Respectable Trade (61 page)

T
HERE WAS A LOUD
hammering on the door knocker at seven o’clock on a cold December morning, hard with white frost. Mehuru, carrying hot water to the bedrooms on the first floor, put down the heavy jugs and went to the front door.

A round-faced man in brown serge, followed by two others, stepped into the house and put his hand on Mehuru’s arm.

“Bailiffs,” he said abruptly. “Is your master at home? Savee? Big boss? Savee?”

Mehuru jerked his arm away. “Mr. Cole is at the warehouse.”

The big man blinked in surprise at the perfectly spoken English. “Here, we’ll have you straightaway,” he said, tightening his grip.

“What’s this?” Cook asked, surging up the passageway from the kitchen.

“Bailiffs,” the man said shortly. “Come to distrain goods to the value of more than two thousand pounds.”

Cook squared up to him. “And what d’you think you’re doing with him?” she demanded, plucking Mehuru’s sleeve away.

“He’s goods,” the man said. “And worth a lot, I should think.”

“He’s free,” Cook lied instantly. “He’s a freeman, a servant.”

“We’ll see about that,” the bailiff replied. “I’ve got authority to seize household goods here.”

“You wait there,” Cook ordered. She nodded Mehuru to go upstairs. “Wake Miss Cole and tell her,” she said.

Mehuru nodded and went up to Sarah’s bedroom. He tapped lightly on the door. At Sarah’s sharp command, he opened the door and spoke from the threshold.

“A man is here called Bailiffs.”

He heard an abrupt exclamation from inside the room and the noise of Sarah getting hastily out of bed and throwing a shawl over her shoulders. She peered around the door at him. “Bailiffs?” she asked.

“Yes,” he confirmed.

Her face was more pinched and angry than ever. “Go out the back door,” she hissed. “Run to the warehouse. Find Mr. Cole. Tell him to come home at once. Tell him he must come at once and bring everything he has—all the money he has to hand, all the notes of credit, a note of what we still hold in bond.”

Mehuru nodded.

“Go without them seeing you,” Sarah cautioned. “And be quick.”

Mehuru went quietly downstairs. In the hall Cook was blocking the way. Another man with a handcart had arrived, and a pony and cart behind him. Mehuru slipped like a shadow down the hall and out through the back door into the yard.

He ran down to the dockside and whistled for the ferryboat to take him across.

“Ha’penny,” the lad said.

“Mr. Cole will pay on the way back,” Mehuru promised. He still had no money in his pockets.

The lad nodded. “He better had.”

The prow of the little boat nosed against the green, slimy steps. Mehuru jumped ashore, clearing the tidemark of garbage and filth, and ran up the steps to the Cole warehouse. He hammered on the front door and shouted until the window above opened and Josiah stuck his head out.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said. “What’s the matter?”

“Bailiffs,” Mehuru told him. “Miss Cole said to come home at once. She said to bring everything you have—all the money and all the notes of credit and a note of what you have in bond.”

Josiah laughed shortly, a cold, mirthless sound, staring down at Mehuru below him. “I’ll come,” he said. “But I’ve nothing to bring. Nothing. D’you hear?”

Mehuru waited. There was a bitter wind blowing up the gorge and a cold frost on the quayside. The garbage in the dock was rimmed with white. The door before him opened, and Josiah came out. He was wearing an old suit of homespun brown, and his linen was dirty. His stock was badly tied, and his jacket pulled on carelessly, with one pocket flap tucked in. The two men went side by side to the ferry, the immaculately dressed black man in livery and his shabby master.

“Do you have a penny for the boy?” Mehuru asked.

Josiah bared his stained teeth. “It’s about all I do have,” he said. “And I suppose I have to pay for you, too, good money to bring me bad news. You should have run around the long way and not cost me your fare.”

The boat edged against the steps on the Bristol side of the river. Mehuru got out first and gave Josiah his hand. The older man moved as if he were stiff and tired, but at the entrance to Queens Square, as he took in the waiting carts and the bailiff’s men, his pace grew swifter.

“What’s this?” he cried as soon as he was at his front door. “What authority?”

The bailiff turned to him. “Are you Josiah Cole?”

“Who wants to know?” Josiah demanded, with pointless cunning.

“Bailiffs. I have a warrant here for the distraint of goods.”

