“You have learned much quicker than the others,” Frances observed.
She was fascinated at the way his eyes could smile at her while his lips spoke of ordinary things. It was a most delicious sensual game, this speaking and listening while all the time his eyes were eating her up, his desire for her showing in every line of his body. His glance over the top of his book was a caress; when his gaze lingered on the neck of her nightgown she could almost feel his touch.
“I speak four African languages and a little Portuguese,” Mehuru said. “Until I came to England, I thought that all white men spoke Portuguese. English is not very different from Portuguese. Some of the words are the same, as you must know.”
“I don’t speak Portuguese,” Frances confessed. “Just French and a little Italian.”
“You are very ignorant, then,” Mehuru said with provocative impertinence.
Frances reached forward to slap his hand and only just checked herself in time.
The flirtation in his voice could not be hidden. Elizabeth in the window seat suddenly turned her attention to the room and looked in surprise at them. Frances blushed scarlet.
“What do you think of the demands for the vote?” Mehuru asked, diplomatically changing the subject.
“I think that it is wrong,” Frances said seriously, repeating her family’s received wisdom. “It cannot be right for people who have no investment in the society to want to run it. The only people who should have power in a country are the people who own the land; they have a genuine interest.”
“In my country no one owns land at all,” Mehuru said.
“How can that be?”
He smiled at her surprised face. “Because there is so much land. More than you could imagine. More than all the families could claim. You could ride or walk for days and days and never see anyone. If you want a field for your own, you mark it out and plow it and water it, and it can be called yours. We are rich in a way you could not imagine, you in this little country where everyone has to own everything for fear that someone else takes it.”
Frances was tired; she closed her eyes. “Tell me about it,” she murmured. “Tell me all about it.”
“The capital city is a great walled town, much bigger than Bristol,” Mehuru said. “It is called Oyo—and the alafin lives in the palace at the heart of the city. He is like a king, except he takes advice from the people and acts on their wishes. He is confirmed in his place every year. It is his task to bring their wishes all together, to make an agreement. I was a diviner, I served the Ifa oracle. My patron’s task was to read the oracle for the king, and I served him.”
“Oh, can you tell fortunes?” Frances asked, not opening her eyes.
Mehuru looked at her pale face with tenderness. “I can,” he said. “I tell fortunes for silly girls like you who want to know who will love them.”
Elizabeth could follow most of the words. She put her hand over her mouth to smother a giggle. Mehuru glanced at her and winked.
“And who will love me?” Frances demanded recklessly, her eyes still tight shut.
“I shall,” he breathed.
“And how will we be together?”
“I have to see the palm of your hand.”
Frances blindly stretched out her hand to him, and he uncurled her fingers and stroked the soft, white skin of her wrist and her palm. “What does it say?” she whispered.
“It says that we will go together to my home and you shall live in my house,” he said. Frances smiled and snuggled down in the bed like a child listening to a bedtime story.
“And what else?”
“You shall wear gowns of indigo silk and a deep blue headdress pinned with gold. You will be my wife, and you will bear me many beautiful children.”
Frances gave a scandalized chuckle. “Hush!”
“You will grow well in the sunshine and the hot winds from the plains,” he promised. “You will like the countryside. The trees on the plains are so broad and strong; their shade is sweet. When the wind is high in the palm trees, they rattle and roar like a rainstorm. When it is calm, you can hear a hundred, a thousand birds singing. The rivers are deep and very green; they carry the reflection of the forest so clearly that it is like two forests—one above the water growing to the sky, one below the water growing down. I shall take you to swim in the river where the sand is white and clear, and when you lie in the water, the little fish will swim around you and nibble at your white skin. There are white and pink lilies that float on the water like little boats, and their roots are sweet and good to eat.
“I shall take you into the forests, and you can eat all sorts of sweet fruits that are just growing for free, Frances. No one owns them. You can eat them all; you can eat all day if you want. You will see the monkeys in the treetops, you will hear the roar of the lions at night, you will see the elephants moving in great herds across the plain, and antelope and deer like a sea of tawny brown hides and sharp, pretty horns.” His voice fell silent.
“She is asleep,” Elizabeth said softly in their own language.
He nodded.
“You are in love with her.” It was a statement, not a question.
He nodded again.
“And she loves you?”
“I think so.”
Elizabeth rose from the window seat and put her hand on his shoulder. “You poor, foolish man,” she said, and there was a world of pity in her voice. “Mehuru, it was bad for you already. You have made it a hundred times worse.”
CHAPTER
28
House of Lords,
Westminster.
29th May 1789
Dear Josiah,
Just a Note written in Haste from the House to tell you that We—the owners, the Masters, the landlords—have Won, as I promised. The bill for the abolition of Trading in Slaves is Talked to Death. There will be a committee which can run forever. There will be much Hand-wringing and Agitation, which will change nothing. You can Ship all of Africa into Slavery if you wish, and No one in England can prevent you. This is a great Day for men of property. Wilberforce is Sick with grief, There are some who say his Health cannot stand the Disappointment. My Regards to Miss Cole and to my niece,
Scott.
