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  “They look dirty, tired and miserable. Then they’re taken to the barracoon to be cleaned, shaved, oiled and ready for the auctions.” He pointed to a large open area beyond his cart in the opposite direction from the harbour. “They’re displayed over there to the white traders who examine them carefully, one by one. It must be humiliating to be treated like a horse or cow or sow. Their teeth, muscles and genitals are checked as well as arms, legs, fingers and hands. There’s a bargaining between buyer and seller to agree a price. Sometimes the buyer walks away angrily and goes to another group.”

  “The payment? What’s the payment?” Bugan asked impatiently.

  “Hold on, I’m getting there.” The young man seemed to enjoy drawing out the information, whether intentionally or not to provoke Bugan. “I’ve seen them deliver huge rolls of cloth, guns, ammunition, knives, hats, iron bars, beads and brandy.”

  Bugan looked at him suspiciously.

  “How do you know all this anyway?”

  The young man looked offended.

  “I’ve got eyes in my head, haven’t I? I can see them coming past with the stuff taken off the slave ships. One day I’ll be a slave dealer myself.” He boasted.

  Running out of cowrie shell currency, Bugan had to act boldly and immediately. He loitered near the slave ships but the crew ignored him. They continued with their work, offloading goods. He discovered the cargo was mostly sugar and tobacco, aside from the cloth, ammunition and other items. The food seller had described them as payment for the slaves purchased by the white slavers. Next, he went to the slave auctions where he observed the action and the procedure. Then he positioned himself near a sign, which said Binada’s men. As soon as a man with obvious authority appeared with slaves, he seized a twig broom and swept the display platform on which the men stood quietly in rows waiting to be inspected. Someone pushed him aside and the inspection and bargaining began. A week of unsolicited sweeping and eventually he came to the notice of the black slave dealer Binada. Whether or not he valued Bugan’s ingenuity was never established, but within a period of two weeks, he started to work for Binada as a guard en route from the interior to the coast, a tiring job involving a forced daily march of about eight hours, covering a distance of approximately thirty-two kilometres a day. The slaves were chained together, sometimes fifty or a hundred in a long caravan.

  Strong, persistent and detached, Bugan was not popular and yet he was sought after and acknowledged as though his chieftain kinship were felt and his authoritative air recognized unconsciously. He breathed a quiet strength and dignity. Before long, he’d forged sufficient contacts to become a successful slaver himself, feted among the white traders as a young dealer who delivered promptly and consistently. He was always on the lookout for new markets, new sources for acquiring slaves, more challenges and more money. He’d grasped the basics: that the heart of the slave trade was concentrated on the west coast of Alkeban. And yet as time went by, he (as well as other slavers and slave catchers) had to penetrate further and further into the interior of the continent for manpower.

  As the west coast countries jostled for precedence in the slave trade, dropping conventional and traditional industries for the sake of the growing and phenomenal demand for labour on the fast-developing plantations over the ocean in Ommenrik, so Bugan investigated which nations were the biggest traders. He found the emerging new regime of Gedevi to be the most successful, if the most brutal in the pursuit of human slave labour.

  What he didn’t know, but could quite easily have deduced, was the fact that over decades the emphasis of wars and conflicts had changed profoundly. Instead of wars being fought after which slaves were taken as a consequence of the conflict, wars were being fought more and more for the primary reason of enslaving the people, especially the males. Gedevi’s royal court controlled the armies, which raided for captives. They even had a women’s army for that purpose, and the country had become known as a slaving state.

  Bugan came to the capital of Gedevi called Aboma to gather information about how the king conducted the slave trade. And just how and what services he could offer the potentate. He found the people in the city to be strangely noncommittal and uncommunicative about the ruler and their lifestyle, the laws and the general activities. And yet mostly wherever he went, he saw banners and signs saying New homes for the people, pictures of a smiling king saluting his people. He noticed soldiers patrolling the streets, squares and meeting places, the back lanes and the outdoor markets. Even so, the atmosphere felt relaxed and slow-moving. People chatting in groups on the streets. Soldiers sitting at ease in the sun or in the tea shops, sipping a cup of oriental chai. Was he imagining dire things in this peaceful, sunny city?

