Respectable Trade

by Philippa Gregory

  “No,” Mehuru chuckled. “You misunderstand me. I am not a farmer, I am not a pioneer. When I say I want to go home, I did not mean that I wanted to camp out in the bush. I want to go home to my house, to my work, to my own country.”

  Dr. Hadley hesitated. “Forgive me,” he said. “I had thought of all Africans as living off the land, in . . . er . . . I suppose mud huts.”

  Mehuru thought of the high stone walls of Oyo and the architecture of the great houses and the palaces. “I might as well suppose that all Englishmen lived in warehouses beside stinking rivers,” he said bitingly.

  They were at the back of Queens Square. The Merchant Venturers’ immense crane threw a shadow like a giant gibbet over the quayside.

  “You are right to correct me,” Stuart Hadley said. “It is hard for white men to imagine your country.”

  “That’s all right,” Mehuru replied bleakly. “Sometimes it is hard for me to remember it, too.”

  KBARA WAS DOZING IN the chair when Mehuru slipped in through the back door. He started awake, and Mehuru clapped his hand over his mouth. “Sshhh! Fool!” Mehuru said swiftly in Mandinka. “Is everything quiet?”

  “The little boy is sick.”

  “Like James?”

  “The same.”

  “Is he as bad?”

  “Elizabeth says not yet, but she is worried for him.”

  Mehuru thought. “Should we fetch the doctor now?”

  “Elizabeth said you were to go to her when you came in.”

  Mehuru stepped out of his shoes, took them in his hand, and crept up the stairs. Kbara stayed behind to lock the kitchen door and shoot the oiled bolts.

  Mehuru hesitated on the landing. The two grand front bedrooms were Josiah’s and Frances’s. From the one on the left came a rumbling snore—Josiah—which meant that Frances was sleeping alone. Mehuru paused. He had a great desire to see her asleep. He wanted to see her without her knowing he was there, standing at the foot of the bed. He wanted to see her as a sleeping woman, innocent of her power as his slave owner. He wanted to see her warm and half naked in her bed. He went toward her door, his feet silent on the Turkish rugs. He turned the handle and took one step inside her room.

  Her window curtains were only partly drawn, and the moonlight bathed the room in pale colors. Mehuru came a little closer to the bed. Frances was asleep on her back, one hand outflung. Her long hair was twisted into a careless plait. She was wearing a white nightgown of pure lawn, embroidered and pin-tucked around the neck. In her sleep one of the buttons had come undone, and he could see the pale column of her throat and the two smooth lines of her collar bones.

  Mehuru swallowed. She was a lovely woman in the moonlight. Pale as a woman made of white flour, pale as a woman sculpted from frozen cream. He thought of what Dr. Hadley had told him—that many black men had married white women—and he wondered if he would ever lie with a woman again. He could not believe that he must not go closer to Frances, could not believe that he was not allowed to touch her outstretched hand nor put his lips to where the pulse beat slowly and steadily at the base of her throat.

  He heard Kbara’s stealthy tread on the stairs, and he slipped back out of the door, closing it quietly behind him, and met him on the landing. They went up the next flight of stairs together and tapped softly on the women’s door. It was locked, of course. One of Cook’s jobs before she bolted the back and front doors was to lock the slaves in their rooms. Kbara took down the key from its hook, unfastened the door, and Elizabeth opened it from the inside. Her face was strained and tired. She had grieved for the death of James, her little foster son, and watched them take him away and bury him in the cold, alien ground. Now John was coughing as badly, and his fever was rising.

  “Should we fetch a doctor tonight?”

  She nodded. “He is a good man. Ask him to come.”

  “I shall have to ask Frances,” Mehuru said.

  “Do we have to wait until she is awake?” Kbara asked. “Wait till the morning?”

  The temptation to wake Frances was too much for him. “I will wake her now to ask her,” he decided. “I will go. Kbara, you go to bed. I will fetch the doctor. Frances will give me the front-door key.”

  He went quickly down the stairs before they could argue, tapped very softly on Frances’s door, and went into the room. She opened her eyes as he came in, and for a moment she thought she was dreaming and that he had come to her in a dream of desire. Then she blinked herself awake, and there was no mistaking the expression on her face. “Mehuru!” she said, and her voice was full of joy.

