Respectable Trade Read online

  Frances heard Josiah’s knock on the front door and Kbara going wearily down the hall to open it.

  “Mrs. Cole is there,” Kbara said.

  Josiah came down the hall and put his head around the parlor door. “My dear,” he said, blinking owlishly at the light. “I am so glad you are still awake. I am obliged.” He nodded. “Obliged to you.”

  Frances stifled a giggle. “I think, husband, you have been drinking well.”

  “A little punch,” he said seriously. “And port, and wine, and sherry, and a good deal of my own excellent rum, and a little brandy as well.”

  “Would you like tea?”

  “Certainly not,” he said. “I fear it would give me a headache tomorrow.”

  Frances laughed aloud. “You are cautious.”

  “As a Methodist,” he confirmed. “Now, madam, cease laughing at a poor man. I have news for you which will make you wish to drink my health many times over, too.”

  Frances half rose from her chair. “The Venturers?” she asked. “You are invited to be a member?”

  Josiah opened his arms wide. “At last!” he exclaimed.

  Frances rushed across the room and hugged him. His warm breath reeked of alcohol. “I am so glad!”

  “I feel as if I have waited a hundred years,” he exclaimed. “At last! And now I am excused dock charges and lighthouse charges, and I can take a share of the fees and fines for others using the port. Now I can see the private plans for the new docks and know where to build a warehouse. Now I am privy to the very heartbeat of the town. At last, Frances! At last!”

  Frances hugged him close, his rumpled stock under her cheek.

  “And it is thanks to you,” he said in her ear. “Your name, your position, the way you played them, your training of the slaves—Frances, you have made me!”

  “I’ve done nothing. . . .”

  “You’ve made me!” he insisted. “I knew where I wanted to be but not how to get there. You knew how we could do it, and together we have done it. From now on, my dear, there is nothing that we cannot achieve. I shall buy you a carriage and pair, I shall buy you a riding horse. We can take a house in London for the Season; we can buy a house in the country. I can buy the lease for the Hot Well, and you can work your magic there, too. You are a ruby, my Frances. Your price is above rubies!”

  “Josiah!” Frances was smiling, overwhelmed with praise.

  “We shall have sons,” he announced grandly. “And leave them a fortune, a fortune apiece! We shall found a family! I shall buy a baronetcy, and we shall have a title! You will not be humbled by marrying beneath you. I shall rise, Frances, and you will be where you belong again!”

  “I did not feel humbled—”

  There was no stopping Josiah. “I shall build new ships,” he predicted. “As big as the Liverpool ships, and faster. And the first ship I shall call Frances, and the second ship I shall call Ruby, and the third ship I shall call Virtue, and the fourth ship I shall call Wife.”

  “Josiah,” Frances said fondly.

  He dropped to the sofa. “I shall close my eyes for a moment. And then you shall make me a glass of punch, and we will drink your health.”

  “I think you had far better go to bed,” Frances suggested hesitantly.

  “Lemons,” Josiah ordered sleepily. “Fresh lemons and lots of my sugar . . .”

  Frances moved slowly to the bell, but by the time she put her hand out to ring for Kbara, Josiah was already asleep.

  CHAPTER

  19

  EVEN SARAH WAS PLEASED with the news when Frances met her at breakfast. But the promises from Lord Scott threw her into spinsterish anxiety again. “We should not be too hasty to spend,” Sarah fretted anxiously. “Sir Charles’s money is for safe investment, not for risks. We know the risks of the trade. What do we know of London buildings? And Liverpool docks?”

  “That is why Lord Scott must advise us,” Frances said patiently. “Sir Charles has chosen us as agents and Lord Scott as his adviser. Sir Charles wants us to invest in schemes for him.”

  “We know the trade,” Sarah said stubbornly. “I can find him good investments in Bristol. I can find him voyages that pay five, even ten, percent!”

  It was pointless to argue that Lord Scott’s investments might pay 30 or 40 percent. The prospect of huge profits frightened Sarah almost as much as the prospect of insolvency. Frances nodded. “I shall write to Sir Charles for his instructions.”

  There was a clatter from the sideboard. One of the slaves, Mary, had dropped a cup.

  “Tell her to be more careful,” Sarah said.

  “She understands perfectly well,” Frances replied. “You can tell her yourself if you wish.”

  “Careful!” Sarah ordered loudly. “You! Be careful!”

  The woman dropped a curtsy, as she had been taught to do. “Sorry,” she said. “Sorry.”

  Frances looked at her. For a brief moment, she did not see her as a careless slave who should be corrected but as a woman, a little younger than Frances herself, uncomfortable in a plain green dress with a white cap on her head, always too cold, always hovering between exhaustion from the constant drudgery of her work and the boredom of repeated, meaningless tasks.

  She was a Fulani, one of the nomadic people of Western Africa. If she had been at home, she would have been gathering firewood and roots, beans and berries, watching the cattle, pounding millet in the big stone churn, hauling water from the well. She would have lived in a hut, set in a circle of huts, carelessly made because next year, or the year after, the family would move to new pastures and build again. But inside the humble round hut would be her bed, draped in deep-dyed cotton, gorgeous with color, and a woven palm-leaf basket carrying her clothes. At the foot of the bed would be a hand-carved cradle and a fine-boned, chocolate-colored baby blissfully asleep. It was a life that any English countryman would have recognized—a herdsman’s life. It was a life that followed a seasonal round of moving across a broad plain, as light and as free as a herd of antelope. It was a life that turned in tune with the earth, that followed the rains, that chimed with the seasons. It was as alien to slavery as a silver-winged flight of cattle egrets to a molting hen in a coop.

  “Shall we keep that one or the other?” Sarah inquired.

  Frances was shocked from her reverie. “We’ll sell them both,” she decided. “We’ll keep Elizabeth. She is in the kitchen now. She is Yoruban like Cicero and some of the others. I think it is easier if they can speak amongst themselves.”

  “But we’ll only keep three,” Sarah said. “A lad and two women.”

  “Yes,” Frances said. “They will be sold in summer. As soon as they can speak properly and follow orders.” She turned and smiled at the woman. “Tell the others to go to the dining room,” she said, and pointed to the door. “I will come and teach them.”

  The slaves were waiting for her when she entered, seated in silence around the table. Frances was alone in the room with them. John Bates had been dismissed. They no longer needed watching with a whip; they were thought to be safe. They no longer needed teaching domestic tasks; they had learned how to run a house.

  Indeed they were safe. They no longer spoke of walking back to their home, they no longer tested their imprisonment. Mehuru had not even checked the strength of the bars on the skylight window. They had ceased plotting for freedom. They were too overworked and weary to think of anything more than their survival. And also, fatally, they had lost their courage. They did not plot to escape, because they feared the sprawling streets more than the drudgery of the house. They were very far from happiness, but they felt safer staying in slavery than running away into the unknown.

  Mehuru was tired and drawn. He woke at five every morning, and by six he had emptied the great bathtubs, brought coal for the fires and the kitchen range, cleaned the grates and emptied out the ashes, laid the fires afresh, and taken out garbage for the cook. He was given no breakfast until the cook was ready, and she made a policy of feeding th