Читать книгу A Respectable Trade - Philippa Gregory - Страница 13

Cook was standing by the kitchen table in offended silence. Brown was washing the second-best china dishes at the sink. She turned when Sarah and Frances came in and dipped a curtsey. The scullery maid backed away, her head down, wiping her dirty hands on her hessian apron.

Miss Cole nodded at them and led the way past the table to the massive door in the wall, bolted top and bottom and secured with a lock. Hanging by the door was a heavy key on a ring. Sarah lifted it down and turned it in the lock. Then she slid back the bolts.

‘Have they been fed?’ she asked. It was as if she were enquiring about the welfare of carriage horses.

‘Yes, Miss Cole.’ The kitchen maid bobbed. ‘And Bates has taken out the slop pail.’

Miss Cole nodded and beckoned Frances to follow her. Frances went towards the doorway and then hesitated. Ahead was a narrow passage-like cave, carved from the dark red sandstone of the cliff, illuminated by the horn lantern which Sarah hung high on a peg hammered into the soft stone.

At its highest the roof of the tunnel was only about six feet; Frances could see the scrape marks of the picks and shovels where the cellar had been hollowed out from the cliff. The floor was bumpy, rutted in parts by the rolling of barrels of sugar and wine. A heavy acrid smell wafted towards her. A smell of old long-stored wine, and a new smell of men and women left for months in their own dirt, a smell of degradation and despair. She recoiled but Miss Cole took hold of her arm and drew her forward.

‘This is where the money comes from to buy your embroidered morning dresses,’ she said sharply. ‘Money has to be earned in this world. This is how we earn ours. It’s a good trade and an honest trade.’

‘It was just the smell …’

‘The ships smell worse than this and we send our sailors out in them. The lead works poison their workers and yet your uncle buys their shot. You have been hidden from the real things, the dirty things, Sister. But now you are the wife of a man who makes his living by the sweat of his brow, whose hands are dirty at the end of the day. And I am proud of it. I don’t want to be a lady who knows nothing of the real world. I am ready to earn my daily bread.’

Sarah’s face was exalted in the flickering light. Frances pulled her arm away. ‘I am ready to play my part,’ she said with simple dignity. ‘I have taken a share in the prosperity of this family. I am ready to work, Sarah, and I was never a lady of leisure. You need not lecture me.’

‘Good,’ Sarah said briefly, and led the way, sure-footed down the familiar passage. As Frances followed, the smell of sweat and grief and infection grew stronger.

‘There!’ Sarah said avidly. ‘Look at them! And in good condition too! I shall pay Captain Lisle a bonus!’

Frances blinked, trying to accustom her eyes to the darkness. The tunnel had widened into a circular cave, lined with silent people. She could dimly make out the gleam of the candlelight on shining eyes and there was a soft chink of a chain as someone moved. She had a sense of a mute crowd, filling the small cellar. They were chained like dogs to each other, and to rings in the walls. Each man, each woman, each child had a light iron collar bolted around their necks and above this shackle their faces were dulled with pain, weary with hopeless grief. She could see stains of pus on the collars where the blisters had gone septic, and bloodstains where they had worn their necks raw.

One ring on the neck collar held the chains for the manacles on the hands, another ring held the chain which roped them together in pairs, the links passing from behind their heads up to bolts on the walls. Their feet were in heavy leg-irons locked to the floor. The place smelled of excrement and the sweet sickliness of diseased flesh. Frances clamped a hand over her mouth to hold back the nausea and above it her face was white as a cave-fish in the gloom, her eyes as black as theirs.

None of them looked at her. None of them cared enough to look at her. Those whose eyes were open stared blankly at the space before them, or looked down at their feet, skin puckered from standing barefoot in the mulchy straw. Mostly they were sitting on the stone bench cut out of the wall of the cave, leaning against the wall, their heads tipped back against the damp stone with their eyes tight shut.

Frances found her breath and whispered: ‘My God!’

Miss Cole looked at her pale face. ‘What is it?’

