Respectable Trade (16 page)

Frances had spent her life among events that never rose above the trivial. Now, suddenly, she was responsible for the survival of thirteen people, and one of them a man who sat as if he were wrapped in a cloak of magic. She turned quickly to the sideboard.

“Glasses,” she said, showing them two wineglasses.

“Classes,” they repeated.

“Knives, forks, spoons,” she said, laying them down on the table.

They babbled the words in panic; she had gone too fast. One of the little children started to cry. Miss Cole was still standing at the foot of the table, her color high, her breath coming quickly.

“That one,” she said abruptly, pointing to Mehuru. “The man with the marks on his face. He understands the most. He is watching.”

The meaningless repetition of words died away into silence. “Find out his name,” she demanded. “You can teach him; then he can explain to the others in their own tongue.”

Frances turned toward Mehuru. She could smell his fear like smoke.

She put her hand on the base of her throat. “Frances,” she said. “Frances.”

Then she pointed at him. Mehuru gulped.

“France-sess,” he repeated. He felt as if he had a thrashing animal trapped in his brain. What did she mean now, “France-sess”? Was that the word for woman? Or for throat? Was it the word for thirst? Or for the scared thumping of his heart that he felt as he put his hand there, mirroring her action?

“Not you! You fool! Her!” Miss Cole said irritably, watching him gesture to himself and say “Frances.” His dark eyes snapped toward her as if he were waiting for an attack but did not know which woman would spring first.

“I am Frances,” the young one said quickly. She pointed to the older woman. “Miss Cole.” Mehuru noted the dislike in her voice. She pointed at the white man with the whip who had thrown water over them and laughed when the woman was assaulted. “John Bates,” she said.

Mehuru nodded; he understood: They were names. He had four names. He gave her his public name, which anyone could
use without summoning his soul or harming him. He put his hand on his chest and looked her in the eyes. “Mehuru,” he said.

Frances’s black eyes gazed at him and widened. She leaned forward a little closer, as if to hear him better. She put her hand to her throat and felt beneath her fingers her own rapid pulse.

“Frances,” she said again. Then she reached out across the table and put her hand on Mehuru’s chest. He could feel the light touch of her fingers tremble as she touched him.

“Mehuru,” she said.

Her small, white, childlike face looked into his. “Mehuru?” she asked, seeking confirmation. She could feel the warmth of his chest through the thin linen shirt. She could smell the scent of his newly washed skin. The tattoos on his face were fine, delicate lines of blue. The skin beneath his eyes was faintly blue, too, with fatigue and sorrow. His eyelids slanted upward, his eyes met hers. He was as wary as a trapped animal.

“Mehuru,” she said lingeringly.

A ripple of fear ran through them all. A new depth of terror went through them like hot wind through the grasslands. They heard the tone of a woman speaking to her beloved.

Mehuru heard it, too. He lowered his eyes to avoid her penetrating, horrible gaze.

“Mehuru,” he said obediently. “France-sess.”

Miss Cole was exultant. She would have kept them all day in the shadowy parlor, learning new lessons. But Frances refused.

“They’ll be getting tired,” she objected. “And I am weary. We’ve done enough for today.”

Miss Cole nodded unwillingly. “Bates, you must keep them chained in their groups so we do not muddle them up,” she ordered. “Bring these particular ones to do another lesson tomorrow.”

Frances bowed her head. Mehuru held himself with weary alertness. The two white women were talking together, but
their voices were cold with dislike. The older one had the sharp tone of command, but the younger one had power, too. The man at the door called Johnbates was their servant. Mehuru had given orders in his own world, and he knew the tilt of a head which was ready to bow. Johnbates might be dangerous, but he was only a cipher for the women.

“Take them back to the cellar,” Miss Cole said to John.

Mehuru shot a swift look at Frances and met her slanty, dark eyes. Her skin colored, and Mehuru stared, fascinated, as a deep red blush rose up from the white fichu at Frances’s throat to color her whole face. “Red as frangipani,” Mehuru thought. “Red as a tongue.”

