The Quality of Mercy: A Novel

by Barry Unsworth

  “We was informed by Capt’n Thurso that there was not water enough,” he said. “We took it on trust. On a ship you takes the word of the capt’n.”

  “Are you seriously asking us to believe,” said Price, with significant glances at the jury, “that there was a lack of water urgent enough to justify the throwing overboard of those men and women while the breath of life was still in them, and that you weren’t aware of this urgency until the captain told you of it? Are you seriously asking us to believe that a damaged water cask would not be noticed by any single member of the crew until the water had all leaked away?”

  “We was rushed off our feet, we was undermanned, there was no time to look at the casks.”

  He was led away, and Price turned to the jury. “There was no time to look at the casks,” he said. “Of course there wasn’t. They were afraid the slaves might die below decks before they could be thrown over the side to drown. The reason for that hasty dispatch had nothing to do with damaged casks or a shortage of water. There was no shortage of water. Were the crew placed on rations? No. Did the ship put in anywhere for fresh supplies? Again no. They were in haste to jettison the sickly because they knew that those dying aboard ship were not covered by the insurance.”

  “But what had the captain to gain by this, or the crew either?” Justice Blundell leaned forward to put this question to the impassioned Price. “I cannot see that they would take such action only for the sake of the owners.”

  “Your worship, we cannot know the captain’s motives. Some promised reward, some prospect of commission, perhaps mere habitual fidelity toward the owners. We cannot examine far into the state of mind of a man long since dead.”

  Some commotion was now caused in the court by the calling of James Porter, who was seen to be a negro. Before he could be questioned by Price for the insurers, Kemp’s lawyer intervened.

  “May I inquire into the quality of this witness? What is his state?”

  “He has been manumitted by his former owner, who brought him back from the West Indies and in whose service he has since remained as a free man. We have a deposition to that effect by his employer, a Colonel Trembath, a retired officer who has served his country well and whose word cannot be impeached.”

  “That is all very well,” Waters said. “It is not his present condition that concerns the court, but his condition as it was on the deck of the Liverpool Merchant at the time these events took place. At that time he was a slave, and therefore his evidence is tainted and inadmissible.”

  Price said nothing to this, but he allowed himself a broad smile of superior understanding, and he was still, for the benefit of the jury, keeping this smile in place when Porter surprised the court and brought a frown to Justice Blundell’s face, though no reprimand from him, by addressing the hostile counsel directly. “No, sir, you are quite wrong,” he said, in excellent English. “I was not enslaved, I was on the ship of my own free will. I was employed as an interpreter.”

  Waters would have done better to yield the point, but he still hoped to discredit the witness and arouse some prejudice against him on the grounds of color. “How can we believe that?” he said. “What need for this great title of interpreter aboard a slave ship? It is all an invention of your own.”

  “Sir, you reveal considerable ignorance,” Porter said. “The Africans we took had never heard English spoken before. Do you suppose they became gifted with knowledge of it the moment they stepped on board the ship?”

  “My man, you are here to answer questions, not to ask them,” Blundell said.

  “I beg your pardon, sir, but he was calling me a liar.”

  The rebuke had been a mild one, and Price took heart from this mildness. He could sense a general sympathy in the court for Porter, who was bearing himself with dignity under these heavy-handed attacks. “If it pleases the court,” he said, “Barber can be recalled to testify in support of the witness’s claim.”

  But Blundell was beginning to feel oppressed by the tedium of these proceedings; and he was aware that his dinner hour was not far away. “No, let us go on,” he said.

  With a series of questions Price elicited from the witness that he had been present at the jettisoning but had taken no part in it, that there had been no shortage of water whatsoever, that in fact there had been recent rain, that the casks were regularly inspected and there had been no report of damage.

  It was when Porter stepped down that Waters made his great mistake. He was ambitious and was at an early stage in his career. He had been gratified by Pike’s recommendation and greatly wished to justify the trust that had been placed in him. There was also the fact that Kemp was a powerful man and might have been a source of favors. Now he sensed that things were going against him and that the victory he had hoped for was slipping away. The discomfiture enraged him, brought out a strain of fierce antipathy never far below the surface. He had seen Ashton in the courtroom, and now, instead of making a reasoned address to the jury and giving what emphasis he could to the case for the owners, he embarked on a personal attack.

  “There is a person in court at this present moment,” he said, at the same time turning and looking directly at Ashton, “who I am told on good authority intends to bring on a criminal prosecution against the persons who took part in this lawful and eminently reasonable jettison, those of them that have survived. That is dangerous folly—more than folly, it amounts to madness. I am sure that I express the sentiments of the members of this court, and every good citizen throughout the land, when I say that the blacks thrown overboard were property and nothing else. They were cargo, as bales of cotton might have been. No charge of murder can be brought against the crew, no charge even of cruelty in any degree whatever, their actions were not in any degree improper—”

  He was halted at this point by Justice Blundell, whose scowl, in the passion of this address to the court at large, he had quite failed to see, and who now spoke to him loudly and irascibly. “How can you permit yourself such animadversions in my court, sir?”

