The Quality of Mercy: A Novel

  Women did not come very often to the tavern and the landlord had nothing that might meet the needs of more delicate palates except gin, so this was mixed with water and, after some expressions of reluctance, proved acceptable. The men had ale in pint pots, and Sullivan allowed his pot to be refilled. When all were seated in the taproom—Sally among them, he was glad to see—and when the lamps had been lit and hung on the walls, he began his tale.

  So grateful had he been to the Virgin for securing his release from prison, so set had he been on carrying out his vow, unfaltering through all the trials and tribulations that had beset him during the weeks of his journey, that he had not paused to give much thought to the mode of his narrative, the way it should be presented. He began confidently enough with the relation of how he and Billy had seen and recognized each other in a dockside tavern in Liverpool.

  “We had sailed together,” he said. “A ship called the Sarah. Long years before, but when you have been shipmates together, haulin’ on the ropes together for the best part of a year, you niver forget a man’s face, for good or bad. I was playin’ me fiddle for the dancin’ when Billy came in. He was off a ship, purse full of money.” Skin full of rum, he remembered, but he said nothing of this to the assembled company.

  Darkness had fallen outside, and the faces of the listeners were ruddy in the lamplight, their bodies motionless. No sound came from them.

  “Billy was tricked out of his money. They threatened him with prison for debt unless he agreed to sign on for this ship that was gettin’ ready to sail—she was due to cast off with the tide next mornin’. He could not pay his score, d’you see, his purse was robbed out of his pocket. They were all in it together. Billy put up a fight an’ I got in the middle of it an’ got knocked on the head. The long an’ short of it all was that we both ended up aboard the ship, an’ she was a slaver, she was bound for the Guinea Coast.”

  It was as he pronounced these last words and looked at the unchanging faces that the first shadow of doubt came into his mind. What could the Guinea Coast mean to them, what kind of picture could it conjure up? They could have no more of idea of it than the inhabitants of that coast could have of a Durham pit village. He saw suddenly, and with a sinking heart, that his story, which he had looked forward to telling in fulfillment of his vow, was dressed in the wrong colors. “That was the Windward Coast of Africa,” he said. “We traded for slaves there, an’ when we had number enough to cram the space below decks, we set off for the island of Jamaica, where it was purposed to sell them an’ buy sugar with the money.”

  He paused now as if he had come to a wall with no gate in it. Silence descended on the room, broken after some moments by John Blair, Billy’s brother, though not much resembling him to Sullivan’s eye, being taller and longer-faced and having eyes closer set.

  “Billy was workin’ in Sunderland before he run off to sea, a know that for a fact. He was workin’ in the shipyard.”

  “No,” another man said, “it was South Shields where he went, he was loadin’ coal on the freighters. A was told that by a lad that worked there alongside him.”

  Arbiter Hill now intervened, seizing, as was his wont, on the difference of opinion. “There is some as says Sunderland, there is some as says South Shields, depending on witnesses and memory. There might be others as would say something different again—Hartlepool, for example. With the time that has passed we will not obtain the final answer, we will have to box on without it.”

  “What the hell does it matter?” Bordon said with sudden violence, and Sullivan saw the woman beside him lay a hand on his arm. He spoke again, but more quietly now. “Yor listenin’ to the story of what befell my wife’s brother, yor hearin’ talk of Africa an’ Jamaica, an’ you gan on with tittle-tattle about Hartlepool an’ Sunderland.”

  This was the husband, Percy’s father, he who had made the kite. Sullivan found himself being regarded with eyes of a singular intensity, even shadowed as they were by the brim of the cap, which he wore well pulled forward. Here was one at least under the spell of the story, and Sullivan’s spirits lifted with the perception of this. He had wanted his words to grip and enthrall, to crown his long journey, even though Billy’s death was contained in them. He was taking a risk and he knew it. It was not very likely that news of the part played by the crew of the Liverpool Merchant would have reached such a remote place—these men and women did not have the look of newspaper readers. But that it was possible he had known from the beginning. His vow had always involved this risk, and the miracle of his escape had made it worth taking. The interest written on Bordon’s face confirmed him in this feeling and gave him heart to go on.

