Respectable Trade (52 page)

Altogether, then, we have near five hundred for sale, and we will start preparing them for inspection and auction next Month. Nearly a hundred look poorly. Some are Old with drooping breasts and others sick. But we will Bung up the ones with the Flux, and Bootblack those with sores. Trust me—I will be rid of them.

The ones I cannot Clear I will sell in a Scramble, and any I cannot be rid of I Will Drown on my way to Jamaica.

I will buy as much Top-grade sugar as I can conveniently obtain and Load and make all Speed home. I hope this meets with your Satisfaction, Sir. For my own Pride, I regret the loss of so Many, but that
was a Risk we ran, as you yourself acknowledged at the Time. The profit will no doubt console Us both.

I remain your obdt. servant,

Stephen Smedley

(Capt).

Josiah read the letter from Captain Smedley in the back parlor, which Frances had furnished as an office for him. He read it through once again, and then he drew a sheet of paper toward him. He estimated that there would be about four hundred and fifty slaves who could pass as fit once Captain Smedley had finished painting their sores and blocking their anuses. They could be sold for a total of about twenty-two thousand pounds. A scramble—when greedy or poor planters paid an entrance fee at the gangway and were allowed down into the hold to take potluck in the dark, grabbing as many slaves as they could and only finding if they had sick or even dying workers when they dragged them out into the daylight—would earn no more than a couple of hundred pounds.

Once
Rose
docked and Josiah shared the profits with his partners, he should be left with little more than ten thousand pounds. He nodded. He had overcalculated the amounts as a man always does, speaking grandly to Sarah of profits of fourteen thousand pounds. But even this would clear all his debts and leave him with a profit greater than Cole and Sons had ever shown before.

More slaves had died than he would have believed possible, and there were more sick and unsellable slaves than Cole and Sons usually carried. Never before had a captain written in a matter-of-fact tone about dumping sick women and children over the side. Josiah shrugged. He would come out of the venture with enough profit to settle all his debts and still show a handsome margin.

He went to the fireplace, where coal and kindling were laid. He took a tinderbox to the incriminating letter, carefully lit the
corner, and sat back on his heels to watch it flame up and then crumple to ash. The letter had taken two months to reach him. He might confidently predict that the sale of slaves had now gone through and
Rose
was even now on the seas, headed for home, rich with sugar in her hold and bullion locked safe in the captain’s cabin. On this leg of the voyage, she was insured, overinsured. Josiah’s gamble—overloaded slaves smuggled to the Spanish colonies—had paid off.

“Two more months and I am clear,” he said softly to himself. “Two more months and it will be November, and she will be home laden with gold and sugar.”

He went back to his desk and looked at his other letters. One was addressed to him in an unfamiliar hand. He opened it and read, then reread, the letter.

It was a summons to appear before the Bristol magistrates. He had been summonsed by the Merchant Venturers’ Company for failing to comply with the terms of their lease—namely, to provide water from the famous healing spa the Hot Well for the needy poor of Bristol.

For a moment Josiah was too stunned to take in the meaning, and then he felt himself gripped by a rage so total that he could not see the letter in his hand, nor the desk, nor the window before him overlooking the little backyard where Kbara was slowly sweeping.

“My God,” he said. He was almost awed by the passion that shook him. “My God.”

He could not think why they should persecute him for the little tap, why they, who had grown rich on the sweat of the Bristol poor and on the blood of the slaves of Africa, should suddenly suffer a crisis of conscience about one little tap. He had heard Stephen Waring’s warning, but he had never dreamed that the Merchant Venturers’ Company—his own club, his own newfound friends—would take action against him.

He rose from his chair—he almost staggered—and, clasping the letter to his chest, went to find Frances.

She was seated in the ornate parlor, with some sewing in her hands. She put it down as soon as she saw his face. “Josiah?”

“Read this,” he said, and thrust the letter at her.

He watched her face as she read it through, and read it through again. He saw her grow suddenly wary, as if she had found something to fear.