‘I did not know,’ Frances said. She looked around the cellar at the thirteen black faces still as heartbroken statues in the shadows. The cruelty of the Trade suddenly opened before her, like a glimpse of hell beneath her feet. ‘I did not know,’ she said.

Miss Cole nodded briskly as if that confirmed her poor opinion of Frances. ‘Well now you do,’ she said, and turned to go up the steps again.

Frances started to follow her, but then she froze. She had a strange feeling of being observed. She felt it so strongly it was as if someone had put a warm hand on the nape of her neck. She spun around, forgetting the roughness of the floor, and had to put her hand on the damp wall to steady herself.

One of the slaves was looking at her. His skin was black, as dark as the skin of a ripe grape, his nose flared, his mouth a sculptured perfection. His cheeks were scarred with curious blue lines drawn in intricate patterns on his cheekbones. The same pattern was etched like a headband around his forehead. He had been standing with his head thrown back against the wall, the blank look of all the captives in his eyes. But something about her had drawn his attention, and his head had come up, the chain attached to the collar around his neck chinked. His eyes met hers.

He looked at her as if he knew her. She felt a jolt – as tangible as a light slap in the face. She had a strange falling sensation as if she were about to faint. The moment seemed to last for a long long time as she stared at him and he looked back at her.

‘Come along, Frances.’ Miss Cole’s voice was spinster-sharp.

Frances did not move. She stared at the man. He stared impassively at her.

Miss Cole came back a few steps to see what had attracted Frances’s attention. ‘Oh, you are looking at his tattoos, are you?’ she said. ‘Grotesque, isn’t it? And pagan. One of our captains told me that the ones who wear those tattoos are the wizards and priests of their pagan beliefs. He would have talked with the spirits and foretold the future.’ She laughed one of her rare laughs. ‘He couldn’t have been a very good fortune-teller!’

Frances looked at him. His face was still impassive.

‘Do they not understand English at all?’ she asked.

‘They’ll have to learn,’ Miss Cole said, holding open the door at the end of the passage. Frances turned unwillingly and walked away from the man. ‘The whip is all the language they know now.’

Frances paused at the doorway and looked back at him. She longed to touch him, just lightly, a soft touch with her fingertip on the inside of his wrist where his black skin was soft.

He turned his head to watch her go, until all he could see was the hem of her grey gown and the shadow of the closing door.

The door at the head of the passage closed abruptly, shutting out the daylight and the sound of voices. The slaves were left in darkness.

Mehuru leaned his head back against the damp wall again and closed his eyes.

He did not despair. The Snake’s counsel was ambiguous, not always to be obeyed. Like all gods he teased with false knowledge. Mehuru kept his mind turned inward and waited for the earth under his feet to stop rocking. One of the women was crying but the children were shocked and silent. They looked to Mehuru to advise them, to speculate about what would happen next. The smallest of the children was not yet three and he watched Mehuru’s face with the large trusting eyes of a baby. Mehuru shook his head and looked away from the child. He did not know what would happen. He could be of no comfort to anyone.

In a little while the door opened again and the man brought them loaves of strange-tasting bread, slices of cooked meat that tasted like old dry beef, and some hard good fruit with a green skin and white sweet flesh. There was clean sour-tasting water to drink in a pan.

After a short time the man came back and made them stand, and prepared them to walk in a line. Mehuru did not look for a chance to escape. He realised he was defeated. He did not know where he was, he had never even heard of a place where the air itself was cold and grey and smelled of smoke and dirt. He could not run when he did not know where he should go. So he followed like one of the children in his pitiful obedience. The man had two pistols stuck into his belt and a long thick horsewhip in his hand, they had no chance against him. They lined up like herded cattle, and did as they were bid, straggling along the tunnel and up the four shallow steps into the warmth and poignant normality of the kitchen.

They were not allowed to linger. There was a lad waiting for them who steered them out of the kitchen door into the backyard. Mehuru was so afraid that they were going back to the ship and on another long dreadful journey that he did not look around him at first but watched his bare cold feet creeping slavishly on the cold cobbles; a man no longer, but a trained animal.

