City of Dreams (35 page)

The potential buyer dropped his arm and shook his head.

The situation was the one the auctioneer had most hoped to avoid. The breeding of slaves was a business with little profit; children had to be fed and sheltered for too many years before they became productive. Most buyers paid a premium for any black proven sterile. A few, however, dabbled in what they called stock farming, breeding selected slaves and raising up the offspring until they were old enough to sell. Such men never bid until the very end of a transaction. They bought cheap and sold dear, and they showed their money only after every other option had been exhausted.

Every auctioneer in New York knew the breeders and located them in the crowd well before the sale began. This day there was only one present, standing alone to the right. The auctioneer looked straight at him. Waited. The man let a few seconds go by. Then, slowly, with an air of not caring much how things came out, he raised his hand. “Very well, I’ll do you all a favor. I’ll take the little girl for five pounds. Not a penny more, and you’re lucky to get it.”

The auctioneer grinned. “Thank you, sir, you have solved all our problems. Done, gentlemen. Well and properly done.” The hammer fell.

“Good God.” Christopher clutched Jeremy’s arm. “Look at her. She doesn’t know what’s happening.”

Amba hadn’t moved throughout the bargaining, and she was still motionless, still staring impassively straight ahead.

Jebbo took a step forward and reached for Phoebe. The little girl turned away and buried her face in her mother’s neck. Amba tightened her grip on the small body. Jebbo got hold of one tiny arm and yanked it toward him. Phoebe screamed in pain, then started to wail. Jebbo tried again. This time Amba twisted out of his reach, hissing at him while kicking fiercely at his shins.

“Told you! She’s a witch.” The voice of the original heckler was heard again. “Damn bitch should be ashes by now.”

Jebbo darted back, out of the range of Amba’s leather boots, and cracked his whip with a vicious snap.

“Give her a couple, Jebbo,” someone shouted. “Long overdue. Let’s see the color of her blood.”

Jebbo raised the arm holding the whip.

“Wait! Hold up!” Christopher shoved forward, shouting at the top of his lungs. “Let me pass! I’ve a better offer!” The crowd was surging, closing behind Christopher, sucking him into its depths. Jeremy made a futile grab at his sleeve. “Chris, are you mad? There’s already enough talk about you to—”

Christopher shook off his friend’s hold and kept moving forward. “Five hundred for the pair,” he shouted. “Five hundred pounds for the woman and the child together!”

The auctioneer shook his head. “Can’t be done, sir. The hammer went down on the other offers. Them’s the rules.”

“Yes,” came another faceless voice. “And the rest of us are waiting to do some real business. For God’s sake, man, get on with it.”

Jebbo had managed to get Phoebe away from Amba, and two of his assistants had hold of the woman. They pinned her arms behind her and held her suspended above the wooden platform of the auction block. Her kicking feet were of no use, and the curses she hurled at them had no effect.

Christopher was close enough now to actually look into her face. “Amba,” he called out. “Over here. Look at me.”

She heard her name called, turned her head. Their eyes met. “Quiet,” Christopher commanded. “Be quiet. You’re not doing yourself any good.”

She held his gaze only for a moment, then looked away, toward her child. For a moment her customary mask of stoicism disappeared and every bit of her anguish showed.

Christopher spun around and looked toward the rear of the crowd. “Cousin Will Devrey! I saw you back there. You’re one of the owners of this market, and you have a duty to your sister’s estate, and to your own kin. I’m offering double what the other two paid. What say you?”

Will swabbed at the sweat pouring down his face. He was standing near the holding pens, frantically waving at the man waiting to bring on a group of chained Fantis. “Get them up on the block,” he screamed. “Now.”

The Fantis began moving through the crowd, urged on by the cracking whips of the pen guards.

Christopher refused to be distracted. “What about it, Will? Five hundred pounds for the girl and her child. That’s more than twice what you’ve been offered. You can pay each buyer a premium for his disappointment and still make a bigger profit for the estate. How can there be anything fairer than that?”

A few of the men murmured their approval. The Massachusetts man who had originally bought Amba shouted that considering what he’d just seen he’d accept twenty-five pounds ill-use money and consider himself well out of the bargain. The stock breeder raised his hand. “Twenty-five will do me fine as well. If I get it, the hammer never came down.”

“Yes, very well!” Will shouted. “You’ll both get your money. Jebbo, give Mr. Turner the girl and the child. And for God’s sake, let us proceed.”

“Aye, that’s what we all say,” came a voice. “Let’s see some real slaves.”

The Fantis had reached the block and were starting to climb the stairs. Jebbo and his assistants prodded them into position.

“Prime!” the auctioneer shouted, turning to point to the new offerings now arrayed before the waiting buyers. “All prime! Come, gentleman, what am I bid?”

He’d all but beggared himself buying her, and now he was … What? Christopher was not quite sure.

Amba and Phoebe had been part of his household for three weeks, but this was the first time he’d been alone with the African woman, without Jane having first provoked the meeting, then lurking nearby trying to hear what Christopher made of it. This time, though he and Amba were in the kitchen in the rear of the small house, Jane was otherwise engaged. Christopher could hear her screams.

His wife had been in labor for nineteen hours. Tess Hancock was in attendance. According to Jane and her mother, Tess was the finest midwife in New York. Christopher had no reason to think otherwise, but the thought that it was his fault such a sweet and gentle thing as Jane was in such agony, and that he could do nothing to help, was driving him mad. Not to mention that while his wife labored he was sitting in his kitchen watching a black savage heat a kettle of water and thinking about the way her breasts rose beneath her calico frock. It was … Sweet Jesus, there was no name for it.

