Respectable Trade

by Gregory, Philippa

  He ripped back the covers of the newly made bed and flung down the daffodils pell-mell on the white linen sheets. He studded the pillows with violets, dozens and dozens of bunches, and then he stood back and surveyed the disorder with delight.

  Already the room was smelling sweet as the crushed violets poured out their essence and the opening daffodils exhaled their subtle, insidious perfume. Mehuru gave another little laugh and crept from the room, closing the door behind him with a sense of having released something troubling and dangerous and wild in the orderly house.

  So it was that when Frances came upstairs at noon to change from her morning gown, she found her room filled with a heady, golden, powerful scent and her bed drenched with flowers.

  She did not think, she did not hesitate for a moment. In some archaic, intuitive part of her mind, as yet unfrozen and untamed, she knew precisely who had brought her the flowers. No one else in the house would have bought them with such spendthrift abandon. No one else in the house knew that she loved daffodils and that this spring had released her wild, young, greening desire. She stripped off her dress and her shift, recklessly, like a young girl, and fell, naked, into bed with them. She buried her face in their cool, passionate greenness and bathed in the watery, pale scent of them. She rolled around on them and among them, swimming like a diver in a pool, until her body was slick with the juice and her hair was tumbled over her bare shoulders and filled with petals. Sap from the daffodils smeared on her skin and was slick on her lips, sharp and bitter to the taste, staining the white purity of her sheets—and Frances was laughing and breathless and wanton at last.

  CHAPTER

  22

  JOSIAH WAS AT HIS desk waiting to be called for dinner but whiling away the time in adding figures. He had half a dozen sheets of paper before him, and each displayed a different calculation. Rose was due home first, but Josiah had already borrowed against her cargo to buy the Queens Square house. She should bring an extra profit in gold from her smuggled slaves, but Josiah could not borrow against contraband goods; they must remain a closely guarded secret. Daisy should only be a month behind her. Loading and unloading with the efficiency of a Merchant Venturer vessel, she should come into Bristol at the end of December, and Lily would be only two months behind.

  Josiah hoped to raise money against Daisy’s expected profits. He wanted to offer them as security for a loan on the Hot Well. On each page he calculated how much the repayment would be if he could borrow at 3 percent, and then the further calculation if Daisy came in late . . . a week late, two weeks late, a month. The difficulty of Josiah’s work as a long-distance shipper was its unpredictability. The voyage took, on average, fourteen months. But storms could delay a ship; a wrecked mast could mean that she put into a strange port for repairs and was delayed for months. The captain was authorized to buy repairs in such a crisis, but he could be cheated or the work expensively done, and he could come home carrying no gold at all, forced to sell cargo to cover his costs.

  Josiah never knew, until his ship docked, whether he had made a fortune or lost one. There was no way for a captain to get a message home unless he met another Bristol ship on the voyage and it got home before him, and that happened only rarely. There was never anything to do but wait, and try not to borrow against profits that even now might be tossing in a storm on a sinking ship.

  There was a tap on the door, and Frances looked in.

  “Am I disturbing you, Josiah?” She was wearing her hair in a new way, combed simply over her shoulders. Her face was radiant, and she looked pretty in a way that Josiah had never noticed before.

  “New gown?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Oh.”

  “Is it you I must thank for my flowers?” she asked carefully.

  “I sent Cicero to buy you a bunch,” Josiah said. “Did he find a pretty bunch for you?”

  Surprisingly, the color rushed into Frances’s cheeks. “He bought a lot,” she said. “They are beautiful. Thank you.”

  Josiah waved his hand. “What can I do for you, Mrs. Cole? It’s not dinnertime, is it?”

  Frances shook her head gravely. “I wish to send for a doctor for one of the children. The smallest boy is very feverish. He has had a cough since before Easter, and he is getting worse.”

  Josiah looked thoughtful. “Can we not give him a poultice or something? A few days’ rest in bed?”

