The Quality of Mercy (6 page)

He was silent for a moment or two and then said, with a sort
of solemn indignation, “And now it seems I am to be sued by this Bolton on the grounds that by my intervention I have deprived him of a capital sum, namely the current value of a male slave in good condition at the Kingston slave market, where it was purposed to sell him.” Ashton shook his head. “It is lunacy,” he said. “A writ is served on a man for violent and flagrant disregard of the laws relating to the liberty of the subject, release of the abused person is secured and then you find yourself being sued for his value as a slave.”

Something divided in his expression, some mixture of incredulity and ruefulness, struck her now as comical, and she laughed a little, at which he was visibly surprised for a moment. Then he smiled himself and nodded. “Yes,” he said, “you are right, it is ludicrous.”

“You should laugh more, Frederick,” she said. “And you should divert yourself more. It does not mean that one cares less. And this is especially so now, with this case of the slave ship that has come before you, that one hears talk of all over town.”

“No wonder there is talk. It is a most unusual case. In fact, I can’t remember anything like it. Not only for the circumstances, but for the appalling wickedness of the crime—those unoffending people, our fellow human beings, bound and cast overboard to drown, and all to save a few guineas. However, we may derive benefit from it.”

“Derive benefit?” She had never grown used to her brother’s sudden changes from near to far in the way he viewed things. There were times, as now, when she felt a peculiar chill, a sense of dismay, at his ability to pass in a breath from compassion genuinely felt to considerations of strategy, to what might be turned to account.

“The case has received widespread attention,” he said. “It has featured much in the newspapers—people are talking about it, and not only in London. It will give us an opportunity to bring the iniquities of the trade to public notice. There are two actions,
entirely separate in law but closely bound together, both brought by the owner of the ship, a man who has made a fortune out of sugar—out of the slave trade, in other words.”

“Yes,” Jane said. “Erasmus Kemp. We have met.”

“Have you indeed? I did not know that.”

“It was at the house of Sir Richard Sykes, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. It seems that he and Mr. Kemp have some banking interest in common. As you know, his daughter Anne is a particular friend of mine.”

“You said nothing of this.”

“There was really nothing to say. Just a few minutes of conversation, quite unmemorable, with several others present.”

Jane had busied herself as she spoke with setting the tea things back on the tray, an operation she would normally have left to the parlormaid. She was aware of not being entirely frank, but saw no reason why she should be, or why she should be uneasy at not being. Distinctly memorable, in fact, had been Erasmus Kemp’s glowering good looks and elegant figure, his lack of smiling, the blaze of his regard, as if he were aiming his eyes at people. She had sensed a sort of unhappiness in him, fiercely contained. His face had lightened a little when he complimented her on her gown, but still he had not smiled.

After waiting in vain for something further from her, Ashton said, “All this happened something like fourteen years ago, and now there is no ship, very few survivors and no reliable witness.”

She was about to ask him more when a footman entered to announce a gentleman visitor, a Mr. Van Dillen, who was asking if he might be accorded some minutes of Mr. Ashton’s time.

“Show him into my study and ask him to take a seat,” Ashton said, getting to his feet. “Tell him I shall be with him in a minute or two. This is one of the underwriters,” he said to his sister, after glancing at the card the servant had handed him.

Jane too had risen. “I have some things to see to,” she said. “I look forward to hearing your account of the visit.”

As they stood together in the light from the wide bow windows,
the resemblance between brother and sister was evident. There was the same delicacy of feature and clear gaze, the same fine dark brown hair, though Jane’s had tints of copper that her brother’s lacked, the same straight-shouldered, narrow-boned build. The brother’s face was grimmer, beyond what could be accounted for by the difference in age, drawn with some expression of endurance or obstinacy, as if the suffering caused him by contemplating the suffering of others had forced him to call on reserves of resistance, taken from him the commoner sort of kindness.

“What will you do?” she asked, as they moved together toward the door. “About Mr. Evans, I mean.”