“What do you make of it?” he asked her. “Waring warned me, but I had no idea they would go so far. Why should they take me to court for such a trifle?”

Frances frowned. “Did he warn you that they would take you to court?”

“No! I would not have believed it if he had! He told me only that he had heard that the company wanted the tap open. I had no idea. . . .” Josiah trailed off. “I would have opened it if they had insisted. But why should they insist? Why should they want to spoil the spa with sickly paupers hanging around and collecting water in buckets? Why should they want beggars at the Hot Well?”

Frances shook her head. “I don’t know. It makes no sense. I thought their whole idea was that it should be elegant and exclusive.” She thought for a moment. “When is the hearing?”

“Next week.”

“Can you open the tap before then? Prevent this case getting to court?”

“I should think so. It is only bolted off. But I don’t see why I
should
! Why should anyone ask it of me?”

“Do you have a lawyer, Josiah?”

He shook his head miserably. “I have never needed one before,” he said. “All my dealings, all my father’s dealings, were done on a handshake. You can ask anyone; when I give my word, that is as good as a bond. I have never used a lawyer. I have always thought them more trouble and expense than they were worth.”

“I think we need a lawyer now,” Frances decided. “There is something happening here, and we need a friend who can tell
us what is going on.” She opened the summons again. “Who is the presiding magistrate? Mr. John Shore?”

“That is Stephen Waring’s brother-in-law,” Josiah said. “And his partner.”

Frances’s face was grave. “I think we need a lawyer.”

T
HE LAWYER
’
S ADVICE WAS
simple. Even Josiah conceded that he had given value for money. The tap was to be opened at prearranged times every day, and only then could the needy of Bristol disturb the gentility of the spa by queuing for their water. There was no fine to pay, and aside from the lawyer’s fee there were no costs incurred. Josiah went before the magistrate, John Shore, who nodded pleasantly to him from the bench, while Josiah explained that there had been an oversight and that all was remedied now. It turned out to be a simple little matter.

Josiah would have kept it from Sarah if he could, but the week after the court hearing she read of it in the newspaper. A journalist made a great to-do over it, writing as if a moral victory had been won over the grasping new tenant of the Hot Well. It appeared as if the Merchant Venturers had stood firm for the rights of the poor and defended their health. The Merchant Venturers had protected the defenseless paupers’ right to the miracle of the spa water. The Merchant Venturers had saved the Hot Well for the people of Bristol. Someone had given the journalist a great deal of information, and none of it reflected very well on Josiah. Someone had gone to a deal of trouble to show Josiah as a newly rich, grasping landlord who had tried to ride roughshod over the rights of the common people. The water from the Hot Well was said to be the savior of the Bristol paupers—the only water they could safely drink in the whole contaminated, dirty city. It was a miracle water that had cured countless patients of skin ailments, digestive troubles, lung and heart complaints; and now the new landlord, a
self-made man, a trader, would snatch this natural boon from the mouths of the needy.

“It means nothing, Sarah,” Josiah said. She had brought a copy of the newspaper to his office.

“We have never appeared in a newspaper before,” she said, her voice throbbing with suppressed emotion. “And they are calling you an upstart.”

Josiah flushed. “It means nothing.”

“You did not tell me,” Sarah reproached him.

“It was not ships’ business. I did not want to worry you. I saw a lawyer and took advice. It is a storm in a teacup.”

“We are all out of our depths in these matters. The Merchant Venturers’ Company was your newfound friend only last month, and this month they take you to court.”

Josiah nodded. “They surprised me,” he acknowledged frankly. “I will take it as a warning shot across my bow, Sarah. Things are not always as they seem.”

“In this town they are never as they seem,” Sarah said.

Josiah smiled. “You are prejudiced. You are a Welsh girl at heart, Sarah.”

She shook her head. “I am the daughter of a self-made man,” she said simply. “I will never trust the gentry.”

