Respectable Trade

by Gregory, Philippa

  “And I could not go,” she said simply. “Look again. Look at me. Look into me.”

  Mehuru leaned forward and took her in—the blank, strange shapes of her masked face, the hunched shoulders of a woman in deep pain, the shapeless clothes that hid her round, smooth breasts and the pure line of her hips, and then he leaned a little closer, sensing the start of new life. He sighed a small, hidden breath. He could see Sir Charles’s baby.

  The woman nodded, but Mehuru did not let the sense of the embryo slide away from him. There was something wrong. He breathed a little deeper; if he had the smoke, if he had the water, if he had the polished tray and the cowrie shells for the complicated arithmetical divination, he would have been able to know what was wrong.

  “The baby,” he said. “I think it is sick.”

  “The man was diseased,” she answered. “He was thick with illness; he smelled foul, like death.”

  Mehuru nodded. The baby would not go full term; he would not be taking a viable life when he wished the woman dead with a baby inside her. And Died of Shame did not have a life worth living now.

  “Can you wish me dead?” she asked. “Without pain, but quickly?”

  Mehuru waited for guidance, closing his eyes. Patiently, the woman sat beside him, watching his face. They were silent together for nearly an hour, until Mehuru hissed a long, slow hiss. “Yes.”

  “The goddess will not eat you,” she said generously, freeing him of any guilt, absolving him of blame so that Ayelala, the goddess who punishes lawbreakers, would not come for him.

  “Or you.” Mehuru returned the blessing.

  He took one last look at her before she went back to her place beside the other women and lay down. He saw that his wishing would only complement her own desire. Her eyes were already dead, as dull as the metal plate across her mouth.

  He heard her moving softly in the darkness, lying down and wrapping her arms around herself. He heard her muffled lips name the people she loved—her little son, her husband, her mother—and then the ancestors who might come to her, who might, despite all that was wrong in her life, forgive her. And then he heard the long, long silence of a woman waiting for death.

  Mehuru sat up and stared into the darkness and started the wishing.

  IN THE MORNING IN THE darkness of the cave, he heard the women stirring and then an abrupt exclamation. “Aiee! She is dead.”

  “Mehuru! Did you know? Died of Shame is dead!”

  He rose to his feet and staggered a little from the stiffness in his legs. “I knew,” he said.

  Kbara, chained to the wall at the other end of the line, was awake. “What shall we do? She needs to be buried here.”

  One woman pushed back the straw and tapped on the cave floor. It was sandstone. “Do they have no earth in this damned country?” she asked. “How are we to bury our sister where she should be buried, under the floor of her own hut?”

  “She knew,” Mehuru told them. “She was prepared for it to be done wrongly.”

  The woman who named herself Grief drew a little closer to him. “She spoke to you?”

  Mehuru said nothing.

  “So how will we manage?” Kbara demanded. “Shall we shout out for them?”

  “Don’t make them bring the whip,” the girl called Homeless said hastily. “When we shout, they bring the whip.”

  “We’ll sing to her very quietly,” Grief decided. “And make her ready as much as we can. Then Mehuru can tell them. Mehuru, you will ask for Frances and tell her.”

  He nodded. It was a relief to see a woman taking command. They knew what they should do; it was their business. They gathered around her. He heard their soft lament, a whispered song, and he heard the shuffle of their feet in the straw as they moved, straightening her torn clothes and washing the parts of her face they could reach around the metal bridle.

  “It is not right!” the girl called Lost cried despairingly. “How can we do it right here?”

  Kbara, Mehuru, and the older boy, Accursed, stood uneasily waiting. They should have been digging the grave for the woman, inside the door of the hut, at her own hearthside so that she might always be with her family. They should have been walking to outlying houses to tell them of the death. They should have been making a gift or doing some task for the bereaved family. They should have been helping to prepare a feast to say farewell, they should have been priming their guns to celebrate her passing with gunshots, they should have been practicing their steps and preparing the grim masks to dance for her funeral. There was so much to do when there was a death, especially that of a young woman. And now they stood around like fools, like idle fools.

