I looked over the side of the ship, expecting to see Pa’s face in the green churn below. Buried there? Dropped below the waves, eaten by all manner of fish and bones picked clean by lobster and stingray? Washed up on some lost beach by a storm like the bloated remains I once found? I sank beside Patey. She took my hand, and as people moved around us, we listened to each other breathing for a while. Sadness o’erwhelmed me, yet I could not cry. I imagined our horrified mother, weeping inconsolably. I also imagined that without Pa, Uncle Rafe might never again be convinced to leave us alone.
After two more days of calm sea and warm food, many of the women had revived. Our clothes were ruined. Our hair hung matted against our gaunt faces, but we no longer stank of death from the hold.
With that much reviving, it seemed that all the prisoners save Patience and I began to take great heart. The third night they held forth with singing and some even danced jig steps to the songs. They sang and rocked, and stomped their feet. Some drummed on the casks and hogsheads in the aisles. Soon the women around us began to dance in a line. Two of them came to Patience and me, took our hands, and bade us walk with them. Patience walked but with no joy. I lifted my feet, trying to keep time. Around and around we went as the songs got louder. We circled and coiled through the small hold. The sailors heard from up above and did the same. They stamped their feet with thunderous noise, and the shouting became rhythmic. Reels from our island and from theirs blended together. African songs took hold, drowning out the English reel, and the drumming became loud and heavy and insistent as a beating heart. They held my hands and swept me into their rhythm, pounding, pounding my blood through my feet and arms. A smile crept across my face. The movement was earthy and fierce and lively.
Patience had pulled herself from the line and stood by the wall, her hands over her face. I jerked myself free and went to her. “Come and dance!” I called.
“No. I am not a slave that I should be dancing as they.”
“It is pleasant. It’s, it is diverting!”
“We are prisoners. I will not be diverted.”
“I am sorry, Patey.” I felt her sadness rolling over me, yet for no reason I could speak, I backed away from her and into the line of singing, dancing women. We coiled like a great snake through the tiny prison, until, sweating and ripe as old fruit left in the sun, the drumming stopped and we all sat where the drums stopped us. I panted against my arm. I knew that, as much as she could not, I must dance the sadness out of me, dance and dance. I raised my face from my arm and looked about me at the slaves in this prison. I thought of the nights I had lain awake in my bedroom, steamy nights filled with far-off drumbeats and the songs from the quarters, and I knew now why they danced. It made something in the chains and bars that held us demand our spirits to take flight. I would take that with me, I decided. That knowledge would abide. It made me feel larger than I had before. As if the bars did not, could not, contain me.
That night a quick rain washed the decks and drizzled upon us. I awoke and moved to a place where the water hit at my feet rather than my face, and saw Patience awake, too, her eyes focused on some distant dream. I leaned against her breast, she put her arms around me, and I slept.
After that time, the women talked more to each other. They included us, but just as often spoke as if we were not there. I learned things. I learned about what men and women do. Things I should not have heard, I suppose, yet they meant little to me and were so strange as to seem like tall tales and nothing more.
CHAPTER 3
October 17, 1729
The sailors treated the men on the other ships with the same food and physick that we had gotten. The privateers started dividing up the stolen goods. As I watched I could see that they had also divided up the Saracens. Some who had not been hung had been pressed or volunteered, and now served the privateers.
After loading the ships with food from shore, they lined us up, sorting us by age, I think, but in any case, Patience and I were placed in two different lines. Longboats unloaded a few of the men captives and took women from her line in their places. Patey and I looked from one to the other as Englishmen prodded some reluctant woman toward the railing where other women scaled the rigging down to the longboats which had come from the third sloop. The woman balked and spoke some language not English nor the patois I knew. While they fussed with her I sidled like a crab across the line and stood behind Patience. I felt the wind leave me as a blow I never saw coming pushed me back into the other line.
“Ressie!” Patience cried, rushing to my side. Women gave us wide berth.
“Patience!” I replied. We clung to each other and I buried myself in her skirts.
“Please, sir!” Patience said. “Please let us go together. We’re orphaned enough. Let her come with me or me with her!” She spoke to a man whom I had not seen before, one who sported a long, bushy beard and had come from the third sloop. He stood next to the man who had knocked the spine out of me. Patience said, “My brother waits in your ship, sir. I beg you by God’s grace. Will you let us go together?”