So! he said cheerfully to Siko. Off we go!
The quayside coffee shop was on the opposite side of the river from Josiahs dock, and so he took the little ferryboat across and tossed the lad who rowed him a hapenny. 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 lifes 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 wont buy tobacco out of season. Ill 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. Dyou 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 wont 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 couldnt 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 ships husband? You? You will do all the fitting and the orders?
Myself, Josiah said. I always do. I would trust it to no other man. But I should not have troubled you with this. There is Mr Wheeler now, I promised him a share in the Lily.
No, stay, the man protested. I will take a share, Josiah. I will have my share in her.
Josiah nodded easily. As you wish, Samuel. He held out his hand and the other grasped it quickly. Come to my warehouse this afternoon, and bring your bond. I will have the contract for you.
The man nodded, half-excited and half-fearful. He rose from the table and went out. He would be busy from now until the afternoon scouring the city for credit to raise his share.
I had not thought he had nine hundred pounds to outlay, one of the others remarked. You had best see your money before you sign, Josiah.
Josiah shrugged. Despite himself, his eyes strayed to the table at the top of the room. The men had called for a pie, a ham and some bread and cheese for their breakfasts. They were drinking port. They were joking loudly, and their faces were flushed. They did not have to haggle over some small mans life savings to finance a voyage. They carved up the profitable voyages among themselves, they shared the profits from the docks even the barges that plied up and down the Avon paid them a fee, the little ferryboat and even the lighthouses paid them rent.
I have some news, Josiah said abruptly. I am to be married.
There was a stunned silence at the little table.
To the niece of Lord Scott of Whiteleaze, Josiah went on. His lordship will be calling on me soon and we will settle the marriage contract.
My God! Josiah! one exclaimed.
Wherever did you meet the lady? one of the others asked. The rest simply gaped.
She called on us, Josiah lied convincingly. She knows a friend of my sisters. They were at school together.
The men could hardly find words. I had thought you would be a bachelor forever! one of them said.
And with Sarah to keep house for you! I never thought you would marry.
I was waiting for the right lady, Josiah said precisely. And for my fortunes to be on such a rise that I could offer her a proper position in life.
The men nodded. The news was too staggering to be taken in all at once. I had not thought he was doing that well, one of the men muttered.
I was waiting for the right lady, Josiah said precisely. And for my fortunes to be on such a rise that I could offer her a proper position in life.
The men nodded. The news was too staggering to be taken in all at once. I had not thought he was doing that well, one of the men muttered.
I shall move from the warehouse, Josiah said. I shall take a new house for my wife.
Where will you live?
I shall buy a house in Queens Square, Josiah said. Again he glanced towards the top table. The men there owned Queens Square outright; it had been built by the Corporation, to their design. They could choose whether or not to sell to him. Money alone could not buy him into their neighbourhood; but with Lord Scotts niece on his arm he would be welcomed in the elegant brick-faced square. Josiah would call them neighbour and his new wife would visit their wives.
The men at the table nodded. And the lady
Shall we return to business? Josiah asked with a small triumphant smile. I think that is enough about the lady who is to be Mrs Cole.
They nodded, as impressed by the triumph of his marriage as by his quiet dignity.
About this voyage of the Lily, one of them said. I think Ill take a share after all. Will his lordship be coming in with us?
Josiah smiled slightly. Oh, I should think so, he said.
Mehurus mission was going well. He went from town to town and even stopped at the councils of the larger villages as he worked his way north-west across the great rolling plains of the Yoruba nation. The villagers knew that he was talking nothing more than sense. For all the profits that could be made from the slave trade and they were beyond the dreams of most farming communities there were terrible stories, garbled in the telling, of rivers where no-one dare fish and woods where no-one could walk. Whole villages were desolate, hundreds, thousands of women and children abandoned and starving in fields which they could not farm alone. It was a blight spreading inland from the coast, a plague which took the young men and women, the fittest and the strongest, and left behind the ill, the old, and the babies.
This plague of slavery worked unlike any other. It took the healthy, it took the adventurous, it took the very men and women who should command the future. The guns and gold and fine cloth could not repay Africa for the loss of her brightest children. It was the future leaders who were bled away, along the rivers, down the trade routes.