He held the door open for her, keeping it wide to allow the unhindered passage of the skirts. “What I shall do,” he said eagerly, “is bring immediate proceedings for criminal assault on his behalf against Bolton, who ordered it, and the men who seized him and conveyed him to the ship, and the ship’s captain who had him chained to the mast.”

She smiled at him as she passed through. “Dear brother,” she said, “you will drown in litigation one of these days if you are not careful.”

He remained in the room for some minutes after she had gone, as if at a loss, momentarily disabled. These moments of arrest came sometimes to him, times at which his purposes seemed suspended, hoisted away from him, and he was recalled to his former life, genteel and pointless—the debating society, the coffeehouse, the written verses of slight value circulated among friends …

He glanced up suddenly, as if to break free. Yes, he would bring criminal charges against them. He had never before initiated criminal proceedings by a black man against a white. The Grand Jury might throw out the indictment. But it was only by testing the ground that any way forward could be found. Tirelessly, in spite of all disappointment, he persisted in the belief that a judgment would someday be delivered that would open men’s eyes, call the entire system into question. If Evans’s case went as
far as the Court of King’s Bench, substantial costs were only to be expected …

The maid came in to take away the tea things, and with this Ashton recalled suddenly that he was awaited in his study and began to make his way there.

The man who rose at his entrance was middle-aged and corpulent, plainly dressed in frock coat and double-breasted waistcoat and wearing the raised wig with double roll common to men of business. “Good of you to give me your time, sir,” he said as they shook hands. “I am much obliged. Van Dillen at your service.” He spoke with a slight foreign accent.

“Pray be seated. You represent the insurers, I believe.”

“That is so, sir. You have been giving the case some attention, as I understand.”

Ashton’s first impulse was to ask the other how he had come by this understanding. But he forbore—it would be common knowledge by this time, at least in the circles frequented by his visitor. “Naturally, yes,” he said. “It has some unusual features, would you not agree?”

Van Dillen raised a plump, short-fingered hand and briefly caressed his chin. “Unusual features, yes, one could say that. You will know that an action has been brought against the underwriters to recover a percentage of the value of sixty-eight male slaves and seventeen females lost in the passage from the Coast of Guinea to the West Indies in the year 1753.”

“I did not know the numbers. What is your warranty for those?”

“The first mate of the ship, James Barton, has made a deposition to that effect and will repeat his testimony in court, if so required. Other members of the crew may be called upon to testify, since it is a question of fact and does not involve them in any criminal charges. Barton has said that they cast the negroes overboard while the breath of life was still in them. This they did on the orders of the captain, which orders, as he declares, were sufficient authority. He has been freed on the surety of the present owner, son of the former owner, by name Erasmus Kemp.
His whereabouts have been kept secret to prevent him from being got at.”

Some snap of resentment in the tone of these last words told Ashton that efforts to get at the mate had already been made, without success. “Well,” he said, “if we can bring him before the court, we may get at him there.”

“You say ‘we,’ sir. I am delighted to hear you say it. It is in the hope that you will support our case that I have taken the liberty of calling on you at your home. They claim there was a shortage of water aboard the ship. It is our belief, and we will found our case on it, that this is gross falsehood, that these slaves were cast overboard because they were sick and like to die before reaching Jamaica, and that this was done in the full knowledge that death aboard ship, when due to natural causes, is not covered by our policies.”

Ashton passed a hand over his brow. “Natural causes, is it? Heaven help us. I have not yet understood how I can be of service to you.”

“You can speak for us. You are a man known for your opposition to slavery, known as a generous patron and protector of black people. Who more fitted than you to make an appeal to the court and express on the behalf of the underwriters the sincere indignation and moral outrage we feel at the barbarism of this claim? Thirty guineas a head for the men, twenty-three for the women—that is what the owner is claiming. We will dispute the estimates of value, but if they are taken as correct, it will amount to upward of twenty-five hundred pounds, taking the men and women together.”

“I see, yes,” Ashton said. “You want me to sound the note of humanity so as to help you avoid meeting the claim.”

“I would not put it like that, sir.”