  “We niver got there,” he said. “We niver got to Jamaica at all. We were blown off course. The skipper was dead by this time. We were beached up on the coast of Florida.”

  “Florida,” Bordon repeated, and his voice lingered on the name.

  Sullivan did not try to describe the efforts they had made to haul the ship up the creek and so conceal all traces of it. “We had no choice but to stay there,” he said. “The ship was wrecked. We lived there twelve years, Billy an’ me an’ the others, white an’ black together, them that were left. We made a life for ourselves.”

  Out of duty to Billy’s memory, so they would understand the way he had lived as well as the way he had died, he tried to describe the life they had had, the ocean never far away, the lagoons and jungle hummocks and mangrove swamps, the alligators and snakes and deer, the great flocks of white herons that rose all together with a great beating of wings, flying up suddenly for no reason anyone could know or determine, settling again as if they were snow or big white petals.

  “Twelve years,” he said again. “Billy came to his end there.”

  “What end was that?” Nan said. “What happened to our Billy?”

  “Unbeknown to us, the sojers were comin’. The man that owned the ship took some redcoats to get us. He said we had stole the ship an’ the slaves aboard her—in his way of thinkin’ they were still slaves, even after the years we had all lived together. The sojers were closin’ round us, but we niver knew it till they started shoutin’ for us to come out an’ give ourselves up. Billy wasn’t in the compound, he was outside, mebbe a mile away. He was fishin’ in the creeks with his mate, whose name was Inchebe, a man from the Niger. It was just getting’ light and these two were on the way back with the catch …”

  He paused here, aware of having arrived at a difficulty but impelled still by the sense of duty, the need to do justice to Billy’s life in the settlement, all their lives. “These two were close,” he said, “because they were sharin’ the same woman. You see, there were more men than women, more than twice as many, so the women could have two if they were inclined that way, an’ mostly they were.”

  “What, our Billy an’ another man sharin’ the same woman?” John Blair said. “A never heered of such a thing, it’s nay decent.”

  “Tha’d rather have it t’other way round, woudn’t tha?” his wife said. “It would be decent enough then, a’ll be bound.” There had been a note of bitterness in this, as it seemed—some strain between them had been brought out by this revelation.

  “Our Billy only done what the others was doin’,” Nan said. “A wouldna want two men mesen, one is enough for me.”

  “More than enough sometimes,” Bordon said, and he smiled at her, the lines of tension on his face softening into tenderness.

  “He shared a woman with a black man?” Michael Bordon said, but there was more curiosity than disapproval in his tone. He was wondering, though he did not say so, whether they ever came to blows over whose turn it was. How he would hate to share Elsie with anyone. Even another hand, touching her lightly …

  “Yes, he did so, we all did. The woman was black too—all the women were black, d’you see, they were brought aboard as slaves.” This diversion about the sharing had distracted the people from his narrative, even as he was nearing the moment of Billy’s death. “We
were there,” he said. “There were no churches an’ no priests. We niver chose to go there, we had to live as best we could.”

  Bordon helped him forward again now. “What were they gannin’ to do, kill one another, fightin’ over it?” he said to Michael. “You an’ me is black a lot of the time, for the matter of that. So Billy was comin’ back with the catch, then?” he said to Sullivan.

  “As they drew near, they came upon some of the redcoats, hidin’ there among the trees. Billy was in front an’ so he saw them first, an’ he shouted to warn Inchebe, an’ one of the sojers lost his head an’ he fired an’ the ball took Billy in the back as he was tryin’ to get away. Inchebe was caught with the rest of us, an’ he told us what befell, he told us on board the ship that was bringin’ us away. He said Billy took some steps before he fell, but he was a dead man before he come to the ground.”