  Two weeks after his arrival, he noticed a bustle and stir around the parade grounds of the summer palace. As he sat in a by-now customary teahouse sipping his first cup in the early morning, he questioned the aged teahouse owner who surveyed his shop (and the world) with a hangdog look and rheumy eyes. The man replied, “Haven’t you heard? The king’s wife (the second senior) tried to poison him. He’s had her thrown in jail. And at 11 o’clock there’s a public hanging, right here on the parade ground.”

  “So the king is still alive?” Bugan asked anxiously.

  “Oh, yes!” The teahouse owner elaborated. “The palace wives are in disarray. Some support the senior second. They say she’s being punished unfairly through a vicious rumour spread by the youngest wife to discredit her so that her sons lose their place of precedence to the throne since wife number one has no heir.”

  Conspicuously absent from the sensational hanging, the king had left the gory procedure to his Chief Justice and the head of the military. The immediate spectacle proved to be tense and dramatic. The king had acted swiftly, savagely and cruelly. The second wife, a dumpy, homely, middle-aged woman dressed in the dark brown of a servant was dragged on to the parade ground, sobbing and hysterical. The huge crowd gathered there didn’t seem to know what to do or whom to support until a soldier called out, “Kill the traitor! Save the king!” At which the crowd started to boo, hiss and chant as in a refrain. “Down with the traitor. Down with the poisoner. Kill! Kill! Kill!” Over and over again. A hushed few minutes followed. After the executioner placed a sack over her head, she was hoisted up to the wooden gallows with ropes. Her shrieking and moaning muffled in the confined space of the bag. The minute the executioner let go of the rope and she hung doll-like, small and floppy, the crowd went berserk, screaming, whooping and ululating. The onlookers began to throw rocks and stones, which they’d either picked up along the way or brought purposely to vent their anger.

  The value of human life had become meaningless in Gedevi, an attitude also clearly shown in an annual festival. Here human sacrifice dictated by voodoo and witchcraft dominated and was carried out on a large scale. Servants and gladiators were killed in a ritual slaying so that they could continue to serve their masters in the next life. In the months that followed the queen’s hanging, Bugan carefully laid his plans and drew up his business proposals for the king. First he had to cultivate the right people within the royal circle with the aim of obtaining an audience with the king. Urbane and wealthy by this time as a result of many profitable dealings in the slave trade, Bugan was in a position to arrange elaborate dinners for the court ministers and advisors in the tavern where he lodged. The banquets were sumptuous enough to set tongues wagging about the rich stranger in the city who also happened to be a slaver. Much was at stake, including his life. If there were any problems or hitches, he knew the king would show him no mercy.

  “We have a singular mode of living in the winter palace,” the Mehu informed him. “The palace is situated in the town of Alissa, with unique security in the form of a mud wall nearly ten kilometres long. Six gates at intervals for entry into the town. A ditch one and a half metres deep, filled with thorny acacia branches running all along the wall. The palace itself has earthen walls nearly half a metre thick to keep the interior cool. The courtyard walls are decorated with bas-relief panels made of earth from anthills mixed with palm oil, the colours of the panels made of vegetable and mineral pigments. They depict religious rites and conquests of war. The king’s lineage goes back two hundred and fifty years, his elevated status symbolized by a golden stool as throne.”

  Bugan went through the motions of sycophantic admiration, hoping the Mehu would broach the subject of his audience with the ruler. As if on cue, the Mehu indicated how busy the monarch was at this time. Nevertheless, he would try to set up a business discussion. Eventually within three weeks, Bugan’s presence was requested after the full moon of the following month. Grateful that the Mehu had filled him in with details of the winter palace, he was still taken aback when the Mehu himself conducted the entire meeting. The king was nowhere to be seen. No word was said by his advisor.

  The Mehu questioned Bugan in detail regarding the slave deals. The wily slaver didn’t give much away, aware that the man could use the information against him. He already knew the advisor had contact with traders from Whitland who had come to the southern port of Leboma. Bugan could, however, offer to buy about a thousand eight hundred slaves from the king every year, or a hundred and fifty per month. The information appeared to satisfy the Mehu, at which point he called for refreshment.

