Respectable Trade

by Philippa Gregory

  “Most disappointing,” the man replied. “I, too, am most disappointed.”

  “I am sorry for it,” Josiah said grimly. “I shall add your disappointment to my other worries. Why is no one here?”

  The man shook his bewigged head. “I can’t say. I don’t know.”

  “Very well,” Josiah said carefully. “What is your opinion? Do you have any opinion? Would you venture a guess?”

  The man regarded him warily. “I think it is a number of things,” he offered cautiously. “A number. Shall we take tea?”

  “No. What number of things?”

  “Well, the charges,” the man said delicately, looking longingly at the urn and the maid and the diversion of teacups. “They are rather high now. Higher than Bath, I believe. Perhaps too high, you know, Mr. Cole. People don’t want to pay them. I think they won’t pay them, in fact. No one from Bristol comes at all now; the spa has a reputation in the town of being too expensive, of being too fashionable.” He simpered slightly. “Perhaps we have been too successful?”

  Josiah nodded. “And what other things?”

  “Well, the atmosphere,” the man went on. He waved his hand exquisitely gloved in white kid at the row of desperately sick people. “Very dreary. Not quite the place you want to come for amusement.”

  “It’s a spa!” Josiah exclaimed. “Of course there are sick people here. You’re supposed to come here for your health. That is rather bound to attract ill people.”

  “Of course. But it’s just that they all seem so very ill indeed, don’t they? They are calling Dowry Parade ‘Death Row,’ you know.”

  “What?”

  “Mmm, lowering, isn’t it? You can see that it would put people off.”

  Josiah clenched his teeth together. “Anything else?”

  “France, I’m afraid.”

  Josiah felt his teeth grind. He carefully relaxed his jaw. “France?”

  “A lot of the younger, wilder, fashionable set are off to the French spas. They’re interested in France this year. The French, you know.”

  “What?”

  “The French, sir, the Jacobins! You know, Liberté, Egalité . . . ”

  “What the devil has this to do with my Hot Well?” Josiah bellowed. The quartet died into silence. Josiah flushed scarlet with suppressed rage and embarrassment. “Tell them to play on,” he muttered.

  The MC waved an airy hand at them. The quartet bowed to Josiah and started their little rippling tune again.

  “What has the fall of the Bastille to do with my Hot Well?” Josiah demanded through his teeth.

  “There is a great enthusiasm for liberty and France and so on. They are all rushing off to France this year. We cannot make poor little Bristol appeal at all.”

  Josiah sighed. “I can make no sense of this. Anything else?”

  The man shrugged. “I don’t know. It is a shame. I do think it’s a shame.”

  “So all we have to do,” Josiah said bitterly, “is drop our subscription, stop sick people coming here, and put an end to the revolution in France and our worries will be over.”

  The master of ceremonies looked at him coyly. “Rather a task, isn’t it?” He smiled.

  “It’s damnable,” Josiah said. He strode from the room. The master of ceremonies fluttered behind him.

  “But don’t be disheartened, I implore you. It’s only November. Anything could happen! Once the winter is over—and I so dread the winter, don’t you?—once the winter is over and the spring comes, I am sure anything could happen.”

  Josiah turned to face him, and the man skidded to a standstill, his high-heeled shoes slipping on the polished floor.

  “Anything is happening!” Josiah cried sharply. “This place costs me nigh on one thousand pounds a year for the lease alone, and the running costs are near a hundred pounds a week. Anything and everything is happening, with the sole exception of this place earning a living.”

  “Oh! Money worries! Money worries!” the man exclaimed. “They are so wearisome, aren’t they?”

  “How much do I pay you?” Josiah demanded unpleasantly.

  “Why, by the Season, you pay me eighty guineas a Season, Mr. Cole.”

  “At least I can save that!” Josiah said. “You are fired.”

  “I?” The master of ceremonies was genuinely amazed. “You cannot fire me, sir. You are making a mistake.”

  Josiah trudged to his horse, his head down. “I have fired you,” he said grimly. “You can pack your bags.”

  “I? Pack?”

  “Or leave ’em here. But you are out of this place by the end of this week, so help me God! You were hired to bring in the fashionable set. I don’t see one of them. So you are fired!”

  “Well, I doubt very much that it will help you.” The master of ceremonies teetered to a halt and flung the words after Josiah’s back.

  Josiah unhitched his horse from the ring and mounted it in surly silence.

  “The Hot Well will not pay because you bought it at too high a price!” the master of ceremonies called up at him. “You can blame me, but it is your own fault! Blame me all you like! But everyone knows it is your own fault!”

