Respectable Trade (54 page)

There was an embarrassed silence. Frances gave her breathless society laugh. “I am sorry to hear it,” she said. “You must tell us about it over dinner. Shall I ask them to delay dinner while you change your clothes, Mr. Cole?”

“No,” Josiah said stubbornly. “I can dine like this.”

A shadow crossed Frances’s face. “Whatever you wish,” she said smoothly.

“You are kind to keep me in countenance.” Lord Scott smiled. “Here I am in my traveling clothes, but my niece insisted I stay for dinner. I only called for tea on my way to Whiteleaze.” Lord Scott’s traveling clothes were an immaculate suit of light gray cloth with a matching light gray cloak. He looked as if he had never seen a dusty road in his life.

Josiah nodded curtly. “I hope you will come back to visit the Hot Well and bring your wife.”

Lord Scott shot a quick look at Frances, as if to see how he should respond to such a brusque invitation. “Well, of course we shall come,” he said smoothly. “As soon as Lady Scott is strong enough to go visiting again. And sorry I am to hear that it is not going well for you there. But these are early days, surely. And it is a new line of business for you.”

“What is wrong, Josiah?” Sarah cut through the light patter of conventional pleasantry.

He looked directly at her. “Hibbard and Sons are pressing me, the Hot Well is losing money, and I am still waiting for
Rose.
”

She nodded, her eyes never leaving his face. “Early days yet,” she said bravely. “We’ve had many a ship come in later than this and bring us nothing but good news.”

Her calmness was like a sheet anchor in a storm. His face cleared a little. “Yes,” he said. “You are right.”

There was a short silence.

“I have brought you a gift,” Lord Scott announced, bridging an awkward moment. “Not of my own choosing, I am sorry to say. I am a messenger for Sir Charles Fairley. He ordered some slave collars for you after his last visit here and had them delivered to me. They are in the hall. Would you like to see them?”

“Of course,” Frances said. She reached out and rang the bell. Mary came, and Lord Scott asked her to tell his coachman to bring in the boxes.

“What are these things?” Josiah asked as the coachman carried in eleven narrow boxes and put them on the table at Lord Scott’s elbow.

“Slave collars,” Lord Scott replied pleasantly. “They are very much in fashion in London for slaves. Sir Charles has ordered you a most pretty set, each one engraved with your slaves’ names.”

He opened the first box and held one up. It was a light, decorative silver chain, carrying a label at the front, also of silver. Engraved on the label was the name “Julius.”

“Which are you?” Lord Scott asked Mary.

“Mary,” she answered, unsmiling.

He opened a couple of the boxes. “Ah, yes! Here it is.” He turned the black woman around as if she were a doll and fastened the chain around her neck. “You get a blacksmith to forge the final link,” he told Frances. “So they are fixed on. They are of ornamental value only, symbolic, if you like. If a slave runs off and wants to be free, he can break the chain if he tries hard enough. It is a fancy, merely.”

“Very pretty,” Sarah said. “Mary, fetch the others. They can all have them on.”

Frances put her hand out to stop her but could think of no excuse. The other slaves came into the room one by one. Mehuru came in with the little boy John and glanced across at Frances. She met his eyes with a look of veiled warning.

Sarah had taken a few of the boxes, and Lord Scott had the others. Without explaining to the slaves what they were doing, they ordered them to stand still and then fastened the chains around their necks and sent them back to the kitchen. Mehuru was the last of the line, left alone in the room with the white people. When Lord Scott held out the chain, Mehuru recoiled. “I will not have that thing on me.”

Lord Scott hesitated. “I do not think you have a choice,” he said with a little smile. “Come here.”

Mehuru took another step backward. “I will not have that on me,” he repeated.

“Cicero . . .” Frances said quietly.

He threw her a look that demanded her support. “It is not my name,” he said desperately.

Lord Scott turned the label around. “Cicero,” he read. “It is your name. It is. See the ‘C’? That means Cicero.”