Mehuru read the letter left open on Josiah’s desk, his face grim. He turned to the door and felt himself shrug, philosophically, slavishly—a man who expects little and receives less. He knew that Stuart would despair and would then launch into a frenzy of pamphleting and writing and secret agitation. But Mehuru thought that his own anger had been sapped. You had to be a freeman to feel spontaneous anger, he thought. You had to have power in your own life to feel rage. When you were a household drudge, you thought no farther than the next floor to wash, the next grate to clean. When the messenger from London had told Stuart that Wilberforce had not even reached a vote, Mehuru had known then that the white men would not let him go. They would not throw away their investments, would not give away their profits. Why should they?
Mehuru heaved the heavy coal scuttle and dumped it on the marble grate. If he wanted his freedom, he thought, he would have to run.
THE MERCHANT VENTURERS WERE at their June supper. The cloth had been taken away, and the port and rum were being passed around. Josiah was seated in the middle of a long dinner table, taking a little rum and water and smoking a pipe. His fresh, aromatic tobacco leaf was passed around for others to sniff.
“Your tobacco, Cole?” someone asked him, and he nodded.
“Can you send me ’round a hogshead?” the man asked, and then dropped his voice as the man at the head of the table tapped the heel of his knife on the wood.
“Shall we get to business?” asked Sir Henry Lord. “Before the evening begins in earnest?”
There was a roar of appreciation. Sir Henry nodded at the clerk, who quickly ran through a list of decisions the company had to make. All of them went through on the nod. The Bristol merchants moved with one accord, knowing their own interests and working as a
team. When they came to the issue of the Hot Well lease, Stephen Waring spoke up for Josiah’s bid.
“May I say, Sir Henry, that I support this bid for the lease by my friend Josiah Cole—a new member of the company and a merchant of enterprise whose business is well known to us all. He has asked for an assurance that the present rent for the Hot Well lease of nine hundred pounds per annum should remain the same for ten years, to enable him to plan his investment.”
Sir Henry peered down the table to where Josiah was sitting. “Are you planning new buildings at the site?” he asked.
“I plan a winter garden,” Josiah said. “A bathhouse designed on romantic lines, with a view over the river and plants. Like a conservatory, Sir Henry.”
“You had best take your profits first,” Sir Henry observed.
“I want to see the Hot Well as the best spa in Britain,” Josiah declared.
Sir Henry nodded like a man prepared to keep his opinion to himself and said nothing.
“M’friend Cole is prepared to pay two thousand pounds entry to the lease, payable at once, and the rent for the first year at once,” Stephen Waring reminded him.
Mr. James, the previous tenant, who had resigned from the lease when the company made their improvements, raised his glass to Josiah in a gesture that could have been seen as a tribute to superior financial acumen. Josiah smiled and bowed his head at him.
“Very well,” Sir Henry said. He looked toward the clerk. “You have the papers, Browning?”
The clerk produced a lease and took it to Sir Henry. “Sign on, then,” Sir Henry said. He scrawled his signature at the foot of the papers and waved them away. The clerk took them down to Josiah with a pen and a standish of ink. Josiah, beaming with triumph, signed his name in his round, honest script at the foot of the document and knew that his career as an entrepreneur had truly begun.
“I wish you the best of luck with it, the very best of luck!” Mr. James drawled from the other side of the table.
Josiah tried not to look superior.
“You will make a handsome profit from it, I don’t doubt,” Mr. James went on. “I should have stayed in longer, I know. But I had to free my capital for other schemes. It should be a little gold mine for you.”
“I hope so,” Josiah said modestly.
“Is it your only investment?”
“My first, not my only. My first on land.”
“I am surprised you are not buying leases and building,” Mr. James said. “I thought everyone was buying building land.”
“I have connections which make the Hot Well particularly attractive,” Josiah said discreetly. “And I have no knowledge of the building trade.”
“Oh, that does not seem to stop anyone. Half of the men I know are building. It is like a plague, and we have all caught it!”
Josiah nodded. “Timing is everything. Clifton and the Downs is a long-term prospect. The Hot Well is more immediate. It suits my plans.”
“Well, the best of luck,” Mr. James said. “It is a high rent, that, a crippling rent, you know. How will you ever meet it?”
“I shall increase charges, of course,” Josiah said. “No more family rates, no discounts for local people, no free water given away. And I hope to attract more trade from London. The fashionable crowd, you know. My wife’s friends and family.”
The company settled down into their places again, and the chairman went on with other business. They set a new levy on the dock, they set a new rent for the use of the great crane. There was some joke that Josiah did not quite understand about the aldermen of the city, but he smiled and laughed with the others. He had an exhilarating sense of breaking unknown ground. He was mixing at last with the men who controlled everything in Bristol. The jokes, the cliquish references were not yet clear to him, but he felt that he was on the threshold of belonging. In a year, in two, he would be seated farther up the table, he would be party to the private discussions that were now ratified. Josiah had penetrated the company only to find a further cabal, hidden behind it. Next year, the year after, he would understand all the references, he would be one of the decision makers. For this year he was happy to be one of the new boys who could roar out “Aye” to decisions he did not fully understand, who could trust his leaders to make the right judgments. Josiah felt he was among friends who would safeguard his interests.