  Josiah’s face went so black that the man sprang back, half fearing him, but Josiah dragged the horse’s head ’round and cantered away, down the track to the docks where Rose with her cargo of gold and sugar was due this month and soon would surely arrive.

  HE DID NOT GO HOME, though it was nearly dinnertime. He returned the horse to the stable and walked, rather uncomfortable in his riding boots, down to the quay. The lad in the ferryboat was moored on the far side, but at Josiah’s shout he rowed over.

  “Been riding, Mr. Cole?” he asked.

  Josiah scowled at him and made no reply.

  The lad rowed in silence, slightly surprised. Josiah’s good nature was well known on the quayside. But the rumor that he was overextended had been growing lately. The boy took his ha’penny in silence and pulled his cap as Josiah went up the slimy steps to his quay.

  The familiar noise and bustle comforted him. The porters’ sledges screeched on the greasy cobbles, the men swearing and cursing as they pulled heavy loads. The quay next to Cole and Sons was again busy with a ship newly in from the West Indies. As Josiah watched, they ran a gangplank up to her and the captain came down and greeted the owner. Josiah hung back until they had spoken and the owner gone on board to see for himself the full, sweet-smelling hold, and then he called to the captain.

  “Holloa! Captain Smythe?”

  The man turned. “Oh! Mr. Cole, is it?”

  “Good crossing?”

  “Moderate.”

  “How long did it take you?”

  “Eight and a half weeks from quayside to quayside.”

  “You will have seen my ship, Rose?”

  “Rose? No, I have not seen her.”

  Josiah tried to smile, but he knew that his face was strained. “Come now, you must have done. I had a letter from her writ in July. She was just off the Sugar Islands then. She will have bought sugar and set sail for England. Surely you will have passed her in the channel. I cannot think why she is not ahead of you.”

  The man shook his head gravely. “I have not seen her, Mr. Cole. Not sailing home, nor in the West Indies. No one spoke of her either. I hope she has not gone astray.”

  Josiah laughed mirthlessly. “Not Rose! She is the luckiest ship that ever was, and she is commanded by Captain Smedley. If he does not know the way home, then no man at sea knows it! She will be home within the sennight, I am certain.”

  “Indeed I hope so,” the captain said. “And we had some black storms. I could have passed within inches of her and not seen her on some of the nights.”

  “Exactly!” Josiah exclaimed. “No. I shall not worry. She will be home any day now.”

  The owner came out of the hold, his face bright. “There’s no better sight in the world, is there, Cole?” he demanded. “A full hold and the smell of fresh sugar!”

  J
osiah found a weak smile. “No,” he said with difficulty.

  “Here is Mr. Cole asking me after his ship Rose,” the captain said indiscreetly.

  “Is she late?”

  “No!” Josiah replied quickly. “She’s just due. I thought that they might have passed her.”

  “Well, I daresay it does not matter to you now,” the owner said jealously. “With your other interests. Your fine house, and your membership of the Venturers, and your Hot Well. I daresay Rose late or early matters very little.”

  Josiah’s smile was ghastly. “Very little.”

  He went into his warehouse to avoid their stares and up into his old parlor. It was empty and dusty. Only the pieces of furniture that were too shabby to move had been left. He found his father’s old broken-seated chair and dragged it to the parlor window.

  He sat, looking out over the quay, over the dock, downriver. The tide was going out, and the new ship at the quayside would have to be unloaded tomorrow. They were loosening her ropes to let her drop down on the ebbing water to settle on the mud. She would not split her sides, even with her heavy cargo; she was built “Bristol fashion,” strong enough to withstand the stress of the tidal port, which dumped all the ships on to their keels in the mud twice a day.

  There was no point looking for Rose. She would not come into port against the tide. He would have to wait until tomorrow for her now. For a moment Josiah imagined her, riding easily in the water with her cargo of sugar stowed evenly in the hold, moored for the night safely in the Kingsroad anchorage with her lanterns lit fore and aft. He sat still, his eyes on the swiftly draining water, picturing his ship so passionately that it was almost as if he could call her into life.

  “Rose,” he said.

  WHEN JOSIAH arrived home at five o’clock, late for his dinner, he was irritated to see a traveling coach emblazoned with the Scott arms waiting outside his door. In the morning room, Lord Scott was sitting with Frances and Sarah. Josiah came in reluctantly.

  “Why, Cole!” Lord Scott exclaimed. “We thought you had gone down with one of your ships.”

  Josiah flinched at the image of a sinking ship. “I was working,” he said irritably.

  Frances glanced at his riding breeches and boots. “You have been to the Hot Well! Is everything as it should be?”

  “No,” Josiah answered shortly.

  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 wa
s 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.”