Kingston by Starlight Read online

  Liam had a mean look in his eye, like a street dog without a master, and so did the others in his pack. Cormac met his gaze and then looked over to me and back at his fellows again. He then scooped up a handful of mud. Now he, too, had that same street-dog look.

  I should have run, but I could not move. Yes, I feared the assault that was to come, but there were other emotions at work. I hated myself for not being braver. I had more disgust for myself than any of my tormentors, and it was my own self-loathing, I think, that was the hardest to bear. What makes persecution sting the most is if, in a moment of honest reflection, one comes to the conclusion that if the tables were turned, one would act like one’s tormentors. Righteousness, which is so strong and sure a shield, dissipates like smoke. I fought the notion, but I knew, deep within, that I longed to be in that pack, throwing mud at myself. At that thought, my skin grew cold, cooler than the evening chill. Then I felt a warmth trickle down my thighs. A wet splotch blossomed, visible to the whole world.

  “Look at this one then!” said Liam. “M’lady’s done her pooley right in her dress!”

  With a sweep of his twiggy fingers, Cormac brushed one of his girlish curls from off his face and then, rearing back, hurled the first ball of mud. The dragonflies buzzed up into the air.

  Why couldn’t I fight them or at least run away? What element was lacking in my constitution? I hated myself for what I was not, and I also despised myself for being so alone. All the things in nature, it seem’d, had their companions, the birds in their flocks, the ants in their hills, even the rivers ran to the sea and thus were intermingled with like-minded waters. I thought, too, of my old village and of the wolf. The beast had been just another mother seeking to provide for her cubs, and yet she had struck fear in all the men of the region. I thought of her eye, that single planetary glare of light. A rage grew in me then. I felt as if I had been plunged in fire.

  Liam and all his fellows were ready to hurl their handfuls of filth. But as they looked up at me, they hesitated. I do not know what they saw. I only know how I felt. It seemed, at that moment, that I could have devoured the world. My skin felt hot, I could hear my blood in my ears, and a huge scream was building within me. There are some emotions you have, and there are others that have you. Love, I suppose, is one of the latter, at least according to the poets. And I’ve had sorrow possess me— its boundaries extend beyond the human form, it saps your limbs of power, chokes the air from your throat. There is still another feeling with such power: rage. That is what I felt. I had no plan of action, I had no weapon, but it seem’d, like Medusa, with my eyes alone I could lay waste my enemies. Chase me! Throw mud if you will! My rage felt consuming and filling as well— it filled my lungs and pumped out of my palpitating heart and pushed against my eyes. I didn’t care what anybody else said, I didn’t care what they did; I was lost in my own anger. I felt as if my face was aflame, burning with its own light. I did not scream, I did not shout or swear— I had no need to do so. My countenance was announcement enough.

  Liam let the mud that he had scooped into his hand fall back to the earth. Slowly he and the other children backed away, and soon, one and all, they moved out of my sight.

  But the first mudball had stained my da’s coat beyond repair. I left the sad garment there, by the bog.

  “Shhhh, my child,” my ma said afterward. “We are fighters now, you and I. That is how it must be, and will be, from now on. Take these words as my gift to you.”

  And so passed my sixteenth birthday.

  chapter 5.

  It was at this time that the sea arrived to claim me for its own. Cork was home to many rivers and bodies of water. The brown currents of the River Lee flowed through the center of town, and climbing the loamy hills one could look out over the misty murk of St. George’s Channel and imagine that one saw the towers of London in the distance. I was schooled more than most girls, my ma insisted on it, and ere I had reached a blooming age, I had even read some Dante and seen Shakespeare performed by traveling troupes— tho’, in my learning, I was most enchanted with the poems of that great Roman, Ovid. His songs of myth and change excited my soul and I committed to memory, in Latin and in English, a number of his ancient tales: the strange, sad story of the sea nymph Salmacis and her doomed, unrequit’d love; the tragic verses devoted to Phaetheon, who steer’d the sky chariot of his father, the sun god, into the currents of the broad Eridanus, which is in Italy, and was washed ashore, lifeless; and the legend of Arethusa, who fled from her home and was transform’d, at last, into a sacred fountain. I thrilled to other poems by honey-tongued Ovid as well and let them enter my spirit. How tragic that, in our mundane, empiric lives, such wild mutations are impossible. I wondered, Would I ever embark on an adventure that boasted the magic and peril of the antique days? Would I ever gaze upon waters that ran beyond the limits of my horizon?

  Both my education and my childhood in Ireland were, in the end, abort’d before their full term, and not of my untemper’d volition. Ma, having heard some rumor of my da coming into some money overseas through some business venture or another, decided to head off in pursuit of her undivorced spouse. So she booked us passage on a British ship making stops along the coast of that Dark Continent, and from thence to the Americas. We had accepted berths on a slaver, the most wretched of all vessels that sail the seas, because we lacked the funds for transportation of any higher station.