  He sought for some fitting way to close. The final words were the only ones that he had rehearsed in his mind while on the road, feeling that he owed it to Billy to give the death full detail and sum up the life at the same time. “It was a misty mornin’,” he said. “There was always strange sounds in among the trees at that time of the day—strange till you got used to them, I mean. The feller that shot him was full of fears, I dare say, an’ would niver had done it if he had been of sound mind. Billy wasn’t took with the rest of us an’ brought back in chains, he died there, where he had been happy and free for all them years. It would be misguided to feel sorry for him. We had a good life there till the sojers came. Everyone respected Billy an’ listened to what he had to say. He was plannin’ to come back here one day an’ see his folks again, but he died before he could do it, so I have come in his stead.”

  No one made any answer to this, and after some moments people began to get to their feet preparatory to leaving. Nan took Sullivan by the hand. “Tha’s been a true friend to our Billy,” she said. “A’ll never forget the service tha’s done us. It always pained me, not knowing what became of him. A was only twelve when he ran off, an’ we never heered more of him from that day on. It comforts me to know that he didna forget us, that he was meanin’ to come back.”

  John Blair and his wife left without words, though whether it was disapproval that kept them silent or some sort of displeasure with each other, Sullivan could not tell. He was feeling spent—it had been a tiring day and he had eaten little—but he was not dissatisfied with the way he had told Billy’s story. He was thinking of trying to get a bite to eat in the kitchen and a word or two with Sally, who was rinsing out the tankards there, both of these things falling, as he felt, within the terms of his new employment, when he saw that Bordon, having accompanied the others out into the yard, had now returned to the taproom.

  “There was sommat a meant to ask,” he said. “What did they live on there, what did the people do to keep alive?”

  “There was fish in the creeks,” Sullivan said. “There was turtles, which can be partly consumed if you know the trick of it. There was game most of the year, quail, wild turkey, pigeons. There was deer you could get a shot at when they came to drink.”

  “No, what a mean, did they grow veg’tables an’ such-like, did they work the ground?”

  “Not to begin with. We had nothin’ in the world to plant. There was sea cabbage an’ acorns an’ berries an’ a kind of wild oats you could contrive to make porridge with. Then with time and lucky chance we came to be friendly with the Indians that lived along the coast. We made them gifts from the trade goods that had been left aboard the ship—kettles, beads, scraps of cotton. We never could fathom what use they were, but it was like a treasure to them. They brought us gifts in their turn. There was a root they knew of that you could grind an’ make cakes from, an’ there was yams an’ pumpkin seeds an’ tubers of sweet potato.”

  Bordon listened intently to this and nodded several times when Sullivan had finished speaking. “You lacked for nothin’,” he said, “you had all you needed,” and Sullivan saw on his face the light of a vision and knew in that moment that he and this miner were fellow spirits. “We did so,” he said.

  Bordon remained silent for a space of time, head lowered. He did not look at Sullivan when he spoke again, but kept his eyes on the stone flags at his feet.

  “Tha made me a gift, comin’ here.”

  Only the strangeness of such a visitor with his way of looking and talking, his tale of wanderings in far places, his wildness, could have brought Bordon to words like these, words safe to utter, inviolate, sealed off by the difference between the two of them. “A rare gift,” he said. “An’ a’m nay talkin’ only about Billy Blair.”

  And Sullivan, who was quick to sense feelings in others, felt the gratitude and unhappiness in the words and experienced an urge to protect Bordon by shifting the talk before regret could enter into it. “Speakin’ of gifts,” he said, “that was a fine kite you made for your son.”

  “My father made a kite for me when a was gannin’ on for seven years old, in the time just before a went down the mine. When a had sons of my own, a carried on with it. Now it’s Percy’s turn, he’ll be startin’ soon. Once they start down the mine they dinna play no more.”

  He was looking squarely at Sullivan now, and something of a smile had come to his face, though there was no gladness in it. “They come to the end of playin’,” he said. “How did tha come to be a fiddler?”

