Silver

by Andrew Motion

  Why did I feel this so certainly? Because of what I saw when I looked more carefully at the stockade. I reckoned it must be fifty yards long, and fifty wide. On either side of the open ground were the two log houses, one much better built than the other, with a shack leaning against its sidewall for a purpose I could not immediately decide. Midway between them, and occupying the heart of the place, rose the large fan shape I had previously seen from the Nightingale. Now that I was looking from the landward side I could see it resembled a court—with a chair (or throne) in the center, a dock below, and on either side two benches that might be filled by a jury and an audience.

  I might not have so soon deduced the purpose of this structure, had it not been in use—and as I began to comprehend this use, I also understood why other activities in the camp were all suspended. Seated on the bare ground before the court, and arranged into separate rows of men and women, were the Negro inhabitants of the island that yesterday I had seen suffering at the hands of their white-skinned masters. They were even more shabbily dressed than I had thought—wearing rags where clothes covered them at all—and all wretchedly thin and slumped and dejected. Even the few children struggling free of their mothers’ arms had a listlessness that made them seem sickly. Sickly and terrified, since very often their rambles were blocked by the five or six white men (though their skins were very stained with dirt) who wandered around the compound. These men held long bamboo sticks, which they occasionally slapped against their legs with a menacing insouciance—or poked into the shoulders and backs of those huddled at their feet.

  Natty, who lay beside me so quietly I had not even heard her breathing, now turned to look at me: our faces were inches apart. A leaf fragment had glued to her cheek, but in the movement of her skin when she whispered to me, it fell off.

  “Is this a trial?” she said.

  I nodded.

  “Who are these people? Where have they come from?”

  I gave a grimace and a shrug, which told her that I did not know, then said, “The ship?”

  Natty frowned, but slowly, to show she thought this was a possibility—then we resumed our watching.

  At the distance of some thirty yards, we were too far off to hear exactly what was being said. The general sense, however, was easy to understand. In the high throne sat, or rather lounged, a judge—a large, foul-looking villain with a greenish cocked hat on his head and a fuzz of gray hair reaching as far as his shoulders. Directly beneath him, and previously unnoticed because he stood very still, was a figure in absolute contrast. This fellow wore sailor’s trousers, a shirt that had once been white but was now brown as a biscuit, and a short blue jacket that flapped open to reveal a sword at his waist. His face showed a complete lack of expression and was as pale as a cadaver’s—except for a russet smear that ran across his throat.

  I assumed this must be some trick of the light, and turned instead to look at the accused. This wretch stood lowest of all in the construction, with his hands tied in front, and his eyes switching between the companions sitting on the ground before him, and a third and very confused-looking pirate, who paraded before the empty right-hand bench, tossing out occasional remarks and otherwise mumbling to himself; he wore a very battered old hat, with one of its cocks fallen down, and a handkerchief underneath to protect his neck from the sun. I thought by the way this man swayed against the rail that ran alongside him that he was probably drunk.

  The whole spectacle was so sordid in its parody of justice, and so genuinely menacing, my first instinct was to scramble away, and return as fast as possible to the Nightingale. To judge by the soft groan she gave, Natty shared my feelings. We all did, I am quite certain. Yet we were bound to stay—to spare ourselves the risk of discovery, and because we were caught (though I am loath to admit it) in a web of fascination. What were we about to see?

  I did not have to wait long to find out. As though he had suddenly tired of hearing so much mumbling from his “barrister,” the judge abruptly hauled himself upright in his seat, clapped his hands, and barked loudly enough for his words to carry to our hiding place: “Enough, Mr. Jinks. I have heard enough.”

  A gasp rose from the Negroes crouching on the ground, which made their guards move among them more quickly, lashing out with their sticks like boys knocking the heads off nettles. The meaning of this sound was entirely clear. It was a gasp of terror and disgust.

  Everything now followed with a sickening appearance of regularity. The judge straightened himself once more, so that he was almost erect in his place, and shook his hair away from his face. He then leaned forward, tapped the white-faced fellow below him on the shoulder with his right hand, and with his left drew a line across his own throat.

  The noise of the crowd now changed from gasping to groaning, despite the blows whipping down on them. The cadaverous man paid no attention. He descended the rickety steps of the court until he had reached the accused in his dock, then seized him roughly by the arm and dragged him forward until they stood side by side on solid ground. The contrast between them was dreadful to see. One slim and pale and passionless, but with a shine of purpose about him; the other dark and skeletal, with his knees pressed together and his head sunk between his bare shoulders.

  The moment held them—and in my memory has never ended. In truth it finished soon enough, with the white man grasping the other by his wiry hair and forcing him to kneel, then drawing his sword with a flourish, pausing in an attitude of monstrous relish, then sweeping it downward. While it fell, a great cloud of birds rose from the shore beyond him, screaming and circling in the air. The blade sliced through the victim’s neck as if it were made of water.