“You got that water ready yet?” The young woman burst into the kitchen already speaking, breathless from her race down the stairs, but she saw Christopher sitting at the kitchen table before Amba could answer. “Oh, Master. I didn’t—” The girl had been seasoned by Jane’s mother. She knew enough to drop a quick curtsy.

“It’s all right.” His mother-in-law had given them a pair of slaves for a wedding present. Shirley and Chassey were sisters who looked so much alike Chris could never keep them entirely straight. “Shirley, isn’t it?”

“That’s right, Master. Chassey, she be upstairs with Selma and Midwife Hancock.”

“Tell me, Shirley, how is your mistress?”

The youngster did not meet his glance. “She be doing ’bout as well as she can, Master.”

“Good God, what does that mean? Is there any sign—”

“Water,” Amba said, thrusting a steaming jug in Shirley’s direction. “You go now.”

Shirley grabbed the jug and turned to leave.

“Wait!” Christopher said. “What’s Midwife Hancock doing with all this water? Is your mistress bleeding? If she is losing much blood I must be in—”

“Go!” Amba said, waving both her hands at the girl. “You go. Now.”

Shirley ran from the room.

Amba stood by the door watching her.

“How dare you?” Christopher said. “You interrupted me when I was speaking to another slave, and you took it upon yourself to dismiss her. That is gross disobedience, Amba. You deserve to be whipped.”

She turned to him and smiled. “Mistress Jane make you son. He big and strong, fight hard. That’s why take long time to birth him.”

She always knew he wasn’t really angry with her.

Christopher gave up the pretense. “Very well. If you say so.” For once he stared not at her breasts but at her head. He liked the form of it. He had, he realized, never before seen the actual shape of a woman’s head. Amba’s was on display because two days after he brought her and little Phoebe home from the slave market, she had cut off all her hair.

“She’s hacked off every lock, Christopher.” The first of the bitter complaints Jane brought him. “With a kitchen knife, I’m told. I can’t believe Selma let such a one as Amba get to the knives, but she did. Now Amba truly looks like the half-tamed savage she is. You must discipline her. And have a word with Selma, too.”

Chris never told Jane that he quite liked the look of Amba’s very short and curly hair clinging to her skull. He found another excuse. “She says it’s the fashion among the women of her clan back in Africa,” he reported. “I can’t see that it does any harm, my dear. Amba does her work as well with or without hair, does she not?”

Perhaps, but Amba’s shorn head was one more thing that set her apart, one more thing that unsettled Jane, like the presence of the child. Amba, however, settled Christopher. That’s why he’d come to the kitchen looking for comfort when Jane’s screams became more than he could bear.

“You make me feel better,” he told her. “There’s no reason for it, but you do. Make me a toddy, Amba. Bring it to the sitting room. Midwife Hancock has Selma and Shirley and Chassey to assist her. Surely you can be spared.”

“Take off everything. I want to see you naked.” Dear God, what was he doing? “You have to do what I say, Amba. I’m the master and you’re a slave.” Christopher reached behind him and turned the key in the lock of the sitting-room door.

“Amba not a slave. Amba a queen.”

“Really? In your country you were a queen?” The notion went straight to his crotch. Everything about this exotic creature did.

“Amba woman of the son of king. Amba a queen.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s how it would work. But you’re a slave here. Now do as—” He broke off because there was no need to say more. Whether or not she believed herself to be a slave, Amba was removing her dress.

Her camisole came next. She pulled it off and threw it aside and paused a moment, long enough to smile at him. Then she stepped out of her petticoats. She was naked. And when she kicked aside the heap of discarded clothing the muscles rippled beneath her taut black skin. “You’re magnificent,” Christopher whispered. “Like … Like a queen. Yes, I can believe it.”

Amba stood very still.

He heard Jane’s voice. From the room directly over his head, where she was struggling to give birth to his child. “Noooo. . . . Help me! I can’t bear it! No!” Amba was almost as tall as he was, and incredibly sleek, like a painting of a leopard he’d once seen. There was no womanly softness about her. Her breasts were perfectly formed; they looked as if they were carved out of marble. He stretched out his hand and stroked them lightly, with only the very tips of his fingers. The flesh was more yielding than he expected, but her nipples grew hard and erect the moment he touched her. “You desire me,” he whispered. “That’s true, isn’t it?”

She didn’t answer but he knew it was true. Christopher put both his hands on Amba’s shorn head. It was as if he could feel her thoughts through his palms. In some ways the vulnerability of the almost naked skull was the most exciting thing about her. “I like your hair in this outlandish fashion,” he murmured. “There’s no reason I should, but I do.”

“Amba cut hair for you,” she said softly. “Show master she is queen.”

“So only royalty get to cut off their hair. I see. And do kings and queens among your people also do this, Amba?” He bent his head and kissed her.

Above them Jane shrieked, a long, wordless cry of anguish. “Push, child!” the midwife could be heard yelling. “Keep pushing!”

Christopher went down on his knees. His face was inches away from the curly black hair of her mound. He reached up, ran his hands over her midriff, her hips, her buttocks, her thighs. She stood very still and let him do whatever he wanted. Christopher bent his head back and looked up at her. She was smiling. “Lie down here,” he whispered, “beside the fire. Yes, that’s it. I like to look at you like that. My very own beautiful black jungle cat.”