“Oh!” he sighed, and turned back to her. “Sit down, breathe slowly.” He pressed her into a seat. “Come, Frances, breathe properly. I will not be angry with you. Breathe!”
With his hand on her back, she took three shaky breaths, and he watched as the color came back into her face.
“I am very sorry,” she said as soon as she could speak. “Please don’t be angry, Mehuru.”
“It is I who am sorry,” he said. “I should have remembered your health.” He glanced around at all the windows facing the square, longing to take her into his arms but knowing he did not dare. He waited until her breathing steadied. “Now,” he said. “Frances, I must tell you that these are good men and friends of mine. Anything you have heard against the societies is not true.”
She nodded, anxious to avoid a quarrel. “Perhaps.”
“And they tell me that Englishwomen often marry men of my color,” he continued. “And they live happily with them.”
She nodded. “I have heard of that.” She did not tell him that she had heard of it because of an article in a newspaper deploring the tendency of white women to marry freed slaves and accusing them of the grossest immorality.
“These would be our friends,” he said. “Our neighbors. We would make a new life for the two of us.”
Frances drew a breath and tried to speak calmly. “Mehuru, I know that you mean well, but it could not happen,” she said quietly. “These are workingwomen, they are not ladies. Wapping is a poor part of London; it is not like Queens Square. It is even worse than the Redclift quay. It is dirty and unhealthy, and all the people there are poor people, laboring men and women. They would despise me. I would hardly understand their speech. I could not possibly live there. I would be miserable living in poverty, and so would you.”
He gave her a swift, unhappy look and straightened up.
“Josiah might pursue us,” Frances said. “He could have you arrested as a runaway, and then I would be there on my own.” Her voice trembled. “There is a pit of poverty underneath me. You never saw me before my marriage. I had to work or tumble downward into charity, and I was never very good at my work. I dare not leave Josiah, I dare not leave my family. It is their name and their wealth that feed me and house me and clothe me. Without them I would be ruined.”
Mehuru said nothing. He stood behind her, as a slave should stand, alert for her command but detached from her. He looked over her head, over the bonnet with the small bobbing flowers, and he felt his heart ache for her, and for the unlikely romantic future he had dreamed for them. She turned her head and looked up at him. She looked very small and vulnerable, like a scolded child. Her eyes, as dark as his own, were huge, shadowed with blue bruises from her illness.
“What are we to do then?” he asked tenderly. “What do you want to do?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
JOSIAH WAS ON THE quayside, watching his rival’s ship preparing to set sail, his own berth achingly empty. The sailmakers dragged heavily laden sledges across the cobbles, and the runners screamed in protest. When one of the sailmakers saw him, he hesitated and then came over.
“Your bill, Mr. Cole,” the sailmaker said. “From Lily, in March. I would appreciate it if you could settle it now.”
Josiah put his hand to his pocket and then checked. “I am sorry, George,” he said. “I have left my purse at my house.”
George looked uncomfortable. “Do you have nothing at your office, Mr. Cole?”
“No,” Josiah said. “I keep no gold here. It is not safe with no one living here anymore. I shall send one of my slaves to your loft this evening to pay what I owe.”
The man made a little bow and shouted to his lad to unload the sails. Josiah went down the steps to the ferry over to the Bristol side of the river. He sat in the bow and looked back at the ship. She was sailing direct to and from the West Indies. Josiah’s neighbor and rival had given up the trade of slaving. Josiah hawked and spit in the filthy water—he knew better. When Rose came home in November, when Daisy followed her into port, with Lily not far behind, they would all know that Josiah had been right to cleave to his own trade—the only trade he knew. The ferry nudged against the steps of the quay, and Josiah tossed a ha’penny to the lad and stepped ashore, heading for the traders’ coffee shop.
Stephen Waring was at the top table taking breakfast when Josiah came in. He raised his head and nodded an invitation. As Josiah came over Stephen regarded him rather grimly, without his usual smile.
Josiah ordered a plate of meat and bread and a pint of porter.