AT THE OTHER SIDE of town, in a dingy coffeehouse, Mehuru was also attending a meeting, poorly financed but infinitely more ambitious. He was at a formal meeting of the Bristol Society for Constitutional Information, one of a network of societies committed to reforming the corrupt political structure and bringing in the right to vote for all men. It was Stuart’s response to the disappointment of the Wilberforce bill. He was determined to widen their campaign, to bring in the freedom for black men as part of the freedom for white workers. Seated at the head of the table with the door tightly shut and guarded against eavesdroppers, Stuart was chairing a discussion of a motion brought by one of the more radical members: “This society should ally itself with our brothers engaged in the struggle for their rights in France, in America, and in the colonies.”
Mehuru was listening carefully, trying to follow the passionate interruptions to the debate. The society had divided into two broad camps: those who feared that an association with the foreign reformers would invoke a patriotic backlash against them and those who saw the reform movement as naturally international.
“These are great days,” Dr. Hadley summed up. “These are times for great change. The people taking power in France, the people taking power in America, slaves rising against their masters in every colony—who can doubt that the people will take power in England, too? Is the English tyranny of king and church and landlords immune? Can anyone doubt that a hundred years from the last bloodless English revolution we are heading toward another?
“All over the country, men are coming together to demand that they be truly represented in Parliament, that their leaders be men of their choice and not some pretty puppets set at their head. In the new industrial towns, even in the quiet market villages, all men of sense are demanding a change and a right to be heard. And in the ports of Britain and in her colonies, the black citizens are asking for their rights, too. They demand a living wage, they demand their freedom. And they demand the right to return to their homeland. This is a glorious crusade! I am proud to put this matter to the vote. All those in favor say ‘Aye.’”
“Aye,” said Mehuru, along with the other two dozen men in the crowded room. He felt that Stuart was right, that he was at the forefront of a powerful international movement that could not fail. The logic of it was too strong, and its moral power was irresistible. “Aye,” said Mehuru, from the heart.
Stuart carefully noted the vote in the society’s new ledger and closed the meeting. The men called for drinks, coffee or small ale. Mehuru noticed that all of them were following the self-imposed ban: refusing sugar in their coffee and rejecting rum. They were all signatories of the petitions to support the banning of the slave trade; they were all refusing to support the plantation trade until slavery was abolished.
“Have you had a chance to read those pamphlets I gave you?” Stuart asked. He took a drink from his pint pot. “What d’you think now of the Sierra Leone scheme?”
“I think it is a risk,” Mehuru answered. “The men who planned it seem to have no idea what it is like on that coast. Since the coming of the slavers, all order has been destroyed. You have to realize that you are not planting a settlement in a desert, in an empty space; there are people living there now, and they are not people at peace in an ordered nation. The whole coast of Africa and for miles into the interior is in a state of perpetual uproar and warfare. Each bandit is paid and licensed by white men to make war on each other and capture slaves. Every village is like a fort, except for those which are already destroyed and the survivors hiding in the forests and scavenging for food. It is a wild, lawless country now. You cannot draw a line on a map and say
that inside this line it will be different.”
“They have negotiated treaties. . . .”
Mehuru gave a short bitter laugh. “I was envoy for the kingdom of Yoruba. The mightiest kingdom in Africa. I spoke three of the neighboring languages and enough Portuguese to make myself understood. On a mission for my king, and with his protection, I was captured, my servant was stolen from me, and I was chucked into a canoe like a sack. I was left naked, I was force-fed, I was manacled in the bottom of a ship and left to roll in my own vomit and excrement. If slavers can do that to me, why should they respect a group of poor farmers who have nothing but a piece of paper signed in London, two months’ voyage away?”
Stuart Hadley nodded. “I am sorry to hear you talk like this,” he said. “I am friend to one of the directors, and we urgently need African leaders to live there. Someone like you who could speak many languages would have been ideal. And it worries me if you think it is so risky.”
“Only the ending of the trade in slaves could make it safe,” Mehuru declared.
“And that will come soon,” Stuart promised. “Next spring in Parliament, Wilberforce will speak for it again. Then they must agree. And then Sierra Leone would have a future. We could make it a Crown colony, give it the protection of the navy—” Stuart broke off as he saw Mehuru’s sarcastic smile.
“Oh! I had no idea! We are talking of a new colony for Britain! I thought we were freeing black men to return to their own lands, but we are planning new plantations!”
“I did not mean a colony like a plantation,” Stuart protested. “And you know that would never be my intention.”
“It is the danger, though,” Mehuru said thoughtfully. “If the European states stop slaving, will they also stop seeing Africa as their market? Will they leave us to get our country back into order, to reestablish our own laws?”
“Of course there is a strong feeling that Africa should be converted to Christianity and to civilization.”