  “He has been resting,” Frances said. “And Cook has done all that she can. She wants him to be seen by the doctor, and I think she is right.”

  “I’m very sorry for the boy,” Josiah said awkwardly. “But we are running a business here, Frances. We cannot care for him as if he were our son. The doctor charges for every visit, and then there are medicines to buy as well. I would rather we waited until we were sure it was essential.”

  “The child is very ill,” Frances insisted.

  “I daresay, and I wish him well. But a couple of visits from the doctor and we will start to run at a loss on him.”

  Frances turned to go, the prettiness drained from her face. “But I may send for him if the child gets worse? It will be a greater loss if the little boy dies, after all, Josiah.”

  “I don’t wish him to be neglected,” Josiah said. “But we have to measure our costs against our likely profits. Otherwise it is not a business venture but a mission. We are not in business to take little children from Africa and bring them up in civilized homes and spend a fortune on medicines for them. They have to earn their keep.”

  “I know,” Frances conceded. “Yet I cannot help but feel for him.”

  Josiah smiled at her. “You have a tender heart. Oh, send for the doctor if you insist; send if it worries you! But remember that we must keep costs down.”

  “I will,” Frances said. She gave him a quick smile and slipped from the room. She went upstairs to the top floor, where the slaves slept. James, the smallest boy, was on his pallet bed, Elizabeth beside him. She was sponging his hot face with vinegar and water. He was tossing his little head from side to side, his black eyes glazed, seeing nothing.

  “Very sick,” Elizabeth said as Frances came into the room.

  “No better?”

  “No.”

  Frances bent down and put her hand against the child’s forehead. His skin burned under her touch. His little close-cropped curls were damp with sweat, his smooth black skin flushed darker with the fever.

  “I will send for the doctor this evening if he is no better,” Frances said.

  Elizabeth shook her head. “No better.”

  “You do not understand,” Frances said, irritated. “I said: ‘I will send for a doctor if he does not get better.’”

  Elizabeth shook her head again. “No better.”

  “It is you who do not understand,” Mehuru said softly from the doorway. “She is saying he is no better, and he will not get better.”

  Frances looked shocked. “Of course he will!” she cried. “This is just a fever. Children get fevers all the time. By later today he will have probably sweated it out and the fever will have gone. In a few days, he will be up and running around playing.”

  “He did not do much playing,” Mehuru observed. “Even when he was well.”

  Frances flushed. “If he had gone to the plantations, he would have been weeding in the sugarcane every day from dawn to sunset,” she pointed out. “He has an easier life here.”

  Mehuru nodded. “And if he had stayed in Africa, he would have been safe on his mother’s back while she worked in the fields. And in the evening when she cooked his supper, he would have played in the dust with the other children. And at night she would have tucked him up in bed beside her.”

  Frances said nothing. In the silence they could hear the hoarse sound of James’s breath, rasping through his closing throat. “I know he would have been better left at home,” Frances said very quietly.

  James turned his head restlessly on the pillow, seeking a cool place. Frances leaned forward and
lifted his little head. Elizabeth turned the pillow over, and Frances let him lie down again on the cool new cotton. “I’ll send for the doctor now,” she decided.

  “I’ll go,” Mehuru said. “Where is his house?”

  “Trenchard Lane, near the hospital. Dr. Hadley. Wait, I will give you one of my cards to take.”

  Frances went downstairs to the parlor for a card from her case, Mehuru following. She scribbled a note on the back of it. “There,” she said. “Ask him to come as soon as he can.”

  Mehuru took the card, went down to the kitchen to throw on his jacket and snatch up his hat, went out through the back door, and set off at a steady jogging run along the quayside of the Frome to John’s Bridge.

  The doctor was not at home. Mehuru tracked him around the city from one fashionable address to another and found him, coming from a lying-in at Culver Street. He was a young, fair-headed Scotsman, notoriously freethinking and politically radical. He was tolerated by the conservative citizens of Bristol only because of his remarkable abilities and his degree in medicine from Edinburgh University. He took Mehuru up in his phaeton and drove down to Queens Square.

