Queen of Freedom E-Book

Catherine Johnson

• Herausgeber: Pushkin Children's Books
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

The thrilling true story of how one woman masterminded slave resistance to British rule in eighteenth-century Jamaica - part of the True Adventures series 1720. Blue Mountains, windward Jamaica. In the sweltering heat Captain Shettlewood leads a troop of British soldiers through the thick trees towards the river. They are hunting slaves who have escaped from the brutal plantations. Their mission: to find them, and kill them. But up ahead, hidden among the rocks above the water, a group of men with cutlasses and muskets wait patiently for the instructions of their leader. Queen Nanny is a 'wise woman' with a reputation for ancient obeah magic, and a guerilla fighter with a genius for organisation. So the battle for Jamaica begins, the First Maroon War, in which the maroons - escaped slaves - will make a final, do-or-die stand against the slavers and soldiers of Empire.

Leseprobe

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CONTENTS

TITLE PAGEMAP1720: WINDWARD JAMAICA1 HUNTED!2 A CLEVER WOMAN3 MAKING STORIES COME TRUE4 REDCOATS IN THE RIVER5 NOTHING STRONGER THAN NANNY6 CATCHING BULLETS7 A CLOUD OF TROUBLES8 BLACK SHOT AND MESKITO9 THE BATTLE FOR NANNY TOWN10 A NEW TRAIL11 PEACEA LITTLE MORE ABOUT QUEEN NANNYTIMELINEGLOSSARYABOUT THE AUTHORCOPYRIGHT

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1720

WINDWARD JAMAICA8

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1

HUNTED!

In the Blue Mountains, Parish of St George

The raid had been a mistake. The redcoats were after them, crashing through the trees and undergrowth.

The cows Quao and Johnny Rain Bird had stolen would be useful, but not if they all ended up dead. Nanny told the men to go east and circle back to town; she and Yaw and the pig – Michele – would go west.

But she had been running for so long and the redcoats were still coming. The thorns cut her feet, tore at the skin on her legs, and vines whipped her onwards. Behind her the soldiers snapped branches, 10 shouted threats. Birds flew up, calling, yelling. As she ran, the cutlass – as long as her thigh – slapped and bounced against her leg.

The boy and the pig galloped ahead.

She had been hunted before. So had Yaw. The times she thought she had escaped, only to be dragged back, punished with shackles and chains and beatings. She would not let them catch her now. She would never go back to the cane fields, to the lash and the overseer and the buckra. Never. And she had responsibilities now, to the village, to her new family. She should never have agreed to taking the pig with Yaw. Had she ever been a child? She could not remember.

Yaw looked back at her, grinning. This was all still a game to him. Her heart was beating so hard and so fast she thought it might leap out of her chest.

‘Run, Yaw!’ she called.

Then a sharp crack-crack. She thought it was a branch, at first, breaking. Then another, a hard, dry snapping noise. Then another sound, a whirring – a bird, a hornet? No, something else cut the air past her face.

Bullets. They were shooting at them.

Another whistled past. Her skin stung: it had grazed her, made a red line across her upper arm.

They would kill them both. She heard them reload. Up in the trees a monkey screamed.

11 ‘Yaw!’ she yelled. ‘Faster!’

‘Stop! In the name of the King!’ The soldier’s voice bounced off the leaves and the hills.

She had caught up with the boy now. The pig, head down, was almost pulling him along.

‘They cannot catch us, Nanny,’ Yaw said. ‘The gods are on our side! We stole Michele and we will take her home. We will—’

Another crack-crack-crack and Yaw pulled up, stock-still. Then, as the world stopped, he crumpled to the ground and Nanny watched open-mouthed as he folded in on himself in the way the shamey plant leaves curl up when you step on them. A red flower bloomed above his temple and his eyes turned up inside his head.

Nanny reached him as he let go of both the rope and the pig, his hand loose, his fingers useless. Michele stopped too; she snorted, her white flanks heaving. Nanny halted, bent over Yaw’s body as another volley of bullets cut through the air right where her head had just been.

‘Yaw!’ Nanny cried out. She felt his pain like a blow to her chest.

She looked up and could see the flashes of red and gold where the soldiers moved between the trees. She knew she was next.

She gathered him up in her arms. The charms he wore on a string in a tiny cloth bag around his neck hung loose. His head was all meat now. The soldiers were closer. 12

13Nanny blinked; her hands were wet with sweat and Yaw’s blood. She had to put him down but she whispered into his one whole ear, ‘I will not leave you, Yaw.’

Then before the redcoats came any closer, she wiped her palms on her plaid cotton dress and shinned up a soursop tree. Clinging and flattening herself on a branch directly above the body of Yaw – lying on the forest floor, one eye ruined, one staring up at the blue sky – she shut her eyes and tried to imagine his spirit floating past and flying home across the wide ocean.

Michele, the pig, stayed close, nudging Yaw as if he might get up if only he had some encouragement.

Then suddenly the soldiers were upon him. Four men burst upon the track like monsters, pink and red-and-white and gold, their whiskers bristling, their weapons dark. They smelled of gunpowder and sweat and death.

One kicked the boy as if he were nothing. Michele squealed and went for the red-faced soldier before running off into the bush. Another cursed and aimed for the pig with his gun, but Nanny was pleased to note Michele was too fast.

The tallest soldier bent over Yaw and pulled his shirt down off his shoulder.

14 ‘He’s one of the Fairview slaves,’ he said. ‘From over Mount Vernon. There’s the mark there, Captain Shettlewood.’

Yaw’s shoulder bore a lumpy raised scar. Nanny blinked. She remembered the pain when the hot iron had seared those same letters and the shape of a heart onto her own skin.

‘Good shooting, Geoffrey,’ the redcoat called Shettlewood noted. ‘Only a few more to round up, although Mr Noach would rather have all the property returned alive.’