Now Face to Face (60 page)

“The Regent of France sent a messenger to tell us. Ormonde is in Spain, with ships at his command. We do not know how many soldiers or ships. The Pretender has asked for three thousand men from the Regent, as if there were no treaty between France and England.”

France had helped Cousin James before, treaty or no. That was the truth of treaties. “When?”

“We’re not certain. Soissons—”

“Who?”

“Philippe, the Prince de Soissons. It was he who was sent by the Regent to inform us of the invasion plan, and he says they have a date of May tenth. But no one is perfectly certain of that. The French have word from their army that the Irish in certain regiments are gone, on leaves of absences. I cannot believe it. We are on the brink of war.”

The Princess rubbed at the suddenly cold, cold flesh on her arms. “Will there really be war?”

“Ormonde is a fine soldier.”

Yes. Ormonde had been Captain General of the army when Queen Anne died. He was singled out by Whigs as one who plotted to make James the Queen’s heir. Oh God, who could forget that treacherous year of 1715?

You go into a web of terrible quarreling, the Prince’s father had been warned by his closest advisers. The two English parties, Whig and Tory, hate each other, and each will try to have you rule without the other. It was true; the hatred between the two factions had been something one could feel. There had been a time in 1715 when their throne was so uncertain, when civil war seemed so imminent, that the King made plans for them to leave England and seek refuge in Holland should the Duke of Ormonde come out in open rebellion. It had been clear the soldiers in the army would support Ormonde, their general, over the foreigner, their King. But Ormonde had fled the country. That’s what had saved them: the flight of fearful Tories.

What had they sung in the streets, as Tory after Tory was accused of treason, of plotting to bring Cousin James to the throne? “Farewell Old Year, for thou with Broomstick Hard had drove poor Tory from St. James’s Yard. Farewell Old Year, Old Monarch, old Tory. Farewell Old England, thou hast lost thy Glory.” Awful song. Someone had had the audacity to sing it under her windows at St. James’s Palace.

I am given no choice, the King had said then. Neither side will work with the other. I must choose one and attempt to contain the other. Seven years, and the enmity, the deceit, were not ended yet. The other would not be contained, it kept bursting out. This was the fourth invasion attempt. Perhaps they would not be safe until Cousin James died, but he had a child now, hadn’t he? So the mantle would be passed on to the child. It might never end, it might go into time endlessly, forever and forever, amen.

“There is to be no word, no sign, no whisper on our part yet. We are gathering what information we may; letters are being opened at the Post Office and ships stopped in the Channel,” said the Prince. “Walpole said there had been odd rumors about Cadiz from certain agents. Our ambassadors at the courts of France and Spain and Rome are instructed to find out what they may as soon as they may. All agents here and abroad have been alerted. I’ll go again to St. James’s tonight.”

“Is it Cadiz that Ormonde will leave from?” Cadiz was on the coast of Spain.

“It seems so.”

She shivered. In an uncharacteristic gesture, the Prince put his hand over hers upon the balustrade.

Is it war? she thought. And can we endure?

Chapter Thirty-four

T
HEY APPEARED AGAIN, THE ANGEL WOMEN
. F
OR A MOMENT, THE
boy stopped his work to listen to their voices, knowing, yet not knowing, the words they spoke to him. The slave driver raised his cato’-nine-tails, a stem of rope some eighteen inches long, at one end of which were fastened nine tails of leather with three or more knots upon each line; the whip whistled its particular sound as it whirled through the air. But the boy was stronger now, nimble again, a quick pupil of survival. He leaped out of the whip’s way and ducked in and between other slaves who were bent over planting the green strips of hollow cane in a patchwork of water and dammed-up soil. Once out of the driver’s reach, he bent down, as the others were doing, to work. The driver shook his head, leaving well enough alone. The boy did not have all his wits; everyone knew it.

The sky over the boy was blue, as blue as his memory of the color of someone’s eyes. He could make no complete sense of words yet, just as he made no complete sense of the pictures in his mind, crowded images of dogs and gilded chairs and two women, their faces pale. The other slaves around him sheltered him. They put him to work between them. They motioned for him to do as they did. When he fainted, as sometimes happened, they carried him into the shade to rest, one of them fanning him with a palm leaf. They nudged him when he stopped too long, lost in his dreams. Over and over he bent, all the day. His hands bled because the pieces of cane cut. His head ached, a perpetual ache from the sun and bending, so that by evening he could not think nor speak, could only shake with weakness. The other slaves were gentle with him, respectful of his pain, respectful of his confused visions, of the dreams he woke them with at night.

Clear memory began with awakening in a small, bare room. He lay upon a floor, a threadbare blanket over him. There were others in the room with him. They sat crouched against the walls. Some of them were weeping. Their hands and feet were chained.

“Madame?” he said, as from the window sounds came to his ears: a carriage passing, a cry like a street vendor’s, though the words were in another language unknown to him. He made an attempt to crawl to the window, but there was no strength in him. Some time later, a man came into the room; he was pale, plump, in the rich, sober clothing of a merchant. Exclaiming, the man spoke to him in questioning tones, but he didn’t understand. Thus was born the first truth of this new life, that he was in a world in which nothing was comprehensible. Day by day, the others in the room with him disappeared. The plump, pale man would come for them, and only he ever returned.

