Philippa Gregory - A Respectable Trade

‘We will be travelling along trading routes,’ Mehuru said patiently. ‘We will be meeting porters and guards on the trading caravans all along the way. If there is any danger on the roads we can travel with them. I am on an urgent mission, we are travelling at speed. You would have us dawdling along the road and stopping at every village.’

‘I would have us stay snug in the city,’ Siko muttered into a saddlebag. Aloud he said: ‘We are packed, sir, and ready to leave.’

Mehuru nodded to him to load the bags and went into his room. In the corner were his priestly things, laid out for meditation. The divining tray made out of beautifully polished wood indented with circular cups filled with cowrie shells, the little purse filled with ash, a cube of chalk, a flask of oil. Mehuru picked them up one by one and put them into a soft leather satchel, letting his mind linger on them and calling for vision.

Nothing came. Instead he saw once more the prow of a ship, rocking gently on clear tropical waters. He could see a shoal of small fish nibbling at the copper casing of the wooden hull, something he had never seen in waking life. Again he smelled the heavy sickly smell of sugar and sepsis.

‘What does it mean?’ he whispered softly. ‘What does it mean?’

He shuddered as if the day were not pulsing with heat, as if he could feel a coldness like death. ‘What does it mean, this ship?’ He waited for an answer but he could hear nothing but Siko complaining to the cook about the prospect of a journey and the chattering of a flock of glossy starlings, gathering on the rooftop, their deep blue feathers iridescent in the morning sun.

He shrugged. No ship could endanger him; his journey lay northwards, inland. To the north were the long rolling plains of savannah country, an inland river or two, easily forded or crossed by boat, and then even further north – at the limits of the mighty Yoruba kingdom – the great desert of the Sahel. No ship could be a threat to him, he was far from the coast. Perhaps he should see the ship as a good omen, perhaps it was a vision of a slaving ship which would no longer be able to cruise casually off the coast of his country and gather in his country’s children as greedily as a marauding hyena.

Mehuru picked up his satchel of goods and slung it over his shoulders. Whatever the meaning of the vision, he had a job to do and nothing would prevent him. He bundled his travelling cape into a neat roll and went out into the brilliant midday sunshine. The horses were waiting, and the great city gates set deep into the mighty walls of the famous city of Oyo had been open since dawn.

‘So!’ he said cheerfully to Siko. ‘Off we go!’

The quayside coffee shop was on the opposite side of the river from Josiah’s dock, and so he took the little ferryboat across and tossed the lad who rowed him a ha’penny. The coffee shop was the regular meeting place for all the merchants of Bristol from the finest men to the smallest traders. When Josiah pushed open the small door his eyes smarted at the strong aromatic smell. The place was thick with tobacco smoke and the hot familiar scent of coffee, rum, and molasses. Josiah, with his hat under his arm, went slowly from table to table, seeing who was there. All of the merchants were known to him, but only a few did business with him regularly. At the best table, farthest from the damp draughts from the swinging door, were the great merchants of Bristol, in fine coats and crisp laundered linen. They did not even glance up when Josiah said ‘Good day’ to them. Josiah was not worth their attention.

He nodded politely in their direction, accepting the snub. When he was nephew by marriage to Lord Scott they would return his greeting, and he would be bidden to sit with them. Then he would see the cargo manifests which were spread on their table. Then he would have a chance at the big partnerships and the big trading ventures. Then he would command their friendship, and have access to their capital for his own ventures. They would invite him to join their association – the Merchant Venturers of Bristol – and all the profits and opportunities of the second-greatest provincial city in Britain would fall open to him.

‘Josiah!’ a voice called. ‘Over here!’

Josiah turned and saw a table crowded with men of his own class, small traders who shared and shared again the risks of a voyage, men who scrambled over each other for the great prizes of the Trade and yet who would be wiped out by the loss of one ship. Josiah could not reject their company. His own father had been an even lesser man – trading with a fleet of flat-bottomed trows up and down the Severn: coal from Wales, wheat from Somerset, cattle from Cornwall. Only at the very end of his life had George Cole owned an ocean-going ship and she had been a broken-down privateer which had managed one voyage for him before she sank. But on that one voyage she had taken a French trading ship, and claimed all her cargo. She had shown a profit of thousands of pounds and the Cole fortune had been made, and the Cole shipping line founded. George Cole had put up his sign ‘Cole and Sons’, and bequeathed the business to his son and daughter. They had made it their life’s work to expand yet further.

Two men seated on a bench moved closer to make space for Josiah. Their damp clothes steamed slightly in the warmth and there was a prevailing smell of stale sweat and wet wool.

‘Good day,’ Josiah said. He nodded at the waiter for coffee and the boy brought him a pot with a cup and a big bowl of moist brown lump sugar.

‘You did well on the Daisy then,’ the man who had called him commented. ‘Prices are holding up for sugar. But you get no tobacco worth the shipping.’

Josiah nodded. ‘It was a good voyage,’ he said. ‘I won’t buy tobacco out of season. I’ll only take sugar. I did well on the Daisy and we turned her around quickly.’

‘Do you have a partner for your next voyage?’ the man opposite him asked. He spoke with a thick Somerset accent.

‘I am seeking a partner for the Lily . She will be in port within two months.’

‘And who commands her?’

‘Captain Merrick. There is no more experienced master in Bristol,’ Josiah said.

The man nodded. ‘D’you have the accounts for her last voyage?’

Josiah shook his head, lying with easy fluency. ‘They are with the Excise men,’ he explained. ‘Some trouble over the bond last time. But the Daisy is a better example in any case. She was fresh into port and showed a profit of three hundred pounds for each shareholder. You won’t find a better breeding-ground for your money than that!’

The man nodded. ‘Could be,’ he said uncertainly.

Josiah dropped two crumbling lumps of thick brown sugar into his coffee, savouring the sweetness, the very scent of the Trade, and signalled for a glass of rich dark rum. ‘As you wish,’ he said casually. ‘I have other men that should have the offer first, perhaps. I only mentioned it because of your interest. Think no more about it.’

‘Oh no,’ the man said quickly. ‘What share would you be looking for?’

‘A quarter,’ Josiah replied coolly. He looked away from the table and nodded a greeting at another man.

‘And how much would that be?’

Josiah seemed to be barely listening. ‘Oh, I couldn’t say …’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Perhaps a thousand pounds each, perhaps nine hundred. Say no more than nine hundred.’

The man looked rather dashed. ‘I had not thought it would be so much …’

Josiah turned his brown-stained smile on him. ‘You will not regret it being so much when it shows a profit of twenty or thirty per cent. Eh?’

‘And who will be the ship’s husband? You? You will do all the fitting and the orders?’