Respectable Trade

by Gregory, Philippa

  That little elation did not last long, and when the goose had been cleared from the table and the puddings and sweetmeats were gone, the afternoon seemed very long and dark and dreary. The sun had vanished, and it was starting to rain, a steady, misty drizzle that created a premature twilight, as cold and dark as winter. Sarah settled herself before the parlor fire with a book of sermons and seemed well content. Josiah dozed on the sofa. Frances sat on a chair facing them both, feeling as lonely as she had ever felt in her life.

  Very faintly, from the very floorboards beneath her feet, came a soft, insistent thudding and then the half-heard snatch of song. Frances glanced across at her husband. He was fast asleep. Behind her book of sermons, Sarah’s head was nodding. Frances got to her feet and went to the door.

  With the parlor door open a crack, she could hear better. There was a patter of drumming, like rain, coming from the kitchen. Frances went into the hall and then pushed the green baize door that led down the corridor to the kitchen. As soon as she stepped through, the sound hit her like a dark, fast-moving wave.

  It was a thud-thud-thud of drumming, and above the deeper rhythm a patter, an exciting patter, of a contrapuntal rhythm. The two sounds chased each other, like laughter, like play, and Frances felt her feet tapping to the insistent, dancy rhythm of the noise. A voice started a song, a deep, confident voice—Mehuru—singing in Yoruban, a song about love, a song about the wantonness of young women and the pleasure there is in satisfying them. It was a song about magic—the magic of a woman’s hair and the dark, sideways glance of her smile. And at every verse break, at every line break, there was a chorus of assent, in half a dozen tuned voices.

  Frances crept slowly down the corridor and peeped around the half-open door, like a little child trying to watch a party.

  Mehuru was seated at the kitchen table with an upturned wooden washtub and a couple of wooden spoons before him, a hastily improvised bass drum. He had thrown the spoons aside—their hardness gave no resonance—and he was drumming barehanded, using his strong fingers to call out a deep, echoing rhythm, almost a tune, from the hollow bell of the wood. Kbara, beside him, standing barefoot on the stone floor and swaying in time, was pounding on a brass saucepan, sometimes using a metal fork, sometimes the flat of his hand. Mehuru was singing, his head thrown back, his eyes half shut to hear the music, his wide, sensual lips smiling, and his whole face happy, in a way that Frances had never seen before.

  It was a transformation. He was changed from a powerful, brooding, unhappy man into a man at ease with himself, singing from the depths of his belly, smiling at the joy of the rhythm and the excitement of the pounding noise.

  And the women! Frances craned forward. The women were like the chorus in a Greek play. They were grouped together, swaying and singing, drawn by Mehuru, entranced by him. Every now and then, one of them would step forward and dance toward him, for herself alone and also completely at his bidding and for him. When one of them stepped forward, Kbara’s treble drum would pound invitingly, the tone sharper and sharper as the fork rattled on the brass, piercing notes raining around her. Mehuru would speed his drumming, faster and faster, as if he were calling to her to dance and dance and dance for him. And the woman—Mary or Martha or Elizabeth—bunched up her skirt in her hand to show her bare feet and lovely black legs and pounded the floor with feet moving so fast that they were a blur to Frances, peeping around the door. Bent over, haunches moving, the women hammered into the floor, their feet making a new beat, a new quick, erotic rhythm of their own, and then they would drop the hem of their skirts and sway back to the others, laughing and disclaiming praise, and Mehuru and Kbara would shout applause and resume the slower pace of their song.

  Frances stared disbelievingly at this explosion of strangeness into her English kitchen. She looked around for the other servants and then saw that the heady potency of the drumming had caught them, too. As she watched, Cook, who had waged a campaign of bullying against the slaves since their arrival, was dragged forward by two of the little children, and she, too, held her skirt from her feet and jiggled from one foot to another. And for her, too, Kbara and Mehuru sped the music, called encouragement, pounded the rhythm.

  Cook flushed rosily with a sudden sense of her own desirability. “No, no!” she said, pulling her hands from the grasp of the two little boys. “My dancing days are over!”

