Freedom Page 5

  I remembered the notices Mary Lee had read out loud: money offered for escaped slaves. I followed him down the street of shops.

  “Let’s get you off the road for tonight,” he said, looking round as if he might see a crowd of people already after me. “This might be a happy accident, for I am on my way to a meeting with my brothers, the Sons of Africa. We’re going to make sure there ain’t never any more slaves, one way or another.” He smiled, and even though my feet were sore and I was hungry, I couldn’t help smiling back.

  I would have asked there and then who the Sons of Africa were but I had never seen anything like the shops we passed: bowed-glass windows, bright coloured fronts, red and blue and yellow. Gloves displayed in fans like flowers, hats, lace, china that the old mistress would love in her house and that the young master would love to smash.

  But I didn’t have time to stare as Mr Furman went along at a clip. We turned off into a street of bakers and saddlers, shops of the more useful sort, and he pulled me into a grocer’s shop. Inside, it was warm and smelled of coffee and spices and my stomach groaned with hunger. I had not eaten a thing since some bread and butter at breakfast.

  Mr Furman removed his hat. There was a tall brown woman at the counter with bright skin and black braided hair, she was such a beauty I was struck dumb for a moment. But as soon as she saw me she frowned.

  “Another one!” she said, folding her arms. “Mr Furman, what if his owners find out? What if they call the magistrates?”

  “Frances, please. What’s the use in fighting for an end to slavery if we can’t help our own children…”

  The young woman sighed, pushed her braids away from her face.

  “You’re right, of course.” She looked me up and down. “Let me find him a warmer coat, I have many younger brothers, we should have something to fit.”

  “A pair of boots for my friend would be welcome, Frances,” Mr Furman said.

  “Boots do not grow on trees, Mr Furman.”

  “Shadrack, please.”

  It seemed as if they were talking about a parcel. “I am here – and I am grateful – but I don’t want to cause any trouble for you.” I nodded at her. And at Mr Furman, “Sir.”

  “A polite lad, then.” She smiled at me and put out her hand. “I am Miss Frances Sancho, this shop was my father’s. He too suffered enslavement. And you are?”

  “Nathaniel Barratt, late of Barratt Hall Estate, Jamaica.” I wiped my hand before I shook hers. “If someone could put me on the road to Shadwell then I would not need to trouble you…”

  Frances shook her head. “Forgive me, you are no trouble at all, Master Nathaniel. The world outside is dangerous, and it will soon be dark.”

  Mr Furman led the way upstairs to the rooms above the shop and into a parlour. There were a few well stuffed chairs set around a fireplace. It was not half as grand as any of the Barratts’ houses, but it was clean and bright.

  “Are the others coming?” Mr Furman said. “Equiano? Cugoano?”

  “All of them,” Frances said.

  “And Granville Sharp?”

  “Mr Sharp will definitely be here. Said he’s bringing the witness, the first mate.” Miss Sancho lifted the lid of a linen chest and took out a dark woollen jacket and unfolded it. She held it up against me. “This one ought to do.”

  Mr Furman looked out of the window to the street as if expecting the company to arrive this instant. My stomach rumbled louder than the traffic below.

  Miss Sancho smiled at me. “Let me fetch you some broth.”

  I put on the jacket, made of good thick material, and with pockets. When Miss Sancho returned with a large bowl of broth I fair wolfed it down. It was hot and with plenty of mutton, I swear I’d not tasted anything as good my whole life.

  Mr Furman and Miss Sancho continued talking as she set out wood and kindling in the fireplace and lit the candles in the room. I scraped every last drop of that broth from the bowl and felt warm both inside and out for the first time since I had set foot in this country. I moved myself closer to a small armchair by the fireside and pulled the jacket around me. Slowly, in the flicker of candlelight, I felt my eyes fall shut.

