A Respectable Trade. Philippa Gregory

      Mehuru shook the dream from his head. He had a busy day before him: a meeting at the palace and an opportunity for him to show himself as a man of decision and ambition. He put the dream away from him. If it came back he would consider it then. It was a brilliant cream and white dawn, full of promise. Mehuru did not want such a day shadowed by the dark silhouette of a dreamed ship. He turned inside and called Siko to heat water for his wash and lay out his best clothes.

      In the Bristol roads – where salt water meets fresh in the Bristol channel – the slaving ship Daisy paid off the pilot who had guided her down the treacherously narrow Avon gorge and cast off the barges which had towed her safely out to sea. She put on sail as the sun rose and a light wind got up, blowing from the west. Captain Lisle drew his charts towards him and set his course for the Guinea coast of Africa. The cabin boy had laid cut a clean shirt for him and poured water for him to wash. He poured it back into the jug, holding the china ewer carefully in grubby callused hands. It would be two months at least before they made landfall in Africa and Captain Lisle was not a man to waste clean water.

      Cole and Sons, Redclift Dock, Bristol.

       Monday 15th September 1787

      Dear Miss Scott,

      I write to you Direct on a delicate matter which Perhaps should best be addressed to his lordship. However since I have not Yet his lordship’s Acquaintance, and since you indicated to me that you have to make your Own Way in the World, perhaps I May be forgiven for my Presumption.

      I was Delighted to meet you at my Warehouse when you applied for the Post of governess, but your Family Connexions and own Demeanour convinced me that I could Never think of You as an Employee of mine. It was that Realisation which prompted me to draw the interview to a Close.

      I had an idea Then which I now Communicate to you: Namely that I wish that I might think of you as a Wife.

      Some might say that as a Bristol Merchant I am overly Ambitious in wishing to Ally myself with your Family. But you say Yourself that your circumstances do not permit the Luxury of Choice. And tho’ I am in business – ‘in Trade’ as I daresay his lordship might say – it is a Respectable Trade with Good prospects.

      You will be Concerned as to the House you would occupy as my wife. You saw Only my Warehouse apartment and I assure you that I am moving Shortly, with my Sister who will remain living with Me, to a Commodious and Elegant house in the best Part of town, namely Queens Square, which his lordship may know.

      As to Settlements and Dowry – these certainly should be Arranged between his lordship and myself – but may I Assure you that you will find me Generous if you are Kind enough to look on my Proposal with favour.

      I am Sensible of the Honour you would do me, Madam, and Conscious of the Advantage your connexion would bring me. But may I also hope that this Proposal of mine will Preserve you from a lifetime of employment to which your Delicate talents and Aristocratic Connexions must render you unfit?

      I remain, your most obedient servant,

      Josiah Cole.

      Josiah sprinkled sand on the letter with a steady hand and blew it gently away. He rose from his chair and went to the high window and looked down. Below him were the wharves and dark water of the Redclift dock. The tide was in and the ships were bobbing comfortably at the dockside; a steady patter of sound came from their rigging, rattling in the light freezing wind. There was a heap of litter and discarded bales on the Coles’ empty wharf, and mooring ropes were still coiled on the cobbles. Josiah had seen his ship Daisy set sail on the dawn tide. She should be at sea by now, with his hopes riding on her voyage. There was nothing that he could do but wait. Wait for news of Daisy, and wait for the arrival of his second ship, the Lily, labouring slowly through the seas from the West Indies, heavy with a cargo of sugar and rum. His third ship, the Rose, should be loading off Africa.

      Josiah was not by nature a patient man, but the job of a merchant in the Trade with only three little ships to his name had taught him steadiness of purpose and endless patience. Each voyage took more than a year, and once a ship had sailed from his dock he might hear nothing from her until she returned. He could do nothing to speed her, nothing to enrich himself. Having provisioned and ordered Daisy and watched her set sail, there was nothing to do but wait, gazing down at the rubbish slopping on the greasy water of the port. The distinctive smell of his ships – fearful sweat and sickness overlaid with heady alcohol and sugar – hung around the dockside like an infected mist.

      Josiah’s own clothes were lightly scented; the hair of his wig and his hands were impregnated. He did not know that throughout Friday’s interview with Miss Scott she had been pressing her handkerchief to her face to overcome the acrid smell of the Trade, overbearing in his little room above the warehouse and never stronger than when a ship was in dock.

      He glanced at the letter in his hand. It was written very fair and plain, as a man of business writes when his orders must be understood and obediently followed. Josiah had never learned an aristocratic scrawl. He looked at it critically. If she showed it to Lord Scott, would he despise the script for its plain-fisted clarity? Was the tone too humble, or was the mention of the Queens Square house, which he had not in any case yet bought, too boastful?

      He shrugged. The stubborn ambition that had brought him so far would carry him farther – into social acceptance by the greater men of the city. Without their friendship he could not make money, without money he could not buy friendship. It was a treadmill – no future for a man. The greater men ran the port and the city of Bristol. Without them Josiah would forever cling to the side of the dock, to the side of the Trade, like a rat on a hemp rope. Miss Scott and her uncle Lord Scott would open doors for him that even his determination could not unlock … if she so desired.

      Frances opened Josiah’s letter and re-read it for the tenth, the twentieth time. She tucked it into the pocket of her plain gown and went down the vaulted marble-floored hall to his lordship’s study. She tapped on the door and stepped inside.

      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.