Respectable Trade

by Gregory, Philippa

  The lad nodded. “He better had.”

  The prow of the little boat nosed against the green, slimy steps. Mehuru jumped ashore, clearing the tidemark of garbage and filth, and ran up the steps to the Cole warehouse. He hammered on the front door and shouted until the window above opened and Josiah stuck his head out.

  “Oh, it’s you,” he said. “What’s the matter?”

  “Bailiffs,” Mehuru told him. “Miss Cole said to come home at once. She said to bring everything you have—all the money and all the notes of credit and a note of what you have in bond.”

  Josiah laughed shortly, a cold, mirthless sound, staring down at Mehuru below him. “I’ll come,” he said. “But I’ve nothing to bring. Nothing. D’you hear?”

  Mehuru waited. There was a bitter wind blowing up the gorge and a cold frost on the quayside. The garbage in the dock was rimmed with white. The door before him opened, and Josiah came out. He was wearing an old suit of homespun brown, and his linen was dirty. His stock was badly tied, and his jacket pulled on carelessly, with one pocket flap tucked in. The two men went side by side to the ferry, the immaculately dressed black man in livery and his shabby master.

  “Do you have a penny for the boy?” Mehuru asked.

  Josiah bared his stained teeth. “It’s about all I do have,” he said. “And I suppose I have to pay for you, too, good money to bring me bad news. You should have run around the long way and not cost me your fare.”

  The boat edged against the steps on the Bristol side of the river. Mehuru got out first and gave Josiah his hand. The older man moved as if he were stiff and tired, but at the entrance to Queens Square, as he took in the waiting carts and the bailiff’s men, his pace grew swifter.

  “What’s this?” he cried as soon as he was at his front door. “What authority?”

  The bailiff turned to him. “Are you Josiah Cole?”

  “Who wants to know?” Josiah demanded, with pointless cunning.

  “Bailiffs. I have a warrant here for the distraint of goods.”

  Josiah looked indoors to the shadowy hall. Sarah, coming downstairs in her plainest gown, nodded at him. Brother and sister’s eyes met. Neither of them smiled, but there was a grim recognition of mutual need and a promise of mutual support. Mehuru thought of the warriors of Oyo who sing that only those who fear nothing, not even the hornbill who feasts on the eyes of dead men, can march with them. The taut readiness for disaster was there in Sarah and Josiah. Upstairs, Frances still slept.

  “How much?” Josiah said evenly. He thought he might part with some of the more extravagant pieces of porcelain and keep the basic goods.

  The bailiff looked at his list. “It’s £2,300.17s.,” he said.

  Josiah staggered as if he had been knifed in the belly. Sarah came swiftly forward and drew him into the hall, half supporting him with her arm around his back.

  “Show me,” Josiah said. “Who has done this?”

  The bailiff handed over the warrant with the bills and signatories attached. Josiah read them with minute attention, as if he hoped to spot an error of a few pence. His lips moved as he scanned the words, but Mehuru could tell that he was not seeing them at all. He was turning the pages, one after another, but his eyes were sightless.

  “Let me see.” Sarah’s voice was gentle. She took the papers from Josiah’s hand and looked from one bill to another. They were the bills for the wall hangings, for the carpets, for the curtains, for the pictures. The plasterer, who had repaired the broken beak of one of Josiah’s beloved ornamental plasterwork ho-ho birds, the carpenter for a new step on the stair. The chimney sweep who had cleaned all the chimneys before they had moved in, the coal merchant for the last delivery. Not a bill had been settled since they had moved into Josiah’s great house. While Sarah had been balancing the housekeeping books for butcher and baker, Josiah had been letting the costs of the house double and redouble, with one eye on the Hot Well and the other on his ships.

  The second set of papers were the bills for the Hot Well: wages, new furnishings, running costs. Sarah turned page after page as the bailiff looked at her, his stolid face carefully impassive.

  There was a third set of papers from the chandlers, the sailmakers, and the ropewalk, unpaid since Lily had sailed, still owing from Daisy’s sailing nearly a year ago.

  “You will have to give us a few days to settle these,” she said.

  The bailiff shook his head. “I am sorry, missus,” he said. “My orders are to take goods to the value for sale. They are to be taken today.”

  “I don’t believe we have goods to the value of two thousand pounds,” Sarah said, her voice sharp and unemotional. “Much of the furniture belongs to my sister-in-law.”

  “Married to Mr. Cole?”

  “Of course.”

  “Her goods are his, then,” he said. “If they’re married.”

  “Even so,” Sarah maintained, “we do not have goods to the value of these bills.”

  The bailiff nodded. “Then I have to ask you to vacate the premises, missus. I have instructions to claim the property itself. You can take your personal clothes and belongings.”

  “Go back to the warehouse?” Josiah was suddenly roused from his daydream. “Back to the warehouse? But we’ve only just come from there!”

  Sarah turned to him. “It doesn’t matter, Josiah,” she said urgently. “We can go back for now, while we get this sorted out. The house will not be sold for weeks. Rose could come in any day, and then we will settle our debts. We can go back for now.”

  “No!” Josiah yelled. He suddenly plunged toward the bailiff, his hands snatching for his throat. The bailiff sidestepped him easily, and his man, waiting behind, seized Josiah and wrestled him away. The man with the handcart raced up the steps, and the three of them bent Josiah’s arms behind his back and held him. “No!” Josiah yelled again.

  Mehuru hesitated, then heard Frances’s bedroom door open. At once he turned for the stairs and ran up to her. He saw a glimpse of her pale face and her tumbling dark hair.

  “Not so fast, you!” the bailiff called. He took three swift steps up the stairs behind Mehuru and flung his arms around him. “Here! Sam! Help me with this!”

  Mehuru twisted in his grip. “Let me go,” he said steadily. “I must go to Mrs. Cole. . . . She is ill. . . .”

  “You’re goods,” the man said with sudden, abrupt viciousness. “And I’m distraining you along with everything else.”

  The second man raced up the stairs toward them. Frances from above could see Mehuru’s danger. “Mehuru!” she screamed. “Run! Run!”

  At the sound of her voice, Mehuru kicked out and threw the bailiff backward against the banister. There was a splintering sound, and the banister creaked outward, away from the stairs. He stumbled against the other man, and Mehuru punched him straight-fingered into his round belly. The man slumped down, whooping and gasping for breath, knocking the other man off balance. Mehuru tore out of his grip and raced up the stairs to Frances.

  She was clinging to the doorframe. “What is happening? Who are those men?”

  Mehuru swept her off her feet and carried her back into her bedroom, kicking the door shut behind them. “It is nothing, nothing. Be calm, Frances!”

  She struggled out of his arms and stood unsteadily before him. “Mehuru! Tell me! What do they want?”

  He could feel her rapid pulse thudding in her fingers.

  “Please,” he said. “Please, Frances, be still. They have come for money. That’s all. They want money.”

  “Bailiffs?”

  He nodded. “That is what they said.”

  Her face was wax-white. “We will lose the house. We will lose everything.”

  There was a loud bang on the door, and then it was thrown open. The bailiff stepped into the room. “Beg pardon,” he said heavily. “But I’m distraining him for sale.”

  Frances staggered. “He is sold,” she improvised swiftly. Her face was ashen. “You cannot have him. He is the prope
rty of Mr. Waring.”

  The man hesitated. “Mr. Waring?”

  Frances held her hand to her heart. She could feel its erratic pounding. “Ask him!” she said. “And he will be angry if you touch his servant.”

  The bailiff recoiled. “Leave my room,” Frances said. “How dare you come in here?”

  He was impressed by her frosty air of command. “Beg pardon, ma’am. Just trying to do my job, and he struck me.”

  “Mr. Waring will compensate you,” Frances assured him. “You must complain to him.”

  He nodded and left. They were silent as they heard his heavy tread going down the stairs.

  Frances gave a little gasp. Her face was ashen. “You must run,” she whispered breathlessly. “Get out the back door, Mehuru. And take Elizabeth.”

  “I won’t leave you,” he said stubbornly. “He won’t touch me. He thinks I am Mr. Waring’s slave.”

  “That won’t save you. Mr. Waring could come and claim you. You must go.”

  He caught her in his arms. “I promised that I would stay with you.”

  “Look at me!” she cried in sudden passion. “I am dying, Mehuru! And you have a life before you! Go! I want to know you are free!” She gathered her strength and pushed him away from her, thrust him to the door. But as she did so, her face suddenly changed and went into a spasm of pain. She doubled up. “Oh, God, Mehuru! The baby is coming! The baby!”

  He scooped her up and laid her on the bed. She screamed a sharp cry of pain and then gasped for breath.

  Mehuru recklessly flung open the door and shouted for Elizabeth. She came running down the stairs. “The baby is coming,” he said. “Go to her, I will fetch Stuart. Lock the bedroom door, and let no one in but me.”

  He glanced down to the hall. The bailiffs had given up on him for the time being; they were arguing with Josiah. Brother and sister were blocking the doorway, shoulder to shoulder and insisting on seeing one bill after another, haggling as if a reduction of a few pounds would make all the difference. Mehuru thought that the two worlds of the house had split off from each other completely. Downstairs, Sarah and Josiah still struggled for money; upstairs, the slaves and Frances struggled to bring life into the house and to cheat death.

  Mehuru went quietly down the hall, slipped out the back door and then took to his heels toward Stuart’s house.

  He was lucky. He saw the doctor’s phaeton waiting outside the Merchant Venturer almshouses at the back of the square. “Stuart!” he shouted to the squat, white-painted facade intersected with black beams, and was rewarded by the sight of Hadley’s face at a small leaded upstairs window.

  “It’s Frances! The baby is coming!”

  Stuart made a grimace at Mehuru’s crashing lack of discretion, vanished from the window, and then appeared at the little door.

  “She’s in pain! Come!”

  Stuart swung into the driving seat, and Mehuru leaped for the footman’s hold behind the carriage.

  “Did something bring it on?” Stuart shouted over his shoulder.

  “Bailiffs in the house,” Mehuru said. “A fight. They tried to catch me.”

  Stuart scowled.

  “You knew of the baby,” Mehuru accused.

  “I am her doctor.”

  “You did not tell me.”

  “Why should I have told you?” Stuart hedged. He steered the horse carefully around the square and pulled it up well clear of the bailiff’s cart.

  “Because I was caring for her,” Mehuru said. “I needed to know. She needs my protection with Josiah away all the time. You should have told me.”

  “And who do you think is the father?” Stuart asked conversationally. He reached into the phaeton and pulled out his bag.

  “Come on! Hurry!” Mehuru was dancing on the pavement with impatience. He had forgotten all about the bailiffs.

  Stuart gave him a brief, quizzical look and let himself be rushed toward the house. Inside the hall they could hear Josiah and Sarah conducting the bailiffs from room to room.

  “That is porcelain. It is worth a hundred pounds,” Josiah was saying in the morning room. “And that is an heirloom. You can see the crest, the Scott crest.”

  Mehuru led the way up the stairs, taking the steps three at a time, Stuart behind him. At Frances’s door he suddenly checked, listening to the low moaning noise from inside.

  “The father?” he suddenly demanded, at last registering Stuart’s look and his question. “The father of her child?”

  Stuart put him carefully to one side and tapped on the door. “I will call you when she can see you,” he promised. “But, Mehuru, don’t expect too much. She is not strong.”

  “Let me see her now.”

  “In a moment.” The door opened, and Stuart went in, firmly closing it behind him. Mehuru collapsed on the stairs outside and listened.

  He could hear Frances gasping for breath when the pains crushed her. He heard Sarah draw Josiah out into the hall, leaving the bailiffs in the morning room pricing the furniture.

  “Let it go, Josiah,” she begged urgently. “Let it go!”

  “The heirlooms . . .” Josiah said. “And the dragons.”

  Sarah grasped the lapels of his jacket. “Josiah, listen to me,” she said. “We have a chance, we have a good chance.”

  Josiah looked at her with his old keen attention. “How?”

  “They can have it,” she said recklessly. “The house, the furniture, the Hot Well spa—everything. They can even have a ship! They can even have two! We can deal! Don’t you see? We can deal on the debts.”

  “We lose the house?” Josiah asked.

  “Let it go!” Sarah repeated. “As long as we have the quay and the warehouse and one ship. That’s all we need, Josiah! We can start again. The warehouse and the quay and one ship!”

  “Frances cannot live there,” Josiah said suddenly.

  “Frances can go, too. Along with the other luxuries.”

  “She is my wife. . . .” Josiah protested weakly.

  “We are not suited for marriage, you and I,” she ruled. “You have forgotten how our mother died. She died alone while Da was out trading on the trow. He said then that business and love do not mix. D’you remember?”

  Josiah shook his head.

  “He did,” Sarah said convincingly. “And we chose the trade. We chose the cruelest business that ever has been. That ever will be. You cannot make your money as we have made ours and still be tenderhearted, Josiah. Your wife is sick and dying upstairs. Down here we can bargain with the bailiffs and take our kitchenware to the warehouse and start again. Tell me what it is you wish.”

  Josiah hesitated for only a moment. “If Rose comes in tomorrow . . .”

  “Then we are rich. If she never comes in at all, then there are still Daisy and Lily. One of them will come in, and both of them could come in at a profit.”

  He nodded. “Pack up the kitchenware and everything you think we can get away with,” he said softly. “I will get the best price I can for these things. Those dragons should be worth something. I always said they were the thing.”

  “And her furniture,” Sarah said. “Sell her furniture. She cost us enough from first to last. She can pay now.”

  Mehuru sat at the top of the stairs listening, half to them, half to the painful, hard gasps of breath from Frances’s room. As he sat, he gathered his old skills around him. He sat quite still, focusing his mind to give her ease. He closed his eyes. The noise of Josiah going protestingly from room to room downstairs faded away like the chatter of parrots. All he could hear was the rasp of Frances’s breath, and then slowly, slowly, she grew quieter.

  Mehuru felt himself drawing her pain from her and watched it flow through his own body, the griping pain at the heart, the hot rasp of breath in the laboring lungs, and the powerful, unimaginable viselike grip of childbirth. He opened his body like a cave, like a cavern, and let the pain flow through him like a fast, deep river, scarcely touching the sides. His conscious mind heard France
s’s sharp breathing ease as the pain left her, and he held the river of pain close to him, to keep her safe.

  The bedroom door opened, and Stuart looked out, his face drawn. “You had better come in,” he said. “I am losing her.”

  Mehuru straightened up and went slowly into the room. Frances was lying back on the fine linen pillow, her face as white as her sheet and her hair stuck with sweat to her forehead and neck.

  When she saw him, she managed a little half smile. “Mehuru,” she said, and the way she spoke his name sounded like “water.”

  He knelt beside her bed and gathered her gently into his arms, cradling her head on his shoulder, holding her. She closed her eyes and clung to him, one hand around his shoulders and the other reaching up to touch his throat. “Oh, God, Mehuru. I have been a fool.”

  “We both have been fools,” he said. He could feel a deep, slow pain in his own chest, which he thought was probably heartbreak.

  “I’ve been such a fool,” she said, snatching a little gasp of air. “All the time I was trying . . .” She lost her breath and stuttered as she tried to inhale “ . . . t . . . t . . . trying to keep a position . . .”

  He nodded. “I know.”

  “To be a lady!” She gave another little gasp. “At such cost!”

  He held her very close, willing the pain to pass. “I know,” he said softly. “I understood from the very beginning.”

  “All your pain . . . and the wreck of Africa . . .” He rocked her gently, letting her speak, letting her finally speak honestly to him from her heart. “And you . . . and I . . . Such a waste, Mehuru!”

  He laid her back on her bed and buried his dark head into the warm curve of her neck. She put her arms around him and held him close. “I love you,” she said quietly.

  He pulled back and looked at her face. The twisted, frantic look had gone, and she was smiling slightly. Mehuru looked into her eyes. He had watched men and women die, and he knew that nothing could keep Frances now. “I never said so before,” she whispered. “But I loved you from the moment I first saw you.”

  “Stay,” he begged urgently. “Stay with me, Frances.”

  She smiled almost lazily. “Look in my writing box. Later. Hold me now.”