  CHAPTER

  7

  I woke with a start. It was dark outside now but the fire burned orange in the grate. There were footsteps on the stairs, men talking loudly. I sat up. I could not help feeling afraid. Was I really safe here with these people? I heard Mr Furman’s voice, and relaxed a little. I stepped softly to the door to listen. Four or five men, maybe six, all talking across each other. On their way downstairs, by the sound of it. There was mention of the Zong and I racked my brains to remember when I had last heard that name. By the time I opened the door a crack, the men had gone downstairs.

  I crept to the head of the stairs and listened to the group of men gathered in the hall. Mr Furman was talking to a soberly dressed white man with a small powdered wig. He clapped him on the back. “Mr Sharp –” he turned to another man that I couldn’t see from where I was perched on the stairs – “Mr Equiano. I have no doubt that with the help of Mr Kelsall here we will turn the tide. We will make the British see what the cost of slavery is, and that we are human, not cargo.”

  “What I saw was a most horrid brutality, sirs…” said another voice. I could not see the man who spoke, but my ears pricked. Didn’t I know him? And that name – Mr Kelsall. Could that really be the mate? The same man from The Brave Venture? I heard the street door open. The men were leaving, Mr Furman was saying his farewells.

  I went to follow but Frances Sancho came out across the landing with a candle and called to me.

  “Nathaniel?”

  “I have to go, madam!” I started down the stairs.

  I ran down just as Mr Furman was bolting the front door shut.

  “Nathaniel! Whoa there, young fellow.” He blocked the door. “You’re not going anywhere on your own.”

  “But I need to know – that Mr Kelsall? Is he a sailor?”

  Mr Furman looked at me. Frances set down her candle. They seemed so calm, but all I could think was that my only link to Henry Hughes was walking further away with every moment.

  “I think he can help me! My friend Henry Hughes, Kelsall knows him, he could take me back to Shadwell, to the inn…”

  I was talking too fast, I knew.

  “Take a breath, young man.” Mr Furman put a hand on my shoulder and steered me towards a high stool by the shop counter. “How do you know Kelsall?”

  Frances set the candle down. They both studied me.

  “You weren’t a survivor on the Zong? Another witness? Did you see all those people thrown overboard?” Frances spoke softly, but I could see the shock on her face.

  I shook my head. She nodded; I think she was relieved on my account.

  “Mr Kelsall needs his rest, and so do you.” Mr Furman leant upon the shop counter.

  “If Mr Kelsall could tell Henry where I am…”

  “Henry? Your friend the sailor?”

  “Yes, I met them both on the boat over from Jamaica. And that’s where I was going when you found me on the street – to see Henry Hughes at The Cat and Mutton in Shadwell!” I said.

  Mr Furman laughed. “As I remember you seemed to be going to heaven or hell under the hooves of some rather large horses.”

  Then I told them about Mamma and Martha, about the old mistress and young master and being sold to a duke from somewhere called Mistleton in Yorkshire. That I needed to find Henry as soon as I could, before he found himself another place on another boat. He could help me find work, and that’s what I needed to do – earn money. When I had finished my story, the candle had burned half the way down. Frances fetched us all some small beer and Mr Furman sighed.

  “Henry must wait,” Mr Furman said. “Tomorrow is important for us Sons of Africa.”

  “Are they all your brothers?” I asked.

  Mr Furman shook his head. “Brothers in name only. We’re a like-minded group, some African by birth,
others from across the world like me, or born and bred in Britain, all with one aim: to find an end to slavery.”

  Frances put three mugs of beer down on the counter. “My father was among them,” she said, glowing with pride. “Ignatius Sancho, the first black man to vote in the general election!”

  She rolled up her sleeves and took a cloth from under the counter to mop up the spills and then she gave Mr Furman a sharp look. “I don’t see why you won’t have Daughters of Africa at your blessed meetings…”

  Mr Furman winked at me and drank his beer.

  “You have both been very kind,” I said. “If I can talk to Mr Kelsall I’m sure he will know the way to Shadwell.”

  “Tomorrow is the trial. Mr Kelsall will be busy – maybe afterwards.”

  Frances pulled a stool out for me from behind the counter. “Did you hear what happened with the Zong, then, Nathaniel?” she asked.

