Sao Tome by Paul Cohn

Author:Paul Cohn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: historical fiction, history, jewish history, sao tome, isbn9780964587601, historyafrica, historyslavery
Publisher: Paul Cohn

Chapter 14

Except for the goats, pigs, and horses that foraged in my garden plots, little remained of the farm. Our houses were burned and the canefields black. Kiman found a supply of salt fish in the rubble of his house, and we took the charred mess down to the Vascão, washed it and ate our fill. With little to do for the moment, our families safe and the two of us exhausted, we lay down in the shade and slept.

In a short while Kiman woke me. “Hear noise, master.”

I listened and heard something. “Goat,” I mumbled, adjusting my repose and closing my eyes.

“No Saulo, a man noise. From Horté farm.”

I struggled to my feet and picked up my poleax, the damned weapon part of my life now. “Let’s take a look.” As we neared Horté’s we saw buzzards circling.

We found him hanging by his arms from a tree in the yard. He’d been flailed. The buzzards made their ill-tempered croaking sound and lumbered away. We cut Horté down and laid him on the ground. Frantic eyes stared from his bloody face. He gasped violently and began to talk. “My niggers did this. Where’d they go?”

“Most of your slaves fled with the Angolars,” I told him. “We heard you’d been killed.”

“I am not dead yet. Where’s my family?”

Horté was dried blood from head to foot—amazing he’d survived this long. “I don’t know where your family is, but we better get you to town.”

For the second time that day Kiman and I carted a man on a litter to the hospital. Horté was immensely heavy and, as we struggled along, he asked a stream of questions. His fanatic eyes flashed when we told him of the executions at the slave port. “I will see more of them hang!” he shouted.

Some soldiers straggling back from Alegre caught up with us. Most of the rebels, they told us, had escaped into the jungle after sacking the town. “…headed toward the old fugitive camp on the mountain,” one man said.

When they saw our burden and offered to carry Horté, he began to buck and thrash. “Take me where they’re hanging those bastards,” he raged. “Take me!”

“He’s going to the hospital,” I told the soldiers.

“No!” screamed Horté. He pitched himself from the bloody litter and squirmed in the dirt. “You men take me, not the Marrano. I got gold sovereigns. I’ll pay.”

The soldiers appeared confused. I’d grown sick of Horté’s insanity. “Where is this gold, Nuño?”

“It’s hidden, Jew. I’ll not tell.”

I had never seen anyone so crazy. I dashed my palms together dismissively. “Take the lunatic,” I told the soldiers, “but see you get his gold before he dies.”

•••

Horté did not die. He stayed a day at the slave port, unable to rise from his litter, urging the hangman on. When he fell into a stupor, the soldiers carted him to the hospital. By then he had gangrene in an arm and a leg. The surgeon took both. The nuns looked after Horté and a priest administered the last unction.

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