Rachel put two fingers over the young woman’s lips. “Quiet your wild imagination, and go to sleep.” Rachel smiled in the darkness and lay back down. She realized Tenneh’s words were statements, not questions, and she resented the fact that her father’s maneuverings to throw her together with the captain had not gone unnoticed, even by her young student. However, she loved the girl next to her like a sister and leaned over to brush a light kiss across her forehead. “If I ever leave the mission, it will be for a better reason than my father’s fears I’ll be alone when he’s gone.”
Mrs Chelly moved quickly,with purpose, through the undergrowth next to the mission’s outdoor kitchen. When she emerged at the edge of the road skirting the jungle, she fell into the waiting arms of a tall man who carried a machete tucked inside his belt.
He ended their embrace abruptly and held her away from him, peering closely into her eyes. “What news of the girl? When will she be by herself and far away from the mission school?”
Anger flicked quickly and burned in her chest. “The girl,” she spat out. “Always the girl. Maybe you no longer care about me?” She stepped back a few steps, nervously eyeing the broad knife in his sash. “Maybe you never cared about me.”
He snatched her back and slammed her so close to his chest, she could hear the slow, steady beat of his heart, and smell the stench of onions and garlic on his breath. “All you need to know is we want the girl. If you get in the way…” he touched the blade in a slow dance of his fingers before jerking her up a path into the jungle.
3
Chris took the steep steps up to the stone government building two at a time, stretching his long legs in his rush to get to the Prize Court hearing on time. The judges always frowned at latecomers.
A lot depended on keeping these particular judges happy. They had the power to reward, or destroy, all the hard work he and his crew on theHMSThistlehad put in over the last year.
He’d hoped for an early start that morning, but some crew behavior problems had delayed him. He’d had to mollify the proprietor of a harbor inn where several of his men had fallen into a drunken mill the night before with crew members of a Portuguese ship in the harbor. He’d instructed his purser to pay a portion of the damages which they’d have to deduct from the men’s pay. In addition, he’d had to leave instructions with his Bo’sun for the sailors’ punishment. He’d had them secured in the ship’s brig until he could return from Prize Court.
For him, seeing human beings released from the horrors of slavery were enough, but the men of his crew did not come from a wealthy, privileged family like his…an abolitionist family like his.
His share of the prizes over the years had provided a comfortable side income, but money alone could not make up for the long hours and deadly fevers of the endless shores of West Africa, shores that from a mile or so out to sea were nearly indistinguishable.
He relied heavily on his African sailors. His navigator’s mate, Nebe, was uncanny in his ability to know exactly where to set in toward the shore to find an inlet where slaves would be embarking onto slave ships. Most of those ships flew the flags of all the countries refusing to join England’s anti-slavery efforts, even though their owners, or final destinations, told a different story.
“Chris…” He turned toward the familiar voice of a fellow squadron captain, Arnaud Bellingham. Their ships had been swinging at anchor near each other in Freetown’s harbor. He’d brought along one of his Marines, Lieutenant Bourne. Good idea. Chris had thought about bringing one of his men as well, but had forgotten in his rush to get to the hearing on time.
The city of Freetown had grown quickly with the influx of released slaves over the last decade. There were now at least ten thousand residents in the city. In addition, there were neighboring, indigenous tribal members who lived in outlying villages and moved in and out of the city to trade and sell their wares. Freetown’s streets could be welcoming, or not, to the Royal Navy.
Not everyone in that part of Africa appreciated the anti-slavery work of the Royal Navy. Many tribes, and even former slaves in the area, remained actively involved in clandestine slave trading activities.
He hurried to Arnaud’s side and slid into the pew-like seating next to him. Just as the other captain leaned close to whisper a welcome, three men in long robes filed into the front of the room from a side door and the court bailiff rapped hard against his wooden desk. “All rise,” he intoned. Chris and his fellow officers stood while the man rattled off the names of the judges who would be deciding their fates that day.
In the wake of England’s latest treaty maneuvering, the prize judge panels were now from multiple nations. The one hearing their adjudication that day would be the British, Spanish, and Portuguese Mixed Court of Justice.
The Spanish judge finally spoke after the room had quieted and his voice was so low, Chris had to strain to hear him. He and Arnaud were both fluent in Spanish after many years of service in the Mediterranean, but even Arnaud gave him a quizzical look. He was having about as much luck as Chris at deciphering what the man was saying.
Rachel stoodin the midst of a swirling mass of chickens with feathers of hues ranging from white to auburn to black. She flapped her apron filled with a quantity of grains and seeds culled from the large mission garden behind the parsonage. She could afford to repeat the ritual only twice a week, but felt she needed to vary their diet of bugs for which they constantly foraged.
Her mighty flock provided eggs for the mission staff as well as the hundreds of newly released slaves who passed through her school every week. In her frugal rationing, she spared only three chickens per week for the pot which she stretched to provide stews and pies for the multitude of hungry former slaves. The meat they stewed in the kitchen behind the church she carefully shredded from the bones and then boiled the bones further to create a broth she could turn into soups to which she added greens and yams.
Although her hens were meant to sustain them through hard times, she couldn’t help seeing them as her friends. The roosters who managed and protected the flock were ferocious creatures who ran off predators and set up raucous warnings when danger was near, like a snake sliding into the coop at night to steal eggs. But for the most part, her precious hens had loving, individual personalities, and she couldn’t help giving them names.
She made a slight clucking noise with her tongue against the back of her teeth, and a hen with speckled black markings on white feathers moved close to peck at a special portion of pumpkin seeds she’d saved for her. “Abile, Abile,” she cooed. “You are a proud lady who pretends she needs to be coaxed to take her treat.”
When the hen neared to pluck at the seeds in Rachel’s hand, she gathered her up against her side and stroked her feathers while the bird enjoyed the seeds at her leisure. “What would you do, Abile? Would you be kind to the handsome officer to please Father? Or would you be nice to him because he pleases you as well?”
The hen kept cracking the seeds and whuffing out an occasional satisfied “buck, buck, buck.”
She imagined the conversation was with her mother instead, whose face faded from her memory a little more each year. All she could remember now of her mother was a beautiful face…and a soft bosom she could hide against when her father was in one of his drunken rages. And her hands…her mother’s hands.
The memory of her mother’s face might fade, but her hands she’d never forget, because they were the same hands Rachel used every day to prepare the corn meal cakes for breakfast, feed her poultry flock, and turn the pages of the hymnal while she played the tinkling, out-of-tune old battered pianoforte one of the British officials had donated when he’d moved his family back to England.
Her father’s actions were puzzling, but she grudgingly admitted he was right. Her position at the mission school was tenuous at best. She’d never been formally trained by the missionary society back in England, and she had no idea what would happen to her if her father died suddenly. Any vicar sent as his replacement would surely have a family of his own and would expect Rachel to find accommodations elsewhere.
When Abile finished her seeds, she began screeching and accusing Rachel with loud squawks. “How can you be such an ungrateful hen? Why I scrape out gourd seeds for you every week I do not know. No matter how hard I work, your special treat is never enough. You are a greedy little hen.” In the louder squawking that followed, she nearly missed the low question from Captain Halloren who must have stolen through the gate without a sound.
“Do you think she truly understands what you’re saying?”
Rachel jumped, embarrassed he’d caught her murmuring endearments to one of her hens. Her ears burned at her very next thought. Had he heard what she’d said about him? Did he know how the sight of his tall figure striding through her chickens made her heart hiccup in a strange, syncopated beat?
