The Middle Passage Read online

  The Middle Passage

  A Play in Two Acts

  Dedicated to all Cat’s loyal readers–that means you!

  Julia Golding

  www.juliagolding.co.uk

  Copyright

  Text copyright © Julia Golding

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted

  This work is available under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commmerical No Derivatives licence.

  Cover photography by Jonathan Ring, Other: Shutterstock,

  Model: Amalia Austin/Bruce and Brown London Kids

  First e-book edition 2010

  ISBN 978 1 4052 58852

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Principal Characters

  The Critics

  Prologue: All at Sea

  Act I

  Scene 1: Stargazers

  Scene 2: Laboratories of the Universe

  Scene 3: The Theft

  Act II

  Scene 1: The Rivals

  Scene 2: Setting the trap

  Epilogue: Cat’s Comet

  Cat’s Glossary

  The Critics

  ‘Reading Cat Royal, I felt like some watcher of the skies, when a new planet swims into his ken’– John Keats

  ‘A Cat Royal story? I’ll point my telescope in that direction any day!’– Caroline Herschel, astronomer

  ‘What, she’s back again? Summon the navy and get rid of her!’

  – William Pitt, Prime Minister

  Somewhere in the Atlantic, Late Summer 1792

  Curtain Rises.

  Principal Characters

  Cat Royal–your intrepid guide

  Billy Shepherd–her annoying companion

  Mabel Flanders–a stargazer

  Peter Flanders–her telescopically obsessed brother

  Rachel Flanders–their sister, who wants nothing to do with the heavens

  Mr Flanders–their father

  Charles Aubert–curly-haired French rival

  Albert Aubert–his brother, not blessed in his looks

  Anna-Maria Aubert–their shy sister

  Madame Aubert and Monsieur Aubert –their parents

  Gossiping servants, drunken sailors, mistaken magistrates etc.

  And two donkeys.

  Prologue: All at Sea

  The most annoying person in the universe is the one who retains his appetite while his travelling companion is suffering from seasickness. I can now attest to this newly coined proverb from my own experience. In the middle of the recent mid-Atlantic storm, while I had my head over a certain nameless object, Billy Shepherd, former Covent Garden street thug turned gentleman, was tucking in to a good square meal of salt pork and beans in the captain’s mess.

  Following that incident, I began an alphabetical list of all the words describing Billy. ‘A’ was easy–‘awful’, though ‘abominable’ came a close second. No, no, I changed my mind: ‘arrogant’ won by a nose. I put my pen down on the little ledge on the writing desk I had cobbled together from packing cases and stretched my arms above my head. The sea beyond my porthole was blessedly smooth, a calm deep blue; the sky a paler expanse thanks to a light cloud cover. Now I came to think of it, there were so many words for Billy, this little exercise was going to pass the tedious days on board the Dolphin very well. I savoured some of my favourites further on in the alphabet. A very satisfactory feast of delicious epithets.

  The object of my lexicon of revenge stuck his head into my cabin. ‘Wot you doin’, Cat?’ I think he seeks my company because I am the only entertainment available.

  ‘Contemplating human nature,’ I replied tartly, gathering up my papers.

  ‘Captain says we’ve almost reach the Azores.’ Billy was looking like the pirate he was at heart: tanned, clothes salt-stained and more than a bit scruffy, dark brown hair needing a good wash and visit from the barber. ‘’E’s going to call in to make repairs before the last leg ‘ome.’

  I wrinkled my nose, trying to imagine where the Azores were on the navigational charts. ‘Gone a bit far south, haven’t we?’

  ‘You don’t argue with a storm like the one we weathered. Besides, Captain Bates knows the islands well.’

  ‘I bet he does.’ I shoved the manuscript on which I’d been doodling into my sea chest. It was an unpleasant fact that the only passage I could obtain from Tortuga in the Caribbean back to England had been on board a slave ship, empty of human cargo but now stuffed with slave-made goods: sugar, indigo and tobacco. I would have much preferred not to mire myself in the ugly web of the trade in human misery, but it seemed impossible to live in the British Empire without being implicated in what we were doing to our fellow men. Thinking of that iniquitous trade, I was reminded of my friends, Pedro and Jenny, who had stayed behind in San Domingo to help the rebel slaves fight for their freedom. I muttered a little prayer for their protection.