  He touched her outstretched hand, and in a movement too quick for either of them to consider, they clasped hands and he bent down to her bed, snatching her to him. Her arms went around his neck, he kissed her throat, the warm hollow where the pulse was now thudding, a line of kisses up to her mouth, which was warm and sweet and opened under his. Her skin smelled of rose water. He rubbed his face against her neck and felt beneath his moving lips the smooth swell of her breasts.

  Her hands pulled at his stock, at his jacket, and he moved to throw his jacket aside but suddenly checked. “Frances! No . . . ”

  “What is it? What is it, Mehuru?”

  “I must not. . . . I came to tell you—it’s John. He’s sick.”

  Her eyelids fluttered for a moment, and then a cold, closed look spread over her face. Her years of training shut down upon her desires like a trap. Her hand went to the open neck of her nightgown and pulled it close. “Oh. Oh. I see.”

  “Elizabeth wants him to see the doctor. May I go for him?”

  She threw back the covers of the bed. He had a brief glimpse of her pale, long legs. “Frances . . .”

  But she had herself under control. She would not even look at him. She threw a shawl around her shoulders, and when she finally turned to him, her face was icy. “Mr. Cole does not want the doctor called except in an emergency.”

  “The child is sick.”

  “Is he seriously ill?”

  Mehuru exclaimed with impatience and reached out to her, but she stepped back. The coldness of her face forbade him to come closer. He felt his quick anger rise at once.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said bitingly. “Excuse me, Mrs. Cole. Yes, he is sick. He is sick like little James. Do you want him to be left to die, or shall I fetch the doctor?”

  She flushed at the insult in his voice. “You can fetch the doctor.”

  He went to the door and hesitated, wondering if she would call him back. His mouth was still hot with her passionate kisses. He could not understand how she could suddenly summon such iciness and distance.

  “The front-door key is in the drawer in the table in the hall,” Frances said precisely.

  “Yes, Mrs. Cole.”

  STUART HADLEY WAS READING in his study when Mehuru arrived, breathless and hatless. He grabbed his bag and washed his face while Mehuru put his horse between the shafts of the phaeton and drove it around to the front door.

  “Same symptoms?”

  “Symptoms? I don’t know that word.”

  “Signs, signs of illness.”

  “Yes. I think so.”

  Hadley nodded. “Better pray it’s not typhoid.”

  The clock in St. Mary Redclift struck two and was answered by the cathedral clock on the other side of the city.

  “Get into the house all right?”

  “Yes.”

  The carriage wheels rattled over John’s Bridge, and Mehuru turned the horse sharply to the right to drive down the bumping cobbles of the quay. The tide was out, and the mud steamed with fresh sewage. Even in the cool night air, the smell was overpowering.

  “It’s a wonder anyone survives,” Hadley said shortly.

  Mehuru turned the carriage away from the quay and into the clean, white enclosure of Queens Square.

  “Will the horse stand?”

  “He’s used to it.”

  Mehuru looped the reins over a railing and led the way into the house, up the s
tairs, past Frances’s bedroom, and up to the servants’ rooms.

  Stuart Hadley took in the overcrowding at one quick glance. The other women and girls had pulled their blankets over their heads, from tiredness and modesty, and were sleeping. Only Elizabeth watched by the bedside of the little boy, so like her own baby who had been left in Africa and now could not remember his mother at all. She looked up when the doctor came in.

  “John,” she said, pointing to the little boy.

  He was hot but fully conscious. He looked up in surprise as the white man came in, and Mehuru whispered quickly that this was a good man, come to make him well. Stuart smiled at him, took his pulse, and touched a hand to his forehead and his cheek.

  “Not too bad yet,” he observed. He opened his bag. “Here are the pastilles to burn again. They should stop the rest of you catching the illness. I wish that you were better housed. I will speak to Mrs. Cole in the morning. There should be no more than four in a room of this size. And here is something to help him sleep. Continue sponging him with vinegar and water to keep the fever down, and let him drink all he wants of clean water.”