  The opening of the door was a relief. John Bates came in, carrying a big pan of porridge. He recoiled as Mehuru went to the length of his chain to greet him.

  “Now then, now then,” he said nervously. “Shush, shush, shush, stay quiet.”

  “Frances,” Mehuru said quietly. “See . . . Frances.”

  John Bates nearly dropped the pan in amazement.

  “Johnbates,” Mehuru said gently. “I . . . want . . . Frances.”

  “My God, he’s talking,” John exclaimed. “He said my name!” He turned his head and yelled up the stairs. “The darkie’s talking. The big one! He’s talking words!”

  Cook appeared at the top of the steps. “If you’ve finished, I’ll shut this door,” she said crossly. “I won’t have it open all day. Shall I shut you in?”

  “Wait a minute, if you please.” He thrust the bowl into Mehuru’s arms.

  “See Frances,” Mehuru repeated.

  “Frances.” The driver nodded. “Mrs. Cole. But I know what you mean. I’ll tell her.” He opened his mouth and suddenly shouted very loudly. Spittle flew from his red lips into the porridge; Mehuru could feel it on his face. “I’ll tell her!”

  He turned and went back up the stairs. “Remarkable,” he said as he closed the door and went into the kitchen. “Here, Mrs. Brown, tell Mrs. Cole that the big nigger is asking for her. He’s never done that before. He said her name.”

  Brown sniffed disapprovingly. “She’s not even awake yet,” she snorted. She was laying the tray with Frances’s drink of hot chocolate and a bread roll with fresh-churned butter and plum jam.

  “Well, tell her when you bring her breakfast in,” Bates said. “She’ll want to know. She takes a deal of trouble over them.”

  Brown picked up the tray without answering and swept from the kitchen. But by the time she had woken Frances, drawn her curtains, and set her tray before her on the bed, she knew that Bates was right.

  “The big slave was asking for you,” she said.

  Frances paused with the cup halfway to her lips. “He asked for me?”

  “He said, ‘see Frances,’ according to John Bates. I said I’d tell you. I hope I did right.”

  “Yes, of course,” Frances said. “I’d better see him at once.”

  “You’ll have your chocolate first?”

  Frances pushed the tray to one side and got out of bed. “No, you can make me some more later.” She was now accustomed to ordering what she wanted. “Fetch me a wrapper and tie back my hair. I’ll see him now. Is Mr. Cole at home?”

  “No, ma’am. He’s gone out. He went over on the ferry to see Sir Charles Fairley at his hotel.”

  “Then I’ll come down in my wrapper.”

  Frances brushed her own hair, scrupulously pinned her cap, and tied her loose gown. “Tell Cook I’m on my way,” Frances said, mindful of the protocol of Cook’s kitchen.

  There was a stony silence as she went into the kitchen, but John was waiting by the cellar door. “He said your name, Mrs. Cole, clear as a bell. Shall I come down with you? Shall I bring my whip?”

  Frances was about to refuse, but then she hesitated.

  “You don’t know what he’s doing,” John warned. “It could be a trap, ma’am. I’ll fetch my pistols as well before you go down.”

  An old, dark fear touched Frances. The fear of a woman o
utnumbered by men, the fear of one species among several of another, the master’s fear when he is surrounded by slaves, the driver’s fear when he knows himself hated, the slaver’s fear when he knows he is a criminal. She tasted the sharp tang at the back of her throat that is the taste of power over others and the fear that they, in turn, will take power over you. Then she thought of Mehuru and the darkness of his eyes and her vision of him as an individual—not as one of a dangerous crowd. She had absolute trust in him.

  “I’ll go down alone,” she said lightly, opening the door and descending the stairs.

  Mehuru stepped forward to greet her, and she knew from his face that something important had happened.

  “Frances.”

  “Mehuru.”

  He said simply, “Died of Shame,” and Frances in her ignorance did not know that his words were more than a name—the name the woman had given herself—but also a diagnosis of her sickness and now, finally, her epitaph.

