Crashing through the undergrowth of the tropical trees in the hot, humid air, Kweku fought to understand where he'd gone wrong. It wasn't his fault that Nana Opuku Ware, the Ashanti King, favored him, a by-blow, over the son who would be king, Okyere.
Kweku had overheard Okyere whining to the king, telling him that Kweku was revealing to the Dutch team camped out on the river bank the locations of the locations of the gold digs the Ashanti had concealed between the Ankobra and Volta rivers.
But he hadn't done that. He had been in the forest the whole time, clearing timber. He hadn't talked to the outlanders; not to any of them. It had been Okyere that Kweku had seen conversing with those others—the English. Kweku honored his king and supported his people's teasing of the Europeans with the yellow grit they so wanted to take away from Ashanti.
Had Okyere found out that Kweku had seen him with the snatchers of men?
Or was this all because Okyere was jealous. This is what Kweku believed. Okyere was jealous of the favor the king bestowed on Kweku, even though Kweku had no intention of challenging Okyere when the time of the kings came. Kweku had always been careful to be friendly and deferential with Okyere and to remain on his sunny side—not that Okyere had a sunny side. Kweku's mother had taught him that he had to do that to survive. Kweku would never forget what his mother had drummed into him.
But it didn't matter what Kweku did. It only mattered that Okyere saw the threat and saw the favor the king showed to Kweku.
Kweku could hear the beaters off to his left. If he could make it to the river, he could swim across and they would not know where he had gone. He could send a message to his father—the man he could not call father but who treated him as a son. He could send a message and all would be well. He would say nothing of Okyere and his jealous ways and his lying ways. No, even now Kweku could not say such a thing about Okyere in his father's ear. That would get Okyere exactly what he wanted; that would be playing into Okyere's designs. Kweku was not looking for a fight. Kweku was a man of peace. He knew that there were those who could not believe this because of his warrior stature and his strength. And yes, the beauty and fullness of his body. The men of the village hid their women from him, even now, when Kweku was barely beyond the manhood ritual.
The river. The beaters were coming close. He had to make it to the river. Turn right down this path and . . . Humphh!
Kweku looked down from the netting that held him prisoner in the trees above the path.
He was not alone. He should have guessed. Okyere stood below him, grinning up at him. Kweku's heart sank as he saw that Okyere was not alone. Beside him stood two of the English. The men Kweku had seen Okyere talking to before. Those men who came up the river in empty boats—and returned with filled boats. The men came, and after they left, the village was missing a few men, women, and even children.
Kweku did not have to guess what Okyere was up to. Why he was standing there, smiling, beside the two English. A dead Kweku might be a found Kweku and might lead to questions Okyere would not wish to have to stand before King Nana Opuku Ware and answer.
A Kweku seen walking in chains between two English to their boat on the water and then never seen again was a missing Kweku that the king of the Ashanti all too well could understand.
* * * *
Kweku did not see the light of day for longer than he could count. He could not, of course, count time. Kweku needed the change from light to dark and back to dark to be able to count the passage of time. And since all was dark and dank and putrid in the belly of this vast vessel wallowing on the endless sea, it did not matter whether he could count.
Time meant little to him now. He had been betrayed. And he knew, because it was that way with the others led off to the river in chains between two English, that he would not be going back to the kingdom of the Ashanti again—at least not any time soon. And, of course, time had no real meaning for him now.
He could not blame Okyere, though. Kweku was man enough to know that if he was the one who was the king's son and Okyere the bastard, he, Kweku, would have done the same. Or perhaps not. Perhaps he would have been at least honorable enough just to kill Okyere and not to make him suffer for a birth and a favoring that were not his choice. But there was nothing to be gained to think about it further. Kweku lived in a new world now—for as long as he lived.
Only survival had meaning. Finding food and water, even moving in this mass of chained and moaning humanity in the darkness of the belly of the vessel was all he thought of. And increasingly he didn't think of that either—and as interminable time of misery oozed on, even survival was not something he cared much of.
If he could not live Ashanti—clean and standing tall under the trees of his forests—why live at all? Others around him, here in the stinking darkness of the vessel, had already made that decision. Perhaps they were the brave, pure ones. Perhaps his was the shame for clinging to a life that no longer was Ashanti.
But just about the time he was ready to fight his instincts and give his life up, he could smell a change on the breeze, even here in the fetid belly of the vessel. He could smell the scent of land and plants. And he lurched against the man shackled to him, dead for endless time already, giving off a smell that Kweku had already adjusted to—because he had no other choice—as the vessel banged up against something hard.
He was soon to learn that they had arrived on the Caribbean island of Barbados, on the other side of the great sea from Kweku's own land. And he found that the wooden dock they had banged up against ran onto the land, upon which stood many tall dwellings. Some of these structures were built of wood and others were constructed of stone and smooth, hard mud and were taller and far more numerous than the squat thatch and mud homes his own village was made of. And there were English for as far as he could see—walking purposely and gathering in groups. All looking busy but not being busy doing much of anything. All stinking of English in their choking layers of cloth under the hot sun. The ones Kweku saw who were doing anything, usually at great exertion and who did not stink because they knew what not to put on their bodies, were like him—black. From Africa. Some were Ashanti, like him. A few even looked like Ashanti he had known. But they weren't anything like they had been when he had known them. In their own village they had stood tall and walked proudly—even when bearing burdens. Here they were bent over, seeing nothing but the ground or the booted feet of the stinking English.
Kweku could barely walk as he was led in chains onto the dock—freed now of the truly dead weight of the man who had keened for endless time of his lost loved ones, until his keening had grown dim and eventually had stopped altogether.
The sun was too bright for Kweku, after all of the darkness, and he stumbled and received, with shock, the splashing of the water on his naked body from a bucket, with no preparation that it was happening. Still, he would have welcomed a second dousing. And a mouthful or two of the cool water as well.
"This one is the sturdiest. He should take the best price."
"I agree. Look at the musculature. And see the manhood and balls on the darkie. He would be good in your fields—and even better in the beds of your black females, wouldn't he, Nathan? You have always said you wanted more of them. You could have a new one in each season from each of your females if you put this one to work."
Kweku's eyesight was beginning to clear now. They had been shoved, staggering—the survivors of the journey—straight to a platform near where the dock met the land. There, while Kweku tried to focus on the hated wooden vessel that had taken him away from his home to who knows where, he was sold to Nathan Semple of Semple Hill.
