Philippa Gregory - A Respectable Trade

Lord Scott looked up from his newspaper. ‘Frances?’

‘I have had a reply,’ she said baldly. ‘From the Bristol merchant.’

‘Has he offered you the post?’

She shook her head, pulling the letter from her pocket. ‘He makes no mention of post or pupils. He has offered me marriage.’

‘Good God!’ Lord Scott took the letter and scanned it. ‘And what do you think?’

‘I hardly know what to think,’ she said hesitantly. ‘I can’t stay with Mrs Snelling. I dislike her, and I cannot manage her children.’

‘You could stay here …’

She gave him a quick rueful smile, her pinched face suddenly softening with a gleam of mischief. ‘Don’t be silly, Uncle.’

He grinned in reply. ‘Lady Scott will follow my wishes. If I say that you are our guest then that should be an end of it.’

‘I do not think that I would add to her ladyship’s comfort, nor she to mine.’ Her ladyship and her three high-bred daughters would not welcome a poor relation into their house, and Frances knew that before long she would be fetching and carrying for them, an unpaid, unwanted, unwaged retainer. ‘I would rather work for my keep.’

His lordship nodded. ‘You’re not bred to it,’ he observed. ‘My brother should have set aside money for you, or provided you with a training.’

Frances turned her head away, blinking. ‘I suppose he did not die on purpose.’

‘I am sorry, I did not mean to criticise him.’

She nodded, and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. Her ladyship would have fluttered an embroidered handkerchief. Lord Scott rather liked his niece’s lack of wiles.

‘This may be the best offer I ever get,’ Frances said abruptly.

He nodded. She had never been a beauty, but now she was thirty-four and the gloss of youth had been worn off her face by grief and disappointment. She had not been brought up to be a governess and her employers did not treat her with any particular consideration. Lord Scott had found her first post, but had seen her grow paler and doggedly unhappy in recent months. She had replied to an advertisement from Cole and Sons thinking that in a prosperous city merchant’s house she might be treated a little better than in a country house of a woman who delighted to snub her.

‘What did you think of him as a man?’ he asked.

She shrugged. ‘He was polite and pleasant,’ she said. ‘I think he would treat me well enough. He is a trader – he understands about making agreements and keeping them.’

‘I cannot write a contract to provide for your happiness.’

She gave him her half-sad rueful smile. ‘I don’t expect to be happy,’ she said. ‘I am not a silly girl. I hope for a comfortable position, and a husband who can provide for me. I am escaping drudgery, I am not falling in love.’

He nodded. ‘You sound as if you have made up your mind.’

She thought for a moment. ‘Would you advise me against it?’

‘No. I can offer you nothing better, and you could fare a lot worse.’

Frances stood up and straightened her shoulders as if she were accepting a challenge. Her uncle had never thought of courage as being a woman’s virtue but it struck him that she was being very brave, that she was taking her life into her own hands and trying to make something of it.

‘I’ll do it then,’ she said. She glanced at him. ‘You will support me?’

‘I will write to him and supervise the contract; but if he mistreats you or if you dislike his life I will not be able to help you. You will be a married woman, Frances, you will be his property as much as his ships or his stock.’

‘It cannot be worse slavery than working for Mrs Snelling,’ she said. ‘I’ll do it.’

Mehuru, dressed very fine in a long embroidered gown of indigo silk and with a staff in his hand carved with Snake, his personal guardian deity, strolled up the hill to the palace of Old Oyo with Siko walking behind him.

It was yet another full meeting of the council in two long months of meetings. The Alafin – the king – was on his throne, his mother seated behind him. The head of the military was there, his scarred face turning everywhere, always suspicious. The council, whose responsibility was for law and enforcement throughout the wide federation of the Yoruba Empire, was all there; and Mehuru’s immediate superior, the high priest, was on his stool.

Mehuru slipped in and stood at the priest’s shoulder. The debate had been going on for months; it was of such importance that no-one wanted to hurry the decision. But a consensus was slowly emerging.

‘We need the guns,’ the old soldier said briefly. ‘We have to trade with the white men to buy the guns we need. Without guns and cannon I cannot guarantee the security of the kingdom. The kingdom of Dahomey, which has traded slaves for guns, is fast becoming the greatest of all. I warn you: they will come against us one day, and without guns of our own we cannot survive. That is my final word. We have to trade with the white men for their armaments, and they will take nothing from us but slaves. They will no longer buy gold nor ivory nor pepper. They will take nothing but men.’

There was a long thoughtful silence. The Alafin, an elected monarch, turned to the head of the council. ‘And your view?’

The man rose to his feet and bowed. ‘If we capture our own people, or kidnap men from other nations, we will be ruined within a generation,’ he said. ‘The strength of the kingdom depends on its peace. A nation which trades in slaves is in continual uproar, making war on individuals, on other nations. And we will never satisfy the white men’s need for slaves. They will gobble us up along with our victims.’

He paused. ‘Think of our history,’ he continued persuasively. ‘This great nation started as just one town. All the other cities and nations have chosen to join with us because we guarantee peace and fair trading. We have to keep the peace within our borders.’

The king nodded, and the queen, his mother, leaned forward and said something quietly to him. Finally he turned to the chief priest, Mehuru’s superior. ‘And your final word?’

The man rose. His broad shoulders, thickened by a cape of rich feathers, obscured Mehuru’s view of the court and their serious faces. ‘It is a sin against the fathers to take a man from his home,’ he began. Mehuru knew that his vote was the result of months of meditation and prayer. This was the single most important meeting that had ever been held. On it hung the future of the whole Yoruba nation, perhaps the future of the whole continent of Africa. ‘A man should be left free with his people unless he is a criminal. A citizen should be free.’

Mehuru glanced around. The faces were grave, but people were nodding.

‘It is a sin against the Earth,’ the chief priest pronounced. ‘In the end it all comes back to the Earth, the fathers, the ancestors, and the gods. It is a sin to take a man from his field. I say we should not take slaves and sell them. I say we should protect the people within our borders. They should be safe in their fields.’

There was a long silence. Then the king rose to his feet. ‘Hear this,’ he said. The old women who had the responsibility for recording decisions of the council leaned forward to hear his words. ‘This is the decision of the council of the Yoruba kingdom and my command. Slave trading with white men of any nation shall cease at once. Kidnap of slaves within our borders is forbidden. There shall be no safe passage for white men or their agents when they are on slaving hunts. Other trade with the nations of white men such as gold, ivory, leather goods, brassware and spices is allowed.’

There was a murmur of approval and the king seated himself again. ‘Now,’ he said with a rueful smile, ‘we have the policy – all we have to do is to enforce it while black slavers hammer at our western borders and white men’s ships cruise up and down our coastline in the south.’