  Mehuru nodded and translated for Elizabeth.

  “If anyone else feels sick, you are to call me at once,” Stuart said to Mehuru. They closed the door of the women’s room and went quietly down the stairs together. “I do not think it is typhoid, but I cannot be sure.”

  “What is typhoid?”

  “A very bad illness, a high fever, many people die.”

  Mehuru nodded. They walked quietly along the landing, past Frances’s closed bedroom door, and on down the stairs.

  “I’ll call tomorrow, in the morning, to see how the boy does,” Stuart Hadley promised on the doorstep.

  “She may not want you to call,” Mehuru said tightly. “They don’t want to pay.”

  The two men exchanged a look of mutual anger. “She’ll want me quick enough if she’s got typhoid in the house,” Stuart replied. “I’ll call.”

  He swung himself into the phaeton and gathered up the reins. “Good night again,” he said softly, and turned the horse out of the square toward home.

  Mehuru watched the carriage go, enjoying the silence of the nighttime square and his rare sense of freedom. Overhead, the blue-black sky was rich with stars, hundreds and thousands of them. Mehuru slowly turned to go back inside and closed and locked the front door and returned the key to its place.

  He went quietly up the stairs and paused outside Frances’s bedroom. He could not tell if she were sleeping or awake. He felt an irresistible temptation to open her door and see if she would again come to his arms, but then he thought of the sudden coldness of her face and how, whether she was warm or cold, he could never reproach her. She could be exactly as the whim took her, and he could do nothing but obey. At night, in her bedroom, with Josiah sleeping next door, he would not dare to speak louder than a whisper.

  He made a muffled exclamation of anger and turned from her door. At once it opened, silently, and she was standing before him.

  Her long, dark hair was brushed over her shoulders; in the half-light of the hall, her eyes were dark pools of shadow. He turned and stepped toward her and saw that she was smiling. He knew at once that for some reason, inexplicably, they had broken through the many boundaries that separated them, and that Frances had plunged through the restraint of her training. For this night they were free to love each other as equals.

  Frances, waiting for him to move, half afraid and half delighted, stood quite still. She thought for a moment of her bed of daffodils and whether being held by Mehuru would be like that sudden abandoned dive into freedom and sensuality.

  He reached out his hand to her and put his finger against her cheek. Frances closed her eyes and leaned toward him. His desire for her rose up, and he caught her to him and held her, feeling the warmth of her body against him and the pleasure of her lips under his as she returned and sought his kisses. Mehuru lifted her easily in his arms, went into her bedroom, and tumbled her onto the bed as recklessly as he had thrown the flowers.

  CHAPTER

  24

  EARLY NEXT MORNING, STUART Hadley’s phaeton drew up outside 29 Queens Square. Frances was waiting for him in the hall, her hair piled high, wearing a rich peach gown. “I think he is better,” she greeted him.

  “You have seen him yourself?”

  Frances gave him a small sideways smile. “I am not completely a slave driver. Of course I have seen him. And I think he is much better. Elizabeth is with him now. Do you want to go up?”

  Mehuru came halfway down the stairs. Frances glanced up at him and quickly looked away.

  Mehuru made a little bow, his eyes on her face.

  “Take the doctor to the room, Cicero,” she said carefully.

  Mehuru bowed with meticulous politeness and led the way up the stairs. Stuart Hadley quickly glanced back at Frances and caught such a radiant smile from her as she looked up at the two men that he checked on the stairs and hesitated. “Mrs. Cole?”

  Frances blushed a deep, rosy red. “I am sorry,” she said. “I was thinking . . . I was thinking . . .”

  Mehuru, too, had paused. “What were you thinking of, Mrs. Cole?” he asked, his voice warm with suppressed laughter.

  Frances blushed even darker, tried to say something, and then ran into the parlor and shut the door.

  The two men were silent for a moment. “I see,” Stuart said, understanding everything.

  Mehuru glanced at him. “You see nothing.”

  They climbed the stairs to the attic bedroom in silence. Stuart put his hand on Mehuru’s arm before he opened the door.