J
OSIAH WAS TEASED VERY
roundly at the October company dinner for oppressing the poor, and he took it with a small, grim smile. No one saw fit to tell him why the company should have gone to the length of threatening one of its own members with prosecution, and Josiah did not find himself confident enough to demand an explanation. When the decisions were nodded through, he heard to his surprise that Cole and Sons would be excused charges at the lighthouses all the way down the Bristol Channel for the next two years.

A smiling nod from Stephen Waring suggested that it was a favor from him. Josiah raised his glass in thanks and hid his
confusion. In the roaring bonhomie of the songs and the toasts, there was no opportunity to draw Stephen to one side and ask why he was so unexpectedly favored. When he woke up the next morning with a nauseating headache, he merely assumed that the Merchant Venturers had brought the case against him to demonstrate their care for the people of Bristol and had paid him for his embarrassment with an easing of their charges. It seemed a reasonably fair exchange.

The publicity about the reopening of the tap did not damage the reputation of the Hot Well at all. It made it appear even more exclusive. Another London paper reprinted the story, emphasizing the increased elegance of the spa, which certainly led to a couple of extra bookings. Then the story died away and was forgotten.

Only Frances wondered why the Merchant Venturers’ Company had taken such pains to appear as heroes and defenders of the common people. She wondered why they had taken the deposit for the lease and a full year’s rent from Josiah and then threatened his business in its first season. And she wondered why they had cast Josiah, their new tenant, the newest member of their company, as the villain of the piece.

When she mentioned her worries to Josiah, he snapped at her and ordered her to go and look at the Hot Well herself and tell him what he could do to make the spa more profitable. Frances and Sarah drove out together, on a bright, sunny day toward the end of October.

The avenue was bare and stark, the broad yellow leaves blown away from the little plane trees. On the far side of the river, Rownham Woods glowed with autumn colors—reds, yellows and golds. Frances was wearing one of her new gowns and a pretty fur-lined jacket, but when she saw the saddle horses standing idle outside the pump room and the places for the waiting carriages standing empty, she felt that she should have taken Josiah’s angry demand to heart and canceled all her new outfits.

“It looks quiet,” she remarked uneasily to Sarah.

Sarah said nothing.

The two women dismounted from the carriage and went inside.

“Mrs. Cole! Miss Cole!” The master of ceremonies surged forward. “What a pleasure to see you both. You will take a dish of tea, I know!”

Sarah nodded, and Frances allowed him to draw them to one of the little tables. A smart maid came forward and gave them tea.

Frances looked about the room. A few invalids were reclining in seats around the echoing space. The quartet played brightly. The card tables stood empty, new packs of cards still in their wrappings at each corner. A few people walked slowly up and down the room, undertaking their exercise with mournful expressions. It was deeply depressing.

“I did not know you had so little company here,” Frances said.

“Today
is
a little thin,” the man said, as if he had suddenly noticed. “But in the middle of the week, it is often quiet. We don’t have the local trade that we used to enjoy. We still have our residents, though.”

“Because it is too expensive,” Sarah said abruptly.

“Let us say . . . too select!” he replied sweetly.

“If it is too select for the Bristol merchants and their families, then it is too select to succeed.”

“Sarah!” Frances whispered. To the master of ceremonies she said, “I hope it will improve. Do you think it will improve, Mr. Tucker?”

“I am certain,” he said. “When our new winter-garden room is built, we will be packed every winter. And in summer we always succeed. These are the worst months for the Hot Well—autumn, and of course winter. You can see it in the records. These are the months when the quality are in town. We have to be patient and wait until spring. More tea, Miss Cole?”

“No thank you,” Sarah replied, containing her irritation with some difficulty.

“Perhaps we had better go,” Frances suggested. “Mr. Cole asked us to call and see how things were.”

“Tell him they are well,” Mr. Tucker said with breezy confidence. “A little slow today, of course, but busier every day the sun shines. And all of us here, all of this little team, are ready and confident for spring.”

“But it is October now,” Sarah hissed through her teeth as they got into the carriage. “How does the booby think we will manage until spring?”

“Perhaps the
Rose
will come in early,” Frances said. Both women turned and looked toward the mouth of the river. Seagulls wheeled and cried over the empty water.