THE BOOK OF NEGROES (39 page)

From the portfolio marked GUINEA, I removed the first map and spread it out on a table with two burning candles. It showed the typical paintings of half-dressed African men and naked African women, usually with baboons and elephants nearby.

Reaching again into the Guinea portfolio, I pulled out a piece of paper with flowery handwriting: “Copied from
On Poetry: A Rhapsody
, by Jonathan Swift, 1733.” And then I found the lines:

Elephants for want of towns.
I found it comforting to know that nearly sixty years earlier, before I was even born, Swift had expressed the very thing I was feeling now. These weren’t maps of Africa. In the ornate cartouches of elephants and of women with huge breasts that rose in unlikely salute, every stroke of paint told me that the map-makers had little to say about my land.

I pulled out the next map, and the next, and the next, but they were old maps with no details that I hadn’t already discovered. They listed the Grain Coast, the Gold Coast, the Slave Coast, and they showed some of the major ports, such as Bonny and Elmina. I always remembered that last one, because it sounded like my name. Finally, I pulled out the most recent map that I had ever seen of Africa. It was dated 1789, and printed in London. I saw slave ports again, such as Wydah and Elmina. But much farther to the northwest, I saw another slave port: Bance Island. I remembered that William King, the slave trader in South Carolina, had told me that I had been shipped from Bance Island. I could not tell if Bance Island belonged to a particular country, but the words “Sierra Leone” appeared slightly to the southeast. I studied the map more closely. Although there were still the obligatory naked African women with children on their backs, and monkeys and elephants—especially in the so-called “Zarra or Desert of Barbary”—I also found the names of a few inland towns. This
map had the coastal ports—most of them, it seemed—but also a few villages. From my childhood, I remembered my father promising to take me one day to the town of Segu. He had said it was about four days by foot from our village. And now I saw the name appearing a few inches north of Bance Island. I was puzzling over what four inches meant in real distance, when John Clarkson came back for me.

“Could we sit?” he said. “I want to have a word with you.”

I sat facing him, imagining that he had come to speak about all the work remaining.

“You asked me to look into your husband’s ship,” Clarkson said. “The
Joseph
, which sailed from New York when you were being evacuated.”

“That’s right.” I put my hands together, formed my fingers into steeple. Sitting my chin in the crook of my thumbs, I pressed my nose with my index fingers.

Clarkson cleared his throat. “The ship went down.”

I sat there, motionless.

“I checked with the British naval authorities,” he said, then coughed. “They have an office down the street. Manifests, records, ships logs—they keep all that.”

I couldn’t move or speak.

“The
Joseph
went down,” he said again. “It was blown off course in high winds. It was blown so far off course that it almost made it to Bermuda. But then, in a huge storm, it sank. Everybody on board was lost. The captain, the crew, the Loyalists white and black. I’m so sorry. But you did ask me to find out.”

“When did you hear about it?” I asked.

“Today.”

John Clarkson reached out to put his hand on my shoulder, but I recoiled from him and ran from Government House. I didn’t want to be seen or touched. I wanted only to be alone with the news.
Chekura
. My
husband. After such a long journey. Gone, on the very vessel that I should have taken.

I wondered how the ship had gone down. Perhaps it had been struck by lightning, or had flipped in the churning sea. Had my husband died quickly, or had he had time to think of me as the water swallowed up his body? I consoled myself by imagining that he had probably been helping somebody else. Holding a child, perhaps. So very many Africans had been lost at sea, and many more again had been lost on the way to and from the slave ships. And now … this.

Many times I could have died, yet I was here still, now on the precipice of yet another journey across the water. The first one had been involuntary. This one was my choice. Chekura was dead. Mamadu was dead. May had been gone for five years. If she was still alive, she probably didn’t remember me, and most certainly wasn’t coming back. I missed all three of my loved ones so terribly that my body, it seemed, was half missing.

I spent a morning in my room in the King’s Inn, emptying my grief into a pillow. Then I returned to help John Clarkson. I would take what was left of my body and spirit and join the exodus to Africa. There was nothing left for me in Nova Scotia. I imagined May showing up at Shelburne and asking for me, and this gave me trouble breathing. I tried to calm myself by holding a book, stroking its cover and opening to a random passage, which I read over and over until I was able to speak the words. No matter what the book or the passage, the matter of reading it out loud brought me to a simple truth that I had denied for years in Birchtown: I would never see May again, and it was time to move on.