  In spite of not seeing the king himself, Bugan relaxed and enjoyed a glass of palm wine, the delicately flavoured fish, freshly prepared, served with rice and vegetable sauce. After that he had to wait for a further summons from the advisor to confirm the offer.

  Chapter 3

  The Slaver Granville-Throgmorton –

  Bargaining for Slaves

  It seemed he’d been closeted for months with the black slave hunter, Bugan, in the smelly, close and fe
tid hut while attempting to broker a deal with the wily young trader. He was trying his best to milk him, the Honourable Archibald Granville-Throgmorton, as though he were an adult sow and Bugan a wayward, unweaned piglet refusing to get off the teat! Throgmorton was the sow lumbering to her feet, moving her colossal mass in an attempt to shake off her unnatural, pushy and greedy offspring from a painfully engorged nipple.

  All he (the Honourable) wanted was to ensure that he chose a hundred of the fittest slaves, mostly men but including fifteen women and seven children. The cost to Bugan was minimal because the slaves were mostly kidnapped or bought for beads and brandy from the village chiefs. But for him, it was everything and more than he’d bargained for. He shifted his bulk uneasily on the small stool and loosened his cravat, which seemed to choke him in the confined space. Feeling the sweat pouring down his face, forehead and shirt front, he fanned himself with the by-now-wilted cream panama hat.

  The Sunian slave catcher, Bugan, continued to study him curiously, noting the fat man’s discomfort, wondering at the thick clothes, the sweat, the florid complexion. He himself sat comfortably, semi-naked, in a loin cloth, a man fanning him from behind with a palm-leaf frond. Two men from opposing worlds!

  All they had in common was the gold and the bartered goods, which the fat man was reluctant to part with. And which he (the trader) craved. As a result, Bugan played him, prolonged his all too obvious uneasiness, both physical and mental – the heat, together with Throgmorton’s dismay at having to pay such a high price for the human flesh.

  At first, glib and confident, Throgmorton hadn’t anticipated either opposition or prolonged negotiations. He’d not encountered these before. And now this somewhat sullen and determined young man dared to tantalize him with the prize of one hundred prime bodies. He would sell them at huge profits to farmers and traders across the oceans in the New Land of Ommenrik. Bugan dared to play baiting games with him. Even his strong-man interpreter seemed to mock Throgmorton’s futile efforts to close the deal. Perhaps he should walk away, find another dealer, propose another deal. There was no point in making all this effort for minimal return. Once again, he shifted uncomfortably on the stool, anxious to leave and get away from the oppressive atmosphere, the sticky bargaining. But Bugan in a conciliatory counter-move, well aware he was overplaying his hand, conveyed a revised figure in the form of a lower amount for the goods. And (much to Throgmorton’s surprise) instructed one of his men to fan him, in this way further alleviating his misery.

  Bugan’s timing was neat, his gesture magnanimous so that (at the height of his discomfort) Throgmorton was fooled into thinking that the Sunian had backed down, that he was generous enough to offer the fan for Throgmorton’s benefit, that he had relented and weakened by dropping the price for the slaves. He didn’t see the moves as shrewd and telling machinations and power play on the part of the young bargainer, playing him like a fish on the hook, drawing him out of the water gasping for air and then dropping him back in to revive. Before repeating the ploy all over again! If he so chose, he could reel in the fish at any time, club him over the head, stun or kill him. Just as he could kill the white man and take his goods. Throgmorton’s small body­guard of ten men would be powerless against the superior numbers of the trader’s entourage.

  Throgmorton had learned. It was more impressive to produce a scroll with conditions of sale and price, complete with stamps and seals. The interpreter explained the terms to Bugan who was about to place his thumbprint but stopped in midair to talk to the interpreter.

  “He will sign, Mr Honourable,” the interpreter hesitated, “but he wants something from you personally.” He pointed to Throgmorton’s baby finger, right hand. “He wants your ring.”