  Mehuru shook his head and pounded his drum. “You are a fine woman!” he called. “A fine woman!”

  Cook beamed at him. “You ask Brown to dance a jig for you!” she said. “She had an Irish mother!”

  Mehuru rose to his feet and hefted the washtub under his arm. He snatched up a wooden spoon and walked toward Brown, smiling, drumming as he advanced. Frances thought that there was not a woman in the world who could have resisted him.

  “I can’t dance,” Brown protested, but she looked up at Mehuru as if he were a god, and she could not stop her color rising.

  He said nothing; he let his music call her. Brown’s feet were tapping. “I can’t,” she repeated. “I can’t dance like you do.”

  Mehuru stepped back, his long, slim feet drumming on the floor in time to the music, his body swaying. Brown rose to her feet, stood before him, and followed his movements like a thin, white mirror of his potent image. He shuffled and stamped, and she followed him, he drifted to the right, and she moved as he did. He turned and strode forward, and she was behind him. Then he whirled and hammered on the drum and called out to her, and Brown hitched her skirts up in both hands and let her feet pound into the rhythm of an Irish jig, as wild a dance as could ever be—the deep, irresistible drumming of Africa with the lightning, heel-tapping, toe-stamping dance of a Celt.

  Mehuru laughed aloud at Brown’s sudden abandon and pounded the drum in her praise as he turned to the other women. Cook rose up from her seat again, the scullery maid danced behind her, the slaves clapped rhythmically, swayed and sang in a compelling, unending melody, in an incomprehensible promising language.

  And Frances, watching this sudden explosion of joy and sensuality and passion on the stone floor of her cold, empty house, sprang from her hiding place and whirled away from them, from the rich, seductive drumming and song. She dashed to the hall and then up the stairs to her chilly bedroom, with loud, unladylike sobs choked back until she could slam her door and fling herself facedown on her bed and cry out against her coldness and her loneliness. As she pushed her face into her pillow to weep without restraint for the first time in her life, she acknowledged at last her vision of Mehuru as the only man in the world who could save her from the icy death-in-life of ladylike English behavior, and she knew that for the first time in her life she had fallen, irretrievably and completely, in love.

  CHAPTER

  20

  NEXT MORNING MEHURU TAPPED on the parlor door. Frances was sitting at the round walnut table, another chair placed opposite her. A bowl of hyacinths stood in the center of the table, their waxy white flowers scenting the room. Mehuru saw in one quick glance that this was not a lesson, when the table was swept bare, but he could not read Frances’s set face. She was very pale, and there was a bluish shade under her eyes, as if she had lain sleepless. He wondered if she were ill. A second child had taken the nagging cough; they were all finding the slow turn to warm weather arduous and long. Maybe even white people, whose skin was suited to sodden days of mist and endless gray afternoons, dreaded the long darkness and the pale, disappointing coolness of the midday sun?

  “Please sit down,” Frances said. Her voice quavered slightly.

  Mehuru drew back the chair and sat before her, his hands clasped lightly on the table before him.

  “I realize . . . I realize . . .” Frances started, and then broke off. “I have taught you for months, and I hardly know you at all,” she faltered. “I have taught you to speak and never asked you anything about yourself, about your life before you came here.”

  Mehuru’s face was an ebony mask, carefully held from expression
. He could not follow Frances’s train of thought. He did not know she had heard his drumming. He did not know that for the first time and painfully, Frances was feeling emotions stir and warm into life.

  “You want to know about me?”

  “Will you tell me about your home, Cicero?”

  He flashed a look at her at once. “Cicero is an English slave,” he said precisely. “Cicero was born here, in this room. You named him then.”

  She bit at her upper lip, sucking it down so that her face was momentarily distorted and ugly. “Very well. Just for now I will call you Mehuru. Where were you born, Mehuru? And where did you live? And what did you do?”