  All the breath left my own body in the same instant, and as my head sank forward I found myself looking closely at the earth—at the grains of mud, the leaves, the roots wriggling through the soil. This had the strange effect of making me feel I was a child, seeing the miracles of the world for the first time, with no sense of separation between them and myself. A moment later, being more than a child, I could not help looking upward again. The body had collapsed sideways and was curled like a brown shrimp, with the head lying separately, a foot apart. The executioner, whose face was still entirely without expression, then thrust the tip of his sword into the flesh of the cheek to mangle it, before hoisting his trophy toward those still seated—or rather now cringing—at his feet.

  Their sorrow rose and fell in a ragged wave, but his only response was to lift his chin and leer at them—which allowed us to see the long shadow across his own throat was in fact a scar. It ran from ear to ear, and made him seem like a man who had been killed, but refused to die.

  “Now you may get back to work,” he squawked, in a high and finicky voice. “All of you. Back to work.” The guards immediately began swinging their long sticks, and made sure the order was obeyed.

  17

  Scotland

  I SAID NOTHING—NONE of us did. I lay still—so did we all. But my silence and stillness revolted me, since they made everything I had just witnessed seem bearable. Where was my defiance, my outrage, my disgust? What had I begun, when I stole the map from my father? What had I become, stepping onto the island?

  It was a strange kind of fortune that dragged me away from such questions. For while they were still fuming in my mind, Bo’sun Kirkby began to wriggle backward through the undergrowth, beckoning us to follow. When I saw his eyes wide with fear, and remembered how steady he had been on the Nightingale, and also during our march toward the stockade, I did not need any further encouragement. He was a man who understood danger, and knew when it must be avoided.

  While we were still close to the pirates, our escape was very slow because we did not want to draw attention to ourselves. But the moment we felt sure we would not be noticed, the bo’sun slapped Mr. Lawson on the back, and the two of them set off as fast as their legs could carry them. I seized Natty’s hand and we also dashed away—but in a wild zigzag, as though we expected bullets to strike us. Fo
r the next several minutes the only noise was our shoes pounding the earth, and our hearts thundering in our chests.

  As I ran, all manner of questions began bubbling into my brain. We had seen a grotesque sort of trial, but what of the judge, the prosecutor and the executioner? Most probably they were the three maroons, who had been left on the island when the Hispaniola departed. What of the guards, then, and the prisoners? What kind of society had they made, that depended on cruelty? I could not be sure. I needed calm and the opinion of others to make a complete picture. Until I found them, I reckoned I would do better to remain as I was: like a fleeing animal.

  After a few hundred yards we stopped again, beside a monstrous old azalea bush that had grown to the size of a church. We were not able to speak, but stood in a circle with our hands on our knees, panting until we had recovered our breath. If we hoped we would find our confidence at the same time, we were disappointed. For before we were quite ourselves again, Bo’sun Kirkby suddenly cupped his ear.

  “What’s that?” he whispered.

  All my senses quickened: every gleam of sunlight on the leaves around us seemed to be the blade of a sword, every scuffling bird the footstep of an enemy.

  “Ssssh,” hissed Kirkby, as if even these thoughts were outrageously loud.

  In the deeper silence that followed, I caught a faint disturbance on the air, traveling from a distance I could not easily estimate. Not a human noise, I thought at first—more like the chattering of a creature. It seemed quite unselfconscious, which made me think it must come from some kind of rabbit, or hedgehog, that was feeding among the bushes. The longer it continued, however, the more strongly I became convinced that it was not so much careless as involuntary, and might therefore be the sound of terror.

  Bo’sun Kirkby beckoned to us very cautiously, and we crept forward again, skirting the huge shrub that had blocked our way, and finding what appeared to be a foot-worn path among a belt of smaller bushes. When the bo’sun next raised his hand, we gathered around him in dread of what we might find, but also with relief that our suspense was almost over. Mr. Lawson, I remember, took a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his face; he did this very gingerly, as if the scars on his skin were still painful to him.

  “What?” I asked the bo’sun, as quietly as possible.

  He did not reply, but pointed and put one hand across his mouth. On the path ahead a large hole gaped open. We stepped toward it in line, taking strength from one another, and peered in. It was about twelve feet deep and ten wide, square cut, with a few small stones and feeble roots protruding from its sides. A litter of branches and crumpled brown bracken leaves, which had evidently once been a kind of roof, now covered the floor.

  If any of us had been inclined to speak, we would have done better to call it a “pit” than a “hole,” and better still to say “trap” than “pit.” For a trap is what it was. And if it had originally been made with a view to capturing animals that might be killed and eaten, it had just as effectively caught a man. A Negro whom I saw must until recently have been among the prisoners in the stockade. He was now cowering on all fours, coated in dust and dirt and throwing up pitiful looks. The sound we had heard was his whimpering.

  Because we were so astonished to see him, we stared for much longer than was kind—and watched the terror in his face change to bafflement, then to curiosity, then to a nervous hopefulness. The terrible noise of his fear stopped, and he stood up. A man about twice my age, but my own height and very thin, with bruises on his shoulders and back, and a shaven head that was also covered in scabs and cuts. He was barefoot and naked to the waist, and the number seven had been branded onto his right shoulder. The skin of this wound shone almost purple in the black skin surrounding it.

