Cecily stood still in the winter landscape, Demeter watching Persephone taken down to Hades.
She made a last clutch at hope. Perhaps she’s not on hoard. It’s another ship. Then, as the man standing beside her waved his hat to the ship and shouted, ‘God speed,’ she knew it wasn’t.
‘She’s small for a slaver,’ somebody said.
‘Oh, we cram ’em in,’ said the man, replacing his hat and tapping it so that the turquoise ring on his finger showed like a tiny blue exotic bird. ‘We cram ’em in.’
‘Do you?’ asked Cecily, mildly. ‘Do you really?’ She held her arms out in front of her as if she were sleepwalking, turned and pushed Da Silva into the river.
Some of the men restrained a struggling Tinker while others took the madwoman to the harbourmaster’s office. Da Silva was brought in shivering, wet, to be wrapped in a tarpaulin. There was a lot of shouting and questions that Cecily ignored, didn’t hear.
The focus of it changed. They were all outside again in the black and white world of the wharf. Men pointing. Tinker howling triumph. Snow closed in and cleared again. Through it came a skiff, dangerously low in the water with new weight – an elderly black man and a bundle that Cameron had wrapped in his coat, which he held to his chest like the treasure of the Indies.
Chapter Fourteen
By April England was still rioting. Public houses shook with curses against the king. Justices threatened to read the Riot Act and the mobs responded: ‘Damn your laws.’
Walpole, certain that lowering the land tax would give him the support of the powerful, and equally certain of his hold on the House of Commons, put his case time and again: the excise was logical; the honourable members must not be led astray by an orchestrated howl.
What the honourable members knew was that an election was in the offing – and fifty-four constituencies had already instructed their MP to oppose the tax. Even courtiers began to desert the Great Man, partly bowing to public opinion, partly from a late attack of social conscience. Tax on necessities was already higher in Britain than in Holland or even France; much of the poor’s taxes went towards paying the interest to government fund-holders.
The Jacobites were excited and on the move.
In all this furore, few had attention to spare for a case concerning a thirty-pound piece of property to be heard at the Court of Common Pleas that Easter term…
‘Reasonable?’ asked Cecily, furiously. ‘You’re calling Da Silva “reasonable”?’
‘Not unreasonable,’ Cameron said. ‘He’s admitted his mistake in taking Eleanor and is deeply apologetic…’
‘Mistake?’
‘…and merely demands Quick back.’
‘He’s not bloody having him.’
They stood at the chambers’ window watching Eleanor take her exercise by walking round and round the courtyard flowerbed. Tyler was with her, pistol in pocket, but they became nervous if she wasn’t under their eye. The little girl walked quietly, her hand in Tyler’s. She used to skip.
She asked: ‘I want revenge. Why aren’t we suing the bastard for kidnapping or assault or whatever?’
‘Because he would counter with your assault on him at the jetty. I am anxious to avoid your appearance in court.’
‘That wouldn’t matter.’
‘I think it would, my dear.’
My dear, not my dearie. I’m the Jacobite again. We’ve had time to collect ourselves.
‘Also a writ of Habeas Corpus would mean the King’s Bench where Lord Juniper is sitting. I’m no favourite of his. No, let Da Silva sue for restitution of property in Common Pleas. It’s what the case will be about, pure and simple: is Quick, is any man, a chattel or is he not?’
He said it without emphasis but it was like standing too close to a firework: she could hear the fuse fizzing. ‘Don’t go on crusade,’ she said. ‘Don’t make legal history. Just get my cook back.’
She wanted it over: Quick, free, chopping his herbs in the Belle’s kitchen, Eleanor helping her stem daffodils for the parlour table. Everything as it was, if it could be. Which it couldn’t, of course: Eleanor had been introduced to fear and would never throw it off. And I shan’t ever be easy if she’s out of my sight.
The child’s nightmares told her what the child wouldn’t: dark, cold days in a cellar, Da Silva’s matter-of-factness, shelving in the hold of The Swan on which slaves would be packed like library books when she reached Africa. Only Eleanor’s devotion to Quick showed that she’d had a protection for which Cecily would be ever grateful.