  He hesitated, thinking to refuse this sudden, surprising curiosity. Then he relented. He could not resist the pleasure of talking of his home, even to Frances. “I was born in the city of Oyo,” he said. “My mother was a companion to the mother of the king, my father was one of the eso—” He broke off, searching for the English word. “I don’t know what you call it.”

  “What did he do?” Frances was smiling, thinking that the eso might be a little band of singers, or farmers, or some primitive group.

  “He leads fighting men,” Mehuru replied. “Those on horses.”

  “Cavalry?” Frances asked, surprised. “You had horses?”

  “Yes. An army of horses.” Mehuru hesitated, gathering the words. “A hundred horses to a lord; each lord obeys a higher. At the top a commander, and he reports to the alafin—the king.”

  Frances blinked. It all sounded rather complicated for a tribe of naked cannibals. “Who else reported to the alafin?”

  “The prime minister and the council of nobles.” Mehuru thought. “Seven lords who choose the alafin. And then there is our church—a chief priest who keeps the oracle with chiefs under him. I worked for him.”

  “You were a priest?”

  Mehuru nodded. There was a distant look in his eyes, as if he could barely remember. “I was a diviner of the oracle. I spoke on grave matters. The oracle spoke against slavery. I took the message.”

  “But niggers are slavers. You keep slaves yourself,” Frances protested.

  “Not like you,” Mehuru told her gently. “A criminal may be sentenced to work as a slave, or a freeman may sell himself. . . .” He had an abrupt vision of Siko, who had sold himself into Mehuru’s protection and had been betrayed. He would never find the boy now; he was far away in the Sugar Islands. It was most likely that he was already dead. He had been a slight boy, not strong enough for backbreakingly cruel work in the fields or in the sweltering heat of the boiler houses or feeding the roaring, cane-crushing machines for ten, twelve hours a day. Mehuru looked away, his throat suddenly tight. “I cannot tell you.”

  “But human sacrifice . . . You do human sacrifice with your slaves. . . .”

  Mehuru stared blankly at her. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said with immense dignity. “I think you must be thinking of another country. Murder is a crime in any of the Yoruban countries.”

  Frances felt snubbed. “I was told that all of Africa was a pagan country, practicing human sacrifice and . . .” She paused. She could not mention bestial sexual practices. She flushed scarlet. “And . . . impropriety.”

  “Africa is a very large country,” Mehuru explained patiently, as a man might speak to a stubborn and stupid child. “There are many different nations and many different ways of doing things. In Yoruba we live in cities cleaner than this one, we have laws which forbid actions that your laws allow, we trade, we farm, we hunt, our brassware is famous, our gold mines are wealthy, our leather and art goods are sold miles away, even across the Sahel Desert. Why, you have some of our leatherwork here.”

  “African leather?” Frances queried disbelievingly.

  “Mr. Cole’s leather slippers,” Mehuru replied.

  Frances thought of Josiah’s beautifully worked leather slippers. “Those are Moroccan,” she corrected him. “From an Arab country.”

  Mehuru shrugged. “We sell leatherwork to the Arabs, and they sell it on. You have named it for the trader, not the makers. That leather is certainly Yoruban work.”

  “It’s not possible,” Frances protested. “For Yoruban leather to get to North Africa would be a most tremendous journey. Thousands of miles across Africa and across the desert.”

  Mehuru nodded. “We have very great trade routes. And mighty cities along the routes.” A shadow crossed his face. “We had,” he corrected himself, his voice very low. “When the slavers came, the routes became unsafe. I am afraid that all that may be finished.”

  He paused. Frances was looking down at her hands, pleating the fabric of her gown between her fingers and then smoothing it out. She was wearing a morning gown of muslin threaded with a blue velvet ribbon with a matching blue velvet jacket. It was one of her prettiest dresses; she rarely wore it. The skirt was creased from her fiddling, and as he watched, she spread it out and put a hot hand on it.

  “Mehuru,” she said very softly.

  “What is the matter?”

  She looked up quickly at the kindness in his tone, and he saw her lip was trembling, and her face was filled with some suppressed emotion, her hands, her whole body was shaking. “Mehuru,” she whispered.

