The Color of Death (38 page)

“I don’t know how much good I was as a spy. You seemed to get more information than I did. About all I could do was say yea or nay to what you’d dug up. But Zondervan paid me in sovereigns, and there were things that the Dutchman wanted to know, like how many constables there were at Bow Street, who was in charge. Y’see, he couldn’t really believe that a blind man could run things the way Sir John did. What they really wanted to know was who and how many they might meet in the neighborhood of Bloomsbury Square. So, naturally, we knew that the next house they raided would be in Bloomsbury. Sir John told me what to tell them, so it was just a matter of waiting them out.

“But I’ll tell you, young sir, I might still have had a bit of feeling for John Abernathy left in me, for I knew what he’d escaped from, and I knew what such mistreatment can do to a man. But when I found out he’d killed that poor pregnant girl, that ended it between me and him. I saw he’d become like a mad dog, and so like a mad dog, he was shot down.”

“I have a pair of questions,” said I.

“Ask them,” said he.

“Why did Abernathy’s robber gang always do their work in blackface?”

“Because Johnny said one thing he learned working on the plantation was that whites can’t tell one black man from another. All they see is the color of the skin. And besides, one of the gang really was an African; Osili was his name. He angered me by wearing my Dragoon s coat on that second raid. Had a fondness for it, he did. He used to study himself in the looking glass wearing it, when he could.”

“He was the one died of his wounds there at Lord Mansfield’s?”

“He was the one.”

“Just one more question. Did I hear you aright when you gave the name of the plantation where you were that last year as ‘the Burnham plantation?’ ‘

“That’s the one. That’s the name. It was a Welshman, getting on in years, who owned it and operated it. But he married a widow with four children. I heard his own son was living in London. You don’t, by any chance, know him, do you?”

I never gave Mr. Patley s question a frank answer. Indeed, whether out of consideration or cowardice, I never mentioned to Robert Burnham what I had learned from the constable. As for what became of those taken into custody on that grand night, all were hanged for theft, with the exception of Mistress Pinkham, who was given transportation to the North American colonies, and Mr. Collier, who in return for his testimony against Mr. Zondervan was generously given but a year in Newgate Gaol. The captain and crew of the Dingendam were held for near a month while the ship was searched thoroughly, and all but Lady Lilley’s jewels were found aboard the vessel. The maritime court tried to decide what laws had been broken, but finally, after repeated protests by the Dutch ambassador, the captain and crew were allowed to depart in their vessel. I happened to hear that John Abernathy’s body, pulled from the Thames, was claimed by a woman for burial. Though I have no certainty of it, I have always assumed that it was Maude Bleeker who saw him to his last resting place.

Thus do things change, lives end, people come and go. Only, it seems, do the laws of our country and colonies remain static. The contradiction as regards slavery remains unchanged. The Somerset case was continued until autumn as the Lord Chief Justice wrestled with it. In the end, it bested him. Though Mr. Somerset, the former slave, was given his freedom, the decision came in such a way that it changed naught but that. It remains for Parliament to remove that cancer upon the body politic.