Respectable Trade (21 page)

Frances shrugged resentfully. “How should
I
know? I’ve had no experience.”

“I could beat them, ma’am,” John offered. “That’s what we always did in Jamaica. Beat them till they were quiet.”

“No,” Frances said. “I don’t want them whipped.”

“Then you must silence them some other way,” Miss Cole demanded. “Either by teaching or beating, Frances; they must be quiet.”

Reluctantly, Frances went to the head of the stairs. John unlocked the door, uncurled his whip. “Perhaps I had best go first,” he cautioned her. Frances heard the note of fear in his voice.

“Are they chained?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He preceded her down the stairs. Frances blinked, accustoming herself to the gloom. She saw the food pail in the center of the cellar, ringed with plates. On one plate she saw a dark smear, like mud.

“Fetch me that,” she said to John.

He stepped toward the four women, who leaned away from him, like a field of rustling sugarcane leaning away from the wind. The woman called Died of Shame had tipped earth over her head, had covered her face, and was moaning, as soft as a breath, into her cupped hands.

John proffered the plate to Frances. “Looks like earth, ma’am.”

Frances looked across at Mehuru. He met her eyes without expression. He had neither smile nor scowl for her. He regarded her as one might look at a cheating market trader—with a distant scorn.

“She is eating earth?” Frances asked. “Why should she eat earth?”

Bates shrugged. The movement uncoiled the whip, and the long tail of it hissed on the straw of the floor. The women shifted in one small movement, farther back against the wall, farther away from him.

Frances showed the plate to Mehuru. “Died of Shame?” she queried, repeating the girl’s name in her strange, stupid voice.

Mehuru nodded.

“She is eating earth?” Frances asked.

Mehuru’s face was impassive.

“I don’t understand,” said Frances, who understood all too well. She turned to John Bates. “I
don’t
understand,” she insisted.

“They’re savages,” he volunteered. “Perhaps they eat it all the time in their own country. Perhaps she fancied a bit of Bristol dirt for a change.” He gave a little chuckle and then straightened his face when Frances scowled at him.

She turned and went back up the steps to the kitchen, taking the plate with her. “It’s the girl called Shame.” She carefully pronounced the African name. “She has been eating earth. I think she may be sick.”

“Which is she? You know I can’t remember their names.”

Frances flushed scarlet. “She is the one . . . she is the one . . .” Frances could not say that she was the one she herself had sent to Sir Charles last night. Frances could not say such a thing before the servants.

“Oh.” Miss Cole understood at once. “Well, that’s no reason. It must be something else.”

“Should we call a doctor?” Frances asked.

Miss Cole shook her head. “No, too expensive. Besides, how would a white person’s doctor know what to do?”

“The farrier might know, ma’am,” Bates offered. “A horse will eat earth sometimes. A farrier might know.”

Miss Cole tapped her teeth with her toothpick. “Sir Charles,” she said finally. She turned to John Bates. “Go to his hotel and see if he is at home. Give him my compliments and ask him if he would step over. We need his advice.”

John Bates gave a little bow, reached for his hat on the chair, and went out the back door. Miss Cole turned her attention to Cook. “All this will be swiftly settled,” she assured her.
“Sir Charles is very experienced in the handling of slaves. It will be all over by dinner. And I shall see that my brother knows that you have worked through some disruption.”

Cook slapped the pastry on a brimming pie and abruptly trimmed the rim. “I hope so indeed, Miss Cole,” she said ominously. “I must say it’s not what I am accustomed to.”

Miss Cole nodded to Frances to lead the way up the stairs to the parlor. She returned to her seat in the window and looked down at the quay, watching Bates as he waited for the little ferryboat to take him across the river to Sir Charles’s hotel on the opposite side of the Avon. “I hope Sir Charles is at home,” she said. “Or we will have to send for my brother.”

