The Book of Negroes

  "It's the mark I was branded with, out back in your own slave pen, when I was eleven years old."

  Blood rose to Armstrong's face, and he stepped back. "Two letters," he said quietly. "Do you know what they represent?"

  "It's a G and an O," I said. "Never knew what they meant."

  "Grant, Oswald," he said, his voice flat and emotionless.

  "What?"

  "The company that runs Bance Island. Grant, Oswald. Richard Oswald is a Scotsman. This is his company. His associates—"

  William Armstrong retreated to his chair, sat down and stretched his hand over his brow. I let him sit quietly for a moment while I turned away and did up the buttons and the clasp of my dress. And then I took three steps in his direction, looking straight into his eyes.

  "You have no idea what I have lived through. Every waking moment is a nightmare for the captives you hold right now, on the other side of these stone walls. You have no idea what they endure, if they will even survive in the ships, no idea of the thousands of humiliations and horrors waiting at their destinations."

  "Some things are better not to think about," he said.

  "Tell that to your captives," I said.

  Armstrong rose from his chair and said that he would see to it that I wanted for nothing. Tomorrow, he would take me to meet the traders.

  THE NEXT MORNING, heavy fog blanketed the waters. I took coffee and bread alone in my room, and then followed Armstrong out of the building, past the cookhouse, past the thatched huts where African workers slept, to a two-storey building. Inside, I found three rooms full of imported goods: cowrie shells from the Maldive Islands, iron bars from England, perfumed soaps from the Netherlands, and rum. There were pistols, rifles and shot. I saw huge bolts of cloth in an array of colours, which Armstrong said had been bought from the East India Company in London. There were also knives and sabres, iron pots, iron cauldrons, and scarves, trousers and dresses.

  As the sun rose, African slave-traders began arriving in the Palaver House, shaking hands with Armstrong and inspecting the samples of goods that they might accept in exchange for slaves. I saw Fulbe in white robes and white caps, and Temne men in their own clothing, and Maninkau traders from inland. I heard Temne, Arabic, Fulfulde, Maninka and English, and a litany of other languages I did not know.

  Armstrong and the principal Fula, whose name was Alassane, began negotiating. Alassane spoke in Temne to an aide who translated the words into English for Armstrong. Alassane wanted twenty iron bars, one barrel of rum, one bolt of cloth, six rifles, two boxes of shot, two iron cauldrons and two sabres for every healthy adult male. Armstrong offered him half of that. They finally settled on a price—about halfway between the two starting positions—and agreed that a healthy woman would go for half the price of a man, and a healthy child one quarter. As the men launched into endless discussions about the relative values of ivory, camwood, rum and guns, I stopped listening to the details and thought about how I had once been traded for these very goods. I would have been worth about five iron bars, a quarter of a barrel of rum, one or two rifles, and fractions of a few other goods. Surely when I was abducted on the path outside Bayo, the men who seized me had also estimated my worth. Maybe, to them, I was worth a few rabbits and a goat. In South Carolina, the first time I had been sold as a refuse slave, I was worth only a pound or two at most. I suppose in a way I was lucky to have been sold at all, for if I had not, I might well have been killed. The last time I was sold in South Carolina, Solomon Lindo had judged me to be worth sixty pounds. Who was to blame for all this evil, and who had started it? If I ever got home to Bayo again, would people in the village still be at risk of being valued, and stolen? Would my own villagers still keep woloso—second-generation slaves—as we had done in my own childhood? It seemed to me that the trading in men would continue for as long as some people were free to take others as their property.

  William Armstrong was calling my name. A number of people were looking at me. Perhaps he had called to me several times. Now it was time, he said, to come forward and address Alassane.

  I had heard Alassane speaking in Fulfulde, the language of my father, to his aides, but I didn't want him to know that I spoke that language too. So I spoke in Temne, saying that I wanted to travel far inland, to a village called Bayo, some three revolutions of the moon by foot northeast of here, not far from Segu on the Joliba River.

