Dearest E.

One of these days, we shall be together on sunny shore,

vessel of my heart. You carry sweet honey with your words.

Four not even death can sepaerate us. Not even many

guns of enemy can rip me apart from you.

Left to my own, I only imagine last we touched in old

Hamburg. Parting with you was such gray sorrow. My

destination must be kept secret, but I shall bring you

cape with the golden flowers that you like ones on green

coast of your home town in Greece.

Free is my spirit when I dream of you, but my heart is

slaves to pain of your loss. I am sailing with a great crew, mostly

British, on ship called Chaesar, I hope to hear you soon.

Love R.

I missed her, truly I did. Even though we might never see each other again, I prayed that someday our paths would cross. A woman of her caliber was rare indeed – strong-willed, capable, intelligent, brave… I would love to marry her, but alas we had both been set to task by our mother the czarina, and she would chastise me to no end if I forsook my mission for her.

We had been out at sea for thirty days. After the initial novelty of being on a giant vessel had gone, the voyage itself had become mundane and unremarkable. Some grew bored and reckless, owing to the lack of things to do on board the ship other than singing the occasional song, which Andrei and I later came to attempt as well. Even though I am certain that we both murdered the lyrics to whatever English song we were singing, the crew recognized our efforts. With the help of Andrei, an English Bible, and a French/English dictionary that Captain Glass had been so kind to lend me, I was able to compose my first letter to Eirene, which would be delivered to her via the next port of resupply. However, such resupplies were rather infrequent. Captain Glass had justified this by saying that he would take on one very large load of rations and necessities just before our arrival so he would have enough to feed the hundreds of slaves that we were to take aboard. Meanwhile, I occupied myself by trying to learn as much of the foreigners’ language as I could. I leaned over the side of the vessel, letting the salty breeze fill my lungs while watching the sailors perform their duties above me in the ship’s rigging.

“So, avast is the same as stop, ahoy is the same as hello, starboard is right-board, and larboard is left-board?”

“Yes monsieur,” said Andrei, before he buried his head in his hands.

“The language of the Englishmen changes into a completely different animal at sea. I find it most confusing.”

“Yes m—blaaagh!” Andrei was cut short by the unexpected resurfacing of his morning meal all over the Chaesar’s deck.

“Come now, Andrei Vasilyevich. You have been retching for weeks. How have you not found your pied marin by now?”

“Ah, ha-ha,” Andrei managed a weak laugh. “Sea legs. Very good, monsieur, it brings me great joy to see you practice wh—blaaagh!”

I wanted to tell him to get down below to get some rest, after all, he had been having these bouts of sea sickness for nearly the entire length of the journey. Before I could say anything at all, the lookout in the basket at the top of the mast bellowed, “Land ho!” and the entire crew rushed abovedeck in a stampede of excitement towards the edges of the craft. Those that had their spyglasses flipped them out to scan the horizon. It became obvious to me that the English “land ho” was a clear indication that something very interesting was in the distance. To confirm, I turned to Andrei.

“Andrei Vasilyevich, what does that phrase mean?”

When I had turned to face him, I found him leaning over the side, sacrificing more of his ship’s biscuits and tea to Poseidon.

I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder and turned to see Rebecca, who had changed from her breeches and frock coat into a dress befitting a governor’s wife. The pure white fabric contrasted well against her dark skin, and her corset accentuated her very fine figure. I dared not glance a moment longer, and cast my gaze at the distant shore, for it would be improper to ogle the wife of another man.

“Alas, dere she be. De Gold Coast. Do yuh see her, Rooshian?”

Truly, her speech was impossible to understand. In the thirty days we had travelled together, I had learned more English, but Rebecca’s dialect was still a mystery to me. I was certain it had to be some sort of English, for her husband spoke to her in the same tongue as the books he lent me, but her manner of speaking was markedly different. She spoke again to me, or rather at me, in more of her strange words, knowing full well that I could barely comprehend. She laughed, for she probably realized that I could only offer a wordless gawk in reply to her words. But then, with the utmost slowness of speech and seriousness of her voice, she said,

“Me people gine walk on board slaves, but dem gine leave freedmen.”