Frances did not answer. She knew that they should not have sent for Sir Charles, with his tainted expertise. She knew why the woman who had named herself Died of Shame was eating earth and pouring earth on her head and streaking her face with it. Frances knew that she was inviting a rapist to order how his victim should be managed. She knew that she was being slowly and effectively corrupted by a system over which she had no control.

“How will he know what to do?” she asked.

“Clearwater is one of the best-run plantations on Jamaica.”

“But he said that a quarter of their slaves died within the first year and another quarter within the next four, just through illness. He loses even more by punishments and selling on.”

“That’s quite good, actually,” Miss Cole remarked. “Some plantations, especially those that are low-lying in fever country, lose every single slave within a couple of seasons.”

Frances seated herself at the table and picked up the sheet she had been darning. “Sir Charles said that of every ten slaves shipped out of Africa, two die on the voyage, two more die the first year, and then another two are dead by the fourth year,” she said, her voice carefully neutral. “So for every ten that have been caught and shipped, only four are left alive by the end of five years.”

Miss Cole nodded. “And this is why it is such a reliable trade,” she observed. “That is why it is such good business for us.”

Frances inclined her head. “I see.”

The two women sat in silence until Miss Cole, looking down at the quay, said, “Here he is,” as Sir Charles strolled up to the front door and hammered on it with his pearl-handled stick.

He came into the parlor behind Brown. He kissed Miss Cole’s hand, bowed low over Frances’s hand, and kissed it gently. He straightened up and gave her a little intimate, roguish smile. He looked like a charming boy caught in an apple orchard with bulging pockets. He very nearly winked.

“Forgive me,” he said in his warm, flirtatious tone. “I should have presented myself with my compliments this morning. My daughter and I enjoyed a most excellent evening with you. Alas! I overslept—your wine was very fine!”

“We sent for you because we have some difficulty with one of the slaves,” Miss Cole interrupted.

He turned from scanning Frances’s face and smiled at her. “Anything I can do to assist—you only have to command me.”

“Frances has the managing of them,” Miss Cole said, allocating blame where it was due. “And now one of them is behaving very strangely. They are all moaning, and it is disturbing Cook.”

Sir Charles gave a little seductive laugh and flickered a smile at Frances. “We cannot have that excellent cook disturbed for one moment. Would you like me to see them?”

“It is just one,” Frances said quietly. “She will not eat food. . . . She is eating—”

“Earth?” he guessed.

Frances’s glance flew to his face. “You knew?”

He shrugged. “It’s not unusual. A foul habit, isn’t it? The women do it often. It makes them sick as dogs. They get the yaws, and they will eat it till they die sometimes. It is their mad spite. They know they are robbing you of their purchase price.
They are insane with spite. You will need to use a bridle, ma’am.”

“A bridle?”

He tutted in irritation. “Of course, you will not have one to hand. I had thought myself at home! We put a bridle on them when they eat soil. A metal cage which goes around the face, under the jaw, with a gag of metal across the mouth. Their driver must take it off at mealtimes and watch her to make sure she eats her food. She must wear it all the rest of the time. They are cunning as monkeys. If they want to eat dirt, they will get their hands on it somehow. The only way is to gag their mouths.”

“And you frequently use these devices?” Miss Cole asked, interested.

“We could not run the plantations without them. We use it on those who eat earth, and many people put their cooks and kitchen maids in bridles to stop them tasting as they work. This is a common problem for us, ma’am, and a common solution. I could draw one for you, and a farrier could make it up. It looks like a scold’s bridle from olden times—it has the advantage of making them dumb as well! Which one is causing the trouble? What size is she?”

Miss Cole looked at Frances. Frances wanted to say, “the one you raped,” but she found she could not. The man stood before her, smiling, assured, charming. She could not name him as a rapist. He had assaulted a woman, and now she ate dirt and heaped dirt on her head, and Frances was dumb.

“The largest woman,” she said, cowardly.

