The Quality of Mercy: A Novel

  “Of course, he speaks from memory,” Stanton said. “But it will carry weight. What makes it particularly fortunate is that there is no charge against him—he has nothing to gain or lose, unlike the people of the crew, and unlike the first mate, who has turned evidence against them. Generally speaking, in my experience, such a witness is likely to be believed.”

  Jane regarded her brother’s face. It wore an exalted expression, almost fierce in its intensity, as if he were ready to take a sword and strike out. “I am so glad,” she said, and Ashton, while knowing that her gladness was for his sake rather than the larger issue, was touched by the affection for him in her words and glance.

  “It could make all the difference,” he said. “If we can succeed in having the cases heard together at the Court of King’s Bench, and if it can be shown that there was no shortage of water and even that poor pretext was a lie, the hideousness of this crime against our common humanity will be evident to all but the most callous and wicked.”

  Stanton, who felt that Ashton was a great deal luckier in his sister than in the reappearance of the linguister, said, “Well, I must take leave of you. I shall have to examine the wording of this new charge that has been brought against us.” He shook Ashton’s hand, lowered his head over Jane’s. “We will talk again later today,” he said, “or perhaps tomorrow morning. In any case, as soon as I have all the facts.”

  “What charge is it that they have brought against you?” Jane asked when he had gone.

  “It regards the man Evans. You will remember my telling you that I intended to bring charges for assault and abduction against his former owner, Charles Bolton, in response to his charge against me of theft.”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “Well, it has emerged that Bolton had already sold Evans to another man, a sugar planter named Lyons. Imagine it, he had sold him already, even before the abduction attempt, while he was still living peacefully in Chelsea, not suspecting anything. Now both of these men are bringing charges of damages and theft against me. Yes, it is scarce credible, I know, but such are the facts. And with the worship of property that is growing among us, their arguments may prevail. Much will depend on the judge.”

  “Let us hope he will be reasonable.”

  Ashton smiled. “Well, not too much so,” he said. “An entirely reasonable man is likely to conform too closely to prevailing notions of what is reasonable and put property before all else. No, let us hope rather that he will have a heart open to compassion.”

  “You are going out?” She had noticed only now that her brother was wearing shoes instead of slippers and that his hat lay on the table, where he must have placed it.

  “Yes, I was about to leave when Stanton came. I am going to the prison. I intend to speak to these men and question them.”

  “To the prison? What, into the cell where they are being held?”

  “No, I hope to be allowed to see them in one of the yards behind the Keeper’s Lodge.”

  “But you will catch your death. Everyone knows it is a hatching place of diseases. No one goes there that does not have to.”

  “Nevertheless, I am going.”

  “At least let me have some vinegar packs made up to hang inside your coat.”

  Ashton was impatient at the delay, but he saw the concern on his sister’s face, and he was accustomed to bow to her wishes in matters of this kind, where safety and care of the person were involved.

  When, sometime later, provided with the vinegar-soaked bobbins, he sallied forth in search of a sedan that would carry him to Newgate Street, Jane remained where she was for a time, without moving. The thought of being anywhere in the vicinity of Newgate Prison, let alone entering it, was appalling to her. Once, coming down from Bridewell Walk to Clerkenwell, after a visit of charity to the workhouse, she had passed by the prison, and the deathly stink of the place had assailed her, even closed as she was in her carriage, and the voices of the women screaming through the bars at people going by along the foot passage.

  She had never forgotten that reek of misery and violence; always now, on her visits to the workhouse, she told the coachman to turn directly into Corporation Lane and so return home by the longer route. She had felt no pity at the time and none since, only a violent disgust, and a sort of rage that people, however low their estate and however ill their deeds, could be treated thus, manacled and pent up in that festering place. Frederick had said that compassion counted for more in a judge than a too-reasonable habit of mind. But it seemed to her that anger was much to be preferred to either, a rage for improvement, for changes in the way things were done—changes that should be effected now, immediately, since the need was so obvious, so pressing. She felt this rage for betterment within her, despite the lightness of manner, the slight air of carelessness she generally assumed in the society of others.

