Josiah nodded, took a small sip of port, and swallowed down his distaste. There was a tap on the door, and Frances stood in the doorway, wearing a loose gown and with her cap hastily pinned on her hair. “May I speak with you, husband?” she said.
Josiah rose and went to the door, half closing it to shield their conversation from the guest. “What are you doing downstairs dressed like this?”
Frances glanced at her wrapper, the usual morning dress for ladies in their homes. “I had gone to bed,” she said reasonably.
“You come before a guest half dressed?”
Frances gave a little laugh and then, looking into Josiah’s face, saw that he was serious. “Excuse me, husband,” she said carefully. “I had no idea that you would object.”
The gulf between his world and hers suddenly opened before them. Josiah knew that on all matters of etiquette she was bound to be in the right, but he was an ambitious man, anxious about his respectability. “I do object,” he said, knowing himself to be in the wrong, knowing himself to sound foolish. “I do.”
Frances bowed her head, wary of his drunken irritability. “Shall I go and change my dress?” she asked.
“No. Tell me now what it is that you wanted.”
“Brown brought me a message.” Frances had been distracted by his disapproval; she tried to regain the initiative. “I came to ask you . . . It seems so strange at this time of night . . . May I ask what you want to see a woman for?”
“No, you may not, madam! Sir Charles wishes to inspect the slaves. I sent for the keys, which should be in your safekeeping. There was no need for you to come downstairs at all and no call for you to question me.”
“It is just for him to see a woman?” Frances broke off. “To look at her? It is not to . . . er . . . to trouble her?”
Josiah flushed dark red. “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Cole! You amaze me with your boldness! Please give me the keys and go to your chamber. I do not want Sir Charles to see you like this nor hear such slander spoken against him!”
Frances stood her ground, scarlet with embarrassment. “I cannot give you the keys,” she maintained, her voice shaking slightly. “I beg of you, sir, not to ask me. I am supposed to be teaching them; they are in my care. You are speaking of my pupils. I cannot permit it. I have to have an undertaking from you.”
Josiah came out into the hall and shut the door behind him. He was trembling with drunken anger; his spittle flew as he hissed at her. “You are shameless! Your insinuations are shameless! This is an honored guest! A man who has done many years of very profitable business with me and my house. If he wishes to look at one of our slaves, then of course we will allow it. Why not? Why on earth not? Go and fetch one of the women, Mrs. Cole!”
Frances backed away from him until she reached the newel post at the foot of the stairs. She had the keys in her hand behind her back. “I must ask for your assurance . . .” she insisted weakly.
“My assurance?” he repeated, ready to explode with anger.
She collapsed before his bluster, her breath coming short, her hand to her thudding heart. “Very well. But you will just look at her, won’t you?”
“Fetch one of the slave women, Mrs. Cole,” he said angrily. “You should have stayed where you were and sent the keys to me by Brown. I am much displeased. Since you insist on coming down, you can fetch the woman yourself, and then go to bed!”
Frances’s face was white as she turned from him and went slowly, very slowly, down the stairs to the kitchen.
Brown and John Bates were sitting on either side of the kitchen range, waiting for the family to go to their beds so that they could lock up. At her step they rose to their feet.
“I am sorry to trouble you,” she said. Her lips were cold and stiff; she found it hard to speak. “Bates, could you come with me to the cellar? Your master wishes to see one of the women slaves.”
Bates thrust his hands into the armholes of his jacket and straightened his stock. Frances went to the cellar door and turned her key in the lock.
The cellar below her was shadowy. As she went down the steps, she heard the chink of the chains. One or two of the slaves had been sleeping, but as they heard the door open, they stirred nervously and woke. Mehuru rose slowly to his feet, looking from John Bates to Frances, trying to read their faces.
She did not meet his eyes. She looked around the cellar in the shadowy, unreliable light of the lantern and then pointed to the biggest woman, the one who seemed the most robust. “Her,” she said.
