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 life’s 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 won’t buy tobacco out of season. I’ll 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. ‘D’you 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 won’t 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 couldn’t 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 ship’s 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 man’s 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 sister’s. 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 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 Scott’s 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 I’ll take a share after all. Will his lordship be coming in with us?’
Josiah smiled slightly. ‘Oh, I should think so,’ he said.
Mehuru’s 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