WE FORMED QUIET, ORDERLY LINES on the docks in the Halifax harbour. Huddled in the wind and the rain, waiting our turn to be rowed to the ships, we spoke in whispers. One out of every three men and women had,
like me, been born in Africa. Including children, there were 1,200 of us. It took five days for the storm to subside. I boarded the
Lucretia
with John Clarkson, the ship surgeon and all the pregnant women and ailing adventurers. On January 15, 1792, our fifteen ships lifted anchor and set sail for Sierra Leone.

IN MY OWN SHIP, THE
LUCRETIA
, seven out of the 150 passengers died during the ocean crossing. John Clarkson himself nearly succumbed, choking on his own vomit during a storm, but was rescued. He remained bedridden for most of our journey, though he rallied as our ship sailed into St. George’s Bay on March 9, 1792. I scoured the green mountains. From my childhood, I remembered the profile of the lion’s back and head. Sierra Leone—Lion Mountain—rose up so sharply on the peninsula that I wanted to reach out and touch it.

I knew now that I had come, some thirty-six years earlier, from a slave ship that had left Bance Island. I had found the island on a map, and Clarkson had told me that it was in Sierra Leone. But until the coast with the lion-shaped mountain came into sight, I had doubted that I would truly return to the place of my departure. It had seemed too much to hope for.

The Nova Scotians hugged one another on the deck of the
Lucretia
and shouted praise to Jesus and to John Clarkson.

“Please, that’s enough,” Clarkson said, laughing but embarrassed.

“Tell us more about this land you’ve taken us to,” a woman called out.

“I’m afraid I’m like most of you,” Clarkson said, fixing his eyes on the coast. “I’ve never been to Africa before.”

I stared at him, and noticed others doing the same. It had never occurred to me that the man who had led our exodus from Nova Scotia had never seen my homeland.

To break the silence, one of Clarkson’s officers tipped a barrel and poured rum into glasses for the men and the women. I wanted no drink, felt no need for laughter, and preferred to stand alone at the ship’s railing. I pressed my hands to the wooden bar, felt the humid breeze on my face, and wondered what would become of me now. I had expected to be overjoyed, but instead felt deflated. Waves crashed up against the shores of Africa, yet my true homeland was still far from sight. If I ever did make it home, I knew the one question that people would ask:
Where are your husband and children?
I would have to confess that in the land of the toubabu, I had managed to save only myself.

The crossing had taken nearly two months, but our waiting was not over yet. While the fifteen ships in our flotilla from Halifax dropped their anchors and baked for three days in the African sun, Clarkson was rowed back and forth between our ships and a handful of others already in the harbour. I could see that they too flew the flag of the Sierra Leone Company—two clasped hands, one black and the other white.

I felt relieved, seeing that they were friendly ships, but Thomas Peters ranted about them to me and to any other passengers who would listen. Peters was fond of reminding us that he had been the one to make the migration possible, by travelling to London two years earlier to complain that the Black Loyalists were still without land in Nova Scotia.

But now Peters had something new to say: “What are all those ships from London doing here? This was supposed to be our colony. Our new life. And all decisions in our hands. But what are we doing? Waiting while Lieutenant Clarkson discusses our fate with other white men.”

Clarkson had hired a group of African men to row him about St. George’s Bay. We all stood on deck, admiring the rowers’ muscles and their sleek, smooth paddling, until Peters had a chance to put his questions to Clarkson.

“And who are those men?” Peters asked.

“They are the Temne, and they belong to King Jimmy,” Clarkson said.

“And who is he?”

“The local ruler.”

“And these men, what do they normally do?” Peters asked.

“They are rowing men, for carrying goods and people.”

“What kinds of people? Slaves?” Clarkson’s face began to redden.

Peters raised his palm. “No disrespect intended. Just tell us. Do those men row slaves in these waters?”

Clarkson coughed, and took a moment to compose his answer. While he was thinking, we slowly gathered around him.

“Thomas,” I said to Peters, “why don’t we all stand back a little and give the man room to breathe?”

“Thank you, Meena,” Clarkson said. “I have already told you that there are slavery operations in Sierra Leone.”

“But on our doorstep?” Peters said.

