by H. G. Parry
He started with that.
“When I consider the magnitude of the subject which I am to bring before the House—a subject in which the interests, not of this country, nor of Europe alone, but of the whole world and of posterity are involved,” he began, “it is impossible for me not to feel both terrified and concerned at my own inadequacies for such a task. I mean not to accuse anyone, but to take the shame upon myself, in common, indeed, with the whole Parliament of Great Britain, for having suffered this horrid trade to be carried on. We are all guilty—we ought all to plead guilty, and not to exculpate ourselves by throwing the blame on others.”
He and the other abolitionists had planned their tactics very carefully. They had determined from the start to appeal not to the emotions of his listeners, but to cool, hard reason. All the meticulous evidence they had spent the last two years compiling was on display. Still, passion fired his own voice as he outlined the misery and desperation of the Middle Passage, and he used it to bring the House into his outrage.
“This, I confess, in my own opinion, is the most wretched part of the whole subject. So much misery, condensed in so little room, is more than the human imagination ever before conceived. I will not accuse the merchants—I will believe them to be men of humanity. I verily believe, therefore, that if the wretchedness of any one of the many hundred people stowed in each ship could be brought before their view, there is no one whose heart could bear it.”
Colonel Banastre Tarleton shot out of his seat, as they’d expected. Not only was he the MP for Liverpool, the hub of the slave trade, but as a soldier he had fought with ruthless efficiency in the American War. His opposition to any kind of magical reform, whether on the battlefield or in the House of Commoners, was without mercy.
“Perhaps the honorable gentleman would like to tell the House how he proposes slavery could continue at all,” he said scathingly, “without shipments of new slaves brought in to replace those that die at their work?”
“To begin with,” Wilberforce said before he could stop himself, “it might be a good incentive for plantation owners to ensure fewer poor souls die at their work.”
He forced himself to calm down. This question, after all, was the most delicate part of this proposal, and one that they needed to tread around very lightly.
“There are many plantations now that spellbind their slaves only once a day,” he said more reasonably. “By night, these men and women can move and speak; more trusted workers, at least those without magic, are not spellbound at all. Many of these men and women are permitted to have families, and children who grow up enslaved. If more were to adopt this practice, the population could easily be self-sustaining.”
“So this can also be read as a call for an abolition of spellbinding?”
It was, of course—at heart, beneath the careful facade of practicality. It was a call for a great many things. But they couldn’t afford to be suspected of that yet. They were pushing the door open and fighting for the slimmest of wedges; they couldn’t afford for that wedge to be kicked out at once.
“Not at all.” He was careful not to look at the gallery, where Clarkson and the others sat. “That would still be entirely dependent on the will of the plantation owners. But consider this: the alchemy used to spellbind is expensive to manufacture, it shortens the lives of the slaves, and it impedes their ability to perform their tasks. Plantations that limit its use are measurably more productive. I see no evil in its use being reduced by those that choose to do so. And if the abolition of the trade does provide incentive to improve the lives of the slaves in this way, I can see it only as an added blessing.”
“And how does the honorable gentleman see the instant annihilation of a trade which annually employs upward of fifty-five hundred sailors and one hundred sixty ships, and which entails a large portion of our exports? Is such a loss to the country to be seen as an added blessing too?”
“It’s interesting you should mention this.” Once again, he fought to keep his voice calm—this time, against a flash of triumph. “I have in my hand a pamphlet which states, in very dreadful colors, what thousands and tens of thousands will be ruined, how our wealth will be impaired, one-third of our commerce cut off forever, while France, our natural enemy and rival, will strengthen herself by our weakness.”
He raised his voice over the assenting calls from the House and the gallery.
“It might interest you to know, then, that this pamphlet was written fifteen years ago, when the American colonies rose up against us, and this House voted to grant them independence. Those colonies are free now: its men and women regulate their own magic and make their own laws, free from our control. I would therefore ask you, gentlemen, if this prophecy came to pass? Is our wealth decayed? Is France raised upon our ruins? On the contrary, do we not see, by the instance of this pamphlet, how men in a desponding moment will picture to themselves the most gloomy consequences from causes by no means to be apprehended?”
At the sound of his own voice, fluent and confident above the mutterings of the House, Wilberforce felt confidence rally within to match it. For three and a half hours, as the night wore on outside the candlelight of the House, he described the filthy conditions, the cruel treatment at the hands of the traders, the unimaginable torture of being reduced to property in theory while remaining in truth a feeling, intelligent human being. His throat was dry before he was near done, but his voice never faltered, and he ignored the growing pain of his knife wound to stand as straight and tall as his tiny frame would permit.
Finally, he took a deep breath and concluded. “There is a principle above everything which is political, and when I reflect on the command which says, ‘Thou shalt do no murder,’ believing the authority to be divine, how can I dare set up any reasonings of my own against it? The nature and the circumstances of this trade are now laid open to us; we can no longer plead ignorance; we cannot evade it. It is now an object placed before us; we cannot pass it; we may spurn it, we may kick it out of our way, but we cannot turn aside so as to avoid seeing it. This House must decide, and must justify to all the world and to their own consciences, the principles of their decision.”