“I have heard some news which I hope you will not take amiss,” Stephen began. He finished the last of his meat and took a piece of bread to wipe around his plate, sopping up the juices of the rare beef and the remains of the mustard.
Josiah cocked an eyebrow at him.
“The company has been told that you have shut off the tap for free water at the Hot Well.”
Josiah nodded. “I have.”
“Why is that?”
Josiah smiled. “I should have thought it would be obvious. I have leased that Hot Well from the company, and it has cost me two thousand pounds’ deposit and nine hundred pounds a year. I have staff to pay, and I have this very day spent two hundred pounds on an architect’s drawing for a winter garden. I am hardly likely to give water away. At your colliery, Waring, do you give away coal to anyone who calls?”
Stephen nodded at the jest but still did not smile. “I do not have a lease,” he said slowly. “I own my colliery outright.”
“So?”
“I do not have a lease which says that I am bound to give away my coal to anyone who calls for it.”
Josiah looked a little flustered. His breakfast came, but he pushed it to one side. “You are not telling me that my lease says I have to give away the water?”
“I am afraid that it makes clear that the poor and sick of Bristol have a right to draw water from the Hot Well,” Stephen said smoothly. “That was the agreement when the spring was first walled in and enclosed in the building. There is a general feeling that you have to abide by it.”
Josiah took a long draft from his drink. “That is the letter of the lease,” he expostulated. “But surely no one seriously expects me to give water away! After all that has been spent on the well? After all the work we have done to make it more fashionable, to make it more exclusive?”
Waring pushed back his chair from the table and shrugged slightly. “That is the lease,” he said easily. “I wanted to warn you—as a friend—that the company would wish to see the conditions of the lease fulfilled, including this one.”
“But this is preposterous!” Josiah exclaimed, still disbelieving. “We cannot have the riffraff of Bristol turning up night and day and queuing at the tap with their kettles and their pots, wanting the water! There is no place for them! There is no provision! They will be in the way of the carriages, they will spit and soil in the gardens! The company cannot want that!”
Stephen Waring shrugged again. “You signed the lease, Josiah,” he said. “It makes it clear that water shall be provided free to the needy poor of Bristol. I think you will have to obey.” He rose from his seat. “I must go. I am expecting a ship in port any day now. It is a worrying time waiting, isn’t it? Where are your ships now?”
“God knows!” Josiah snapped irritably. “Lily may be loading off Africa, Daisy should be in the middle passage and the Rose in the West Indies by now. And I would be a richer man today if I had stayed in shipping. At least with my ships I know my rights. No one has yet told me that I have to give away half my cargo. I must tell you, Waring, I cannot see my way clear to opening the tap. There is no room for the needy poor at the Hot Well!”
Stephen Waring nodded. “As you wish, Cole,” he said equably, and walked out of the coffee shop. Outside, he put his hat on his head and strolled toward the quay. “I think you will find that you are wrong,” he said thoughtfully to the wheeling gulls in the clear sky. “I
think you will find that the company knows what it is doing.”
FRANCES AND SARAH ROSE from the dinner table to leave Josiah alone with his port.
“I wish Lady Scott could have come to the Hot Well,” Josiah said uneasily. “I was counting on your family to visit, and to tell others.”
Frances raised her eyebrows. “She is not allowed to travel in her condition,” she said. “They have been much at the sea this year. My uncle says he will come later. And Lady Scott will certainly come in the spring.”
“But now is the important time,” Josiah insisted. “This is the middle of our season. We are far busier in summer than in the winter. In the winter, people go to London. Summer is the time for the country and the spas. People must come now. If they don’t come now, they may not come for another year.”
“I can ask my cousins,” Frances suggested.
“What good are your cousins to me?” Josiah demanded rudely. “You can ask your father’s parishioners, but if they are not lords and ladies, they will not bring in the quality and they are no good to me.”
Frances flinched at his hectoring tone. “I am sorry, Josiah,” she said, her voice affected, unnaturally calm. “I am sure that Lady Scott did not wish to disoblige you.”
“I thought you would bring in the quality patrons,” Josiah said. “I was counting on it, Frances.”