“Hardly,” Clarkson said. “On Bance Island, eighteen miles down the bay.”

“But Mr. Clarkson,” I said. Many heads turned to watch, because everybody knew that Clarkson and I got along well. “How,” I continued, “could you put us anywhere near a hive of slave trading?”

“It’s not as if we had twenty choices,” Clarkson said. “This is where we have operations. This is where we have negotiated with the locals. And this, at least, is removed from the activities of the slavers.”

I heard a few people cursing. I was happy that we had sailed close enough to Bance Island for me to see the shore and be sure that this was the land from which I had been taken. But I wished right now that we could drift another two hundred miles along the coast, in any direction.

Clarkson seemed to guess my thoughts. “At any place where Europeans have established themselves on the Guinea coast, you will find slave-trading factories. Nowhere is safer than this. Our mission is special, and our colony will be different. We will thrive with farming, industry and trade, and find our own ways to serve the British Empire.”

“We didn’t leave our homes in Nova Scotia to serve the British,” Peters said. “We came to Africa to be free.”

“That you shall be,” Clarkson said. “I have given you my word. Is this perfectly clear? None of you shall be taken as slaves.”

Peters fell silent. He had echoed my very concerns, but I reasoned that Bance Island was far enough away. If I could go where I pleased, I would never even have to see it.

“When shall we disembark?” I asked.

“Tomorrow,” Clarkson said.

We spent the rest of that day and all the next morning looking out at the lush green land in the distance, and were at the ship’s railing when we saw a new vessel drawing near. Clarkson stared through his looking glass and groaned.

“What is it?” I asked.

He handed me the looking glass, which I lengthened and adjusted. Peering through it, I spotted naked homelanders on deck. And then the stench engulfed the
Lucretia.
The stink grew as the ship drew closer. Some
of the Nova Scotians went below to their rooms, but I was transfixed. I didn’t want to see it, but could not turn my eyes away.

Clarkson headed for his cabin and returned to the deck dressed in his uniform as a naval lieutenant. The approaching ship had also prepared for the meeting: all captives had been sent below decks. The true nature of the ship could not be disguised, however, because the stink made us choke and gag. I knew exactly how the captives were chained in the belly of the ship, and I could imagine the running sores on their legs and the moans leaking from their lips. A white man was rowed from his ship to ours and allowed to climb aboard.

Clarkson exchanged handshakes, pleasantries and goods with the man. The lieutenant gave him three barrels of dried meats, and the slaver gave Clarkson barrels of fresh water and oranges. They shook hands as if they were friends. Later, when the man was being rowed back to his ship, Clarkson saw me staring at him.

“It’s best to remain cordial with the enemy,” he said.

“Why did you let that vessel go?” Peters asked him.

“Mr. Peters, I do not control these matters.”

“You are sanctioning the trade of men.”

“I received water and oranges from them—things that you and your fellow adventurers badly need,” Clarkson said. “Do you think I took those supplies for my own consumption?”

“Why did you not stop that ship?”

“Mr. Peters, this vessel is not a warship. Do you see any cannons or soldiers with muskets? Everything about me opposes the trade in slaves, but we have to pick our battles. We have come to establish a free colony—not to start a war with the slave-traders.”

I had not even set foot back on land and I already could see that nothing would be simple. I admired Peters for objecting to the slave trade. But for the time being, I felt that Clarkson was right. I had learned that there were
times when fighting was impossible, when the best thing to do was to wait and to learn. First we had to get off our ships, build shelters and find food. That night, while I watched from the
Lucretia
, dark clouds rolled in over the mountain. The skies grew black and starless. Lightning sawed through the clouds, illuminating the ships in the harbour and sending waves of thunder crashing across the bay. From the caves in the mountain, the thunder shot back at us, echoing over and over like cannons in the night. Many of the people on the ship were terrified, but I had not forgotten the storms, even after all these years, and I knew that they would pass.

BY THE THIRD DAY OF BAKING IN THE SUN, it became clear that the Sierra Leone Company had no plan for getting us off the boats. With just one rowboat per ship, it would have taken an eternity to move a thousand passengers and our belongings to shore. While I stood on the deck with the others, feeling that the
Lucretia
was less a liberating vessel than a prison at sea, I watched sixteen oarsmen row a massive canoe carrying a straight-backed homelander in a regal English chair. Behind him sat a coxswain, and ahead, a beating drummer. We heard the tam-tam rhythm skimming over the harbour waters before we could make out the faces of the men. King Jimmy was coming to pay tribute to John Clarkson, who ordered his sailors to fire twenty guns in salute and told us to address the chief as “Your Excellency.”

