The Quality of Mercy (12 page)

And if we fail, he thought, and you end on the gallows, there is a chance that you will be seen as martyrs, and that is almost as good … But no, they were not the stuff of martyrs, or heroes either; they had no voice, no attitude, they represented nothing. If by some miracle of advocacy true justice could be done and these men declared guilty of murdering the slaves and hanged for it in full view, that would be the best solution of all. Beyond hoping for—Stanton would not risk such a plea. But what a wonderful thing it would be, what a triumph! A clarion call through all the years to come, sounding the note of justice and humanity to future generations.

With this thought, his sense of differences among the men, a perception that had earlier taken him by surprise, altogether disappeared. They became once again in his eyes the featureless, amorphous body they had been before, a body that circumstance had deprived of all rights, made entirely subject to considerations of utility, of the higher and nobler purposes they could be made to serve.

“If you do not make this plea,” he said, “you will have no defense against the charges of murdering the captain and making off with ship and cargo, since the slaves will be regarded in that light. You will be condemned and you will end on the cart to Execution Dock.”

No reply of any kind came from the men assembled there. Ashton regarded them in silence for some moments, then said, “I leave the matter to your consideration. I will pray to Almighty God that you be guided to the right decision.”

On this, he raised an arm and signaled to the guards waiting outside the gate.

“I should have suspected somethin’ there and then, when he said that about seein’ the power of music in me. How can anyone see the power of music in a man only by exchangin’ a few words? He must have been followin’ me, he must have seen me fiddle. But the notion did not enter me mind at the time, I was puffed up with pride an’ vainglory, I am not the man to deny that.”

Several people were listening to this, or appearing to, all in a medium state of drunkenness, as was Sullivan himself. They were sitting round a fire of scraps and rags on a piece of waste ground in the town of Peterborough. “They is terrible cunnin’, some of these beastly fellers,” somebody said.

“Lookin’ at it another way, I had spent a good part of the money, so the loss was not so grievous. Then there was this shillin’ that was left to me. Small things can lead to great, as various sages has observed at different times. A shillin’ is not a large sum, but when I discovered that shillin’ in me pocket, I knew the Blessed Virgin was still keepin’ me in the lamp of her eyes. It was at the first partin’ of the ways, one road was leadin’ to Watford, the other to St. Albans. I took a shillin’ out of me purse an’ tossed it an’ it come down for St. Albans.”

“Aye, St. Albans, is it?” another man said. “I bin there.”

“What it was, you see, I was only lately a purse-bearin’ man,
an’ I was not intoirely in tune with the condition of it, so I did not think to put the shillin’ back in me purse, I stowed it in me pocket. Then it come back to me, a picture of meself, standin’ at the crossroads, spinnin’ up the coin.”

He had seen the group round the fire, seen the Hollands passing among them and brought a pint from the nearby taphouse, so as to be friendly. “Then there was the pleasure of it,” he said, “feelin’ the edges of the shillin’ in me pocket. Pass the jar down, will you, it is stayin’ too long at that end.”

Not much was left of his shilling now. Sixpence had gone in the course of the four days it had taken him to get here from Bedford, and twopence had gone on the gin. He felt entitled to a fair share of this, as also, it seemed, did the man sitting next to him, who had contributed nothing but readily seconded his request for the jar to be passed along. This was a lank, lantern-jawed, unshaven person, from the folds of whose being there emanated an odor of neglect strong enough to prevail against the fumes from the burning rags.

“My friend, I understand you, I understand you well,” this man said. “It was the force of habit that saved you.” The gin was beginning to slur his speech slightly, but he had the accents of an educated man. “One of the strongest forces known to humankind,” he said. “I would put it on a level with instinct, in the sense that it is antecedent to reflection. If you had paused for thought, you would have replaced the shilling in the purse and so lost it along with the rest. You may find it hard to believe, but I have known force of habit to be urged in a court of law as a defense against the charge of murder.”

“You know somethin’ of the courts, then?”

This had come from the man on the other side of Sullivan. There was a woman sitting close by him; it seemed that these two were together.

