Whither Thou Goest (The Graham Saga Book 7) by Anna Belfrage

Author:Anna Belfrage
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: SilverWood Books
Published: 2014-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24

Alex had never been to a slave market before. At a distance, she’d seen the holding pens in Providence, too far away to make out more than a mass of humanity, but now she was scant yards away from where silent, apathetic human beings stood waiting their turn as sales lots.

A six-foot wall surrounded the space, killing any hopes of a breeze to relieve the oppressing heat. The stench was overpowering: a heavy carpet of human waste, sweat, vomit and blood, all of it overlaid by the incongruous smell of roasting yams and pork.

In a corner just to the right of the entrance, a food stall was doing fantastic business, three coloured girls scurrying back and forth with heaped plates and brimming wooden cups. A sense of festivity hung over the crowd standing around the open fire while they waited for their food. White men under wide-brimmed hats laughed and talked loudly to one another, here and there with a woman by their side. A gaggle of white children rushed around, dogs barked, umbrellas twirled, and all that was truly missing for this to be the scene of a family picnic were tables with linen tablecloths and quilts thrown onto the ground in the shade of the gigantic breadfruit tree. Until one turned to face the other way.

“Oh Lord,” Alex said. Matthew just nodded. One very large group of slaves was being herded forward, and suddenly one of the young women screamed, her arms clutching a child no more than two to her chest.

“No!” she wept. “Please, massa, no.” But the child was torn from her, and Matthew’s fingers closed tightly around Alex’s.

“A healthy maid child,” the slave trader said. “The mother proven fertile, with two live births so far, and already breeding again.”

Two? Alex looked at the woman again. She couldn’t be more than eighteen.

“Look,” the trader continued, setting the child down on a table. “Well proportioned, and with a very nice tone to the skin.” The little girl swivelled her head, looking for her mother, but the slave trader forced her to face forward.

Matthew made a sound of absolute disgust. “I don’t want to watch this,” he muttered.

Alex couldn’t agree more, but they were hemmed in by prospective buyers, loud men that pushed them closer and closer to the wooden platform. They watched in stunned silence while the large lot was sold off, one by one, children torn from their mothers, men from their women.

“They do it on purpose,” Alex said, crying after seeing a terrified six-year-old being carried off from her family. “At least they could keep the children with their mothers.”

“You mustn’t allow yourself to become so upset, Mrs Graham,” Mr Lynch said in her ear. “They’re but slaves.”

“They’re human beings, and don’t tell me you don’t think they love each other!” She indicated a man who was hugging a woman desperately, and then he was dragged away in one direction and she in the other.

“The buck will forget her quickly enough,” Mr Lynch said, “once he is put among other women.

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