“We are meant to be traders, no?” Fergus had argued. “We have an empty hold to fill. Besides,” he had added logically, clinching the argument, “Monsieur Grey will pay us more than adequately.”
“How far, Sassenach?” Jamie squinted at the horizon, as though hoping to see land rising from the sparkling waves. Mr. Willoughby’s magic needles rendered him seaworthy, but he submitted to the process with no real enthusiasm. “Three or four days’ sail, Warren says,” he admitted with a sigh, “and the weather holds fair.”
“Maybe the smell will be better at sea,” I said.
“Oh, yes, milady,” Fergus assured me, overhearing as he passed. “The owner tells me that the stench dissipates itself significantly, once the dried material is removed from the caves where it accumulates.” He leapt into the rigging and went up, climbing like a monkey despite his hook. Reaching the top rigging, Fergus tied the red kerchief that was the signal to hands on shore to come aboard, and slid down again, pausing to say something rude to Ping An, who was perched on the lowest crosstrees, keeping a bright yellow eye on the proceedings below.
“Fergus seems to be taking quite a proprietary interest in this cargo,” I observed.
“Aye, well, he’s a partner,” Jamie said. “I told him if he’d a wife to support, he must think of how to do it. And as it may be some time before we’re in the printing business again, he must turn his hand to what offers. He and Marsali have half the profit on this cargo—against the dowry I promised her,” he added wryly, and I laughed.
“You know,” I said, “I really would like to read the letter Marsali’s sending to her mother. First Fergus, I mean, then Father Fogden and Mamacita, and now a dowry of ten tons of bat shit.”
“I shall never be able to set foot in Scotland again, once Laoghaire reads it,” said Jamie, but he smiled nonetheless. “Have ye thought yet what to do wi’ your new acquisition?”
“Don’t remind me,” I said, a little grimly. “Where is he?”
“Somewhere below,” Jamie said, his attention distracted by a man coming down the wharf toward us. “Murphy’s fed him, and Innes will find a place for him. Your pardon, Sassenach; I think this will be someone looking for me.” He swung down from the rail and went down the gangplank, neatly skipping around a slave coming up with a barrowload of guano.
I watched with interest as he greeted the man, a tall colonial in the dress of a prosperous planter, with a weathered red face that spoke of long years in the islands. He extended a hand toward Jamie, who took it in a firm clasp. Jamie said something, and the man replied, his expression of wariness changing to an instant cordiality.
This must be the result of Jamie’s visit to the Masonic lodge in Bridgetown, where he had gone immediately upon landing the day before, mindful of Jared’s suggestion. He had identified himself as a member of the brotherhood, and spoken to the Master of the lodge, describing Young Ian and asking for any news of either the boy or the ship Bruja. The Master had promised to spread the word among such Freemasons as might have occasion to frequent the slave market and the shipping docks. With luck, this was the fruit of that promise.
I watched eagerly as the planter reached into his coat and withdrew a paper, which he unfolded and showed to Jamie, apparently explaining something. Jamie’s face was intent, his ruddy brows drawn together with concentration, but showed neither exultation nor disappointment. Maybe it was not news of Ian at all. After our visit to the slave market the day before, I was half-inclined to hope not.
* * *
Lawrence, Fergus, Marsali, and I had gone to the slave market under the cranky chaperonage of Murphy, while Jamie called on the Masonic Master. The slave market was near the docks, down a dusty road lined with sellers of fruit and coffee, dried fish and coconuts, yams and red cochineal bugs, sold for dye in small, corked glass bottles.
Murphy, with his passion for order and propriety, had insisted that Marsali and I must each have a parasol, and had forced Fergus to buy two from a roadside vendor.
“All the white women in Bridgetown carry parasols,” he said firmly, trying to hand me one.
“I don’t need a parasol,” I said, impatient at talk of something so inconsequential as my complexion, when we might be near to finding Ian at last. “The sun isn’t that hot. Let’s go!”
Murphy glowered at me, scandalized.
“Ye don’t want folk to think ye ain’t respectable, that ye don’t care enough to keep yer skin fine!”
“I wasn’t planning to take up residence here,” I said tartly. “I don’t care what they think.” Not pausing to argue further, I began walking down the road, toward a distant murmur of noise that I took to be the slave market.
“Yer face will…get…red!” Murphy said, huffing indignantly alongside me, attempting to open the parasol as he stumped along.
“Oh, a fate worse than death, I’m sure!” I snapped. My nerves were strung tight, in anticipation of what we might find. “All right, then, give me the bloody thing!” I snatched it from him, snapped it open, and set it over my shoulder with an irritable twirl.
As it was, within minutes I was grateful for Murphy’s intransigence. While the road was shaded by tall palms and cecropia trees, the slave market itself was held in a large, stone-paved space without the grace of any shade, save that provided by ramshackle open booths roofed with sheets of tin or palm fronds, in which the slave-dealers and auctioneers sought occasional refuge from the sun. The slaves themselves were mostly held in large pens at the side of the square, open to the elements.
The sun was fierce in the open, and the light bouncing off the pale stones was blinding after the green shade of the road. I blinked, eyes watering, and hastily adjusted my parasol over my head.
So shaded, I could see a bewildering array of bodies, naked or nearly so, gleaming in every shade from pale café au lait to a deep blue-black. Bouquets of color blossomed in front of the auction blocks, where the plantation owners and their servants gathered to inspect the wares, vivid amid the stark blacks and whites.
The stink of the place was staggering, even to one accustomed to the stenches of Edinburgh and the reeking tween-decks of the Porpoise. Heaps of wet human excrement lay in the corners of the slave pens, buzzing with flies, and a thick oily reek floated on the air, but the major component of the smell was the unpleasantly intimate scent of acres of hot bare flesh, baking in the sun.
“Jesu,” Fergus muttered next to me. His dark eyes flicked right and left in shocked disapproval. “It’s worse than the slums in Montmartre.” Marsali didn’t say a word, but drew closer to his side, her nostrils pinched.
Lawrence was more matter-of-fact; I supposed he must have seen slave markets before during his explorations of the islands.
“The whites are at that end,” he said, gesturing toward the far side of the square. “Come; we’ll ask for news of any young men sold recently.” He placed a large square hand in the center of my back and urged me gently forward through the crowd.
Near the edge of the market, an old black woman squatted on the ground, feeding charcoal to a small brazier. As we drew near, a little group of people approached her: a planter, accompanied by two black men dressed in rough cotton shirts and trousers, evidently his servants. One of them was holding the arm of a newly purchased female slave; two other girls, naked but for small strips of cloth wrapped about their middles, were led by ropes around their necks.