  The judge had felt his heart begin to beat in his ears, a sure sign of rising blood pressure. This, instead of warning him to remain calm, increased his rage. This presumptuous young fool was reviving the nightmare of Ashton’s petition, raising questions of property and humanity, which had nothing at all to do with the issue before the court. “We are not assembled here to discuss the beliefs or the intentions of any person whatever, whether present at these proceedings or not,” he said. “I am surprised at you, sir. Do you think you are on the hustings, soliciting votes?”

  Waters knew better than to attempt an answer, and in fact the pleas of counsel ended here, Price being more than content to wait for a verdict. In somewhat calmer tones Blundell directed the jury’s attention to the fact that they were there to decide whether the throwing overboard of the negroes was a genuinely necessitous act of jettison, in which case the insurers would be liable, or whether it was a fraud on the policy, in which case they could not be required to make any payment. Was there a shortage of water or was there not? How was it that the first mate on the ship, the man Barton, knew with such certainty what no one else knew until the captain informed them? Was not this strange and contradictory? Counsel for the owner had produced no evidence that the ship was foul or leaky. Barton was freed from imprisonment on the surety of the claimant. Did not this taint his evidence and incline greater belief in the declaration of James Porter, the interpreter on the ship, who had nothing to gain by lying, that in point of fact there was no shortage of water at all?

  The jury, thus guided, came in a matter of minutes to the conclusion that the claim of lawful jettison had no substance and therefore the insurers were released from all obligation of payment.

  18

  The following evening, while he was waiting below for his sister to complete her toilet and make herself ready, Ashton had a glass of claret, an unusual thing with him. He had felt a spirit of celebration since the insurance verdict, while knowing that the vi
ctory was partial, in some ways hardly a victory at all, since no issue of principle had emerged from it, only a ruling as to insurance liability. With a man like Blundell on the bench, this was hardly surprising; he had reacted with fury to the ill-judged attempt of Kemp’s lawyer to discuss the nature of the cargo. Ashton had hoped for something more but without any great belief. Once the decision to hold separate hearings had been made, he had known that any attempt to enter a plea of murder against the remnants of the crew was unlikely to succeed, though he was no less set on it.

  They were unworthy of saving; they had proved it in court with Barber again as their spokesman. They had not given heed to his advice, they had pleaded ignorance and blind obedience. Nevertheless, the judgment in favor of the underwriters had done some service to the cause. It was true that it had not been stated, or even implied, that the Africans were to be regarded as other than merchandise. But there had been journalists in the court; he had seen a correspondent of the Morning Chronicle, a man he knew fairly well, who had a certain discreet sympathy for the abolitionist cause. He could not express this directly without incurring the risk of dismissal, but he could be trusted to stress the fact that casting the Africans overboard had been unlawful and fraudulent, that it had been a deed entirely gratuitous, without ground or reason other than the desire to claim on the value. A monstrous crime, it had to be so regarded, in any court, in any system of law …

  Once again the appalling obviousness of it came to Ashton, accompanied as always by the bafflement he felt at the failure of so many to see it. How could such an offense against God and man be adjusted, compensated for, shuffled away out of sight by a judgment that related only to the regulations governing insurance claims? He was intending to write to the Lord Commissioners of the Admiralty to petition that the surviving crew members should be prosecuted for mass homicide. He rehearsed some phrases in his mind as he waited. I believe it my duty to lay before your lordships the circumstances of multiple and felonious murders carried out by captain and crew of the Liverpool Merchant in 1753 … I have done my utmost to discover and publish the full facts in regard to this most inhuman crime, so that justice may be done, and the blood of the murdered may not rest on us all …

  No, it was clear that the crew had forfeited their rights. They would not now be able to escape from the contradiction of having risen up and killed that very embodiment of authority to whom they claimed to have owed absolute obedience. Unlikely that they would change the nature of their evidence now, advance at this late hour the only defense that might have saved them, a crisis of conscience, the sudden realization that what they were doing was hideously wicked.

  There was no way out for them now. They were bound for the gallows, either as mutineers and pirates, which he was compelled to admit was the more likely outcome, or, Divine Providence assisting, as the murderers of eighty-five innocent men and women made in God’s image like themselves. Again he reflected on what a wonderful stroke of fortune it would be if the judgment went that way, how it would resound in the annals of humane endeavor. Finally, a key ruling …

  He sipped his claret, and the warmth of it on his tongue and in his throat was also the warmth of this imagined success. With one of the upsurges of spirit characteristic of him, he felt that everything was possible, a new age of freedom was about to be ushered in.