“Well, you’ll just want a medium-size one, then,” Sir Charles said comfortably. “It has to be tight enough to cut into the mouth, to press against the lips, against the teeth and gums. They learn the lesson well that way. If she bleeds a little around the mouth, it is no great loss. Here, I’ll sketch one out for you.”

Miss Cole gestured to the parlor table and put paper and a pen before him. With swift, confident sweeps of the pen, he
drew a little helmet with an open socket for the nose and a smooth plate that blocked the mouth, fastening behind the head with leather straps.

“Don’t be discouraged,” he said kindly to Frances. “One little setback means nothing. I am sure you are making good progress.”

“Thank you,” Frances said stiltedly.

“Now, come back with me to my hotel!” he commanded. “And take a glass of wine and a little luncheon with me there! Honoria will join us; she is longing to improve her friendship with you, Mrs. Cole.”

Frances glanced at Miss Cole, who was flustered and flattered. “You must give us a moment to put on our bonnets. Shall I need a cape or a shawl?”

“It’s as cold as ever, but it has stopped raining, thank God!” Sir Charles exclaimed. “I shall wait for as long as you need to get ready, Miss Cole. It’s not often I have the honor of a beauty on either arm. I would wait all day for the privilege.” He smiled at her, and Miss Cole flushed with pleasure. His sideways gleam to Frances gave the compliment to her. His powerful maleness, his confidence of his own desirability filled the little room.

Frances went slowly to the door. She did not want to put her hand on Sir Charles’s arm. She did not want to have luncheon with him. She did not want to see his knowing little smile or hear his half-shamed, half-bragging chuckle. She thought of him taking the black woman against her consent, and of all the other black women he had used, against their wills. She paused at the door, nerving herself to refuse.

“This is a great pleasure for me.” Sir Charles beamed. “I have such little occasion for the society of English ladies. I can feel myself becoming more civilized minute by minute.”

Frances felt the traitorous weakness of her polite smile. “Oh, good,” she said.

T
HE LUNCH PARTY WAS
not a great success, although Sir Charles was a charming and expansive host and Miss Cole was delighted to be in his company. Honoria was as coldly polite as she had been the previous night. Frances could feel the sick thudding of her headache coming back.

“You are pale, Mrs. Cole,” Honoria said in her rich, languid accent. “You are so lucky. I have to shield my face from the sun all the time at home. Mama is terrified of me getting brown—brown like the girls.”

“I don’t feel very well,” Frances said quietly.

“The strains of new married life, eh?” Sir Charles interrupted, smiling intimately down the table at Frances. “Running a house, teaching the slaves. You must tell Josiah that he must not work you too hard!”

“It is not the work,” Frances said. “I worked harder when I was at home.” She felt a sudden pang of homesickness for the rectory and the little village where she and her father were well known along every lane and track and where she enjoyed a constant sense of self-righteousness. “I used to walk in all weathers. I used to visit the poor; my father was the rector and my uncle, Lord Scott, the landlord. It is the countryside I miss. My home was in the hills outside Bath.”

“And now you are cooped up in town!” Sir Charles exclaimed sympathetically. “I wish I could take you ladies to
Clearwater.” He included Sarah in his smile, but his eyes were on Frances. “You could rest in a hammock and look out over two hundred acres to the sea, Mrs. Cole! As lush and as thick and as fruitful as your heart could desire, and a dozen slaves to do your bidding, whatever you might want! That would bring the color to your cheeks. And I myself should make you rum punch, which would make your heart beat a little faster.” His voice held a caress. Frances glanced uncomfortably at Sarah.

“My sister is happy where she is,” Sarah said. “And within a month we will be living at Queens Square. There is some delay with the purchase of the house, but when it goes through, we shall have the Queens Square garden for our enjoyment.”

“An excellent address,” Sir Charles agreed. “But had you not thought of the heights of Park Street? I barely recognized the city, there has been so much building since I was last here. The whole town seems to be sprouting terraces.”