The Quality of Mercy - By Barry Unsworth Page 0,10
blessed with a strong constitution, but he came very close to it. Well, the man was hanged, of course, but you will not easily divine why.”
“Why, for attempted murder, I suppose.”
“No, sir. The law we serve with such devotion is not always so simple. They hanged him for attempted burglary. In order to gain access to his master, he had to enter by the door that led to his master’s chamber. There was no forcing of locks—all he did was lift the latch and go in.”
Kemp regarded the lawyer for some moments without speaking. The instinctive antagonism of his nature, a constitutional unwillingness to react as was expected or desired, unless there was something to be gained, kept his face impassive now. Pike was acting for him, they had agreed on a fee; he saw no cause for seeking to please Pike by raising eyebrows or uttering exclamations of astonishment. “So long as he was hanged,” he said, “that answers the matter well enough.”
“Some might take that view, yes. I have been wondering … If you wanted the men hanged, the remainder of the crew, I mean, why not see to the business in Florida? It is a British possession by exchange of Havana with the Spanish. The Admiralty has jurisdiction there, no whit less than here in London. And procedures are simpler in the colonies. They could have been hauled off and hanged from one day to the next.”
Kemp hesitated before replying; in fact, at first he was minded not to reply at all. He had never, from earliest youth, liked to avow his motives for anything, feeling it to be somehow undignified, or even demeaning, as if he were submitting himself to judgment. His cousin had been wounded in the capture and had died of the wound before he could be got to the hangman in Florida or anywhere else. Kemp had felt this keenly at the time as a failure on his own part. His view of it had changed since then; the failure was tinged with sorrow now, though he could not bring himself to admit blame or contrition—that would be to betray the mission of justice that had impelled him. He had been guided by principle in bringing the men back to England, and he was a man who set great store by principle.
“That was my first thought,” he said. “But then it seemed wrong to have them tried and executed in that hasty, scrambling sort of fashion. Twelve years had passed since they took refuge in Florida. I judged it more in keeping that they should stand trial and be hanged here, in full public view, so they should serve as an example of the workings of justice, and make it known on every hand that punishment is certain, whatever the time that has elapsed.”
It was Pike’s turn to hesitate now. He was not cynical exactly, but he had seen too many courtrooms to believe altogether in the principle of justice as a determining force in legal process. “Worthy aims, worthy aims, upon my soul,” he said at last.
“Have there been some further developments? Other than the escape of this scoundrely fiddler, I mean. Is it not high time that these men came before a jury?”
“We have been successful in our application for the release from prison of the first mate, Barton. As you know, he is turning evidence against the others on the promise of a pardon. His evidence cannot be presented in court while he is in confinement, since it might seem that his words are aimed at securing his own release.” Here the lawyer permitted himself a pause and a smile, though he made no attempt to share the smile with his client. “That his words will have already served to secure his release is an entirely different matter, of course. He has undertaken to make a written deposition. It seems that he can write.”
“Yes, he told me he could read and write.” With the words there came to Kemp a memory of the mate as he had been aboard ship, when the proposition to betray his shipmates had first been put to him. In the narrow confines of the cabin, Barton, brought down from the open deck, had shivered like a dog and gulped down the rum and talked of his sainted mother, who had taught him to read at her knee. A reek of sweat and fish oil had come from the man’s body as he sat across the