I almost understood that. My knowledge of English, although very limited, was no longer confined to the babblings of an infant. “Slave” was a word I had heard many times on this voyage while I dined with Captain Glass and his wife, and it did not take long before I fully understood. What I would have done to be free of my shackles when I was a slave in the Crimea. My mind was reaching into old memories of whips, chains, and broken bones, but something in the distant horizon caught my eye. Finally, I knew what everyone was excited about. A long flat shoreline in the distance broke the monotony of the blue ocean. I gave a hearty chuckle as I realized that we had reached land.

“Andrei!” I said as I grabbed him from the gunwales. “We’re here!”

He looked at me with his bloodshot eyes and managed a dopey smile, with bits of sputum dangling from the corners of his lips.

“Why, that is… that is excellent, monsieur. I knew that from the lookout’s cry. Terribly sorry for not telling you. If you excuse me, might I retire below? I wish to spend the next few hours at rest in my hammock.”

I laughed and gave him a pat on the back, which made him cough. I only laughed harder.

“Of course, Andrei Vasilyevich! Relax! We might have many more hours until we reach shore.”

As Andrei thanked me and headed down below, I realized that I had sent away my only means of coherent speech, and I was now up here with Rebecca, Captain Glass who was on the quarterdeck with the helmsman and first mate, and an entire crew who spoke nothing but English. I had to attempt to communicate somehow.

“Ah… when come in Land?” I asked.

Rebecca was taken aback, and she gave me a smile and a nod, clearly indicating that she was impressed.

“We be ashore in tree, maybe four hours. Den we make ready de launches, and you get ta see dis part of Africa for what it be. It be a den of kidnappers, flesh traders and villains of all sorts, makin’ profits from de blood of me people.”

I should have never asked. I barely understood a word she said and just nodded politely as she spoke.

After a few hours, the sandy beaches and green palms of the coast came into plain view. At long last, we had arrived at Cape Coast. Dozens of ships larger than our own lay anchored some distance from its harbor while seagulls circled high above their masts. A large stone fort stood as an imposing guardian over the beach itself. Its guns, all pointed at us, were enough to sink even the sturdiest vessel, and wary gunners peered through their spyglasses at us as we passed. Hot sunlight reflected off the plain white walls of its numerous towers, which stood well over the masts of the ships. Over those towers flew the same colors as our vessel’s own – British colors – while under the shadow of its walls, a crowd of hundreds of black bodies was herded along onto boats by men in red coats. I clenched my teeth in disgust.

“Quite the sight, is it not, Mister Rooshian?”

I turned to see Captain Glass approaching me. His speech was no longer as alien to me as it had been before we left Europe, and I reckoned I could fare well enough in a conversation with him. I gave him a respectful nod, which he returned before kissing his wife. For a short while, the three of us gazed upon the great white fort.

“When we land, sir, and the governor asks who you are, what shall you say?”

I had not thought about what I would do in such a situation, and paused before I replied in what English words I could muster.

“I say I am crew of ship, with you, yes?”

To my surprise, Glass and his wife looked at each other and exchanged smirks, not to mock my grammar or my accent, but as if what I had said was devoid of sense.

“Surely, you jest,” chuckled Glass. “A man in your attire, along with his own body-man, part of the crew? No sir, you shall tell them the truth.”

“What truth?” I said, raising an eyebrow.

“That you are an emissary from the czarina herself.”

Taken aback, I tilted my head in confusion.

“But why? Mission is secret, you want me to reveal all?”

“That eagle that you wear around your neck carries with it the protection of your empress and all her armies. How would you like to be the British governor that brought war upon England by harming the empress’s own hand?”

I smiled and slowly nodded. The Irishman was shrewd, and his plan made sense. This venture would need protection, indeed, for I doubted that the slave merchants here would wholly trust a man and his crew visiting for the very first time.

Andrei and myself had boarded the ship’s jolly boats along with Captain Glass and Rebecca. As his men rowed us towards shore, the coast came even closer and I was able to see more activity on the beach. There, I had a better look at the slaves who were being loaded onto waiting dinghies and jollyboats bound for the larger ships further out at sea. I could hear the cries of merchants who were yelling out prices and numbers for human beings as if we were at a wet market. It was a trade drenched in blood, and it made my own blood stir inside me, as I imagined the violence I would visit upon those men.

Andrei, who had finally recovered from his bout of illness, had returned to my side and watched with me as shore drew ever nearer.

“Praise God, land at last! I fear if I had stayed one more day aboard this wretched vessel it would have cost me my life.”

I could only manage a grunt in response.

“Are you not in good spirits, monsieur?”

