1
November 1821
Freetown, Sierra Leone, Africa
8.4657° N, 2317° W
Captain Christopher Hallorenhad never thought overly hard about the habits of poultry. His ships, of course, had carried many chickens and sometimes a goose or duck or two over the years. But the ship’s cook and his own man had always dealt with the creatures.
Of course, growing up on his father’s estate in East Anglia had not exactly prepared him for rounding up farmyard animals, either. He shuddered to think what his brother, the current Baron Rauschford, would make of him racing after the feathered fiends along a dirt road in a dusty town on the coast of West Africa.
His relative inexperience with flocks of said chickens probably explained his feelings of helplessness when he’d wrenched open Vicar Jameson Berry’s sagging gate at the rear of his Freetown vicarage. A veritable cloud of hens and a fair number of roosters had raced through the opening before he’d had a chance to react and slam shut the damned gate.
Hard on the heels of the surging creatures were two women, both shouting warnings, whether to him, the chickens, or all of them, he was unsure. From the harsh inflection of their voices raised in what sounded like native invectives in the Temne language, he hoped their ire was directed at the winged creatures and not him.
When they whipped their heads around to glare at him on their way out the gate behind the escaping birds, he realized he was in as much trouble as the chickens, so he did what any officer in the King’s Navy would do. He whirled and joined the women in hot pursuit of the escapees.
He deftly grabbed one of the creatures with his left hand and smiled in triumph before realizing he had no idea what to do with the squawking prisoner. The younger woman came close and shouted to him in perfect English - “Go around behind the flock and help us drive them back inside the gate.” Of course, that made perfect sense. What a dolt he’d been.
But when he managed a close look at her face beneath a wide-brimmed straw bonnet, he nearly dropped his clucking captive. Dark, blood-red ribbons tied the bonnet neatly beneath her chin and drew his gaze, but her eyes stopped him dead. Her clear blue eyes were like saucers of sky on a Cornish summer day, startling in her tanned face.
For a moment, he was disoriented. Why was she here, in this settlement of former slaves? Was she one of them, as her companion obviously seemed, or was she a mission worker? Her companion wore an odd, lavender top hat of sorts and a flowing, bright red print cotton bodice over a deep purple skirt.
He recognized the fabrics as similar to the ones he carried in the hold of his ship, manufactured on the looms of Lancashire and used for trade and gifts throughout African and Caribbean ports of call. The younger woman, however, wore a light blue dress similar to one he might see on a young lady shopping with her maid back on the streets of Portsmouth.
“I live here.” The sudden vehemence in the younger woman’s voice made him flush from his cheeks to his neck. Her hands balled into tight fists.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…” He trailed off, embarrassed.
Her darker friend, aiding in the chicken chase, interrupted. “What you try to say is you do not mean to stare. But since you stare in rudeness anyway, I must make your knowing of Miss Rachel Berry, daughter of Vicar Berry.”
For one mad moment, Christopher considered bowing low and introducing himself, but remembered in time the squawking prisoner in his left hand, not to mention the absence of his right arm, so he simply remained upright and said, “My humble apologies. Captain Christopher Halloren at your service, Miss Berry and, um?”
The other woman gave him a wide smile. “You. You can call me Mrs Chelly. Mrs Chelly, she be the parsonage cook.” She turned away from the stern warning look from Miss Berry.
Rachel gavean impatient swat at a fly that had landed in an open sore on the ankle of the man seated on a stool at her feet. Even though she surrounded herself and the patients with netting to keep the flies and mosquitoes away, the constant movement of freed slaves in and out through the flap closing allowed a few insects to fly through the gap.
The open sore was so deep, she could see part of the man’s bone. All she could do was use water from the spring to wipe the dirt from the wound and wrap it in linen gauze. Other than that, she would provide him a meal, some basic clothing, and hope he would heal on his own.
She’d long since run out of outrage at the treatment captives received at the hands of slave ship crews. The shackles used to restrain the hundreds of men, women, and children per ship were crudely made, probably to save the wealthy slave runners any excess costs. The edges were never smoothed over.
Even with the resentment which so filled her, it seemed to push against her ribs from the inside out, Rachel couldn’t keep her treacherous thoughts from turning back to the Royal Navy captain who had carelessly freed her flock of chickens earlier that morning. He lived in a world so far removed from hers, he could not possibly know the danger of releasing poultry into the middle of a hungry village.
Even though they’d come back to roost by nightfall, they might have in the meantime flown into the yards of other Freetown folk where they’d no doubt have ended up in that night’s stew pot. Her precious hens would have disappeared into bellies that were never quite full.
She kept her flock for their egg production mainly, and a number of new chicks each year. The eggs went much farther toward feeding the endless lines of newly freed slaves, or they could be used to barter in Freetown for other necessities for the parsonage. She never sent her hens to the stew pot until they’d stopped laying eggs. The meat was tough and stringy by then, but people at the edge of starvation did not care.
Rachel turned her thoughts back to the long line of men and women awaiting treatment and wondered if she’d be able to finish in time for the English language class at noon. After the class each day, Rachel, her father, and the other mission workers served a nutritious meal. Mrs Chelly, their cook, had been with her that morning when she’d met the captain,
Whether or not any of the newest settlers in Freetown were keen to learn English, the offer of a meal after the class always guaranteed attendance.
She wrapped the man’s ankle in gauze and motioned for the next patient to join her beneath the netting. After a steady twenty minutes of processing patients and sending them to her assistant who would find them a few pieces of clothing as well as several lengths of fabrics and basic sewing tools, Rachel looked up and smiled at the shortened line.
But then at the end of the line, near the open door where the sun threw heat into the room like a mighty furnace, there were two silhouettes outlined in the searing light. One of the men she knew to be her father. The other she noted with sinking displeasure. The block-like epaulette at his shoulder meant he was with the Royal Navy, most likely an officer and probably a captain, no doubt the irksome officer she’d encountered that morning.
Royal Navy officers and crew were necessary evils. They wrested the melting pot of tribal captives from slavers’ ships and brought them to Freetown. Many of them ended up at Rachel’s mission school. Although the English ruling class in Parliament had voted thirteen years earlier to end slavery on the high seas, they’d allotted few resources with which to accomplish the huge task.
Although the ships brought a great good, when in Freetown’s port, they also provided a lucrative market for the evils offered by some of the former slaves on the harbor front: taverns serving rum and houses where many former slave women offered their services as prostitutes. Even the crew and officers who were sympathetic to their cause were still a privileged lot who eventually would return to their comfortable homes on a cool, green island over a thousand miles away.
