Voyage of Midnight (16 page)

Uncle had been observing the scene with clenched jaw, his lips compressed into a thin line. Now he looked at me with the eyes of a stranger. “We all have fathers. Mine shot himself in the head when I was eleven. Yours was lost at sea.” To McGuire he said, “Carry out my orders. And string up the warrior brute first.”

“McGuire, don’t do this,” I pleaded, but McGuire looked over my head, as if I weren’t there. “McGuire, you know it’s wrong. Uncle,
please
. I’m begging you!”

I begged some more, feeling no longer the grand, intelligent surgeon of the
Formidable
, but instead the sickly, pale little lad cowering under the ferocious scowl of Master Crump, vainly begging for any mercy. I clung to Uncle’s shirt, mucus and tears and blood all running together. But Uncle ignored me. Finally pushed me away as if I were an insect, and then I lay flat on my back again, sails and sky blurring into one awful scheme of white and blue, blue and white.

And so, on the twenty-second day of our homeward voyage across the Atlantic, six male slaves, including Ikoro, were executed, hanged from the main yard and then shot. They were then hacked into pieces and tossed overboard. The last part was a deliberate act on the part of my uncle, for it was well known that Africans believed that if a body was dismembered, the spirit couldn’t return to the African soil of its ancestors.

I heard all this and more from Billy the Vermin, for I’d refused to watch. Like a fly that wouldn’t shoo, Billy followed me about the infirmary as I cared for the wounded slaves, telling me all about the executions, though I hollered at him to clear off, that I didn’t want to hear it. To clear off, clear off,
clear off!
He finally left, but only after I threw a scalpel at him that stuck, quivering, in the bulkhead.

It was midnight. Cries and moans and songs of grief bled throughout the ship. My nose throbbed. I kept the candle burning in the lantern.

I slept fitfully, gasping awake every few minutes, over and over again seeing Teags’ look of surprise. The speculum orb sticking out of his stomach. I saw Pea Soup running toward us. Tugging at the whip wrapped about his father’s neck. Weeping, sobbing, asking of me
“Mèel
ny
èbelè!”
—“Have mercy on us!” I saw my uncle, glaring at me with the eyes of a stranger. Six male slaves, including Ikoro, standing silently by my berth, watching me, wanting something.… The familiar nausea pitched in my stomach. I groaned.

Finally, hating my bed, hating my cabin, hating the stench of nighttime, I arose and took the lantern from its peg. I’d decided I’d go on deck and clear my head.

But outside my cabin door, confronted with the closed door of my uncle’s cabin, which stood beside mine, a compulsion overtook me. Hesitating just a moment, I entered his cabin, again without knocking, lantern in hand.

I don’t know what I’d expected to find. Him sitting at his chart table, perhaps, plotting the next day’s course. Him pacing, stewing over the day’s events. Him reading his Book of Common Prayer, praying for strength to endure the remainder of the voyage.

But what I’d not expected was to see him sleeping like a babe.

He lay crossways on his bed, shirt unbuttoned to his waist. His mouth was open. Gold teeth caught the shimmering light of the lantern. He was snoring softly. I saw beneath his curls that he didn’t remove his earrings at night. His boots lay haphazardly on the floor next to the bed.

He looks as if he hasn’t a care in the world
, I thought.

And as I gazed at my uncle, the scales fell from my eyes and
I knew. For the first time since I’d met my uncle at the Magford workhouse four years previous, I saw him clearly, saw him for what he was. Surrounded by cries and wailing so piteous it’d melt the heart of the devil himself, my uncle slept peacefully.

You care for no one but yourself, Uncle. No one. Not even for me, your only flesh and blood
.

You never sent money for my welfare. You left me to rot at the workhouse
.

You killed six slaves today as heartlessly as you’d swat a fly
.

A horrible, seething wretchedness crawled through me, and in that moment, born of every beating I’d ever endured, born of the cries of suffering that shrieked in my ears, I despised my uncle.

W
ithin two days, life aboard the
Formidable
returned to its usual appearance.

The four dead crew members—including Teags, Mackerel, and Numbly—followed in Jonas’ wake, sewn into their hammocks, weighted with cannonballs. Dry-eyed, I said nothing when their bodies plunged one by one into the briny deep.

