightmare, which would end when the Hiltons caught up with her. Because they would do that. Then they would hang both Runner and Penny, and they would take her, and ... but her mind had to stay closed to that also. To consider what Matt might think of her, after she had spent two months, or more, on this boat with these people, would be to go mad. He would rescue her, because he was Matthew Hilton. That was enough.

And Runner would hang. She had never realized before what a pleasure it could be to hate. Why, in its dream of future achievement it almost equalled love.

He was here now, standing at her shoulder, hand slipping beneath the shift to massage her bottom, squeezing and pinching. She believed he was, now, almost fond of her. She had grown on him, from a pair of breasts and a flat belly and slender thighs and long legs into a companion, a constant helpmate. 'Listen,' he said.

The first law of survival was to do everything Captain Runner even hinted. And indeed there was sound, a mixture of splashing oars and chanting voices, a rustle of weapons and steel, the whole overlaid with a strange moan, as of a large number of people in torment. 'That's the Prince on his way,' Runner said.

'And about time.' Penny stood above them on the poop, also leaning on the rail. 'You'll have me break out the chest?'

'Oh, aye. The sooner we're filled and away from this pest hole the better I'll like it. But mark me, John Penny. You'll have the pieces loaded and run out; grape, not ball. I don't trust that nigger further than I can spit, and it'll do him no harm to see we've teeth. And every man on deck will wear a cutlass and a pistol.'

'Aye aye,' Penny said, and hurried forward.

'And you'll get below,' the captain said. ' 'Tis a certain fact that His Highness will never have laid eyes on a white woman before, and he might just want to add you to his harem.'

'But I am not a white woman, Runner,' she said. 'Else I had not been here, surely.'

'Bury your humour, girl,' Runner growled, and now he was definitely nervous. 'Or I'll have the skin from your hide.'

Gislane shrugged, and retreated to the companion. But she remained in the hatchway to watch the approaching army. For so it seemed, as from the mouth of a large river which debouched into the bay some distance to their right there emerged a succession of canoes, each paddled by a dozen brawny black warriors, and each containing, amidships, a huddle of equally dark humanity. But there was no relation between the paddlers and the slaves. The warriors were tall and powerfully built; they handled their paddles deftly, and their heads were high; they sang as they sent their surprisingly large craft surging towards the
Antelope.
They wore headdresses of brightly-coloured feathers, and another fringe of feathers at their waists and round their calves; these indeed were their only clothing; their spears were slung over their shoulders by rawhide thongs, and from other thongs at their thighs hung heavy wooden knobkerries. They were not a reassuring spectacle, but there could be no questioning their arrogant humanity.

The moan arose from the prisoners. These were destitute of all clothing, and consisted of women, and some children, as well as men. But none of the children was less than twelve, Gislane estimated, squinting in the morning sunshine, just as none of the men or women was much over thirty. And they were yoked together, and chained at wrist and ankle, without distinction of sex or age, and had apparently been thrown into the bottom of the boats without regard for their comfort, for arms and legs emerged from various angles, and the general moan was occasionally punctuated by a shrill cry.