The Kingdom on the Waves Read online

  “We shall wait, madam,” I said, “while you set aside these ornaments.”

  “Two of you, step out,” she demanded. “The boat is too low in the water.”

  “We regret, madam, that we cannot remain on shore,” said Bono.

  Said I, “If it please madam, would she —”

  “Step out. Two. One, two.”

  We said we would not; she demanded that we should not travel one fathom without two of us remained behind. We protested with all the propriety we might. She would not compromise her dignity, and shrieked at us so that we might know it. The son sought to calm her — berating us for troubling her — and now the younger child began his bleating and wailing, that he would not leave his father’s house.

  The mother declared we should none of us leave, that she would not stir upon the river with such rogues as we; that none of us should use the boat.

  And so Olakunde stepped aboard, and Bono and I released our grip upon the wood. The elder son shouted curses at us, calling us dogs and curs, bastards, sons of whores, while his mother rebuked him, “Not in the presence of your mother. Not in the presence of your mother!”

  We left them behind us on the shore. We drifted away from the ruins of their house, and were upon the river.

  The light fell as we were swarmed down the Rappahannock toward its mouth.

  For a long while, we did not speak, but were all consumed in reverie.

  The farms upon the banks prepared themselves for evening. Maids drew water; boys drove geese before them.

  We progressed past forests, pine woods upon the shore; and in their depths, where the dying sun hardly shone, spied a glimpse of a steep rise through the branches, mounded earth, secret paths through red needle and hillock seen briefly, then shadowed. There is no young man whose heart is not led on by such vistas, and doth not ride post before him to sweet, lonesome dells bannered with sunbeams and choired with crickets; then further, to the woods where the great Nations of the Cherokee and Shawnee have their home, so dear in the imagination of romance, hunt, and hazard; then on to the mountain pass, hard won; to the grasslands; to the fabled painted cities of the West in their vast plains.

  “We must find a place,” said I, “where we can begin anew.”

  No one replying, I said to Bono, “We must seek a place where we can vow to live in more perfect unity.”

  Bono said softly, “There ain’t such a place.”

  “Row,” said Clippinger.

  “I shall find us such a place,” I said.

  Bono rowed, for his were the oars; and at each draw upon them, water spilled into the dinghy, the lip being so close to the surface of the river. Olakunde and I bailed with our cups and our hands, which vessels were too small to stop the wavelets that splashed over the gunwales and dashed fore and aft, aft and fore, across our feet in rhythm with the rowing.

  “Damn this boat,” said Bono. He rattled the oars on their tholepins. “It’s rotten. The wood’s all eaten. Look ye, see when I pull? Warps. You see there? Gentlemen, we is taking on some ugly water.”

  “Row,” said Clippinger.

  We could not judge of distance, nor of speed; nor note even the undulations of the shore, since to the eye upon the water, the shore looks one gathered rank, drawing to it all islands and coves so that they cannot be seen distinctly. We could distinguish no streamlet, no jetty, and all distances seemed one. No solid contour was certain, but all devolved with the evening into one crabbed mass, gnarled and dark beneath the moon.

  The shore was dark; but the river, bright. As I bailed and Bono rowed, I vainly sought to gauge our passage through the waters, to measure the subtle articulations of current and tide and how they contributed to the flexing of the river’s vast musculature across which we slid, rising and falling with that flexion, passing through gentle vales and over knolls which every moment dispersed and regathered, until there seemed no solidity anywhere, but simply the blind will of motion.

  Slowly, the boat grew lower in the water.

  “I don’t know no swim,” said Olakunde.

  The boat began to founder. The water lapped the thwarts. Olakunde no longer bailed, for fear of the element roiling all around him; he gripped the gunwales and sat inclined as if the dinghy barreled down a slope.

  Bono had, through his exertions — the boat being well nigh intractable, now swamped — snapped off the rowlock and a stave of the gunwale, wet with rot. We used the oars as paddles, now, perched on either side of the boat; but the hull would not support us for long.

