Respectable Trade (14 page)

“I have to have some time to get used to them,” Frances said.

“She is right,” Josiah agreed kindly. “She needs to become accustomed. I have taken on a good man, my dear, who has handled slaves on the Sugar Islands. He is an experienced driver. His name is John Bates, and he will feed them and clean them and muck them out and beat them for you.”

“We can go and look at them now,” Sarah said eagerly. She was animated, her pale cheeks showing two spots of red.

Josiah smiled. “I saw them when they were unloaded, so I shall leave you to inspect them on your own. I have to go to my work, but I look forward to hearing your progress this evening.” He nodded to Sarah, but he took Frances’s hand and
bowed low over it. “If you can accomplish this, I will be obliged to you,” he said formally. “Our fortune depends on it.”

Frances shifted uneasily. “I will do my best, Josiah,” she promised.

“I ask nothing more,” he said, and left the room.

Frances stood by the window and looked down, watching Josiah’s dark three-cornered hat moving among the laborers on the dockside unloading the
Daisy.

“What a long way they have come,” she said. “And what a terrifying voyage it must have been. All the way from Africa to the West Indies, and then all the way to England, in rough seas and sometimes becalmed, in heat and in cold weather. How frightened they must have been.”

“Oh, I doubt it,” Sarah Cole said. “They do not feel as we feel, you know. And they do not understand things as we do. Even now they probably do not realize that they are far from home, and never going home again.”

C
OOK WAS STANDING BY
the kitchen table in offended silence. Brown was washing the second-best china dishes at the sink. She turned when Sarah and Frances came in and dipped a curtsy. The scullery maid backed away, her head down, wiping her dirty hands on her hessian apron.

Miss Cole nodded at them and led the way past the table to the massive door in the wall, bolted top and bottom and secured with a lock. Hanging by the door was a heavy key on a ring. Sarah lifted it down and turned it in the lock. Then she slid back the bolts.

“Have they been fed?” she asked. It was as if she were inquiring about the welfare of carriage horses.

“Yes, Miss Cole.” The kitchen maid bobbed. “And Bates has taken out the slop pail.”

Miss Cole nodded and beckoned Frances to follow her. Frances went toward the doorway and then hesitated. Ahead was a narrow, passagelike cave, carved from the dark red sandstone of the cliff, illuminated by the horn lantern that Sarah hung high on a peg hammered into the soft stone.

At its highest the roof of the tunnel was only about six feet; Frances could see the scrape marks of the picks and shovels where the cellar had been hollowed out from the cliff. The floor was bumpy, rutted in parts by the rolling of barrels of sugar and wine. A heavy, acrid smell wafted toward her. A smell of old,
long-stored wine and a new smell of men and women left for months in their own dirt, a smell of degradation and despair. She recoiled, but Miss Cole took hold of her arm and drew her forward.

“This is where the money comes from to buy your embroidered morning dresses,” she said sharply. “Money has to be earned in this world. This is how we earn ours. It’s a good trade and an honest trade.”

“It was just the smell. . . .”

“The ships smell worse than this, and we send our sailors out in them. The leadworks poison their workers, and yet your uncle buys their shot. You have been hidden from the real things, the dirty things, sister. But now you are the wife of a man who makes his living by the sweat of his brow, whose hands are dirty at the end of the day. And I am proud of it. I don’t want to be a lady who knows nothing of the real world. I am ready to earn my daily bread.”

Sarah’s face was exalted in the flickering light. Frances pulled her arm away. “I am ready to play my part,” she said with simple dignity. “I have taken a share in the prosperity of this family. I am ready to work, Sarah, and I was never a lady of leisure. You need not lecture me.”

“Good,” Sarah said briefly, and led the way, sure-footed, down the familiar passage. As Frances followed, the smell of sweat and grief and infection grew stronger.

“There!” Sarah said avidly. “Look at them! And in good condition, too! I shall pay Captain Lisle a bonus!”

Frances blinked, trying to accustom her eyes to the darkness. The tunnel had widened into a circular cave, lined with silent people. She could dimly make out the gleam of the candlelight on shining eyes, and there was the soft chink of a chain as someone moved. She had the sense of a mute crowd, filling the small cellar. They were chained like dogs to one another and to rings in the walls. Each man, each woman, each child had a light iron collar bolted around their necks, and above this
shackle their faces were dulled with pain, weary with hopeless grief. She could see stains of pus on the collars where the blisters had gone septic and bloodstains where they had worn their necks raw.

One ring on the neck collar held the chains for the manacles on the hands; another ring held the chain that roped them together in pairs, the links passing from behind their heads up to bolts on the walls. Their feet were in heavy leg irons locked to the floor. The place smelled of excrement and the sweet sickliness of diseased flesh. Frances clamped a hand over her mouth to hold back the nausea, and above it her face was white as a cave fish in the gloom, her eyes as black as theirs.

None of them looked at her. None of them cared enough to look at her. Those whose eyes were open stared blankly at the space before them or looked down at their feet, skin puckered from standing barefoot in the mulchy straw. Mostly they were sitting on the stone bench cut out of the wall of the cave, leaning against the wall, their heads tipped back against the damp stone with their eyes tight shut.

Frances found her breath and whispered, “My God!”

Miss Cole looked at her pale face. “What is it?”

“I did not know,” Frances said. She looked around the cellar at the thirteen black faces still as heartbroken statues in the shadows. The cruelty of the trade suddenly opened before her, like a glimpse of hell beneath her feet. “I did not know,” she said.

Miss Cole nodded briskly, as if that confirmed her poor opinion of Frances. “Well, now you do,” she said, and turned to go up the steps again.