  “Are you a freeman?” he asked curiously.

  “No,” Mehuru said. “Mrs. Cole owns me.”

  “You seem to be a man of education. You speak well.”

  “Mrs. Cole taught me to speak, and I have taught myself to read.”

  “Read, eh? Do you read the newspapers?”

  “When I can see them. I have no money to buy newspapers or books.”

  “You could go to a reading room or a coffeehouse.”

  “I have no money,” Mehuru pointed out. “And no time off. I am not a servant, I am a slave. I am not allowed out of the house.”

  The doctor muttered something brief and impolite. “Ever heard of Granville Sharp?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “He’s a Londoner. He lives in London. He’s made a bit of a name for himself, championing the people of your race.”

  “Slaves or free?”

  The doctor clicked to his horse as they turned in to the square. “Slaves,” he said. “He defended a black runaway slave—what was his name now? Strong, Jonathan Strong, and another, James Somerset—their cases went to court, and the judge ruled they could not be sent out of the country against their wishes. If they try to send you to the plantations, you can refuse to go, slave or not. Did you know that?”

  Mehuru jumped down from the seat and ran to the horse’s head. “I did not! I thought they owned me completely.”

  “Not completely,” the doctor said with sharp irony. “Even in Britain, in the land of freedom, you have some few rights. For instance, they can beat you, but not to death.”

  “Can I speak with you again?” Mehuru asked urgently.

  “I dine at the Crossways coffee shop on Mondays,” the doctor told him. “I talk to a number of friends there. We would be pleased to see you, if you could get there.”

  “I’ll get there,” Mehuru said.

  “Don’t get yourself shipped out before Monday,” the doctor warned wryly, lifting his bag from the carriage. “There’s always a ship going to the West Indies, and you won’t be the first Negro stolen away.”

  “I’ll be there Monday,” Mehuru promised.

  The doctor nodded and ran up the steps.

  The door opened immediately, as Martha had been watching for him. She took him to James’s little room at once. When he came down again, Frances was at the foot of the stairs.

  “Is he very ill?” she asked.

  “He may pull through,” Dr. Hadley replied. “It’s a violent fever and a putrid sore throat. But he’s underweight and very sick. I’ve given the woman some pastilles to burn in his room and some syrup to bring down the fever.”

  “I did not know he was so ill.” Frances could hear the exculpatory tone in her voice.

  “He’s only a little boy,” Dr. Hadley said abruptly. “What is he? Three? Scarcely more than a baby. He should be with his mother. What’s he doing here anyway?”

  “It is a scheme of my sister-in-law’s,” Frances explained. “We import slaves direct from Africa and train them here for domestic work. . . .” Under his sharp blue stare, her voice died away. “It is better work for them and a better life than on the plantations,” she finished feebly.

  “I am sure of it,” he said ironically. “I should think death itself is preferable to work on the plantations.”

  “You are against slavery,” Frances accused him. “You are an abolitionist.”

  “In this town?” He raised his sandy-colored eyebrows. “A man would be lynched if he acknowledged such beliefs. I am a professional man, a doctor. I attend where I am summoned, and I generally keep my opinions to myself.”

  “Shall you come again?”

  “I will call later to see how he is. The woman tells me that there is another little boy who is also unwell.”

  “I did not know,” Frances said. “Will you please see him, too?”

  “When I come tonight. He has gone out now to carry a message for your husband.” Dr. Hadley glanced out the window at the scudding clouds. “A nasty day for a little boy with a fever to be running errands around town,” he observed. “I will not delay you any more, Mrs. Cole.” He made her a brief bow and strode to the front door. “Good day.”

  STEPHEN WARING WAS IN his accounting house discussing his colliery with two other men. As they turned to go, he called one of them back into the room as if he had suddenly remembered something.

  “Oh! Green! I had forgotten to ask you. You are planning to give up your houses at the Hot Well, are you not? And move your business to Clifton?”

