Voyage of Midnight by Michele Torrey

time of confinement had done wonders. “I’m your master,” I said to him, delighted with the firmness in my voice and wishing Uncle were here to see me. “Do you understand?”
    Pea Soup nodded vigorously.
    “From now on, you’ll do what I tell you. Do you understand?”
    Still on his knees, he shuffled forward, then pressed his forehead to my feet. “I will be good. I promise.”
    “Release him,” I said to McGuire, thinking,
Now that’s how to handle it. Just like that, the situation has been righted
.
    McGuire unshackled Pea Soup, whereupon the boy stood shakily on his feet, a good half a head taller than me. “I am grateful,” he said.
    “My cabin’s a shambles, and my bedding needs airing. Please see to it, and then take your dinner and rest.”
    “Thank you, Master Philip, thank you.” Pea Soup nodded and, with a quick glance at someone in the crowd, turned and left.
    I stood, blinking daftly, as the Africans watched me.
    “Let’s go,” said McGuire. He was tugging at the back of my shirt.
    I looked to where Pea Soup had glanced. There stood Ikoro, head bowed, meek as a daisy. An unsettled feeling came over melike a spell, for when Pea Soup had glanced at Ikoro, I saw not the wretched expression and the tears he’d given me, but instead a look of triumph.
    “Yes,” I replied, “let’s go,” suddenly anxious to be out of there, feeling as if I’d just made a horrible, horrible mistake.

F evers, boils, bad eyes, sores, and rashes …
    I wiped my face with my handkerchief and then straightened my stiffened back, feeling it pop. I filled my lungs, praying for fresh air, praying for my head to clear. But the infirmary air still stank of candle smoke and the most vile of body odors and excrements. Much as I’d tried to keep up with the washing and cleaning of the infirmary, it was getting the better of me—rats, dirty medical instruments, and every towel and rag filthy.
    I’d told Jonas that we needed to do something about the deteriorating conditions in the infirmary, but Jonas, lately falling into long periods of drunkenness, was of little help.
    And if I’d thought that Pea Soup would be of assistance, remarkably transformed from his imprisonment, I could think again. If possible, he worked slower than before, disappearing entirely for hours at a time. Yesterday, overwhelmed, I’d commanded Pea Soup to help me in the infirmary. Acting deaf and dumb, he did nothing but get in my way and trip over things, in the process spilling the surgical tray and breaking two crockery bowls. I next gave him laundry duty, but the articles came back damp, gray, wrinkled, and smelling like seaweed and rotten eggs. Today I’d not the strength nor time to deal with him, and so let him be—wherever he’d disappeared to. I didn’t want to admit it, but I feared Pea Soup’s promises and tears had only been a charade, masterfully performed to obtain his release.
    A headache was beginning at my temples. In the five hours I’d worked, I’d seen how many people? Twenty? Thirty? A stream of ailments and complaints.
    Jonas himself was groaning in our cabin, too ill to venture out today, he said.
    Only the most desperately ill slaves stayed in the infirmary. On this day, just our twelfth day out from the river Bonny, every pallet was full, sometimes with two to a pallet, stacked up the sides of the hull like shelves. Already four slaves had been tossed overboard that day to the ever-present sharks who shadowed our wake. Each death became personal to me, as if I’d somehow failed, failed in my effort to bring the slaves to a better life.
    “Hold still now, lass,” I told the slave girl who lay before me on a raised pallet. She was eight years old or so, her two front teeth large as a rabbit’s. “This won’t hurt a bit, I promise.”
    One of her eyes was gummed shut. As she clutched my wrists, no doubt fearful of what I was about to do, I drizzled warm water over the lids, then gently pried them open and