Frances started to follow her, but then she froze. She had a strange feeling of being observed. She felt it so strongly it was as if someone had put a warm hand on the nape of her neck. She spun around, forgetting the roughness of the floor, and had to put her hand on the damp wall to steady herself.

One of the slaves was looking at her. His skin was black, as
dark as the skin of a ripe grape, his nose flared, his mouth a sculptured perfection. His cheeks were scarred with curious blue lines drawn in intricate patterns on his cheekbones. The same pattern was etched like a headband around his forehead. He had been standing with his head thrown back against the wall, the blank look of all the captives in his eyes. But something about her had drawn his attention, and his head had come up; the chain attached to the collar around his neck chinked. His eyes met hers.

He looked at her as if he knew her. She felt a jolt—as tangible as a light slap in the face. She had a strange falling sensation, as if she were about to faint. The moment seemed to last for a long long time as she stared at him and he looked back at her.

“Come along, Frances.” Miss Cole’s voice was spinster-sharp.

Frances did not move. She stared at the man. He stared impassively at her.

Miss Cole came back a few steps to see what had attracted Frances’s attention. “Oh, you are looking at his tattoos, are you?” she said. “Grotesque, isn’t it? And pagan. One of our captains told me that the ones who wear those tattoos are the wizards and priests of their pagan beliefs. He would have talked with the spirits and foretold the future.” She laughed one of her rare laughs. “He couldn’t have been a very good fortuneteller!”

Frances looked at him. His face was still impassive.

“Do they not understand English at all?” she asked.

“They’ll have to learn,” Miss Cole said, holding open the door at the end of the passage. Frances turned unwillingly and walked away from the man. “The whip is all the language they know now.”

Frances paused at the doorway and looked back at him. She longed to touch him, just lightly, a soft touch with her fingertip on the inside of his wrist where his black skin was soft.

He turned his head to watch her go, until all he could see was the hem of her gray gown and the shadow of the closing door.

The door at the head of the passage closed abruptly, shutting out the daylight and the sound of voices. The slaves were left in darkness.

Mehuru leaned his head back against the damp wall again and closed his eyes.

He did not despair. Snake’s counsel was ambiguous, not always to be obeyed. Like all gods he teased with false knowledge. Mehuru kept his mind turned inward and waited for the earth under his feet to stop rocking. One of the women was crying, but the children were shocked and silent. They looked to Mehuru to advise them, to speculate about what would happen next. The smallest of the children was not yet three, and he watched Mehuru’s face with the large, trusting eyes of a baby. Mehuru shook his head and looked away from the child. He did not know what would happen. He could be of no comfort to anyone.

In a little while, the door opened again, and the man brought them loaves of strange-tasting bread, slices of cooked meat that tasted like old dry beef, and some hard good fruit with a green skin and sweet white flesh. There was clean, sour-tasting water to drink in a pan.

After a short time, the man came back and made them stand and prepared them to walk in a line. Mehuru did not look for a chance to escape. He realized he was defeated. He did not know where he was; he had never even heard of a place where the air itself was cold and gray and smelled of smoke and dirt. He could not run when he did not know where he should go. So he followed like one of the children in his pitiful obedience. The man had two pistols stuck into his belt and a long, thick horsewhip in his hand; they had no chance against him. They lined up like herded cattle and did as they were bid, straggling along the tunnel and up the four shallow steps into the warmth and poignant normality of the kitchen.

They were not allowed to linger. There was a lad waiting for them who steered them out of the kitchen door into the backyard. Mehuru was so afraid that they were going back to the ship and on another long, dreadful journey that he did not look around him at first but watched his bare, cold feet creeping slavishly on the cold cobbles; a man no longer, but a trained animal.

“Get on, you!” the man said gruffly, and tugged at Mehuru’s chain. They were in a cobbled yard surrounded by high, redbrick walls. Ahead of them and on each side were the glowering bulks of the warehouses with small, barred windows. Mehuru gazed up and up the grim facade. He had seen stone buildings before—the city of Oyo had higher walls and greater buildings than this—but he had never seen such functional ugliness before. The blank redness of the walls held his eyes. He was afraid the stones had been colored with blood.

The man shouted at him, and Mehuru was pulled forward to the pump in the center of the yard. The lad worked the pump until the water gushed out into a bucket, and the big man threw buckets of water at their heads and mimed to them that they should wash themselves with a block of soap. The water was icy and tasted bitter. The soap stank of ashes from old fires and the fat of pigs. Mehuru shivered miserably and hastened to do as he was ordered.

Two of the women seemed paralyzed with fear; they were certain they were being washed for the white men to eat them. They thought they would be safer if they remained dirty. They held tight to their loincloths and ducked away from the buckets of water. In the end the lad poked them with a pitchfork and laughed as they flinched between the icy water and the sharp prongs. He licked his lips at them, and the slave driver guffawed when he saw how they looked to the manacled men for help. The two men looked back at them in passive misery, wishing they were blind.

One by one they washed and then rubbed themselves dry
on the same rough cloth. Then the back door of the house opened, and the scullery maid brought out clothes for them, tittering at their naked discomfort. The lad, tiring of the jest, pulled the clothes onto one of the boys and left the rest to guess how the breeches should fit. The women kept their hands spread over their genitals, their dark faces blushing even blacker with shame. The lad grinned and slid a curious finger between one of the women’s clenched buttocks.

Mehuru spoke softly to her, and she disengaged herself with a slow, speechless dignity. The lad glanced at Mehuru, his eyes drawn to the blue tattoos on his forehead and cheeks.

“What you staring at?” he asked aggressively, gesturing with the pitchfork. “What you looking at, you beast, you?”