Journey of Strangers

by Elizabeth Zelvin

  “Let us take a look at you,” Yenenga said.

  Joanna and Brou, the baby still tightly wrapped to her back, cleared the ground of coconuts, broken branches, and other debris and laid down giant palm fronds for the three strangers to lie upon. Nunke and Yenenga helped them to lie down. One looked dazed and kept shaking his head, which streamed with blood. Another screamed aloud when Nunke inadvertently touched the burns on his hands. The third winced with pain every time his foot touched the ground and moaned when Yenenga laid an experimental hand on his ankle.

  “You are safe now,” Yenenga said. “We will help you. Lie still now.”

  “What are your names?” Nunke asked. He repeated the question in several languages. Then he pointed to himself. “Nunke.” He pointed to each of his companions in turn. “Brou. Yenenga. Joanna.”

  The man with the head wound closed his eyes and did not respond. The burned man nodded weakly but did not speak. Finally, the man whose ankle was injured pointed to himself and to his companions in turn.

  “Mishambo. Nkonde. Shanda.” He added in Portuguese, “The gods were angry.”

  “The gods saved you,” Yenenga said. “You are safe here.”

  “The ship? The whites?”

  “Gone. They drowned.”

  “Good.”

  One of the others asked a question in his own language.

  “Our people?” the spokesman asked.

  “Also drowned,” Yenenga said.

  “We are sorry,” Joanna added.

  “Rest now,” Yenenga said.

  Days passed before the strangers were well enough to be helped up the track to the encampment. By that time, all of the others had come down to the beach to see the newcomers at least once. A few had common languages with the strangers, who talked eagerly when they found they could tell their story and seemed to recover more rapidly once they knew that they had reached not only safety but also freedom.

  “How did it happen that you were not chained?” Joanna asked Mishambo one day. He had the best command of Portuguese and was quickly learning the hybrid language of the band.

  “Their greed undid them,” Mishambo said. “They took more slaves than they had chains, for the slavers at Elmina complained constantly about the cost of the iron they must replace when they ship their captives on.”

  “You were fortunate,” Joanna said. “We are all survivors.”

  “I knew I would not drown,” Mishambo said, “once the fires broke out. I am a child of flame. That is the meaning of my name.”

  Some brought the rescued men gifts: a hunk of smoked fish wrapped in banana leaves, a cowrie shell, or an article of clothing from the community’s small store. This generosity, after they had waited, hopeless, naked, and starving, in the dark hold and then endured the fury of the storm, expecting death at any moment, moved the newcomers to tears. Joanna shuttled back and forth, bringing whatever Yenenga needed, since the feiticeira would not leave her patients.

  Finally, there came an evening when the whole augmented company could feast around the fire in the encampment. By common consent, a pig was killed and an abundance of bananas and coconuts laid out. Mawuwo and Fafale, grinning, brought out a small store of palm winewith whose manufacture they had been experimenting in secret.

  “It has not had time to age,” Fafale said.

  “But it will make you sing,” Mamuwo added. “All but Fafale, who cannot sing no matter how drunk he is.”

  “He cannot,” Kwaku agreed, “no matter how strong the palm wine is. I have heard him try.”

  When all had eaten and drunk their fill, Kwaku and N’goran drummed on instruments made of pigskin stretched over lengths of hollow log. The others danced around the fire, singing praise to their various gods. Joanna watched, sitting on a log, her foot tapping to the drumbeat. She smiled when she saw Brou’s baby fast asleep, still bound to his dancing mother’s back.

  Still later, all sat in a circle, firelight illuminating their gleaming faces as the flames crackled and danced on a bed of glowing red coals.

  “Let us remember our homelands,” Yenenga said, “and the people we were born to, though we may never see them again. I am Yenenga. I am Mossi.”

  “I am Kwaku. I am Ewe.”

  “I am Babune. I am Ewe.”

  “I am N’goran. I am Baule.”

