The Kingdom on the Waves Read online

  But I see now how sedulously she labored to create her illusion; for she knew it should protect me only so long as I believed it. The tale of my royal parentage was all that kept me from abject slavery. She spent her life weaving it, in comfortably deluding me, that I might wear the lie as proof against all injury.

  Present or no, the royal blood of Oyo, of the Egba, was not the great birthright handed down to me. It signifies little, whether I am scion of a noble line.

  Her lie was her last gift to me. It was not a rebuke or a mark of ill-favor.

  The lie was my great inheritance.

  And if there standeth my mother in a gown of China damask, and beside her, her tiny little son, twig thin, regarded by the whole of the company as he playeth solemn tunes upon the violin, applauded by all assembled — then see there, back against the wall, Pro Bono, some eleven years of age, dressed in livery, taught the lessons of silence and obedience. He hath been sold at eight from his mother’s side, and now must daily watch another boy enjoy coddling, plaudits, and idleness. He must serve the tot at table; he must rise and see the princeling is dressed in finery; he must listen to the mother’s fatuous tales of Africk royalty, knowing that all that debars him from these pleasures is a story likely knit out of fancy; keenly aware that the darling of all eyes is no more or less than he.

  Now know why he might pinch that child upon the arm when no one observes. Now know why he might wish to offer his protection, and at the same time, revel in the look aghast in those wide eyes as the full dimensions of their prison are revealed.

  I lie upon my mattress in the night and listen to the idiot slap of water against the hull.

  February 1st, 1776

  “Bono,” I pressed, “do we know absolutely that — the scene of my conception —?” (My mouth could not utter the words.) “Might she have been pregnant before she was taken upon the ship, as she always averred? Did she speak to you ever of my parentage? Whose child I am?”

  He was not easy with this questioning. “Reckon I don’t know,” he said.

  “She told me my father was a prince.”

  It was shortly after the bell rang for the close of morning watch; we paraded the deck by company for the exercise of our limbs. The sky was dark: gray clouds above black ruin.

  I owned, “For some years, growing sensible that some part or whole of her narration was not founded upon the firmest bedrock of veracity —”

  “Ha,” said Bono.

  “For some years, I feared I might be Mr. Gitney’s child.”

  “Now, that is a fate worse than death. If that be true, you should consign yourself to the waves this same moment.” He gestured carelessly over the rails. “Especially if that nose come out late in life.” His jest made, he amended, “You ain’t Mr. Gitney’s child. Understand? Dr. Trefusis says she was big with child when she arrived.”

  “Which signifies what? Six months following conception? Seven?”

  He shrugged his shoulders, saying, “Don’t rightly know. She was a skinny little thing; could have been three months and she was already big with child for aught I know.”

  “You calculate it could have been as little as three months?”

  “But the College could’ve boughten her at any time after she showed: seven months, eight, nine. Any.”

  “How long lasts a transit across the Atlantic?”

  “Sweet mercy, Prince O., I pray you, don’t torment your own self. You ain’t going to find a father through numbers.”

  “We know not what transpired while she was immured in the slave castle.”

  “I reckon it takes like to two months across the Atlantic, but that’s from England, and no stopping. Your mother, she went to Jaimaica or Barbados or such and then up the coast. So longer. What does that tot up to? And then there’s winds. I can’t recall, but it’s faster going the one way than the other. Because of winds.”

  “So I could be the child of a sailor.”

  “Or a jailor. Or another captive. Or a prince. Or a king.” With a great look of sympathy, he pleaded, “Don’t worry your own self this way, Prince O. I am asking, because I will tell you, you ain’t ever going to know the answer. First moment you’ll know who made your body is when you leave it behind and can pose a few sharp questions in the avenues of Paradise.”

  With an anger my companion little deserved, I replied, “I wish to know who I am.”