  I was quiet. I thought of what Mr Kelsall had said to me and Henry about the sharks, about the people dying and the sea turning red. I looked at Frances and then Mr Furman. “How many died?” I asked. “How many were thrown overboard?”

  “One hundred and thirty three. Children in their mothers’ arms.”

  I shivered thinking of Martha and Mamma.

  Mr Furman shook his head. “And men too. Your Mr Kelsall was on that boat and tried to stop them, but he was overruled.”

  No wonder poor Mr Kelsall was so melancholy, I thought.

  “This trial is vital,” he continued. “Maybe the most important there’s been. If we can get the papers to print every word of what happened, and ordinary folk read about it, then maybe this could be the beginning of the end of this awful trade.”

  “I don’t understand…” I said. “Who is on trial? Mr Kelsall? For killing all those people?”

  “No, son, the owners of the boat.”

  “For throwing all those people overboard?”

  Mr Furman shook his head. “Not even that. The owners of the Zong are arguing with their insurance company. They claim they had no choice but to massacre all those children, all those men and women. They went to court to claim money from their insurers for the death of all those people.”

  I frowned. “I don’t understand, Mr Furman. This isn’t a crime?”

  Frances tried to explain. The captain and the ship owners, she said, had paid for something called insurance. The trial tomorrow was a dispute between the ship owners and the insurance company. It was all about money.

  Mr Furman sipped his beer. “These devils. They are clever. They make money whether we live or die.”

  I still didn’t understand. “What is insurance, miss?” I asked. Frances paused, looking thoughtful.

  “Nothing more than a kind of bet, or wager against disaster or loss,” said Mr Furman. He must have seen my confusion because he smiled, then put his ship hat down on the shop counter.

  “See this ship? Say it’s carrying…” He looked around and picked up some tea leaves from a small brown sack. “It’s carrying this tea.” He tipped a handful of leaves on to the deck of the model ship. “All the way from across the sea and back home to London. They spent a lot of money on that tea and plan to sell it just as soon as they get home.” He steered his ship hat across the counter. “But if something happens…”

  “A storm!” Frances pulled her braids back from her face and blew hard across the ship, scattering tea leaves everywhere.

  Mr Furman nodded. “Then the ship owners will have no money from the sale of the tea. They will be out of pocket. They might be ruined,”

  “But with insurance,” Frances said, “the owners will have paid a small amount to an insurance company in advance, just in case something of that nature happened, and when they come back to London and say they lost their cargo, the insurers pay up. Cover their costs.”

  “The ship owners won’t make the fortune they’d have got from selling that tea, but they get enough to pay everyone, to keep things sweet.” Mr Furman brushed the last of the tea leaves off his hat.

  “But the Zong?” I said. “That wasn’t tea.”

  “Exactly.” Mr Furman pulled his ship hat back towards our side of the counter.

  “The Captain of the Zong packed his ship – built for taking two hundred men, women and children – with over four hundred souls.”

  Frances wiped down the counter. “They were packed and chained below decks, with no room to sit.” She sounded grim.

  I nodded. I had heard the tales of the Middle Passage, the trip from Africa across the Caribbean. It was hell on earth.

  “Folk were lying deep in their own filth.” Frances spat the words. “It was no wonder people sickened.”

  “And died,” Mr Furman went on. “Forty and then sixty, then the fever spread to the crew. Captain Collingwood was a lousy sailor – he’d taken the voyage to make his fortune. He worried he’d not make the money he wanted with ill slaves.”

  My eyes widened. “So he threw folk overboard for the insurance money?”

  “Exactly so, young man. Exactly so. One hundred and thirty three men, women and children…”

  “But he is not on trial for murder?”

  Frances laughed, a bitter laugh. Mr Furman sailed his ship hat back towards us.

  “Captain Collingwood died three days after they made land. God’s justice, I reckon. He said there was not enough water on board for everyone, and that he’d had no choice but to kill those people to save the crew. But Kelsall says that’s a lie.” Shadrack Furman leaned on the bar counter. “The trial is all about money. See, the insurers wouldn’t pay out. And the ship owners want their money.”