  “I am Brou. I am Baule.”

  As those in the circle named themselves and their tribes, they seemed to Joanna to sit taller, their eyes to grow brighter. The newcomers sat together.

  “I am Mishambo. I am Mbunda.”

  “I am Shanda. I am Mbunda.”

  “I am Nkonde. I am Mbunda.”

  Now all the others had spoken. Everyone looked at Joanna.

  “I am Joanna. I am Jewish.”

  The enlarged community continued to flourish. But all seemed reluctant to call the encampment a settlement, and not only to avoid reminders of the hated Povoação. Some of the men continued to urge a foray to the settlement, either to raid it or to instigate a slave revolt. Others talked of building rafts and striking out for the mainland, where they might find their way back to their various tribal lands.

  “How hard can it be to build a raft of logs and vines?” Babune asked.

  “Not as hard as making it carry you over a hundred miles of ocean in the direction you wish it to go,” N’goran said.

  “Or swimming fifty miles to shore,” Yenenga said, “if it sinks in the middle of the sea.”

  “Even half that distance is too far to swim,” Mawuwo said, and several of the others nodded in agreement.

  “Do you know how to swim, Babune?” Joanna asked.

  “No, but I can learn,” Babune said with a broad grin that bared his broken teeth and set the tribal scars on his cheeks to dancing. “Mishambo, you will teach me.”

  “It is all very well for you,” Nunke said, “but I have a baby to consider. And I do not have Mishambo’s juju against drowning.”

  “After the passage here,” Fafale said, “I vowed I would escape or die before I let them put me in another slave ship. Drowning is not the alternative I had in mind.”

  “Mishambo, if we do this thing,” Babune said, “are you with us?”

  “I am not ready to trust myself to the great water again so soon,” Mishambo said. “Good juju can run out.”

  The other Mbunda nodded assent, as did several of the others. A man of powerful presence, Mishambo had gradually taken on a leading role that only Yenenga had held before his arrival.

  “First, I must see this settlement,” Mishambo said. “We must consider our brothers and sisters who are still enslaved. Why have they not risen and killed the whites? Perhaps they lack only a leader. I am a warrior!”

  “You are a fool,” Yenenga said. “Have you not yet learned that we cannot stand against the white men’s guns and swords?” Mishambo folded his arms across his chest and glared at her.

  “Yet I am here,” he said, “and the white men who carried me across the sea are not. We would take the guns and swords before attacking.”

  “Easier said than done,” Yenenga said. She spat into the fire.

  “Why can we not stay,” Brou asked, “and make this a true village, make it our home?” She wiped the baby’s milky mouth with a corner of her cloth and tucked her breast into its folds. “The whites do not even know that we are here.”

  “Is that true?” Shanda asked. “How can that be?”

  “The forest is thick,” Nunke said, “too hard to clear for their plantations, and the mountain lies between us and the settlement. They have never come after us, not even on the beach. If they knew, they would.”

  “And when people disappear,” Nkonde asked, “as you did?”

  “They think us drowned in the swamp,” N’goran said, “or killed by the cursed creatures of the island: venomous snakes, lizards with teeth like knives, insects whose sting gives deadly fevers. Stay far away from the swamp. There is no good in it.”

  “Stay far away fr
om the settlement, I say,” Mawuwo said. “It would be folly to let them know that we are here. Now that we make palm wine, we have everything we need. The people there are weak and frightened. They would not rise. If they had any warrior spirit left, they would at least have seized their freedom, as we did.”

  “You did not seize it,” Mishambo said, “you crept away like lizards.”

  “There speaks one who has not seen the Povoacão,” Babune said. “Even if you could take it and kill all the whites, which you cannot, you would still be stuck on this cursed island. It is better to build rafts and leave.”

  “I say build no rafts,” Nunke said. “Even if they do not sink, what if the current brings you ashore on your enemy’s doorstep? It was not white slavers who raided my village. First I was taken captive in war, then I was sold to the whites.”