  And with some irritation, he responded, “Then recall that you enjoy the fiddle and Scots tunes and them Italian trumperies and you enjoy treacle tarts and, when it rains, books where men in fine dresses throw spears at each other’s feet. Recall you got a friend you once called Pro Bono and you got companions you call Slant and Pomp and Will, and they call you Buckra, and in the enlistment rolls, you’re named Private Octavian Nothing. Because we ain’t anything more than a name and some likes and some distastes and a story we tell about ourselves.”

  “And what others say about us.”

  “If you want them stories heaped in, too, then you’re welcome to them. And we’re a body; and sometimes the stories and the name, they live on after the body — and sometimes the body lives longer than the name or the story, though that ain’t for aye, especially if”— and here he raised his voice —“a set of FOOLS confines you to a ship rotten with PLAGUES.”

  We circumnavigated the deck in our rows.

  February 2nd, 1776

  Last evening, a cannonade from the ships; to what purpose, we have not been told. We can divine no meaning nor strategy.

  This day, the first smallpox sores appear upon the sick.

  The day was consumed in bringing water to the afflicted. There is a miserable shortness to our supplies of that indispensable element. Pomp, who suffered the sickness as a child, circulates with me among the afflicted, bathing them comfortably and urging them to resist scratching and worrying at the sores, lest they rupture.

  I recall too well the stench of this affliction; it resembles no other smell. It recalls me intolerably to those final days in Canaan.

  Slant is in great anguish at the apprehension of the fever. He moves in perpetual agitation.

  February 3rd, 1776

  Suffering a head-ache and a poor stomach; we are all besieged by petty illnesses, trapped as we are upon this ship.

  For nigh on two weeks, our clothes have seen neither water nor soap, and they are now considerably enstyed by the muck of the deck and the contagions of the air. Thus, ’twas with general acclamation that we greeted the arrival of two women to collect our laundry this day. Though I harbored a desire that I might see Dr. Trefusis as a result of this necessary visit, and spend an hour indulging in book and debate, he was not permitted to accompany the washerwomen; my disappointment being most agreeably mollified, however, by the appearance of Miss Nsia.

  Private Draper’s child, who hath for several days been quartered with us upon the Crepuscule, would not remove his shirt for washing. I was down upon my haunches, speaking what reason I could to him — Master Thomas, I pray you remove that shirt and put on this — a debate wherein I argued that he did not want, did he, to be a mere frigate for mites and chiggers — and he replied that ’twas his best shirt and he weren’t giving it; he didn’t mind no mites; they was his mites; and so my coaxing turned to pleading; and his complaining turned to obduracy — at which juncture Miss Nsia and Pro Bono appeared at my side, and I was confounded in silence, abruptly sensible of how my head-ache dulled my wits.

  “He won’t yield up the shirt?” said Pro Bono.

  I shook my head, and half rose to deliver a bow to Miss Nsia, but could not fully rise nor fully sit; and so gave over and squatted as I had been.

  “He is,” said I, “on most days, a charming child.”

  “’Cepting he probably brought the mites on board with his mama,” said Pro Bono. “That’s what I heard.” He said to the boy in play, “It’s lucky you’re so prodigious sweet-faced. Otherwise we’d all feed you to them sharks for introducing fleas.”

&
nbsp; “Where’s the sharks?” asked the boy.

  Pro Bono pointed aft, toward the sailors; Master Tom swung his head in delight and horror to observe the most dangerous of fishes; at which Miss Nsia swooped down, seized upon the child, and commenced tickling his sides, whispering, “A fingery bite! Them sharks has a fingery bite!”— to which the boy squealed and laughed — she growling, “They got wiggly teeth and loves that meat under the arms! ‘This boy eats fine! Most well-tasting child I eats for three weeks!’”

  “It’s owing to he’s garnished with lice,” said Pro Bono. “They makes a fine amuse-bouche for the king of the sea.”

  My heart swelled at the sight of Miss Nsia’s considerable powers brought to bear on this giggling child; and it was with delight that I watched this tender and familiar scene, in which natural compassion was so leavened with sportiveness. But no sooner had I entertained visions of this delightful charm being brought to bear upon me, than I realized that Pro Bono and Miss Nsia, now struggling the child out of his shirt as he writhed like a fish, were grouped like parents; whereas I sat apart, my head aching, my adoration unmatched by any powers of persuasion or address.

