A Game of Colours

Chapter 5: Like Finding a Slave in a Haystack

The train comes to a screeching halt a few hours later, waking me abruptly from a nightmare. Frederick was in it, so let's skip over that section of my most fortunate life. I sigh impatiently, my body is aching to stretch from this rather inconvenient position.

"Isaac," I whisper, then mentally slap myself for asking him of all people.

"We're here, your majesty," he says curtly, the sarcasm oozing in his voice.

The compartment door slides open, and light floods in.

"Load up the wagons!" yells a voice.

The sack I'm hiding in is roughly picked up, and I'm crudely tossed into a pile of hay (rather unceremoniously, might I add, for a royal member like myself). I suck in my breath as long as I can, trying to not draw attention to myself. A few other bags are thrown into the cart, and I hope that all of us stayed together. The wagon sags under the weight of two more people, who I realize are now sitting at the front.

"Where are these off to?"

"Brooke's farm, I reckon. It's a Tuesday, she'll be expecting us, aye?"

"Have the sacks been checked? We don't want a repeat of last time, now do we?"

I flinch.

The first voice groans in complaint.

"They didn't need to be until recently, and anyway, no man could survive not eating since Mississippi. We've either got hay or a cart of corpses now, but it's old Brooke's problem anyway," he cackles.

Clearly, the first voice belongs to a spoiled white man (preferably a grotesque looking, pudgy one to soothe my anger) who's never gone a day without a meal.

Well, I've gone four days, and I don't wager I'm a rotting corpse.

"Unbelievable, this talk of war. I can't wrap me finger around it. Those bloody abolitionists been starting it all, I tell you. Who ever heard of a black man working alongside a white one? It's rubbish, I tell you."

My blood boils.

"It'll only end badly; way I see it. Prices going up for us, and some unhappy rich folks."

The cart stops abruptly as the wagon wheel slides on a rock, tossing some of the hay out onto the road.

"Ye stupid, good for nothing brute!" one of the men shouts, the hiss of a whip cutting through the air, "whaddi feed ya for?"

"Come on then, faster! Haven't got all day for ye laziness, have I?" All I hear is lashing and the horses neighing in complaint. I cringe every time I hear the familiar crack.

I try my hardest not to make a sound as the cart tosses up and down on the rocky road.

I realize that I am whipped in this way too. I am at their feet, with reins and no where to go but the leash I am given.

I am treated like an animal; a subhuman.

No, I correct myself. Not even an animal should be treated in this way. I feel an overwhelming urge to grab the whip from their hands, and use it against them. To let them see how it feels to be taken away from everyone and everything they've loved. To have to live in fear of the slighest sound.

The cart stops again. "Janice!" yells one of the men.

The name sounds familiar. This is the woman who will harbour my life. I hope she holds it with two hands.

"So soon arrived, lads! I was beginning to worry you'd lost my shipment along the way!" she says, the double-meaning only apparent to us.

"Come come, let's unload them then."