  “So why is this trial important, if no one will be brought to justice?” I asked.

  “This is a way to change minds, Nathaniel!” Frances said. “If enough ordinary English people read about this case, hear what terrible things are done to our brothers and sisters for money, that can only be a good thing!”

  CHAPTER

  8

  I thought I would be staying with Frances Sancho but Mr Furman took me back to his lodgings through the dark London streets. He reminded me to tell anyone who asked that I was his son.

  In the streets, torches flared against the darkness. There was so much to see: pie sellers and street musicians, a girl with a dancing dog. There was a lightness to my step, even though I wore new (to me) boots that rubbed my toes. Was this what freedom felt like? Everything seemed interesting, everything sharper. Even the bad smells.

  As we crossed the road, Mr Furman waved at a man driving a wagon. As it came closer, the smell was so strong I thought I would be sick. Mr Furman talked to the driver but I stayed back. The smell was the worst I’d ever known, worse than the stink of rotten food, or horse manure.

  Mr Furman said his farewells and laughed at me. “That’s the night-soil man. Only have them in the cities, I expect you’ve never seen the like.”

  “Night soil?” I asked. “What’s that?”

  “Soil as in dirt. Human dirt. They empty the closets in the houses. Dig the stuff out of the cesspits. And those men take it out of the city.”

  “A cart full of—”

  Mr Furman cut in. “You got it, Nathaniel. Those fellows only work in the dark when the ladies and gentlemen are asleep. My friend Colley makes a good living out of what he gets for free.”

  “How does he do that?”

  “Sells it. There’s farmers pay him well.”

  “Like horse manure?” I asked.

  “Exactly that! I tell you, Nathaniel, I couldn’t do it, but Colley, he doesn’t smell a thing any more.”

  I asked how he knew the man and Mr Furman told me that he had fought alongside Colley on the British side in the American War of Independence. He explained how the British had promised the slaves in America their freedom if they fought the rebels who wanted America to be a new country, and not part of Great Britain. And how his own wife and child were sold into the south before he could find them.

  “
I have a daughter not much younger than you in America, in Maryland,” he said. “If she is still alive.” He looked away and wiped a tear. I did not want to ask if he would see them again.

  “Why do they do it, Mr Furman?” I asked. “Why do they treat us this way? Hurt us, sell us, send our families away.”

  Mr Furman thought for a long time. “Because they can.” He looked up at the sky. “But one thing I always held on to, all those years I was enslaved; they might have your body, but they can never have your mind. Be free inside.”

  I nodded. But I had decided, I would never let anyone buy or sell me ever again.

  Mr Furman promised that tomorrow, after the trial, he’d find someone to take me out of the city. I wanted to ask again about The Cat and Mutton, but thought I would keep that question for Mr Kelsall when I spoke to him after the trial. He’d know where Henry was.

  We walked the rest of the way in silence. Mr Furman’s room was up four sets of stairs. I thought we would almost reach the moon there were so many. The house was full of noise too. Outside in the street, a pig snuffled through rubbish, inside dogs barked, babies cried and an argument raged on a floor below. But even so, this was the room of a free man and it felt to me like the best place in the whole world.

  I would have been happy to sleep in the armchair, which was losing its stuffing but looked comfortable enough. Mr Furman, however, insisted that I take the bed. And as soon as I hit the mattress I slept, dreaming of sunlight and a world without the old mistress, her son, or her parrot. My first night as a free man.

  When I woke, Mr Furman had made a small fire to heat some water for tea.

  “It will be a long day, Mr Barratt,” he said.

  “I have never been to a trial,” I said. “Once one of the field hands, Naomi she was called, was said to have stolen some callaloo – that’s like spinach – from another woman’s vegetable patch. But Naomi swore blind that callaloo was her own! Old Thomas – he was the gardener and one of the oldest slaves on the plantation – was set to deciding which woman was telling the truth. He made them share.” I shook my head. “I couldn’t have done it. How can you tell who is telling the truth when folk lie so easily?”