  ‘So, Moggy, are you comin’ out?’ Billy stood back, giving me a glimpse of the busy deck beyond my door. I had the cabin next to the captain’s, a berth of honour. Everyone else shared quarters in hammocks in the stifling lower deck (being the only female paying passenger has its benefits). There were a few older women who had come aboard in the Caribbean; I did not enquire too closely into their status–their alliances with their husbands were somewhat fluid–but as they gave every indication of being tougher than the sailors, I assumed they were well able to shift for themselves. Billy had warned me to steer well clear of these ladies or be ‘eaten for breakfast’ (I quote).

  ‘Of course, I’m coming out. Can’t wait to clap my eyes on land after having to endure your ugly phiz for the last month.’

  Billy grunted. ‘And I’ve ‘ad to put up with your sharp tongue. Been a voyage worthy of Odysseus.’

  I gaped. Billy kept on doing that: luring me to thinking he hadn’t changed from the street urchin I knew and then reminding me that he had paid good money to get a swift education in the essentials of passing as a gentleman. Homer–in Chapman’s translation obviously–had clearly figured on his reading list.

  ‘So that makes me…what? Scylla? Charybdis?’

  ‘Nah, a siren.’ He offered me his arm with mocking solemnity.

  ‘Stuff your ears with wax then.’ I placed my hand on his forearm and gave it a pinch.

  ‘Been tempted, Moggy, been sorely tempted.’

  He steered me to the foredeck and the dolphin-shaped figurehead. The sun was high and the light curiously flat. I couldn’t see the islands on the horizon as I had hoped.

  ‘Not a sign–not even a pimple.’ I shaded my eyes. ‘Is he sure we’re close?’

  Billy shrugged. ‘’E’s the boss so I ‘ope ‘e knows wot ‘e’s doin’.’

  I eyed the nearest mast.

  ‘Oh no, you don’t.’ Billy’s grip on my arm tightened.

  What was his problem with my urge to climb? I had my sailor’s trousers on underneath my skirt. I tried to tug free. ‘Let go.’

  ‘I vowed last time you went up the mast like a monkey that I’d stop you if you tried those tricks again.’

  ‘I’m fully trained in all aspects of skylarking.’ I wriggled my arm clear. ‘If you don’t like it, you could always come with me to keep me safe.’

  If he hadn’t been burnt brown as a berry, I would lay good money on him going the colour of good parchment. ‘Can’t,’ he muttered.

  ‘Can’t? What, you don’t like heights or something?’

  ‘Don’t like ropes.’ His words were barely audible as he made the confession shame-facedly.

  There was only one bad association someone of his profession had with ropes–and that involved a scaffold, priest and judge. I guessed Billy had once or twice come too
close to taking the nipping jig.

  ‘You stay here then. I won’t be a moment.’ Making my escape, I darted up the first shroud I reached. The sailors on deck cheered when they saw me go. The chief bookmaker among them started counting–there was a bet that I could reach the top in twenty seconds if I went flat out. Those who put their faith in the cat were going to be a lot richer in nineteen seconds because I felt like showing off my prowess today.

  I reached the crosstrees as the sailors’ all roared ‘Eighteen!’. I clung on to a line and gave them a jaunty wave. Billy had his hat pulled over his eyes–he couldn’t bear to look when I got in one of these moods, which was partly why I did it, of course.

  Standing up with my arm locked around the mast, I took a deep cleansing breath. This was the only place on board where you could rise above the stench of the ship–the old odours left by the poor human cargo of a month back and the smell of too many unwashed sailors who were a rough lot by anyone’s standard. I’m sure I wasn’t too sweet myself, having not had a proper chance to wash in more than a thimbleful of water since we left San Domingo.

  ‘Can you see anything?’ bellowed Billy.