  She had acquaintances among her own sex who were zealous in works of charity, but there were none she could think of who felt this passionate need to change the state of things. No man of her acquaintance—and in this she included her brother—would think it becoming in her to give eager expression to such opinions in company; some she could think of, if they were alone with her and felt safe from the judgment of their fellows, might try to please her by pretending to take her words seriously.

  These thoughts made her feel rebellious and disconsolate at the same time, a mixture of feelings familiar to her. She found herself thinking about Erasmus Kemp and wondering how he would take it if she spoke seriously to him about things that mattered to her. She could not imagine it; she did not know him. But he was different from the other men she had met. His looks and manner came vividly back to her. He had seemed to gather all the energy of everyone else there, gather it to himself and contain it and bring it to her as an offering.

  She would not go on with her embroidery, she decided; she would return to her own apartment and have her coffee there, and continue reading the latest issue of The Ladies’ Diary. Much of this was written by gentlemen in tones considered suitable for ladies. But it contained, amid news of the latest fashions and advice on such matters as the paying and receiving of calls, items on history and geography and science. At present Jane was halfway through an account of Isaac Newton’s theory of gravity, and absorbed in the struggle to understand how the fall to the ground of an apple and the awesome sweep of the moon in her orbit could be due to one and the same cause.

  9

  Ashton alighted from his chair on the eastern side of Bridewell and approached the prison by the covered passageway that led toward the entrance gates to the Keeper’s Lodge. After some twenty yards he emerged into the open at a point immediately below the outer wall of the prison, whose five stories rose sheer above him. From one of these floors, as he passed, a chamberpot was discharged, and he narrowly escaped being fouled by its contents. Sounds of pain and riot rose to him from the gratings of the cellars where the condemned were held.

  He stated his business to the turnkey at the gate, a man of unsavory appearance and unsteady with drink. Stating his business, however, was not enough to gain him entry. The turnkey asked for a shilling, which he declared to be the usual tariff, but was then visibly content to get the threepence that Ashton handed him through the bars.

  Oppressed by the stench and grimness of the place, Ashton took refuge in levity. “Well, my friend,” he said, “if it will keep you drunk the longer, I suppose it has to be seen as a good cause. It is not surprising that a gatekeeper to the infernal regions should ask for a sweetener—there is good precedent for it.”

  No reply to this was forthcoming. He was led across the short yard to the Lodge, where he found two assistant keepers making up a tray of wheat bread and sliced pork.

  “You the visitin’ gen’leman what ordered up the vittles for the press yard?” one of them said at sight of Ashton. “Sixpence ha’penny, yer pays beforehand an’ takes the tray yerself. If yer wants it taken up, that will be eightpence.”

  “I can
eat better than that round the corner at half the cost,” Ashton said.

  “Ah, yes sir, but yer not suffrin’ from the ’andicap of bein’ in confinement, are yer now? Prices is subjec’ to circumstance, every mother’s son knows that.”

  “I see you are a philosopher,” Ashton said. “I am not he who ordered the food, I have nothing to do with the press yard. I want to speak to the Keeper. I want to ask him for an hour or so with the seamen who are awaiting trial on the piracy charge.”

  “Them as threw the blacks over the side an’ rose agin the captain an’ made off with the ship?”

  “Those are the men, yes,” Ashton said, impressed again by the way in which these separate events were taken as belonging all together in the popular mind.

  The man looked Ashton over for a moment, taking in the cut and material of his clothes, the silk cravat, the ebony cane. His nostrils twitched at the smell of the vinegar. “The Keeper ain’t ’ere today, sir,” he said. “He is rangin’ abroad on matters of public concern.” The other man sniggered at this but said nothing.

  “To whom can I apply, then?”