Worse was Eleanor’s confusion as to who she was. Future references to her colour would, necessarily, be translated to slavery in her mind; once assured of being part of a loving household, she would henceforth see herself a misfit in two races.
New truths for Cecily too. On the wharf she had rocked the child and told her how much she loved her, to see that Eleanor had known it all along. And how important Cameron was to the girl: even in Cecily’s arms she’d not let go of his hand. ‘I knew you and Mamma would get me back.’ The thin little face crumbling: ‘But I didn’t know when.’
Slavers dragged her t’rough dat window, dat one. Watching her daughter, Cecily remembered the woman who wouldn’t see hers again. I don’t have to fight her war, she thought. It’s not the same. She was too common to feel agony like mine.
But the woman had. And the bloody Scottish little Don Quixote by Cecily’s side knew she had and was going into battle for her.
She sighed. ‘Will we win?’
He went through the procedure so far: Declaration, Plea; the Replication, Rejoinder, Surrejoinder, Rebutter, Surrebutter. ‘Da Silva won’t issue a writ of ca. sa., that is capias ad satisfaciendum, though he might go for fi. fa., fieras facias, to seize his goods – in this case Quick…’ He was deliberately boring her.
She grinned at him. ‘First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.’
He didn’t smile back. ‘By the way, my dear. There’s a warrant out for the arrest of a certain Sir Spender Dick. Sedition. An acquaintance of yours, I believe.’
* * *
Through the law which dictates that the worst must happen, and through a winter that had broken one judge’s leg and given another pneumonia, it was Lord Juniper who sat on the bench – actually a great Jacobean chair – to hear the case of Da Silva v. Cameron.
He was a fleshy man who peered out from his wig like a pug that had grown spaniels’ ears. As he smiled on Prosecuting Counsel Jennings it was a not unattractive pug. ‘Ah, Sir Peter, how nice.’ But his greeting, ‘We meet again, Mr Cameron,’ had the rasp of a sword drawn from its scabbard. Lord Juniper didn’t like Scotsmen, particularly this one.
He didn’t like blacks either. He glanced at the public gallery, where Cecily’s was one white face in a row of black: ‘I see the court has gathered soot today.’ He had a mistress – the legal profession retained the monastic tradition of university colleges and rarely married – four illegitimate children and a large staff that included one Negro.
Unlearned – the legal profession accepted the semi-literate – but intelligent, he made his position clear from the beginning: ‘Gentlemen of the jury, Mr Cameron is the defendant in this case and is choosing, most unusually, to conduct his own defence. He is precluded from giving evidence. He is going to try and waste our time with a lot of fol-de-rol about the Rights of Man but I would urge on you that what we have here is a property matter, pure and simple. Mr Da Silva, the claimant, will tell you that his cook, a certain Sambo Vickery otherwise known as…’ the judge looked at his papers, ‘…Quick Bell, was unlawfully taken from him by Mr Cameron here. Whether he was or was not – and only whether he was or was not – is for you to decide.’
The jury, stacked like chessmen in the lidless box that was their gallery high on the court wall, nodded in unison and awe. Grocers, Cecily decided.
‘I should tell you,’ continued Lord Juniper, ‘that when the request for a writ was brought before me, I advised the def
endant to purchase the disputed cook from the plaintiff and save everybody’s time.’ He sighed. ‘However, let’s to it and see if we can all be home for tea.’
Cameron had put this solution to Quick, for whom Da Silva had insisted he stand surety before he could take him home to Arundel Street. ‘I can buy ye back, Quick. It would ensure your freedom for I’d give ye manumission at once.’ He stopped there but they could all hear the qualification hanging in the air while Quick considered. Cameron wanted to fight a case that wouldn’t just get Quick back but which would add a principle to Law itself: that no man, whatever his colour, could be somebody else’s property.
Mentally, Cecily urged Quick to agree to his purchase. Say yes. Yes. Save yourself. Don’t worry about the rest. The case may be lost. Say yes. It’s a save-yourself world. Let’s go home to the Belle. Quick had become more than the inn’s masterly cook: he was its paterfamilias. His pronouncements could bore her to tears but she asked for his opinion. Standing in his kitchen, among his apprentice cooks, he was nearer the Belle’s heart than Cecily herself, a respected, self-respecting old man.