  Tom Draper was changed into a wide, long shirt that trailed upon the ground. His other, stained, was in the bundle of laundry to be washed, and he, delighted with the game, was running through arched legs to find his father.

  Bono noted my sadness; he watched my eyes upon her.

  Together, the three of us collected the shirts and breeches from such as were afflicted with sickness, all lying together in the stern. They were slow to move and shivered in the cold before we wrapped them again in blankets. Miss Nsia turned with nice discretion as Bono and I lifted off their smocks.

  When she bade us farewell and retired, I entreated her to forgive me my lack of animation, adding that, between illness and fear of illness, I was not in much countenance to speak fluidly; but that the restorative powers of her presence had rallied me.

  “Private Nothing,” she said, “you makes a pretty little speech right there.”

  When she had gone and we were alone, Bono adopted a tone of utmost seriousness, and said to me, “I withdraw all claim upon her, Prince O.”

  With some misery, I prayed that he should do no such thing, for in her looks and speech her admiration for my companion was clear.

  Bono shook his head. “I would truly like to see you dew-eyed in love,” he said. “’Cepting you’d be lyrical. All hollyhocks and wee folk skipping in the barley and ain’t it like what Plossitossitus says about the return of spring.” He put his hand upon my shoulder and rose. “In earnest, I withdraw my claim,” he said.

  Said I, “It is not for us to decide.”

  He thought upon this. “A true word.”

  “She hath made her determination.”

  “You don’t know that, surely.”

  “Her eyes speak of her favor.”

  He argued not, but brooded; he was as sensible as I of the marks of her regard. I should perhaps have found gratifying a little more polite resistance to my observation, but he offered no feint; he denied not her favor and accepted his lot with alacrity. Had I not been beset upon by other anxieties, I would have been more galled by the speed with which he laid aside his professions of equality in the contest; but being consumed with exhaustion at our ministrations, I merely observed in defeat and humiliation his assumption of the bays.

  He looked fore, toward her retreating form, and said, “She is monstrous fine.”

  I nodded, my head beating with its ache. “Private Williams,” said I, “there are more sicknesses than the smallpox, and we endanger ourselves by resting in the vapors.”

  “Aye,” he said. “I don’t cut so excellent a figure when I’m vomiting. I bend from the waist, and it interrupts the line of beauty.”

  Thus we removed ourselves as best we could from the ring of contagion.

  February 4th, 1776

  Today, I instructed Pomp, Slant, and Olakunde in reading and writing. I do not regret pulling out the leaves of this book to make a lesson-book for my friends, though I approach its end: Their pleasure and assiduity repay me. In the last several days, in our idleness, Pomp and Olakunde have learned the better part of the alphabet; and Slant, though he hath not brilliancy of parts, excels in generosity of spirit and humility of demeanor, which makes him a ready student.

  This day, when we were finished with our lesson, we swapped the tales of Africa and Europe: Olakunde told us of Ogun, the god of iron, beloved by smiths and warriors; which potent deity was despised by the other orishas for teaching man the mysteries of the forge and smithy; and I in return told them of Prometheus, similarly condemned, and of lame Hephæstus, blacksmith of the gods, toiling in his Ætnan gulph.

  For Pomp, who begs tales of horror and enchantment, Olakunde recounted tales of the red monkey who with withered lips enounced sacred knowledge to the oracles of Oyo. He spake of the cults of the forest demons, whose wails could be heard in the bush when the brotherhoods met in convocation. He spake of the ghost societies who worshipped the dead, which spirits returned, said he, caparisoned in the feathers of many birds, and speaking in tones too low for mortal throat; or faceless in grave-shrouds, walking between the huts and crooning of judgment. In such a humor, he told us that his city was oft called Oyo Oro, “Oyo of the Ghosts,” and so it seemed to us as he spake: empty alleys of mud, tenanted only by the gray dead and the frigid moon, as the living lay slumbering in their houses, or shivering in corners in the greatest transports of fear. And as he spake of these things — the crying in the woods, the dead returned — one could observe Pomp’s pleasure in the fear of it, as he painted for himself the swamp where once he had kept cattle, and peopled that desolate bogland with horrors.