“No, I dare say not. Well, we shall not quarrel over words. Perhaps we can come to an accord. We for our part will seek to have the cases heard together in the same court. The charges Kemp is bringing against the crew, or what remains of them, are
murder and piracy—murder of the captain, not the negroes. Since the ship was at sea, the case comes under the jurisdiction of the Admiralty, but this will make no difference in practice, as it will be heard at the Old Bailey just the same, with two, or possibly three, Admiralty commissioners sitting in judgment. If you will raise your voice with ours in a common plea and argue with us that one set of human beings cannot, in law, have such power over another, that this was mass murder whatever the quantity of water, we may both be victorious. You will avoid payment, and we may obtain a ruling that denies the right of property of one man in another.”

He had leaned forward in the enthusiasm of these words, but Van Dillen remained silent and motionless for several moments, avoiding his eye. “No, sir,” he said at last. “No, it will not do. We will press for the hearing to be held at the Guildhall, as is usual in such claims. We cannot confuse the two cases, we cannot hazard the firm’s money on an issue of property. It would only lead to muddle, sir. No, we must confine our arguments to the question of jettison, whether these negroes were cast over the side for some just cause or not.”

“Some just cause?” Ashton rose to his feet, obliging his visitor to do the same. “I should have known better,” he said. “I will not take up any more of your time. Be assured that whatever words are uttered on our side in court, they will not be designed to save your guineas.”

It was the purse that brought an end to Sullivan’s brief period of affluence, while at the same time signaling its peak—the purse, and with it, in disastrous combination, a misplaced sentiment of fellow feeling. In all the years of his life—years of poverty and vagrancy from early adolescence onward—he had never possessed such a purse; in fact, he had never possessed a purse at all, keeping what coins he had in a cloth bag inside his shirt. And he was, in any case, particularly vulnerable to tricksters during this period of his life, being unused to money and in a way innocent about it after the years in the Florida settlement. They had traded, but there had been no use for coins.

For all it was so fleeting, he was always to remember the sense of wealth and well-being that the beautiful purse and its contents had brought him. They became linked in his mind with his miraculous escape, the supremely fortunate encounter by the wayside, a time when he had been a man at large, a man under a vow, with a destination, in stout boots and a good coat with brass buttons. Though in the end not much was to remain to him but the destination and the vow, he was always to think of these few days as constituting one of the highlights of his life.

The wagon put him down in Bedford on the evening of the following day, when it was already dark. Guided by his new sense
of himself as a traveling man with the power of purchase about him, he chose an inn in the high street with a good front, the Golden Cockerel, a name that seemed appropriate to his condition. The landlord, however, was not at first in full accord with Sullivan’s vision of himself, perhaps suspicious at the discrepancy between the good clothes and the wild hair and ragged beard. Then there was the Irish accent, the haggard looks, the vagabond’s fiddle over the shoulder. He wanted a shilling in advance, he said.

So it was the landlord of the Golden Cockerel who had the first sight of the purse and its contents. Sullivan was later to wonder whether this man, who smiled upon him when he saw the money, was in the plot too. But no shadow of doubt troubled him at the time; he took pleasure in the display, and bore himself in lordly fashion.

He dined well on sheep’s liver chopped and grilled, accompanied by roast potatoes, the whole washed down by a quart of ale. It was the best meal he had eaten for months, since the yams and sweet potatoes and marsh birds of the settlement. He slept soundly, breakfasted heartily and paid the balance of his score to the now friendly landlord.

It was a man transformed who walked down Bedford High Street that morning. To make matters even better, the weather had changed; he emerged from the inn to sunshine and a blue sky. It was the last day of March. Spring had arrived; he saw a cherry tree with buds of flower in a sheltered courtyard. Always mercurial, Sullivan felt his life to be full of blessings, and he began, as his habit was, to count them over. He was well clear of London, no one could know which way he was headed, there could be no alarm put out for him here. The fetid cell in Newgate Prison, where he had lain in fetters with his shipmates since arriving in England, the fear of the noose that had accompanied his days and nights—all this fell away from him. He was going to do his duty by poor Billy Blair. He was a man who kept his vows. And
in the knowledge of this he held up his head and walked with a light step.