“I have invited several ladies,” Frances pointed out. She could feel her breath coming short and uncertain. “And at least two of them have promised they will come and bring their families, too.”
“We’ve put the price of a subscription up so much,” Josiah said. “It was ten shillings for an entire family, whatever the size, and now it is twenty-six shillings per person for the month.”
“Will that not drive away trade?” Sarah demanded.
Josiah flushed at her tone. “Not at all. What are shillings to these people? We have to think grandly! I am just concerned for these first few weeks.”
Sarah scrutinized his face. “We should not be too greedy,” she observed.
“I have to meet the Merchant Venturer rent,” Josiah said. “I owe a year’s rent in advance; I have to pay them. But when Rose is docked and I can pay off my creditors for the purchase price of the Hot Well, I will be easier. I am known to be creditworthy, and I expect to see a large profit on the Rose voyage.”
“The sugar crop is so good at this time of year?” Frances asked.
It was nothing to do with the price of sugar, but Josiah could not tell her about the slaves, double the usual number loaded into the small space, or the Spanish preference for women and children workers who were more obedient and less likely to rebel against the particular cruelty of those plantations. “Oh. Yes,” he said simply. “Very good.”
“And what day will the Rose arrive?” Frances asked.
“She is not a wagon,” Sarah answered acidly. “You cannot say what day and what hour.”
“She is due in November,” Josiah said. “But please God she will come in early and my worries will be over.”
“I am sorry you are worried,” Frances said pleasantly.
Josiah nodded unsmilingly. “You could reduce your expenses,” he remarked.
Frances glanced swiftly at Sarah. Her sister-in-law was staring at them with avid curiosity. Frances realized that it would not occur to Josiah that such a conversation should take place in private.
“I will certainly do so,” she said with quiet dignity. “I had no idea that matters were not as prosperous as they seem. If you had told me earlier, Josiah, I would not have ordered my autumn gowns. I shall cancel them.”
Josiah’s anxiety warred briefly with his ambition. “Oh, keep them! Keep them!” he said irritably. “I can’t have it said that my wife goes around in last season’s dresses. Keep your gowns, Frances. But save on things that don’t show. Underwear or shoes or something.”
Frances flushed scarlet at his indelicacy and went to the door. “Certainly. I shall be in the morning room if you wish to continue this conversation in private.”
Sarah gave a snort of laughter as Frances closed the door on the two of them. Frances crossed the hall to the morning room, shut the door, and leaned back on the white-painted panels with a sigh of relief.
Mehuru was there before her, lighting the fire. Although the September days were bright, there was a chill in the air, and so Mehuru always lit a fire when Frances was sitting in a room. The children were to be brought to her at six o’clock; she was teaching them their catechism. Frances’s smile was immediate and delighted. “Oh! Cicero!” she cried.
“Call me by my name.”
“Mehuru,” she said, her voice low and passionate.
He wanted to draw her to him and kiss her, but he heard footsteps in the hall and stayed still. They looked at each other across the room.
“Frances,” he said tenderly. “Are you well today?”
“I am perfectly well,” she replied. She sat down near the fire and smiled at him. He scanned her face for any trace of pain.
“Truly I am,” she assured him. “Perfectly.”
He knelt at the fire to put coal on it and sat back on his heels to look at her.
“I am well,” Frances said softly. “If you wished it—” She broke off. He looked carefully at her. She was flushed but smiling; her eyes were bright.
“If I wished what?” he asked, half guessing what she might say.
“If you wished to come to my room . . .” she whispered, so softly that he could hardly hear her.
He was silent for a moment. “You know I desire you,” he said hesitantly.
She took up some embroidery, as if she wanted to avoid his gaze. He watched the dark sweep of her eyelashes on her cheeks. “I think so,” she said. “I thought so.”
“But I cannot—” He stopped. “Not here. Not in Josiah’s house with him asleep next door. He could wake and come in at any moment.”
She nodded briefly and stole a quick glance at him. “I was afraid . . .”
“What?”
“That you did not . . .”
“Desire you?”