  All of us now suddenly remembered our better selves, and leaned down so that we could pull him out of his abyss. It happened that my hand was one of those he jumped up to grasp, and the roughness of his palm shocked me; it might as well have been the root of a tree. After a quick scramble he was standing among us. Standing over us, I should say, since he was taller than I had supposed—until his legs folded and he sat down, whereupon Natty offered him her water flask. He drank from it greedily, then poured a splash over his scalp. As this trickled down, it revealed a handsome face, although his cheeks were sunk with hunger, and flecked with numerous small scars and scratches.

  Bo’sun Kirkby was the first to break the silence, indicating we should also sit, to show that we were equals. “We are friends,” he said—very slowly, as if he did not expect to be understood.

  “Where are you from?” the answer came back, in an accent I recognized to my amazement as Scottish.

  “England,” I joined in.

  “Your name is England?”

  “We are from England,” I said. “From London.”

  “My name is Scotland.”

  After so much anxiety, the comedy of these confusions seemed greater than it was, and we all broke into laughter—which Bo’sun Kirkby stopped by speaking in a voice hardly louder than a whisper.

  “Your name is Scotland,” he repeated, then began pointing to us in turn as he continued. “My name is Kirkby, William Kirkby. This is Mr. Lawson, this is Master Jim, and this Nat Silver. We are from England. Our ship is anchored at the northern end of the island, where we have other men waiting.” As he finished, we bent forward to shake hands, Natty being the last to do so and leaving her fingers in Scotland’s grip for a second or two longer than the rest of us.

  As she relinquished him, she asked the question that was in all our minds: “What is this? What are you doing here?”

  “I was trying to escape,” Scotland said in his rolling brogue—and gave a hopeless shrug. “Impossible, of course.”

  “Escape from the stockade, you mean? But where?”

  “Anywhere,” came the answer. Then, like a weary afterthought: “I knew I would have to return to them soon enough.”

  “And this …” Natty paused, unable to decide how best to describe the trap. “This thing. This pit. It was dug to prevent escapes?”

  “To stop escapes, yes. And to catch animals. It’s all the same. They would have found me eventually.”

  “Surely not!” Bo’sun Kirkby broke in, as though he thought Scotland’s tyrants might have considered eating him, if they had reached the trap before us. “Well, well. You have no more reason to be frightened. We have rescued you.”

  This was spoken in a very open-seeming and friendly spirit, but I could not help noticing that nothing had so far been said about our original reason for coming to the island. When Scotland followed these introductions by turning to each of us in turn, and fixing us with his large eyes as though to make a judgment about our trustworthiness, I thought that he too might be holding things in reserve. He did not show the exuberant gratitude of someone who feels that he has been entirely saved, but remained quiet and watchful.

  I would like to think it was respect for this discretion, and not any baser motive, that prevented us from immediately bombarding Scotland with questions. The truth is: we still feared that men from the stockade might stumble on us and make us their prisoners. For this reason, we did no more than ask him whether he would return with us to the Nightingale.

  “To work for you?” he wanted to know, but we assured him he would come with us as a friend, which was how we then continued.

  Because Scotland had shown signs of exhaustion so soon after escaping his trap, I suspected we might have to carry him, or assist him in some other way. But his weakness was only a kind of cramp, and quickly disappeared. As we moved out of the undergrowth, and began the part of our trek that lay across the open shale and into the pine woods, he fell into step beside Bo’sun Kirkby and spoke to us easily.

  Scotland, it transpired, was so called because, after his removal from Africa, he had worked from a young age on an estate in Jamaica which had been owned by a gentleman who had been born in Edinburgh and had run his business with the help of fellow co
untrymen, whose accents had influenced Scotland’s own. When this man died childless, his estate was sold along with Scotland and the other slaves that lived on it. This new owner, it seemed, was converting the ground to a different kind of agriculture, and required fewer men to work.

  In any event, Scotland and a party of some fifty other slaves (men and women, elderly and children) found themselves on a ship bound from Jamaica to a more western part in the Bay of Mexico. At some point in this journey their ship ran into a storm, was blown off her course, lost a mast, almost found a berth in Davy Jones’s locker, and eventually was wrecked on Treasure Island along with the sailors, guards and suchlike that had also been aboard.

  This ship was the Achilles, which we had seen in the Anchorage by Skeleton Island. Scotland indicated that when she had run aground about five years previously, he thought at first the winds of fate must have blown him to freedom, or at least into a place where he might be able to arrange a different kind of existence with his guards. From the way he explained this, I knew that he came from a family that expected to assume the responsibilities of leadership, and had retained this role during his enslavement.

  Scotland said that his hopes of freedom were crushed as soon as he reached the island—because the slaves had landed in the exact spot where the maroons had made their camp. As I heard this, I remembered that when the wreck occurred, these maroons must previously have lived in solitude for almost thirty-five years—which gave me some idea of how wild they might have become. In any event, it was clear from Scotland’s account that they had very quickly suborned the ten guards who survived the storm, and made them instruments of their will in subjugating the slaves. These poor wretches then became victims of the most barbarous appetites imaginable.