‘Get on, you!’ the man said gruffly, and tugged at Mehuru’s chain. They were in a cobbled yard surrounded by high red-brick walls. Ahead of them and on each side were the glowering bulks of the warehouses with barred small windows. Mehuru gazed up and up the grim facade. He had seen stone buildings before, the city of Oyo had higher walls and greater buildings than this, but he had never seen such functional ugliness before. The blank redness of the walls held his eyes. He was afraid the stones had been coloured with blood.

The man shouted at him and Mehuru was pulled forward to the pump in the centre of the yard. The lad worked the pump until the water gushed out into a bucket and the big man threw buckets of water at their heads and mimed to them that they should wash themselves with a block of soap. The water was icy and tasted bitter. The soap stank of ashes from old fires and the fat of pigs. Mehuru shivered miserably and hastened to do as he was ordered.

Two of the women seemed paralysed with fear; they were certain they were being washed for the white men to eat them. They thought they would be safer if they remained dirty. They held tight to their loincloths and ducked away from the buckets of water. In the end the lad poked them with a pitchfork and laughed as they flinched between the icy water and the sharp prongs. He licked his lips at them and the slave driver guffawed when he saw how they looked to the manacled men for help. The two men looked back at them in passive misery, wishing they were blind.

One by one they washed and then rubbed themselves dry on the same rough cloth. Then the back door of the house opened and the scullery maid brought out clothes for them, tittering at their naked discomfort. The lad, tiring of the jest, pulled the clothes on one of the boys and left the rest to guess how the breeches should fit. The women kept their hands spread over their genitals, their dark faces blushed even blacker with shame. The lad grinned and slid a curious finger between one of the women’s clenched buttocks.

Mehuru spoke softly to her and she disengaged herself with a slow speechless dignity. The lad glanced at Mehuru, his eyes drawn to the blue tattoos on his forehead and cheeks.

‘What you staring at?’ he asked aggressively, gesturing with the pitchfork. ‘What you looking at, you beast, you?’

‘Is it now?’ Mehuru asked Snake curiously, in the quietest corner of his mind. ‘Will he spear me and kill me now?’

Snake kept his silence.

Mehuru dropped his eyes to the ground and the lad put the pitchfork down, oddly dissatisfied. ‘I hate them,’ he said to the driver. ‘Let’s get them out of the yard and back into the cellar.’

John Bates shook his head. ‘They’re to go upstairs,’ he said. ‘The new mistress is teaching them to talk English, if she can. Then they go into service.’

The lad looked at them. ‘They can talk?’ he asked incredulously. He stepped closer to Mehuru. ‘Can you talk?’ he shouted into his face.

Mehuru flinched at the spittle. He had no idea at all what the young man was shouting at him. The young man stuck his tongue out at Mehuru.

‘Got a tongue?’ he shouted. ‘Can you speak to me?’

A sigh of pure terror went through the others at the sight of that startlingly red tongue poking out from the obscene pink lips.

‘Gently,’ Mehuru said to the others in his own language. ‘Be still.’

‘He made a noise!’ the lad said, delighted. ‘Say some more, Animal! Say something more!’

Mehuru looked down into the face of the young man. The scaly grey-green eyes looked up at him curiously. The ghostly dreadful skin was speckled with spots of brown as if the youth had some strange sickness.

‘Come on,’ said John Bates the slave driver, weary of the lad’s interest. ‘You must have seen enough niggers before.’

‘Not straight from Africa I haven’t,’ the lad replied. ‘I’ve seen them when they’re tame, from the Sugar Islands. I’ve never seen them straight from Africa. They eat each other, don’t they?’

‘They wouldn’t eat you,’ Bates said. ‘Too smelly by half. Come on now, let’s get them in.’

They split them into two groups by pushing them into place and prodding them with the pitchfork. One group they left chained in the yard but Mehuru, two women, two little boys and one youth they chained and led towards the kitchen door. Mehuru turned back to the other group, shivering in the coldness of the wind.

‘The gods be with you,’ he said.

The other man looked after him. ‘May we meet again, in a better place,’ he said.