  “Are you ill, Frances? Shall I call one of the women?”

  He got to his feet, and she put out a hand to stop him. He checked at the touch on his arm, suddenly understanding her. Drawing in a breath, he froze, looking at her intently.

  Mutely, she raised her white face to him; her trembling lips were pitiful. He scanned her expression from her dark eyes to the neck of her gown, where he could see the thudding of her pulse in the hollow of her collarbone. And as he looked, her breath came faster, the color rose and rose into her cheeks, and her eyes filled inexplicably with tears.

  Silently he drew back. “I shall call one of the women for you,” he said, and left the room.

  JOSIAH TOOK HIS BREAKFAST in an expansive mood at the top table of the coffee shop. He had a message from Rose, who had passed a Bristol privateer off Africa. Captain Smedley wrote that they had made good speed and were off Goree Island, on the coast of West Africa. He was too discreet to refer to Josiah’s illegal order to sell slaves to the Spanish colonies; he merely promised that he would ship as many as he could buy and pack them tight. Already the holds were half filled. Josiah was to repose every faith in him and to know that he understood exactly what was required.

  “You’re early, Josiah,” Stephen Waring remarked, taking a seat beside him.

  “The early bird . . .” Josiah said.

  “Have you thought any more about my colliery?”

  Josiah shook his head. “It’s a likely venture, I agree, but I have another project that must have first call of my capital. And you are the man to advise me, if you will.”

  Stephen nodded, snapping his fingers for a plate of ham and a pint of ale. “If I can,” he said, smiling his sharp smile. “You are a Merchant Venturer now. You have only to ask and there are a dozen men who will assist you.”

  Josiah glowed slightly. “I don’t forget it. And it is that which makes me bold enough to ask you what the Venturers plan for the Hot Well. I hear that you seek a tenant to take over the lease. Is that right?”

  “Indeed,” Stephen said cautiously. “I don’t know for sure. I have heard some rumor to that effect, but I don’t know. Would you be interested in the lease?”

  “I would!” Josiah said. “On the right terms, of course. But I think that with a little investment and with the advice of my wife and her family, I could venture to take the lease on.”

  “I had no idea that you would ever shift from shipping, Josiah.”

  “A man can spread his investments,” Josiah proclaimed boldly. “It makes sense to spread your investment in these days.”

  Stephen nodded. “I shall inquire,” he promised. “And then, if you wish to pursue it, you could bring it up at the monthly dinner. I would be prepared to support your bid to buy the
lease.”

  “You would?”

  “My dear fellow, why not?” Stephen smiled. “A new member and a new colleague? I would be delighted to be of service to you.”

  “I would certainly make a bid,” Josiah said, abandoning his usual caution. “I would need to see the figures of the investment in the Well, and the profits.”

  “Very misleading,” Stephen murmured. “I can tell you in confidence, Josiah. The Venturers have poured money into the premises and left no capital to run it. We have built a magnificent building, established an excellent name; there is now every reason in the world for it to prosper. The Venturers want rid of it. They want nothing more than a return for their money and someone else to take on the day-to-day expenses.”

  “And so a man coming in fresh . . .” Josiah said excitedly.

  “Would find all the work done for him,” Stephen supplemented. “All of the rebuilding, the new colonnade of shops, the new pumping station, the filtering of the water, all done, all ready to run at a profit. The one thing against it is the ready funds. If you have those—you have only to pay your wages and you will make money in your second month of trading.”

  “Just wages and trading money?” Josiah confirmed.

  Stephen smiled. “I would do it myself, but it is so far out of my usual line of business. And I lack a wife with the friends and acquaintances of yours. You are a lucky man, Cole. This opportunity could have been made for you.”

  “Will no one else take it up?”

  Stephen shrugged. “They will snap it up as soon as they see it. But if you had the money to put down on it and my support, I would think it would go to you. There will be the lease to buy, of course, and an annual rent.”

  “How much would that be?”

  “As I say, I have not seen the figures. I should think you would need about two thousand pounds.”