Chapter 22

CHAPTER 22

ON BOARD THE ESPERANZA, WEST ATLANTIC OCEAN

Dressing her mistress the next morning, Afia noted the bruises. Ana had not exaggerated; he had hurt her. Yet she seem reconciled to him this morning and happy enough. Afia couldn’t understand it. Ana was a woman of spirit, why tolerate such blatant abuse?

“How did you meet Senhor Perez?” asked Afia in her halting Portuguese. She wondered if her curiosity would meet with a sharp set down. To her surprise Ana seemed pleased to talk about it.

“I have known him all my life,” she said with a smile. “He visits our Island, Flores, regularly.” Ana selected a ruby pendant from a box stuffed full of baubles and handed it to Afia to fasten round her neck.

The single teardrop shaped gem, gleamed on the full expanse of her white breasts, nestled just above the dip of her deep cleavage.

“This time when he left, I determined I would go with him. We are to be married in Jamaica,” she said flashing a large diamond ring on her finger.

“Raphael is a very rich man, very successful.” She added when Afia failed to comment.

Afia searched for the right word, “Parabens.” Congratulations.

Afia combed out Ana’s thick black curls, then twisted them up on top of her head and began fixing them in place with pins. “He hurt you,” she said quietly.

Ana shrugged, blinking her eyes that suddenly seemed over bright. “He is a man of strong passions. I angered him. It was my fault.” A pink flush stained her cheeks.

Afia set her lips but said nothing. She had seen this before. In the village there was a woman whose husband abused her, she constantly made excuses for him.

‘Besides, he likes it when I fight back a little, it makes him amorous. I went too far last night, that is all.”

He went too far, thought Afia, but didn’t say so.

Afia spent the day between tasks mulling over how she could determine if Omari was on the ship. If she could but speak with him, know that he was well, she could bear this journey with equanimity.

Taking a walk around the deck with Ana, holding her parasol to keep the hot sun off her delicate white skin, a plan, a crazy plan, began to form in her mind.

That night,Afia waited until she was sure Perez and Ana were asleep, then she rose and opened the cabin door. Her heart thudded hard in her ears as she crept through and pulled the door shut carefully behind her. She clutched the length of rope she had stolen from the deck earlier today and opened the door onto the main deck.

Where she stood in the lee of the quarter deck she was in shadow. The night watch were sitting round the main mast playing cards and drinking. She just needed to reach the rail undetected...

She took a breath and scuttled across the deck to the rail, keeping to the shadows. Glancing behind her, she watched the men covertly. Could they see her if they looked this way? Her pulse beat frantically in her breast.

With shaking hands, she tied one end of the rope to the rail and let the rest dangle over the side. She prayed it was long enough for her purpose.

With another glance over at the men, who appeared engrossed in their game based on the laughter and banter between them, she swung a leg over the rail and clinging to the rope, began to climb down the side of the ship.

Breeze tugged at her clothes and salt spray from the movement of the ship through the water made her damp and cold. She ignored it, concentrating on lowering herself hand over hand, walking down the side of the ship until she was level with the portholes of what she thought was the third deck. The deck where the male slaves were being held, where she hoped Omari was.

She prayed fervently to Azaka under her breath as she clung to the side of ship, swinging a bit on the rope with the list of the ship. Her hands and arms were aching with fatigue. This was harder than she had anticipated.

She was aligned between two portholes, they gaped uncovered, letting air and sea spray in and some of the foul stench out. She gagged as she got a noseful of the putrid smell. The sounds of groans and susurrus of muttered conversation wafted out with the stink.

She leaned in, clinging tightly to the rope, there was insufficient light to see much, despite the best efforts of the moon gilding the water with silver. She caught the vague outlines of dark bodies lined up in rows across the deck.

“Omari!” she called softly, praying he was there, that he was near enough to hear her over the noises of the other men, praying he wasn’t one of those in such abject distress.

“Omari!” she tried again, more desperately, her hands ached with pain and cold, her arms shook with strain. She couldn’t hold on much longer. If she let go, she’d fall into the sea and drown.

“Omari!”

“Afia?” a hoarse voice came out of the dark. “Is that you?”

“Omari, are you alright?”

“Yes, yes, you?”

“Yes I’m-” Suddenly the rope to which she was clinging jerked upwards and a shout above her told her she had been discovered.

“I love you!” she cried as the rope swung violently swinging her away from the side of the ship and back again to bash her hard against the timber, almost knocking the breath out of her and making her lose her grip.

The rope was being hauled up rapidly and the next moment she was hauled ruthlessly over the rail and lay sprawled on the deck, bruised, bleeding and breathless. Her body shaking with shock.

Perez appeared in a dressing gown, trailed by Ana, similarly attired. He swore and gestured for her to be pulled her feet.

“I tell you; you make trouble you go in hold with others!” he said in broken Fon.

Ana protested pulling at his arm. He back handed her, and she screamed at him, slapping him back. He picked her up over his shoulder and walked away, leaving Afia to be hauled below and shoved into the slave women’s deck.

The space was so low she couldn’t stand up, but at least there were grids in the ceiling offering fresh air from the main deck above. That was one improvement over the men’s accommodation.

A slaver shoved her down and clamped a collar round her neck. They were not chained at least and free to move around the deck.

The other women crowded round her wanting to know what happened to her. She had managed to speak to Omari, but at what cost? Tears slide down her cheeks as she hugged her knees and registered slowly just how bruised and sore she was.

The women’s chatter battered at her but couldn’t touch her. Would this ship be her coffin? For the first time since they had been captured, true despair dragged at her heart and she put her head on her knees and wept, the hard metal collar digging into the soft flesh of her neck.