She looked down at her embroidery, and her color rose again. “Yes.”
He gave a short laugh. “Frances, I lie awake every night burning up for you. All these long weeks of your illness, I have thought of nothing else but holding you again. I am sleepless for you, I am hungry for you. Sometimes I think I shall go mad for you.”
“Oh,” she breathed.
“I see you are not worried about my lack of sleep,” he said.
She gave a delicious gurgle of laughter. “I am sorry, I suppose I should be.”
“But I cannot come to you, with him in the room next door,” he said more seriously. “I should feel a fool. I should feel . . . shamed.”
“You did once,” she reminded him in a whisper.
“I don’t forget it,” he said. “I was mad for you. We were both mad that night. But I cannot creep around the house every night like a thief, Frances.”
She nodded. “I understand how you feel. I am glad that you told me.”
He laid the long poker and tongs on either side of the grate and swept up the coal dust. He rose to his feet. “So what shall we do?” he asked. “Are we never to be together again? Will you not leave him and come to me? Or set me free so that I can make a place for us to be together?”
At once the joy was wiped from her face. “I have been thinking,” she said. “I have been thinking all the time. We will find a way. Somehow we must surely find a way.”
“I will wait,” he said. “Not forever. But for a little while. Perhaps Wilberforce will win the vote next spring and slavery will be ended. Perhaps I will be freed by law, free to leave here, and you will be forced to choose then.”
She nodded, still grave. “Perhaps.”
“And how would you vote?” Mehuru asked. “Your whole fortune depends on the trade. Josiah’s wealth, this house, everything you own. Would you end the trade if it was your cho
ice?”
Frances looked up. It was a question she had never put to herself. On the one hand was her tenderness for Mehuru and her recognition of the terrible wrong done to him and to the other millions, tens of millions, of Africans. But on the other hand was Frances’s determination to cling to gentry status and her deep fear of poverty. Anything that could endanger her prosperity was bound to be her enemy.
She hesitated, and then she did not dare to tell him the truth: that she did not know. That she would not force herself to decide. “I wish it had never started,” she said, taking the easy way out. “I wish with all my heart that we had left Africa alone. I wish they had never taken you, nor all the others. I do wish it, Mehuru.”
He nodded, put the coal scuttle carefully in its place, and left the room.
In the kitchen Cook was slicing a pie for the servants’ dinner, and Mary and Elizabeth were hulling bowls of late rosy Cheddar strawberries for Frances’s supper.
“Mehuru,” Mary said hesitantly. “We have been thinking, Elizabeth and Martha and me . . .”
“Yes?”
“We have been thinking of running away,” she said.
CHAPTER
31
The Vessel Rose,
at Sea between Africa and the West Indies.
4th July 1789
Dear Mr. Cole,
I Send this to you by a Reliable friend who Hove to beside us Today to exchange News. He is First mate Stephens, traveling in the Bright Guinea to Bristol and likely to be in port In early September some two months Ahead of us, who have yet to make Landfall in the West Indies. I have told him to put this into Your hands and None other, and he is a Trustworthy man.
Firstly you will be Happy to hear that we are making good time in the middle passage, with Clear skies and favorable winds. I Expect to see the Spanish Islands within a month, please God. According to your Orders in the letter, I have shipped mainly Women and children and packed them Tighter than I would have believed Possible. We are carrying nearly Double the usual number and have had a Quieter voyage than I have Ever made, on account of the fact that they have Never mutinied nor threatened to fight but are simply Dying very quiet and Melancholy. I do assure you that I am doing everything you might wish to keep them Bright and lively, but to No avail. I have let the Youngest children stay with their Mothers, and I have them up on Deck as much as I can. I am keeping them Clean, and the sailors have Not Molested them overmuch. But despite my Best endeavors there is a Great loss of life on the voyage from their Temperament, which is the Worst I have ever experienced. We have Nets rigged to prevent them Throwing themselves off, but when I tell you that One woman squeezed her Infant through the net and threw him Overboard to Drown him rather than Keep him with us, you will understand what a Reckless bunch they are.