Drum by Kyle Onstott Read Free Book Online Page A

down the rotting curtains and put up new ones.
    3o to the warehouse and pick out the blasted presents that
    royalty—black-blooded and black-skinned royalty—expected.
    dut wait. . . . Jonathan would do that. Jonathan knew
    anough now to take over the chores and let his uncle relax.
    lelax! He knew what would relax him. If he could paint
    jne picture, just one picture, and feel that he had put a soul
    Qto it, he would be happy.
    Mongo Don shifted his long, lean shanks over the edge of me bed, groped under it with one hand for the porcelain 4iamber pot and sat on the very edge of the thin mattress, fitting the slow stream trickle down. He sighed and shook lis head. He'd like a bath but he didn't have time. He needed I shave but that would come later. The gray bristle of his •card scratched his hand as he rubbed his face and he won-tted if it had scratched Jobeena's smooth skin last night. He oped it had. From the wardrobe he pulled out a pair of

    clean pantaloons which, like the sheets, had once been white but were now a dusty gray, slipped them on, and put his feet into thonged sandals. There was a rap at the door.
    "Come in," he called, lifting his arms to his shirtsleeves.
    The door swung open slowly, propelled by the black foot of a naked Negro urchin. He bore a tray covered with a grayed white napkin, which was immediately whisked out of his hand by the man behind him. A playful slap on the fal Uttle rump of the boy sent him scampering away.
    "Time you were here, Jonathan," Mongo Don grumbled. "There's a lot of work to be done today."
    "Already started, sir." Jonathan Danson was the exact opposite of Mongo Don. Where the Mongo was old and ravaged by his years on the Gold Coast, Jonathan was yoimg and pinkly fresh as though he had stepped out of a Devonshire cottage on a misty October morning. One could never imagine there was any blood relationship between the two, but Jonathan was Mongo Don's great-nephew, fresh out of the Liverpool countinghouse which owned and controlled the slave factory here at Yendo Castle in the Niger Delta. Mongo Doc represented the Spanish side of the family which, in the previous generation, had married with the English to founc the Llarinago-Tait djmasty. Now they owned not only the vast warehouses, piers and offices in Liverpool and Havanj but three factories on the Gold Coast of which Yendo Castle; was the largest, as well as the fleet of sturdy slavers whict plied back and forth across the Atlantic. From Liverpool they came to Africa, loaded with gaudily printed cottons copper kettles, iron pans, bugle beads, cheap mirrors and al] the other claptrap of trade goods. Then back across the Middle Passage to Cuba, loaded with their most precious cargc —slaves—and carrying also ivory, wax, oil and gold. Once they had discharged their living cargo in Havana, they filled with tobacco, rum, sugar and rare Cuban woods for the return journey to Liverpool. There was a cargo waiting ir every port and a ready profit from each one but the biggest profit of all was from the black sons and daughters of Africa whose seed would soon spread across all the new world.
    "Already started, sir," Jonathan repeated so cheerfull> that it made Mongo Don wince just to look at him. "The compound's been swept, the guest house cleaned—"
    "New curtains?" Mongo Don raised his head, hoping thai this particular item might have been missed.
    "New curtains that will knock Ama-jallah's eyes out. Spe-

    cial chair set up for His Highness on the porch alongside yours and gifts lined up for his inspection."
    "What gifts?"
    Jonathan ticked them off on his fingers. "One brass clock, one crystal chandelier with a hundred wax candles—"
    "Change them to tallow, the stinking Sultan will never know the difference."
    "Yes, sir," Jonathan nodded, "and one bolt of rose damask—"
    "Silk or cotton?" Mongo Don was hoping to catch the boy in some error.
    "Silk on a cotton warp, sir, but it looks like silk." He waited for Mongo Don to