Read Online Blonde Roots by Bernardine Evaristo - Free Book Online
Authors: Bernardine Evaristo
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involved and so were men called Aphrikans, who were colored blak.
The slave raiders, it seemed, were in cahoots with aristocrats like Percy and the middlemen who supplied them with slaves for shipment overseas. Criminals and prisoners of war were hot favorites, but when they weren’ t available it was any one who could be captured, so long as they weren’t too old or, in Percy’ s case, his own serfs. Children were taken too.
Some said that the guns the greedy aristocrats received in exchange for slaves encouraged them to start more wars just to meet the demand of the slave traders who wanted a yearly increase in exports.
The Aphrikans built heavily fortified castles to hold their cargo until ships arrived to collect them. It was rumored that there was one on the coast that could accommodate a thousand slaves at a time.
But all that was happening somewhere far away. None of us knew what happened when the prisoners got on those boats, but it was rumored to be a bit crowded belowdecks, and sea-sickness was rife.
To be honest, it felt so distant from us that we didn’t give it much thought. Our world was made up of our immediate neighbors and foreign meant the people of the midlands or fenlands.
We were just simple country folk, who tried our best to live with ourselves and understand one another.
O U R NIGHTS WERE SPENT singing songs. What else was there to do after work was done and food eaten and we were exhausted but not quite ready for bed? Pa’ s snoring provided a sonorous bass. We’d be inside in front of the fire in winter with the tallow rushlights flickering, woolen blankets wrapped around us for extra warmth. Or outside in summer, sitting on stools under a sky bigger than our brains could ever imagine (we could just about manage acres, not planets), surrounded by the silence of the countryside, which was really quite noisy what with crickets and owls, small scurrying beasts in the undergrowth, the close buzzing of mosquitoes, the pig snortling, the fowl doing their nighttime chicken-pen shuffle, and the stream running nearby.
We’d stamp our feet, bang clay pots, rub sticks up and down a washboard, click wooden cutlery, clap our hands and slip into familiar harmonies. We’d raise a cheer after a song if it was rendered perfectly, or point the finger when someone’ harmony didn’ t slide smoothly into place.
When my mind does a back flip into my BS days, at some point it goes on past what I remember myself and into what I’d been told. There it goes, legs, hands, the supple spine of a child, flicking back the years to when my mother was in labor and Old Sarah, the local midwife, saved my life.
Mam went into the throes with me early one evening a month before I was due to arrive while Pa, as luck would have it, was at work. She lay in a puddle of broken waters and just knew I was going to come out all twisted. I was her seventh child—four had already died. She kept rattling some stones in the cup of her hand, which was supposed to prevent a miscarriage.
Mam had to send little Madge off to Old Sarah, who lived all the way over at Sheepwash. Somehow she made it and Old Sarah came rushing in through our door, sending Madge to heat up some water while I was safely disentangled.
Then I was swaddled from head to toe in linen bands so that I didn’t grow up deformed, and she made a caudle of spiced wine for Mam, to keep her health and spirits up.
Old Sarah lived alone, had never married, had no kids, owned a cat, Tibbles, and was over fiftv-all of which should have been enough to see her tied up in a sack and drowned in the river for witchcraft. She also practiced the herbs and was known for her healing powers, which could have got her burned alive at the stake outside the church at Duddingley. She was lucky not to have been stripped naked in search of extra teats (from which her imps suckled), inspected for a telltale mole (a sign she was “consorting” with a demon), pricked by a
The slave raiders, it seemed, were in cahoots with aristocrats like Percy and the middlemen who supplied them with slaves for shipment overseas. Criminals and prisoners of war were hot favorites, but when they weren’ t available it was any one who could be captured, so long as they weren’t too old or, in Percy’ s case, his own serfs. Children were taken too.
Some said that the guns the greedy aristocrats received in exchange for slaves encouraged them to start more wars just to meet the demand of the slave traders who wanted a yearly increase in exports.
The Aphrikans built heavily fortified castles to hold their cargo until ships arrived to collect them. It was rumored that there was one on the coast that could accommodate a thousand slaves at a time.
But all that was happening somewhere far away. None of us knew what happened when the prisoners got on those boats, but it was rumored to be a bit crowded belowdecks, and sea-sickness was rife.
To be honest, it felt so distant from us that we didn’t give it much thought. Our world was made up of our immediate neighbors and foreign meant the people of the midlands or fenlands.
We were just simple country folk, who tried our best to live with ourselves and understand one another.
O U R NIGHTS WERE SPENT singing songs. What else was there to do after work was done and food eaten and we were exhausted but not quite ready for bed? Pa’ s snoring provided a sonorous bass. We’d be inside in front of the fire in winter with the tallow rushlights flickering, woolen blankets wrapped around us for extra warmth. Or outside in summer, sitting on stools under a sky bigger than our brains could ever imagine (we could just about manage acres, not planets), surrounded by the silence of the countryside, which was really quite noisy what with crickets and owls, small scurrying beasts in the undergrowth, the close buzzing of mosquitoes, the pig snortling, the fowl doing their nighttime chicken-pen shuffle, and the stream running nearby.
We’d stamp our feet, bang clay pots, rub sticks up and down a washboard, click wooden cutlery, clap our hands and slip into familiar harmonies. We’d raise a cheer after a song if it was rendered perfectly, or point the finger when someone’ harmony didn’ t slide smoothly into place.
When my mind does a back flip into my BS days, at some point it goes on past what I remember myself and into what I’d been told. There it goes, legs, hands, the supple spine of a child, flicking back the years to when my mother was in labor and Old Sarah, the local midwife, saved my life.
Mam went into the throes with me early one evening a month before I was due to arrive while Pa, as luck would have it, was at work. She lay in a puddle of broken waters and just knew I was going to come out all twisted. I was her seventh child—four had already died. She kept rattling some stones in the cup of her hand, which was supposed to prevent a miscarriage.
Mam had to send little Madge off to Old Sarah, who lived all the way over at Sheepwash. Somehow she made it and Old Sarah came rushing in through our door, sending Madge to heat up some water while I was safely disentangled.
Then I was swaddled from head to toe in linen bands so that I didn’t grow up deformed, and she made a caudle of spiced wine for Mam, to keep her health and spirits up.
Old Sarah lived alone, had never married, had no kids, owned a cat, Tibbles, and was over fiftv-all of which should have been enough to see her tied up in a sack and drowned in the river for witchcraft. She also practiced the herbs and was known for her healing powers, which could have got her burned alive at the stake outside the church at Duddingley. She was lucky not to have been stripped naked in search of extra teats (from which her imps suckled), inspected for a telltale mole (a sign she was “consorting” with a demon), pricked by a
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