“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.
Waring, would you tell me who does your hats? I thought you wore such a pretty bonnet the other day, and that cap is enchanting!”
Under Sarah’s amazed gaze Frances slipped easily from charming the men to charming the ladies. Josiah abstracted the men from the room as easily as a pickpocket dipping for shillings and led them off to drink punch and talk business. No one could have suspected that the whole campaign had been planned and executed by Frances, but when Brown closed the front door on the last of their guests, Josiah called for a bottle of champagne, popped the cork in the best parlor, and spilled it on the hearthrug.
“Here’s to you, Mrs. Cole!” he cried, pouring Frances a brimming glass. “And here’s to you, Sarah! And here’s to me, because I have just been offered insurance for Daisy at the Merchant Venturer rates. I was afraid I would have to send her out uninsured. Now she can sail, and Lily is due in any day, and they will insure her, too. And I am well on the way to being invited to join the Venturers.”
“Not already?” Frances asked, taking a glass and sipping.
“In the parlor just now!” Josiah confirmed. “I could hardly believe it myself. They had a glass of punch with me, they asked me about Lord Scott and Sir Charles, and I was just as you said I should be—discreet. I said nothing at all, and they understood far more than is the truth. They are certain that both his lordship and Sir Charles are my partners, and the next thing I know is, do I need an insurer for my vessels?—yes, please, says I—and then would I like to go to a little supper party, just for gentlemen, at the Custom House next week?—yes, please, says I!”
Frances crowed with delight and clinked her glass against his. “What a campaign! And so quick!”
Josiah shook his head. “I knew we would do it,” he said. “I knew you could do it. But I never thought it would tumble into our laps on our first night!”
Frances found herself laughing for joy, for the first time in long, long years. “And all I have to do is to buy a dreadful bonnet from Mrs. Waring’s milliner!”
“I shall reimburse you,” Josiah promised swiftly. “I will buy it for you myself, and you can fling it in the dock.”
“I do not understand,” Sarah said slowly. “I thought you did not want to attend Frances’s tea party.”
“A ruse! A ruse!” Josiah huzzahed. “Frances thought of it all, tea for the ladies and punch in another room for the gentlemen. And now you see how right she is, sister. We have made more progress in one afternoon than we made in a lifetime of trading.”
Sarah put down her glass of champagne with unnecessary force. “I see that we are pretending to be what we are not,” she said sharply. “I see that we are pretending to partners we do not have. I see that we are trying to live above our station in life and claiming kinship and partnership where they do not exist. I am the daughter of a man who was not ashamed to be a collier and proud to own one little trow. Now I find I have to pretend that I am on calling terms with Lady Scott of Whiteleaze whom I met once and did not much care for.”
Frances turned a shocked face to Josiah.
“Sarah . . .” he began.
“We were traders,” she said fiercely. “Frances is making us over into mountebanks.”
“You are tired with the move and all the changes. . . .”
“I am not tired,” Sarah contradicted him. “I was never tired when I worked all the hours of the day on the company papers and accounts. But when I have to sit in the parlor and tell a string of lies to women who know nothing—yes! then I am weary of the turn our business has taken. I have been clerk, and factor, and ship’s husband in this trading house. And now you expect me to simper in the parlor among a gaggle of women!”
Josiah was stunned. “You still have your place in the company, Sarah.”
“I cannot lie and chatter about bonnets,” she said bitterly. “I cannot do the pretty as Frances does.”
“I don’t ask you to—”
“You do! You do!” she exclaimed passionately. “I have sat here listening to nonsense all afternoon while you have been talking business in your study. It is my business, too! It is my inheritance, too! Da never spent a penny without checking with me. I knew every transaction in the books. I knew every guinea we made. And now you leave me with the women while you talk business with the men.”
“It has to be done!” Josiah exclaimed. “We can’t stay as we were. We can’t be a little dockside trading house with you at the books and me on the quayside. We’ll employ proper clerks, we’ll open an office. We have to rise,” Josiah said exasperatedly. “We have to be ladies and gentlemen.”
“I am not a lady!” Sarah screamed at him. “I am the daughter of a workingman, and I am proud of it.”
There was a stunned silence.
“I am so sorry,” Frances said feebly. She swallowed down her fear at Sarah’s anger and choked. Her nervous, consumptive little cough sounded very loud in the room. “I did not mean to offend you, Sarah. I did not mean to embarrass you.”