“Know something of the courts?” The man paused to take a drink from the jar. “I should think I do.”

“Steady with the fluid,” Sullivan said, reaching out for it. He had to keep his hand extended for a considerable time before the jar was yielded up to him. Half of the gin was gone already. “My name is Michael,” he said. “Names are in order, seein’ as we are takin’ swallers from the same font.”

“Know something of the courts?” the man said again. “Simon Reedy is the name, a name that should have been known throughout the land, but for adverse circumstances and conspiracies against me. I was intended for the law, sir, I might say I was born for it. I practiced at the bar and was widely recognized as an up-and-coming man, a man marked out for greatness. Lord Chief Justice Reedy was the title prophesied by many, until through the plots of envious colleagues I was wrongly accused of falsifying documents and other malpractices of a similar kind, and struck off the list. As a consequence, I was forced to descend to the lower level of lawyer’s clerk in the London firm of Bidewell and Biggs.”

“What was the case you was speakin’ of, where force of habit played such a part?”

The question came from a ragged man sitting across from Reedy, on the other side of the fire.

“The defendant had struck his wife a blow that knocked her off her feet. In falling she struck her head on a curb stone, fractured her skull and died on the spot. It emerged that it was this man’s common practice to strike his wife in moments of irritation. He had been doing so for many years. His counsel mounted an extremely effective defense on the grounds that the blow had been occasioned by pure force of habit and that the defendant could not therefore be said to have intended harm, in the sense that the law understands intention, as there had been no interval of time for intention to be formed. I will not disguise from you that I was the barrister who mounted that brilliant defense.”

“What happened to him then?”

“He was sentenced to five years’ penal servitude.”

“The son of a whore, he got off light, they should of stretched
his neck,” the woman said, speaking for the first time and with unexpected violence. “I would give ’im force of habit, I would put a bellyache in his broth every night till he croaked.”

“No, no,” the lawyer’s clerk said. “The fact that you administered poison to him on a number of successive nights could not be said to constitute habit. On the contrary, it would argue premeditation, it would be viewed as
male in se
. Capital punishment should be inflicted in such a case, by the command of God to all mankind. You will remember his words to Noah, our common ancestor. ‘Whosoever sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.’ ”

“You could train it up to be force of habit,” the woman’s companion said. “If you kept at it night after night with very small doses, just a grain or two, in the end you would do it without thinkin’ twice.”

“You misapprehend,” Reedy said. “This is the law of the land we are talking of. There is need to make distinctions. The ability to make distinctions is the mark of a civilized society. It is necessary for the welfare of the people,
salus popoli suprema lex est
. Pass the jar this way, will you?” His speech had thickened now and his mouth had developed an occasional tendency to slip sideways a little, but there was no faltering in the flow of his words. “You see, it is very different from the theft of your purse,” he said to Sullivan. “In that case there was clear intention of harm.”

“Well, it was meditated on beforehand, so much is true. But I contributed to me own downfall. The thought that he might be given to thievin’ niver strayed into me mind. He was a Galway man, like meself.” Sullivan paused for a moment, then added, “Leastways, that was what he gave himself out to be. I have thought since that it might not have been the truth. Losin’ the purse was a blow to me, I am not the man to deny that, even though the gravity of it was reduced by the spendin’ that had gone before.” He remembered as he spoke the brightness of the weather, the world full of promise as he stepped out into Bedford
High Street, well fed and well rested, spring in the air. “There was a blessin’ on me,” he said. “An’ it is on me still.”

“You have no cause to reproach yourself,” Reedy said. “It may have been unwise to trust a man on such short acquaintance, but it was neither rash nor heedless as the law understands these terms.”

In his seagoing days Sullivan had seen much strong drink consumed, and it impressed him now that the lawyer’s clerk was able to maintain such command over his speech while slowly losing it over his features and the bearing of his head. It argued a great deal of practice. “I am not sure in me mind how them words differ,” he said. He had always liked to pick up new words and use them in conversation; it added tone to a man. A great deal of his vocabulary had come from songs he knew by heart and sometimes sang to the accompaniment of his fiddle.