  I scanned the horizon–there on the very margin was the bluish hint of land, a mountainous island by the looks of things. ‘Yes! Land-ho!’

  ‘Then get down from there, you idiot girl!’

  I reached for the nearest line heading to the deck.

  ‘Not again!’ he groaned.

  With a hoot, I swung out and skimmed my way hand over hand down to the deck and gave the assembled company a bow.

  ‘Cat Royal on deck, sir!’ I saluted Billy.

  His reply is not fit for decent folk to read.

  Act I

  Scene 1: Stargazers

  The Portuguese settlement of Angra do Heroismo was surprisingly beautiful, a cluster of white-washed houses and churches set against the steep slope of this fertile volcanic island like a stack of ivory betting tokens scattered on a green baize table. Angra clung on by the merest whim of fate that saw the volcanoes dormant for the present; with turn of fortune’s wheel, I guessed it could be swept way. The Azores boasted some of the tallest mountains in world if you took note of their dramatic rise straight out of the Atlantic Ocean. My mind whirled to think how much lay hidden under the waves–they had to be huge.

  The Dolphin was now riding at anchor near the docks and all but the core of the crew dismissed to amuse themselves in the taverns of Angra. Well used to welcoming travellers, the harbour rejoiced in numerous squalid establishments catering to the lowest of tastes. I imagined that Billy would feel completely at home and be raring to sample these dubious delights, but instead he insisted on keeping me company as I went in search of a more respectable place to spend the days while our ship was repaired.

  ‘Really, you needn’t,’ I said for the hundredth time as we scaled a flight of stairs winding up the hillside between the houses. It felt hot in the airless streets after the breezy days on board, but I welcomed the sensation that the land under my feet was going to stay put. Perspiration ran down my forehead, the band tying my sunhat in place itched against warm skin.

  Billy paused to fan himself with his battered tricorne. ‘Course I do. I don’t even want to imagine what trouble you’ll get in if I leave you to wander the taverns on your own.’

  I put a cautious hand over the place on my shoulder where I now sported a cat-shaped tattoo, memento of a night in a certain tavern in Bermuda. He didn’t know about that, did he? To be sure, he had seen me in my nightgown on the occasion when I’d been delirious with malaria, but he would have teased me about it before.

  ‘What kind of mischief could I possibly get myself into?’ I asked, a shade too innocently.

  He chuckled. ‘Cat Royal–low dives heaving with the rummest bunch of sailors this side of Marrakesh–you’d be knocked over the ‘ead and shipped for the white slave trade before you could say “Drury Lane”.’

  ‘I wasn’t planning to frequent any such establishment. I am planning to find somewhere quiet and decent so I can pass a few pleasant days without annoying company.’

  ‘Not possible.’ Billy poked me in the side. ‘You and quiet cancel each other out.’

  ‘Oh, shut up, Billy.’ I continued walking not wishing to witness his smirk.

  We reached the top of the hill and found ourselves on a garden walk surrounded by some of the finer houses of the settlement, the homes of the shipping agents and merchants who clung to this little outpost in the ocean. A broad-leaved fig tree shaded a bench, ripe fruit dropping on the ground to the delight of a horde of wasps.

  I here admit, Reader, to a peculiar antipathy to these stripped nuisances, terrors that plague our summers and autumns in England. I would hazard that my irrational fear of them must stem from some childhood incident that has since slipped from my memory. Suffice to say that whenever I hear that particular buzz, I flee.

  ‘Let’s find somewhere else,’ I said quickly, tugging Billy round to the top of the stairs.

  ‘You daft?’ Billy mopped his brow. ‘We’ve just climbed all the way up ‘ere and you want to go back already? No way, no flippin’ way, Cat Royal. I’m sticking ‘ere.’ He plumped down on the bench, heedless of the wasps buzzing round his feet.

  I cringed, edging out of range to perch on the wall overlooking the harbour.

  Billy could not help but notice my unusual reticence. ‘Wot’s the matter with you?’ He squashed a wasp under his heel, then reached up and picked a fig, swishing away the clouds of insects that rushed to enjoy the fruit in his fingers.