John stepped forward and unchained the woman from her handcuffs. She flinched away from him as he came toward her and shot a look at Frances—a look that was both a question and an appeal. Frances’s face gave nothing away; she was like a cold stone statue.
“What does she want of me?” the woman demanded of Mehuru.
He shook his head, his eyes on Frances. He could sense her powerlessness. He could feel her sense of defeat and something more—a deep sense of shame.
“I don’t know,” he said softly. “Have courage, sister.”
The woman trembled and would have fallen, but John Bates grabbed her around the waist and pushed her toward the steps. Her knees buckled beneath her, and she crouched at the foot of the steps. “They will eat me,” she whispered. “Look at her face. She has come for me, and she will eat me.”
Mehuru glanced swiftly toward Frances and saw her horrid narrow lips bitten even thinner. “No,” he said certainly. “It’s not her choice.”
“Save me,” the woman begged softly. “Mehuru, save me!”
Mehuru stood very still and felt the depths of his helplessness wash through him and over him. He knew that she would be raped and all that he could do was watch her be taken. He was unmanned, perhaps forever. “Have courage, sister,” he said tightly. “We are a proud people. Bear this proudly.” He heard the hollow bravado in his voice, even as he spoke. He was a proud man no more; he was less than an animal, for he did not have even a safe lair.
She found her feet, managed to stand.
Bates, growing impatient, asked Frances, “Shall I carry her upstairs? I don’t think she can climb them.”
“Yes,” Frances said shortly. She did not dare to look at Mehuru. She kept her eyes on her feet. She had dainty gray silk sandals to match the gown she had worn at dinner. She pointed her toe to look at the sheen on the silk and the twinkle of the paste buckle.
John Bates caught the woman up. She grunted as his meaty shoulder butted into her emaciated belly, but she was silent as he climbed the steps. She seemed to have fainted from her fear; her head lolled at each step, her arms dangled down. “Shall I carry her to Mr. Cole’s office?” he asked.
“Yes.” Frances followed him up the steps and carefully locked the door behind them. Slowly Bates walked through the kitchen, with Frances behind him. Brown watched them pass in silence. Frances kept her eyes on the worn heels of Bates’s boots.
When they left the warmth and light of the kitchen and went into the dark hall, the woman started muttering the prayers for death. Over and over again, she called the name of her husband, who was still waiting for her, still hoping for news of her. Over and over again, she called to her ancestors to prepare a place for her and begged them to forgive her for whatever wrongs she had done that she had been sent away from her home to die in dishonor in exile.
Frances heard the babble of pleas without understanding. She did not know that the woman was calling on her, demanding of her what was wanted, what they wanted her to do, if there was any way she might be spared. Frances walked behind Bates, nursing her ignorance, deaf and blind to pain.
She tapped on Josiah’s door and then swung it open, her face impassive. Bates marched in with his burden, and Frances closed the door on them all and went steadily up the stairs to her bedroom. Through the closed office door, she heard the woman call out suddenly and clearly, “Day-bull! Day-bull!”
She was trying desperately to please them. To say “table” as they had wanted her t
o say this morning. To do whatever it was they wanted.
Frances hesitated for a moment at that one despairing cry and then she went on, slowly, slowly up the stairs, her face set and grim. She was seated before her dressing table looking at her white face in the pier glass when she heard one scream of pure pain, quickly muffled by a heavy hand.
Frances unpinned her cap and plaited her hair, pulled on her nightgown and got into bed. “I made an agreement,” she said to herself. “I knew it would not always be to my liking.”
She pulled the cold white sheets up to her chin and lay very still. She closed her eyes. From the floor below came a rhythmic grunting, which went on and on like a clumsy machine at work, and at last, a loud satisfied groan.
Frances put both her hands over her face and pressed down as if she would suffocate herself, block out the air as well as the noise. “I made an agreement,” she whispered. “I was warned that it would not be like home. But I made an agreement. That was my trade.”