Josiah looked indoors to the shadowy hall. Sarah, coming downstairs in her plainest gown, nodded at him. Brother and sister’s eyes met. Neither of them smiled, but there was a grim recognition of mutual need and a promise of mutual support.
Mehuru thought of the warriors of Oyo who sing that only those who fear nothing, not even the hornbill who feasts on the eyes of dead men, can march with them. The taut readiness for disaster was there in Sarah and Josiah. Upstairs, Frances still slept.

“How much?” Josiah said evenly. He thought he might part with some of the more extravagant pieces of porcelain and keep the basic goods.

The bailiff looked at his list. “It’s £2,300.17s.,” he said.

Josiah staggered as if he had been knifed in the belly. Sarah came swiftly forward and drew him into the hall, half supporting him with her arm around his back.

“Show me,” Josiah said. “Who has done this?”

The bailiff handed over the warrant with the bills and signatories attached. Josiah read them with minute attention, as if he hoped to spot an error of a few pence. His lips moved as he scanned the words, but Mehuru could tell that he was not seeing them at all. He was turning the pages, one after another, but his eyes were sightless.

“Let me see.” Sarah’s voice was gentle. She took the papers from Josiah’s hand and looked from one bill to another. They were the bills for the wall hangings, for the carpets, for the curtains, for the pictures. The plasterer, who had repaired the broken beak of one of Josiah’s beloved ornamental plasterwork ho-ho birds, the carpenter for a new step on the stair. The chimney sweep who had cleaned all the chimneys before they had moved in, the coal merchant for the last delivery. Not a bill had been settled since they had moved into Josiah’s great house. While Sarah had been balancing the housekeeping books for butcher and baker, Josiah had been letting the costs of the house double and redouble, with one eye on the Hot Well and the other on his ships.

The second set of papers were the bills for the Hot Well: wages, new furnishings, running costs. Sarah turned page after page as the bailiff looked at her, his stolid face carefully impassive.

There was a third set of papers from the chandlers, the sailmakers, and the ropewalk, unpaid since
Lily
had sailed, still owing from
Daisy
’s sailing nearly a year ago.

“You will have to give us a few days to settle these,” she said.

The bailiff shook his head. “I am sorry, missus,” he said. “My orders are to take goods to the value for sale. They are to be taken today.”

“I don’t believe we have goods to the value of two thousand pounds,” Sarah said, her voice sharp and unemotional. “Much of the furniture belongs to my sister-in-law.”

“Married to Mr. Cole?”

“Of course.”

“Her goods are his, then,” he said. “If they’re married.”

“Even so,” Sarah maintained, “we do not have goods to the value of these bills.”

The bailiff nodded. “Then I have to ask you to vacate the premises, missus. I have instructions to claim the property itself. You can take your personal clothes and belongings.”

“Go back to the warehouse?” Josiah was suddenly roused from his daydream. “Back to the warehouse? But we’ve only just come from there!”

Sarah turned to him. “It doesn’t matter, Josiah,” she said urgently. “We can go back for now, while we get this sorted out. The house will not be sold for weeks.
Rose
could come in any day, and then we will settle our debts. We can go back for now.”

“No!” Josiah yelled. He suddenly plunged toward the bailiff, his hands snatching for his throat. The bailiff sidestepped him easily, and his man, waiting behind, seized Josiah and wrestled him away. The man with the handcart raced up the steps, and the three of them bent Josiah’s arms behind his back and held him. “No!” Josiah yelled again.

Mehuru hesitated, then heard Frances’s bedroom door open. At once he turned for the stairs and ran up to her. He saw a glimpse of her pale face and her tumbling dark hair.

“Not so fast, you!” the bailiff called. He took three swift
steps up the stairs behind Mehuru and flung his arms around him. “Here! Sam! Help me with this!”

Mehuru twisted in his grip. “Let me go,” he said steadily. “I must go to Mrs. Cole. . . . She is ill. . . .”

“You’re goods,” the man said with sudden, abrupt viciousness. “And I’m distraining you along with everything else.”

The second man raced up the stairs toward them. Frances from above could see Mehuru’s danger. “Mehuru!” she screamed. “Run! Run!”

At the sound of her voice, Mehuru kicked out and threw the bailiff backward against the banister. There was a splintering sound, and the banister creaked outward, away from the stairs. He stumbled against the other man, and Mehuru punched him straight-fingered into his round belly. The man slumped down, whooping and gasping for breath, knocking the other man off balance. Mehuru tore out of his grip and raced up the stairs to Frances.

