A Respectable Trade. Philippa Gregory

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