Respectable Trade Read Free Page B

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 except Siko complaining to the cook about the prospect of a journeyand 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 northward, 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 farther 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 that 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 shoulder. Whatever the meaning of the vision, he had a job to do, and nothing would prevent him. He bundled his traveling 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!”
    T HE 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 scents 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 drafts from theswinging 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 that 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 oceangoing ship, and she had been a broken-down privateer that 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