Free Blonde Roots by Bernardine Evaristo Page A

none other than Gideon—the eldest son of Old John Hopkins, the master tanner at Duddingley. Gideon sold his father’s leather in the wealthy faraway spa town of Upper Whiddon. He fancied himself a ladies’ man although his prominent overbite meant women recoiled at the thought of clinking teeth with him. We girls avoided him because if we didn’t, he’d find a way to touch us when Mam wasn’t looking.
    Now I stared at him with such an intensity he turned around with the force of it. Gideon knew me. He’d rescue me, surely, even if it meant clinking my teeth with his.
    His face flushed when he saw me-one of the young Scagglethorpe girls. Was it embarrassment? Guilt? Pity? Had he led them to our district? I couldn’t work it out. No sooner had he clocked me than he spun back and continued business with some traders who had gathered around his cart and were squeezing the two young men who were trying to shrug off anyone who touched them.
     
     
    THE TIME CAME FOR US to set off in a crocodile trail of interlinked coffles into the forest. Torchlights fired up the night. The coffle scraped the skin on my neck. Young Dafyyd was struggling with the weight of it.
    People who couldn’t go on were beaten with a truncheon until they did.
    After many hours Dafyyd began to stumble about like a dazed newborn foal, his legs buckling under. I wanted to reach out but the coffle separated us by three feet.
    Finally he collapsed, bringing down those of us attached to him like dominoes.
    Our solemn procession ground to a halt. Dafyyd wasn’t moving. The guards tried to rouse him with a few swift kicks.
    Garanwyn tried to tell the guards he would carry his little brother on his shoulders, but they ignored him.
    Whether Dafyyd’s heart had already stopped beating at that stage I have no idea.
    He was released from the coffle and swung by his arms and legs into some bushes.
    Heavy as a three-stone sack of barley.
    I heard the thud as he landed.
     
     
    IT TOOK TWO NIGHTS and three days to reach the sea, which, I discovered, was just like the winter sky: lackluster, bleached, vacant.
    The surf drizzled spit onto the shingle beach.
    Makeshift wooden cages were waiting for us.
    Way out on the water were enormous ships.
    Pulled up onto the beach were small boats called yawls.
    The first time I saw the blak men I couldn’t believe how their skin could be so dark, their features so broad, their hair so crisply curled. All the stories I’d heard were true because even though it was cold, they wore only cotton strips to cover their privates so they shivered and sneezed and were covered with goose pimples.
    I didn’t know then that they would rather suffer chilblains, frostbite, the dreaded influenza and even death than dress like the natives.
    The blak men inspected our bodies, our mouths, our limbs, and we were soon loaded facedown into the yawls.
    As I awaited my turn, I imagined telling my sisters back home that I had seen the blak men, with my very own eyes, yes, really and truly; that the stories about slave raiders were not exaggerated gossip to bring drama into our lives, but a terrifying reality that had, fleet of foot and with a sinister stealth, made its way into our homelands.
    Just before I was thrust down into a yawl, I looked at those enormous vessels out at sea, ready to carry me somewhere I knew not, and it hit me.
    I wouldn’t be reporting back to anyone.

DOKLANDA

W hen the slow-rocking wheels of the train eased to a sliding stop, I woke up.
    It was dark. There was no door. Was I lying upside down or spinning from the ceiling?
    I saw the moon dance above my head and a hawk sweeping down about to pluck out my eyes with its beak.
    Raising an arm to defend myself, I realized it was the driver holding a lantern, shaking me awake. I could see clearly that he was indeed one of the Tuareg nomads who sometimes made their way to Londolo after a drought or war in their own lands. Submerged beneath flowing robes, they floated about