  The tall Fula raised his eyebrows and said, "I don't trade with women."

  "One barrel of rum," I said, "if you take me inland."

  "One thousand barrels of rum," he said.

  "One barrel of rum," I said, "with not a drop of water in it."

  "You negotiate like a man," he said. "We will meet again, one day."

  "When?" I asked.

  "The next time I come."

  "When will that be?"

  Alassane smiled. "I will return when I return. I am known here. I am Alassane, the great Fula trader."

  I didn't trust the great Fula trader. But he was my only hope.

  THREE WEEKS PASSED before I was able to speak to John Clarkson. He had been away negotiating land claims with King Jimmy, but when he returned to Freetown, he paid a visit to my home. I offered him a hot drink. He said that he had always enjoyed coming to where I lived, ever since the day I had given him mint and ginger tea in Birchtown.

  "There's nothing like a visit with you, Meena, to take my mind off the Company men."

  We settled into chairs with our tea.

  "I return to England in a fortnight," Clarkson said.

  I nearly dropped my teacup on the saucer. "The Nova Scotians will be devastated," I said. "You are the only Company man they trust."

  "It's time for me to go home. I don't wish to keep my fiancée waiting any longer."

  I could understand that. I would have crossed the seas to be with my husband too—or asked him to come find me.

  "I have a proposal to make," said Clarkson. "Come to England with me. I can arrange for your travel."

  When enslaved in South Carolina, I had hoped many times to sail to England—but only as a means of moving on to Africa.

  "Leave the colony?" I asked.

  "Yes."

  "For how long?"

  "Forever," he said, "or for as long as you would like."

  "And why on earth would I want to leave Africa, now that I have finally come home?"

  "We need you, Meena. The abolitionist movement needs you. We need your story and we need your voice."

  It seemed inconceivable to me that people should need me in a place I had never seen. I asked what he meant.

  "My brother Thomas and a group of like-minded men—Anglicans and Quakers—have recently come close to persuading Parliament to abandon this barbaric practice."

  "Falconbridge told me that some men had tried to abolish slavery," I said.

  "Not slavery. The trade in slaves. There is a great difference. By trade, I mean buying slaves on the African coast, carrying them across the seas and selling them in the Americas. It is not the best we can do, but rather a first step. Slavery would still exist, yes, but no more men, women and children would be taken away in slave ships."

  "How could I possibly help your cause in England?"

  "I said that the abolitionists have come close, Meena, but they have never succeeded. Something was always missing. But you have survived slavery, and you can tell Britons what you went through. Your voice could move thousands of people. And when it comes time for Parliament to deliberate on the matter, your voice could swing the vote."

  I was touched that Clarkson was reaching out to me, but it was hard to imagine that I could affect public thinking in England. I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of white people I had influenced thus far in my life.

  "Lieutenant Clarkson," I said.

  "You may call me John."

  No white man had ever invited me to do such a thing. And from what I had seen, white men used titles such as "Mister" or "Captain" even in add
ressing each other.

  "Mr. Clarkson," I said.

  He smiled.

  "John," I said. "You must understand that I have my own plans. Recently, I travelled with Mr. Falconbridge to Bance Island."

  "You did? For what possible reason?"

  "To look into finding an African to take me inland."

  "A trader? A slave-trader?" Clarkson jumped up from his chair. "You can't be serious." Now he was shouting. "It was men working for slavetraders who killed Thomas Peters. And the same sort of thugs stole you away from your own family. You are a fool to be thinking about this, and you must remember who you are consorting with."

  "That's what Armstrong said," I said.

  "As far as slave-traders go, William Armstrong is an honourable sort," Clarkson said. "If he told you it was dangerous, I would believe him."

  "I don't govern my life according to danger," I answered. "Otherwise, I would not have fled from the man who owned me in New York. I would not have travelled to Nova Scotia—a land where I had no friends, no land, no home and no work—in the month of December. And I certainly never would have joined your mission to Freetown."

  Clarkson sat down again, smiling and shaking his head.