“They differ profoundly,” Reedy said. “Rashness consists in failure to perceive, or give full consideration to, an error in the surrounding circumstances, when an action is being contemplated or is about to be taken. Heedlessness is a wrongful failure to advert to and give due weight to the surrounding circumstances, when an action is being contemplated or is about to be taken.”

Finding no immediate response to this, Sullivan contented himself with nodding sagely. Reedy’s head was declining onto his breast. His words came more slowly now and were more difficult to follow. “Both in their different ways are forms of failure to take care, and both are deserving of punishment if harm or wrong should ensue. I lost my place as a clerk in the firm of Bidewell and Biggs because of the gross heedlessness of Bidewell, who frequently left money in a drawer in the anteroom of his office without ensuring that the drawer was kept locked, thus bringing about the ensuing harm of my dismissal. This criminal heedlessness of my employer was compounded by …”

The voice died away. Something between a sigh and a snore came from Reedy and then no further sound.

“Force of habit,” the woman’s companion said. “He knows somethin’ about that, I dare say. He already had a skinful before you brought the extra. He is here without shelter an’ night comin’ on because he has found his true level, never mind all that talkin’. It is different with us, we got nothin’ to blame ourselves for. Till three months ago me an’ Betty here an’ our three children were livin’ as we had allus lived, as my father lived before me. We had some strips of land in the open fields on the edge of the village of Thetford, not very far from here. We kept fowls, we had a cow, we got our firewood from the common land. Then the new law come in. They enclosed the village an’ shut us out. Most of the common land was taken by the squire, an’ so we lost our livin’. We couldn’t pay the rent, they didn’t want us on the parish poor rates, so they put us out of our cottage, bag and baggage. We found people in the village, freeholders, who were willin’ to take the children for the sake of the work that could be got out of them. We been on the move ever since, livin’ as we can. There is a new factory opened in the town, an’ they wants people for frame-knittin’. We are goin’ to try our luck there tomorrow.”

“We stay together,” the woman said, and Sullivan saw her smile at the man beside her. “Sharin’ makes it easier,” she said. “We been unlucky in some ways, but we still together.”

Sullivan considered for a few moments. The jar was finished, the fire was dead; most of those who had been sitting around it had melted away without his noticing. He had enough money left for two pallets on the floor of a lodging house, but not more. The lawyer’s clerk had no coat to his back, only shirt and waistcoat. Just as I was meself, he thought, when I walked through the prison gates an’ set off for the County of Durham, holdin’ me vow inside me.

He shook Reedy by the shoulder to rouse him. “You an’ me will find lodgin’ for the night, so we can be in better case to welcome the mornin’.”

Roused from his stupor, Reedy affirmed that he knew of a place not far away where a bite to eat and a space on the floor
could be secured for twopence a head. “This is a true act of friendship,” he said. “Simon Reedy will be eternally grateful.”

With Sullivan supporting his uncertain and wavering steps, he led the way through a maze of streets until they came to a house that had no inn sign or mark of any kind, only a brass candle lamp set over the door. They were received by an elderly woman of unsmiling looks and short words, to whom Sullivan handed over his last pennies.

The sleeping spaces were straw with strips of hessian laid over them; there was a row of chamberpots along the wall at the far end. There were a dozen people already there, three of them women. Sullivan soon disposed of the slice of bread and the bowl of thin gruel, but Reedy could not stomach more than two spoonfuls of this, so Sullivan obliged by having the rest. “I have always been a foe to waste,” he said.

The two found space to lie side by side, and the candles were doused and borne away, all save one. Reedy reaffirmed his eternal gratitude, relieved himself in one of the chamberpots and was soon snoring. Sullivan looped the straps of the cloth bag containing his few possessions over his arm in such a way that no one could detach it or fumble inside it without disturbing him. He did the same with his boots, tying them together and looping them into the handle of the bag. His head was heavy with the gin and sleep came soon to him.