In truth, my mind drifted once again to memories from my childhood on the steppes, for these men in red coats seemed so very similar in demeanor to the Tatars, jeering and shouting at the Africans as if they were animals to be herded. If I could strip them of their uniforms and put them in chains, put the heavy slave collars on them, make them haul boats over land while I whipped their backs raw…

“Monsieur?” Andrei asked again, drawing away my imagination from visions of terrible violence. “Are you quite well?”

I blinked hard and shook my head.

“What is it, Andrei Vasilyevich?”

“Ah, it’s nothing, monsieur. Merely concerned.”

That was oddly touching. I didn’t think the little man cared for me at all.

“Don’t worry about me. You have been sea sick for a month, and dry land would do you some good.”

As we landed and beached our jollyboat, Andrei leaped out onto the sand before the boat had even cleared the shallow water. His long sigh of relief even as he saw the slaves in chains around him assured me that, even as a servant himself, he cared little for the plight of slaves.

I stepped off shortly afterwards along with the others. It was good to feel soft ground beneath my feet again, but we had no time to relax. Captain Glass beckoned me and Andrei to come to him, and he spoke to us in French with a soft voice as Andrei translated once more,

“Remember, this is English land. If I utter a word of French, we will be cast in suspicion. I hope you understand enough of our language, gentlemen?”

Andrei and I exchanged worried looks, then nodded to Glass. In truth, I hoped that Andrei had learned more than I did, but even he seemed unsure about his proficiency in the English language. From here on out, we would be in the dark, speaking between ourselves in our own tongue while trying our damnedest to converse with Glass in his. Hopefully I had learned enough English from the few lessons I had with Eirene and the thirty days on board the Chaesar to be able to understand what was going on around me.

“Do you have the letter, my love?” Glass asked his wife.

She smiled and produced a roll of paper from beneath the folds of her dress.

“What this?” I asked.

“Our circular letter of credit, sir. The item that will secure freedom for these poor souls trapped in this wretched hell of a place.”

I pondered that for a moment. Slave purchases were usually quite expensive, but Captain Glass did not strike me as a person who was born into wealth. The quality of his ship was testament to that. The Chaesar with her four guns was hardly the best vessel in the world. The list to the left-board, or rather larboard side was permanent, and many an hour was spent by its unfortunate crew pumping out water through its ancient bilge pump lest we sink. If this man had money for slaves, he must have been quite miserly indeed to skimp on maintenance for his vessel. I had to ask,

“Sir, is letter… legalimate?”

“Legitimate, sir, that is the word you are looking for.”

Glass merely smiled at me as we continued to head further inland. His refusal to answer the question made me feel rather uneasy. If the letter of credit was a ruse, then we would need to fight our way out if discovered.

Suddenly my presence made much more sense, for it would be logical for a foreign buyer from the east, unfamiliar with the slave trade in the west to purchase a vessel that might not be of the highest quality.

We approached an officer on shore who was seated under a colorful canopy, busying himself with his quill and paper while a slave cooled him with a giant woven rattan fan. Other Europeans stood before him in a neat single file line, waiting patiently to have their papers processed. Evidently, this was where potential clients would declare themselves and we took our place in the line accordingly.

When it was time for us to be called, our captain, with his chest puffed out and head held high, proclaimed himself as “Johnny Tarr of the Chaesar, accompanied by his mistress Becky Tallow, and two Christian foreigners.”

The officer looked up from his paperwork and asked,

“What are the names of these two Christian foreigners then, sir?”

“Oh, some Rooshian nonsense, Misters Kansky and Kuzov or something or rather, indicate them however you wish. They hardly speak the language anyway.”

I widened my eyes, giving him a confused look, but Glass winked back at me as the officer put his pen to paper. It took mere moments for me to understand, and I nodded with approval. The protection of our identities was crucial if we did not wish to be hounded through Europe for what we were about to do.

“We are here to fulfill a purchase of three hundred negroes to be used for general labor, both domestic and agricultural.”

“Three hundred,” the officer mumbled as he wrote our details into his ledger. “Chartered on whose behalf, sir?”

“Ah, Her Imperial Majesty, the Czarina Catherine of Russia.”

As I suspected. All was going according to plan.

“May I see your purchase documents, sir?”

