—
Weeks went steadily on, and still Quey sent no answer to Cudjo. Instead, he devoted himself to his work. Fiifi and Badu had numerous contacts in Asanteland and further north. Big Men, warriors, chiefs, and the like who would bring in slaves each day by the tens and twenties. Trade had increased so much, and the methods of gathering slaves had become so reckless, that many of the tribes had taken to marking their children’s faces so that they would be distinguishable. Northerners, who were most frequently captured, could have upwards of twenty scars on their faces, making them too ugly to sell. Most of the slaves brought to Quey’s village outpost were those people captured in tribal wars, a few were sold by their families, and the rarest kind of slave was the one that Fiifi captured himself in his dark night missions up north.
Fiifi was preparing himself for one such journey. He wouldn’t tell Quey what the mission was, but Quey knew it had to be something particularly treacherous, for his uncle had sought help from another Fante village.
“You can keep all the captives but one,” Fiifi was saying to someone. “Take them back with you when we split up in Dunkwa.”
Quey had just been summoned to his compound. Before him, warriors were dressing for battle, muskets, machetes, and spears in hand.
Quey moved further in, trying to see the man his uncle spoke to.
“Ah, Quey, you’ve finally come to greet me, enh?”
The voice was deeper than Quey remembered and yet he knew it immediately. His hand trembled as he held it out to shake with his old friend. Cudjo’s grip was firm, his hand soft. The handshake took Quey back to Cudjo’s village, to the snail race, to Richard.
“What are you doing here?” Quey asked. He hoped his voice didn’t betray him. He hoped he sounded calm and sure.
“Your uncle has promised us a good mission today. I was eager to accept.”
Fiifi clapped Cudjo’s shoulder and moved on to speak to the warriors.
“You never returned my message,” Cudjo said softly.
“I didn’t have time.”
“I see,” Cudjo said. He looked the same, taller, broader, but the same. “Your uncle tells me you haven’t yet married.”
“No.”
“I married last spring. A chief must be married.”
“Oh, right,” Quey said in English, forgetting himself.
Cudjo laughed. He took up his machete and leaned in closer to Quey. “You speak English like a British man, just like Richard, enh? When I have finished up north with your uncle, I will return to my own village. You are always welcome there. Come and see me.”
Fiifi gave one last cry to gather the men, and Cudjo went running. As he sped off, Cudjo glanced back and smiled at Quey. Quey didn’t know how long they would be gone, but he knew he would not sleep until his uncle returned. No one had told him anything about the mission. Indeed, Quey had seen the warriors go out a handful of times and never questioned it, but now his heart thumped so hard it felt like a toad had replaced his throat. He could taste every beat. Why had Fiifi told Cudjo that Quey wasn’t married? Had Cudjo asked? How could Quey be welcomed in Cudjo’s village? Would he live in the chief’s compound? In his own hut, like a third wife? Or would he be in a hut on the edge of the village, alone? The toad croaked. There was a way. There was no way. There was a way. Quey’s mind raced back and forth with every thump.
One week passed. Then two. Then three. On the first day of the fourth week, Quey was finally summoned to the slave cellar. Fiifi was lying against the wall of the cellar, his hand covering his flank as it oozed blood from a large gash. Soon one of the company doctors arrived with a thick needle and thread and began sewing Fiifi up.
“What happened?” Quey asked. Fiifi’s men were guarding the cellar door, clearly shaken. They held both machetes and muskets, and when so much as a leaf rustled in the woods, they would clutch each weapon tighter.
Fiifi began laughing, a sound like the last roar of a dying animal. The doctor finished closing up the wound and poured a brown liquid over it, causing Fiifi to stop laughing and cry out.
“Quiet!” one of Fiifi’s soldiers said. “We don’t know who may have followed us.”
Quey knelt down to meet his uncle’s eyes. “What happened?”
Fiifi was gnashing his teeth against the slow-moving wind. He lifted an arm and pointed to the cellar door. “Look what we have brought, my son,” he said.
Quey stood up and went to the door. Fiifi’s men handed him a lamp and then moved aside so that he could enter. When he did, the darkness echoed around him, reverberating against him as though he had stepped inside a hollowed drum. He lifted the lamp higher and saw the slaves.
He didn’t expect to see many, for the next shipment was not set to arrive until early the following week. He knew immediately that these were not slaves the Asantes brought in. These were people Fiifi had stolen. There were two men tied together in the corner, big warriors, bleeding from minor flesh wounds. When they saw Quey, they began to jeer in Twi, thrashing against their chains so that they broke fresh flesh, bleeding anew.
On the opposite wall sat a young girl who made no noise. She looked up at Quey with large moon eyes, and he knelt down beside her to study her face. On her cheek was a large oval-shaped scar, a medical mark James had taught Quey years before, before he’d shipped him off to England, a mark of the Asantes.
Quey got up, looking at the girl still. Slowly, he backed away, realizing who the girl must be. Outside, his uncle had passed out from the pain, and the soldiers had loosened their grips on their weapons, content that no one had followed them.
Quey looked at the one closest to the door, grabbed his shoulder, shook him. “What in God’s name are you doing with the Asante king’s daughter?”
The soldier lowered his eyes, shook his head, and did not speak. Whatever Fiifi had planned, it could not fail, or the entire village would pay with their lives.
—
Every night after that night, Quey sat with Fiifi as he healed. He heard the story of the capture, how Fiifi and his men had stolen into Asante in the dead of night, informed by one of their contacts as to when the girl would have the fewest guards around her, how Fiifi had been slit around like a coconut by the tip of her guard’s machete when he reached for her, how they had dragged their captives south, through the forest, until they reached the Coast.
Her name was Nana Yaa and she was the eldest daughter of Osei Bonsu, the highest power in the Asante Kingdom, a man who commanded respect from the queen of England herself for his sway over the Gold Coast’s role in the slave trade. Nana Yaa was an important political bargaining tool, and people had been trying to capture her since her infancy. Wars had been started over her: to get her, to free her, to marry her.
Quey was so worried he didn’t dare ask how Cudjo had fared. Soon, Quey knew, Fiifi’s informant would be caught and tortured until he told who had taken her. It was only a matter of time until the consequences came to meet them.
“Uncle, the Asantes will not forgive this. They will—”
Fiifi cut him off. Since the night of the capture, every time Quey tried to broach the topic of the girl, to gauge Fiifi’s intentions, the man clutched his side and grew quiet or told one of his long-winded fables.