The walls were chiming, the high, clear nightingale note that was his and his alone. As he sat down in his place to a burst of applause that seemed to come from all corners of the House of Commoners, he knew that despite everything, he had managed to give the best speech of his life.
Two hours later, Parliament was dispersing around him, and he was as low as he had ever felt at the end of a session.
“They haven’t defeated it utterly,” Thornton reminded him comfortingly from beside him. “They’ve only called for the vote to be postponed until next year for more evidence to be heard and collected. That’s a step in the right direction.”
“Of course it is,” Wilberforce agreed, marshaling his voice to sound optimistic. The wave he had been riding while speaking from the dispatch box had been so high that the fall was painful. The wound in his side was throbbing sickeningly, which probably meant his last dose of laudanum had worn off. “And we have over a year’s head start on them in terms of gathering information. It’s perhaps all we could ever expect. Are you going back to Old Palace Yard?”
“I think I will, if I can’t find Sharp or Clarkson outside.” Thornton had been lodging with him while Parliament was in session, which seemed only fair given that Wilberforce had been lodging with him in Clapham for such a large portion of the rest of the year. The two of them had always been on good terms, but their shared ideals and the time Wilberforce had spent recuperating at Thornton’s house had drawn them even closer together. “I should probably get some rest—so should you.”
“I will, very soon, I promise. But I want to try and catch Pitt first, to see if he has any ideas I can bring to the meeting this afternoon.”
It didn’t quite work like that, of course. He had to first run the gauntlet of people’s compliments and commiserations, including those of a very annoyed C
harles Fox; then, as soon as he cleared the debating chamber itself, the other members of the Abolition Society were upon him, filled with their own reassurances and disappointments.
“I knew this would happen,” Clarkson said furiously. The abolitionist was bristling with indignation; beneath it, though, Wilberforce could see real heartbreak. If anybody had given their whole life to this cause, it was Clarkson. “I knew it couldn’t be simply a matter of a few speakers being brilliant and honest; if it was, the country would be in a very different state altogether.”
“This is a reasonable beginning,” Wilberforce said, and knew he sounded unconvincing. “We’ll keep gathering evidence, and then when Parliament opens next year—”
“Nothing is going to be accomplished through politics,” Clarkson said, then caught himself. “Forgive me, I didn’t mean that as a criticism of you. You did wonderfully; so did Fox and Pitt. But this is not the place where any real change is going to happen.”
“It is,” Wilberforce said. “I know how you feel, but I promise, on the right day, it is.”
Pitt was waiting for him in the entranceway. The darkness outside had the crisp, quiet taste of after midnight.
“I underestimated you,” Pitt said as Wilberforce approached. “I only thought you’d do brilliantly.”
“It didn’t quite have the effect I hoped for,” Wilberforce said.
Pitt made a face. “I know. Unfortunately, it was so convincing a speech that the opposition couldn’t risk putting it to a vote. I’ve still rarely encountered its equal.”
Coming from somebody who had studied the great orators of history and Parliament since he could read, that was a true honor, and Wilberforce felt his cheeks color with embarrassed pleasure. Fortunately, he was too tired and dispirited for pride to take a proper hold.
“I have to confess, I’m not at all sure I did the right thing in agreeing to the hearing of more evidence,” he said. “The trade will go as usual all summer until Parliament reconvenes, and then the hearings will drag for months. It’s a delaying tactic.”
“You had no choice,” Pitt said. “If you’d forced a vote, we might have carried it, but it would still have to pass the House of Aristocrats, and they’d use the lack of evidence to overturn it at once. It has to be done properly.”
“Will it be done, though, is the question.”
Pitt considered the question carefully, as usual. “The evidence is in our favor. We just need to fight for it to be heard—and Clarkson and your friends are very good at being heard. You’ll have some long, difficult hours ahead next year, which I’m sorry for. The slave trade will do all they can to make sure their own voices drown yours out. But after how things went today… Unless the climate shifts radically over the summer, and I can’t foresee why it would, I still think you can do it.”
It was what he felt too, more or less what he had told Clarkson. But it was comforting to hear. It might not have been the end they all wanted, but it was a promising start.
“I have plans to go to Paris over the summer, in fact,” Wilberforce told him, and felt a little brighter. “I’m still holding on to the idea of mutual abolition. Even though the king of France doesn’t feel able to ban the slave trade with a royal decree, there are still strong hopes that it can be effected there by other means. The king’s ministers were right when they said that free magic and liberty were touchstones among reformers over there. There’s potential for real change to be made at the Estates General, aimed at freedom of magic for Commoner magicians, mostly, but I can’t imagine anyone who feels indignant at the braceleting of their countrymen could be complacent about the spellbinding of their fellow man. It’s possible that the reformers might be willing to incorporate the slave trade into the list of abuses to be done away with, if we approach them in the right way.”
“It’s possible,” Pitt agreed, but more cautiously than Wilberforce had expected. “I agree it ought to be attempted. As your friend, though, I’d far rather someone else undertook the journey. Paris has been growing dangerously restive lately, and you’re still not in the best of health.”