Sarah shrugged her shoulders rudely, her face still trembling with anger. “You can’t help it. It’s the way you were reared. But I can’t pretend to it. And I won’t pretend to it. I am the daughter of a trader and the sister of a trader. This is the business I was brought up to do. This is the business I understand: an honorable business done by hardworking merchants. Pushing in among our betters, mixing with the gentlemen of the corporation, claiming kinship with lords and ladies and trading on their name—that is not my business, and I cannot do it.”
Josiah said nothing. Both women waited for him to speak. “It has to be done,” he said at last. “I have to join the Venturers, you know this, Sarah. I cannot get the capital, I cannot get insured, I cannot get the trade unless I am in.”
“They would have invited you on your own merits in the end,” she replied, not looking toward Frances. “You did not have to marry and claim kinship with lords.”
“Never,” he said bluntly. “You do not know what it was like, Sarah, in the coffeehouse and on the quay. They would never have had me without this house, without Frances. We would have stayed there forever.”
“There are worse places,” she said bitterly. “You don’t remember, Josiah, you don’t remember where our family came from. There are worse places to be than the storehouse of a prosperous trader.”
“And there are better,” he argued stubbornly. “We are on the rise, Sarah. Frances knows how to do it. I know how to profit from it. You must be glad of it. You must learn to be glad of it.”
Her bony face was white and stubborn. “I fear it,” she said bleakly.
Josiah made no reply.
“I bid you both good night.” Sarah moved to the door. “I shall dine in my room.”
At the doorway she hesitated, as if she expected Josiah would bid her return, but he stood with his back to the fire and let her go.
The door closed behind her with a firm click. Josiah and Frances were silent.
“I am sorry. . . .” Frances repeated awkwardly.
“It is not your fault,” Josiah said. “We have moved too fast for her, we have got on too quick. And she is old-fashioned and stubborn as a grandma.”
“But this is the right thing?” Frances confirmed. “This is the way ahead for you? You do not risk springing up too fast?”
“This is not a bubble which will burst,” Josiah said, his confidence returning. “This is the direction in which I have aimed for years. Even my father would have been a Merchant Venturer if he could have had the chance. My family is on the rise, and this is where the crest of our wave will take us. Drink up your champagne, Frances; we have done good work this afternoon. Whatever Sarah says!”
It was strange dining together. It was the first meal they had eaten alone in six months of married life. It was the first time they had ever been without Sarah’s critical observation. Frances, looking down the long table at Josiah seated at the head, thought that for the first time she felt truly married to him. They had plans and ambitions in common. The
y had shared the excitement of their first success. They had chosen a house together, and it was furnished by them both. The rooms might fluctuate violently, sometimes garish, sometimes elegant, but this reflected the nature of the marriage and the compromises they had both made for the sake of harmony.
She saw him seated at the head of her father’s dining table, and for once she did not fear what her father might have thought. If anything, she was irritated by her father’s imagined distress. This was not the son-in-law he would have chosen, but Frances thought that her father had been reckless with her life. He had made no provision for her—neither a suitor of his choice nor an independent fortune. Josiah was the only man who had offered. He might not be situated as her father would have wished, he might not speak correctly, he might wear the wrong clothes and his taste in furniture and decorations might be garish, even by Bristol standards; but he was working, he was trying as hard as he could to make them a proper place in the world. And she could not help but respect him for his dogged determination to rise, and to take her up with him. Her father had failed to provide for her, and she had been forced to accept Josiah. Josiah’s single-minded vision of wealth and prosperity for them both inspired Frances to gratitude. At last she had someone who would care for her.
She smiled down the table at him, and Josiah, always responsive to her approval, smiled back.
And so that night, when Josiah came to her room, Frances turned back the sheets of her bed to invite him in beside her, and for the first time she did not flinch as he moved toward her. Josiah blew out the candle before he reached for her, and for once his embarrassment did not eclipse his ability, and he was able to do his duty with less pain for Frances and less awkwardness for himself.
It was not love—it was still a very long way from love—but it was better than it had been, and better by far than either of them had ever expected.
MEHURU IN THE ATTIC room above them was sleepless. The room was lit by a little window set square into the slates of the roof, barred over by stout nailed planks. Lying on his back, he could see the stars, like silver pinheads against indigo silk. If he had been a woman, he would have wept for loneliness.