  “There is several of ’em, as I recall. An’ yer wants to see ’em all at the same time. That means two armed men to keep a watch out an’ prevent ’em doin’ you a mischief.”

  “That is not likely. I am here to help them.”

  He had time privately to acknowledge that this was not strictly true before the man said, “Goin’ by time an’ ooman resources, that comes to one shillin’ an’ sixpence, sir. Cash down.”

  “Don’t you get wages?”

  At this both men smiled broadly, the first smile he had seen on either of their faces. “Wages, ho yes,” the younger one said. “What is them?”

  On handing over the money, he was led to a narrow, evil-smelling courtyard immediately behind the lodge. The gate to this was unlocked to him; he was joined shortly by two taciturn men with pistols at their belts and staves in their hands, and the three of them waited in silence between the high walls of dark brick that enclosed the yard.

  Ashton stared at the wall before him, trying to rehearse in his mind the best way to conduct the impending interview. It was of first importance to gain the men’s confidence, try to break down the distrust they would feel toward any that came with seeming authority from the world outside. Only thus could he lead them the way he wanted them to go.

  Lost in these thoughts, he was startled, almost, to hear the rattle of the gate and see the men being led in. Among the variety of experiences that the case of the Liverpool Merchant had in store for him, this first sight of the remnants of the crew was to remain one of the strongest and most lasting. He had thought much of these men, but always as a group, undistinguished one from the other, a single body with a single mind, under the captain’s orders at first, then joined in rebellion. It was with a distinct sensation of surprise that he noticed now the differences in feature and stature among them as they came through the gate, and saw the glances, bemused and uncertain, of those who have been thrust out of dimness into light. All were bearded and unkempt, but he noted that one was squat in build and strongly made and vacant in looks, a second ill-conditioned in expression, with jaundiced eyes, another hulking of form with a shambling walk and only one eye that was of use to him—the white blob of the dead one had a steadiness both sinister and droll, strangely at odds, in its fixity, with the blinking of the other.

  “I had believed there were eight,” he said to one of the guards.

  “One got clear away,” the man said. “The luck of the devil, he got hisself mistook for someone else. The fiddler, that was.”

  Once through the gate and into the yard, the men wavered forlornly together for some moments. Then, as if by a common instinct, they moved to the near wall and took up positions there, with their backs to it.

  “Will you go outside the gate?” Ashton said to the guard who had spoken. They would be out of earshot there; the men would be more at ease. “You can keep us under observation just as well from there, and intervene quickly enough if there is any sign of trouble.”

  “Our orders was to keep close,” the man said. “Anythin’ untoward, an’ it is on our heads.”

  “There is such a thing as dooty, sir,” the other guard said. “Me an’ Jemmy is very partic’lar in doin’ our dooty.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” Ashton said. “There is sixpence for each of you if you will do as I ask.”

  The hesitation was of the briefest; it seemed to Ashton that he had barely finished speaking before the men’s hands were reaching out to him. Only when they were outside the gate did he turn to the men against the wall. “I have come here to help you,” he said, and the partial lie steadied him, gave force to the words that came next. “I do not represent the prosecution. I will not take advantage of anything you say to me, unless I can do you good by it. I want you to trust me.”

  He saw one of the men, gray-bearded and seeming somewhat older than the rest, glance up, saw a twist come to his face that might have been a smile. “Trust don’t come into it,” this man said. “Yer might as well talk of trust to a rat in a hole. We are lost men.”

  “Your cause is not lost,” Ashton said. He had noticed the total lack of deference in addressing him. “You are?”

  “Hughes, my name.”

  “We calls him the Climber.”

  This had come from one of the men against the wall, Ashton was not sure which. “Why do you call him that?”

  “He was allus climbin’ to get away on his own, up on the top trestles,” the one-eyed man said. “He don’t like anyone close.”

  “I see.” A sense came to him of the torment such a man must have suffered, chained and penned up with the others. Even in prison the quality of suffering would vary. Had it come home to Hughes that he had helped to inflict suffering even worse on the slaves below decks? Probably not. “Is there one who will speak for all?” he said.