She remembered the figure that had crouched on the cobbles of her stableyard, wrists manacled to its neck, eyes unblinking as Ned hammered off the collar. Damned if you’re going back to that.
Quick asked: ‘Can we win, Master Archie?’
Cameron grimaced. ‘I’ll be straight with ye, Quick. It’s no’ certain. I’ll try, but it’s no’ certain.’
‘What you think, Miz Cec’ly?’
She was touched. ‘You have to decide. I just want you home.’
‘See,’ he said, ‘Ah want to stay with you, Miz Cec’ly. Ah’m too old to be treated bad.’
Good. Let’s go.
‘But see,’ said Quick, ‘Massa Da Silva, he took our Eleanor. He shouldn’t ought to have done dat. He shouldn’t ought to take anybody.’
Damn…
Quick’s slow eyes went back to Cameron. ‘How much he askin’ for me, Master Archie?’
‘Thirty pounds.’ It was his original price: Da Silva had been fair.
The beginning of a tired smile. ‘Ah’m worth more’n dat.’
So the case went ahead. What can you do? In the face of courage like that, what could anybody do?
Cole came up to London so that he could give evidence of Quick’s upright character and hard work. Tyler went back to take his place at the Belle. Tinker and the nurse remained with Eleanor at Arundel Street.
As Cameron prepared the defence he’d become convinced that Da Silva wasn’t pursuing his claim merely in order to recoup thirty pounds. ‘There’s money and purpose behind this case. It couldnae have been brought so quickly else. The plantocracy want to…’
‘The what?’
‘West Indies planters. Terrified for themselves. England must allow slavery on her soil or what of the colonies that are built on that very system? No, no, they see the chance of settling the matter for good and aye. They’re bringing this case to confirm Yorke-Talbot.’
She didn’t ask what Yorke-Talbot was. She was sure she’d find out.
There were two long benches in the high public gallery. Cecily had arrived late, seconds after the judge himself, to catch his eye. She’d dressed gorgeously: it must be seen that not all the great and beautiful were on the plantocracy side.
And planters there were. On the gallery’s front bench sat three white men with overlarge hats and diamonded fingers, whose skin had suffered under a foreign sun and their figures, by the look of it, from too much rum.
She’d scandalized the usher in choosing the row behind, where all the spectators were black. She made a business of settling herself in its centre, only to wonder what impression it made to be sitting between a convicted pickpocket, Solly, and a notorious madam, Ebony Bet.
Da Silva was dignified in the witness box. Yes, he was Christopher Fernandez Simon Da Silva, resident of St George’s Parish, Barbados, agent for the owners of the Vickery sugar plantation in the same parish.
Yes, he had a bill of sale dated 1683 – he produced it, much worn – which showed that the fourteen-year-old male slave, subsequently known as Samboth or Sambo Vickery (‘“Vickery” being the name of the estate which purchased him’), had been bought in the market at Bridgetown. When the estate had passed to its present owners, so had the ownership of its slaves, including Sambo. When he, Mr Da Silva, had come to England on the estate’s business some nine years ago, its owners had kindly made him a gift of Sambo, who had accompanied him as a manservant. Yes, he had the deed of gift – here it is. And one of his employers was in court who would testify to it if need be.
Sir Peter Jennings: ‘It was a valuable gift, was it not?’
Da Silva: ‘Yes, sir, it was. Sambo’s a skilled cook.’
Lord Juniper, who’d been dozing, woke up: ‘Good cook, is he?’
‘Yes, m’lud. But on arriving in England the boy…’
‘Boy?’
‘Beg your pardon, m’lud. In Barbados a Negro’s a boy until he’s decrepit. Anyway, Sambo became uppity—’
‘“Uppity”, Mr Da Silva?’
‘Lazy, my lord, an’ disobedient. Other Negroes told him he was as good a man as the King of England, he didn’t have to serve a master no more, but must rise up.’
‘Rise up?’
Clever phrase, that, to a Whig judge in a court where the sound of riot made a faint background. And, thought Cecily, to a jury of grocers who’d more than likely had their windows broken.
Da Silva explained how, after two attempts at escape on a journey north, Sambo’d had to be manacled but had still contrived to jump, unseen, from the coach and disappear, only to be found years later ‘staying at an inn, like a lord, on the Great North Road’.
