J. M. W. Turner's The Slave Ship (1840) was originally entitled Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying -- Typhoon Coming On by the English landscape artist and abolitionist. It depicts in the right corner of the foreground, a single dark-skinned leg jutting out of the water with an iron chain locked around the ankle. A swarm of seagulls and fish circles the leg. On the left, there are smaller dark limbs surrounded by loose chains, alluding to the 132 Africans who were thrown off the ship, Zong, in 1781 in "mass murder masquerading as an insurance claim". Fish tails follow the frenzy.
PROLOGUE
Strange things happen on the mighty high sea of this tropical wonderland. They weave a supernatural web around the Caribbean, a web in which a feeling of safety also is caught. Security, my friend, springs from knowing the past – quietly sitting and watching rivers of stories flow by and empty into the all-embracing sea. The turquoise water carries salty myth that helps clarify the elusive present, which fast recedes into the distance. Sailors nurse an unrivaled intimacy with the sea and its fables.
The tales are many.
Sirens, with the haunting voices of mariners’ mothers and first loves, lure navigators to hidden rocks and certain death. At night, the four visible stars of the Southern Cross hypnotize crews, carrying them on a chariot of light to a place of dreams. During the day, the sun glazes over the world, creating far-off scenes that are not there. But then, who is to say what is real and what is an illusion? After all, life is an illusion and a dream.
The most one can do is to try and keep the ship steady.
PART I
CHAPTER 1
The sweetness of a violin bathed its listeners in the nectar of the dry season’s first notes. Slow and luxuriant, the piece enchanted the sensitive crew on the deck of the Good Hope. As daylight began to fade, troubled minds and agitated spirits rested quietly.
Many of the sailors closed their eyes and let themselves be lifted on the wings of music. Some pressed their hands against their crotches, raising their vitality. Whether standing, sitting or lying flat on their backs, the chests on their handsome bodies expanded as the song filled them with joy. They reaped great pleasure from these daily evening concerts, and they were grateful that one in their midst, Adrian Graff, was so gifted a musician.
Adrian’s hands, roughened by life at sea, fraternized expertly with the instrument, conjuring up the goodness, the wickedness, the peacefulness, the torment, the pleasure and pain in his soul. It was not just his hands which played, but all of him, so that when he finished, everyone sank into a trance. A full four beats passed in this hushed homage to the performer and the composer, Arcangelo Corelli, before raucous applause and shouts of appreciation rang out.
“Bravo,” yelled Edward Ames, the Welsh quartermaster. He had lived for years in Paris, where he had acquired a love for singing opera and for a woman, who had led him to commit a crime of passion.
“Hurrah,” shouted Robert Berry, the gunner, once an out-of-work actor in England. He raised his right hand in a fist.
Trevor Halstead, a Caribbean man who had fled the life of master on a plantation, stuck two fingers into his mouth and whistled shrilly.
Here, on the Good Hope, men from all walks of life banded together. Pledged into the free society of buccaneers, they looked to the sailor’s deeds as comment on the man’s worth.
Adrian smiled broadly and bowed deeply before his audience. The crew began to stomp on the wooden deck, each man challenging his friend next to him to make the most noise.
“More. More,” they demanded, as Adrian bowed again.
The ship exploded with so much excitement that Trevor’s shout of “Ship ahead,” surfaced as a small muffled sound before rising to its full height as the crew quieted. Everyone turned their heads at once. What they saw, no one had expected.
A galleon appeared as fire on water, so consumed was it by flames whose light was not of this earth. In the eastern quadrant of the sea where the ship burned, the early evening seemed like no time. The square-rigged vessel glowed yellow, red and orange like a fallen star. Billows of ashy white, gray and black smoke cloaked the sky’s true color of purple in twilight. Dark figures in the distance flung themselves from the deck into the sea like sticks. However, the splashes that followed the deep plunges summoned the horrific thought that people, not wood, were going overboard. The faint sound of the water parting way reached the ears of the buccaneers along with barely discernible screams of terror. The sound of the fear of meeting death in a flash and, worse, the sound of the fear of dying traveled to the Good Hope.
Hear it?
No.
There were no more sounds. No more falls.
The freebooters held the silence and their breaths. Some removed their head coverings; others stood with straightened backs. Adrian lay down his violin. Everyone assumed a funereal position.
“We’re probably too late to save anyone,” said Adrian, the elected captain and runaway indentured servant. Empathy warped his usually level tone of voice.
Adrian’s astute good sense assured him practical choices. His sea green eyes, slanted like a cat’s and set deep in his head under bushy brown eyebrows, gave him the look of a beautiful dreamer. However, they belied the true personality of the leader. An ambitious man who had sworn to uphold his family’s title of nobility, Adrian dreamt only his plans of execution.