  There were some moments of hesitation, then one of the men raised his head to look squarely at Ashton. “I can speak for the others, sir,” he said, “seein’ as I was the carpenter, an’ therefore rankin’ above, as it is so considered aboard ship.”

  “What is your name?”

  “My name is Barber, sir, William Barber.”

  “Can you tell me how it came about that the negroes were thrown over the side?”

  “It was the capt’n’s orders,” the one-eyed man said before the carpenter could speak. “We was only obeyin’ orders. We was all in it together. On a ship you does what you’re told to do by them that is set above you.”

  “That is true, I suppose,” Ashton said. “But surely there is still a choice to be made? After all, there is a higher law than that of a ship’s captain. No man can be obliged to act against his conscience.”

  Hardly had he uttered the words before he knew them for untimely and out of keeping. But it was his habit to utter general statements of a moral kind, and though these were felt sincerely, he did not always pause to consider whether it was the right moment for them.

  “Them that has not been at the orders of a slavin’ skipper can have no opinion. Show me a conscience that will stand up to the cat-o’-nine-tails, I would like to see one.”

  This had come from Hughes, and Ashton was wondering whether he should attempt a reply to the effect that the threat of flogging would have been of no avail if the crew had been united in opposition, when another voice was raised. “Beggin’ your pardon, sir, I was in the galley, I did not come out on deck till hearin’ Mr. Paris call out an’ then the pistol shot that came after.”

  “That is Morgan, sir, the ship’s cook,” Barber said. “It is true that he was in the galley at the time, we can all swear to that.”

  “Will you go on with your account?”

  “The slaves was dyin’ in numbers, sir, both the men and the women. There was the bloody flux among them, an’ it was gainin’ ground day by—”

  “What is that?”

  “It is wh
en they passes blood, beggin’ your pardon. What they eat is turned to blood inside of them, they passes it with their excrements an’ they gets weaker an’ dies from one day to the next. The ship run into squally weather, we had to fasten down the hatches on them, they had no air, sir. On that mornin’ we are talkin’ of, when we opened the hatches we found twelve dead, countin’ men, women and boys. I remember well the figure because it was what Thurso began by tellin’ us. He called us to a meetin’, you see, sir, the ship’s officers that was left.”

  Hughes let the words wash over him without paying much heed to the meaning. It was an old story; too much had happened since. He looked up to the strip of sky above him. It was blue, hazed with the smoke of the city. With what seemed something more than an accident of timing, pigeons flew across that narrow space as he looked up, glinting in the sun, birds of silver. Even amid the stench of his person and that of his shipmates, even in the misery and filth of this place, he seemed to sense the burgeoning of spring. He scanned the wall across from where he was standing. Sixteen, eighteen feet. There were cracks in the brickwork and small hollows where the mortar had crumbled from the joints. Given time, given a bit of luck … He did not really believe it; he was old now, nearly fifty, his muscles had stiffened in prison; a bad fall, and he could cripple himself. On crutches to the hangman …

  He had always been a climber, always first in the tops. In the dark misanthropy of his nature he had found joy in sleeping away from the others, slung high aloft, swaying in his sleep with the sway of the ship. In the years of the settlement too he had kept apart, always happiest at a distance from his fellows, making platforms up in the trees where he could hide away. Suddenly now, in the midst of the voices, a memory came to him. He had been high up in a jungle cluster, overlooking a freshwater pool. The white-tailed deer came to drink there; bow and arrows on the platform beside him, he had been waiting to see them come stepping through the trees. If you chose the right moment, when the deer lowered its head to drink, you could break its neck with a single bolt. Waiting there in solitude—it was one of his last memories of happiness. And it had been then, in those moments, that he had looked seaward and seen the schooner, wondered why it dallied there at anchor, not knowing that aboard her was a man named Erasmus Kemp, who had come to destroy them.