Respectable Trade Read online

  “There are many people who would be only too pleased to kidnap them for sale,” Miss Cole said. “Captains on their way back to the West Indies, visitors to England. Or English families who see the chance of getting a servant for free. Or they might simply escape and live free.”

  “Are they freemen—those black men who work on the quayside?” Frances asked.

  “Most of them,” Sarah replied. “Their masters may have died and freed them in their wills, or they may have earned enough to buy their freedom. Or they may have escaped. There are many free blacks now; in London there are tens of thousands. And every port has more and more of them.”

  “So our slaves could be free one day.” Frances spoke her thoughts aloud. She was thinking of what Mehuru would do with his freedom if he were one day to be released. She did not know what he wanted; his dark face was inscrutable now when he turned it to her. In the hurry of moving, there had been only short lessons most days, and some not at all.

  Even without lessons they were learning many words, words of command and words of abuse. Mehuru in particular listened intently to all the conversation around him, and Frances, watching him as he took the weight of a load of bedding on his back, could see the comprehension in his face. But however fluent Mehuru might become, Frances could not command his speech. Nothing could make him want to talk to her. His gaze was veiled; he could act incomprehension. It was his final defense. It was a problem Frances had not anticipated: that Mehuru might understand almost everything but refuse to speak. When she asked him a question, his face would become deliberately dull and stolid. Sometimes she thought he might know a million words of English, might speak as fluently as Josiah, and still hide behind an assumed ignorance and act dumb.

  She knew he had not forgiven her for the death of Died of Shame. She knew he blamed her for betraying the woman to Sir Charles. But as the days went on and Frances ran from the top of the house to the kitchens several times a day, supervising the unpacking and the placing of furniture in the new rooms, she put it into a corner of her mind and began to forget all about it. As Josiah had said, it was only one slave among many, and they had always known that they would be likely to lose two or three within the first year. If the woman had not died in the cave, she might have died of the cold or of some disease. There was much for Frances to do; it was easy for her to forget her sense of guilt. It was easier for her to forget than to remember.

  Mehuru did not forget Died of Shame, and the others did not forget either. The bustle around the new house they regarded with anxious suspicion, not knowing what it might mean. The stockings and shoes were intolerably uncomfortable for the first few days; feet hardened by walking barefoot did not fit into the stiff cheap leather. But after a few days, they learned to like the comfort of warm feet, and when they walked along the Redclift quay up to the bridge and back again on the greasy, cold cobbles around frozen middens, they were glad to be dry-shod.

  Without the weight of the collar and the constant clink-clink of the chains, Mehuru tried to straighten up and look about him. But he found that the muscles of his neck were knotted tight; he was used to the weight of the collar. For days he could not teach himself to walk like a man, could not rid himself of the slavish shuffle of a dog whose neck has always been chained to a tether. In his shoes and stockings, in his warm breeches and grubby shirt, Mehuru crept from the dockside to the new house, carrying goods and pushing a cart, and knew himself to be walking head bowed, neck bent, like a man without pride, like a man without hope, like the slave he was.

  CHAPTER

  17

  THEY COMPLETED THE MOVE to the house on Queens Square by the end of January, and Frances was able to preside over her first day “at home” on the following Thursday.

  Mr. and Mrs. Waring came, and Mrs. Waring brought her sister, Mrs. Shore, who was married to one of the senior traders in the Bristol Merchant Venturers. While they were taking a dish of tea, Mr. Woolwick was announced, calling to present his compliments to his new neighbor.

  “You’ll forgive me bursting in on you,” he apologized. “But since we live next door, I thought I might intrude when I saw the carriages.”

  “Of course,” Frances said. She nodded at Brown to bring another teacup. “I am delighted that you have called. Do you know Mr. and Mrs. Waring and Mrs. Shore?”

  Mr. Woolwick nodded at Mr. Waring and bowed to the ladies. “Aye. I’m afraid we are a tight-knit little group. Mrs. Shore’s husband is my cousin.”

  Frances smiled. “Then it is you who should introduce me,” she said pleasantly. “For I am likely to be the only stranger here.”

  “Newcomers are very welcome,” Mr. Waring declared gallantly. “Especially such a lady as yourself. Do you have no friends in Bristol, Mrs. Cole?”

  “Only my dear sister-in-law,” Frances said tactfully. Sarah Cole, sitting behind the tea tray, smiled thinly. “I was born and bred in the country near Bath.”

  “At Whiteleaze?” Mr. Woolwick inquired.

  “Oh, do you know my uncle, Lord Scott?”

  “I have heard of him, of course. And we are members of the same club in London, but we are not personally acquainted.”

  “I hope he will call soon with Lady Scott,” Frances said. “And my cousins, the Miss Scotts.”

  “Is Mr. Cole not at home?” Mrs. Waring asked.

  Frances smiled at her. “I do not know about Mr. Waring, but I find that my husband is curiously reluctant to take tea. It is as well that he is not a tea importer.”

  Mr. Waring and Mr. Woolwick chuckled ruefully.

  “I, for one, take tea under protest,” Mr. Waring admitted. “But on this occasion, and with this hostess, I was easily persuaded!”

  “Well, I hope I can tempt you to supper on another day,” Frances said easily, turning her head to look up at him. “I find I can command my husband with the promise of a good table more easily than I can summon him to tea.”

  “Gentlemen often prefer to work during the day,” Mrs. Waring agreed. “Though what they find to do in the coffeehouse all day long is a mystery to me.”

  “Why, they drink coffee and we drink tea, and we all of us use sugar!” Frances exclaimed.

  “Mrs. Cole, you have learned all there is to know of trade.” Mr. Woolwick beamed at her. “Mr. Cole is a fortunate man.”

  Frances suppressed any thoughts of what her parents would say at such a compliment to their daughter. Their one concern in life had been to cling to the precarious status of intimacy with Whiteleaze and keep a distance from trade, and now their daughter was seated in a parlor flirting daintily with Bristol merchants and being complimented on her grasp of business.

  The door opened, and Josiah came in. He was looking very smart, dressed as Frances had requested in buff riding breeches and highly polished boots with a well-cut brown coat with deep dark brown cuffs and collar. He had wanted to wear his best suit, but Frances had dissuaded him. He looked better in riding clothes; he looked more established, more at ease. “But I don’t have a horse,” he protested.

  “You don’t have one yet,” Frances corrected him. “Anyway, they are not to know that you have not been riding for pleasure.”

  “On a working day?” he demanded.

  Frances held up one admonitory finger. “Riding breeches,” she said, and Josiah had obeyed.

  “Why, here is Mr. Cole now!” Frances exclaimed in well-simulated surprise. She introduced him to the ladies, and he greeted the men. “And I was complaining that I could not tempt you to tea, Mr. Cole!”

  “Indeed you cannot,” he said. “But I have ordered punch for the gentlemen in my parlor if they would like to take a glass?”

  Stephen Waring and George Woolwick rose to their feet at once.

  “Well, run along,” Frances said indulgently. “But do not kidnap my guests for long, Mr. Cole!” She turned and smiled at the ladies. “At least we can have a comfortable gossip on our own. You must tell me all the people I must meet in Bristol, and, if I may ask, Mrs.