  Clippinger swore at us at first, calling us fools; and, when he saw that this booted him nothing, grew fearful as the boat dipped lower in the current. He demanded we row to shore, there to steal another.

  This course was not unwelcome nor unwise; we beat toward the land.

  “I don’t know no swim!” Olakunde repeated to us; and for his sake, we paddled the faster.

  The boat all but sank as we approached the bank. Tripping and lifting out Olakunde and the sack of muskets, we floundered through the water to the grass, captives again of the grosser elements. We drew ourselves out of the river and lay for a moment at rest.

  The only course which remained to us was to abandon our late conveyance and seek another. This agreed, we started along the shore.

  For ten minutes, we passed through fields in the moonlight.

  At the end of that time, we spotted a modest house and made our way toward its dock, where we hoped to find a suitable boat.

  We were passing near to the house when a voice hailed us; and we found a man stood before us with a fowling-gun; his daughter stood beside him. He wore a hunting shirt and a look of discontent; his girl was perhaps sixteen, and regarded us with distrust. Her hand was upon her father’s back.

  Clippinger, considerably discomfited by this vision, exclaimed, “Sir! Good sir! Some supper!”

  This exclamation startled us all; but Clippinger repeated his request, and added that he should pay handsomely for a meal for him and his captives, explaining that we were escaped slaves who he transported in the name of the Virginia Assembly, and he begged some small repast for us.

  ’Twas a small house, likely without servants, but the owner was generous. He assented joyfully, declaring that he should always be pleased to aid the cause of liberty. He suggested that Clippinger tie us up to the hitching post and come in; but Clippinger, with a sharp look at Pro Bono, replied that he should prefer rather to sit with us while we ate, because we was rascals of considerable science and deepness. The man guided us to a lean-to in the yard and bade us all wait while he requested his daughter heat us some mash. Before he departed, he congratulated Clippinger and the Virginia Assembly upon the glorious move to indepedency and a nation free entirely from England’s yoke; which bewildering commendation Clippinger had the good sense to nod to without further response.

  So soon as our host was gone, we began a fierce whisper, discussing the man’s meaning, which was, clearly, that the Colonies were voting to cast aside the King entirely, a thought shocking in the extreme.

  “They can’t simply declare independency,” said the Serjeant. “A child don’t simply declare he ain’t a child of his father.”

  “This is chaos,” said Bono, and shook his head. “A universal jumble.”

  “In Oyo,” said Olakunde, “if the King is a good king, yes, good. If the King is a bad king, then basorun and people say, ‘No more.’ He must take poison. Special poison, in eggs. He die.”

  “That,” said Clippinger, “is utter savagery.”

  “I see,” said the gentleman of the house, standing in the door, “that you disputes nicely with your slaves.”

  “I says they was deep ones.”

  “Real deep ones,” said the man, laying corn mush on the table. He set down a sausage for Clippinger. “You took their bonds off?”

  “Don’t want to cut them too much,” said Clippinger.

  “I see,” said the man. “One moment, and I has some water.” He left u
s once more.

  No sooner had he stepped away than I said, “Something is not well.”

  “No,” said Bono.

  Clippinger did not speak, but opened the bag and gave us our wet muskets. We lay them upon our knees beneath the table in readiness.

  Clippinger had no sooner distributed the firearms than the man returned, holding his fowling-piece charged.

  “I hear word,” he said, “that a few miles up that way, they lost some Ethiopian devils.”

  “These is some of them,” said Clippinger. “I found them.”

  “You ain’t who you seem,” said the man.

  That was all.

  It does not take long to die, nor to kill. A life is present or absent, and it is an instant passed between those extremities.

  We made show of force; he resisted. He was intent on fighting and alarming the whole neighborhood. We could not have done other than we did, for he screamed, and in one moment more, would have discharged his piece and thus roused the countryside.

  ’Twas Bono killed him, I still believe, though ’twas my bayonet, inexpertly applied, which became lodged between his ribs.

