London - Edward Rutherfurd [453]
After that however, later tonight . . . She gazed at the window.
She thought she could trust the servants. She prided herself on her cleverness there. It was normally the master, not the mistress of the house who engaged the staff, but early in their marriage she had persuaded Lord St James that he was too busy, and as a result, both the butler and the housekeeper owed their allegiance to her. The two footmen obeyed the butler, but she took care to keep them sweet, and the maids received gifts of money and clothes. The cook, the pastry chef – whose fantastic creations regularly brought applause at dinner parties when dessert was announced – and the coachman were admittedly her husband’s; but both the grooms were in love with her because, when they held her stirrup, she would sometimes give their necks a little touch.
So if this evening, a certain person were discreetly to enter the house while his lordship was out, and if that person were to go into her ladyship’s chamber, into which, without her express permission, his lordship was forbidden to enter – “It is the only thing,” she once melodramatically told him, “the only courtesy I ask” – she could be sure there would be no tittle-tattle, no peeping at keyholes or listening in passages. Nothing would disturb the silence of the house unless, within the sanctity of her chamber, it was the little rustle of silk, the soft creak of the bed, a tiny moan.
Several minutes passed as Balthazar worked on her hair and she contemplated this prospect. Finally, having reassured herself that her plans were in good order, she allowed her gaze to wander to another figure close by her side. For, as well as Balthazar, one other person had also been allowed into the room and he was now sitting silently on a little stool, just within her reach if it amused her to take notice of him, which she now did by stroking his head. He was a round-faced boy, eleven years old, dressed in a little crimson coat like the footmen, and he looked at her with large, adoring eyes. His name was Pedro. He was black.
“Aren’t you lucky, Pedro, that it was I who bought you?” her ladyship asked; and the boy nodded eagerly. For no fashionable household was complete without a pretty, dark-skinned plaything like this. Pedro was a slave.
If a black man had been an object of curiosity in London a century before, he certainly was not now. The busy British colonies had seen to that. Nearly fifty thousand slaves a year were being shipped from Africa to work the sugar plantations of the West Indies and the tobacco plantations of Virginia. Even Puritan Massachusetts was engaged in the trade. Often such shipments came through England; and though Bristol and Liverpool were the greatest ports for slave-ships, nearly a quarter came from London where Negro boys were often bought as toys and domestic servants.
“Tell me, Pedro,” she teased, “do you love me?”
Technically the boy was a slave, but he lived with the servants; and the servants in aristocratic houses lived exceedingly well. Beautifully clothed, well-enough housed, well fed and reasonably paid, they formed an élite. Footmen especially did well because they were often lent out to others. The serried ranks of footmen at an assembly, even in the greatest ducal households, would mostly have been borrowed from other noble friends. Tips could be generous. A London footman who knew how to make himself agreeable could probably save enough in due course to set himself up in business. Similarly, Pedro the slave knew that, if she chose, Lady St James could set him free one day and put him on the path to prosperity. Black butlers and shopkeepers were not unknown. Yet if he had gone to a Virginia plantation . . .
“Oh yes, my lady.” And he covered her hands – it was a liberty which amused her – with boyish kisses.
“I bought him and he loves me,” she laughed. “Don’t worry, my little man,” she glanced down and chuckled, “you are becoming a little man, aren’t you? You shall never be sold. If you’re good.”
It always seemed