  “You would rather cower in this clearing for the rest of your life?” Babune said. “I say let us build a raft and try. Who is with me?”

  “To leave while so many black men and women remain in bondage,” Mishambo said, “is the coward’s way. Who is with me?”

  At this point, the men started shouting. Joanna slipped away. She entered her hut and sat huddled with her arms around her knees.

  “Ko ko ko.” It was Yenenga’s way of knocking at a hut that lacked a door.

  “It’s all right, Yenenga.” Joanne tried to put welcome into her voice.

  Yenenga ducked through the doorway and crouched beside her. She laid her hand on Joanna’s knee.

  “You are discouraged,” Yenenga said. For once, she did not tease Joanna by speaking plantation pidgin. “It is hard for you to be here. You are the only white. You are farther from all you have ever known than any of us. And you do not have a man.”

  “You don’t have a man,” Joanna pointed out.

  “I do not suggest you get one,” Yenenga said. “But you are lonely.”

  “It is not that,” Joanna said, “or not entirely. After all they did to me on the ship and in the Povoação, it is a relief to be alone. But what is my purpose, Yenenga? Did Ha’shem put me here to eat and sleep and perform the tasks of survival from day to day and nothing more? It is not enough, Yenenga! Yet there is nothing more and no way out. This island will be my grave.”

  “You are not inclined to join Babune’s venture?”

  “Of course not. Even if it succeeded, which I cannot believe it will, what would I do in Africa?”

  “And what about Mishambo’s plan?”

  “If he attacks the settlement,” Joanna said, “he will get himself killed and jeopardize the safety of every one of us. Do you think he is just talking, or will he try?”

  “I do not know,” Yenenga said.

  “Why do you let him take charge the way he does?” Joanna demanded. “Everyone listens to him now. You are a natural leader, Yenenga, and you have much more common sense.”

  Yenenga grinned and patted her knee.

  “Of course I do,” she said. “I am a woman. And having common sense, I prefer healing and even sorcery to being a leader. I do not wish to spend my time trying over and over to get a pack of fools to change their minds.”

  “Do you not think he will tear the group apart?” Joanna asked.

  “Were you frightened when they started shouting?” Yenenga asked.

  “Not frightened, but it made me feel discouraged. If we must stay here, we must become a village, as Brou said. We must have accord. If that does not happen, our future looks bleak indeed. How do you keep your spirits up, Yenenga? Have you never fallen into a melancholy, a mood of despair?”

  “What you call melancholy is a luxury, child,” Yenenga said. “I have never had a moment to spare for it. Come.” She stood gracefully, extending her hand to Joanna. “Let us go and pound foutou. It will put your muscles to work and your mind to sleep. And men must eat. Let them use those active mouths to chew and swallow, not to argue.”

  Chapter 43: Diego

  Our days at sea fell into a rhythm. We rowed. We fished. The Muslims among us unrolled their rugs five times a day and prayed, facing the stern, for we were now northwest of faraway Mecca. When a brisk breeze arose, we hoisted our sails and scudded along for a while, giving the oarsmen a needed rest. We also sailed at night. The incessant rippling gurgle of the ship cleaving the water and the beauty of the bellying sails under the great bowl of a starry sky reminded me of nights aboard the Santa Maria. This too was a voyage into the unknown. With the stars to reckon by, only the helmsman needed to stay awake at these times. Miguel told me that on the corsair galley, the slaves had been chained to their benches in pairs, that one might sleep where he sat while the other rowed.

  As we drew nearer to Gibraltar, tension mounted. All aboard Esperanza now knew that we planned to pass through the Pillars of Hercules and sail south upon the ocean. We would brave waters unknown to any save Portuguese navigators and slavers, for even Amir had never heard that any of the tribes south of the Great Desert were seafarers. I had not passed the gateway to the Mediterranean before. Cadiz, where we had embarked for the Indies, lay beyond it, and we had sailed south to the Canary Isles, set in the ocean off Africa’s northwest shoulder, before heading west. Spanish Gibraltar faced Portuguese Ceuta across the strait, guarding the only entrance to the Middle Sea. The strait itself was only nine miles wide at its narrowest point. The question was not whether we would encounter other vessels but how many and whether they would accost us or let us pass.