  The first leg of our voyage, which was to last some few months if the winds blew in our favor, was not unpleasant, or more correctly, it was purgatory and not quite hell. We were lodged above the lower decks next to the captain’s quarters. With us were two other women, the captain’s sister-in-law, whom he was transporting to the Americas to be with his brother, and the lady’s daughter, who was perhaps a score of years in age. Slavers did not normally transport passengers of our sex, but we were taken to keep the captain’s passengers company, and also to ensure some margin of profit for the underwriters of the trip if there were some fatalities in the cargo, which there often were.

  Every afternoon, the navigator— or so I assumed his position to be— would take to the deck and check the position of the sun with a device that looked like a wooden cross. At that time, the sister-in-law and her daughter, who both had silver crucifixes around their necks, would each open a Bible and conduct a service of sorts. Both women were pale and thin with big insect eyes that made them look perpetually terrified. Engaged in their prayers, clasped hands trembling, they seemed to fear God more than they felt his love. The crew had been ordered, it appeared, not to talk to any of the women on board, and the Praying Mantises had more to say to God than to us, so my mother and I let days pass by with little conversation.

  “He died so that we may reach that Higher Place,” they prayed. “Safeguard us, O Lord.”

  The early stages of the trip were uneventful— save one incident during which, late in the evening, the captain gave the order to extinguish all lights on board, cease all work, and still all tongues. There, against the stars, in the slanted and enchanted rays of a crescent moon, I saw a three-masted ship. Without words, I knew what it was— it was a pyrate craft. If it took us, our crew would be enslaved; had we taken on slaves, they would have been freed. The crew of the slaver, hard men all, looked wary and nervous. The Praying Mantises mouthed silent psalms. But I felt no menace from the shadow vessel. I could see the distant, welcoming flicker of firelights on board; I thought I could hear the faint echoes of voices raised in joyous song. Ma put an arm around me and kissed my forehead. The silhouette glided off into the larger darkness.

  A few days later we reached the African coast. We never set foot on land, nor even saw a tree. We sat at anchor for a time, until the cargo arrived in small boats. The captives arrived during the night, while I was asleep in my hammock, and Ma was slumbering in hers. The sound of the shackles woke me. I rose from my hammock and, kneeling, I peeked through the planks in the walls of our cabin. At first I could see only feet— a long line
of black feet, shoeless, chained two-by-two. They were clothed only in shadows. I turned away, ashamed. But I had to watch this ghastly procession, so I looked again. The women were next. They were also naked. I could see the gleam of starlight on their skin. There were perhaps thirty women and a hundred men. They were herded into the lower decks through a hatch near our cabin.

  There was a flat thud. Someone or something had knocked a Bible to the floor.

  The room was bathed in light. The younger Praying Mantis had lit a lamp. The elder Praying Mantis and my ma were both awake as well.

  “It’s a savage!” said the younger Praying Mantis.

  A young African girl, naked and shivering, had somehow broken free and found her way into our cabin. This one, in appearance, was different from the others. Like all the Africans, her cheekbones were high and sharp and her lips full. But this one, this girl, had skin the color of the moon. Her hair was a pale yellow and fell in long knotty ropes. Her thin eyes glinted pink in the inconstant light. She was damp and shivering.

  “We must call the captain!” said the elder Praying Mantis.

  “No!” said Ma. “Do you not hear the crack of the whip outside? She’s only a girl.”

  “We must call the captain. She’s a slave.”

  Ma, holding a blanket, approached the girl.

  The girl drew back farther into the shadows.

  The younger Praying Mantis began to scream. Our door burst open. A half-dozen crewmates stood outside. One had a cat-o’-nine-tails.

  “She’s ours,” said the one with the whip.

  “Take her!” said the younger Praying Mantis.

  “Stay back!” said Ma.

  Ma went over to the younger Praying Mantis. With a jerk and a snap, she pulled the silver crucifix from her neck.

  “She can have this back when she learns the true meaning of it,” said Ma.

  She draped the blanket around the slave girl’s shivering body and handed her the crucifix. Then three crewmen stomped into the cabin and pulled the slave girl out. They left the blanket on the floor.

  * * *

  I woke late. It was afternoon; the navigator was checking the sun with his cross and the Praying Mantises were trembling before God. It was the moans that woke me up. From one side I heard the slave women crying out. Then, from another section of the lower deck, louder and deeper and greater in number, came the voices of the slave men. Together they formed a ghastly chorus that echoed through the ship. We could not see the cargo, but we could hear them. All at once their voices were everywhere, and had transformed everything, like when one awakes on a winter morning and suddenly finds that snow has covered the entire world, every house and every tree, every pathway and every field. So the calls of these Africans spread themselves over our voyage.

  The Africans were to be served one meal a day— a putrid stew of ground fava beans, flour, and rat flesh that made me wretch when I saw it prepared. As some of the ship hands carried buckets of slop to them, I followed. I had to see how they were being kept. A crewman shut the hatch behind him. I opened it a bit and spied through. The smell hit me first. Sweat mixed with vomit and excrement and the aroma of that foul stew. I could see little. The darkness was too deep. Then I began to pick out shapes and movement.