  “I hope you are not putting yourself in very great danger, my friend,” Stuart said quietly. “This is a perilous road for you and for her.”

  Mehuru nodded. “I cannot help but walk it. It is my Ifa—my fate.” He stepped back to let the doctor precede him into the bedroom.

  The little boy was seated on Elizabeth’s lap and taking gruel from a spoon. She looked up and smiled as the doctor came in.

  “Well, this is very much better!” Dr. Hadley exclaimed. “The fever broke in the night, did it?”

  She nodded and put her hand against John’s face. “Cool,” she said. “John is well.”

  “Keep him in for the next few days,” Stuart advised. “And don’t let him go running errands in the rain. Plenty of food to build him up again. I think we have been lucky this time.”

  Elizabeth smiled.

  “And you get some rest,” Dr. Hadley said gently. “No point you getting overtired and making yourself ill, too. Sleep.”

  Her glance slid to Mehuru. They both knew that a slave rested only with permission. “I will tell Frances,” he said. “You rest with John today. I will tell Mrs. Cole. She will allow it.”

  The two men left the room together and went downstairs. Mehuru tapped on the parlor door and stepped to one side.

  “The fever has broken,” Stuart reported briefly. He did not step into the room; he stood on the threshold and addressed Frances and Sarah without preference. “It is not typhoid. You were lucky with this one.”

  Frances smiled. “I am glad,” she said.

  “The woman who has been caring for him should have a rest today,” Stuart continued. “She was at his bedside all night.”

  Sarah looked as if she might argue, but Frances nodded. “Of course,” she said. “And thank you for coming out in the middle of the night, Doctor.”

  He bowed briefly to them both and went out into the hall. Mehuru, who was waiting, handed him his hat and went with him to his phaeton.

  “I want my freedom,” Mehuru said suddenly. “Whatever else. It makes no difference. I still want my freedom.”

  The doctor nodded. “I agree. You have no future here, like this. And slavery corrupts you all, spoils all your lives, hers as well as yours. That’s what they can’t see, the traders, the owners. When you use another person, you are both enslaved, both corrupted. And by next week, by T
uesday, when Wilberforce’s bill is agreed, you will all be on the way to freedom!”

  He climbed into the driving seat. “Tuesday night!” he said softly to Mehuru, and the horse moved on.

  29 Queens Square,

  Bristol.

  7th May 1789

  Dear Uncle,

  I have Heard this day from Sir Charles. He is coming to See us on his Way to stay at the Home of Lord Bartlet. He has Decided to Buy Shelby Manor from You, and he wishes to Sign the Lease here. We are to Act as his Agents in this Matter also: Investing his Rents and settling Debts at the Manor. I understand there is a Land Agent to Manage the Day-to-Day running of the Farms. I therefore Await the lease from You and will Return it to You signed, and with the money for the Purchase Price.

  The Weather here is still very uncertain. The winter seems to have lasted forever. The City is Prone to Fogs and low-lying clouds, and the Smell from the Manufactories is very Bad. Josiah and Miss Cole do not Notice it, being Accustomed. I Drive out on fine Days to enjoy the Cleaner air of the Downs. Despite this I am very happy. I feel so Full of joy, and I have Never been in stronger Health. I Wake every morning so Easily, and I am Never tired.

  An Acquaintance of Mine has asked Me for some Advice on which I Should like your Opinion. She has made a Marriage with a Bristol Merchant but Finds herself very Attracted to a Visitor to Bristol—a Nobleman in his Own Country, and most Handsome and Tender to her. He tells her that he Loves her, and She Believes it is the Truth. She tells me that she has Never felt Happier, as if her Life depends on him. She has Asked me What she Should do. I Wonder what Your Opinion is? There Can be no Future for them, of Course? I have told her My opinion: that the Bonds of Matrimony can never be Loosed.

  I Hope you are in good Health, my Dear Uncle. I remain your loving niece,

  Frances.

  Mehuru tapped on the parlor door and came into the room as Frances blotted her letter and sealed it.

  “May I speak with you?”

  Her quick color rose at once. She smiled at him and whispered, “Shut the door.”

  He pushed it closed but came no nearer.