The Quality of Mercy: A Novel Read online

  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 canno
t 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.”

  5

  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.

  He had clear intentions for this morning. He would make the rest of his appearance tally with the coat and boots, the whole to be in perfect keeping with a purse-bearing man. A more prudent person, knowing the long journey that lay ahead, might have kept his money closer about him. But Sullivan was improvident by nature, and he had spent years in the wilderness of southeast Florida, where the future was not much considered except in terms of the weather it might bring.

  First he purchased, for sixpence, a canvas bag suitable for a traveling man. Since he had no other possessions at all, it would do well for his fiddle and bow. His next care was to find a barber. The one he found was also a wigmaker and made efforts to sell Sullivan a white silk wig that would have cost him more than half his store. He resisted this, however. He was proud of his hair, which was dark and luxuriant.

  “I am not enterin’ in the merits of wigs as such,” he said. “I know well that they are widespread throughout the land. There will be those with a thatch that is wearin’ sparse, there will be those that are wishin’ to make themselves stand taller. But a man with a head of hair like mine would niver want to hide his light under a bushel, though willin’ to admit he is become overgrown, consequent to a neglect that there was no avoidin’.”

  After the shave he had his hair trimmed, pomaded and gathered at the nape with a silk ribbon of a dark green color to go with his coat. The cost of this was tenpence, the greater part of which was due to the ribbon.

  From here, the mild sunshine on his face, the effluvium from his scented hair in his nostrils, he proceeded down the street until he found a journeyman tailor sitting stitching behind the window of his shop. From the stock of ready-made clothes inside he chose worsted breeches and a good calico shirt, changing into his new clothes behind a screen in the shop.

  “These I leave to your judgment,” he said, dropping his former garments on the counter. “I have some experience of commerce, an’ there is no doubt in me mind at all that you will make me an allowance for them.”

  But the tailor, after the briefest of examinations, gave it as his emphatic opinion that the garments were of no value whatever. In fact, he barely touched them and seemed displeased to have them on his counter.

  “That shirt an’ them trousers have been my coverin’ in good times an’ bad,” Sullivan said. “How can they have no value to them?”

  For only answer the tailor pointed out that the clothes were threadbare, torn in places and stained, and moreover had been of mediocre quality even when new. The price of Sullivan’s purchases would remain unchanged at three shillings and ninepence.

  “Very well, then, I will not bequeath them to you,” Sullivan said, picking up the garments and stowing them in his bag. “A man will niver prosper in this world who is lost to all sense of justice an’ decorum,” he said over his shoulder as a parting shot.

  Immediately outside the shop he encountered the gap-toothed smile of a sandy-haired, thin fellow with no great air of prosperity. “I hear well that you are from Ireland,” this man said.

  “I am so,” Sullivan said. “Though it is long years since I last set eyes on Galway.”

  “Galway, is it? Isn’t that a happy chance now? ’Tis a Galway man I am meself.”

  Often it is some slight cheating of our expectations that inclines us this way or that when dealing with our fellows. Sullivan knew he had a wealthy look about him. He was a purse-bearing man, which the other emphatically was not. In view of this, he had supposed that this fellow countryman of his, who smiled and spoke so friendly-like, would have it in mind to ask him for a small loan. He would have obliged, or so he thought afterward, highly suited as it would have been to the splendor of the morning and his new sense of himself. He would have given the man a penny or two, together with some good wishes for his subsequent career.

  But no such request was made to him. “This meetin’ has done me a power of good,” the man said. “To see a fellow Irishman risin’ in the world, it gives us hope for a future better than what is offered in the present, through no fault of me own. I hope you will be crossin’ the water again soon, an’ seein’ them you hold dear.”

  Sullivan, who had been left to his own devices at the age of fourteen and had not set foot in Ireland for more than twenty years, felt some prickle o
f tears at this reference to home and dear ones. And when the man did not attempt to beg from him, and seemed about to move away, he reached out and took his arm. “Well,” he said, “we can take a pot of ale together before we part, for the sake of the dear old days that are no more. You are of these parts, as I suppose, so you will know of a place.”

  The man showed every appearance of pleasure at this suggestion. “Murphy,” he said, holding out his hand. “Patrick Murphy.”

  Sullivan was about to say his name, but then recalled that he was on the run, a fact he had been overlooking all that morning. They might be posting handbills up … “Corrigan,” he said. “Michael Corrigan.”

  If the other noticed this hesitation, he did not remark on it. “I know the very place,” he said. “You look like a man that might have music in him. There is some come into the town that sings an’ plays on the drums an’ hautboys. Everywhere they go there is crowds follerin’ after. I have heard them meself, an’ they are ravishin’ on the ears. They are performin’ in a tavern nearby this very place where we are standin’. It is the innkeeper pays them, because of the people they bring in.”

  “Music, is it? You are lookin’ at a man who has lived by his music in days gone by. Me fortunes have changed for the better lately, but it is a power that never quits you.”

  He followed his newfound companion through narrow streets until they reached a low-fronted hostelry from which the sounds of singing carried to them as they approached. The taproom was crowded, people were standing close together, there was no room for sitting. They had entered at the close of a song and the applause rang round them. Four men faced the audience on a raised platform. One of them, who had a drum slung across his chest, was black.

  Sullivan gave his order to a man in an apron weaving through the crowd with a loaded tray. “We will do the payin’ when you do the deliverin’,” he said to the man, and then, to his companion, “I wasn’t born yesterday. There is such a thing as trustin’ our fellow man over an’ above what is reasonable. He might say he had niver had the money.”