  The man closed the door swiftly behind him to prevent eavesdroppers. “Why, yes, I am going to sell the lodging houses in Dowry Parade at the Hot Well. I am sure that Clifton is the coming place; such pretty buildings and such good company.”

  “Perhaps you are right,” Stephen Waring said smoothly. “But I know of a man who might be interested in taking on the Hot Well. He might be prepared to buy your place also.”

  “Does he know what the lease for the Well will cost?”

  “I believe so. But he thinks he can make it pay.”

  “I thought they would never get someone to take that lease,” Green exclaimed incautiously.

  “The Merchant Venturers have too much money tied up in the Hot Well,” Stephen said smoothly. “I for one should like to see that money released for other projects. And if the Hot Well can be made to pay, we would all benefit. The debt should be cleared, and this is the man to clear it for us.”

  Mr. Green hesitated. “If it can be made to pay,” he said. There was a hint of warning in his voice. “Fashionable society is moving up to the heights of Clifton, not down along the river. However elegant the assembly room—it is in the wrong place. If he is a friend of yours, you may wish to warn him. It is a fine building, but I think Clifton is the place to be.”

  “It is a venture like any other,” Stephen observed pleasantly. “There is always risk where there is profit to be had. He is a trader—he should know that.”

  WHEN DR. HADLEY CAME back to visit James late that night, the child was worse. His fever had broken, but the boy was no better. He was cold now, instead of hot. He lay very still and quiet on the little bed, his rasping breath coming slowly and sluggishly. When the doctor took the thin, dark wrist, he could hardly find the pulse. The doctor looked at the black woman sitting at the head of the bed. She had the soft fringe of her shawl in her hand, and she was leaning forward and gently stroking it against the boy’s cheek. His head was turned to her, and his eyes were shut.

  The doctor raised an eyebrow to her.

  “No better,” she said softly.

  He opened his bag and took a small bottle of laudanum and mixed four drops in a glass of water. “If he cries,” he said simply, “if he cries for pain, he can have this, a bit at a time. I can do no more for him. He’s sinking fast. He’s going now.” />
  “Going home,” she said simply.

  Stuart Hadley found that his eyes were smarting. He bent down and put his hand against the damp little cheek. The boy was so small that the white hand cupped his entire face from curly hair to rounded chin. He was barely more than a baby.

  “Going home,” he agreed softly.

  He snapped his bag shut and went from the room.

  Frances was waiting for him in the hall. “Is he better?” she asked.

  He looked at her coldly. “He is dying, ma’am. He will be dead by tomorrow.”

  She staggered slightly and went white.

  “It is a risk you will have to carry,” he said precisely. “If you bring slaves into England. They are susceptible to English diseases, just as white men quickly die in Africa. They are susceptible to the English cold and damp. Is this the first one you have lost?”

  “No,” Frances admitted. She remembered the woman called Died of Shame and the unmarked grave in the Redclift churchyard.

  “What did that one die of?”

  Frances shook her head wordlessly.

  “Was she sick?”

  “She ate earth,” Frances said, her voice very low. “And she was found dead one morning. She died in her sleep.”

  “How awkward,” he observed savagely. “Well, I must be getting on. I send my bill to Cole and Sons, do I? It is a commercial loss, is it not?”

  Frances flushed. “I shall pay.”

  The doctor bowed and went to the door.

  “You despise me because we own slaves,” Frances accused.

  He looked into her face. Her eyes were filled with tears and she was trembling.

  “No,” he said with sudden honesty. “That would not be fair, of me. I used to take sugar in my tea, and I still love sweet puddings. I smoke tobacco, I wear cotton. I benefit from the trade as much as you do, but I manage to keep my hands clean; I take my profits from the trade at a distance. How can I measure what good it does me? My university is endowed by rich men who draw their wealth from the colonies. My patients are all traders. We all profit from the thieving in Africa. If we stopped it tomorrow, we would still be rich from their loss.”