  When he was dead, we ate. His body lay beneath us. We devoured great mouthfuls of the mush with our hands. We had eaten almost nothing for two days.

  We divided the sausage and ate it in one bite each.

  Our gruesome repast was completed in two or three minutes; at which point, Bono asked, in a voice abruptly blanched, “Where’s Clippinger?”

  Indeed, the man was gone.

  Bono swore. We took up our guns again, wiping our hands upon the table to rid them of mush. We set out in search of our Serjeant, whispering his name.

  The yard was dark. Fireflies played over the field. I progressed down toward the water, believing that Clippinger had perhaps gone in search of a boat. I did find a scow overturned by the water’s edge, but could not find Clippinger himself.

  I was sensible of the possibility that our Serjeant was fled and had deserted, this being by far the most likely occasion for his disappearance; for, I reflected, he had little to return to, did he travel back with us to Gwynn’s Island. He had not our dire incentive for the success of that Regiment — a noncommissioned officer in a hated regiment in a precarious fastness only a few hundred feet from a growing and volatile enemy.

  From my first sensations at the thought of his desertion — a relief that we might not have him in our company longer — there quickly followed the transports of unease, and then desperation, for I reasoned that, did he wish to desert, he should have to deliver to the rebels some token of his new fidelity — and a party of black men who had just committed the murder of a white man would be no unwelcome prize to lay at the feet of our persecutors. This, I reasoned, surely, was why he had slipped away so quickly. So ran my logic; and having seized upon these probabilities, logic gave way to steep fear.

  I made my way swiftly back toward the house to find my companions and abandon this place.

  Upon reaching the house, I saw that the door into the kitchen was open, and thinking to find the members of my party within, I gathered myself and stepped cautiously in.

  Here found I Clippinger. He was with the daughter of the murdered man.

  I cannot describe the scene.

  She was upon the table, weeping; Clippinger had out his knife, and as he labored with her, he whispered to her not to scream, lest her father hear — though Clippinger knew full well that her father was beyond all hearing.

  The girl perceived me in the gloom and cried out. Clippinger turned from his work, clutching his breeches. Observing me, he started; and then, seeing it was an ally, smiled and said a thing I shall in no way repeat.

  I said nothing.

  Having spoken, he turned back to his prize. Again, the table walked shuddering upon the floor.

  I stepped toward him, and he withdrew. He stepped away from the girl. He spake to me again, this time in warning.

  I did not reply; he threatened.

  I drove my bayonet deep between neck and head. He fell backward, but could not dislodge himself from my weapon. His blood, it seemed, filled the room.

  My hands could no longer support the gun with him upon its tip; they dropped, and he fell against the wall and then slid to the floor. I believe he was, by the time he reached the ground, lost to all sensation. His corpse continued to bleed.

  The earth of the floor was brushed in pretty patterns; flowers and vines picked out in dirt to ornament the rude kitchen.

  The girl and I regarded each other for a moment. Our looks were full of hatred, not for any deed, but for the witnessing of deeds.

  I did not speak to her, nor she to me. I turned to find Olakunde in the doorway.

  He and I left her. We left her to make her way past the body of him who had assaulted her; we abandoned her before she discovered the body of her father.

  We went out into the yard, which was full of flat night; we heard an urgent whisper from the side of a shed, where we found Bono awaiting us.

  “Where’s Clippinger?” he hissed in fury. “Where is that whoreson?”

  I opened my mouth to speak; but only silence issued forth. Again I assayed a response; this time, there was a low growl, a hideous, rasping gargle in the throat.

  Bono said, “You seen him?”

  I could not speak. Tears or something similar interfered.

  Olakunde stepped forward. He said, “Died in battle.”

  Bono looked from one of us to the other, taking in the full dimensions of this scene. He asked no questions, but came and put his hand on my arm.

  In the house, the girl began sobbing and screaming for her father. She believed him still alive. We did not wish to hear her find him.