They shuffled into the kitchen, stooping to accommodate the weight and cutting edges of the neck-irons. Mehuru looked more vulnerable in the ill-fitting breeches and shirt than in his own loincloth. It had not been thought worth while to buy them shoes so the new breeches ended just below the knee and he was barefoot. The women were wearing cheap gowns which reached their ankles.

Frances and Miss Cole were waiting for them in the hall. When Frances saw them she drew a quick breath of surprise. Close at hand she was struck at once by the tiny frailty of the little children. Their smocks and breeches were far too large for them, their little black necks were coldly exposed by the broad scoop of the collars. The smallest boy was about two, she thought, and the one who stood beside him and watched her with enormous black eyes was no more than five. They both looked at her solemnly, unwaveringly, with the open faces of children whose experiences of cruelty and loss have not yet wiped out the early memory of love. They were still capable of hope.

‘They don’t smell so bad now, ma’am,’ John Bates said loudly. ‘Will you have them in the parlour?’

‘Yes, take them upstairs,’ Miss Cole said. ‘Are they safe?’

‘Quiet as dead rats,’ John Bates assured her cheerfully.

‘We’ll keep them chained for the first lesson,’ Miss Cole decided nervously. She walked down the line as they stood, their eyes fixed on the ground. They trembled slightly as the ghostly woman went by.

‘Come along then,’ she said, and turned for the staircase to the upper floor. John prodded the woman at the head of the chain, and they followed her, their lips compressed tight so they did not cry out in their terror. Only the widening of their eyes revealed that they were afraid, and the slight sheen of sweat on their faces.

Frances watched each one as they went past her. The two women looked as if they had suffered the most. Their skin was lighter and they clung together; both were scarred on the back, and one had an unhealed cut on her cheekbone. They were followed by one awkward ungainly youth who tried to keep a courteous distance from them but was dragged forward by the shortness of the chain. Frances made herself look away and stepped back to let the line go by her. She did not look up again, not even when she heard the thud of someone struck with the butt end of a whip.

‘He was lagging, ma’am,’ Bates explained cheerfully.

Miss Cole led them up the narrow stairs to the little parlour. When the line walked into the room they hesitated, and did not know what to do. Miss Cole pulled out a chair but then could not bring herself to touch the leading woman to guide her to her seat.

‘Bates,’ she said shortly. He put a broad red hand on the woman’s shoulder and thrust her into a seat. Then the other woman and the youth perched on the very edge of the hard chairs and looked at Miss Cole and Frances with eyes which were blank with terror. The little boys had to be lifted up on their chairs. John Bates stepped back from the table and set himself with his back against the door, two pistols stuck in his belt, and his whip held across him.

‘Sit at the head of the table, Frances, and start their lesson,’ Miss Cole ordered.

Mehuru kept his head down, but he noted the tone of command, and he saw that the young white woman obeyed.

Her looks were horrible. She was as smooth and as pale as polished ivory. But the worst thing about her was her hair, which was as long and as thick as weeds in the river and was piled upon her head with trails of it coming down around her shoulders and curling like water weed around her face. Unpinned it must stretch down to her buttocks like some dreadful smooth cloth. Her eyes were as dark as his own but she moved like one of them, with small steps and a hunched body as if she hated herself, as if she were trying to hide her breasts and her belly.

She was bony and small, like an ugly child. He scanned her body and saw the uselessness of her narrow pelvis and the skinny buttocks. She was too thin, a man could not embrace her and roll her over and over on the ground. She would not seize a lover and take him with laughter. She would not shout joyfully at the approach of pleasure. He thought of his woman at home and how he would thrust his shoulder against her open mouth to muffle her singing cries when she opened her legs wide to him. This ghostwoman knew nothing of this, could learn nothing of this. She moved as if she had denied herself of pleasure for many years, as if she had never known lust, as if she had never known desire. She held herself like a criminal, not like a woman at all.

Mehuru suddenly realised that she was looking at him, and feared that his thoughts were showing on his face. He flushed quickly and looked away from her.