  "Did danger prevent you from joining the British Navy?" I said. "Would danger prevent you from doing everything in your power to return home to your loved ones?"

  Clarkson rubbed his palms together and looked into my eyes. "Well, Meena, you do know your own mind. No one could know it better. You have been a world of help to me. So if I can help you, I would like to do so."

  I told him that I had offered the slave-trader one barrel of rum, but that he would surely ask for more. Clarkson said he would use some funds at his discretion to procure, for me and me alone, three barrels of rum. This would be his gift to me. I had served him long and well, he said, and if this rum allowed me to make my journey home, then so be it.

  "Just make sure you cling to your offer of one barrel for the longest possible time," Clarkson said. "Because eventually, he will drive you up. The Africans are skilled traders."

  "Lieutenant Clarkson, please remember that you are speaking to an African."

  He smiled and shook my hand. "Best British luck," he said. "And if you should return from your mission, perhaps you will consider England."

  "If I go home," I said, "I expect to stay."

  God willing

  IN SEPTEMBER of 1800, just a month or so after the tornadoes and hurricanes of the rainy season had ceased, I prepared for the long voyage inland. I had a strong pouch of goat intestine, big enough for two pints of water, and it sat inside a pouch of antelope leather, just a little bigger, that I slung around my neck. This way, whenever I came upon fresh water, I could fill my bag. In another leather pouch, I brought along a sleeping mat, a pair of comfortable leather sandals, one change of clothing, and ten brightly coloured silk scarves from India, which I had purchased at the Company store. I expected that I might have to part with one from time to time, to pay for a favour. I had a pouch of chinchona bark, ready to boil in case I met with fever, as well as the leaves of a plant known to the Temne as tooma, which, when pounded, boiled and mixed with lime juice, was used to treat gonorrhea. This might increase my value to any suffering male who happened to be travelling with me for a spell. I wasn't sure what value coins might have inland, but I also brought along five gold guineas. If payment was required and the guinea was accepted, at least it wasn't heavy carrying. The guineas I interspersed in the clothing in my bag, so that the coins could not be heard tinkling against each other as I walked.

  I had hoped to travel inland within a few months of my first visit to Bance Island, but my waiting turned into six long years. In those years, the colony had been bombarded once by French warships, and had brought another wave of Negroes—hundreds of Jamaican Maroons who sailed from Halifax—just in time to use them to put down an armed rebellion by disgruntled Nova Scotians who still had no land and little say in the affairs of the colony. Still, somehow, Freetown lived on and attracted an increasing number of Africans—Temne and others—who settled on the outskirts, found work in town and eventually began moving into the town itself. The Nova Scotians of Freetown were never abducted as slaves, but over the years a few captives managed to escape coffles and canoes and find refuge in our midst.

  The Fula trader Alassane showed up at Bance Island only once every year or two, and I had to negotiate on and off with him for years before he agreed—for three barrels of rum—to take me to Segu, a town on the river Joliba that was only a few days by foot from Bayo.

  The Company governor sent me in a small shallop, together with a group of friends to see me off. In the trip across the bay and upstream to the island, I was accompanied by Debra, her daughter Caroline, Daddy Moses and by Anna Maria and Alexander Falconbridge.

  "If I were to offer you a British newspaper and a new book every week," Anna Maria said to me on the journey in the shallop, "would that persuade you to abandon this idea?"

  "No," I said, smiling.

  "Whatever you find," Anna Maria said, "you can't expect to find civilization on the scale of England."

  "If I were looking for England," I told her, "I would have gone with John Clarkson. I am looking for my people. I am looking for my home."

  Debra put her arms around me, as did Caroline, who was now seven years old and made me think daily of the children I had lost. I wondered if May were still alive, and what her smile looked like. I would have given my life and my future and even this journey home, just to put my arms around her, to see her face. But that was impossible now, and there was only one place left for me to go.

  Daddy Moses hugged me before I stepped off the shallop.

