Chapter Twenty-Seven
‘Thus in England, where law leaves men comparatively free, they are slaves to a grinding despotism of conventionalities, unknown in the land of tyrannical rule. This explains why many men, accustomed to live under despotic governments, feel fettered and enslaved in the so-called free countries.’
Sir Richard Francis Burton, 1821–1890
Great Arabian Explorer
Fifty miles inland from the coast of Abyssinia, Tuesday, 11 June 1833
It is dark when they come, at about an hour before dawn. Far away in London, pretty housemaids in Marylebone are setting the fires while the more dissolute rakes make their way home through deserted streets now devoid of the night’s sport. The whores are all abed now as are the Honourable Directors of the East India Company, each to a man concerned that the French, despite being routed, surely have it in mind to capture Bombay, Calcutta and Delhi and unfurl England’s grip on its ruby-encrusted prize. In short order, William Wilberforce, hero of The Cause, will rise habitually early despite his failing health, dress in a sober jacket with dark breeches and, discreetly and behind the scenes, preach the rights of these men and women from thousands of miles away. He has been doing so with success, in and out of Parliament, for the best part of fifty years and he will not have too much longer to wait. But here in the village that makes no difference now.
In the clearing surrounded by lush foliage, the silence is broken and the sleepy huts made of rushes and daub are already being ransacked. There is little anyone can do and it makes no odds whether the families rise fighting, iron daggers in hand, or wake slowly, sleepily, only half-conscious to the screams of their children. One or two of the quickest slip into the darkness, a jumble of long, flaying limbs and flashing eyes, young men abandoning their mothers and sisters, one child with the instincts of a seer, fleeing on instinct alone blindly into the dark jungle and away from the torches and the sparking embers of last night’s fire. A pitcher is knocked over in the panic and douses the rising flames, filling the cool, early morning air with a salty cloud of scorched goat curds that were meant to be breakfast.
It takes only seven minutes to capture almost everyone. The slavers are practised at this. They separate the elderly to one side (hardly worth the trouble to transport even as far as Zanzibar) and beat one old man who shouts so furiously and in such a babble that his own wife cannot fully understand him. There