Another nice touch: a cartoon Negro, fat and lazy.
‘So I took him, m’lud, determining to send him back to Barbados so he shouldn’t be no more nuisance. He was my responsibility. Wasn’t fair he should go on the Poor Rate or keep an Englishman out of a job.’
Somebody’s tutored the bastard. Da Silva had played the three-note chord – rebellion, poor relief, employment – that stood up every hair on a ratepaying head. He was the middle class’s saviour; Quick, its nightmare. We’re doomed.
There was a blast of garlic in Cecily’s ear. ‘Dat one noble Negro-beater,’ said Ebony Bet.
‘Shush,’ begged Cecily. The judge had glanced up in annoyance, disturbed by a black whisper. He hadn’t minded the ‘hear, hears’ of the planters every time Da Silva scored a hit.
The court heard how Quick had been taken off The Swan as she went downriver. Sir Peter Jennings posed the questions so that the replies drew a picture of a boarding by pirates waving cutlasses rather than men carrying a writ of Habeas Corpus.
Cross-examination was made a farce. Cameron attempted to tarnish Da Silva’s uprightness by inducing him to say he’d threatened Quick with a gun, had kidnapped Eleanor. But at the first question…
Lord Juniper: ‘Are you charging Mr Da Silva with assault?’
Cameron: ‘Not at this stage, m’lud.’
‘Then it is of no concern. I will try only this indictment.’
One of the planters in front of Cecily said: ‘Home and dry, I think, gentlemen.’
Quick wasn’t expected: dignified, softly spoken, not fat. But he irritated the court by the slowness of his replies: obviously a ruse to concoct lies.
Yes, he was the Sambo Vickery of this case.
Lord Juniper: ‘But you adopt an alias, do you not? Hurry up, man. We haven’t got all day.’
‘Quick’s what dey call me at de Belle, master. Dat’s affection. Among my people, the Ashanti, my name was Opoku Ware.’
Lord Juniper: ‘Poky what?’ (Laughter in court.) ‘And what cooking did you do at this inn? Hens you’d sacrificed? That sort of thing?’ (More laughter.)
Here we go. Cecily smiled inwardly and watched Juniper’s face change at the chanted menus. Quick was en route to the judge’s heart.
>
Lord Juniper: ‘Oregano? Really?’
Quick: ‘Judge, it ain’t proper côtelette de veau lessen you marinate her in garlic, equal parts oil an’ vinegar an’ oregano – an’ it got to be fresh oregano. I don’ consider dried. You come to de Belle one day, judge, an’ I make her for you.’
Juniper recalled himself, sat back. ‘We’ll see, my man. We’ll see.’
Cameron tried to call Cole to give evidence of Quick’s good character and hard work. However…
‘The cook’s character is not in question, Mr Cameron. We shall not hear your witness.’
The court adjourned for half an hour while the judge went to his retiring room to drink or pee or kick the usher; whatever judges did.
In the marble corridor outside, Cole put his arm around Cecily’s shoulders. ‘Not so good?’
She shook her head and rested it on his coat; it smelt of Hertfordshire and the Belle. ‘We’re going to lose him, Cole.’
At one end of the corridor the planters and Da Silva were drinking from celebratory hip flasks. At the other, Cameron talked to his clerk. He’d taken off his grubby court wig and was combing his hair with his fingers as he did when he was worried.
He’s won every case but this one. And this is the most important to him. She realized: To everybody.
Cole, not having to testify, was able to sit next to her in the public gallery. Ebony Bet kept squeezing his knee: Cole was her size of man. He didn’t seem to mind.
Judge: ‘Very well, Mr Cameron. But keep it short. This is merely a property case, remember.’
‘Aye, m’lud. It is.’
Her husband stood up. Against the prosecution’s tall and elegant Sir Peter Jennings, he was a diminished figure, the Glasgow accent an intrusion into a well-spoken court, another outlander who’d arrived to take employment from good Englishmen. The grocers in the jury box looked on him with disfavour: they liked their law distinguished.
‘Gentlemen of the jury, ye have heard the learned judge in this case address the subject of it as “man”.’
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