The Call of Zulina by Kay Marshall Strom Page B

wild and cruel of the bush spirits.” Cabeto spat out each word as though it was poison in his mouth. “Or should I say, she is the boss of your father!”
     
    Grace opened her mouth to protest, but the low moans echoed through the fortress walls and burrowed into her. They sent a shiver through her soul and stole every argument out of her mind. Her father's boss … yes, that was an apt description of Lingongo. But a lioness? And a traitor to her people?
     
    One time, when Grace was a child and she saw her mother whipping a slave, Grace had asked, “Who are the slaves, and who are the masters?” Lingongo had answered, “The ones with the power are the masters, and the weak ones who can be beaten down are the slaves. That is why you must always have the whips and the guns on your side.”
     
    Cabeto didn’t have a whip or a gun, but he did seem to have power on his side.
     
    “Are you a slave?” Grace asked in a trembling voice.
     
    “No,” Cabeto answered, struggling to keep his voice under control. “I am not a slave. But my kinsmen are.” When Grace didn’t respond, he continued, “In the middle of the night, slavers attacked my village. The young men who slept at the village gate only had time to call out an alarm before they were killed. My people are strong and brave, but they could not stand against the slattee 's muskets. Your father—”
     
    Grace jumped to her feet. “You accuse my father of kidnapping and killing people in your village?”
     
    “No,” Cabeto said, “it was Africans who came. Africans from tribes we did not know.”
     
    “Well, then—”
     
    “But your father paid them for what they did. And you tell me this: if it was your father's beads and muskets and gunpowder that brought the attackers to us, then who really crushed my people?”
     
    Grace opened her mouth to speak, but Cabeto didn’t give her a chance. He wasn’t finished.
     
    “The slattee 's men bound our feet and hands and locked us together in chains. When my brother, the firstborn of my father, tried to protect his babies, he was struck down with a knife. He died at his wife's feet. Tungo is angry, yes, but he is not alone. I am angry as well.”
     
    “But you admitted my father wasn’t even there,” Grace protested. Tears welled up in her eyes again. “He isn’t a bad man. My father is a respected ship's captain.”
     
    “What do you think he packs in his ship?” Cabeto countered. “Sweet potatoes and millet?”
     
    “I … I don’t know,” Grace stammered. “I have never actually been to the harbor.”
     
    Cabeto pointed an accusing finger. “You are not an innocent child,” he insisted. “You are a woman. You live where this prison stands between you and the setting sun. You can hear, can you not? You can see, can you not? You can smell, can you not? When the very ground cries out with the misery of my people, you cannot tell me you know nothing.”
     
    “Many people are slaves,” Grace sobbed. “The ones who are weak—”
     
    With a look determined and hard, yet profoundly weary, Cabeto stared straight into Grace's eyes. “All along the horrible march, I thought about ways I could escape. When we arrived here, our captors unlocked our chains and brought us before your father. They tore the clothes off our bodies so he could look us over carefully, from our feet to our teeth to our hair. Then he paid the ones who brought us in. Your father gave beads and muskets and cloth and gunpowder to those who captured us. That's what he said my people were worth. And then your father burned his mark into each one of us.”
     
    Cabeto pulled off his shirt. He took Grace's hand, and though she tried to pull away, he forced her fingers up to his bare shoulder to the jagged scar. She jerked away as though she herself had felt the rage of her father's red hot branding iron. But there was no mistaking it. JWL. It was indeed the personal mark of the Winslow family—a mark seared into every