“Clarkson will almost certainly volunteer to accompany me—and I’m very close to being well again.”
“The undead came from France,” Pitt said. “It seems a risk to follow it back there.”
“We don’t know for certain that it did come from France. The Templars in France had no record of any necromancy for the last hundred years, you said.”
“And that troubles me in itself. Britain has certainly had an act or two of necromancy in the last century. For France to have no record of any at all in their own country, I strongly suspect somebody gained entrance to the Bastille and destroyed any mention of them. They must have known that the first thing anyone looking for a necromancer would do is to search for incidents of dark magic and then follow the bloodlines.”
“Even if they did, France is a very big country. And why would it be a risk for me to go there, as opposed to anybody else?” A memory struck him, and stopped him in his tracks. “This has something to do with why you asked me to leave town last year, hasn’t it? You never did explain that.”
“There was never anything very much to explain. Only suspicions, and faint ones at that.” Wilberforce looked at him steadily, and Pitt sighed. “Consider this, then. The shadow was waiting in Westminster Abbey. From there, it was in close proximity to many buildings of possible interest: Buckingham House, the Houses of Parliament, Downing Street, Whitehall. But it was in far closer proximity to your house at Old Palace Yard. And when we moved on it, and it was faced with the two of us, it chose to attack you rather than me.”
“But that was pure chance, surely? It might not have recognized either of us. Perhaps I seemed an easier victim.”
“Perhaps. I only know that no undead has appeared in London since. That means one of two things: whoever was responsible for the first was prevented from sending another, for reasons we can’t fathom… or the one they sent had already accomplished its mission. You were about to move to abolish the slave trade. They knew that in France: William Eden saw to that, as did the abolitionists over there. You were almost killed. Since then, there’s been no real movement toward abolition. And even among the reformers over there, abolition is not a popular idea.”
“All the more reason for us to go now, surely,” Wilberforce said. He resolutely ignored the chill around his heart. “You may be right, or not—really, I don’t know. But I know I would hate to jeopardize a chance of negotiation because of one incident of dark magic.”
“Still,” Pitt said, but didn’t complete his thought.
Paris
July 1789
Thomas Clarkson left England early in the morning, amid warnings of a storm and hurried arrangements for transporting his box of African artifacts and countless reassurances to Wilberforce that, yes, he really was quite content to make the journey to Paris in his place.
“Wilberforce, in the last few years, I’ve traveled some twenty-five thousand miles around England to gather evidence and lecture on the evils of the slave trade,” Clarkson said finally. “This is the sole object of my life. It’s immaterial to me where I go for it. And our friends are right that things could be very dangerous over there for somebody as close to the government as yourself, given the state of things; besides, a few months ago I was still hearing reports that you were going to die.”
“I’m not going to die,” Wilberforce said, but in the cold wind from the sea he looked very small and tired. It concerned Clarkson, who had seen him the previous year when everybody was convinced they were about to lose him. “I’m just not going to be very lively for a while. Again. Apparently I’ve overdone things.”
“And by ‘things,’ you mean helping me abolish the slave trade,” Clarkson said dryly.
“And by ‘overdone,’ I mean if you feel I can help you further, please send me word and I’ll come straight to Paris,” Wilberforce said, with a far more characteristic twinkle. It made Cl
arkson smile in response. “Thank you, as always. Do write to us when you can, won’t you?”
It was just as well Wilberforce hadn’t gone. The crossing was a rough one, and the bustle at the port in Calais not much better. As Clarkson journeyed by swift post chaise through the French countryside, the towns in which he stopped only seemed more restless. The people looked starving and ill. Incidents of robbery and violence were becoming more prevalent, and acts of unregistered magic were on the rise. A storm was brewing.
On the morning Clarkson arrived in Paris, Robespierre was having breakfast at the Café de Foy in the Palais-Royal gardens with Camille Desmoulins. The café, elegant in its shroud of tree-lined walks, had become an unlikely hive of revolutionary activity. On a fine day, it was crowded with diners and walkers, and the air felt rarefied and crisp with ideas. A few pedestrians pointed and whispered as they passed Robespierre’s table.
They might have been pointing at Camille, who had gained a reputation for pamphlets too radical to print, but Robespierre heard his own name mentioned more than once. It had become one of the more renowned of the Third Estate. He had come from nowhere, small, pale, and unassuming, yet he had come fighting, and he called for reform on a scale that was dangerous and thrilling. His quiet voice spoke of a country built on Enlightenment principles, whose people were virtuous, where magic was a free resource to be used for the betterment of all, where food was well distributed and plentiful, where courts were in the hands of the people and not the talons of the Aristocracy, where the poorest Commoner was free to vote and grow and be educated. Plenty laughed at his opinions as being overly idealistic, even naive. Yet when he spoke, people listened. This was partly due to the illegal magic throbbing in his chest and permeating his words; he knew this, and he had no scruples about it. What he was saying needed to be heard, by whatever means. His vision for France was so clear now he could almost touch it.