There was silence from downstairs. Then Frances heard her husband’s study door open and someone walk downstairs heavily, carrying a burden back to the caves. No expression crossed Frances’s white face; she did not move. She lay as still and as cold as an effigy of a lady in white marble, and she heard nothing, she saw nothing, and she thought of nothing at all.
CHAPTER
11
JOHN BATES HEAVED HER down the stairs like a lumper on the quayside and dumped her ungently back in her place. He felt the accusing, wide eyes of all the others on him.
“Well, I did nothing,” he muttered, half to himself.
She crouched on the straw with her head between her hands, doubled up over the pain in her belly. Bates had trouble making her straighten up so that he could bolt on the neck collar.
The little children, the two-year-old and the five-year-old, looked at him with big, frightened eyes, but they were too wise to cry aloud.
“Oh, damnation,” John Bates said irritably, and took the lantern off the hook and stamped up the stairs, leaving them alone in the dark and silence.
In the office Sir Charles and Josiah broached another bottle of port. Sir Charles was sated and at peace with the world, and Josiah hid his discomfort. He had made his fortune from the trade, but he had never before abused an individual. All the pain and grief had happened far away, out of sight, out of earshot. Seeing a woman raped on the hearthrug of his office made him uneasy. He had sat in the window and pretended to watch the pitch-black quayside while Sir Charles had labored over her, but he could not help but hear her half-suffocated whimper of pain, and he could not avoid the smell of her fear and the dirty, clotted smell of Sir Charles’s unwashed body.
He reminded himself that she was an animal, with only animal feelings, but he had not liked her agonized face when they had finally lifted her from the floor. Not even his best port could wash away the unpleasant taste from his mouth. He dared say nothing. Sir Charles was an important customer to Cole and Sons, and, besides, Josiah feared that he himself was less of a man for his absence of desire.
It was nearly dawn, a gray, sunless winter dawn, before the men parted. Josiah bade farewell to Sir Charles, climbed the stairs to his room, and got into his bed.
Frances, lying awake, cold, and with her head buzzing with pain, heard him get into bed in the next room and the little puff as he blew out his candle. She did not know that he was lonelier than he had ever been in his life and that he would have given a ship’s cargo to be able to get into bed beside her and feel a little human warmth.
FRANCES WOKE LATER TO the dark of a cold morning with her head a raging storm of pain. Small pinpricks of light danced against her eyelids. Her shoulders were rigidly tense, her neck was tight. The very skin of her face and the bones in her cheeks ached as if she had an ague.
The adjoining door to Josiah’s bedroom opened. “I owe you an apology,” Josiah began without preamble.
Frances barely opened her eyes. “I am ill,” she said. “Forgive me.”
Josiah checked. “I wanted to speak with you,” he persisted.
“I cannot.” Frances’s voice was a thin, determined thread.
“Can I fetch you something?”
“My laudanum, in my writing table.”
He opened the lid of the little box. In the shelf at the back was a small bottle. “How many drops?”
“Three.”
He measured three drops into the glass of water at her bedside and gave it to her. She drank without opening her eyes and lay back on the pillow, waiting for the pain to ease.
“Sir Charles’s behavior was not fitting for an English home,” Josiah said precisely. “You were right to object. I had taken a little too much drink, and, moreover, I was bound to be hospitable. But when I awoke this morning, I thought your objection should have been heeded. I apologize.
“You need say no more,” Frances said. She turned her head away and closed her eyes.
“The woman took no hurt,” Josiah said. “And Sir Charles returned to his hotel in the early hours of the morning. I fear that too long a stay in the Sugar Islands has made him forgetful of English courtesies.”
He waited, looking at Frances as if she should say something.
“I have apologized,” he said with increased sharpness.
“I am sorry,” Frances whispered weakly. “My head . . .”
“You will feel better when you are up and dressed, no doubt,” he said without sympathy. “I will leave you now for my work. I shall be home for dinner at the usual time. The maid will bring you your chocolate—my sister will expect you in the parlor at nine.”
“In the parlor?”
“For their lesson,” he said levelly. “The slaves will be waiting for their lesson. Today. It is my wish that they be taught all together, every day. It will take too long otherwise.”
