The Quality of Mercy - By Barry Unsworth Page 0,107

them gifts from the trade goods that had been left aboard the ship—kettles, beads, scraps of cotton. We never could fathom what use they were, but it was like a treasure to them. They brought us gifts in their turn. There was a root they knew of that you could grind an’ make cakes from, an’ there was yams an’ pumpkin seeds an’ tubers of sweet potato.”

Bordon listened intently to this and nodded several times when Sullivan had finished speaking. “You lacked for nothin’,” he said, “you had all you needed,” and Sullivan saw on his face the light of a vision and knew in that moment that he and this miner were fellow spirits. “We did so,” he said.

Bordon remained silent for a space of time, head lowered. He did not look at Sullivan when he spoke again, but kept his eyes on the stone flags at his feet.

“Tha made me a gift, comin’ here.”

Only the strangeness of such a visitor with his way of looking and talking, his tale of wanderings in far places, his wildness, could have brought Bordon to words like these, words safe to utter, inviolate, sealed off by the difference between the two of them. “A rare gift,” he said. “An’ a’m nay talkin’ only about Billy Blair.”

And Sullivan, who was quick to sense feelings in others, felt the gratitude and unhappiness in the words and experienced an urge to protect Bordon by shifting the talk before regret could enter into it. “Speakin’ of gifts,” he said, “that was a fine kite you made for your son.”

“My father made a kite for me when a was gannin’ on for seven years old, in the time just before a went down the mine. When a had sons of my own, a carried on with it. Now it’s Percy’s turn, he’ll be startin’ soon. Once they start down the mine they dinna play no more.”

He was looking squarely at Sullivan now, and something of a smile had come to his face, though there was no gladness in it. “They come to the end of playin’,” he said. “How did tha come to be a fiddler?”

“Me father was a fiddlin’ man an’ he passed it on to me. He traveled about, playin’ an’ singin’ at fairs an’ weddin’s. There were seven of us, brothers and sisters, we went beggin’ by the way, but I was the only one of them that had the power of music in me. He taught me how to find the notes. He always meant me to have the fiddle. He gave it to me when he was dyin’—he had not much more than that to leave, an’ it will be the same with me, ’cept that I have no sons to leave anythin’ to. Our children were all sold, along with the mothers.”

“What use did they have for a fiddler on board of a slave ship?”

“Well, I had been to sea before as an ordinary seaman, so I knew the work. But they like to get a fiddler on a slave ship because he can play an’ the slaves can dance to the music.”

“Dance to the music?” Bordon’s smile had disappeared. “Tha’s makin’ game of me,” he said. There was the beginning of anger in his voice, and Sullivan sensed in this quickness to take offense a battle more or less permanent against a world that showed him no mercy.

“No,” he said, “they needed to be danced because they were in chains, d’you see, they spent long hours cramped up below decks with scarce space enough to move a muscle. Without exercise they would get ill an’ melancholy an’ their value on the market would take a plunge. So they were brought up on deck an’ made to dance to the fiddle music.”

“Still in their chains?”

“Yes.”

“What if they didna have nay fancy for dancin’?”

“They would be flogged.”

Bordon was silent for a while, as if in reflection. Then he nodded, and the same smile came back to his face. “Not much choice,” he said. “Better to dance than to bleed.”

With this he made for the door, leaving Sullivan feeling that he had made a friend, though one of uncertain temper. Sally was still in the kitchen, and he made his way there now in the expectation of her smile and the hope of something to eat.

Bordon slept badly that night, assailed by dreams of snapping jaws and clanking chains. He saw the white birds rising up and stalked the deer through close-growing trees.