A man of action, his clothes reflected it. Although impeccably chosen, they often hung askew with his shirttail fighting its way out of his trousers. Nevertheless, for these moments of observance, he had adjusted his appearance along with his men. He remained standing and, with his left hand, tucked in his white muslin shirt, which clung to his developed chest and showed off his strong neck. Lace trim hid the buttons down the front and on the cuffs. Under the crook of his right arm, he held a tricorn hat of velvet bedecked with a scarlet plume, which sprayed out behind him. Three-quarter length indigo pantaloons hugged the feminine indentation of his waist and displayed bulging calves in the same color stockings. Black shoes topped with a large, gold buckle completed Adrian’s foppish look. His evenly proportioned body was dressed like that of a member of King Louis XIV’s sparkling court though Captain Graff was thoroughly English, to the best of his knowledge, and proud of it. Still, like the Sun King, he inspired creativity and loyalty. This was his art. This was his talent.
“Looks like a Spanish slaver,” he deduced, while habitually twirling one end of his long, elegant moustache. He never touched his lips, the top one fuller than the bottom and upturned ever so slightly. His teeth were straight and, he still had a mouthful, although tobacco had tainted a few brown. Women had told Adrian that he had the kind of face at which they never tired staring. They said that his long, narrow countenance hid his features in shadows so that they were always seeing his sharp, noble nose, the sunken hollow in his cheeks or his wide forehead for the first time. His tanned skin matched the color of his thick tawny hair, which was parted on the right side but usually fell tousled all over his head because of the wind and his rough, jerky way of moving.
“Must have been a revolt,” he said.
Adrian addressed the thirty men in such a way that it sounded as though he was talking with each man individually. On this floating republic, he shared power with everyone, except during a chase or battle when he had it all.
“A revolution with no winner,” answered one man.
“Maybe no living victor,” said another.
Still, no one moved. Sweat beaded on the brows of the mourners, trickling down their faces into their mouths, the day’s ebb seeping inside them.
“Let’s get closer,” Adrian said suddenly, as he carefully, but quickly, swaddled his violin in crimson velvet. “Maybe we can get to somebody before they burn to a crisp.”
Instinct prompted Adrian’s change of mind. The crew snapped back to work hoisting up sails. Adrian ran his violin to his stark cabin down below before returning to the bow of the ship. His silver cutlass, its edge sharp as paper, swung at his left hip, his brass-barreled pistol stayed ready above the sword, stuck near his waist in a sling of scarlet ribbon tied from his right shoulder to his hip. The thirty-ton Good Hope traveled slowly, it seemed to Adrian, who began to pace. The nearer the ship drew to the disaster, the more furiously he paced, back and forth, back and forth. His hands joined behind him cupped his high-arched derriere. He held his head up and looked straight out at the ship, at the sea, at the ship, at the sea. His small eyes stretched open to their widest and, gradually, he began to see a vision that was his alone.
He espied a boy of thirteen lying on his back on the floor of a wooden house, pinned down by what he could not see. A burning rafter crackled threateningly over the boy’s head. Fear rose from his heart; its smell filled his nostrils. From outside the house, screams deafened him.
He had been asleep when his home started to fall apart. When he awoke, startled, and tried to escape, he had become trapped in the attempt. Now, all he could do was pray and hope. Never in his short life had he felt so powerless and abandoned. The waiting had become too much. He fainted before his father dashed in and carried him out to the street, where two hundred thousand other Londoners wandered, burned out by the fire of 1666, twenty-two years ago.
The boy was Adrian.
He regained consciousness as six others died. Two-thirds of the English capital fell to the fire, which had started before dawn in a baker’s shop. The hungry inferno had raged for three days, swallowing churches, bookshops and the Graff’s home. Adrian’s father had been able to save only his son, leaving their possessions, meager as they were, to be claimed by the flames. Adrian always regretted the loss of the family Bible. Besides the drama, poetry and prophecy inspired by God on high, it also held precious papers documenting births, deaths and marriages here on earth. One paper, in particular, he cried over. It marked the nuptials of his parents, Earl Francis Graff and Lady Audrey. To Adrian, it certified his place in the world. Now a man of thirty-five, he claimed nobility. However, the fire, the greedy fire, had robbed him of proof of his birthright.
Barely aware of his memory’s intrusion, Captain Graff saw the burning ship again.
“Faster,” he shouted. “Faster.”
“I’ve never seen him like this,” the crew whispered. “He seems to be out of his mind. He acts like he knows someone on the ship.”