“I can read,” Mehuru exclaimed. “My name is not Cicero. My name is Mehuru. I am an envoy of the Yoruba Federation. I will not be labeled like a dog.”

Josiah’s temper, which had been on the edge of breaking all day, suddenly snapped. “You will wear what you are bid!” he shouted, his voice horribly loud in the pretty room. “You will wear what you are bid and damned well do as you are told!”

With a bound he launched himself across the room and pounded his fist into Mehuru’s face, thumping him in the eye. Frances screamed and leaped to her feet. Mehuru, stepping back from Josiah’s onslaught, stumbled against a table and fell. In a moment Josiah was on him, forcing him to the ground, pummeling his face and his shoulders. The coachman, at a swift nod from Lord Scott, grabbed Josiah from behind, pinning his arms and dragging him off.

“Josiah! Josiah!” Lord Scott said swiftly. “Not here. Not before ladies!”

The coachman released him, and Josiah felt for the back of a chair to haul himself to his feet, pulling at his neckcloth. The coachman had fallen on Mehuru as soon as Josiah was off him and turned him facedown on the floor, twisting his arms behind his back. Mehuru did not struggle; he lay still, his face forced into the carpet.

“Please . . .” Frances said. She was ashen, her hand at her throat, she was gasping for air, “Please . . .”

“Sit down, Frances, and calm yourself,” Lord Scott said, glancing toward her. The habits of her childhood obedience were very strong. She sank into a seat but did not take her eyes from Mehuru.

“Put it on him.” Lord Scott handed the chain and label to the coachman. “I advise you to be still,” he said quietly to Mehuru. “Or you will be taken and beaten.”

Mehuru gave no sign of hearing. He lay completely still. Even when they put the chain around his neck, and fastened it, and crushed the soft metal clasp together so that it could not be undone, he did not move.

“Let him up,” Lord Scott ordered the coachman. The man released Mehuru but stepped quickly back, ready to knock him down at the least sign of disobedience.

Mehuru climbed slowly to his feet. His eye was badly bruised and was swelling fast, the eyelid closing. Frances gave a little cry, hastily suppressed, and turned her face away from him. He looked toward her, and his mouth twisted at being shamed before her. Lord Scott thought he had never seen a man brought so low.

“You had better go to your room and wash your face,” he suggested gently.

Mehuru gave him one burning look and stalked from the room. His slave collar caught the light as he turned. The lettering said clearly “Cicero.”

Josiah raised his head. “Lock him in,” he said shortly.

Lord Scott hesitated. “Is that necessary?” he asked. “You were not cruel. He surely would not go running to a magistrate with a complaint of cruelty. And this is Bristol after all; no one would listen to a slave.”

“I don’t want him running anywhere,” Josiah retorted crudely. “Order your man to lock him into his room for the night and bring me the key.”

“Very well.” Lord Scott nodded at his man, who bowed and quietly followed Mehuru. “You are perhaps right to take care.”

“That is a hundred and ten guineas of bloodstock walking ’round,” Josiah said sullenly. “I don’t want it walking into the Avon and drowning itself for despair.”

D
INNER WAS LATE AND
served with sulky unwillingness. Kbara and the boys had tucked their slave collars under their high neckcloths, but the lower necklines of the women’s dresses meant they could not conceal them. Their chains glinted in the candlelight as they moved around the table, each one labeled like a decanter of drink. Frances thought that at last they were clearly marked for all to see, a Bristol commodity, as much goods of the city as sherry or port wine.

Josiah drank heavily at dinner and ate little. Lord Scott, seated on Frances’s right and opposite Sarah, kept up an easy flow of talk. He had news of Frances’s cousins and of the health of Lady Scott, banished to Whiteleaze for her lying-in. And he had news of London and the gossip from the City and from Parliament.

“The abolition debate is rather subdued at the moment,” he reported. “But there is no doubt that it will rise up again next year. They cannot succeed, not while the gentry is against them, but they can stir up a lot of bad feeling.”