That was the second understanding, that his own time to leave this room was coming. The boy ate the strong broth with chunks of meat mixed in it; he drank the wine mixed with egg the man brought; and he saw in the man’s eyes that he measured the boy’s growing strength. The boy prayed, the prayers welling up from a source he couldn’t remember; he knew in his boy’s heart that what lay ahead was nothing good. The angel women came often. They told him how much they loved him, that they would guide him and protect him, that he must be brave and ever vigilant. He wrapped their warnings, their promises, their love around his heart like a cloak.

The day the man took him outside the room, he stood in a courtyard and blinked at the sun, at the sight of masts rising behind houses, gulls circling, their cries shrill. The man gave him a shirt to wear, nothing more, so that he felt shamed. It had been in his mind to run at the first opportunity, but the man seemed to know—Others have tried before me, the boy thought—and fastened an iron collar around the boy’s neck, connected by a small chain to the man’s wrist. The shame of near nakedness was nothing compared to the shame of that.

“I’m not a dog,” he said in French. The man ignored him.

When he was aboard a sloop, one of many in a harbor, the chain was undone. A sailor motioned for him to descend down a ladder into the bowels of the sloop. Something in him broke. He ran to the side of the sloop; he kicked and clawed at the sailors who wrestled him; he kicked, clawed, screamed “Madame!” over and over. When they had him pinned, the man was there, raising his hand. In that hand was a club—and the boy thought, His soul is dead, have mercy on mine, before he could think no more.

He woke in pain and dark, unable to see, a ringing in his ears, the press and presence of another being on each side of him frightening. In that dark was a stench that could not be described, made up as it was of filth and fear, of desperate degradation. The dark was horror. Weeping, screaming, sobbing, fierce foreign chants made up a babel of sound. Something scrambled over his leg, a creature, a ship’s rat. He screamed, himself, after that, for a time, until the angel women hushed him. Pray, they told him, and he did, aloud, into the din, prayer after prayer: The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? Sometimes he sang the prayers, sometimes he cried them, sometimes he whispered. Madness was tangible, a pressing, hovering presence in the bowels of this place. It waited in the dark and took those not strong enough to withstand it.

One after another in the darkness was ill with the bounce of the sloop on the water. The mess of it was everywhere, touching the boy’s feet, his hands, making him gag and weep amid his prayers. After a time—time had pressed back upon itself; he had no idea of its passing, of whether he had been here one hour or one day or one month—sailors appeared, their faces shadowed by a lantern, and with shouts and kicks pointed the way to a ladder, which led to light, to outside, to sun, which led to sanity, the sight of clouds, sky, sea. Ears ringing, head aching, stomach reeling, the boy clung to a mast as if it were life. He would do whatever he had to to stay in the light, but there was nothing to do. He and the others were allowed to stay atop from that point on; in the sun, laughter came, smiles, talk, as if there were no dark below; though at night, what the sailors came and did to the women was dark, and evil, and made the boy weep.

Once land was sighted, rising green out of the sea like an emerald, he thought again about escape, but it was clear the sailors had seen many attempts at escape. Chains were made tighter. Every movement was watched. Once the sloop was anchored, he and the others were immediately herded down a gangplank and into wagons; then, for two days, they jolted along twisting roads.

Three of the brave ones, a woman and two men, who fought back, growled and spat, tried to jump out of the wagon, were tied to a tree at the first stopping point and whipped. They were not allowed back into the wagons after that, but made to walk behind them, tied to them, until one of the men fell, and then he was dragged, mile after mile, until they stopped for the night. The sight of the deliberate, ruthless, implacable punishment was something the boy never forgot. Physical strength was not the answer. The man who lay in the dust behind the wagon, bleeding, silent, possibly dead, had been strong. Cunning and patience must be woven into this existence. You can be cunning, said the angel women. They do this to break your spirit, your power to resist them. They must cow you to nothingness. Do not resist them, or they will break you. A way will come, a time when you will see your way clear to us. Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.

Memory of before was just there, beyond reach, ripe fruit upon a limb, tempting but too high to yet reach. He survived. He lived for his dreams, in which the angel faces hovered low, murmuring confused blessings in his ear. “Flower,” they called him, “dear flower.” Except that he now knew his name was Hyacinthe.

W
HO KNEW
what began it? Beginnings are often vague and without meaning. Slaving was an old thing, as old as war, as old as man, as old as time. The children of Israel were slaves to Egypt, the Hebrews and Egyptians, Greeks and Germans, Gauls to Rome. The Renaissance city-states of Italy grew fat on their Christian slave trade with the Sultanate of Egypt; even papal decrees did not stop it. The Ottoman Empire was based on slaves. The first Portuguese sailors, greatly daring in their small ships, meandering down the coast of what would be called Africa, saw little significance in their capture of those they called Moors. It is written that one of the captives himself owned slaves, and redeemed himself from captivity with them. Beyond, farther down the African coast, was the state of Benin, with a thriving, ancient trade in slaves and ivory and pepper with the Berbers and Arabs of the desert. The Portuguese discovered soon enough there was a Christian market for slaves.