And when Uncle asked me to continue with our daily lessons in navigation (which had been temporarily suspended, owing to my duties as surgeon), I silently complied. “Once you master navigation, you’ll be worth double to me,” he said jovially, seeming to have construed my begging for Ikoro’s life as a childish moment, easily forgotten. “Besides, with Numbly gone now, I’m relying on you should anything happen to me.”

The sextant, charts, parallel rulers, compass, and all things navigational were hateful objects to me now. I wished only for the
Formidable
to speed on her way under a full press of sail and for the voyage to end. I resolved that upon arriving in New Orleans, I would go my own way and never see Uncle again.

I’d have thought my uncle would’ve noticed my reticence and suspect that my feelings toward him had changed considerably. But he noticed nothing. This was another confirmation of my uncle’s selfishness, of his inability to see beyond his own nose, beyond his own needs and wants.

My face had swelled from its injury. My nose felt tight; it was reddened, sore, and clogged. My eyes had blackened, as if I’d been punched with the old one-two. Uncle just laughed when he saw me, telling me how many times he’d broken his own nose and that it bloody well hurt, didn’t it?

Because of the rebellion, the slaves were kept under guard in the hold. Not even the women and children were allowed on deck. And so it would remain until Uncle changed his mind. Of course it was all the talk among the crew just
how
the slaves had managed the revolt. They’d been found with all sorts of weapons hidden on their persons—iron bolts, scalpels, mallets, and such. The crew speculated as to how the slaves had obtained such materials, some mentioning Pea Soup as the only possible explanation. After all, he’d been confined in the hold following the battle with the American warship and had found his father, Ikoro. Doubtless, from that moment on father and son had conspired to rebel. Once free to roam the ship again, Pea Soup had taken the opportunity to bring weapons to the slaves.

“Someone should string that boy up, use the same noose as for his father,” said Calvin one day at our noon mess. His mouth was full of biscuit and salt beef, and he spat crumbs as he
talked. “Chop him into bits afterwards. It’s all because of him Mackerel’s dead.”

Upon hearing his words, and with a ferocity that surprised me, I hurled my wooden plate across the deck, lunged across the space between us, and pointed my knife at Calvin’s throat. Everyone stared at me as if I were a lunatic. A mashed chunk of salt beef plopped from Calvin’s mouth. My voice sounded cold and dead, even to me. “If anyone so much as touches Pea Soup, the next time you beg for medicine I’ll administer arsenic instead of quinine. Don’t think I won’t. My uncle’s agreed that it’s
my
responsibility to punish my own slave, and trusts me to do as I see fit. He’s
my
slave, and you’ll leave him be.”

No one spoke as I stamped off. I was trembling with rage, hating the ease with which Calvin had talked of chopping Pea Soup to bits. As I stepped down the companionway, someone moved at the bottom step. Down and away, as if he’d just slipped down the steps ahead of me. “Pea Soup, is that you?”

Pea Soup turned and looked up, his face showing no more expression than if he’d been watching grass grow. I wondered if he’d heard the conversation.

For a moment, we said nothing. I realized then that I was wrong about his expression. Grief lined his face. Shadows circled his eyes. I’d been blind not to see it. Blind like Uncle. “I—I’m sorry about your father. Truly I am. My father died too. Before I was born.”

He turned away then, disappearing into the shadows so quickly that had I not just seen and spoken to him face to face, I’d have doubted anyone else had been there.

It appeared that my little demonstration at the mess had been effective, for after this day no one, not even Uncle, mentioned Pea Soup. He was, however, constantly in my thoughts.
Even days after the rebellion, I was baffled as to why Pea Soup had spared my life. Had not only spared my life, but seemed intent upon preserving it. Why? Even Ikoro had not harmed me when he’d had the chance. After stabbing Teags, he could have dispatched me in a second, yet he’d left me behind, alive and well—a white boy, and an enemy. Again, why? It was possible that he considered me to be no threat, but that still didn’t explain Pea Soup’s change of heart.

Aside from our encounter in the companionway, I’d seen little of Pea Soup since the revolt. Truth was, between my time in the infirmary, navigation, and language studies, my every hour was occupied. Though there was evidence that Pea Soup was keeping up with his chores, I felt unsettled, haunted, as if something were wrong—something unsaid, undone—but I didn’t know what.