A Respectable Trade. Philippa Gregory

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СКАЧАТЬ they can make four times our profits. Just think of it! Twice the amount of trade in half the time!

      ‘The big Bristol merchants are members of the Royal Africa Company and they do not have to wait off the coast, trading up and down at all the little stations, buying here and selling there. They anchor at a Royal Africa Company fort and they load food and water that is waiting for them, and the Trade that is ready and waiting for them. They halve the loss of life for the crew because they are away from West Africa within a month, while we delay for six months gathering cargo.

      ‘When they arrive in the West Indies they have an agent waiting on the quayside to greet them. He has already bought the cargo for loading, he has already arranged the sales. He has agreed prices while they were still at sea. They deal with the best planters and they have contracts arranged. When they give credit to the planters they bring home bills which are honoured in London at once, by the planter’s agents, as soon as they are presented. So they get their money within the quarter. But we have to give credit and then wait until our ship is in the West Indies again, sometimes as long as two years before we are paid! The people we trade with do not have a London agent. They are the smaller planters, and they demand credit from us. It is no business for the little men any more.’

      ‘Yet Josiah seems so confident,’ Frances demurred.

      Sarah’s face was grim. ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘He is very confident. He sees sugar in the storerooms of the Redclift, his bond is filled with tobacco and rum. He can see the gold coming in from one little sale after another, and he is down on the quayside doing as well as other little traders. But I spend my day with the books and I can see that the profits are slowly falling as the costs rise. The world is changing and we will have to change too.’

      ‘My uncle thought that Josiah was a prosperous man,’ Frances protested, clinging to hope.

      Sarah shrugged her shoulders. ‘What would he know?’ she said disrespectfully. ‘I imagine he has never seen a set of accounts in his life. He would see his rent rolls and nothing more. But I have spent my life with these books and I can read them as you would read a novel. And I can see that each voyage out, and each voyage back, is less and less successful. It costs more every day, the risks are greater all the time.’

      ‘What can we do?’ Frances asked. ‘Can’t we build a bigger ship? Or take up a different trade?’

      Sarah Cole measured Frances. ‘No,’ she said with a little smile. ‘We can never leave the Trade. It is the only thing we know. It is the foundation of our fortunes and it is our inheritance. Whatever anyone says, I will never countenance that we leave the Trade. We must stay with it – but do it in a new way.’

      ‘What way?’

      ‘We import slaves direct,’ Sarah said very softly. ‘We bring black slaves into England. We put a black slave in every household in England. We call them Scott slaves – named in honour of you – and we make our fortune.’

      There was a loud crash from the quayside as something was dropped, followed by half a dozen shouts. Neither woman heard them.

      ‘What?’

      ‘We ship slaves already,’ Sarah said sharply. ‘You saw the accounts with me. You saw the figures. You saw that we bought three hundred and twelve on Daisy’s last voyage, you read it yourself. You saw wastage on voyage – sixty-two, you knew that meant that sixty-two of them had died during the passage. You saw how they sold in Jamaica – they went for fifty pounds each. My idea is to bring a sample of them on to England. To train them here to be house servants, to sell them for households in England. Isn’t it the fashion?’

      ‘Yes,’ Frances said slowly. Lady Scott had a little black boy to carry her fan and run her messages, and every lady in London had a black maid or a handsome black footman to ride behind the carriage, and a little black girl to play with the children. But all the slaves that Frances knew had been imported singly from the West Indies, brought over by returning planters, sold by slaving captains. ‘Can you train them in large numbers, and sell them in large numbers?’

      ‘Why not?’ Sarah demanded. ‘It was done in the past. In the last century people imported slaves direct from Africa. I have heard of a Liverpool merchant who has imported a dozen this year. They take up little space on the ship coming home from the Sugar Islands, and they will sell in England for eighty or ninety pounds each. But if our slaves could become known for their manners and their training, we could command an even greater price.

      ‘You shall teach them. They are the pupils you would have had, if you had come to us as a governess. Now you will take a profit rather than a wage but they will still be your work. They will be famous for their smartness and their training, and that will be your job.’

      ‘I’m not sure …’ Frances said.

      ‘You can have no objection,’ Sarah said coldly. ‘You knew we were Bristol merchants. You accepted the Trade well enough when it took place at a distance. You came for a job with us.’

      ‘I did not know I was to be governess to slaves … Josiah never said …’

      ‘You can have no objection though. You knew where our wealth was earned.’

      ‘I have no objection,’ Frances said. ‘Of course I have none. I know that it is a good thing to take the Africans away from their paganism and to teach them godly work and religion.’

      ‘And they are not humans, not as we understand humans,’ Sarah reminded her. ‘They are animals. They cannot speak unless we teach them; otherwise they just grunt and moan. They are not fully human.’

      ‘Oh,’ Frances said. ‘I had not realised. I have never had much to do with them. Lady Scott has a nigger pageboy, but I have never seen one fully grown.’

      ‘So you will teach them?’

      Frances nodded. ‘I only hesitated because I do not know if I can. I have taught children, but they were human children. I wouldn’t know how to teach niggers.’

      Sarah nodded grimly. ‘Then let me tell you, Sister, that you had better find a way to teach them. This will be the saving of our Cole and Sons and its key to the future. If we can train and sell slaves then we can make a fortune big enough to satisfy Josiah’s ambition, and to pay for Queens Square. If we do not, it will not be Queens Square for you, you will stay here forever, beside the filthy water of the dock – cold and damp in winter, deadly in summer.’

      There was a long silence. Frances could feel herself becoming breathless and put her hand to the base of her throat to steady her pulse. ‘You are not exaggerating?’ she confirmed. Her little cough rose up and choked her for a moment.

      Sarah waited until she had her breath back. ‘The bottom is slowly falling out of the Trade,’ she said. ‘If, in a few years, our Bristol partners can get a better return in land and building, or in shops, or in importing cotton to Manchester, they will no longer put their money with us. Then we will not be able to send out ships at all and our investment – in our ships, in our warehouse, in the quay – will be thrown away. We have put so much money into the Trade that we have to trade, and we have to make the Trade pay.’

      ‘I will try, Sarah, I will try my best to teach them.’

      Sarah smiled a wintry smile. ‘You were a governess, weren’t you?’ she asked. ‘You replied to our advertisement for a governess? We planned all along that you should teach them. But now instead of working for a wage СКАЧАТЬ