“Not on your life,” Peters muttered.

Thomas Peters stood erect beside John Clarkson at the top of the ship’s ladder, but the chief brushed past him, reaching out his arms to embrace Clarkson. King Jimmy greeted the white soldiers in English and shook their hands, but he refused, in his first moments, to even look at us. King Jimmy gave Clarkson fifteen pineapples and an elephant tooth in exchange for unwatered rum.

He looked at me and asked the lieutenant: “Your mistress?”

“I am old enough to be his mother,” I said.

King Jimmy guffawed, motioned at the Nova Scotians assembled on deck, and said, “King John Clarkson have many servants.”

Thomas Peters spoke up. “We are the Nova Scotians and we come as equals.”

The Temne chief wasn’t paying attention. Turning again to Clarkson, King Jimmy pointed to me and said, “Is she the one you tell me about? The African who knows more books than the Englishmen?”

John Clarkson frowned. I could see that he did not want King Jimmy to mock me.

King Jimmy looked me up and down and then sent a torrent of African words my way. I had no idea what he was saying. He burst into laughter and disappeared into Clarkson’s cabin to drink rum. Later, he bowed to me on his way out.

“One day you come to my village. How are you named?”

“Aminata.”

“One day you be Queen Aminata, wife of King Jimmy.”

“Thank you, but I am already married.”

“Where your husband?”

When I paused, King Jimmy laughed again.

“If he on other side,” he said, gesturing west across the water, “you free now.”

With that, he climbed over the side of our ship and down a ladder, got into his canoe and was rowed away.

It seemed absurd that my first conversation as an adult with an African in my own homeland should take place in English. Something about his bombastic nature, expressed in the broken language of the toubabu, made him appear to me more as a buffoon than a threat.

Within a few hours, King Jimmy sent men in thirty canoes to fetch
the Nova Scotians. Pulling steadily toward us, they resembled an army of rowers. I was glad that they were coming to help, but aware of how easy it would have been for them to wage war on us. When my turn came to climb into a canoe, I tried to speak to the young rower who sat closest to me. But he stared blankly ahead, would not even turn his head toward me. He did his job and nothing else—working with his mates to pull us smoothly and quickly to shore. And so it happened that the same men who rowed slaves to Bance Island carried us over the waters of St. George’s Bay and onto the shores of Sierra Leone.

JOHN CLARKSON STOOD UNDER A SHELTER erected out of old canvas sails, with twelve representatives from the Sierra Leone Company behind him and all of us gathered around him. Staying in one spot, I lifted my feet up and down, over and over, to feel the land under my heels. I pulled off my shoes to let the sand of my homeland slide between my toes. I was thinking that I never wanted to set foot again on a ship, and that I had just one journey remaining in my life—a long trip overland.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Clarkson said, “we shall call our new colony Freetown. My orders were to bring you here and then return to London, but the Company directors have sent a note from London, asking me to remain with you for a short time.”

Most of the Nova Scotians broke into applause, and I joined them. I trusted Clarkson more than any other white person, and I believed that he would do his best to help us in our new life.

Clarkson introduced the men behind him, explaining that the Company had sent them from London to manage the colony in Freetown.

“Can we not govern our own affairs?” Peters asked.

“Eventually, of course,” Clarkson said. “But the Company has invested
a fortune to bring you here and intends to govern the colony to ensure its success.”

Peters groaned. “We didn’t come all this way for more white man’s rules.”

Daddy Moses was sitting on a cart that had crossed the ocean with him. “Mr. Peters,” he said, “give the lieutenant a chance to say his piece.”

“Thank you,” Clarkson said. “Each one of you will have to give to the best of your labour. I must warn you that shirkers will not receive food, water, building supplies or anything else from the Company.” Clarkson instructed us to place our temporary shelters far back from the water, because prime land was reserved for wharves, stores, warehouses and company residences and offices.

Peters and a few men who were close to him shouted that they had not come to Freetown to build homes for Englishmen.