Frances cleared her throat. “They should not go back in the cellar, where it is so cold and dark and dirty,” she said. “Not now they are washed and have clothes on.”

Miss Cole was looking out the window, relishing her sense of achievement. “What?”

“We should teach them to keep clean,” Frances said. She found herself tapping some secret reserve of female cunning, the skill that says one thing while thinking another. “Now we have washed them, and dressed them, they should not go back into a dirty cave in the dark.”

Miss Cole turned from the window in surprise. “Why not?” she asked.

“Because they will only have to be washed again, and because they must learn how to keep clean, and sleep in beds, and wear proper clothes,” Frances reasoned. “They should have a light. They should have proper food on plates. They should have a clean floor and benches to sit on.”

“But they’re slaves!” Miss Cole protested.

Frances slyly bobbed her head. “I am sorry. I did not understand,” she lied. “I thought they were to be trained as servants.”

Miss Cole opened her mouth to argue and then hesitated. Frances was right. It could not be too early to start training
them in the standards of a proper Christian household. And they could clean the cave themselves.

“You, Bates,” she said abruptly. “Take them back to the cave and get them to muck it out. Scrub it clean and put down some matting on the floor. Get some benches for them to sit on and put a lantern high on a hook for light.”

“They should be unchained,” Frances added. She stretched out her hand toward Mehuru’s clenched fists, touched the manacle on his wrist. Mehuru froze as if some unknown animal were brushing against him.

“Not yet, not yet,” Miss Cole said nervously. She looked around at the impassive black faces. “Not until they are a little more tame.”

“I could give them some linen to go around the manacles,” John offered from the doorway. “That’d stop them bleeding into their shirts. Help with the smell, too. The sores get filled with pus if they wear irons for too long.”

“That will do,” Miss Cole said, revolted. “Make whatever arrangements are necessary, Bates. Take these back and bring the others for their lesson this afternoon. And then bring these back tomorrow morning.”

The driver nodded and stepped to one side. Mehuru watched him carefully, saw the little bow toward the old woman and the more shallow nod to the younger one. So the old one was the senior, as he had thought. He rose from his chair and saw the old one flinch back from his height and strength.

The others followed him, on their feet and walking with their painful shuffle from the room. They crowded at the top of the stairs, finding the narrow wooden steps frightening. Mehuru touched his mind with the wisdom of Snake—“
All skin sheds at last,
”—and went down, like a ghostman, one foot after another, his body erect. The others followed his lead. Frances watched the top of Mehuru’s head until he was out of sight in the kitchen and she could hear the rising litany of complaint from the cook.

“Now,” Miss Cole said coldly, masking her pleasure, “there is an hour left before noon. I suggest that you apply yourself to the housekeeping accounts.”

Frances turned demurely. “Yes, Sarah,” she said.

They went back together to the parlor. Miss Cole laid out the bills and the ledger and directed Frances to the pen in the standish. Frances nodded, sat down at the desk, and pulled the ledger toward her.

Miss Cole drew up a chair at Frances’s elbow and watched the downward march of figures in the columns.

“Very well.” She gathered her sewing basket and announced that she would leave Frances alone with the ledgers. “You will want to study them, I expect.”

Frances nodded, saying nothing. But as soon as Miss Cole shut the door, she pushed the books to one side and laid her face on the coolness of the polished wood.

She felt very strange, as light-headed as if she had drunk some young, fresh wine. The room no longer seemed stuffy or oppressive, the sparkle of the sunlight on the ceiling seemed to promise a bright wintry day, the noise of the working quay was cheerful. She felt as if she were a girl again, as if she were young and hopeful. In her early days, when her mother had been alive, Frances had been a pretty, petted, optimistic child. Now, under the cold carapace of her adult disappointments, her spirit stirred, as if it might warm and come alive again. She sat very still for long moments, feeling her sense of inexplicable elation. She did not know why she suddenly felt as if joy were possible. She did not know why the air seemed a little cleaner and the house less oppressive.

“Mehuru,” she said thoughtfully to the open pages of the ledger.