  The first galley to bear down on us flew the flag of the Knights of Rhodes, a white cross on a red ground. We had taken care to display no insignia ourselves, and none of the men wore turbans.

  “Keep rowing,” Amir ordered, “but do not increase your speed.”

  “We do not wish them to think that we are fleeing,” I added. “Let us do nothing to arouse their suspicion.”

  Once they came near enough, they hailed us in Italian, Spanish, and English.

  “Declare yourselves!”

  “The Esperanza,” I shouted back in Castilian, “out of Cadiz and on our way home with a cargo of fish and a quantity of soap from Marseille.”

  “Soap?” Amir, beside me, raised his eyebrows.

  “You once knew the same soap makers that I did,” I said, “the Espinosas of Seville. If they have questions, we can answer them, and I doubt such a cargo will arouse their cupidity.”

  “That ship you’ve got there is a little beauty,” one of the Knights shouted, also in Castilian. “What do you call her?”

  “An experiment,” I called back. “My cousin the shipbuilder swore he would buy our whole catch if we tested her out for him.”

  “I know Cadiz,” the Knight shouted. “What’s your cousin’s name, and what chandlers do you use?”

  I laughed under my breath as I called out a string of names. I had dealt with all of them while outfitting the Admiral’s fleet.

  A shout from his own ship’s stern distracted my interlocutor’s attention from Esperanza. A larger galley with a couple of masts had appeared on the horizon.

  “From her size and shape,” Amir said, “she’s a merchantman out of Venice, perhaps carrying spices, silks, and gunpowder to the Venetians’ Spanish allies. If the Knights have piracy in mind, that’s a far better cargo than fish and soap.”

  The Rhodian ship was indeed coming about and setting a course for the Venetian.

  “They might simply greet her as an ally,” I said.

  “Or that might be what the Rhodians want her to expect,” Amir said. “Those Knights are a rapacious lot even for Christians.”

  A shout from Esperanza’s bow drew my attention from the ships behind us to a round ship under sail approaching us from the west.

  “Another merchant ship,” Amir said, “this one Portuguese. She might be carrying sugar from Madeira or almost anything from Lisbon to Ceuta.”

  “Do you know every vessel on the Mediterranean?” I asked.

  Amir grinned.

  “Akdeniz, the White Sea, is my
hammam,” he said.

  “Hail her, Miguel,” I said. “Ask her what’s the news from Lisbon.”

  “Look to port!” Musa cried. His arm still being weak, he often served as lookout.

  Two galleys with the distinctive long beak and painted hull of Ottoman vessels appeared from the direction of the African coast. Both were moving fast, oars flashing. Ignoring us, they separated, one making for the Venetian merchant ship, the other for the Portuguese.

  “Hoist all sail!” I cried. “Let us make a run for it while they are distracted.”

  The men leaped to obey.

  “You said that Venice and the empire are not at war,” I said to Amir. “Is this to be a boarding or a battle? In either case, let us put distance between us as quickly as we can.”

  “War is never far away in these times,” Amir said. “Venice has been the sultan’s trading partner in the past. But they have fought as well. Venice led the league that chased the French out of Italy, calling it but a prelude to using the alliance to fight the Turk. The sultan will not tolerate that for long.”

  “Captain!” Musa cried. “The Knights come after us!”

  The Rhodian galley had abandoned the fray to pursue us, rowing hard.

  “The pious corsairs will not defend their fellow Christians,” Amir said. “Men, I want every square inch of those sails filled with wind!”

  “Why do they pursue us?” I said. “We have no guns, no riches they can seize, no passengers to hold for ransom.”