Respectable Trade Read online

  DINNER WAS LATE AND served with sulky unwillingness. Kbara and the boys had tucked their slave collars under their high neckcloths, but the lower necklines of the women’s dresses meant they could not conceal them. Their chains glinted in the candlelight as they moved around the table, each one labeled like a decanter of drink. Frances thought that at last they were clearly marked for all to see, a Bristol commodity, as much goods of the city as sherry or port wine.

  Josiah drank heavily at dinner and ate little. Lord Scott, seated on Frances’s right and opposite Sarah, kept up an easy flow of talk. He had news of Frances’s cousins and of the health of Lady Scott, banished to Whiteleaze for her lying-in. And he had news of London and the gossip from the City and from Parliament.

  “The abolition debate is rather subdued at the moment,” he reported. “But there is no doubt that it will rise up again next year. They cannot succeed, not while the gentry is against them, but they can stir up a lot of bad feeling.”

  “It will never come to anything,” Sarah said firmly. “Mr. Wilberforce knows nothing of what he is talking about. He should turn his attention to the conditions in the northern cotton mills; that is nearer to his home! But no, he is one of these meddling minds who has to see things at a distance. Why, he has even been party to the setting up of a school for farm laborers’ children near Cheddar. There have been many complaints from farmers that they cannot get the children to work as they should; they are forever running off to Mr. Wilberforce’s school. I should like to see how he would like it if we meddled in his business and started trying to pass laws to ban it.”

  “No,” Lord Scott said, smiling at Sarah’s indignation. “I do not think he would like it at all. But surely we cannot hope to avoid abolition forever. Your company might do well to perhaps consider another venture.”

  “I do consider it,” Josiah said grimly. “I consider my land-based venture every day, and every day it costs me more.” There was a brief, embarrassed silence. Lord Scott glanced across at Frances.

  “I was sorry to hear that you were unwell, Frances,” he said. “Are you quite recovered? Bristol suited you. I was so pleased when you wrote to me that you were feeling so strong and so happy.”

  Frances started; she had not been following the conversation at all. “I am quite well,” she replied. She was desperate to know if Mehuru was badly hurt, and she was still shocked at the explosion of violence in her own parlor. She could not look at Josiah. Brought up in a vicarage and shielded from the reality of life by both her status and her sex, she was frightened by the least sign of violence. Josiah’s anger, erupting in her own morning room, was enough to make him a monster in her eyes.

  At the end of the meal when the ladies withdrew, Frances whispered to her uncle that she felt unwell and that she would bid him good-bye. He rose from his seat, drew her to him, and kissed her on the forehead. “I am sorry to see you thus,” he said and the phrase took in the whole evening: Frances’s sick pallor and Josiah’s despairing rage.

  “Such a thing has never happened before. . . .”

  “I will call again,” he soothed her. “As soon as Lady Scott has been brought to bed. And you must come and stay with us.” He turned to Sarah and Josiah. “And you, too, Miss Cole and Josiah. Lady Scott would be delighted to have your company.”

  Sarah looked frankly disbelieving, and Josiah hardly heard the invitation. He was slumped in his chair, staring at his glass. Lord Scott’s quick assessing gaze passed over him.

  “Good night,” Frances said, and slipped from the room.

  CHAPTER

  33

  AS SOON AS THE family had gone to bed, the slaves had unlocked Mehuru’s door with Cook’s spare set of keys and brought him down to the kitchen. He sat, with the children at his feet, in the fireside chair. The women slaves were seated on the kitchen bench, facing him in a solemn row. Kbara sat at the kitchen table. Cook, her feet on the fender, was seated in the opposite chair and clasped her hands in her lap, controlling her sense of outrage. In the flickering light from the fire, the slave collars on the women’s necks gleamed.

  “It isn’t right,” Cook said softly. “I want no part in it. I won’t order you. I won’t work for them anymore if they treat you so. There are many kitchens where I would be welcome. I don’t have to stay here and be a party to this.” She rose to her feet and stirred the coals with a poker through the door of the range. “It isn’t right,” she repeated.

  Mehuru nodded. He was reminded for a moment of the lengthy counsels of the villages at home. To an outsider it might look as if no one was capable of any decision; to an outsider it might look as if the men were sitting around idly, chattering. But what was happening was the difficult stages of discussion, working through to a hard-won consensus. What was primitive, Mehuru thought, was the notion of government as a state of permanent warfare—first one side having the upper hand and then the other. The English justice system was no better—a battle between two opposing points of view. The African way was slower and harder, but it worked on the belief that agreement was possible, that men and women could come together and find a course to suit them all. It was neither victory nor defeat.

  Kbara was in favor of them taking all that they could carry and running away this very night. But the women, especially Elizabeth, were afraid of what might happen. The newspapers were full of advertisements for runaway slaves, and the rewards offered would tempt anyone.

  “But don’t you see,” Mehuru argued, “that the rewards show that slaves are hidden by English people. The owners have to offer a high reward to make English people betray the runaway slaves. The rewards should make us more confident, not less. We could not stay in Bristol, of course. We would have to go to London, and there are thousands of people of our color living there.”

  “Maybe,” Mary said slowly. “But they would offer a high reward for all of us, and if we stay together, as we want, we would be easy to find. Besides, what could we do?”

  “Mehuru and I could work,” Kbara said.

  “Doing what?”

  “On the quayside. There are lots of black men working at the port.”

  “And we could work as house servants,” Martha suggested. “Laundry, or waiting tables, or housework. We’ve been trained well enough. Elizabeth could be a parlormaid or even a lady’s maid. I could try out as a cook.”

  “Could we get the boys apprenticed to a trade?” Elizabeth asked. “They need proper work. I don’t want them working down at the docks. It is rough and it is dangerous, and besides, anyone who wants a slave can just come by and thieve them away from us.”

  Mehuru’s face was hard. “They can’t get an apprenticeship in London. The lord mayor himself has ordered that no black boys can be trained for work. They passed a special law to ban black boys from being trained.” He gave a bitter little smile. “They must think us very skillful, if the white men have to be protected against our apprentices.”

  “And what about the girls?” Elizabeth pressed. “The girls need work, too. I don’t want them growing up with nothing to do but dirty work. Little Susan is as bright as any child I’ve ever known. She should be sent to school, if we were at home—” She broke off. At home a bright girl could find herself a training; she could work in the palace and rise as high as her skills took her. “It seems a long way away now,” Elizabeth said sadly.

  “What about going home?” Kbara asked. “What about this Sierra Leone? We could go to London and take a ship to Sierra Leone. It’s not Yoruba, it’s not my people, but at least we’re in the right place. At least we’re in Africa. And we could maybe travel overland, back to our homes.”

  Mehuru shook his head. “We can’t travel home. The trading routes have been destroyed. There are no caravans we could join. There are no villages we could visit. Inland from the coast for miles and miles, the country has been wrecked. The people are enslaved or in hiding. The fields are growing weeds. No one travels down the rivers unless they are hunting for slaves. The country is