She did not think about where he had come from. She had no notion of an Africa before the coming of the British, of a huge continent populated by a complex of different peoples and kingdoms, of trading and barter stations, of caravans of goods
that crossed from one nation to another; of men and women, some living like peasants working the land, some living in towns and cities and working in industries, some established in hereditary kingdoms seated on thrones of gold and ivory and living like gods.

She had no interest in the slaves as people who had come from a living and potent culture. She felt powerful beside the black slave in a way she had never felt powerful before. She had always been a young woman in a world where male power was absolute. For the first time in her life, she was able to look at a man and know that she could command him. For the first time in her life, she could be a woman who could find and take her own power and make a difference in her world. If she were clever and cunning, she could keep him from death on the plantations. She nodded and felt her lips curve upward in a smile. “I can save his life,” she said softly. “And he has to obey me.”

She rose from the table and went to the mirror above the fireplace. She almost expected to see the face of the girl she had been when her mother had been alive and her father had been prosperous and happy. She looked for that round-faced, confident girl and was surprised to see the reflection of the drawn, thin woman who gazed back at her.

But her eyes were very bright.

T
HE LANTERN-LIT CELLAR
glowed a dusky red. The walls, quarried out of the ruddy sandstone, were red as brick, the lamplight reflecting an ominous carmine glow on the faces of the slaves as they gathered around Mehuru. They were still all chained one to another, and the last one at each end was fastened to the wall. Mehuru—whose uncle was a blacksmith, a sacred worker in iron—was looking over the chain for faults in the metal. Sometimes, if iron was cooled too quickly, it became brittle and could shear as easily as stone could chip. He looked at each link in the uncertain light of the tallow candle. Each
slave stood waiting patiently in turn. Mehuru shook his head.

“The chain is perfect,” he said in his own tongue. For the two women who were from another nation and did not understand him, he put both fists together to indicate strength and shook his head sorrowfully. They nodded.

“We will have to wait until they release us before we can escape,” he said.

The others nodded solemnly. “D’you know where to run, Obalawa?” one of the women asked. She bent her head a little as she addressed him, in the instinctive respect of a woman to a man and that of a mere mortal to one who speaks with the gods.

“No,” Mehuru admitted honestly. “I have no sight here. I am blind like you. I am lost like you.”

A shiver of disappointment ran through them. The women groaned softly. The two Fulani women looked from one anxious face to another, trying to understand what was being said. Mehuru resisted the temptation to smile at them, to reassure his own people. He could offer them only false comfort, and in this pit in the ground he did not want to play at magic.

“I have no power here,” he said. “I have lost it, just as the sun has lost its heat. I know no more than you. At home I was a priest with the ear of the gods; I was high at court with the ear of the king. Here I have to learn to be nothing. I am not a man, I am a slave. I know nothing more than any one of you.”

“If we walk,” one of the women suggested, “if we walk with the afternoon sun on our right, we will get home. D’you remember, in the great ship after we lost the others, the afternoon sun was always to the left? We must walk south.”

“If there is land,” the other man, Kbara, warned. “It may be water everywhere. It was many days sailing, remember; weeks and months at sea. Who would make that journey if they could walk? Who would build a ship like that unless they had to? These people have horses and carriages. If there was land, they would have gone by land. Perhaps we have come from our world to this one by a great sea of time.”

Instinctively, they looked to Mehuru—he knew the mysteries of one world and another; he should know.

Mehuru shook his head. “I do not know,” he said. “It will be enough for me if we can get away from this house and from these people. And from that woman,” he added very low.

“Somewhere there must be real people,” Kbara said desperately. “They cannot all be white. They eat food; somewhere there must be real people planting crops and herding animals. They must be people like us working the earth. They eat meat; there must be herdsmen like the Fulani.”

Mehuru nodded. “Perhaps.”

“At least they have given us clothes and water and now a light,” one of the women said hopefully. “They cannot mean to eat us, can they? They would have started by now, wouldn’t they?”

“I don’t think they will eat us,” Mehuru said carefully. “I think they are teaching us to speak their language for a reason.”