  I closed my eyes, not wanting the image of Billy stuffing soft fig with wasp-garnish in his mouth forever in my memory.

  ‘Go on, tell yer Uncle Billy,’ he urged through a mouthful.

  Oh lord, I feared my sea sickness was returning. I swallowed against the bile in my throat.

  ‘You’ve gone green, Cat.’

  ‘I don’t like wasps,’ I ground out.

  He had the gall to laugh. ‘Bleedin’ marvellous! Fearless Cat is terrified of something no bigger than ‘er fingernail. Don’t tell me, you’re scared of mice too?’

  ‘Am not.’

  I heard him approach so opened my eyes quickly. He was holding out a fig for me.

  ‘See, no wasps. ‘Ave one–they’re ripe.’

  Like a hunter on a fresh scent, a wasp zoomed in over his shoulder and dived at the fig brandished an inch from my nose. I shrieked, tried to bat it away, and only succeeded in knocking the fig flying in what in cricket would have been declared a six by any impartial umpire. The irate wasp, deprived of its meal, turned on me, buzzing straight at my face. I screamed and flapped it away–but only as far as the neck of my gown. Caught in the raggedy lace, it took revenge and sank its stinger into my skin.

  ‘Bi-lly!’ I yelped.

  With a clap of his hands, the wasp was no more.

  ‘It’s only a little sting. Stop makin’ such a fuss. You’re embarrassin’ me.’

  My head began to swim. I couldn’t see the place the wasp had struck but I was sure it was swelling up like a hot air balloon. ‘It hurts!’

  ‘Yeah, it’s a sting–they ‘urt.’ Billy was quite disgusted by my feeble behaviour, but he didn’t understand. Give me a black eye in a scrap, then I would bounce back and give you one in the canister. Push me over then I’d bring you down too. But wasps were different. Wasps were evil. God was having one very bad day when he created them.

  ‘Oh lord…’ I slid from the wall and cast up my accounts in a flowerbed.

  ‘Blimey, you really aren’t takin’ this well, are you, Moggy.’ Billy sounded almost–and I stress almost–sympathetic. A handkerchief wafted into view.

  I was about to agree, when to my eternal mortification, I fainted.

  ‘I think she’s coming round.’

  I could feel a cool, soft surface underneath me. Cotton sheets and a breeze from an open window. A slim hand patted my cheek with a damp cloth. I opened my eyes to com
e face to face with a girl of my own age, slender, with a mass of black curls looped up in a complicated hairstyle. Her eyes were intelligent–dark brown with long lashes–but her face a little too thin to be declared conventionally pretty. Everything about her, from her fine clothes to her elaborate coiffure, declared her to be a product of a privileged upbringing.

  ‘Ah, there you are. Feeling better?’

  English. She was speaking English with no foreign accent.

  A second girl came into view–blond, slightly younger, dressed in the shade of pink that I knew looked ghastly on me but on her was very pretty. ‘I’ll tell her friend that she is awake.’

  With a swish of her skirts, the blond vanished out of sight.

  ‘Where…?’ I asked.

  ‘Where are you?’ the first girl supplied quickly.

  I nodded.

  ‘You are in our house, Bellevue Mount. Your companion carried you in from the heat when you fainted. Said you took on so when you were stung by a wasp.’

  I had to be in one of the fine residences by the garden. Recovered enough to feel embarrassed, I groaned and turned my face into the pillow.

  The cool hand came back to my brow. ‘Do you still feel poorly?’

  ‘No. Ashamed.’

  The girl laughed. ‘No need for that. Your friend explained you’d only just landed and are not used to our climate.’

  ‘Not the climate–the wasps.’

  She shivered. ‘Oh, I understand that. Hate the little demons myself. I can’t walk near the fig tree at this time of year. They breed them big and vicious in these climes.’

  A girl after my own heart.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

  ‘Mabel Flanders. That was my sister, Rachel, you saw a moment ago, and there’s also my brother, Peter, but he’s with your friend, Mr Shepherd.’