  “Is she ill?”

  He shook his head slowly. He leaned his head to one side in a mime of intense weariness, and then he shut his eyes.

  “Dead?”

  He looked at her questioningly.

  Frances repeated his mime, closing her eyes. “Dead?”

  Mehuru nodded. “Dead,” he said in his low, steady voice, the word added to his growing English vocabulary. “She is dead.”

  He stepped to one side so that Frances could see the still body and the women who sat at her head and feet singing very softly.

  Frances went forward and recoiled. She had forgotten the bridle. The young woman’s face was encased in metal. Blood and saliva stained her neck from where the gag had cut her mouth and gums. She looked like a victim of some barbaric medieval torture. And Frances had ordered this. And now the woman was dead. There was a stillness about her that was very final. She looked peaceful; even in the strange helmet with a collar and chain, manacles and shackles, she looked at rest. For the first time, she looked as if she were free, as if she had escaped from all the constraints they had put on her.

  Frances shook her head, denying the truth, denying her responsibility. “But she was well,” she said. “Except for . . .” She broke off. She could not bring herself to claim that Died of Shame had ever been well. She had been a captive in a strange land, she had been the victim of a rape, she had been in such great despair that she had filled her mouth and her belly with earth, and then, despite the cruelty of the bridle, she had escaped her tormentors and fled to her death.

  Frances suddenly did not want to excuse herself, not even to Mehuru. She knew that she was culpable, that she was guilty of this woman’s capture and her death. She had colluded with her capture and her ill treatment, with her rape. Frances, by trading her prestige for Josiah’s wealth and comfort, had been a party to bringing this young woman far from her home to her death. She had been raped, and Frances had lunched with her rapist and promised him tickets for a society ball.

  “I am sorry,” Frances said. Her voice was low. Mehuru did not recognize the words but thought it was the first honest tone he had ever heard from her.

  He bowed his head in a strange, formal gesture. In his own language, he said, “We all have guilt to bear.”

  Frances said nothing, and they stood, facing each other in silence. When she raised her face to him, he was shocked; her dark eyes were filled with tears. He watched, fascinated, as one spilled over and rolled down her cheek. He put his hand out and touched it, almost as if he wanted to know if it was real. The skin of her cheek was warm, the tear was real. Frances stayed very still as he touched her, his fingertip soft and tentative against her cheekbone, as light as the brush of a feather.

  Slowly, he took his fingertip, wet with her tear, and put it to his lips. It was salty and wet, like a real tear. He tasted it on his tongue and gazed into her eyes as if he would read her like the oracle of Ifa.

  “I am so very, very sorry,” she said again.

  CHAPTER

  15

  THEY TOOK THE BODY of Died of Shame away. There was a ripple of distress when Bates came into the cellar and grabbed her by the wrists and dragged her like a doll up the steps.

  “Mehuru, she should be washed and wrapped in cloth,” Grief accused him. “You did not tell Frances!”

  “How could I tell her?” he asked. “I do not know the words for a proper burial. I told her that our sister was dead. I thought she would know what to do. I thought she would do the right things.”

  They watched anxiously, but the door at the head of the steps banged shut.

  “Perhaps they will bury her as they bury their own people,” Kbara said. “They may treat her with respect. It may not be our way, but it could still be a good way.”

  The girl called Homeless looked at him with anger. “She is our sister,” she said. “Of course she should be buried in our way. How else can she find her fathers?”

  Kbara caught the sense of the Wolof words and was about to answer, but Mehuru shook his head. At home they had the Gelede festival—the festival for soothing the mothers—designed solely to direct the awesome power of women for good. For ten days they would feast and dance and watch ritual theater to harness the magical power of women. Here in this dark cave, ominously like a grave, ominously like a womb, the women would seethe with their suppressed desires. Missing their children, missing their mothers, anything could focus their grief and anger. In any case the girl was right. Mehuru had failed Died of Shame in her death as he had failed her in her life.