  And I rejoiced to hear of this city too, for hearing these nocturne tales, I might glimpse the place in daylight, too, this capital of my mother’s land, half heard of in trivial mentions, unadorned and unmajestic: women in the marketplace; goats tied to the cam-wood tree; the pepper stews for which Olakunde yearns; groundnuts and cassava; the sun-graced courtyards where livestock brays and where, in the morning, the head of each household greets his patriarch by prostrating himself, touching cheeks right and left to the dirt, as women recline on their elbows.

  These are the tales I wish to hear.

  Olakunde narrates always with looks of the greatest solemnity, but raveled deep in his demeanor is his joy in telling these tales, and to an audience so delighted with his testimony.

  He tells us also the wonder-tales of travelers from other realms in Africa: of the men of the Upper Coast whose teeth are pointed; of the great cities of the north; of desert Taghaza, where the houses are built of salt with roofs of camel-skin. He told us of a king who fought wars across the Niger by releasing fleets of birds trained to hurl arrows. He told us of the Emperor of the Ashanti, who sits every day beneath a tree of gold, upon a sacred stool of gold, with his feet in a basin of gold, his skin glistening with a paint of tallow and gold, surrounded by troops of royal pickpockets, cats, and a hundred albinos. Olakunde told us then of the yam protocols of the Ashanti, wherein all of the noblemen of that country must arrive in dignity to pay their respects to the Emperor; and as each processes through Kumasi, the capital, he must sacrifice a slave in each quarter of the city, the blood running into holes where the yams last grew.

  I expressed surprise, that slaves should be sacrificed thusly; to which Olakunde nodded and replied, “In Ashanti, true. In Dahomey, true. Before, not so many slave kill. Now so much war, the orishas so angry in they bellies, and the kings say, for buy slave, only a few cowries, only small gold . . . Now many prisoners. Kings know true price.” Thus these rites where slaves are slit, where executioners dance slowly before the Emperors, drumming on skulls with their knives. So learn I of that continent’s wonders, and of its terrors too.

  Slant doth not speak as we tell tales, for he claims he hath no tales to tell; but he frets away all hours when he is not on deck,
certain that he shall inhale some fatal breath, and every occupation for his anxious mind we can offer him is gratifying to him. It is my suspicion that he is too sensible of how words desert him to tell tales in company; but I wish ardently that he should speak freely. He sits with eyes fixed upon the speaker, mouth open, limbs motionless save for the hands, which pace and wheel upon his knees.

  On some occasions, Will joins us and listens; but he does not speak ever. He asks no questions and offers no tales, deprived of his antic companion, with whom the recounting of incident was a joy.

  And for myself, I lie in my hammock at night and whisper the names to the darkness: Dahomey, Taghaza, Sankore, Accra, the ancient realm of Songhai. I know not where lie most of them in that vast continent, but I must reclaim the names I would have heard in stories, had I grown up amongst those cam-wood trees, those wattle walls, instead of that gaunt house in that cold city on the Bay.

  There is a power in names. Olakunde told us of ashe — the power which runneth through all things, subtle and flexile, which finds its most potent expression in human utterance; so that it is a terrible thing to call down imprecations upon an enemy, or to wish for anything but good, for what is said out loud is forged into truth.

  So tonight we sat and told our tales: Olakunde of Oyo, Pomp of marshy cunning-men and revenants, and me of Greece and Rome. Slant and Will listened; and even Bono, when he was by, hearkened some and quipped. What signified was not the tales we told, commonplace or fantastical, but the gestures, the silence of friends as another recounted.

  If, through utterance, ashe may claim us and make what we say true, then this, in recalling these nights of fable, is what I speak loudest, what I declaim to the listening firmament: