Respectable Trade (62 page)

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 Frances’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.”

“Stay. . . .” He was speaking like a man and not an obalawa.

“Maybe one day,” she said very softly. “Maybe one day there will be a world where a man and woman like us might love each other, d’you think?”

“Stay now. . . .”

She suddenly lunged forward, her eyes black with the grip of sudden pain, and she cried out, once. He caught her to save her from falling, calling her name. When her body went limp and he laid her back on her pillows, she was gone.

Stuart dragged him from her bedside and pushed him to the window. “Don’t look,” he said forcibly. “Look out the window.”

Mehuru stumbled to the window and leaned his head against the cold pane of glass and looked without seeing at the frost under the trees and the white-incised blades of grass.

Then Stuart said, “And here we are!” and Mehuru heard a strange little noise, a cry, a tiny breath, and then another cry.

He turned to see Elizabeth wrapping a tiny thing, smaller than a doll, in soft white cloth and dabbing at its head.

“See?” she smiled, though her eyes were still running with tears. “Your son, Mehuru. You have a son.”

Hardly knowing what he was doing, he put out his hands, and she gently put the little bundle into his arms. The baby looked up at him. It had black, black eyes, as dark as Frances’s, as dark as his own. Its little face was a rich color like rum and milk, like the color of the palms of Mehuru’s tender hands. Mehuru staggered for a moment as the truth finally hit him. The child’s smooth skin was a rich brown color, a mixture of Frances and himself. It was not Josiah’s child. It had never been Josiah’s child. It was his own son.

“My son,” he said incredulously. “My son.”

The baby looked at him with his wise, dark eyes as if he could understand everything, everything that was in the world. He opened his little mouth and yawned, a complete, thorough yawn, as precise as a kitten’s.

“Hello, my son,” Mehuru said in English, and then, in Yoruban: “
Baa woo ne o moo me.
”

The baby’s eyes widened as he solemnly considered his father, and then his little face constricted. He squeezed his eyes shut and began to cry.

“He will be hungry,” Elizabeth said. “Give him to me.”

“Can you feed him?” Mehuru asked.

The look she gave him was rich with love. “I have been waiting and preparing for him for months,” she said. “Frances knew. She knew I would care for him.”

Stuart turned from the bed. “I am sorry, Mehuru. I could not save her. I will send a woman to lay her out.”

“I will do it,” he said instantly. “I have stayed here, all this time, to do it as it should be done. She is an African woman now. She is the wife of a Yoruban. She is the mother of my child.”

Stuart nodded. “I will wait for you in the kitchen. I will take
Elizabeth there, with the baby, and make sure they are safe. We should go from here, as soon as you are ready. You can join the others now.”

Mehuru nodded. He held the door for them and watched Elizabeth take his son downstairs. She was holding him close, tucked into the curve of her neck, and all he could see was the crown of the tiny black head. His son had inherited his hair; it was as tight and as curly as the fleece of a little black lamb.

Mehuru shut the door on them. Downstairs, he could hear the bailiff’s men taking furniture out to the cart, he could hear Josiah’s baffled arguing and Sarah’s sharp complaints. He heard it all as if it came from many miles away.

He straightened Frances in her bed and took the bloodstained sheets away. He poured the warm water from the jug into the ewer and sponged her body, her face, her arms, and her thin white fingers. He combed her hair, and he braided it close to her head in the manner of his people. She looked very beautiful with her hair in African braids, he thought. They showed the fine structure of her face, and she no longer looked weary. She no longer looked as if she were warring with herself. She looked at peace, as if she finally had understood that there was no need to hunger and struggle.

He went to her chest of clothes and drew out a blue gown, blue, the color of coolness, of
itutu:
composure. Carefully, he put it on her, drawing it around her, and holding her close as he fastened it. Into the pockets of the gown, he slipped the things that she should take with her when they put her in the earth: her comb, a teaspoon from her breakfast tray, a pinch of salt. He opened her sewing basket and took out her little silver embroidery scissors. He cut one of the tight black curls of hair from his head and tucked it under her handkerchief. He closed her eyes and kissed her, her cool eyelids, her lips, and the stillwarm hollow at her collarbone. Then he drew the white counterpane over her.

At the doorway he hesitated. She had told him to look in her
writing box. He took it to the window seat and opened it. Laid neatly on the top was a single sheet of paper. At the foot was Frances’s seal and name and two other signatures: Stuart Hadley and Mary Allen, the cook. It read:

This is the Last Will and Testament of Me, Frances Jane Scott Cole, signed this 29th day of November 1789 before Stuart Hadley and Mary Allen.

To my Sister-in-law Sarah Cole I do Bequeath all my Dresses and Gowns and Jewelry. To my Dear husband Josiah I bequeath all my Furniture and Heirlooms.

I Direct their attention to my Work as Agent for Sir Charles Fairley. They will see that the Agency is now of a size that it could be registered as a Bank, and I do bequeath to my Sister-in-law and to my Husband Jointly all my Interest in these Matters and Recommend to them that They develop this Bank as their Business, Abandoning the Slave Trade.

For my Own Slaves I hereby grant them their Complete and Absolute Freedom: Julius, Mary, Martha, Elizabeth, John, Susan, Ruth, Naomi, Matthew, and Mark are hereby all Freed. The man Mehuru, once known as Cicero, is also Completely and Absolutely Free.

I send them my Dearest Blessing and the hope that they may make a Home in England and Find it in their hearts to Forgive me—and all English people—for the Very great wrong that we have done to Them and to their Country. It has taken me a Long, Long time to realize what we did to you. I am sorry, I am Sorry. Perhaps one day we can learn to live together in Love and Respect?

T
HERE WERE
A
FRICANS IN
Britain before the English were here—that’s the opinion of Peter Fryer, the great historian of the black presence in England. In his history
Staying Power,
he quotes the existence of an African legion stationed on Hadrian’s Wall in the third century. Before the coming of the Vikings, before the invasion of the Normans at the Battle of Hastings, before Elizabethan England, before everything we think of as English, there were black men here then. We even have a record of one individual. He sounds as if he was a bit of a troublemaker; he barracked Caesar when he came to visit. He was popular with the other soldiers and something of a comedian. The record of the time says, “He was of great fame among clowns and good for a laugh at any time.”