This is where it stops, Mehuru said firmly in one town council after another. One nation has to refuse. One nation has to throw up a wall and say that it must end here. Otherwise what will become of us? Already the trade routes running north are unsafe, and the wealth of this nation depends on our trade. We send our leather goods, we send our brassware, we send our rich luxuries north, across the Sahel Desert to the Arab nations, and we buy our spices and silk from them. All our trade has always been north to south, and now the slavers are cutting the routes.
The coastal forests and plains are becoming deserted. Who will fish if the coast is abandoned? Where shall we get salt if the women cannot dry it in the salt pans? Where shall we get food if we cannot farm? How can a country be strong and safe and wealthy if every day a hundred, two hundred men are stolen?
The men in the village councils nodded. Many of them showed the profits of the slave trade with ragged shirts of cotton woven in Manchester, and guns forged in Birmingham. But they were quick to notice that the vivid dyes of the cottons bled out after a few washings, and the guns were deadly to the users as well as to the victims when they misfired. No-one could deny that the slave trade was an unequal deal in which Africa was losing her brightest sons in exchange for tatty goods and shoddy wares.
Mehuru worked his way north, persuading, cajoling. He and Siko became accustomed to riding all day and camping out at night. Siko grew deft at building small campfires for cooking when they were out in the open savannah. The young man and the boy ate together, sharing the same bowl, and then rolled themselves up in their cloaks and slept side by side. They were fit and hardened by exercise and quietly companionable. Every time they stopped for Mehuru to tell the village elders of the new laws they heard more news, and all of it bad. The trade goods were faulty, the muskets blew to pieces the first time they were fired, maiming and killing. The rum was poisonous, the gold lace and smart hats were tawdry rubbish. Worse than that, the white men were establishing gangs of African brigands who belonged to no nation and followed no laws but their own whim, who cruised the rivers and seized a solitary man, a child playing hide and seek with his mother, a girl on her way to a lovers meeting. There could be no rule of law where kidnappers and thieves were licensed and paid in munitions.
Some of the coastal nations now dealt in nothing but slaves. They had turned from a rich tradition of fishing, agriculture, hunting and trading, to being slaving nations, with only men to sell, and gold to buy everything they might need. Nations of brigands, terrible nations of outlaws.
And the white men no longer kneeled to the kings of the coastal nations. They had built their own stone castles, they had placed their own cannon in their own forts. Up and down the rivers they had built great warehouses, huge stone barns where slaves could be collected, collected in hundreds, even thousands, and then shipped on, downriver, to the forts at the river mouth. There was no longer any pretence that the African kings were permitting the trade. It was a white mans business and the African armies were their servants. The balance of power had shifted totally and completely. The white men commanded all along the coast by the power of the gun and the power of their gold.
The more Mehuru heard, the more certain he became that the Yoruba states were right to stand against slavery. The wickedness of slavery, its random cruelty, no longer disturbed him as much as the threat to the whole future of the continent which was opening before him like a vision of hell: a country ruled by the gun for the convenience of strangers, where no-one could be safe.
If slavery is such a bad thing, Siko said one night as they lay together under the dark sky, I suppose youll be setting me free as soon as we get back to Oyo.
Mehuru reached out a foot and kicked him gently. You buy yourself out as we agreed, he said. Youve been robbing me blind for years anyway.
He smiled as he slept; but in the night, under the innocent arch of the sky, he dreamed of the ship again. He dreamed of it cruising in warm shallow water, its deck misshapen by a thatched shelter, the sides shuttered with nets. In its wake were occasional dark, triangular fins. There were sharks following the ship, drawn through the seas by the garbage thrown overboard, and by the promising smell of sickness and despair. They could scent blood and the likelihood of death. The prow sliced through the clean water like a knife into flesh, and its wake was like a wound. Mehuru started awake and found that he was sweating as if he had been running in terror. It was the ship again, his nightmare ship.
He woke Siko. It was nearly dawn, he wanted the company of the boy. Lets go and swim, he said. Lets go down to the river.
The boy was reluctant to get up, warning of crocodiles and hippos in the river, and poisonous snakes on the path. Mehuru caught the edge of the boys cloak and rolled him out.