Leith rather enjoyed observing these garrulous Virginians. Their American accents varied, some with a detectable Britishinfluence, others indicating they were Virginia born and bred. Most were masters of backslapping and ale sipping, false bravado and coarse jesting. He kept quiet, a habit of his that gained far more than any jaw flapping. Tall as he was, he kept to the back of the room, where he had a wide view of the proceedings despite his eye patch.
What he hadn’t expected was a woman amid so many men.
She stood by a window, her head bent, paging intently through a daybook. He couldn’t see her features or tell if she was young or old. His gaze hung on her shawl with its blue ground and embroidered white flowers. The same blossoms adorned her wide-brimmed straw hat.
The indigo plant?
As he thought it, she shut her daybook and looked up and around, turning slightly forward so he could see her clearly beneath the brim of her hat. Dark hair crept past a lace cap that framed her pale oval face made up of pleasing if not perfect features. Young. Genteel. She stood out like a wildflower among weeds. Her gaze swept the room before she began talking with the elderly gentleman beside her.
Even at a distance she wore that tight, fatigued look he’d seen on his clerks who’d kept too long at their books. It was broken only by a flash of vitality now and then when she smiled or made conversation. Something oddly familiar about her tugged at him ...
“Gentlemen—and one dear lady,” the moderator began, with a sidelong look at her as chuckling rolled through the room. “As has been said, ‘Life is a smoke! If this be true, tobacco will thy life renew; then fear not death, nor killing care whilst we have best Virginia here.’” Clearing his throat, he grew more serious. “We are gathered today to set ourannual market price for tobacco this twenty-ninth day of October, the year of our Lord 1774...”
Leith had never been here to witness price setting, though his father had on occasion. When they were absent, their factors stood in for them. On either side of him were three of his own agents—McCann, Innes, and Hendry—who managed his Virginia stores.
Planters began calling out numbers, much like an auction, to furious ayes and nays from both Virginians and Scots. It was one of the Glaswegian merchants’ chief complaints that these planters established their own terms, though for tobacco growers, how could it be otherwise?
“Since those of us on the Upper James naval district surpass all others in terms of tobacco exports, we should have the first—or the most—say,” one planter cried out amid the melee. “All here know our sweet-scented leaf is far preferred to the bitter Orinoco—”
“Only in France,” another man countered. “The Danes and Northern Europe prefer the stronger, bright-leaf variety.”
“That is neither here nor there. Let us return to the matter at hand.” The moderator gestured to an assistant, who held a stack of what Leith guessed were accounts. “I shall call each planter by name, who’ll then tell me by number their outbound cargoes for the Clyde and Glasgow—”
“We shall be here for a fortnight, then,” another Virginian protested. “Surely there’s a better way to agree upon a price without splitting hairs.”
Frowning, the moderator consulted a ledger. “For this last season, a total of thirty-one thousand, ninety-six hogsheads of tobacco were landed there by a total of thirty-two firms in Scotland.”
Another man’s voice overrode the moderator’s. “Yet ourdebt to these merchants has only increased, dependent as we are on their stores here and the goods we require. Their markup along the Chesapeake is extreme and their profit exorbitant. I cower at the costs.”
“Which must come to an end!” someone else all but shouted.
An aggrieved rumble swept the room even as several ayes crested above it from other Scots present. These colonists had a great many grievances that had to do with trade. The presence of the tobacco merchants simply put them in the midst of the storm.
As if to highlight the chasm, the planters faced the Scots, drawing a dividing line of sorts in the chamber. Would Leith’s fellow merchants and their factors, few as they were, take a verbal pummeling and not speak?
“Well over a million pounds’ sterling is owed by American planters—Virginians foremost—at the close of this season,” one Glaswegian merchant said, his gaze fixed on the knot of York River planters complaining the loudest.
A stone-faced gentleman cleared his throat. “Fueling our debts are a number of unreasonable, arbitrary charges imposed by you tobacco lords that have somehow become law over time.”
“Name them,” Leith replied.
A bewigged, stout man removed his cocked hat, a puff of powder dusting his caped shoulders. “Among these aforementioned petty marketing charges are British duties, Virginia export duties, freight, primage, cooperage, porterage, brokerage, postage of letters, and the merchants’ rising commissions, to list a few.”
“Much of the duty is recovered on reexportation to European markets,” Leith said matter-of-factly. To be less civil would earn him no allies in this simmering room.
“But in those markets, other heavy charges are again imposed.”
“Yet you remain able to set tobacco’s market price year after year,” Leith countered.
“Mayhap you can speak to the market surplus that needs addressing too,” another planter said.
An hour passed, then two. Leith consulted his watch. Half past four. Would these Virginians not come to the point? As he snapped his watch shut, a silken voice broke through the blether.
“We Virginians have set the annual price and tried our luck in all the principal tobacco markets for over a century, only to see Glasgow destroy London’s supremacy in the trade. Shipments sent to Glasgow in 1773 were triple those sent to any other port.” The young woman seemed to look straight at him. “Half the tobacco from the Upper James sailed under the Spiers and Buchanan mark. A handful of British merchants have complete control of the bulk of our tobacco exports, which is no longer tenable. I say we end Glasgow’s monopoly and their ruthless policies, so different than traditional English trade.”
Indignation turned to outright jubilation as her words fell away. Clapping reached a crescendo before she continued, her attention on the tobacco lords. Leith listened to her steady American cadence with only a hint of the mother country, a sort of linguistic independence.
“You Scots merchants have arrived at a remarkable time. No doubt you’ve heard our recent answer to your—rather, Parliament’s—Intolerable Acts.”