  "I am not long for this world, Meena. I bid you a fine journey home. I, too, will be going home soon. But I believe my journey will be less eventful than yours."

  "Say a prayer for me," I said.

  As I left the boat, Caroline, representing all my friends, gave me a wild straw hat with a blue peacock feather rising straight skyward. We all laughed, because everybody knew about my penchant for hats and scarves.

  Debra said, "It's so your dignity will remain intact as you journey inland."

  Caroline made me bend down so she could whisper something in my ear. "Inside the hat, toward the back, Mama and I sewed five gold guinea coins. In case you need them."

  I stepped off the shallop and waved to them all until they were out of sight. I believed I would never see them again, and spent a moment remembering all the people I had left behind in my migrations—enforced and elected. Then I walked up onto the slave island from which I had been shipped forty-three years earlier.

  Alassane arrived with ten canoes and fifty slaves. He unloaded the captives, negotiated with Armstrong and drank tea with him, then shook hands and stood up.

  "We leave," he said to me in Temne.

  "And I return home, God willing," I said.

  "Alhamdidilay," he said. God willing.

  My stomach stirred, and I wished I were twenty years younger.

  Alassane beckoned for me to sit in his lead canoe. Oarsmen rowed us upriver, past two slave factories run as Bance Island outposts. There were eighty paddlers in the ten canoes, with a coxswain in each. There was one drummer for the entire group, and a guide who consulted with Alassane. Before night fell, the canoes were emptied of rum, guns, shot, iron bars, cotton cloth and India silk. Alassane's men passed my payment of rum on to a local chief who met us at the shore. Alassane and the chief negotiated about the rum, and appeared satisfied with their agreement. The rum that Alassane had obtained from Bance Island came in smaller quantities— flat-bottomed firkins that could be balanced atop the head. Twenty of his paddlers became porters of rum, each covering his head with a thick woven mat and balancing a firkin on top. The guns, shot, silk cloth and other goods had been strung together, or wrapped in large plant leaves, and they were carried overhead by twenty other paddlers.

  Alassane was a tall, thi
n, serious man. His age, I suppose like mine, was hard to guess. If he had been a young man, capable of being my grandson, say, twenty or so, I would have worried about his honesty. But he was older—perhaps forty. I hoped that he had seen enough of life to want to honour his promises.

  Alassane wore a loose shirt hanging down past his waist and a thin, tight cap on his head and baggy trousers of white India silk. He stepped into sandals when preparing to trade with people or meet dignitaries, but at other times walked barefoot. The skin on his feet was orange and dusty, cracked in places but as tough as leather.

  He led the procession northeast through the wooded hills, and kept a team of scouts and hunters ahead on the trail to deal with snakes, leopards and other tribes. Alassane kept another five men around him—three in front, and two behind—who were also armed. Other than a knife sheathed to his hip, and a Qur'an hanging in a leather pouch from his shoulder, Alassane carried nothing. He indicated for me to walk behind the two armed men who followed him, making me the last person in the head group of travellers, before the eighty or so porters. The porters, too, were armed with knives and sabres, and some with guns.

  On the first day, Alassane gave me no opportunity to talk to him. He spoke from time to time with the men around him, and at one point I heard him mention me, in Fulfulde, to one of the men.

  "She wants to go to her village," he told the aide. "She says it is near Segu."

  I missed a bit of the conversation, and then picked it up again.

  "Stupid?" Alassane said. "No. She is clever. She counts and reasons and argues like a man. Be careful. She speaks Temne, English and Bamanankan."

  I had not told Alassane that I spoke Fulfulde, and had no plans to.

  Two hours before darkness fell, the procession stepped off the worn trail we were ascending in the hilly country, and set up a circular camp. A group of six men—three with whips and canes, three with cutlasses—beat the grasses to flush out snakes. They let out a roar of pleasure when a long snake slipped out of the bushes, coiling and hissing for the few seconds it took a cutlassman to lop off its head. Eight men scoured the land for wood, brought back armfuls, and within minutes had fires burning.