“It will never come to anything,” Sarah said firmly. “Mr. Wilberforce knows nothing of what he is talking about. He
should turn his attention to the conditions in the northern cotton mills; that is nearer to his home! But no, he is one of these meddling minds who has to see things at a distance. Why, he has even been party to the setting up of a school for farm laborers’ children near Cheddar. There have been many complaints from farmers that they cannot get the children to work as they should; they are forever running off to Mr. Wilberforce’s school. I should like to see how he would like it if we meddled in his business and started trying to pass laws to ban it.”

“No,” Lord Scott said, smiling at Sarah’s indignation. “I do not think he would like it at all. But surely we cannot hope to avoid abolition forever. Your company might do well to perhaps consider another venture.”

“I do consider it,” Josiah said grimly. “I consider my land-based venture every day, and every day it costs me more.” There was a brief, embarrassed silence. Lord Scott glanced across at Frances.

“I was sorry to hear that you were unwell, Frances,” he said. “Are you quite recovered? Bristol suited you. I was so pleased when you wrote to me that you were feeling so strong and so happy.”

Frances started; she had not been following the conversation at all. “I am quite well,” she replied. She was desperate to know if Mehuru was badly hurt, and she was still shocked at the explosion of violence in her own parlor. She could not look at Josiah. Brought up in a vicarage and shielded from the reality of life by both her status and her sex, she was frightened by the least sign of violence. Josiah’s anger, erupting in her own morning room, was enough to make him a monster in her eyes.

At the end of the meal when the ladies withdrew, Frances whispered to her uncle that she felt unwell and that she would bid him good-bye. He rose from his seat, drew her to him, and kissed her on the forehead. “I am sorry to see you thus,” he said and the phrase took in the whole evening: Frances’s sick pallor and Josiah’s despairing rage.

“Such a thing has never happened before. . . .”

“I will call again,” he soothed her. “As soon as Lady Scott has been brought to bed. And you must come and stay with us.” He turned to Sarah and Josiah. “And you, too, Miss Cole and Josiah. Lady Scott would be delighted to have your company.”

Sarah looked frankly disbelieving, and Josiah hardly heard the invitation. He was slumped in his chair, staring at his glass. Lord Scott’s quick assessing gaze passed over him.

“Good night,” Frances said, and slipped from the room.

A
S SOON AS THE
family had gone to bed, the slaves had unlocked Mehuru’s door with Cook’s spare set of keys and brought him down to the kitchen. He sat, with the children at his feet, in the fireside chair. The women slaves were seated on the kitchen bench, facing him in a solemn row. Kbara sat at the kitchen table. Cook, her feet on the fender, was seated in the opposite chair and clasped her hands in her lap, controlling her sense of outrage. In the flickering light from the fire, the slave collars on the women’s necks gleamed.

“It isn’t right,” Cook said softly. “I want no part in it. I won’t order you. I won’t work for them anymore if they treat you so. There are many kitchens where I would be welcome. I don’t have to stay here and be a party to this.” She rose to her feet and stirred the coals with a poker through the door of the range. “It isn’t right,” she repeated.

Mehuru nodded. He was reminded for a moment of the lengthy counsels of the villages at home. To an outsider it might look as if no one was capable of any decision; to an outsider it might look as if the men were sitting around idly, chattering. But what was happening was the difficult stages of discussion, working through to a hard-won consensus. What was primitive, Mehuru thought, was the notion of government as a state of permanent warfare—first one side having the upper hand and then the other. The English justice system was no better—
a battle between two opposing points of view. The African way was slower and harder, but it worked on the belief that agreement was possible, that men and women could come together and find a course to suit them all. It was neither victory nor defeat.

Kbara was in favor of them taking all that they could carry and running away this very night. But the women, especially Elizabeth, were afraid of what might happen. The newspapers were full of advertisements for runaway slaves, and the rewards offered would tempt anyone.