  Again Throgmorton was taken off-guard. What on earth would the heathen slaver want with his signet ring? A simple gold ring, unornamented, with a black onyx stone given to him by his father. This was not the time to hesitate. He agreed, unequivocally, his lassitude gone. He was all action, urgency and briskness. The band of a hundred would be loaded in the next few weeks on the slave ship “Le Broussard,” which was bound for slave collecting on the southwest coast of Alkeban before sailing across the western sea to the New Land of Ommenrik. Meanwhile, there were loads of cloth to offload, muskets, gunpowder, knives, beads and brandy, all in payment for the slaves.

  Fortunately, he didn’t have to remain long surrounded by inscrutable people of different faiths and customs on a foreign continent. In the months before his dealings with the slaver Bugan, he’d spent time (with relief) in Whitland, at first in the capital city of Lyndon representing the acme of civilization, a fine and sophisticated parliament, well-chosen scientific and creative artefacts collected and displayed in museums and art galleries, extensive networks of commercial trading, export and import via ships and barges moving along the vast river running through the city to the ocean. There were complex, exquisitely decorated buildings for monarchs, government and education.

  A measured, stable and refined life for himself as aristocrat and businessman. And yet, at the same time, it was a restless, seeking society made up of seafaring people who in essence were constantly on the move into the unexplored and the explored in order to expand and challenge, to conquer new lands, find new markets.

  For the moment he was satisfied to meet friends and acquaintances in the taverns and public houses off Lark Street, exchange stories and experiences, lodge at a gentleman’s club and visit the theatres. Discreetly, he frequented the whorehouses and pleasure parlours, visited his tailor in Anvil Row who measured him for new suits, shirts, riding breeches and hats. He called on the famous Farnside Jewellers to replace the ring bargained by the wily Bugan.

  A man of technical curiosity, he learned about the new inventions of steam trains, time-keeping machines/clocks and steam-driven turbines, the inventions for the factories of the New Age of Industrialization. Alec Trilby (whom he met at the Regency Gentleman’s Club) wanted to show him the wonders of the latest mass production in a tour of Trilby Textiles, a company established by his father with expertise learned in Whitland’s Far Eastern colony of Deva. So they travelled north to the city of Nanterer. Here Throgmorton found an alien world of five-storey factory buildings containing thousands of looms powered by steam, producing cotton cloth, which made up almost 50 percent of Whitland’s exports!

  It was Throgmorton’s first experience of the miseries of industrial labour in which people were exploited purely for profit. For in spite of his numerous voyages on the slave ships to Ommenrik, he’d never ventured below decks. Never seen the slaves chained and naked, forced to occupy their cubbyhole space amidst the stench, the disease, the inadequate food. Now in his own land, his eyes were opened to the fog and soot of an industrial city with thousands of workers – men, women and children – labouring for fourteen hours a day, feeding the machines including the newly invented Power Loom, which enabled hugely increased production.

  Along with industrialization came the destruction of the environment. Slime and refuse pumped into rivers and streams. Air polluted by the burning of coal. It provided the steam power. And the poor served as workforce, living in dark, damp houses or basements, without adequate water and sewage disposal, without hospitals, breathing in the cotton fuzz as well as the noxious gas from the coal firing. So that men were worn out at forty, children deformed and decrepit, suffering from tuberculosis by the age of sixteen. Working from 5 a.m. to 6 p.m. with half an hour for breakfast, one hour for lunch. Starting at the age of seven or eight. Day shift followed by night shift. Worse still, the worker had to adapt to an entirely new rhythm and lifestyle. His/her workday run by the clock in a fixed routine, in front of a machine, away from home and at the mercy of a supervisor or foreman. Tempted by the carrot of earning more than the man (or woman) really needed to support a family, which was unheard of in rural or agrarian societies.

  Nevertheless, influenced and informed by Trilby, Throgmorton understood the profitability of dealing in Whitland’s textiles. Accustomed to bartering slaves in Alkeban, he discovered that half of the textiles produced in Nanterer were exported to Alkeban, leaving from seaports on the west coast of Whitland, namely Tollard and Poolton, further south. As a result of his visit to Trilby Textiles, another avenue of business came his way. In a neat triangular configuration, he would hire the slave ship in Poolton (where it was fitted out originally), load up the textiles, sail to the coastal slave embarkation point of Aubiss or Koradi or else Leboma, offload the textiles as part payment for the human cargo. And then accompany the slaves to the plantations of Ommenrik.