Respectable Trade Read online

  “Stay. . . .” He was speaking like a man and not an obalawa.

  “Maybe one day,” she said very softly. “Maybe one day there will be a world where a man and woman like us might love each other, d’you think?”

  “Stay now. . . .”

  She suddenly lunged forward, her eyes black with the grip of sudden pain, and she cried out, once. He caught her to save her from falling, calling her name. When her body went limp and he laid her back on her pillows, she was gone.

  Stuart dragged him from her bedside and pushed him to the window. “Don’t look,” he said forcibly. “Look out the window.”

  Mehuru stumbled to the window and leaned his head against the cold pane of glass and looked without seeing at the frost under the trees and the white-incised blades of grass.

  Then Stuart said, “And here we are!” and Mehuru heard a strange little noise, a cry, a tiny breath, and then another cry.

  He turned to see Elizabeth wrapping a tiny thing, smaller than a doll, in soft white cloth and dabbing at its head.

  “See?” she smiled, though her eyes were still running with tears. “Your son, Mehuru. You have a son.”

  Hardly knowing what he was doing, he put out his hands, and she gently put the little bundle into his arms. The baby looked up at him. It had black, black eyes, as dark as Frances’s, as dark as his own. Its little face was a rich color like rum and milk, like the color of the palms of Mehuru’s tender hands. Mehuru staggered for a moment as the truth finally hit him. The child’s smooth skin was a rich brown color, a mixture of Frances and himself. It was not Josiah’s child. It had never been Josiah’s child. It was his own son.

  “My son,” he said incredulously. “My son.”

  The baby looked at him with his wise, dark eyes as if he could understand everything, everything that was in the world. He opened his little mouth and yawned, a complete, thorough yawn, as precise as a kitten’s.

  “Hello, my son,” Mehuru said in English, and then, in Yoruban: “Baa woo ne o moo me.”

  The baby’s eyes widened as he solemnly considered his father, and then his little face constricted. He squeezed his eyes shut and began to cry.

  “He will be hungry,” Elizabeth said. “Give him to me.”

  “Can you feed him?” Mehuru asked.

  The look she gave him was rich with love. “I have been waiting and preparing for him for months,” she said. “Frances knew. She knew I would care for him.”

  Stuart turned from the bed. “I am sorry, Mehuru. I could not save her. I will send a woman to lay her out.”

  “I will do it,” he said instantly. “I have stayed here, all this time, to do it as it should be done. She is an African woman now. She is the wife of a Yoruban. She is the mother of my child.”

  Stuart nodded. “I will wait for you in the kitchen. I will take Elizabeth there, with the baby, and make sure they are safe. We should go from here, as soon as you are ready. You can join the others now.”

  Mehuru nodded. He held the door for them and watched Elizabeth take his son downstairs. She was holding him close, tucked into the curve of her neck, and all he could see was the crown of the tiny black head. His son had inherited his hair; it was as tight and as curly as the fleece of a little black lamb.

  Mehuru shut the door on them. Downstairs, he could hear the bailiff’s men taking furniture out to the cart, he could hear Josiah’s baffled arguing and Sarah’s sharp complaints. He heard it all as if it came from many miles away.

  He straightened Frances in her bed and took the bloodstained sheets away. He poured the warm water from the jug into the ewer and sponged her body, her face, her arms, and her thin white fingers. He combed her hair, and he braided it close to her head in the manner of his people. She looked very beautiful with her hair in African braids, he thought. They showed the fine structure of her face, and she no longer looked weary. She no longer looked as if she were warring with herself. She looked at peace, as if she finally had understood that there was no need to hunger and struggle.

  He went to her chest of clothes and drew out a blue gown, blue, the color of coolness, of itutu: composure. Carefully, he put it on her, drawing it around her, and holding her close as he fastened it. Into the pockets of the gown, he slipped the things that she should take with her when they put her in the earth: her comb, a teaspoon from her breakfast tray, a pinch of salt. He opened her sewing basket and took out her little silver embroidery scissors. He cut one of the tight black curls of hair from his head and tucked it under her handkerchief. He closed her eyes and kissed her, her cool eyelids, her lips, and the stillwarm hollow at her collarbone. Then he drew the white counterpane over her.

  At the doorway he hesitated. She had told him to look in her writing box. He took it to the window seat and opened it. Laid neatly on the top was a single sheet of paper. At the foot was Frances’s seal and name and two other signatures: Stuart Hadley and Mary Allen, the cook. It read:

  This is the Last Will and Testament of Me, Frances Jane Scott Cole, signed this 29th day of November 1789 before Stuart Hadley and Mary Allen.

  To my Sister-in-law Sarah Cole I do Bequeath all my Dresses and Gowns and Jewelry. To my Dear husband Josiah I bequeath all my Furniture and Heirlooms.

  I Direct their attention to my Work as Agent for Sir Charles Fairley. They will see that the Agency is now of a size that it could be registered as a Bank, and I do bequeath to my Sister-in-law and to my Husband Jointly all my Interest in these Matters and Recommend to them that They develop this Bank as their Business, Abandoning the Slave Trade.

  For my Own Slaves I hereby grant them their Complete and Absolute Freedom: Julius, Mary, Martha, Elizabeth, John, Susan, Ruth, Naomi, Matthew, and Mark are hereby all Freed. The man Mehuru, once known as Cicero, is also Completely and Absolutely Free.

  I send them my Dearest Blessing and the hope that they may make a Home in England and Find it in their hearts to Forgive me—and all English people—for the Very great wrong that we have done to Them and to their Country. It has taken me a Long, Long time to realize what we did to you. I am sorry, I am Sorry. Perhaps one day we can learn to live together in Love and Respect?

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  THERE WERE AFRICANS IN Britain before the English were here—that’s the opinion of Peter Fryer, the great historian of the black presence in England. In his history Staying Power, he quotes the existence of an African legion stationed on Hadrian’s Wall in the third century. Before the coming of the Vikings, before the invasion of the Normans at the Battle of Hastings, before Elizabethan England, before everything we think of as English, there were black men here then. We even have a record of one individual. He sounds as if he was a bit of a troublemaker; he barracked Caesar when he came to visit. He was popular with the other soldiers and something of a comedian. The record of the time says, “He was of great fame among clowns and good for a laugh at any time.”

  If we skip forward to James VI’s court in Scotland, we come across a number of black court entertainers, including a drummer, a choreographer of the court dances and masques, a black knight, and a lady who was famed for her beauty: “A black lady—a skin that shone like soap. In her rich costume she gleamed as bright as a barrel of tar. When she was born the sun had to suffer an eclipse.”

  All through the sixteenth century, in the records of English history, there were men and women arriving from Africa—and going home after a visit to England. In 1555, John Lok brought five Africans from Ghana to Britain to learn English. When they got home, they acted as interpreters to the growing trade in ivory, spices, and gold. As the trade grew more important in the African economy, enterprising merchants and princes sent their sons to be educated in England so that they could develop commercial contacts. We know that there were African children educated in London, Bristol, and Liverpool, who came for their schooling and then went safely home again.

  But the trade and these trading relationships changed. From 1570 onward, the slave trade developed. For more th