  “It is I who am at fault, Homeless,” he said gently in her language. “Not Kbara. We are not men here; we have no power. I cannot provide for you, or hunt, or farm, or even guard. I could not tell Frances what was needed. She seemed grieved, and I thought she would do the right things for our sister. I had not realized that these people can feel one thing and do another. They are strangers indeed.”

  “Was she grieved for Died of Shame?” the youth called Accursed asked him.

  “She had tears in her eyes,” Mehuru said. “I trusted her. I thought she must care.”

  The woman called Grief shook her head. “She is a dreadful woman. She had tears in her eyes, and yet she sent that rapist to bury his victim?”

  “Yes,” Mehuru said. “Exactly.” He sat on the stone bench, drew his knees up under his chin, and wrapped his arms around them, isolating himself from the world, from the others.

  “Are you praying, Obalawa?” Accursed asked in his endearing, husky voice, which was just breaking into the male depths and yet could still go unreliably squeaky.

  Mehuru shook his head. “I can summon no god,” he confessed. “He comes to me no longer. I am waiting for him, but he does not come. I am waiting for understanding, but it does not come either. Perhaps someday something will come to make sense of all this pain. Perhaps someday I will understand why we suffer this.”

  THE DEATH OF DIED of Shame was to make no difference to the routine of the day, Sarah Cole decreed. The corpse was taken up to the Redclift graveyard and buried in an unmarked grave. It was not a pauper’s burial; Sarah paid threepence for the site and entered the sum in the company ledger as a loss. She looked accusingly at Frances as she dusted sand on the ink and closed the ledger. “A loss,” she said reproachfully. “You had better start teaching them to obey commands. We need to show a profit on this.”

  They came into the parlor in silence and sat in their accustomed places. The two youngest children were not crying today; they were too shocked. Frances saw their little faces at tabletop height as blank and as empty as new black slates.

  She had brought her sketch and watercolor books for today’s lesson, and she put up the easel at the head of the table. The first picture was the long view down the avenue of elms to the house at Whiteleaze.

  “This is a house,” she said. She nodded at Mehuru. “House.”

  They knew now what she wanted of them, and they repeated the word without emphasis, without interest. She might mean the paper, she mi
ght mean the easel. She might mean the artist or the gods who made it possible for men and women to dream and create art. They did not care. They repeated the word as she wished.

  “This was my house,” Frances explained to Mehuru. “Well, it was my uncle’s house. I stayed here very often, and we dined here two or three times a week.”

  Sarah Cole in the window seat leaned forward to look at the easel, her curiosity overcoming her irritation with her sister-in-law.

  Frances gestured to herself and then pointed to the picture. She said to Mehuru, “This was my house. My house.”

  So she was an exile, too, Mehuru thought. That accounted for the strange sense of loss that hung around her. It accounted for her powerlessness in this place. She was a new arrival; she had not yet made it her home. He thought of his country and the careful arrangements of introducing a bride to a new home. The senior wife would fetch the new bride and take her to her husband’s house. They would wash her legs and send her to his room. She would live in the senior wife’s house as her apprentice, to learn what should be done and the right way to do things. For three months she would visit her parents only at night, when the work of the day was done. It was almost a game, the sneaking back home to mother, and any troubles in the early months could be whispered in the darkness. After three months the girl had served her apprenticeship and knew her rights. But in any case, there were few troubles. It was a world where men and women knew their duties to each other and where the gods were kind. Before the slavers had come, before the slaving nations had been armed and set upon their neighbors, it had been a world of particular good fortune: fertile, with fine weather, and long, long-established political stability.

  Frances turned a page to show a competent watercolor of a still life. “These are fruits,” she said. “Fruits.”

  She pointed to the painted fruits, and they named them after her. “Apple, pear, grapes, peach.”

  She turned another page. It was a picture of a King Charles spaniel sitting at the edge of a cornfield. The pale green corn was bright with flowers, scarlet poppies and blue love-in-a-mist. The hedgerows around the field were spotted with dog roses and the nodding heads of foxgloves.