She was clinging to the doorframe. “What is happening? Who are those men?”

Mehuru swept her off her feet and carried her back into her bedroom, kicking the door shut behind them. “It is nothing, nothing. Be calm, Frances!”

She struggled out of his arms and stood unsteadily before him. “Mehuru! Tell me! What do they want?”

He could feel her rapid pulse thudding in her fingers.

“Please,” he said. “Please, Frances, be still. They have come for money. That’s all. They want money.”

“Bailiffs?”

He nodded. “That is what they said.”

Her face was wax-white. “We will lose the house. We will lose everything.”

There was a loud bang on the door, and then it was thrown open. The bailiff stepped into the room. “Beg pardon,” he said heavily. “But I’m distraining him for sale.”

Frances staggered. “He is sold,” she improvised swiftly. Her
face was ashen. “You cannot have him. He is the property of Mr. Waring.”

The man hesitated. “Mr. Waring?”

Frances held her hand to her heart. She could feel its erratic pounding. “Ask him!” she said. “And he will be angry if you touch his servant.”

The bailiff recoiled. “Leave my room,” Frances said. “How dare you come in here?”

He was impressed by her frosty air of command. “Beg pardon, ma’am. Just trying to do my job, and he struck me.”

“Mr. Waring will compensate you,” Frances assured him. “You must complain to him.”

He nodded and left. They were silent as they heard his heavy tread going down the stairs.

Frances gave a little gasp. Her face was ashen. “You must run,” she whispered breathlessly. “Get out the back door, Mehuru. And take Elizabeth.”

“I won’t leave you,” he said stubbornly. “He won’t touch me. He thinks I am Mr. Waring’s slave.”

“That won’t save you. Mr. Waring could come and claim you. You must go.”

He caught her in his arms. “I promised that I would stay with you.”

“Look at me!” she cried in sudden passion. “I am dying, Mehuru! And you have a life before you! Go! I want to know you are free!” She gathered her strength and pushed him away from her, thrust him to the door. But as she did so, her face suddenly changed and went into a spasm of pain. She doubled up. “Oh, God, Mehuru! The baby is coming! The baby!”

He scooped her up and laid her on the bed. She screamed a sharp cry of pain and then gasped for breath.

Mehuru recklessly flung open the door and shouted for Elizabeth. She came running down the stairs. “The baby is coming,” he said. “Go to her, I will fetch Stuart. Lock the bedroom door, and let no one in but me.”

He glanced down to the hall. The bailiffs had given up on him for the time being; they were arguing with Josiah. Brother and sister were blocking the doorway, shoulder to shoulder and insisting on seeing one bill after another, haggling as if a reduction of a few pounds would make all the difference. Mehuru thought that the two worlds of the house had split off from each other completely. Downstairs, Sarah and Josiah still struggled for money; upstairs, the slaves and Frances struggled to bring life into the house and to cheat death.

Mehuru went quietly down the hall, slipped out the back door and then took to his heels toward Stuart’s house.

He was lucky. He saw the doctor’s phaeton waiting outside the Merchant Venturer almshouses at the back of the square. “Stuart!” he shouted to the squat, white-painted facade intersected with black beams, and was rewarded by the sight of Hadley’s face at a small leaded upstairs window.

“It’s Frances! The baby is coming!”

Stuart made a grimace at Mehuru’s crashing lack of discretion, vanished from the window, and then appeared at the little door.

“She’s in pain! Come!”

Stuart swung into the driving seat, and Mehuru leaped for the footman’s hold behind the carriage.

“Did something bring it on?” Stuart shouted over his shoulder.

“Bailiffs in the house,” Mehuru said. “A fight. They tried to catch me.”

Stuart scowled.

“You knew of the baby,” Mehuru accused.

“I am her doctor.”

“You did not tell me.”

“Why should I have told you?” Stuart hedged. He steered the horse carefully around the square and pulled it up well clear of the bailiff’s cart.

“Because I was caring for her,” Mehuru said. “I needed to
know. She needs my protection with Josiah away all the time. You should have told me.”

“And who do you think is the father?” Stuart asked conversationally. He reached into the phaeton and pulled out his bag.

“Come on! Hurry!” Mehuru was dancing on the pavement with impatience. He had forgotten all about the bailiffs.