  “Me father was a fiddlin’ man an’ he passed it on to me. He traveled about, playin’ an’ singin’ at fairs an’ weddin’s. There were seven of us, brothers and sisters, we went beggin’ by the way, but I was the only one of them that had the power of music in me. He taught me how to find the notes. He always meant me to have the fiddle. He gave it to me when he was dyin’—he had not much more than that to leave, an’ it will be the same with me, ’cept that I have no sons to leave anythin’ to. Our children were all sold, along with the mothers.”

  “What use did they have for a fiddler on board of a slave ship?”

  “Well, I had been to sea before as an ordinary seaman, so I knew the work. But they like to get a fiddler on a slave ship because he can play an’ the slaves can dance to the music.”

  “Dance to the music?” Bordon’s smile had disappeared. “Tha’s makin’ game of me,” he said. There was the beginning of anger in his voice, and Sullivan sensed in this quickness to take offense a battle more or less permanent against a world that showed him no mercy.

  “No,” he said, “they needed to be danced because they were in chains, d’you see, they spent long hours cramped up below decks with scarce space enough to move a muscle. Without exercise they would get ill an’ melancholy an’ their value on the market would take a plunge. So they were brought up on deck an’ made to dance to the fiddle music.”

  “Still in their chains?”

  “Yes.”

  “What if they didna have nay fancy for dancin’?”

  “They would be flogged.”

  Bordon was silent for a while, as if in reflection. Then he nodded, and the same smile came back to his face. “Not much choice,” he said. “Better to dance than to bleed.”

  With this he made for the door, leaving Sullivan feeling that he had made a friend, though one of uncertain temper. Sally was still in the kitchen, and he made his way there now in the expectation of her smile and the hope of something to eat.

  Bordon slept badly that night, assailed by dreams of snapping jaws and clanking chains. He saw the white birds rising up and stalked the deer through close-growing trees. Waking from this, lying wide-eyed in the dark with Nan breathing deeply beside him, he thought of the freedom of that life in Florida, taking the hours as they came, living in the open and the light of day, doing things because they needed doing, so that life could go on, not because you were summoned to do them, not because someone you never saw owned the labor of your body. He felt a deep sense of envy for that band of men and women, even for their toil, even for the dangers they must have faced.

  Fol
lowing upon the envy, softening it with a sort of consolation that he knew to have no basis in reason, there came thoughts of the plot of land by the streamside, in the Dene, the sheltered ground, the falling water, the fertile soil, two acres, perhaps a bit more … The apple trees, the green rows of vegetables, the laden pony following the path to the coast where he would set up his stall and sell his produce. Somehow, in a manner that defied logic, this wandering Irishman’s story had brought the possibility nearer.

  28

  It took Kemp forty-eight hours to reach the city of Durham, the journey broken by an overnight stay at an inn in Nottingham. Spenton was expecting the visit and would have sent a coach to bring his guest the twelve miles or so from the city, but Kemp had decided well in advance that he would hire a mount from the stables of the inn where his coach set him down. He was not carrying a great deal in the way of luggage; what he had would go into saddlebags. The thing of overriding importance to his mind was having independence of movement during his stay, being able to range freely; he had much to see, and wanted to choose his own time for the seeing. Spenton would have stables, but borrowing a horse would mean making arrangements, stating intentions and so limiting the freedom he felt to be essential. As always, he was single-minded, formidably so; all of his being was concentrated now on learning what he could, assessing the levels of investment that would be needed, striving to apply what he had learned from his study of the industry to the actual workings of the mine, which would be entirely new to him.

  It was midafternoon when, after some questioning of people along the way, he reached the gates to the house and grounds, though as yet no house was visible. Stone pillars on either side were surmounted by reclining lions, bemused and emaciated by time and weather. A man emerged from a small lodge and opened the gate to him. The drive, broad enough for two coaches to pass, wound upward through rolling parkland, with copses of oak and ash cunningly laid out to give a sense of limitless vistas. The land fell away on his rig ht as he neared the house, and he caught a flat gleam of water in the distance from what he supposed was a lake.