“You speak as though you would be happy to dine sitting upon a packing crate, and sleep on a bale of straw. Mr. Bertram will form false notions of the simplicity of your tastes.”
“Here we see demonstrated the logic of the female mind, Mr. Bertram. I generously give her carte blanche and she finds something to be aggrieved about.”
“Your lordship,” Edmund said blandly, “would you care to look over the stables and the kennels next?” He looked over at Julia, who nodded almost imperceptibly.
“And, your ladyship, it would be my pleasure to show you the rose garden and the shrubbery,” Julia added. “I fear the rain will return shortly—shall we walk out first and go over the upstairs rooms later?”
Their noble visitors decided with one accord to go outside, with Edmund ready to lead his lordship in one direction while the ladies went the other. “And I think I spy our steward, Mr. Rivers, walking up to meet us,” Edmund said, pointing out a portly gentleman with a tidy sheaf of papers under his arm, making his way slowly up the hill.
“Mr. Rivers, eh?” enquired Lord Delingpole. “Does he bank a lot of money from this place? Will he brook no interference from us? Is he currently attending to only the farmlands or does he manage everything in your father’s absence?”
“As a matter of course, your Lordship, Mr. Rivers will be at your beck. And your call.”
“Lord, give me strength,” murmured Lady Delingpole.
* * * * * * *
Aboard the Crocodile
Sierra Leone, May 1811
Dear Fanny,
Thank you for the several long, excellent letters I have received from you. Your latest arrived less than two months after it was written, which is quite astonishing! I wish you could see the delight with which every letter from home is greeted here.
We are at anchor outside of Freetown, which is built on a low peninsula with forested mountains beyond. I was surprised when I first saw the extent of the colony, as I expected it to be little more than a collection of mud huts.
William Price paused, frowning, over his blank page and wiped the sweat from his face so it would not drip on his letter. He had barely begun, but he was struggling over how much of his situation, or his sentiments, he ought to share with his sister.
The heat—
He scratched it out again irritably. She knew about the heat. He always mentioned the heat. It was stifling, smothering, and humid. One had to constantly struggle against an inclination to complete lassitude. Every movement, every breath, was an effort at times.
And what to say of Freetown? The dismal, dirty, disease-ridden outpost which was supposed to be a beacon of hope to the enslaved Africans?
Freetown has grown tremendously since I first saw it eighteen months ago. It makes one’s chest swell with pride, Fanny, to consider that wherever we English go, we bring so much with us, in the way of education and improvements. We are making roads and opening waterways, building harbours, and erecting permanent barracks, hospitals, churches, and schools, all built with red bricks made from the local soil or stone quarried from the nearby hills.
But of course the most interesting thing about Freetown is the wide variety of peoples living here—we have soldiers and missionaries, and shopkeepers and there are thousands of negroes who have been returned to Africa from as far north as Nova Scotia and as far south as Brazil, all different shades of brown and black, and all with different manners, language, and customs.
He didn’t want his sister to know that after several years’ service with the West African Squadron, he was fighting a sense of futility. Many slave ships escaped their patrols, and those Africans who were rescued, faced an uncertain future, so far as his observation could reach.
I am extremely fortunate in my current assignment. The Crocodile has seized two more slavers—the Marianne and the Esperanza. We brought several hundred freed negroes onto the beach before the town and there was the usual misery and to-do of finding a place for them all, and half of them being too sick to help themselves at first. We cannot send them back to wherever they came from, of course, because they would just be captured again and sold back into slavery. The missionaries do what they can with feeding and clothing them, and there is a little school established for the children.
Wherever possible, the freed Negroes are apprenticed to some local tradesman or merchant to learn to support themselves. At first, I thought it a little queer that one black man may purchase another black man for twenty dollars—but it is not so different for poor people here, than for poor folk in England, really. If they were not indentured, then how else might they feed themselves?
“Mr. Price?” came a soft and plaintive female voice.
William jumped up and opened the door of his cabin.
“Yes, Mrs. Columbine? May I be of assistance, ma’am?”
His commander’s wife tucked a stray lock of limp hair back under her cap with a shaking hand. “Oh, Mr. Price, please come and mend the punkah! The boy would not leave off trying to climb up the rope. I scolded him and told him he was only to pull on it gently, but he pulled down the entire contraption! And after you were so clever and obliging as to make it for us! My poor Charlotte cannot sleep without someone fanning her constantly!”
“I shall be there on the instant, ma’am,” William promised.
William grabbed his jacket from his chair and hurried to the captain’s cabin, where he found a frightened black child cowering in the corner, and on the floor was the punkah—a small carpet which William had earlier