Missus Glass pulled the papers out of the folds of her dress and handed them over to the officer with a smile, which he did not reciprocate. As he looked them over, his eyes began to narrow. Captain Glass clasped his hands behind his back to hide the nervous twitching of his fingers while we all waited in shared suspense. Either Glass had made a serious error and the plan would fail before it even began, forcing us to have to fight for our lives to return to the boat, or the officer – who did not look particularly dim-witted – would simply accept our letter and the mission would proceed as planned. The officer placed the documents in a stack and leaned forwards in his chair.

“Sir, where is your letter of indication?”

Glass made no response beyond a short chuckle. Sweat formed on his brow as he tapped his feet rapidly on the sand. I too, was confused, as I had never heard of the term before. I exchanged a look of doubt with Andrei before Rebecca broke the silence.

“Dis be a Rooshian client, mista port officer sir. He don’t have no letter of indication. Ain’t a custom in he country.”

The officer looked at me, and upon seeing the confusion in my face, placed Glass’s letter of credit among his stack of papers.

“Very well then,” he said to Glass. “You may proceed into the castle and take your pick from the common slaves that have not already been purchased.”

Glass gave the officer a gracious bow and took his lady Rebecca off towards the castle. Before I could make a step to join them, the officer raised his hands to stop me.

“Sir, the purchasing of slaves is a rather ghastly endeavor, and is best left to those practiced in the act. A gentleman such as yourself should not have to endure the sight of all that blood, or the smell of negro sweat and excrement. I am certain your companion and his negress will fair quite well without you.”

“Yes!” said Glass, who continued to walk away with Rebecca, “We shall be quite fine!”

I grit my teeth as the couple faded into the crowd of merchants beyond. I had to dig into my limited reservoir of English once more just to ask this officer how I would bide my time. Even though I was to be separated from Glass and Rebecca, I wanted to ensure that I would rest in some quiet place where I could simply lay low and allay any suspicions that the British might have of us.

“Ah, where I stays?”

“Where do you stay?” he said with a raised eyebrow. “It is a rare thing indeed for a client to come directly to the source of slaves and forego the middlemen. I am quite certain that the governor himself would be happy to receive you in his parlor. It has been such a long time since he has had the opportunity to entertain fellow nobility. It is only prudent to inform him of your arrival.”

“Nobility?”

Before I could protest, the officer scribbled a note on a piece of parchment and handed it to the slave that was fanning him, then spoke some words to him in what I assumed was an African tongue. The slave, quick as a bullet, bolted into the castle.

“We’re fucked now,” murmured Andrei in Russian.

“I didn’t know you cursed, Andrei Vasilyevich.”

“Only in the direst of circumstances, monsieur.”

I knew what he meant. We were to meet the highest authority in the land, and the stakes would be raised considerably if we were exposed. The fact that I was presumed to be nobility was no small matter. I would have to rely on every little thing that Andrei and Eirene had taught me on our long voyage. The governor was expecting someone like himself – urbane, refined, sophisticated – not a brute with a tossed-up wig.

For a few minutes, we endured uncomfortable silence as we waited for the officer’s slave to return. He had resumed with the bureaucratic tedium of his paperwork, and thus – mercifully – left me with only Andrei to converse with. He gave me a nudge and said in Russian,

“Our Irish benefactor is trying to put up a ruse, but he gave no indication as to what part you would play in it. To me, monsieur, this seems like awfully bad planning.”

“Perhaps he made up the plan on the spot?”

“Now why would he do that?”

“The documents,” we chorused.

“He was going on and on about his letter of credit for the entire trip,” I said. “He seemed confident that it would work, but apparently he has never used one before.”

“Indeed, when he was asked for his lettre d’indication, he became quite jittery. Monsieur, we must maintain his ruse if we are to escape from this place with our lives.”

“And how do we do that when we are not of one mind with our good captain, who is as of this moment, more concerned with his mission of liberating the slaves than of concocting stories to protect his identity, hm?”

“We lie,” sighed Andrei. “We must think of the simplest and most logical fib that he would likely come up with.”

“Or,” I said as I wagged my finger at Andrei, “we could tell the governor the truth about us, and adhere to only the lies that the captain has already told to this officer here. I do not know about you, Andrei Vasilyevich, but I find it rather difficult to lie in a language I barely speak.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the officer’s slave returning to us from the castle, his bare feet kicking up sand as he ran back to his master. After a short exchange in the native tongue, the officer nodded to us.

“The governor will see you now.”