  We went to the riverside, where lay the boat. We set it upon the Rappahannock and cast off. We were free of the land.

  Bono rowed us far out into the middle of the river, and then let the current take us. We drifted between the banks.

  I saw on the shores all of the farms where slumbered slave and master alike. I observed their ordered fields beneath the moon. I saw the vast systems required for their industry: the river upon which we floated, where ketches carried bricks for the construction of house, dairy, and kiln, and shallops drifted, heaped with hay; and where busied the fleet involved in gathering grain and tobacco and conducting crops out to the Bay and beyond, to the open sea.

  As if in a vision, I saw the coasters and Guinea-men upon the ocean, plying the waters for transmission of goods. I saw the West Indies, where bonded men slashed at the cane, that we might eat our sugar dainties; and the East Indies, where sepoys walked the walls of fortresses and Redcoats in full woolens charged a Newar’s army, screaming beneath the blaring sun, and thus secured our tea.

  I saw Africa, all the places told of in Olakunde’s tales: I saw the fortresses of Accra, the forest states of the Gold Coast, the markets of Algiers, the entrepôts of the grasslands where translators bartered for Ashanti cloth, for the girls of Mahi, for amulets and Awka metalwork, for kola nut and potash. I saw the great herds of the Fulani; and the camel caravans of the Tuareg, laden with salt, leading slave coffles through the bright desert to the Ottoman kingdoms of the north, sand keening off the dunes. I saw the slave-weavers of the Sudan; the child-warriors of the Moroccan sultan; Efik musketeers scampering at dawn into Ibo villages while women screamed alarm; forest wars declared simply to render up captives for sale. And upon these scenes remote did rum distilleries here depend, and teahouses in Philadelphia, and Carolina rice plantations, the account books of Liverpool and the fine equipages of London, Parisian silk-sellers and the seamstresses of New-York, the Customs House on Boston wharves, the proud estates on the Rappahannock.

  All these things saw I; and I saw that everything hath its price, and all are in fluctuation, no value solid, but all cost as they are appraised for use; and there is use for all, and constant and relentless exchange. How much, asked Slant, is a man’s life worth? A pregnant child upon th
e docks doth cost less than a fine dress she might wear two years later; and luxury is earned by being wrested. (And the women walk upon the lawn, arm-in-arm, as the gardeners stoop before them with blooms.)

  And I saw the Earth as the sun rose; and it was a world of fire, of particle, spark, and æther consumed and exchanged, no solid place to stand; and we were creatures of fire, loops and bright coils devouring as we could in serpentine chase, exhausting until ourselves extinguished; and all shed superficies, and clutched to renew, and preyed upon all.

  Within me, a small, still voice urged, It need not be thus; but what could that signify? For I am hungry, and must devour to live.

  We passed down the Rappahannock, and at dawn, came to the Bay.

  We arrived back at Gwynn’s Island this morning, the 4th of July. When we reached the isle, rowing between the great ships of the floating town, coming to rest upon the dirt of the beach, our return was greeted with no emotion of surprise or elation; save later by our close familiars, who wept to see us again, and wept for those who did not return with us. Nsia greeted her husband with shouts; and then they grew silent. They were too solemn for speech. Dr. Trefusis embraced us, weeping.

  Works upon the isle proceed as ever: still the futile fortifications, though the rebels glower high above us from the shore. The Otter sloop-of-war is hove to and careened in the channel while it undergoes repair; men crawl upon its belly, scraping at barnacles and repairing the work of the worm. Governor Eden of Maryland pays his respects to Lord Dunmore, exiled from his Colony, and I hope they made a pleasant supper of the collapse of all authority and safety together.

  There is weariness and defeat upon every face. Among the sickly, great numbers are dying. There is scarce time to bury them. There are no memorials to these entombed upon the island, save crosses drawn upon the brown loam, which †’s serve the Christians for hope even when racked; and serve the heathens as a suitable sign of the mountain of the living reflected in the lake of the dead. There are many buried there.