“I cannot do it,” Frances protested stubbornly. “I am too unwell to see them.”
“Then do not work overlong,” Josiah replied promptly. “But start at nine, teach them all together, and then send them away after an hour or so. I do not wish them to miss a day of their training. Sir Charles was convinced that they have to work daily or they will become unruly.”
Frances searched for grounds for refusal and could not think of one. “I wish you had not fetched her to your office,” she said pettishly.
“I did nothing,” Josiah said awkwardly. He paused. Neither of them could discuss exactly what had taken place. “The woman was not harmed,” he repeated. “Indeed, at Clearwater, or any plantation, these things happen almost every day.” He hesitated, seeking refuge in generalities. “It is not as if she were hurt. She would expect nothing else.”
There was a silence. Josiah went toward the door.
“I feel ashamed,” Frances said suddenly. Her headache thumped as if in recognition of a truth spoken aloud at last.
Josiah, closing the door softly behind him, was careful not to hear her.
THEY FILED INTO THE parlor, all thirteen, and took their seats at the table without looking at her. They were crowded. Frances was already at her place and did not look up as they came in quietly, but she sensed Mehuru’s presence when he drew out his chair and sat on her right. Looking down at the polished tabletop, she could see his gently clasped hands. She longed for him to put his hand on her forehead where it throbbed and tightened. She longed for him to lay his hands on her hot eyes and tell her that he forgave her, that she might forgive herself.
She shot a swift, painful glance at him. His dark, dark eyes met hers in one long, judging look and then turned away. He would not look at her, though Frances waited. The other slaves sat in silence around the polished table and watched her. Tentatively, Frances put out her hand and gently touched his clasped fingers With her forefinger. It was the lightest of touches, but one that lingered with her, the warmth of his slim, strong hand under her fingertip.
“Mehuru,” she said softly.
He looked up at her. She put her hand on the
base of her throat. “Frances,” she said aloud, and then, very softly, too softly for Miss Cole or the driver John Bates or any of the other slaves to hear, she said, “I’m very sorry. I could not stop them.”
Mehuru looked at her with a hard, unforgiving glare and would not hear her whisper, and if he had heard it, would not have understood.
The lesson went badly. Miss Cole sighed in the window seat and picked her teeth with a silver toothpick that clicked against the stained enamel. She had painful indigestion from the night before, and every now and then she shifted in her seat with a little grunt of discomfort. John Bates stood like a statue with his back to the door and his whip held across him. Mehuru would not meet Frances’s eyes again. The woman who had been raped sat in complete silence, her head bowed so low that her face nearly rested on the table, hiding the dark bruise on her temple and the dead look in her eyes. The smallest boy cried continually, little half-smothered, heartbroken sobs. He sat still on his seat, leaning forward, and his tears fell on his bare black knees where they peeped from his breeches. He was only two; he did not know how to endure in silence. Frances did not know how to teach simple nouns while the child shook with silent grief.
“Get them to say their names,” Miss Cole suggested, moving from her place in the window. “That’s where you left off yesterday. What is wrong with them today?”
Frances looked at her. “Sir Charles disturbed them in the night,” she said.
There was a brief silence. Miss Cole understood perfectly. “What for?” she asked, daring Frances to speak the truth.
“I don’t know,” Frances replied, deliberately ignorant. Behind the words was Miss Cole’s sharp comprehension of what had happened, and Frances’s shame.
“Well, that is no reason for them to be dull,” Sarah said briskly. “They should not object to being looked at. Ask them their names, all of them.” She pointed to Mehuru. “He said his name last time. Ask the others what they are called.”
Frances nodded. She put her hand to the warm cambric of her gown at the neck and said her name, and then she pointed at one and then at another. Today they would not speak. They shifted uneasily in their seats and stared at her with frightened eyes. When she pointed at the woman that Sir Charles had taken from the cave, the others gave a soft groan, as low as the creak of bending trees in a forest.
Respectable Trade Page 14