  From this he fell to considering another matter, also promising in its way. It presented itself as a series of images or memories. Jane had kept very quiet about having met Kemp before. She had said nothing about it for a week or more. She was not usually so reticent, and there were particular reasons why she should have spoken of this meeting. Kemp’s return from Florida with the surviving members of the crew was being spoken of on every hand; she had known that he, her brother, was involved in the case; she had known that Kemp was an adversary, and this should have argued a readiness to say what she knew of him in the hope that it might be useful. But she had done the exact opposite. And when she had finally spoken of the meeting, it had been with what seemed to him now in retrospect a sort of studied casualness. She had turned away and busied herself with the tea things, though there had been no immediate need for this, they were scarce finished drinking their tea.

  These were things not much remarked at the time, given significance now by certain impressions of later. When they had received the invitation, when he had recalled—and mentioned—that Bateson was a member of Parliament representing the West India Interest, she had known, she had guessed who was behind it; she had flushed even before he uttered Kemp’s name. Her nature was honest; any slightest subterfuge brought unease to her, brought color to her face. She had been eager to attend the hearing with him yesterday, but not too much could be made out of that—she knew his interest in the case, knew how much weight he attached to it. Of course, she would have supposed that Kemp too would be at the hearing …

  He was still occupied with these thoughts when Jane entered the small room adjoining the hall where he had been waiting for her. “Well, you are a vision and no mistake,” he said as he got to his feet. And indeed it was clear to him that his sister had taken great care with her appearance for this occasion. She had recently rebelled against the hoop skirt, one of the first he knew of to do so, as being awkward to manage and too restrictive. She was wearing now a gown of silver muslin with a close-fitting bodice and a skirt cut at the front to show a white embroidered petticoat, simple in style, without flounces. Her hair was combed smoothly back from the forehead and temples and drawn up behind with some pearls interwoven. But to the affectionate gaze of her brother it was the radiant pallor of her face and the spirited brightness of her eyes that gave her beauty.

  Ashton’s valet, the only manservant in the house, was sent to whistle up a cab for them. Bateson’s house was in Grosvenor Square, and they descended amid a number of persons also alighting from coaches, who thronged at the steps up to the house, were met by liveried footmen in the large entrance hall and guided to the foot of the broad, curving staircase that led up to the ballroom on the first floor. As Frederick, with Jane by his side, reached the top of the stairs, he gave their names to the steward waiting there, who shouted them in stentorian tones. A further few steps brought them to the welcoming smiles of their host and hostess.

  From his chosen point of vantage Erasmus Kemp had seen the couple reach the head of the stairs and heard the names called out. Her appearance, her shouted name, her entrance into the ballroom, were the culmination of a design he had been maturing ever since learning of his colleague’s intention to hold the reception, which was mainly for the benefit of various business and political acquaintances and prominent members of the West India Association. He had lost no time in asking Bateson if the Ashtons might be added to the list of guests.

  He had been painstaking and methodical, as always, arriving early, planting himself where he had a clear view across the room. But—and it was one of the several contradictions of his nature—this care and preparation, designed to give him a feeling of calm control, was far from having this wished-for effect. He was not made calmer by it; rather the contrary, as when in listening to music we are not calmed by the gathering notes, however quietly they gather, because we know they are a prelude to some tumultuous crescendo.

  It was with the sense of some imminent clash of cymbals that he waited some moments longer and then began to walk toward them through the crowd. He was walking in step to this music of the mind when by a coincidence he felt to be strange, and in some way significant, the orchestra in the gallery overlooking the room struck up with some martial music, which seemed familiar without his being able to recollect where and when he might have heard it.

  “Music from the heavenly spheres,” Ashton said, glancing up toward the gallery. He had not known the musicians were stationed there.

  Jane was never to remember how she replied to this, or whether she replied at all. As her brother was speaking she had observed Erasmus Kemp making his way toward them, and she
needed to collect herself for what she feared might be an awkward moment. He had lost his case yesterday, and her brother, though without being one of the parties to the dispute, had in a certain sense been victorious. It had been a prelude, in a way, to the Admiralty case that was to come, when they would be direct and self-declared opponents.

  “Miss Ashton, a great pleasure to see you again.” Kemp lowered his head over her hand.

  Not entirely unexpected, however, Ashton had time to think as he smiled a little and waited for introductions. These came, and the two men inclined their heads.

  The meeting, the sight of each other at such close quarters, was for both of them something in the nature of a shock, both having formed judgments of the other that now turned out to need revising. Kemp had set Ashton down as a sentimental sort of fellow, probably given to preaching and hand-wringing, not on close terms with the realities of life. He found himself looking at a face that was ascetic but far from meek, at eyes that were closely observant and penetrating. Ashton, in his turn, instead of the coarse-grained trader he had been expecting to find, saw a face that was acquainted with pain and bewilderment, whatever the striving for an arrogance that would conceal this.

  Ashton could find no immediate words, and Jane too was silent, both feeling that some reference to the previous day’s judgment should be made, both fearing to sound a note of triumph. There were the strains of the orchestra falling from above, there was a hubbub of voices and a bustle of movement about them, but Jane felt caught in a web of silence and unease. She sought for something to say. The music, perhaps; it was a piece by Haydn they were playing now …