  The Africans were laid out on wooden planks. They were all on their sides, crammed next to one another like spoons in a silverware drawer. The mates ladled gruel into the mouth of each captive. Some swallowed, others spat out the foul mixture and let the food dribble down their closed lips. All the Africans were naked. Most had open, oozing sores on their backs, arms, faces, and legs. Their wounds would certainly grow worse as the voyage continued. Their cries were already growing louder, more insistent, and, here, in the belly of the ship, their voices seemed to coalesce into a single howl of horror.

  I could see no more. I scurried back to my cabin.

  * * *

  The next morning I awoke to music. An accordion was playing a merry tune.

  I could hear the voices of the crew singing:

  “Dance you dogs! Dance you dogs!

  Dance dance dance!”

  The accordion played on. The Africans had been crowded onto the main deck. The men were in one group, the women in another. The men were chained together two by two, the women, unchained, huddled together in a great mass.

  “Come on now!” cried the navigator. “Dance the minuet!”

  Another crew member snapped the cat-o’-nine-tails across the back of an African man.

  “Bow to your partner!”

  Another lash, this time across the back of an African woman.

  “Curtsy! Curtsy, you bitches!”

  The accordion played on. The African men, as lashes rained down, began to step to the left, and then to the right, and then spin in a circle, as the crewmates directed. Some hopped up and down, roughly in time with the music. The group of African women, still clustered together, swayed back and forth. The men and women were all murmuring now. Were they calling to their God? Or were they simply in pain?

  The Praying Mantises had come out to watch the spectacle. The daughter, seeing the dancing Africans, pointed and laughed. My mother turned on her.

  “Hold your tongue,” she said, “or I’ll feed you your Bible, every book, Old Testament as well as New, from Genesis to Revelations.”

  The cruel dance continued. The girl I had seen before was at the edge of the group of women. Her milky form was rippling with terror.

  “Bathtime!”

  A half-dozen crewmates, all holding buckets, threw the contents onto the clustered Africans. Some of the Africans screamed and clutched at their sores. The buckets had been filled with seawater.

  The accordion played on.

  * * *

  I could smell them before I saw them. They reeked of beer and sweat. From their voices, I could tell that they were drunk. From the sounds of chains clanking, my mother and I judged that they were trying to break into the slave women’s quarters. My ma rose from her hammock.

  “Where are you going?” said the elder Praying Mantis.

  “To help, of course.”

  “But it’s none of our concern!”

  “Maybe not yours,” said Ma, “but it’s mine.”

  “Do you think I don’t know?” hissed the elder Praying Mantis. “You’re just like them! You’re a slave! An Irish slave! You paid for this voyage by selling your body! The minute you step off this boat, you’ll be pressed into service. Your daughter may be free, but you’re no better than the Africans! Go to them then!”

  Ma gave the Praying Mantises a small, sad smile.

  “We are all servants of God,” said Ma.

  Then Ma stepped out the door.

  I did not want to be on this ship. I wanted no part of this trade. I wished I had the power to change what was happening, but I knew I did not. I would have prayed for pyrates to come if my prayers would have done any good but I knew that they would not. I could not stay here. I slipped outside behind Ma.

  There were five men. They were unshaven. I was young, but I could not mistake, even at that age, the lust in their eyes when they looked at Ma and then at me.

  “Get in your cabin, misses,” said the navigator, who seemed the leader of the group.

  “I have to ask you to leave,” said my ma.

  “We’re just getting bellywarmers,” said a crewman with a cat-o’-nine-tails.

  “Get in your cabin, misses,” said the navigator.

  There was a loud crack. A crewman had kicked off the lock of the hatch that lead to the deck where the female Africans were held.

  “I plan to report this to the captain,” said Ma.

  The crewman with the whip laughed.

  “The captain’s paid two trips down ’ere already,” said another.

  The navigator came close up to Ma and me.

  “I tried asking you nice,” he said. He pushed her back into her cabin with a savage shove, then stepped inside and locked the door behind him.


  I ran toward the cabin, but something struck me from behind. A crewman was standing over me.

  What happened next took place in a blink. From below, I saw an ivory shadow sprint up onto the deck. It was the girl with moon-colored skin. In her hand, she had something that glinted, something sharp. I could see it now— it was the crucifix, its tip filed to a deadly point. She slashed at the man standing above me. He fell back, clutching his throat. His mates took a step back, uncertain. The African girl ran to the side of the ship. She looked back at me and our eyes met again. I began to swoon. Then she leaped over the side of the ship, through the night, into the cold waters of the Atlantic. We were two weeks from land.

  chapter 6.

  I awoke in a feather bed. The lace curtains had been pulled open and sunlight streamed through a large window. Outside I saw a swallow fly and heard the quack of ducks. The bed on which I lay had a sturdy brass frame and enough pillows for a family of sleepers. There was a mirror that was taller than I was and almost as wide as my outstretched arms. A deep brown carpet was on the floor. A chandelier hung from the ceiling. The crystal knob to the door of the room was in the shape of a parrot’s head.